His Only Son: With Dona Berta

by Leopoldo Alas

  Minghetti and Emma conferred together on the best way to protect Serafina without wounding her dignity, for Emma, living in fear of imminent death, had grown charitable and, intermittently, felt the misfortunes of others very deeply. She also consulted her uncle, who made no attempt to conceal his indifference regarding his niece’s interest in Mochi’s protégée. He said bluntly that there was nothing they could do for her, either with or without wounding the singer’s dignity, since there was no money available to help her.

  Bonifacio was not consulted about these plans; first, because they never consulted him about anything, and second, because it also occurred to both Minghetti and Emma, without either of them actually saying so, that it would be somehow wrong and improper to discuss such a matter with him.

  One day, when, according to the most likely calculations, the “catastrophe” that so terrified Emma was fast approaching, and she should, in Don Basilio’s opinion, be prepared for it to happen at any moment, Bonifacio met the postman as he was leaving the house. He had just one letter to deliver.

  “It’s for you, sir,” said the man solemnly, as if giving great importance to such an extraordinary event.

  “For me?” Bonifacio seized the envelope as if pouncing on a prey that was about to be snatched from him; he glanced anxiously back at the stairs and up and down the street, fearing that some witness might appear; and as the postman was leaving, he said in a tremulous voice, aghast at the thought that he had forgotten to pay him, “Wait, I haven’t paid you.”

  “Oh, that’s all right, sir. There’s no hurry. You can pay me another day.”

  “No, no, I have the money with me. Here you are. Always best to settle one’s debts.” And he handed him a two-cuarto coin.

  “That’s one cuarto too many, sir. I’ll keep one on account, shall I, for tomorrow? Seeing as how you’re such a prompt payer, I should—”

  “No, no, please, keep the change or else give it to a beggar.”

  The postman walked off, laughing.

  “He’s laughing at me,” thought Bonifacio. “He’ll think I was trying to buy his silence.”

  He had not even glanced at the envelope, which he hurriedly stuffed into his pocket. Not that he needed to read it. He was sure it was from Serafina, and it was. Sitting in the Café de la Oliva, he read the letter, in which Serafina poured forth her woes like a Dido skilled in the epistolary arts. There was such eloquence in her reproaches that they touched his heart. She complained of his long silence; she knew from Emma that he no longer read his beloved Serafina’s letters, which was doubtless why he had sent not a single word to console her in the terrible situation in which she now found herself. Perhaps he did not believe in her penury, perhaps, wretch that he was, he thought she could avail herself of certain offers that would ensure her the means to live in considerable comfort. Well, that wasn’t true. He might or might not believe her, but she could not help but look back fondly at the serene, tranquil life he had taught her to prefer, initiating her in those very real pleasures.

  She was writing to tell him, in her own way, with many romantic turns of phrase but with absolute sincerity, that, as far as she was concerned, the time she had spent in Bonifacio’s town had transformed her and she could not now launch herself upon a life of empty amusement in which, given her beauty, she would be sure to triumph and prosper. She still made no mention of any previous affairs, but she was not lying about her present feelings.

  In La Coruña and in Santander, she had resisted all attempts to seduce her with money, which were, in fact, the only offers that had come her way. She could have taken any number of wealthy lovers but had chosen not to.

  She was faithful to Bonifacio just like any good wife who, while she may no longer love her husband, nevertheless respects and esteems him, and, above all, respects and esteems decency. Serafina had quite simply adored the ladylike life she had enjoyed with Bonifacio; she was, admittedly, a “lady” involved in an illicit affair, but all her other relationships had been perfectly aboveboard. The letter went on:

  Mochi promised to come back for me as soon as he had arranged a decent contract for us, but time is passing, and I’m beginning to despair. Mochi still has not come, and I’m in a very sad, delicate, nervous state and have very little money. Worse, my voice is going; I’m starting to dread going onstage; the audience no longer loves me, and in their barely veiled indifference I sense future hunger and, beyond that, the work-house. I’m not asking you to give me asylum, I’m merely asking for alms, but I also want to be near you. I want to be a bourgeois lady. I learned that by your side, in your house. The tranquillity of soul of which you spoke so often, well, I need it too. That and a little bread and a sense of having somewhere to call home, even if that home is a borrowed one. I’ve grown fond of that small town of yours, just as I did of that other green corner of the world in Lombardy I used to tell you about, in the days when you worshipped me as if I were a madonna. I know that love is not eternal. And I’m not asking you for love, only friendship, and the kind of affection that not even the least faithful of husbands would deny his wife. I cannot live in the same house as you, but I can live in the same town, at least for a while. Please, let me come to you. I need to rest. I’m ill inside, deep inside, almost unbalanced. I need to see friendly faces. You don’t know what it’s like to have no true home when your body is weary and wants to rest, and your soul is asking for peace and to be left alone to live on its memories. I did not feel like this before, but you and your obsessions about strict morality, even your house with its lordly, traditional air, all those things have put down roots in my soul. You sometimes used to say that we poor singers had infected you and your family with our cheerful, carefree ways. Well, everything infects everything else. I’ve been infected by you and your ways, especially by your anxieties and fears of the unknown. Being blown hither and thither by the wind is no way to live. I’m coming to see you, Bonis. I know you don’t care about me anymore, but you matter to me. I may not be your wife, but you are my husband. I have no other. Had I been the spoiled daughter of Señor Valcárcel the lawyer, then the blessing that consecrated your love for another woman would have fallen on me. Don’t give chance more importance than it deserves. You know me: Any day now, I will turn up on your doorstep. Will you slam the door in my face? Is that what your latest morality tells you to do?

  Your Serafina, who still loves you, Bonifacio Reyes, who still loves you very much.

  Bonifacio did not for a moment doubt the sincerity of her words. He felt terribly sorry for her and was filled with a kind of retrospective love, a purified form of their previous voluptuous relations evoked in memory. His conscience felt disoriented, the compass of duty was spinning madly inside his head. He owed a debt to Serafina too. While she had corrupted his heart and the marital bed, he had infected her with that desire for a peaceful, decent, orderly life. More than that, the woman who had made him happy was asking him for his support . . . for bread. Then, inside him, the “new man,” as he put it, cried out, “Pure sophistry! I’m going to be a father, and no former mistresses are going to enter the house where my son will be born. No more mistresses and no more money. That’s all over with. From now on, the only money I spend will be on my son. It will all be for him, and that’s that. I know it’s cruel and selfish, but I’m being selfish for my son’s sake, and that doesn’t seem wrong to me. For him I will do anything. And I will cling to that absolute decision, to my duty and my love as a father.”

  Such thoughts and words did not always rule over Bonifacio’s soul. Since receiving Serafina’s letter, his life had been a constant struggle with himself, a perennial battle, which, like so many others in his life, he always lost.

  Serafina duly arrived and presented herself at the Valcárcel mansion, where she was warmly received by Emma, by Nepomuceno, by Sebastián, by Marta, by everyone, and Bonifacio lacked the courage to do otherwise. He did not resume his role as lover, though, and she showed no desire to do so either, at least for
the moment. However, he could not help remembering what she had said in her letter. Serafina’s eyes seemed to repeat her final words. Nor did he touch on the thorny, delicate matter of sustenance, which his former mistress had seemed to be demanding.

  Serafina explained that she had come there to wait for Mochi, who had said that he would return in order to carry her off with him to South America, where he had signed a contract for them both. She asked nothing of anyone. She lived modestly in her old room above the Café de la Oliva, where she was visited by Minghetti, Körner, Sebastián, and other friends. Bonifacio only saw her in his own house, that is, in his wife’s house. Serafina never complained of his behavior toward her, but, whenever they were alone, she would gaze at him lovingly.

  Bonifacio was pleased with his own strength of mind, for he had felt such emotion when he found himself once more in Serafina’s presence. He had, however, controlled himself, thinking of his future fatherly “priesthood.” This struggle in which, this time, he succeeded in mastering his desires, seemed to him the beginning of the life of virtue and sacrifice to which he believed he was being called. Doing such violence to his former grand passion required so much energy that he had, he felt, used up all his willpower, and so it was that, with few scruples, he forgave himself for his continued postponement and deferral of that settling of accounts with Nepomuceno. He did fully intend to have it out with him, to ask the vital questions, but the days passed and still he did nothing, absolutely nothing. He read books on civil law, he read the commercial code that came as an appendix to a treatise on bookkeeping; he consulted the eloquent young lawyer, Cernuda, but that was all. Nepomuceno was doubtless braced for an attack, and Bonifacio knew very well that he would have a substantial armory with which to defend himself! That was why Bonifacio kept running away, delaying matters and why, truth be told, his legs trembled whenever he said to himself, “Today I’m going to ask to have a private word with Nepomuceno and tell him straight.”

  But what was he going to tell him? He had no idea. One afternoon, the postman arrived with two letters for him. One was from Serafina, who had not been seen at Emma’s house for a few days. Despite their agreement, the letter was addressed to him in person, telling him how miserable and upset she was because she had still received no word from Mochi. She begged him for some words of consolation, a visit . . . and a little money too, a loan. She apologized profusely, but the owner of the Café de la Oliva had wounded her pride and deeply offended her, and she wanted to be able to pay him in order that she might leave that place and tell the vulgar man that he had no idea how to treat a lady on her own, with no man to defend her.

  On reading this letter, Bonifacio’s first impulses were worthy of a Chevalier de Bayard or a Croesus. For a moment, he forgot all about his “fatherly priesthood” and saw himself onstage, confronting the landlord of the Café de la Oliva and running him through with his sword before throwing at his feet a purse made of chain mail, such as those used by Mochi in operas. But he was distracted by the scrawled handwriting on the other envelope, which he tore open. The unsigned letter it contained struck him like a blow. All it said was this: “Sacrilegious thief! Where are those seven thousand reales returned to the confessional by a repentant sinner?”

  Bonifacio, who was in his bedroom, sat down on the blue floral bedspread of his humble bed. He broke out in a cold sweat, his throat tight.

  “I’m going to be sick,” he thought. Then, just as suddenly, he forgot his nausea, the anonymous letter, everything, because Eufemia came rushing in and collided with Bonifacio’s knees, crying, “Sir, sir, the mistress’s pains have begun.”

  Bonifacio leapt up like a tiger, ran through rooms and down corridors, wearing one boot and one slipper, just as he had been when those fateful letters had arrived, and, in a trice, reached his wife’s boudoir.

  With a look of horror on her face, like one of the damned in Hell, Emma was writhing about and clinging like grim death to Minghetti’s neck and shoulders, for Minghetti had not even had time to get up from the piano stool. He had, as usual, been singing and accompanying himself when his pupil let out a scream of surprise and terror on feeling the first birth pang. She had grabbed her teacher and friend, not just instinctively, as any woman in her situation might, but as if she were determined not to die alone, if indeed she did die, but to carry with her into the next world the first creature to hand.

  When Bonifacio appeared, all three reacted as if in response to a single impulse: Emma released her grip on Minghetti’s neck and shoulders; Minghetti quickly stepped away from Emma; and Bonifacio strode decisively forward to take Minghetti’s place, as though to demand his rights. Emma clung more earnestly and with more confidence to her husband’s robust neck and chest, and he felt a shiver of delight to feel her nails digging into him, her firm, frightened embrace, as if that indirectly presaged the being whose presence he so longed for, his son, who, with the sad, grave, mysterious, sublimely uncertain solemnity of all great moments in nature, was announcing his coming through the pain of the mother.

  With each new pang, Emma clutched at him still harder, and as well as the natural female weakness of any woman in that situation, as well as mere physiological phenomena, Bonifacio saw in this his wife’s true nature, her habitual egotism, tyranny, and cruelty. Part of the pain Emma was inflicting on him—as if trying to pass on or share some of the pain she was feeling—Bonifacio attributed to her desire to hurt him and take pleasure in making him suffer.

  “I’m dying, Bonis, dying!” she kept shouting as she clung to her husband.

  Her weight against him seemed almost sweet and her voice loving. Then he looked down at her face pressed against his chest, and found in it an expression like that of Melpomene, the Muse of tragedy, as depicted on the covers of the Galería Dramática. There was not a hint of tenderness in her wide, terrified eyes; she was clearly not thinking about her child, only that she was suffering and might die, and that it was utterly wrong that she should die while others remained behind. She was in pain, and she was absolutely furious; she was like a condemned prisoner, innocent of the charges laid against her, but far from resigned to death and still hanging on to life. At one point, Bonifacio thought he could feel his wife’s sharp teeth in the skin of his neck.

  Minghetti had vanished on the pretext of going to tell everyone else the news.

  Indeed, Sebastián appeared soon afterward, looking deathly pale; five minutes later, Marta turned up, most put out because the birth might delay her imminent marriage by a few days, and because the christening might possibly eclipse her wedding. One would have thought, by the look in her eyes, that she had been given a guarantee that Emma would not give birth until after she had married. Finally, Nepomuceno arrived, accompanied by the old doctor, the expert on childbirth; because Emma, while she greatly respected Don Basilio, had, in the end, betrayed him; he had been her doctor right up until the crucial moment, but then, unless things went very wrong indeed, she wanted the other doctor by her side. She wanted to give birth with the aid of the miraculous man-midwife of popular legend, the one who had never had a patient die on him. The ladies of the town had more faith in him than they did in Saint Raymond Nonnatus, the patron saint of childbirth. The only women who died were those treated by obstetricians who did not have the miraculous man-midwife’s supernatural powers, for he was always careful to summon his colleagues as soon as things took a turn for the worse. What he lacked in knowledge, he made up for in conscience, simultaneously reinforcing the legend of his infallibility.

  Bonifacio had always defended the town’s other medical experts and spoken scathingly of the man-midwife’s miraculous reputation, but as soon as he saw the doctor enter the room, he was immediately infected by the town’s all-pervading faith. May science and Don Basilio forgive him, but he, too, felt filled with confidence in the presence of that highly practical ignoramus, even though, long ago, he had, wrongly as it turned out, blamed that same doctor for his wife’s sterility. There was the false
prophet who had wrenched from him his hopes of becoming a father and of achieving what he deemed to be the highest honor a man could want. Whatever the truth of the matter, Don Venancio entered, declaring loudly, as he usually did, that, since they had summoned him so late, he would not be held responsible for any mishaps. He ignored everyone, rudely shoved Bonifacio to one side, made Emma lie down on the bed, and, addressing an alarmed Bonifacio almost nose to nose, demanded the kind of tools that made the future father think that the illustrious man-midwife was planning to make a rope with which to throttle his son.

  Sebastián, who had taken a skeptical view of everything ever since he had abandoned romanticism and grown fat, smiled sagely and murmured that things were clearly going to take some time.

  Don Venancio made haste, behaving rather like a fireman called to put out a fire. He was always the same. Sebastián had seen him on many other occasions, which it would perhaps be best not to go into here.

  Marta felt that the most fitting stage direction for her role as the ingenue in this comedy, was Exit. And she withdrew to the dining room, where she found Minghetti dipping sponge fingers in a glass of Malaga wine. He was not his usual cheerful self.