“And?”
“As I said, don’t rush me. I mentioned earlier that the situation casts a poor light on the memory of the deceased man, let’s call him X, may he rest in peace. No, I’m not explaining myself well at all. It casts both a poor light and a good light, because strictly speaking, he is entirely innocent, at least in this particular case, and even if he wasn’t, the breaker pays, as the saying goes, and he wanted to pay . . . except that he hadn’t broken anything. Do you understand?”
“No, sir, but it doesn’t matter. Don’t worry.”
The priest was beginning to think Doña Emma Valcárcel’s husband a complete dolt.
“Did you know the deceased . . . Don Diego?”
“Yes, he was my father-in-law . . . I mean, my employer.”
“This young man is either mad or stupid,” thought the priest.
Then a happy idea occurred to him.
“Listen,” he said, “I can explain it to you using an example, all right, that way I can simultaneously tell you the facts and not tell you, all right?”
“Fine,” said Bonifacio, who was barely listening, engaged as he was in a terrible struggle with his conscience.
“Imagine that you’re a hunter and you come onto my land. Imagine for the moment that I am the other party and, while you are on my land, you spot a deer or a boar or a hare if you like—”
“A hare,” repeated Bonifacio mechanically.
“And bang!”
So convincing was this loud report that Bonifacio, who was in a highly nervous state, almost jumped out of his skin.
“You fire your gun and . . . no, a hare won’t do, it needs to be something bigger, anyway, you shoot what you believe to be a chamois or a deer . . . but there is no chamois, no deer, instead you’ve killed a cow of mine that was quietly grazing in the field. What do you do? In my example, in this case, you pay for the cow with a gift inter vivos . . . the large sum of seven thousand reales. I keep the seven thousand reales and the boy, I mean, the cow. But now here’s the best of it, it turns out that you were not the one who killed the cow. The shot you fired missed the target, your shot went off into the clouds. Because long before, another hunter, hidden away, had also fired a shot . . . and he was the one who killed the cow, and kept both the cow and your seven thousand reales. Time passes, you die, so to speak, and the other man dies too, but before he dies, he repents of what he did and wishes to restore to your heirs the money which, strictly speaking, is not his, even though you gave it to him inter vivos.” The priest clearly set great store by that Latin tag, as if he felt it was essential if the idea of the gift was to be properly understood. “Now do you understand me?”
Not a word. Bonifacio did not realize that this was one of those lapses in honor that Don Diego had stopped up with money. In this particular case, as the priest was saying, no one’s honor was impugned, or not, at least, by Don Diego and he had been tricked into paying something he did not owe. The person who had profited from this, thanks to the lawyer’s skittish conscience—for he lived in constant fear of scandal—had repaid that money on his deathbed, doubtless thinking fearfully of the fires of Hell.
The priest judged that he had explained enough and, feeling very pleased with his example, whose exposition had brought him out in a sweat, he was wiping the back of his neck with his green-and-white-striped handkerchief, unconcerned now as to whether that seemingly dim gentleman had understood his example or not. The secret of the confessional and Don Diego’s reputation would not allow him to say any more or to be more explicit.
He continued talking but added nothing of any substance; he said again that this was a private matter, and exacted from Bonifacio his word of honor that only he and his good lady, if he thought it decent, should know about what had happened.
“No one else must know. It is, as you see, a delicate business, and if the gossips, especially up there in the village, if they should ever find out that I came here to hand over the money, well, they would immediately put two and two together. So be very careful. The young lady herself, your wife I mean, should also know as little as possible, she might start thinking about it, and women, especially married women, are very quick on the uptake.” (“Far quicker than you, it would seem,” he added to himself.)
And then that priest from the mountains left, feeling very pleased and trusting in the word of honor of that dull, almost doltish gentleman, who, nevertheless, had the face of an honest, responsible fellow.
“Being dim doesn’t mean you can’t be true to your word,” the priest was thinking as he went down the stairs.
Initially it had occurred to Bonifacio to see the hand of Providence in what he would normally call “chance.” However, he immediately added: “The hand of Providence or the hand of the Devil.” Because the first thing he thought of doing with that money fallen like manna from Hell rather than Heaven was to take it straight to Don Benito Major, in order to fill up the gaping maw of his debt, that black hole, from whose depths the infernal Furies (as Bonifacio thought of them) were screaming at him: “Villain, adulterer, what have you done with your wife’s fortune?” In vain did reason tell him: “You’re not an adulterer yet, well, apart from making another woman a proposal of marriage, and your wife’s fortune is not compromised in the least by that loan of six thousand reales, even if she were to pay it back herself.” It made no difference; his feelings of remorse and his fear of Emma and Don Juan kept him from sleeping that night. He relegated what he called his adultery to second place; he could perhaps, by dint of sophistry, find some way of excusing, to himself, that illegitimate love, but with the money there was no excuse; he had borrowed six thousand reales, making use of his wife’s credit. That was wicked and, even worse, it could trigger a domestic scene. His imagination, “the madwoman in the attic,” set before him a terrifying image: Pale, scrawny Emma leapt out of bed still wearing her nightcap, her eyes darting fire, and silently advanced on him, clutching in one tremulous hand the receipt given to her by Don Juan, who remained impassive as ever, safe in the dignity of his side-whiskers. She knew everything! She knew about the thousand reales and about the six thousand reales and his night walk with Serafina. . . . The night watchman and Don Juan had told her everything! Terrible! “The things one’s imagination comes up with!” thought Bonifacio, trembling from head to foot. Fortunately, it was pure fantasy, although reality could easily come to resemble it. And now a priest had presented him with seven thousand reales, which he, Bonifacio, could spend as he wished, without a single living soul stopping him or even knowing about it. Indeed, secrecy was of the essence. And how could he keep the secret if he paid that money into what Don Juan called the “till”? Neither the priest nor the honest penitent who had restored the money to the family knew that he, Bonifacio, had no power in the household, no control over the finances, despite what the law said, or so he had been told; despite all the laws in the world, he had not a penny to his name and served only to sign blindly whatever documents the side-whiskered one set before him. Given this situation, how could he possibly add that money to his wife’s wealth without anyone finding out? Impossible. On the one hand, his conscience was telling him: “Do as you please.” But wasn’t spending that money to his own advantage tantamount to stealing from his wife? Yes and no. No, because he was going to use it to stop a hole opened up in the Valcárcel credit. It was clear that he hadn’t a penny to call his own nor any way of finding one, and that Don Benito Major had loaned him money taking Emma’s capital as guarantee; more than that, even Bonifacio would acknowledge that he had always assumed that he would pay off the loan with his wife’s money, although it terrified him to think quite how and when. On the one hand, he wasn’t really intending to steal. On the other hand, he was because . . . because whatever you chose to call it, whether theft or fraud, it was quite simply stealing.
Feeling fairly pleased with himself, he stood in the midst of that moral desolation and contemplated the rectitude of his soul, which was rejecting all vain sophistry and shou
ting: “Thief! Thief!” Not that this prevented Bonifacio from washing and dressing as quickly as possible and leaving the house without being seen or heard, and intending to be back before Emma woke up.
“This is how one must do these things,” he was thinking as he walked down the street. “If I hesitate, if I spend days and days cudgeling my brains about whether or not this is a crime, who knows, all hell might break loose, Don Benito might grow tired of waiting, Don Juan might find out about it and . . . I would rather die than that, I would rather die and go to Hell. I’m going to pay off that loan. The priest wanted me to keep it a secret, didn’t he? Well, there will be no better-kept secret than this. Yes, I am a thief, there’s no doubt about it, but a thief for love’s sake.” And that little phrase satisfied and soothed him somewhat. “A thief for love’s sake!” It was really rather good. He reached the door of the notary’s house. Should he go up? Yes, because surely if what he was going to do genuinely was a crime, his inherent honesty, his innocent blood, his instinct to do the right thing would stop him. He would lose the power of speech or his legs would give way beneath him, as had happened during recent adventures of quite another sort, but if neither of those things occurred, then there was no crime involved.
Don Benito was standing in the middle of his dark, low-ceilinged office, surrounded by clerks seated, scribbling away, at ancient felt-topped desks. There stood the stout, grave, gray-spined files full of legal records and documents, exuding an air of mysterious solemnity that filled Bonifacio’s romantic and unlegalistic soul with superstitious fear.
The notary came straight over to Bonifacio and rubbed his ears as if trying to warm his hands. A ridiculous idea, for Bonifacio found the atmosphere positively suffocating.
“And what can I do for you, young rascal? What are you doing here, eh? Stealing my time perhaps? Well, you’ll pay for it in cash, because time is money.”
And Don Benito laughed, delighted at his own joke.
“Señor García, I’d like to have a few words with you,” Bonifacio said, making a gesture indicating that he wished them to be alone.
Grabbing Bonifacio by the lapels of his overcoat, Don Benito led him into the next room, the walls of which were also lined with shelves filled with still more legal documents and records. These were the records from past centuries. “Dear God,” thought Bonifacio, “these bundles of sealed papers are as old as a notary’s tricks!” For some unknown reason, he suddenly recalled hearing someone describe the cellars in Jerez whose walls were lined with ancient barrels of sherry, each bearing its sacred age on its belly. “What a difference,” he thought, “between that and this!”
Don Benito brought him back to reality.
“Right, sir, out with it! ‘We are alone now, just the two of us, Alone beneath the sky. . . .’ ”
After declaiming these two lines from an amateur play—which was often put on in the village because all the parts were performed by men—he patted Bonifacio on the chest, then grew serious, very serious, uttering not another word, as if to say, “I’m all ears. No more jokes. You have before you either a representative of public faith and confidence or else a heartless moneylender, take your pick.”
“Señor García, I’ve come to pay back that trifling sum—”
“What trifling sum?”
“The six thousand reales you were so kind—”
“What do you mean ‘kind’? What six thousand reales? You owe me nothing.”
“You’re teasing me,” said Bonifacio, who was more in the mood for receiving the Holy Sacrament than for jokes.
He fell back onto a chair and started counting out the money onto the desk.
That money was burning his fingers, he thought, or should be, for the fact is he performed the action of counting out the money quite calmly, intent only on not making a mistake, as he usually did, because calculating how many onzas made six thousand reales seemed to him quite beyond his capabilities.
Don Benito let him carry on counting, either because he was too dumbstruck or perhaps because he was a lover of money, and it’s true that the sight of gold always took away any desire he might have to joke. Whatever the reason, for him the presence of money was always a very serious matter.
“Here are the six thousand reales . . . and can you change this—”
“But. . . .” Don Benito appeared lost for words. “What are you doing here, lad? As I said, you no longer owe me anything.”
“Señor García, I, alas, lack your good humor.”
“Devil take it, I’m telling you that yesterday that insignificant amount of money was repaid in its entirety.”
“Yesterday? By whom?”
Whatever had prevented the notary from speaking earlier seemed to have lodged in Bonifacio’s throat now, because he, too, was lost for words.
“Please, Don Benito, by all that’s holy, explain yourself!”
“It’s very simple, my friend. Yesterday evening, at the club, Don Juan Nepomuceno, your uncle—”
“He’s not my uncle.”
“All right . . . your—”
“Please, get on with it. What did Don Juan do?”
“But whatever’s wrong, lad, you’re dreadfully pale. You look as if you were about to faint. Is it the heat? I’ll open the door.”
“No, no, don’t! Just tell me what Don Juan said.”
“Nothing. We were talking about business, and we ended up discussing the possibilities of that industry you’re planning to start up with the money from the most recent sales of property.”
“We’re going to start up an industry?”
“Yes, of course, the chemical factory.”
“Oh that, yes. But what of it?”
Bonifacio had heard his wife’s relatives talking about chemical products but knew nothing more than that.
“Please get to the point!” he cried, more dead than alive.
“Well, I, in all innocence, asked your unc—your relative if the money you had just borrowed, thus honoring me with your trust, was for the initial outlay on some new plan or test. . . . I don’t know . . . I’d got it into my head that it was for the factory. Don Juan gave me one of those looks of his, and I couldn’t help but notice that he took a long while to answer. Finally, he shrugged and said, ‘Yes, it’s for preliminary expenses, for the preparatory work, but now that I think of it, I have orders to pay back that money immediately.’ I have to say I did find it a little odd, given that you’d only borrowed the money a few hours before, but who was I to ask questions? Anyway, we arranged to meet at your house at ten o’clock that night, and at a quarter after ten, there was Don Juan Nepomuceno handing me six thousand silver reales.”
“So that’s what happened!” thought Bonifacio from the depths of his prostration. He was stunned, destroyed. Don Juan knew everything . . . and had repaid the debt! And what about Emma? At the thought of his wife, he experienced that weakness in the legs, that unbearable sensation that always afflicted him at times of trouble.
They both fell silent. The notary realized there was something odd going on, “some mysterious family business” he thought. But having retrieved his money, now that it had been restored to him, he was perfectly happy and able to contain his curiosity, which gave way to an exquisite prudence. “That’s their business,” he thought and continued to say nothing.
Bonifacio broke the silence, saying in a sepulchral voice, “Would you mind asking someone to bring me some cold water.”
“Of course!”
A very fat, slovenly maidservant arrived bearing a glass of water with a stick of sugar resting on the top of the glass.
“Thank you, but no sugar. I never take sugar with water. Thank you.”
Bonifacio said this as he gazed stupidly at the girl’s coarse, smiling features; he said it in the tone of an actor in the third act of a play, bidding farewell to this fickle world, with his soul already in his mouth and a dagger in his guts.
The water calmed him and gave him a certain degree of strengt
h, enough to be able to get to his feet and say goodbye. It didn’t even occur to him to explain or apologize. His silence was utterly ridiculous, of course; what would Don Benito be thinking? At the very least that he was mad. But so what? What did Bonifacio care at that moment if the whole world was laughing at him! Nepomuceno had paid back the six thousand reales! That was the truly terrifying thing. Should he go home? Should he run away?
Seeing how troubled Bonifacio was, Don Benito Major preferred not to say another word about that whole mysterious business; he neither tugged at Bonifacio’s ears nor made any jokes, he merely said goodbye to him gravely and contritely, as if commiserating with Bonifacio over some very real but unknown misfortune; and after leading him to the first flight of stairs, he returned to his office. Only then did this diabolical idea occur to him.
“There’s something odd going on here, not that it matters to me, but . . . just as a hypothesis, what if there had been some possible, legal means of my getting the six thousand reales back from the uncle, plus another six thousand from the nephew? No, that’s ridiculous, absurd, but a nice idea nonetheless. . . .”
And with a heartfelt sigh, he rubbed his hands together; then, abandoning the ideal possibility of being paid twice over, he thought no more about it and returned to his work.
As for Bonifacio, when he reached the street door, where an old shoemaker worked and ate, he was assailed by various ideas and by another fainting fit. The ideas were as follows: “That fraud up there has duped me. I should have had the courage to knock him down or at least tear him off a strip. He’s a lying hound. Uncle Nepomuceno paid him the money because that traitor didn’t trust me; he could tell just by looking at me that I’d never be able to pay back those six thousand reales and so he went to Don Juan . . . and betrayed me. True, I didn’t swear him to secrecy, but that went without saying. He should have known it from the expression on my face, and to think that I went to him precisely because he has a reputation as a man of great discretion. . . . I’m going to go back upstairs right now and kill him. . . .”