‘A great solace for the Count’s family,’ I said.
‘For what remains of it. He has a nonagenarian aunt in Madrid, and a second cousin, a nun, cloistered at Cartagena. The seven-hundred-year-old title is at last extinct.’
‘There will be an all-night vigil at his house?’
‘Yes, Don Roberto. My husband and I hope to see you there presently.’
How much did I know about the Count, after a casual acquaintance of four or five months? Not very much, really. He was what is called a character. My mother always warned me against becoming a character. I remember that when I once asked her the meaning of ‘a character’, she said, ‘Like people who feed birds in public gardens, and usually have two or three perched on their heads.’ But the Count would never have done anything so obvious and vulgar as that. Vultures, in a cemetery, perhaps. He was a neat, ugly little man of fifty, always dressed in the same grey fustian jacket and trousers, with a French hunting waistcoat, and his hirsute but well-manicured hands were, as a rule, fidgeting at the links of a thick gold watch chain. He never wore a hat, and his bald head was lavishly freckled. A humorous contempt for the world showed in the curl of his nostrils, and the anger smouldering behind his black eyes attracted me; most Majorcans are childishly stolid and complaisant. The Count talked a beautiful Castilian and a still more beautiful Majorcan. Our island aristocracy converse in Mallorquí àulic, a courtly dialect of their own, close to Provençal, and distinguished by numerous thirteenth-century forms that have disappeared from Mallorquí plebeu, the language of commoners. I gathered that the Count was recently widowed and had no children. I knew that he was an admirable Latin scholar, and an authority on the late-medieval Peasants’ Revolt; he talked of publishing a monograph on Christopher Columbus, to prove him a Majorcan outlaw who had fled to Genoa after his family estates were confiscated at the collapse of the Revolt. The Count lived alone, attended by a valet, at Ca’n Deià – a tall sixteenth-century house, adjoining the church, which had his coat of arms carved above the lintel. Except for an occasional game of truc at the café, with the mayor, the schoolmaster, and the doctor, he took almost no part in village life. Women and children seemed to be scared of him, though I could not understand why, since he never raised his voice nor made a scene.
Every villager of consequence went to pay his last respects that evening. The Count ranked as a local man, because he owned Ca’n Deià; but the family seat was the Palacio Deià, at Palma, and until he settled among us, only six months before his death, Ca’n Deià had stood empty for generations, though it was opened and ritually whitewashed once a year, at Easter. The furniture, pictures, and china suggested the early 1830s as the period of its last tenancy. According to the sacristan, who preserved ancient village traditions, one of the Count’s collateral ancestors – ‘one afflicted with most informal habits’ – was then guarded there by a couple of servants, to save his family the embarrassment of keeping him at home, or the disgrace of confining him in a madhouse. The sacristan explained that the unfortunate young fellow had had to be sewn into his clothes to prevent him from removing them in public, especially at Mass. ‘He came here during the Carlist Wars,’ he once told me, ‘in the very year when a famine reduced the village to eating locust beans. It was he who contrived those silhouettes hanging on the passage walls. Are they not curious?’ The silhouettes were intricate cut-outs, made of white paper: a palm tree, hunting scenes, pipe-smoking gallants in extravagant costume, heraldic designs, enormous doves, flowers, mermaids, and unicorns, all crazily juxtaposed on a background of blue sugar-loaf paper, but formalized by plain gilt frames.
The dead Count lay upstairs, among white roses and Madonna lilies, wearing court dress adorned with splendid orders. The flower scent nearly drowned the smell of camphor, and carefully placed rose petals hid, I discovered later, the more conspicuous holes (moths? mice?) in the black velvet of his suit – there had been no occasion for him to wear court dress since Alfonso XIII’s abdication, more than twenty years before. The Count’s face had been decently made up by the midwife, and everyone agreed that he looked as peaceful as a child; she had not disguised the characteristic half-smile at the corner of his mouth.
When I went in, a memory made my own mouth twitch sympathetically. ‘¡O Señor muerto!’ I muttered. It was a joke that the Count had told me himself, about a village theatrical show he had once seen. A faithful page, discovering the murdered body of his liege lord, should have cried out, in desperation: ‘¡O Señor! ¡Muerto está! ¡Tarde llegamos!’ (‘O my lord! You are dead! We have come too late!’) But the actor had learned his part from a prompt script without accents or punctuation, so he tripped onto the stage and gaily exclaimed, ‘¡O Señor muerto, esta tarde llegamos!’ (‘Oh, Mr Corpse, we are coming this evening!’)
Downstairs, in the stone-flagged parlour, we mourners occupied a long line of low, corded chairs, such as almost every Majorcan family keeps for baptisms, funerals, weddings, and first communions. But these had been borrowed from the sacristan’s house, next door; Ca’n Deià contained only huge seignorial armchairs in faded red velvet and tall black leather ones with octagonal brass studs. Black coffee and biscuits were served, and a box of cigars lay open on the two-inch-thick tabletop. As the last man to have seen the Count alive, I had to tell my story several times. For the sake of good manners, I embellished it by recalling his comments on the unstinted hospitality that the village worthies had shown him – the devout priest, the correct justice of the peace, the learned schoolmaster, the indefatigable doctor. But one genuine and most enigmatic remark of the Count’s I kept to myself, for fear it might perhaps hurt someone’s feelings. He had thrown the words over his shoulder as he turned toward the reservoir. ‘She landed yesterday, you see. Not far from here. That is why I must leave you.’
Our solemn gathering grew somewhat cozier at eleven o’clock, when the electric light dimmed and recovered three times, as a sign that half an hour later it would be cut off for the night. At this signal, most of the villagers took their leave. Those of us who remained drew up our chairs in a circle around the table, and the Count’s burly Majorcan valet, our host, lit long ecclesiastical tapers stuck in pewter candlesticks. Two bottles of brandy, and another of anís appeared on a tray, and we soon started talking freely. There were seven of us: Guillermo, the valet; the schoolmaster, who had literary pretensions; the emaciated sacristan; María, the midwife; Don Tomás Fons y Pons, the Count’s family lawyer, whom I had not met before; Catalina’s husband, who drives our village bus as well as owning the café; and myself.
‘An ideally constituted party,’ said the schoolmaster, beaming. ‘More in number than the Graces, and less in number than the Muses.’
‘But,’ said the sacristan, ‘precisely equal in number with those who sufficiently honour the memory of the deceased gentleman upstairs to keep an all-night vigil for him!’
‘I have seen no member of the nobility about the village,’ said Catalina’s husband, ‘though news of his accident must have reached the capital hours ago.’
The lawyer stroked his white moustache, hemmed, and explained: ‘Many are out of town, the rest are attending the Italian opera. But we can expect representatives of all the great families at tomorrow’s funeral service. They cannot well omit this act of courtesy to one who was not only the senior nobleman of Majorca but also hereditary pomander-bearer to His Majesty the King of Spain.’
‘The hypocrites, how they disliked my master!’ the valet burst out. ‘His father fell in love with a beautiful peasant girl from Costitx at the Martinmas pig-killing, and had the good sense to marry her, instead of seducing the poor innocent and flinging a hundred-peseta note in her lap, as any of them would have done. She was a woman of great character, was the old Countess, and pious to a fault. Those degenerates pretended to scorn our Count as the offspring of a misalliance, yet they envied him his learning, his courage, his independence of spirit! None of them but would have been the better for a few spoonfuls of w
holesome peasant blood in his veins. The old Countess died when my master was five years old, and he adored her memory; indeed, some say that it was the unfortunate nobleman’s ruin.’
‘Come, man!’ María, the midwife, challenged him. ‘How can adoration for a mother’s memory ruin anyone?’
Guillermo appealed to the lawyer. ‘Don Tomás, correct me if I am wrong, but this is the story as told in the servants’ quarters, and we are sticklers for accuracy.’
‘Tell it your own way, Guillermo,’ said the lawyer.
‘Well,’ the valet continued, ‘Don Ignacio, the Count’s only brother, two years his junior, drove a fast car down the La Puebla road. Rain had fallen, and the tarmac was slippery with mud from the potato carts. He had his wife beside him, and both were killed instantly when they skidded and hit a tree. Their graceful, green-eyed, thirteen-year-old daughter, Doña Acebo, came under my master’s guardianship – she had no suitable aunts or other relatives on either side of the family – and since he was a bachelor, this embarrassed him a little. But he accepted his responsibility, and, finding the child sadly ignorant, though not lacking in intelligence or humour, removed her from the convent school where she had studied, and became her tutor. They lived in the Palacio Deià. He taught Doña Acebo history, heraldry, geography, botany, French, and Latin. She soon dropped her school friends, because none of them had the same interests or enjoyed the same liberty as herself, and my master kept her out of Palma society – “Lest she should turn into a profligate modern woman,” as he said. Only three hours a day she studied, yet they were worth thirty hours at a convent, for he taught like an angel, and work was more like play to them. The family chaplain, of course, attended to her religious needs. My master took Doña Acebo everywhere with him – to theatres, concerts, bullfights, cockfights, freestyle wrestling matches – but both enjoyed far more the entertainments of their own devising. They were formidable jokesters, and would leave the palace at all hours, disguised as gipsies, or drunks, or pedlars, or peasants, and have a thousand droll adventures in the bystreets of Palma.’
‘Give us an example,’ said the schoolmaster. “‘A thousand droll adventures” is no way to tell a story!’
‘Well, they once competed as to who could first earn fifty pesetas from a stranger by barefaced fraud. I was the timekeeper. My master, wearing a cloth cap, a false beard, and spectacles, visited a second-hand bookstall, where he paid five pesetas for a volume on apiculture. He then added a zero to the figure on the flyleaf, wrapped the book in a sheet of brown paper, slipped into a café to find a newspaper, and went through the obituary notices on the second page of La Ultima Hora. Discovering that a certain Don Fulano de Tal, an importer of uralite piping, had died only two streets away, he took the book to his house, and inquired for Don Fulano. “Alas, he is dead!” sobbed the widow. “Alas, and doubly alas!” echoed the Count. “Don Fulano, a valued friend of mine, ordered this volume a week ago, and I have just managed to procure it in Barcelona.” He was turning sorrowfully away when the widow asked leave to inspect the book. “Ah, a practical treatise on beekeeping,” she said tenderly. “My poor angel must, after all, have contemplated the tranquil country life that I so often urged upon him, begging him to sell his business in good time. How right I was, for an overworked heart carried him off. I must buy this as a memento of his affection. How much did it cost you?” My master showed her the price on the flyleaf, and mentioned another five pesetas of postal charges. In the circumstances, he was prepared to forgo his commission, and the widow let him do so, thanking him for his nobility of heart. That game took less than half an hour, but Doña Acebo had already won the contest. She sold two out-of-date twenty-five-peseta raffle tickets for an automobile to some German tourists and was home before my watch marked five minutes.’
‘Proceed with your story, man!’ said María, the midwife. ‘You mentioned the Count’s ruinous love for his dead mother.’
‘I am coming to that. The innocent comradeship between the Count and Doña Acebo could not last forever, because, as she grew older and plumper, she came to bear such a close resemblance to the portrait of her grandmother, the old Countess, whose Christian name she inherited, that they might have been twins. In short, when she reached the age of fifteen, my master fell in love with her, much to his alarm and confusion. What should he do? The two had become so deeply attached to each other, from living alone in the great palace, with only the chaplain and us servants as chorus to their prolonged comedy, that it seemed most cruel to send her away. But would it not be worse if she stayed? After much heart-searching, and with the chaplain’s dubious approval, he decided to marry her. Of course, though marriage between uncle and niece can be sanctioned by the Church, out of respect for a well-known gospel precedent, such unions are extremely rare. Here in this village, if an uncle were to show a niece undue tenderness, conches would be blown all night around his house, and filth left on the doorstep. But to a Count of Deià all things within reason are permitted, for did not his ancestors play a distinguished part in restraining the Majorcan clergy from allegiance to the anti-popes at Avignon? Nevertheless, it was a costly and troublesome procedure, even for my master, to secure a dispensation from the Vatican; to begin with, the Bishop of Palma had to supply a covering letter, explaining the peculiar nature of the case, and the Bishop raised technical difficulties.’
‘Enough, Guillermo!’ interrupted the lawyer. ‘Leave the intricacies of canon law to canons, and stick to the facts! The Count of Deià and Doña Acebo were married, and it proved no happy marriage.’
‘That is the truth,’ the valet agreed. ‘At first, Doña Acebo, who was still only sixteen years old, treated the wedding as another of their wild, scandalous jokes, and one that would give her an enviable social status, so they went off on their honeymoon to San Sebastián in the highest spirits. Then, finding that she was seriously expected to become her uncle’s wife, in fact as well as name, and to present him with an heir, she felt a certain distaste and even, it may be, moral scruples, though their union had been fully legitimized.’
‘I heard some talk of that,’ said the midwife, keeping a straight face. ‘She rejected his caresses, but in a most affectionate manner.’
“‘Affectionate” is right, Doña María,’ the valet answered, no less gravely. ‘The Count was very ticklish, and whenever he attempted any more than avuncular endearments, she would tickle him in the ribs until he nearly died from laughter and annoyance.’
The lawyer interrupted again. ‘A tragic tale! The exasperated Count, aware that he had made a serious error, but determined to teach his Countess a lesson, sued for an annulment – which proved as troublesome and costly to obtain as the marriage licence – without her consent or knowledge. One fine morning, she awoke to find the wedding ring absent from her finger, and when she raised a hue and cry, Margalida the housemaid informed her, as she had been instructed, that she no longer had any need of the trinket.’
‘Doña Acebo resented this joke so bitterly,’ said the valet, nodding his head up and down for emphasis, ‘that the couple never resumed their former carefree play, and soon she ran off with a young Colombian band leader, whom she had encountered at Tito’s Bar. From every city they visited, to comply with his engagements, she would send the Count picture postcards of lovers – some sentimental, some grossly comic, and all in the lowest popular taste. The Count grew increasingly morose, and took to his bed, seeing nobody. When at last he regained his health, we found him altered and the prey to a compulsion for strange games. If we attended Mass in Santa Eulalia church, for instance, where patterns of alternate white and dark-red marble squares line the pavement, he would experience great difficulty in approaching the altar steps; there were always holy women kneeling in prayer on the red marble squares he felt he had to tread upon. “Excuse me, good woman,” he would mutter. “Would you mind moving twenty centimetres to the right?” They would look up in great vexation, but he always got his way. The Mass priest would blanch when he
saw him, because the Count, once he had gained the steps, would wring his hands and utter a low moan of “Oo-oo!” at the slightest mispronunciation or grammatic error in Latin.’
‘I watched him once for a half an hour at the Palm Sunday Fair,’ put in Catalina’s husband, ‘some three months after Doña Acebo’s departure. He was leaning over the counter of the shooting gallery, and behind him waited a queue of little boys, whom he made stand to attention, like soldiers. Having fired a few preliminary shots to gauge the precise twist in his rifle barrel, he bought an enormous stack of counters and shot with monotonous insistence at the same iron plate. “Crack!” “Crack!” “Crack!” At each hit, a door would fly open, and out came a doll, dressed as a waitress, with a tray in her hands, and on it a miniature bottle of so-called vermut. He would beckon for the bottle, uncork it, pour the contents down the throat of the foremost boy, send him back to the end of the queue, and resume his marksmanship. The proprietor shouted curses at him, but could do nothing else.’
‘Why did he leave the palace?’ asked the sacristan. ‘Was it to avoid unhappy memories of his marriage?’
‘Perhaps,’ said the valet. ‘But he announced that he had taken refuge from the enemy, here in the mountains. When I inquired what enemy, he answered, “Those who smoke blond tobacco; those who strew our quiet Majorcan beaches with pink, peeling human flesh; those who roar round the island in foreign cars ten metres long; those who prefer aluminium to earthenware, and plastics to glass; those who demolish the old quarters of Palma and erect travel agencies, souvenir shops, and tall, barrack-like hotels on the ruins; those who keep their radios bawling incessantly along the street at siesta time; those who swill Caca-Loco and bottled beer!” The last straw came with the closing of the Café Fígaro, which everyone of character in Palma used to frequent, and the conversion of its premises into palatial offices for Messrs Thomas Cook & Son. He had sat there most mornings, at a corner table, playing dominoes with the Cat-stewer –’