“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, holding a glass of water in his hand, “such is my gratitude, such is the emotion filling my heart that I, Bonifacio Reyes, have no hesitation in saying that I will foot the bill . . . for the food and the drink . . . including the ice creams. . . . Yes, you heard me, Benito,” he said to one of the waiters, “I will pay the bill.” This was greeted with cries of “Bravo.” Mochi smiled smugly, as might a prophet seeing his prophecy come true. “Yes, I will pay for everything, only ask not from which heaven this particular manna rained down. As I always say, one might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. . . . My private life is my private life, and that’s the fact of the matter. One’s private life is sacred, a holy ark, an arca sanctorum.”
“Sancta sanctorum!” cried the prompter, who was an ex-seminarian. (Shouts of: “Silence!” “Be quiet!”)
“All right, sanctorum omnium. Ladies and gentlemen, I cannot . . . I cannot . . . nor perhaps should I, nor perhaps do I wish to, put into words everything that your affection means to me. . . . I love art, but have no way of expressing that love. . . . I lack the ability, but my heart is the heart of an artist. Art and love are two aspects of the same thing, the two sides of the coin of beauty shall we say.” More cries of “Bravo” and general amazement among the performers. “I have read a little and I realize that the wretched life I have led in this accursèd town is a mean and miserable one. . . . I hate it. Here, everyone despises me, they respect me about as much as they would a useless, toothless old dog, and all because I’m a gentle soul who cares nothing for purely material goods, for filthy lucre, and certainly cares nothing for industry or commerce. I am no businessman, no intriguer, I do not know how to behave in society . . . therefore I am nothing. How absurd! I believe, I feel, no, I know there is something worthwhile inside me, and you artists, who have as little time as I do for those desk-bound money-grabbers, those bores, those provincial nobodies, you understand me, you tolerate me, you welcome me, you applaud me, you take me in and. . . .”
Bonifacio had turned pale, his words stuck in his throat, he was on the verge of tears, and his apparently ridiculous emotional state did not, for the moment, seem ridiculous to those present, who did not speak or even stir but listened to the poor man with genuine interest, serious and astonished to hear this unhappy fellow, this fool, saying something that touched them deeply, that flattered and moved them. The speaker did not lack for words, but his tears got in the way and insisted on being heard first; besides, his wretched legs gave way beneath him, as they always did, and he found himself almost bent double, his chin nearly touching the tablecloth, as he went on.
“Ah, my friends, dear Mochi and dearest Minghetti,” he said, addressing the baritone too, “you cannot imagine how flattered poor, abandoned, despised Bonifacio feels knowing that he is understood and loved by you artists. If I dared, I would run away with you, I would be the very least of you, but I would be an artist too, independent, free, with no fear of the future, not even giving it a thought, but thinking only of music. . . . Do you think I don’t understand you? How often do I read in your faces the anxieties that afflict you, your concerns about the uncertain morrow! But gradually art restores your tranquillity, your carefree existence; applause is your opium, the pure love of singing raises you up and lifts you out of ordinary, banal life. . . . And the very least among you, Cornelio, for example, who owns only one suit, which he is obliged to wear winter and summer, he forgets or scorns that poverty and is filled with enthusiasm, with artistic inspiration, when, in his modest role as a distinguished member of the chorus, he sings out that line from Lucrezia Borgia: ‘Viva il Madera!’ ” (More cries of “Bravo” and applause.) Cornelio, who was present and was, indeed, wearing a very worn suit more suited to the tropics, embraced Bonifacio who, weeping, kissed him on both cheeks.
Bonifacio tried to go on but failed; he sat down hard on his chair, and Serafina, proud of that unexpected speech and of the discretion her lover had shown in not mentioning her, rewarded him with a squeeze of the hand and another, more energetic squeeze with her feet.
Mochi came over to the hero, embraced him, and whispered in his ear, their faces touching, “Bonifacio, this poor, obscure, disregarded artist will never forget what he owes you, nor your true worth.”
Mochi’s tears, mingled with the traces of face powder he had not completely removed that night, moistened the cheeks of his impromptu host, who barely had strength enough to think. Suddenly, though, looking pale as death, Bonifacio jumped up and, arm outstretched, pointed at the clock opposite him.
“Look at the time!” he cried in terror, and tried to leave the table and run away.
“What do you mean?” everyone asked.
“It’s time to. . . .” He looked at Serafina with eyes that begged for her compassion, her understanding.
Serafina duly understood. She knew something, although not the most humiliating part, of his domestic enslavement.
“Let him go, he has important things to do . . . I’m not quite sure what, but I know it’s serious. Let him go.”
Bonifacio gave his idol a melancholy, lingering look by way of a kiss, since he could not kiss her in any other way and, filled with tender gratitude, headed for the stairs.
The actors allowed him to leave but looked at Mochi as if expecting him to know what they were asking.
Smiling and serenely twirling the ends of his waxed mustache, Mochi knew at once what they meant.
“Don’t worry! They all know him here and know that Señor Reyes’s money can be relied on absolutely. If he didn’t pay before he left, it’s because he forgot . . . or perhaps did not wish to offend us.”
“Of course,” said the baritone, “that would have meant we couldn’t order anything more. . . .”
“Exactly. You see what a gentleman he is.”
Everyone agreed that Bonifacio would cover the cost of all that evening’s expenses.
As for Bonifacio, he was relieved to find that, as he walked along, his drunkenness was gradually ebbing away. He was sure that the beneficial action of the cool night air would also put paid to his dread of his wife.
“Yes, I’m quite calm, I have to be. When I go into her room, my preservation instinct, if I can call it that, will restore to me the use of all my faculties, and Emma will notice nothing. Besides, she might already have gone to sleep, in which case, she won’t be able to scold me tomorrow for coming in late, and by tomorrow, I’ll be as free of wine as the Koran itself.”
He arrived home, opened the front door, lit a lamp, tiptoed upstairs and into his wife’s rooms. In one corner, a dim lamp flickered dully behind its opaque pink glass; her actual bedroom lay largely in darkness, the little light that penetrated serving only to change even the most innocent objects into strange, formidable shapes.
Bonifacio very tentatively approached the bed, eyes wide, craning his neck and walking in a special way he had devised to ensure that his boots did not squeak, as they usually did. This, he believed, was one of the many tricks played on him by cruel fate: The soles of his shoes always creaked.
As he approached his wife, he suddenly thought of the Moor of Venice, whose story he knew from Rossini’s opera; yes, he was Othello and his wife was Desdemona, or, rather, he was Desdemono to his wife’s Otela—she certainly had the personality for it.
The main thing was to find out whether or not she was sleeping.
He prayed wholeheartedly to the Creator. It was fifteen minutes past the hour appointed for the last massages of the day.
“At least she’s not saying anything,” he thought, coming to an abrupt halt when his feet met those of her bed.
Unfortunately, silence was no proof that she was asleep; indeed, having her eyes closed was no proof either, because often, in order to torment him, to punish him, she would remain silent like that, eyes closed, and would not answer even if he said her name; no, she would not answer except—no, it was too terrible to think about, but why deny it—except with a slap around the face a
nd a “That’s what you get for creeping up on me like a thief in the night! You villain, you traitor, you so-called husband, you evil man, you etc., etc.!”
This was historical fact. Bonifacio knew that were he ever to write his memoirs—although, of course, why would he?—he would have to leave out those slaps around the face, because there was no place in art for the utterly miserable sadnesses of real life, sadnesses that, in his memoirs, would have to be artistic or not exist at all; but regardless of whether he left them out or not, those slaps were, nonetheless, historical fact. They had not happened often, but they had happened. Worse, he had to confess that they didn’t really upset him that much; he preferred a slap in the face to being screamed at; anything but noise. Besides, when Emma was insulting him, she repeated herself over and over, which made him feel quite ill. It’s true that when she hit him, she also repeated herself, but not so much.
Emma’s eyes were closed, but he wanted to be quite sure and so put his ear to her mouth. Her breathing had all the regularity of sleep, but she might still be pretending. It was hard to tell if she was sleeping or not. As for saying her name, he had long ago given that up. He preferred simply to stay there, head bent over his “patient,” because at least it would be clear that he had done his duty in trying to ascertain whether his wife’s sleep was real or feigned. After three or four minutes, he would decide that Emma was beyond his help and would withdraw, satisfied that he had done his duty. The next day, she could accuse him of having neglected and forgotten her, but he would know that her complaints were baseless, because, as he would tell himself, “If she was awake, then she knows full well that I did not abandon my post; and if she was asleep, she obviously didn’t need me.”
The usual four minutes had passed, but, given the exceptional circumstances, Bonifacio wanted to prolong the experiment.
After five minutes, Emma opened her eyes very wide, and in the dull voice that always struck terror into Bonifacio, she said in a calm, cold, languorous voice, “You smell of rice powder.”
In the romantic novels of the day, authors often resorted, at such moments of crisis, to the expression: “He stood thunderstruck, like a blasted oak.”
This was precisely the expression that came into Bonifacio’s head to describe his current feelings and, as if by association of ideas, he added to himself, “Damn and blast!”
“You smell of rice powder,” Emma said again.
Bonifacio still did not respond. He was thinking, “I’m unlucky in every respect, even Providence treats me unfairly and punishes me when I don’t deserve it: I must have smelled of rice powder on a hundred other occasions and yet she’s never noticed, but tonight, when there’s no reason for it . . . tonight, when I haven’t even. . . .” Suddenly he remembered how Mochi had embraced him and how his drunken friend’s tears had wet his cheek and had indeed reeked of rice powder. “The great poof!” he thought, yes, it was all the fault of that sentimental fool Mochi, but how embarrassing, what was he to say? How could he tell her “Look, I do smell of rice powder, but it’s because the tenor from the Italian opera company embraced and kissed me!”
“You smell of rice powder,” said his now wide-awake wife for the third time.
And to her husband’s great surprise, an arm emerged from beneath the sheets and gently, rather than aggressively, encircled Bonifacio’s head and tenderly drew him to her. She then sniffed his neck, and he was sure that she was sniffing not with her nose but with her teeth. He feared that this she-cat was about to play a trick on him; he feared, God help him, a terrible bite to the jugular, an awful blood-letting, but as he tried gingerly to pull away, he felt on the back of his neck the weight of two arms holding him with an insistence that could not be confused with violence or deceit; and then he understood, with even greater surprise, what this was about, when he heard a hoarse, affectionate moan, sleepily voluptuous, simultaneously urgent and abandoned, a moan he recognized at once and whose meaning was perfectly clear. All this meant a rebirth of a conjugal initiative she had long ago relinquished. In that most intimate of intimacies, Bonifacio had no more authority than he did in any of his other domestic tasks; no spontaneity on his part was either expected or allowed. Yes, he was thunderstruck. And Serafina’s lover could not have been more taken aback by his sleepy, capricious wife’s advances had flowers rained down upon him instead of thunder; however, choosing not to question the possible causes of this change, Bonifacio made his calculations and, without pondering the appropriateness of the phrase, said to himself, “What have I got to lose?,” and to his wife’s unmistakable signals, which stirred in his soul a melancholy cloud of memories that drifted across a honeymoon long since lost in the dark firmament, he responded with his own signals, which were received for what they were.
“I’m not being unfaithful,” Bonifacio thought, “this is a case of every man for himself.” His lover’s conscience, the false conscience of a principled romantic, was accusing him, telling him that the vapors from that night’s “orgy” had lit a fire that was not entirely feigned; whether it was what remained of his intoxication, whether it was gratitude or nostalgia for that lost honeymoon, the fact is that he, the pantheist who had given the toast earlier, felt no hint of repugnance at having to fulfill his rudimentary duties as husband; his surprise at Emma’s unusual attitude was soon succeeded by many more surprises that left him virtually speechless, surprises that revealed to him, as if in a dream, how little we know, how deceptive appearances can be, how our fears deceive us, and so on; was he being overly suspicious or was he seeing things, or was his wife not quite as near death’s door as she claimed, and were the chicken and chops she swore she could not eat, and the fine wines she assured him were as poison to her, were they all having some effect? Had the ointments and the cotton wool produced a kind of rebirth . . . rather as plants continue to grow in the darkness, pale but vigorous too? In the bewildered Bonifacio’s cloudy depths, the twisted, damaged conscience of the faithful lover and the unfaithful husband protested and rejected all sophistry, while he, half dreaming, half waking, partly out of fear—“to throw her off the scent” as he put it—partly out of a new and, to him, monstrous kind of voluptuousness, surrendered to the raptures of physical love, not with any great show of originality, it must be said, but with a spontaneity that troubled the faithful lover’s aforementioned conscience. No, there was no originality; there were words, muffled cries, new postures, new sources of pleasure, which Emma received at first with feeble protests, but then enjoyed and absorbed with almost epileptic delight, with the infallibility of the sinful instinct; all of this was an imitation of that other passion, all of it was imbued with Serafina’s style of lovemaking. Before the night was over—in the delirium of love, which he described to himself as “physical” in order to distinguish it from the other kind of love—Bonifacio heard Emma utter interjections and invocations straight out of his beloved’s love dictionary; and he noticed that she bestowed on him certain Serafinaesque caresses; it was like a contagious disease; he had infected his wife, his “wife before God and men,” with Serafina’s love, as if it were a form of leprosy; and the conscience that protested now was that of the husband, the would-be paterfamilias. “This is tantamount to sullying the marriage bed with a kind of secret disease, a moral disease,” he said to himself, “as well as failing in my duties as faithful, romantic, artistic lover.” This whole confusion of remorse and guilt was swirling around in the depths of his poor brain, among the fumes of a drunkenness he thought had vanished but which had merely dissipated: On the one hand, his brain felt as if it were filling up with lead, while, on the other, an unhealthy, exalted lasciviousness was threatening to melt it. In Emma’s arms, Bonifacio heard occasional cries booming in his skull. “Bonifacio! Reyes! Bonifacio!” said those huge booming voices, among which he recognized the baritone and the bass and the singer who sang the line “Viva il Madera!” in Lucrezia Borgia.
Day dawned, and the sad couple fell asleep. At ten o’clock Emma woke up
and, wide awake, she smiled as a cat would if it could and kicked her husband in the shin, saying, “Bonifacio, get up, Eufemia will be here at any moment.”
Eufemia was the maid who brought Emma her hot chocolate at a quarter past ten on the dot. She did not want the girl to discover that they had slept together in that manner.
When Bonifacio “opened his eyes to reality,” as he put it only seconds after waking, the first thing he did was yawn, but the second was to feel a burning thirst for idealism, for the infinite, for regeneration through love, as well as a no less intense physical thirst and a deep desire to continue sleeping. Otherwise, he preferred not to think about his situation; it horrified him—for various reasons. “Sideo,” he thought, recalling one of the seven words spoken by the Martyr of Golgotha, as he referred to Our Lord Jesus Christ; but when Emma again kicked his shin with her bare foot, Bonifacio translated his exclamation, saying, “I’m so thirsty. . . . Give me some liquid, please, even if it’s only cough syrup!”
“Listen, you, I want you out of this bed before the maid comes. You may have no shame, but I do.”
And with the impetus and energy that characterized Emma—and which Bonifacio had often thought would have made her a magnificent man of action, a politician, a captain—with those same qualities, the wife kicked her husband out of the marriage bed. Bonifacio had no choice but to pull on his clothes as best he could and leave his spouse’s bedroom without more ado; half naked and barefoot, for he was carrying his boots in his hand (he could hardly be expected to put on boots rather than slippers when he had just got out of bed!), he stumbled down corridors, crossed the dining room, where he drank a glass of water left over from the previous night, reached his room, and hurriedly, clumsily disrobed again, tearing off a button or two in the process; and as soon as he was in bed, the one he considered properly his own, he was about to give himself over to the various highly contradictory thoughts and regrets afflicting him; his body, however, would not oblige; and the sweet coolness of the firm bed, the softness of the springy mattress, drew him down, like triumphant sirens, into the very depths of the sea of sleep, with waves of repose and forgetting washing over his head.