His Only Son: With Dona Berta

  As for the plundering of fruit, hay, firewood, and so on, the law could not be blamed for that, for it did not go so far as to authorize people to steal from and even attack the Rondaliegos; however, the sheer ineptitude and apathy of its representatives—be it mayor, judge, or magistrate, as appropriate—ensured that they never ever found the culprits. But all this was years ago; the Rondaliegos’ good fortune consisted in the topographical elusiveness of their domain: Just as their character as a family distanced them from the common people, so the location of their house seemed to be another flight from the world; the folds of the landscape, the thickness of the surrounding woods, the fact that the path that led there led nowhere else, guaranteed the obscurity in which they lived, and while that seclusion may also have been a result of their neighbors’ scorn, it also provided the peace they so craved. “Fine,” said the “brethren” of Posadorio, “the world and the rural rabble despise us as much as we do them; so be it.” Whenever they could, though, the Rondaliegos continued to perform charitable acts in the surrounding area.

  All the brothers were bachelors, and although they were generally cold, apathetic creatures, they could, on occasion, be kindhearted and cheerful. Their idols were their unbesmirched honor and their immaculately noble blood. Berta, their sister, should have been the shrine of that purity. However, while she resembled her brothers in appearance—pale-complexioned, sturdy, and sweet-natured, measured in her gestures, voice, and manners—Berta harbored emotions of which they knew nothing. Her second brother, who was something of a man of letters, brought home certain contemporary novels translated from the French. All the siblings read them, but while they left no mark on the brothers, in Berta they wrought terrible inner damage. Romanticism, which, among men and women in the cities and towns, was a mere topic of conversation or, at most, a pretext for certain misdemeanors, had found in Posadorio a true priestess, even if it only reached her as a faint echo, in the form of much-thumbed feuilletons. Her brothers could never have suspected the bonfire of idealism and sentiment that was burning in Posadorio. Not even after the “misfortune” did they think to attribute it to romanticism; they laid the blame on chance, opportunity, betrayal, all of which also played their parts; and perhaps the least charitable among them even considered lust as the cause, but there was no lust on Berta’s part; the only possibility none of them considered was innocent love, a heart that melts when touched by the flames it adores. Berta allowed herself to be deceived with all her heart and soul. The story was a very simple one, just like the stories in those French novels. The captain, a captain in the First Carlist War, turned up one day at the house; he was a wounded soldier, a fugitive, who collapsed outside the garden gate; the dog barked; Berta came, saw the blood, the pale face, the uniform, the gentle blue eyes asking for her compassion, even her affection; she gave shelter to the poor unfortunate man, and hid him in their private, unused chapel; she even wondered if she should tell her brothers, who were Carlists, as was she, and who would perhaps hand the fugitive over, should their soldiers come looking for him. He was, after all, a liberal, the enemy. She gave the matter careful thought and reached the right decision. She revealed her secret to her brothers, and they thoroughly approved of her conduct; the wounded man was moved from the floor of the chapel to the best featherbed in the house; and no one said a word to anyone. The Carlist patrol that passed through later on had no idea that the enemy, the scourge of the absolutists, was so very near. Doña Berta nursed the captain diligently and kindly for two whole months, having fallen in love with him on the very first day; her brothers allowed her both to nurse him and to fall in love; they allowed her to perform the offices of a loving wife caring for her dying husband; and they hoped, naturally enough, that once the patient was well enough to leave Posadorio, all affection would die; the young lady of Rondaliego would once again be a stranger to the handsome captain, who, each night, wept tears of gratitude, while the brothers lay snoring in their beds and their sister watched over him, never far from his side, accompanied by an old lady and by Sabelona, who was then a fresh young maiden.

  When the captain was well enough to get out of bed and go for strolls in the garden, the two brothers who were at home at the time (the other two, the eldest and the youngest, had gone to the city for a few days) found in the “enemy” an excellent friend, capable of prizing them out of their usual mood of resigned tedium; sympathy between the Carlists and the liberal grew day by day; the captain was warm and outgoing and possessed of a lively imagination; he was affectionate and easily aroused the affection of others; more than that, he encouraged the sluggish Rondaliegos to participate in innocent games, like fencing bouts, which he umpired, without taking any very active part himself, or games of chess and cards; and after supper, by the light of the ancient oil lamp in the echoing drawing room, he would read to them out loud, in a beautiful, soft, rhythmic voice that lulled them all to sleep.

  4

  THE DAY came when the “liberal” felt obliged, as a matter of courtesy, to announce his departure because he was now sufficiently recovered to return to the battlefield and rejoin his comrades. He would be leaving behind him his very soul, namely, Berta, but he had to go. Her brothers, however, would not let him leave, giving him to understand, in the most roundabout way, that the longer it took him to resume his fight against the Carlists, the better he would repay the Rondaliego family for their hospitality and for the life that he said he owed to them. Besides, and above all, they so enjoyed his company! They were savoring that delightful interlude, with no thought of political wrangling or, indeed, of anything beyond those woods, which provided the green frame for the idyllic painting that was Susacasa. The captain allowed himself to be persuaded and remained longer in Posadorio than he should have; then one day, when his physical strength and the strength of his love had reached a pitch of intensity that provoked a delightful and highly dangerous inner harmony, he could hold back no longer and, as soon as an opportunity to be alone with her came to tempt him, he fell at Berta’s feet. And she, who understood not a word of such things, burst into tears; and when a mad kiss seared her lips and her soul, she felt such a confused mixture of love and fear that she could only protest by weeping. This was not the day on which she “lost her honor”—that happened later, one evening in the garden, beneath a gloriously scented royal laurel. Blind to the danger, Berta’s brothers had left her and the captain alone in the house and gone off hunting, an activity as yet too strenuous for the convalescent, who was eager to get back to the war before he was really fit to do so.

  A solitary nightingale was singing in the neighboring grove of oaks, a nightingale like the one that had entranced the sublime Saint Douceline de Digne, the sister of the venerable bishop Hugues de Digne. “Ah, what a solitary song!” cried the saint and immediately fell into a religious ecstasy, absorbed in thoughts of God. Or so says Fra Salimbene de Adam. And the same thing happened to Berta: Listening to the nightingale’s song, she swooned and lost all the cold, hard strength of will that would have allowed her to resist; her soul was flooded with an infinite poetry that filled everything with love and indulgence; she lost all notion of good and evil; there was no evil; and enraptured by the nightingale’s song, she fell into the arms of the captain, a Don Juan devoid of evil intent. Had the “liberal” who owed her his life not been there, Berta might perhaps have listened to the nightingale’s solitary song and sworn to be another Douceline and to love only God and the sweet name of Jesus in the solitude of the cloister, or, like Saint Douceline, have remained in the world, in the secular world of Susacasa, which was far more solitary than any convent; be that as it may, one thing is sure, on that evening, at that hour, Berta would have wept with infinite love and devoted her life to worship. When the captain paused to consider the civil aspect of this his supreme happiness, he himself offered, as a lover and a gentleman, to return to Posadorio as soon as possible, to lay down his weapons and ask Berta’s brothers for her hand in marriage, something they would nev
er grant to a “liberal” soldier. Such was Berta’s innocence that, while she knew something serious had happened, she did not feel it was irreparable. She said not a word to anyone, more out of a desire to preserve the sweet mystery of it all than out of fear of any consequences such a revelation might bring. The captain promised to return and marry her. That was fine and good, but happiness had already installed itself in her soul. She would wait a hundred years if necessary. The captain was, like a coward, fleeing the danger of death and returning to his flags purely for form’s sake, out of duty, ready to save himself and request his discharge from the army; his life, he thought, belonged not to him but to Berta’s honor.

  However, man proposes and the hero disposes. One evening, at the same hour that Berta’s and Saint Douceline’s nightingale was once again singing, the captain heard the bugle sing out the hymn of war; like another supreme love, glorious death was calling to him from the trenches; his soldiers expected him to set an example, and the captain fulfilled those expectations and, in an ecstasy of holy valor, surrendered his body to the bullets and his soul to God; he had only been truly happy twice in his life, and on those two occasions he had brought about misfortune and begotten a poor unfortunate wretch. All of this, translated into the only language the Rondaliego brothers could understand, meant that a vile liberal, besmirching the laws of hospitality, gratitude, friendship, trust, virtue, and all things holy, had robbed them of their honor and fled.

  They never heard from him again, nor did Berta. She never knew that her soul’s chosen one had been prevented from returning and doing his duty by the church and by the world because an irresistible impulse had obliged him to do his duty by his regiment. The captain had left Zaornín the day after their moment of great happiness; no one knew anything about the dishonor he had left behind him until, to the brothers’ bewilderment and horror and to Berta’s equal bewilderment, but not to her horror, she fell ill with an ailment that ended in a baptism which they took great pains to keep shrouded in mystery and secrecy. Berta only began to understand the seriousness of her error from the punishment meted out. Her child was taken from her, and her brothers, the thieves, left her alone in Posadorio with Sabelona and a few other servants. The inheritance was duly divided up, and to Berta was given, as well as the little that fell to her by rights, the usufruct of Susacasa, including Posadorio: Since she had besmirched the ancestral home with her sinful actions, they left to her the place of her dishonor, where she would be more hidden from the world than anywhere else. Once she had given up all hope of her captain ever returning, she realized that, from then on, that remote corner, almost submerged in greenery, would be her entire world. Many years passed before the Rondaliego brothers began if not to forgive, at least to forget; two of them died while still embittered, one in the war into which he threw himself in despair; another, months later, during the emigration of Carlist troops to France. Both had spent their inheritance on the cause they were defending. The other two had also given their inheritance to support Don Carlos, but without exposing their bodies to bullets; they lived on into old age and would occasionally return to “the scene of their dishonor,” although they no longer called it that. Their success in keeping the secret had removed much of the bitter sting from that dishonor; also, the passing years had granted Berta’s “fall” the indulgence that time spreads over all things like a blanket made up of layers of dust. Death, as it approached, brought graver thoughts; old age silently forgave youthful errors that age itself was now too old to commit; and with barely a thought, Berta had forgiven herself as well, but she continued to live in the seclusion imposed on her by her brothers and which she accepted with pleasure, out of habit, like the bird in that Lope de Vega sonnet, which returns to its cage so as not to see its mistress cry. Berta could no longer understand life outside of Posadorio. Family matters and the family’s continued battle with society in general and with the common people in particular gradually replaced any idea of her “affair” as constituting a stain or a sin, and was transformed instead into a poetic memory, which endured and grew more intense and subtle with age. However, while Berta had forgiven her own error, she did not, deep down, forgive her brothers’ theft of her son, which, while it had caused her infinite pain when she was young, had then at least seemed to her legitimate; but when maturity of judgment granted her indulgence for the awful sin of which she had once accused herself, her maternal feelings resurfaced in full force, and not only did she not forgive her brothers, she did not forgive herself either. “Yes,” she thought, “I should have protested, I should have demanded to keep the fruit of my love; I should have looked for him afterward and refused to believe my brothers when they told me he was dead.”

  When Berta finally decided to rebel, to inquire into the whereabouts of her son and find out if they had lied to her about his death, it was too late. He had either died or been lost. The Rondaliegos had behaved with the cruelty particular to fanatics who sacrifice the relative realities that touch the heart for the sake of absolute abstractions. Those good men, those kind, sweet, irreproachable gentlemen, were like four Herods ranged against one child, whom they considered to be a blot on the escutcheon. He was the son of a liberal, a traitor, and a villain. Keeping him close, bringing him up, and thus risking having people discover their own relationship with that bastard nephew, seemed to the Rondaliegos insane, like casting a bell out of the metal of that scandal and hanging it from the rooftop of Posadorio so that it could ring out day and night, declaring the ignominy of their race, their family’s eternal, irreparable shame. That would be absurd! The “accursed child” was hurriedly handed over to a family who took in such children for money; no concern was shown for the child’s safety, and the only precaution the brothers took was to obtain an absolute guarantee that the family would never try to find out where the child came from: Otherwise, they plied them with money, just to ensure that the child would not starve; and thus they succeeded in making him disappear, and he did. One side of the bargain erased all trace of him for reasons of honor, the other side did the same for reasons of self-interest and greed, and thus there was no way he could be found. When conscience finally pricked the remaining Rondaliego brothers into seeking out the lost child, there was nothing to be done. The self-interest and egotism of those good people rejoiced at having come up with that original lie, according to which the poor child had died. Initially, they had lied in order to punish their hussy of a sister who was shameless enough to ask to see the fruit of her great sin; later, they continued to lie so that she would not die of grief, cursing the murderers of her maternal joy. The last two Rondaliego brothers died in Posadorio, two years apart. Berta did not dare to ask anything of the first to die, the eldest: Standing at his bedside, where he lay dying, but still able to speak, his mind still lucid, Berta gave him a deep look, not asking after her child, not even with her eyes, but thinking about him. Her brother also occasionally met Berta’s eyes, but he withheld the answer he should have given her without being asked and said nothing with either lips or eyes. And yet Berta sensed that he, too, was thinking about her lost or dead child. And shortly afterward, overwhelmed by grief, she closed those eyes that carried their secret off with them. When her last brother was dying, Berta—about to be left alone in the world and feeling only her own anguish—flung herself on his thin, expiring breast and, invoking God and the parents whom neither of them had known, asked, “Did my child die? Did he? Do you know that for sure? Swear to me that he did, Agustín, swear before God, whose face you will soon see!” And Agustín, the youngest of the Rondaliego siblings, looked at his sister, without even seeing her now, and shed the tear that all men shed as they bid farewell to the world.

  Left alone with Sabelona and the cat, Berta began to age rapidly, until she was like a sheet of parchment, like the bark of a withered oak. She was turning into parchment inside as well, but two feelings, like two diamonds, survived among all that dryness, feelings that took on the automatic nature of an obsession that t
ick-tocked back and forth inside her, like a pendulum, through all the solitude, the isolation, the pure, clean air of Posadorio, Susacasa, and Aren, through all the mouselike busyness of that thin, sallow-skinned old lady (she who had once been so white and round), who, deaf now but still light on her feet, bustled back and forth, hanging out clothes, giving orders for fields to be mowed, trees to be pruned, and hedges to be trimmed. In the midst of all this activity, however, when she gazed out at the immaculate green of the fields, at the solitude and remoteness of Susacasa, she would suddenly be surprised by the memory of the “liberal,” her possibly treacherous captain, and of her child either dead or lost, and then, despite her seventy years, she would again mourn for her child, whom she had always loved with a somewhat abstract love, for she lacked the necessary imagination to conjure up his image; she mourned for and loved her child with the rather tepid affection of a grandmother; tepid but persistent. And the pendulum of her obsession tick-tocked her down into the sadness of death, into the coldness and the shadows of the mind, as she bemoaned the world, her fate, her brothers, and herself. Sabelona knew only part of this emotional to-ing and fro-ing, only what was most obvious, most active, most evident. Just as when her brothers were alive, Berta remained condemned to absolute solitude as regards that most delicate, poetic, refined, and melancholy part of her soul. As they sat spinning by the light of the oil lamp beside the kitchen hearth, the two old ladies resembled two mummies, which is what they were; but one of them, Sabelona, slept peacefully, while the other, Berta, had a little mouse inside her, frantically scrabbling away beneath her skin. Sometimes, after talking about the laundry for an hour, Berta would fall silent and not respond to Sabelona’s remarks; then, in that silence, her little eyes bursting with a torment of ideas, she would look at Sabelona, and it seemed to her that Sabelona, who knew nothing of her sorrow or of the wheel of painful ideas going round and round inside her head, was not a woman but a little old spinster carved out of ancient ivory.