His Only Son: With Dona Berta

by Leopoldo Alas

  On the one occasion on which Minghetti and Emma mentioned the pregnancy, both Bonifacio and Don Basilio were thrown into torments of anxiety. Emma insisted that she wanted to go sea- bathing; the season was right, and there were still some weeks before “it” was due; they had ample time to go and come back. Sea-bathing was not as common then as it is now. Emma’s town was only a few leagues from the coast, and yet very few families visited the seaside in summer. And the reason Emma was so insistent was precisely because it was the “distinguished” thing to do. Don Basilio had to admit that sea-bathing would not cause any actual harm, but that depended on various things; she might be nearer to giving birth than she thought, in which case it would be very foolish. But the truly dangerous, reckless part of her venture was the journey by carriage, there and back, along those rough, potholed roads. It was absurd!

  “But Minghetti said—”

  “Let Signor Minghetti stick to singing his arias and romanzas and not get involved in matters of which he knows nothing.”

  “But Minghetti has traveled widely—”

  “But not when he was in an interesting condition.”

  “That’s not what I meant, I mean that he’s traveled and seen a lot of things and he assures me—”

  “That ladies comme il faut should not give birth. It’s all right, I know the theory.”

  Ignoring Don Basilio’s advice, they went to the seaside.

  Given that fatherhood was now all but assured, Bonifacio was tempted to oppose the expedition and deploy the new energy he had determined he would use later on. However, alarmed by the look of fury on Emma’s face when he suggested giving due consideration to Don Basilio’s advice, Bonifacio continued to postpone his resolution “to take control of the household” and “to be a proper husband to his wife” until after the birth.

  “There’s no point risking everything over a mere trifle. Best not to irritate her. Another miscarriage would be disastrous, disastrous for all my hopes, for my whole life. We’ll discuss things further after the birth.”

  But Nepomuceno, Körner, Sebastián, Marta, the Ferraz girls, and Minghetti were not about to give birth, so what prevented him from dealing with them? Why did he not throw the parasites out of the house? Why did he not seize control of the household expenses and restore order to their domestic routine, which was currently entirely given over to revelry. Above all, why did he not insist on having a private talk with Nepomuceno and telling him, “Now look here, my friend, this has gone far enough! The least you can do is to explain why it is that we’re on the brink of ruin.”

  Why was he so afraid of Nepomuceno and the other friends of the household? The trip to the coast, he reasoned, would afford him a breathing space.

  “We’re going now and I can’t possibly sort those things out before we leave. But when we’re back, oh yes, when we’re back, then I’ll have it out with Emma’s uncle.”

  The only thing Bonifacio had dared to do before leaving for the coast had been to sniff around a little in the family business. He had timidly suggested to Körner and Nepomuceno that they take him with them to see the factory, which was about a league outside the town, a whole league of potholed roads. It never occurred to either of them that there was anything suspicious about this journey, that it was an act of espionage. Bonifacio’s ineptitude regarding serious, industrial, economic matters was such that when he listened to his uncle and to Körner, they might as well have been speaking Greek. They talked openly in his presence of the bad state in which the “old business” found itself, but he understood not a word. The “new business,” they said, was another matter entirely. The Valcárcel money, as Körner dismissively referred to it, would play no part in that. The chemical factory was on its last legs; the idea of extracting chemicals from seaweed had been almost completely abandoned. In theory, the business could not fail; in practice, however, it was a disaster. They had kept it running out of sheer inertia. The material bought with the Valcárcel money, at the cost of large and pointless sacrifices, was put to use in other ventures—all of which were risky and quite mad from the economic point of view—and on tests intended to help Körner try out the novelties he read about in technical journals, but which were a recipe for disaster, sheer madness, in the sad world of Spanish commerce, especially in that backwater of Spain, with barely any communications, not even a railway station. They spent little money on those “romantic” chemical adventures because there was no money to be had; there was nothing left of the fortune which, up until then, had provided everything. The new business, they said, would be quite different. No vague ideas, no experiments with unpredictable results; the new factory would be the first and only gunpowder factory in the province. Körner would be the engineer in chief, and Nepomuceno would be in charge of the limited company that would provide the financial juice. They had left something, albeit very little, in the exhausted Valcárcel family finances, although the Valcárcels knew almost nothing about this.

  The gunpowder factory was to be built on land belonging to the “old” factory, as they referred to the original building. No one knew why so many hectares had been bought for that first factory, but this proved to be a boon for the new industry because they had bought, very cheaply, the land now needed for the gunpowder factory and which was of no use to the old one. The industrial and administrative skulduggery in which Körner and Nepomuceno were always involved had cost them many arguments, not a few shady dealings, and quite a lot of money, given the need to overcome the scruples of the law and of the civil service, or, rather, their personnel, but the odd first-rate meal and the occasional gift, along with boundless bonhomie, letters of recommendation, and other such wheezes, had gradually smoothed the path.

  Bonifacio’s only response to that visit to the factories was an overwhelming feeling of invincible fear for as long as they remained anywhere near the gunpowder. The thought of being blown up, which seemed far more likely there than a league away, did not leave him for a moment. As for the old factory, the one producing chemical products—as they were vaguely described—it did not seem to him to be on its last legs. He had expected to see a ruin, with crumbling walls and decrepit machinery, and with no smoke issuing from the chimneys. Instead, it looked almost like new, full of life and noise and heat; he had even seen some workers, although admittedly not many. So what did they mean when they spoke of “ruin”? Not that he dared to ask, in case they should suspect he knew something about the state of the business.

  “When we return from the coast and I demand a full account from Nepomuceno, then I’ll ask if this factory is a going concern or is, in effect, bankrupting us.”

  On the way back along those potholed roads, he was jolted and jerked around in the carriage like a small, frightened bird, and as soon as they entered the town, he swore never, on his own account, to set up a business as dangerous as that of manufacturing gunpowder.

  Nepomuceno was now greatly taken with cousin Sebastián, so much so that he happily confided in him about his business affairs and drew him in with promises of making a healthy profit, and both Körner and Sebastián had remarked upon the fact that, for some weeks now, Bonifacio had taken to listening intently to their conversations about the factories and even hung around the desks in the office, trying to sneak a look at the papers that came and went between them.

  “That imbecile seems to be taking a sudden unhealthy interest in things,” said Körner.

  “Yes, I’ve noticed that too, but you just have to see the stupid look on his face to know that he clearly doesn’t understand a word.”

  “Maybe, but I’m not so sure. He’s behaving almost like a spy. We need to keep an eye on him.”

  Hearing their comments about Bonifacio’s fruitless curiosity, Nepomuceno grew thoughtful.

  He said nothing, but he, too, began to observe his nephew by marriage. On Bonifacio’s bedside table, he found certain unexpected books.

  They were not poetry books or novels or tomes on logical and ethical psych
ology, which was what Bonifacio usually read. Instead there was one volume entitled One Hundred Treatises, a popular encyclopedia, which included—along with a short course on rearing chickens and other such poultry—a compendium on civil law. On top of this was another, Legal Practice by a certain Laspra, and yet another bearing the title Commercial Law Explained.

  What did this mean?

  The following day, the ebullient lawyer Ferraz met Nepomuceno in the street and said, “Are you about to get involved in some legal dispute?”

  “A dispute? Who with?”

  “I only mention it because every afternoon Bonifacio spends hours talking to that young lawyer, Cernuda.”

  “What is going on?” thought Nepomuceno, although that is not what he said to Ferraz, pretending instead to take this alarming news as a joke.

  “Oh, he’s probably considering becoming a lawyer himself and taking lessons from Cernuda. Now that he’s going to be a father, he wants to know everything, so, as you can imagine, he has a lot of studying to do.”

  And they both laughed at the joke and at the sarcasm behind it. Nepomuceno was seriously troubled though. Why would Bonifacio be talking to Cernuda? He would have to keep an eye on him.

  Körner, Marta, Sebastián, and Nepomuceno advised Emma to go to the sea as soon as possible. Minghetti agreed. They found a decent four-seater carriage with good suspension, ordered the driver to go very slowly, and Bonifacio, Emma, and Eufemia set off for the coast.

  Emma had high hopes of the bumpy road, hoping that this foolish journey would provide a kind of “natural” miracle. She wanted her child to die inside her through no fault of her own. Minghetti had said that the journey could cause her to miscarry and thus avoid the much-feared birth. She wanted to miscarry, but with no feelings of remorse. It wouldn’t be her fault, it would be the rough, jolting ride, those laws of nature that Bonifacio was always going on about.

  Bonifacio, on the other hand, kept pestering the driver with warnings and advice. “Careful now! What was that? A pothole! Goodness, what a bump! Go slowly . . . gently . . . we’re in no hurry. How are you feeling, my dear? Honestly, these road engineers, these roads! What a country we live in!”

  And Emma, caring nothing for the danger, was thinking, “Yes, yes, blame the country, blame the engineers, but you’re blaming the wrong things. It’s those laws of nature, which you believe to be so immutable and so amusing, they’re the ones who are going to let you down.”

  She fell asleep and, half dreaming, half deliberately imagining, she felt a grotesque, shapeless creature, a little wrinkled old man resembling the baby Jesus, all folds of fat and gray peach fuzz, detaching itself from her womb and falling slowly, slowly into an abyss of damp mist and fog, mouthing its goodbyes and waving its hand, which was the only lovely thing about it, a shapely, mother-of-pearl hand, a real beauty. And she took that hand and kissed it and said to the hand grasped in hers, “Goodbye, I’m sorry, but it just wasn’t meant to be, I simply wasn’t cut out for this. Goodbye, goodbye. It’s the laws of nature that are making you fall and leave my womb. Farewell, dear little hand, farewell, farewell. See you in eternity.” And the figure, apparently made of wax, disappeared, dissolving into that gloomy, smothering, suffocating mist wrapping about the child and her. She opened her eyes with a start and saw that Bonifacio, with what she called that tender-Lamb-of-God look in his pale eyes, was gazing at her belly, in which he had invested all his hopes.

  They reached the coast without incident. Emma bathed in the sea the very next day, following the precautions counseled by the local doctor, whom Bonifacio had called in for the purpose. When she took a turn about the town, however, a horrified Emma was told by the same doctor that, at that late stage, what she called a miscarriage could prove far more dangerous than actually giving birth, because it would no longer be a miscarriage but a premature birth, resulting in a frail six-month-old fetus and great risk for the mother; even worse, he warned that if they failed to take every possible precaution, the journey back to town could provoke precisely such an incident. Emma screamed, threw up her arms, insulted Bonifacio, then Minghetti and Don Basilio, even though neither of them was present. She had thought she could trick nature. She had fled from danger only to find another still greater! Why hadn’t someone told her?

  “But we did!”

  “Don Basilio mentioned the possibility of losing the child, but he didn’t say anything about dying. Good God! I refuse to move. I’ll give birth right here in this village. I’ll die here. I won’t take another step.”

  They had the devil’s own job to get her into the carriage. The village doctor had to give his word of honor and promise that nothing would go wrong if they followed his advice to the letter. They did. A local countess loaned them her finest carriage; the driver had to swear that the horses would trot at a very even pace, and the carriage was filled with cushions. Emma was almost suspended in midair. She had to admit that she barely felt any movement at all. On the return journey, which lasted three hours longer than the journey there, she again fell asleep, her hands clasping her belly. When she awoke, she found Bonifacio staring gravely and intently at the sacred bulge beneath her fingers. She smiled, grateful to him for helping her not to give untimely issue to the load she was carrying in her womb, and then, feeling embarrassed, as she always did whenever she gave way to any affectionate impulse, she showed her gratitude by kicking him gently on the shin. And Bonifacio, close to tears, thought, “It would be best if I could love my son and his mother.”

  When the carriage stopped outside her house, Emma insisted that two people help her down, namely Bonifacio and Minghetti. She let them take her whole weight, sure that they would not flinch. Then, while Bonifacio and Nepomuceno and the others who had rushed to her aid were giving orders for the luggage to be carried into the house, she went up the stairs, clinging to Minghetti’s arm. She stopped on the first step, breathing hard, then looked directly at the baritone and said, “What if I had died en route . . . and it was all your fault?”

  “Bah!”

  “Yes, bah! I could have bled to death. I mean it!”

  “No, my dear, no. You will give birth painlessly and to a bonny bouncing boy.”

  Emma blushed scarlet. As if distracted, Minghetti removed his arm from hers and stalked up the stairs ahead of her, hands in trouser pockets, whistling a cavatina through his teeth—one of his many skills. Emma had to continue the climb alone, holding on to the banister and clutching her belly, as if afraid she might give birth there on the stairs.

  She went to bed and summoned Don Basilio, from whom she demanded an examination, which revealed nothing untoward, only that the happy event would occur at the appointed time, whenever that happened to be.

  Letters asking for news of Emma’s health kept arriving from “those who are no longer with us,” as the merry band referred to Mochi and Serafina.

  Minghetti wrote back on behalf of those who were still there. Consequently, few letters were sent to La Coruña, but letters from La Coruña arrived in abundance. The absentees were nostalgic for the vita bona they had left behind them. Serafina wrote most often. In an exquisite English hand, she wrote pages and pages of polyglot literature, sometimes in English—for the things she found most difficult to say, and which remained incomprehensible unless Körner or Marta were on hand to translate them—often in Italian and more usually in Spanish. Even in Spanish there were passages that remained utterly opaque to the recipients, not because of the words she used but because of the concepts. These were artfully disguised allusions intended to go straight to Bonifacio’s heart and thoughts. Despite any feelings of remorse, he also wrote to Serafina from time to time, as she had demanded. She had a real passion for epistolary expansiveness and was perfectly capable of keeping alive the flame of love, however moribund, through the mere accumulation of bundles of perfumed sheets of paper covered in tiny handwriting, dense as the weave of some subtle fabric. But while Bonifacio had agreed to continue “relations” with Ser
afina in writing, he had refused to let her write to him directly. There could be no doubt that Emma had discovered that her husband was or had been the lover of her friend Serafina and had chosen to turn a blind eye, but it was still best not to provoke her. As Bonifacio both thought and wrote: If Emma’s dignity as betrayed wife were pushed too far, the provoked lion might lash out. Serafina had responded to this in a strangely amused tone: “But your wife lives like a grande dame, free of convention, and knows what the world is like. . . .”

  The idea of his wife being so lax and tolerant rattled Bonifacio’s moral sentiments, and he rejected this hypothesis out of hand. His wife would never be so lacking in respect either for him or for herself. And he dug in his heels. She simply must not write him love letters that would, almost certainly, fall into the hands of Nepomuceno and Emma, who would be no respecters of their correspondence, just as they were no respecters of other people’s individual rights. Serafina had to accept this and make do with writing not just to Minghetti, on her own behalf and that of Mochi, but to Emma, her dearest friend; and even in her letters to Emma, there were veiled responses, inserted with great skill and subtlety, to certain essential points in Bonifacio’s few letters to her. When the father-to-be read those letters mentioning the imminent birth of his child and making obscure mysterious allusions that seemed to bear no relation to anything he had written to her, and which seemed to him more like incomprehensible jibes, he felt something akin to moral repugnance and stopped writing to Serafina altogether. Their relationship would have to end anyway, as soon as his son was born. Indeed, Bonifacio had, in his own peculiar way, become superstitious; and although he dismissed as absurd—albeit charming and beautiful—the idea of making a promise to the Virgin of Cueto, a local miracle-working image of Our Lady, he decided, instead, to make a sacrifice of all his vices and sins in exchange for a successful birth. “Strict morality,” he thought, “will be my equivalent of Our Lady of Childbirth.” He examined his conscience, and since those “adulterous letters” were the only grave sin he could find, he simply stopped writing them. A few weeks later, Serafina complained in her esoteric, epistolary way, but Bonifacio ignored her complaints and, in the end, ignored all the letters that came, first, from La Coruña and, later, from Santander. And so he only found out from Emma, and subsequently Minghetti, that Serafina’s current situation was quite desperate, because Mochi, weary of disaster following upon disaster, had departed for Italy laden with debts and without a penny to his name; and she, his friend and pupil, was left in Santander with no contract, no money, and suspecting, doubtless correctly, that her maestro and spiritual babbo would not come back to find her, even though he had promised that he would.