His Only Son: With Dona Berta

by Leopoldo Alas

  She went to the millionaire’s mansion as often as she was allowed. She sometimes went to stand there, in front of the painting, both morning and afternoon. The tips she gave encouraged the servants to be kind. As soon as she left the mansion, she would be filled by a feverish desire to go back. And when she doubted, that was when she most wanted to see the painting again, to bolster her belief by staring, like an ecstatic, at that face, those eyes, from which she struggled to extract their secret. Was he or wasn’t he her son? “Yes, yes,” her soul would sometimes answer. “Ungrateful mother, do you still not recognize me?” those half-open lips appeared to cry. And at other times, those same lips said nothing, and Doña Berta’s soul would say, “Who knows, who knows? The resemblance might be pure chance, pure chance and imagination. And what if I’m mad? Or, at best, soft in the head? But what about the resemblance to my captain and to me, and to all the Rondaliegos? Yes, it definitely is him . . . no, no, it isn’t!”

  She thought of the saints and mystics who were also often tempted by the Devil, who, in order to test them and cast them adrift in the desert of spiritual doubt, would occasionally cause them to forget the Lord.

  The saints would always win, though, and however dim and clouded the sun of their spirit, they still believed and loved and prayed in the Lord’s absence for Him to return.

  Doña Berta came to experience the sublime, austere joy of keeping faith even as she doubted. Sacrificing herself for something self-evidently true, where was the glory in that, where was the triumph? The courageous thing was to give everything not for her faith but for her doubt. In her doubt, she loved what she believed to be true, just as a mother’s love for her child grows stronger when the child is ill or when snatched from her by sin. She came to see weak, ailing faith as far greater than its blind, robust counterpart.

  In this new frame of mind, she had grown firmer than ever in her determination to move Heaven and earth to acquire the painting.

  And it was in this mood that she finally met the millionaire in his museum. At their first meeting, she did not dare to tell him of her bold intentions. She did not even ask him the price of the famous painting. When, at her request, they met again, she spoke gravely to him of her infinite desire to own the picture.

  She knew how much the state had been prepared to pay for it before. She had enough money for such a sum, and would still have a few thousand pesetas left with which to repay her son’s debt, if she could find his creditor. Doña Berta waited with bated breath for the millionaire’s response, unconcerned by his evident and inevitable amazement. That was when she found out why her artist friend had not replied to her letter: She learned that her son’s companion, the man she had met in the woods, the charming, celebrated artist who, at the end of his career, had changed the life of the last of the Rondaliegos, had died in her very own region of Asturias while on one of those excursions of his to see what lessons nature might teach him.

  And because the artist had died, the painting of her captain was now worth so many thousands of duros that the whole of Susacasa, even were it three times the size, would not be enough to pay for those few yards of canvas!

  The poor woman leaned on the shoulder of the South American millionaire and wept, for he was a simple, unassuming man, with every appearance of being a charitable fellow. The good lady was clearly mad, but that did not make her grief any less real or the whole affair any less interesting. He was kindness itself; he tried to deceive her as one does a child; he did everything, in short, but let her have the painting, not for the amount she could offer him but for its current value. How could he? What would the government say? Besides, even assuming she had the sum of money she was offering him, giving in to her request would mean ruining her, bankrupting her. No, this was sheer prodigality, sheer madness. Impossible!

  Doña Berta wept and begged profusely and finally realized that while the owner of her one desire was patient enough to put up with her, he was not kind enough to give in to her. Nevertheless, she still hoped that God would bring her a miracle; she was determined to get blood out of that particular stone, tenderness out of the hard pebble he carried in his chest instead of a heart. And he agreed, for the moment, to allow her to come and see the painting every day until it was taken to Havana; and, from time to time, he would also allow her to visit him and speak to him and beg him on bended knee. . . . The man agreed to everything, certain, of course, that he would not be won over, because that would be absurd.

  And Doña Berta came and went, dodging the dangers of the carriage wheels and the horses’ hooves; she was growing increasingly bewildered and weak, but also more determined than ever to achieve her impossible goal. She was a familiar figure now to the people who frequented certain streets and, in the millionaire’s circle of friends, she had acquired a reputation as an eccentric.

  Half of Madrid had in their heads the image of that lively, smiling, sallow-skinned old lady, who, in her brown dress, her outmoded clothes, fled from the trams, took refuge in doorways, and spoke kindly and with many gestures to the multitude that never stopped to hear her.

  One afternoon, when she discovered that the man from Havana was leaving and taking his “museum” with him, she, paler than ever and dry-eyed (although only just), her voice initially without a tremor, requested one last interview with her executioner; and alone, standing before her son as silent, dead witness, she revealed her secret, the secret that was doing the rounds of the world in the lost letter sent to the late artist. Even this did not work. The owner of the painting would not give in, nor did he believe this new madness. Assuming that it wasn’t all pure invention on the part of the mad-woman, always supposing that she had given birth to an illegitimate child, how could she be so sure that her son had been the model for that painting? All that Doña Berta could squeeze out of him was permission to witness the sad, solemn act of taking the painting down from the wall and packing it up for its long journey; he was allowing her to say farewell forever to her captain, her supposed son. The millionaire offered something more too: He would, of course, keep her secret, but this would not prevent him from setting in motion an investigation to try and identify the original of the captain in the painting, on the assumption that the old lady had not simply invented the whole story. And Doña Berta was relatively calm when she said goodbye until the next day, the last, not because she was resigned but because she still hoped to win. God clearly wished to try her hard and was keeping his miracle until the very last moment. “Because there would be a miracle!”

  11

  AND THAT night, Doña Berta dreamed that from some remote coastal village in Asturias, where her friend the artist had died, there came, as if by magic, carried on the wings of the wind, a teeny tiny notary, almost a dwarf, with a shrill voice like a cicada, and he was shouting and waving a piece of yellowing paper: “Gentlemen, stop! I have here the artist’s last will and testament, the real one this time, because the other is invalid; he did not leave Doña Berta’s painting to the hospitals and poorhouses, but, as is only natural, to the mother of his captain and his friend. So keep your money, Mr. Millionaire, and surrender that painting to its legitimate owner, Doña Berta de Rondaliego.”

  She woke early, remembered her dream, and frowned, because that solution, which would have been perfect had the miracle occurred the day before, would now not do at all. She knew from her own sad experience of life that dreams never come true!

  She went into the dining room to ask for her breakfast cup of hot chocolate and something occurred that, as well as upsetting her, drained her of the energy she required to make her final assault on that hard-hearted Croesus and to see if the miracle she needed would, indeed, occur.

  Her landlady, Doña Petronila, placed on the table (on the green felt cloth covering the dining table) the eternal question, the only one that divided those two peace-loving ladies: the matter of the cat. She simply could not put up with the cat and had said as much before; he was virtually wild, having been the spoiled pet of two
old ladies; with his stubborn, independent, country ways, he was untamed, uncivilized, and unsociable; in short, she could tolerate him no longer. Since there was no garden for him to visit, he soiled the whole house, even the living room; he broke vases and plates, scratched chairs, curtains, carpets, clothes; he gobbled up tidbits and meat alike. Something must be done. Either the cat and his mistress must leave, or Doña Berta must agree to keep the wretched creature shut up in some safe place from which he could not escape. Doña Berta argued for and defended the freedom of her best friend, but finally gave in because, on this most solemn of days, she did not want any domestic complications. Sabelona’s cat was duly locked in the attic, in a junk room, which made for a perfectly secure prison because the bars on the skylight were covered with wire mesh. Since no one lived nearby, the cries of the prisoner would not disturb the neighbors’ sleep; no one would hear him, even if he turned tiger and roared out his right to liberty.

  A sad, crestfallen Doña Berta left the boardinghouse, feeling deeply upset both by the incident with the cat and by the memory of her dream, which would have been so very good were it reality. It was a public holiday, and Doña Berta found the traffic at such times horrific. The pavement, polished by the frost, was slippery underfoot. It was still early; she had plenty of time. She went into the church and sat through two masses; then she went into a shop to buy a collar for the cat, intending to embroider it with some initials in case he got lost, so that he could, at least, be identified. Finally, it was time. She was in Carrera de San Jerónimo; she crossed the street and, by dint of politeness, and a little discreet, somewhat timid elbowing, made her way through the crowds standing outside the Café Imperial. The most difficult part lay ahead: Calle de Alcalá. It took a quarter of an hour for her to get up the courage to cross. She took advantage of a “clear patch” as she put it, and lifting up her skirts, she broke into a run. Swept up into the multitude as if by a wave, she arrived safely on the other side and trudged slowly and wearily up Calle de la Montera. She felt even wearier than usual. Perhaps she was hungry; she had hardly been able to drink her hot chocolate because of that argument over the cat. She crossed at San Luis, thinking, “I should have crossed lower down, where the street is narrower.” She entered Calle de Fuencarral, one of the streets she feared most, where the tram lines were so close to the pavement, they seemed almost to brush her skin like razor blades. When she passed by a large mansion at the top of the street, she, most unusually, forgot all about the danger and the care she always took not to be knocked over, and thought, “I believe the former prime minister, Señor Cánovas, lives there. He could perform the miracle I need, could issue a royal decree or some sort of order that would oblige the millionaire to sell me the painting. They say he’s very influential, and surely influence should be put to some good use, to sort out injustices that fall outside the laws.” While she was thinking this, she had unwittingly taken a few steps without looking where she was going. And just then, she heard a confused murmur as if of voices, saw hands reach out to her, felt a blow to her back . . . her dress being trampled. . . . “The tram,” she thought. Too late. It was the tram. Then a horse knocked her down and rode right over her; then a carriage wheel ran across her body. The vehicle stopped at once, and she had, very carefully, to be dragged out from between its wheels. She appeared to be dead already and, only ten minutes later, she was. She did not speak or sigh or utter a sound. She lay for some moments on the pavement, until the police arrived. The crowd formed a circle around her corpse. Some of them recognized the little old lady whom they had often seen bustling back and forth with a smile for everyone. A cheerful, lively young journalist grew suddenly sad, recalling, as he told the gathered throng, that this same poor old lady had saved him from just such a death in Calle Mayor, next to the Café de los Consejos. Her dead body was not a repulsive or horrific sight. Doña Berta appeared to be sleeping, because when she slept, she always looked as if she were dead. Her face was the color of old ivory, her skin a wrinkled ashen gray; otherwise, everything, even her boots, was a uniform dark brown. There was just a single red stain, a tiny trickle of blood that emerged from between her thin, pale lips. The people surrounding her felt more sympathy than pity. One way or another, that feeble little woman could not last long; she would soon begin to decay. In a matter of minutes, all trace of that sorrow was gone; the traffic resumed, the body disappeared, as did the tram, and the incident went from the street to the courts to the newspapers. Thus ended the last of the Rondaliego family, Doña Berta of Posadorio.

  In Calle de Tetuán, in one corner of an attic room, was a cat with no name, who had been happy in Susacasa, a hunter of country mice, a great botanist, a lover of butterflies and of siestas spent in the shade of ancient trees. Forgotten by the whole world and with his mistress dead, the cat spent many days hurling himself at the walls, and in the end, he died, like Dante’s Ugolino, but without so much as a bone to chew on, hearing the mice scampering about in the empty spaces of the neighboring attics but unable to relieve his hunger with a single one of them. At first, furious, he raged and hissed and jumped and scratched and gnawed at the door and walls and iron bars. Then, with the final resignation of supreme weakness, he slumped down in a corner and died, dreaming perhaps of the butterflies he could never catch but which brightened his days, back there in Aren, full of spring flowers, cool grass, and the most delightful shade at the edge of the little stream that the owners of Susacasa used to call “the river.”