Private Life (3 page)

When gambling, the disinterested feelings those bosom friends affected towards one another turned into a miserly and ferocious conduct known only in the world of insects.

The presence of men neutralized the corrosive tension of the game. Which didn’t mean that some of them, like the insignificant and tubercular Baró de Foixà, did not apply an intricate technique to their wagering, or were not intransigent and unwilling to entertain any kind of irony when their money was at stake. The Baró de Foixà was very wealthy and more than once he had settled a baccarat debt by appropriating a diamond or taking a mink coat to the pawnshop himself, taking no notice of the ladies’ tears or the coarse comments of the gentlemen regarding his sanctimonious regard for the letter of the law. There were those who recalled that the baron had once lost the favors of a girl he was head over heels in love with, because of his insistence on collecting an insignificant gambling debt from her.

Rosa Trènor greeted Frederic with a smile of indifference, not looking up from her cards, as if they had been chatting no more than a half hour before. Anyone familiar with Rosa would not have seen anything unusual in her attitude, knowing as they did how she liked to appear eccentric and disconcert her audience.

Even though Rosa had a vague notion of the precarious situation of her ex-lover, she still hoped that Frederic might once again turn out to be a solution. Rosa believed that though Frederic’s fortune was not, by a long shot, what it used to be, he could still not be mistaken by any means for a pauper, and his sexuality, a bit weaker and more disenchanted with age, might manifest itself with a drop of
sickly tenderness, which Rosa could use to her advantage. Frederic’s possibilities would be more generous, he would abandon himself with fewer conditions and, knowing him as she did, Rosa would be able to administer his sentimentalism more profitably than a more tender and inexperienced body could.

In those days Rosa’s head was ruled by her stomach. In the theater of love she would waste no time on the build-up, heading straight for the “bedroom scene.” And here, though Rosa could not wield the weapons she had had at eighteen, she had perfected a technique of turning on and off the switch of pathos, which made her a dangerous woman for a certain type of man. Out of both vanity and the instinct for survival Rosa most definitely subscribed to the rustic aphorism, “The old hen makes the best soup.”

The game of baccarat went on without a hitch with Frederic and Bobby’s contributions; the bets got heftier amidst the electrical vibration of jaws and eye sockets. The women ended up winning, as always, except for Mado, who thought it wasn’t right for the hostess to win all the time, and paid off her losses from Bobby’s wallet. Besides the beverages, Mado offered her friends a bit of caviar sprinkled on salted crackers, which everyone accepted except Rosa Trènor. With her pretensions to being an old-fashioned grand dame, Rosa thought caviar was awful; she betook herself to the kitchen to prepare some toast rubbed with tomato pulp, which she tore into voraciously with an intentionally unsophisticated abandon.

When the time came to retire, Bobby winked at Frederic, and Rosa Trènor showed no desire to envelop herself in her beaver coat.
Mado said she was a little dizzy, and Reina offered to stay and sleep with her. Understanding as always, Bobby bade his lady friend farewell with the usual explosive kisses, and the group headed down the stairs, muffling their laughter so as not to scandalize the neighbors. The group was Bobby, Marta, Gisèle, the Baró de Foixà, Ernest Montagut and Pep Arnau, the youngest son of the Comte de Tabartet, a boy as fat and innocent as a pig, who never got beyond the door of his lady friends’ domiciles.

Rosa Trènor had said that she would stay another half hour or so to finish teaching Mado the stitch for her sweater, and everyone found it perfectly natural that Frederic should take the stopper out of a crystal bottle and serve himself a respectable dose of cognac without saying goodbye to anyone.

Then Mado and Reina went into Mado’s bedroom, not before Mado had told Rosa Trènor, “Make yourselves at home, don’t mind us.” On a divan upholstered with silk the color of a turtle dove’s breast, before the half-drunk glasses, the scattered cards, and the occasional inert grain of caviar that had leapt to its death on the tablecloth out of repugnance at dying between Bobby’s teeth, Rosa Trènor and Frederic de Lloberola initiated their dialogue.

After a few exploratory words from Frederic, consisting only of polite remarks and a few inoffensive
double-entendres
to see how she would react and to try to gain the upper hand, Rosa Trènor, in a vague and apparently cold way, started talking in the blasé tone of “her milieu.”

“Yes, frankly, it was a bit of a surprise …”

Later, in response to an unfortunate question from Frederic,

“Rancor? No, I feel no rancor towards you …”

Silence, a great sigh from Rosa, a fluttering of eyelashes and a natural smile:

“But, now that we’ve said our hellos and we’re friends again … You know what I think? I think you should go home … As for me …”

Frederic began to harbor the terrible suspicion that Rosa Trènor was being sincere. He tried another tack:

“That’s the best thing we could do.”

Fearing this was too strong, though, he added:

“But stop, enough pretending. I wanted to talk with you because I need you …”

At that point Rosa let out a raucous and offensive peal of laughter. Frederic flinched, but he had no choice but to swallow it. Once Rosa stopped laughing, her voice became sweeter:

“You need me, Frederic? Now you realize it?… After … how long has it been?”

Never a good actor, Frederic went for this question like a ton of bricks, and Rosa coquettishly covered his mouth before he could answer:

“No, no! Don’t tell me how long …; it’s rude to talk about age. But, still, it’s been a while, eh? So I guess it’s true that … you really do need me …”

With a maternal air, Rosa knit her brow in mock pity. Smiling, Frederic said:

“Do I look … so bad to you?”

Rosa ran her fingers over his shirt and the knot in his tie and straightened his thinning hair. Like a caged rabbit, Frederic let her do it, and Rosa took a good look at him, cocking her head like a photographer:

“No, you don’t look bad to me at all. But you can be sure I wouldn’t stand for a tie like the one you’re wearing … And now that I think of it, I need you, too, but not for what you think … I need to talk with you about Eugènia D. Yes, yes, your wife’s cousin; you must have heard about it …”

Frederic opened his eyes wide in ignorance. Rosa thought it would be good to stretch the situation out and went back to her foul talk again:

“The other night at the Grill it was all people were talking about. Now, the worst gossips were a couple of drunken urchins like Mado and Kity – who’s running around with that fool, Bonsoms, the eye doctor – wenches whose hands still smell of dishwater.”

It occurred to Frederic, who found the affectation of brazen speech in a woman to be offensive, that one way out would be to pretend that Rosa’s vocabulary was appealing to him:

“Rosa, you’re incredible. When I hear you talk … I just can’t believe …”

“What is it you can’t believe?”

“You make me feel younger by the minute!”

“Oh! I’ve changed a great deal since we’ve been out of touch. I’ve become more ‘refined’ … But don’t you dare make fun of me!
Tell me, what have you heard about Eugènia D …? Is it true about the diamond?”

Frederic realized, with some annoyance, that his praise had not had the effect he was hoping for, so, dropping the pretense, he said brusquely:

“That’s none of my business. I don’t keep track of my wife’s relatives. As you can imagine, I haven’t come here to talk about my family.”

Rosa was radiant. Her conversation was annoying Frederic. She went on without batting an eye:

“Oh, aren’t you the babe in arms. Even a dope like Bobby who never catches on to anything knows all about it, and it turns out you … Well, you needn’t worry. I don’t give a hoot, I just mentioned it to pass the time. When push comes to shove, you know very well I won’t be a penny richer or poorer if one of your cousins is giving her jewels away to some piece of trash from the Bataclan music hall.”

Rosa’s chatter about his cousin and the call girl from the Bataclan was of the most indecent and uncharitable kind; Frederic was getting nervous. Rosa didn’t let up and, with a condescension that suggested that the interested party was in fact Frederic, she added:

“What’s more, if you must know … That’s exactly what I said yesterday to those little snipes: as long as they leave me out of it … Because as you well know, I’ve never enjoyed this kind of rubbish …”

Rosa Trènor knew through Bobby and other friends of Frederic’s that Eugènia D. was his wife’s dearest friend, and that, beyond their blood relationship, there was a genuine closeness and affection. She was certain that Frederic would find these conjectures – absolutely false, in point of fact – about some supposed depravity on the part of Eugènia D. offensive. Realizing he had no other recourse, and simply to have something to say about Rosa Trènor’s remark regarding “this kind of rubbish,” Frederic responded in a completely idiotic tone:

“How old-fashioned you are!”

He might just as well have said, “How rude you are!” or “What a piece of work you are!” Rosa Trènor pretended not to have caught Frederic’s tone, and quickly responded:

“Indeed I am! That’s what I always tell these young guttersnipes. We did things differently in my house … A man, oh yes! With a man, the sky’s the limit. But only if he’s well-mannered, a “gentleman.” Don’t you think I’d have diamonds just like Mado if I weren’t so choosy, if I took up with the first young buck who showed up at the Excelsior?”

Even though at the moment Frederic was starting to feel a sort of peculiar pleasure at being drawn into Rosa Trènor’s low, wretched domain, he couldn’t suppress a skeptical laugh.

“All right, go ahead and laugh,” Rosa said. “I don’t mean, of course, that the first guy you run into will come bearing diamonds. But one thing leads to another, and if you have no scruples, before you know it you find a couple hanging from your earlobes. And mine have been in hock for years now.”

Sensing that the sauce was starting to thicken nicely, Rosa took the conversation down a different, slightly more undulating and benevolent, path:

“But I’m being tiresome. Yes, I am, don’t deny it, I’m boring you to tears … Isn’t it funny … It feels as if it were only yesterday that we were talking … I don’t know, what can I say … this all seems so natural … As if we were just as close as before …”

And then she brought the first notes of the aria down to earth with a sneeze, and an anecdote about perfume:

“I have a cold, you know …? Have to keep my handkerchief close by at all times …”

Rosa ran her handkerchief under Frederic’s nose, and, closing his eyes, he relaxed a moment as he inhaled the fragrance, while he searched for a way to broach the big subject.

“So you like this perfume … Oh yes, as you will soon see, I haven’t lost my good taste. Mado and Reina smell exactly the same: an unremitting horror from Guerlain that they consider the height of chic. Sara brought them a sample bottle. Four hundred francs, not counting what they had to pay the customs agents at Portbou. I’m surprised I didn’t pass out today. Lucky for me my nose is stuffy … But, my darling, what a sleepy face! You mind me, grab your hat and go home. I want to look in on those silly girls. They won’t mind. It’s perfectly safe. They’re probably reading some dirty book; Reina, that is, because Mado doesn’t know how to read. Bobby lent them a picture book, a filthy thing … Now, you mind me, go home and sleep; what will your wife say …? You married men have to behave …”

Frederic looked up and burned Rosa’s eyes with an acid smile. She added, in an afterthought:

“Though with me … after all …”

Frederic was starting to worry, but her last words, her “Though with me … after all …”, gave him license to press on, and Frederic said:

“Now, see here, Rosa, don’t you realize what an exciting woman you are? You’re the most delightful, intelligent …”

And here Frederic let out a grotesque, inarticulate moan, something akin to the whining of a dog, because Rosa had placed her hand upon his mouth to keep him from adding more adjectives. Stubbornly, her hand still on his mouth, Frederic tried to continue, and when he was convinced it was no use, he bit gently into the soft flesh of her palm, grabbed her hand violently, and covered it with kisses. Rosa didn’t stop him. Both of them were breathing heavily. Rosa improvised a couple of tears:

“But no, dear boy, no; don’t you see that my mascara will run! Can’t you see the tears in my eyes?… What is this! What is happening? You, too?… Are you really crying, Frederic?”

Frederic confessed as if in a cut-rate melodrama (“I was a dog with you, a dog!”). He confessed as if in an Italian opera (“How could I tolerate such slander!”). Frederic evoked scenes from his past with Rosa, moments of intimacy, he stumbled over his words, he blushed, because those moments included ludicrous or indecent details, which, naturally, he omitted; but omitting them punctured the effect of the phrase a little, and it came out flat. At the end of his
confession, Frederic himself was taken aback at his own words: “What we meant to each other, what we had together, has been the only truth in my life …”

Frederic’s speech had the effect of a musical interlude. After hearing Frederic out, Rosa abandoned her crass talk, and adopted the attitude of an abandoned Niobe, bedecking herself in the folds of the most solemn tunic. Rosa played her grand role with an eye to Frederic’s emotional range, to marvelous effect. With a dancer’s grace the abandoned Niobe lifted the solemn folds of her tunic, and Frederic found Rosa Trènor’s calf, warm beneath her chiffon stocking, in his hands. Rosa had been – and still was – famous for having perfect legs. The fruition of those legs had been one of Frederic’s most legitimate sources of pride, and in that critical moment it was her legs that contained the most positive evocative power of the past, with all the consequences of a fierce arousal.