Island. They had to hold one another up until they could control the trembling of their knees and focus their eyes.
“And what do we do now, Bernardo? I agree with you that the first thing would be to rent a coach and try to locate the home of Don Tomas de Romeu. You say that first we ought to claim what is left of our luggage? Yes, you’re right.”
So they pushed their way through the crowd, Diego talking to himself and Bernardo a step behind, alert, fearing that someone would grab his distracted friend’s purse. They passed the market, where bovine old women were selling the produce of the sea, standing in puddles of fish heads and guts that were soaking into the ground beneath a cloud of flies. It was here they were intercepted by a tall man with the profile of a buzzard. In Diego’s eyes, judging from the blue velvet uniform, the gold epaulets of his jacket, and three-cornered hat perched on his white wig, he had to be an admiral. He greeted the man with a deep bow, sweeping the cobbles with his California sombrero.
“Senor Diego de la Vega?” the stranger inquired, visibly taken aback.
“At your service, caballero,” Diego replied.
“I am no caballero, sir. I am Jordi, Don Tomas de Romeu’s coachman. I was sent to look for you. I will return later for your luggage,” the man clarified with a frown, thinking that the youngster from the Indies was making fun of him.
Diego’s ears were beet red, and as he clapped his hat back on his head and prepared to follow, Bernardo was choking with laughter. Jordi led them to a slightly shabby carriage where the family major-domo was waiting. They rolled through tortuous cobbled streets leading away from the port, and soon came to a neighborhood of elegant homes and somber mansions. They turned into the patio of the residence of Tomas de Romeu, a large, dark, three-story house sitting between two churches. The majordomo commented that they were no longer disturbed by bells pealing at all hours because the French had removed the clappers as reprisal against the priests responsible for stirring up the guerrilla fighters. Diego and Bernardo, intimidated by the size of the house, did not even notice how rundown it was. Jordi led Bernardo to the servants’ quarters, and the majordomo escorted Diego up the exterior stairs to the piso noble, or main floor. They walked through salons in eternal shadow and icy corridors hung with threadbare tapestries and arms from the time of the Crusades. Finally they came to a dusty library badly lighted by a few candles and a dying fire in the fireplace. Tomas de Romeu was waiting there. He welcomed Diego with a fatherly embrace, as if he had known him always.
“I am honored that my good friend Alejandro has entrusted his son to me,” he proclaimed. “As of this instant you are a member of our family, Diego. My daughters and I will see to your comfort and contentment.”
De Romeu was a ruddy-faced, paunchy man of about fifty, with a roaring voice and thick sideburns and eyebrows. His lips curved upward in an involuntary smile that softened his rather haughty aspect. He was smoking a cigar and holding a glass of sherry in his hand, he asked a few courteous questions about the voyage and about the family Diego had left behind in California, then pulled a silk cord to summon the majordomo, whom he ordered in Catalan to take his guest to his rooms.
“We will dine at ten. You need not dress, we will be just family,” he said.
That night in the dining room, an immense hall with ancient furniture that had served several generations, Diego met the daughters of Tomas de Romeu. He needed only one glance to decide that Juliana, the elder, was the most beautiful woman in the world. Possibly he exaggerated, but it was true that the girl had the reputation of being one of the belles of Barcelona, as alluring, everyone said, as the celebrated Madame de Recamier of Paris had been in her day. Her elegant bearing, her classic features, and her raven black hair, milky skin, and jade green eyes were unforgettable. She had so many suitors that the family, and the merely inquisitive, had lost count. Gossip had it that they had all been rejected because her ambitious father wanted to climb a couple of rungs of the social ladder by marrying her to a prince.
They were mistaken; Tomas de Romeu was not capable of schemes of that nature. In addition to her remarkable physical attributes, Juliana was cultivated, virtuous, and sentimental; she also played the harp with tremulous fairy fingers and performed charitable works among the poor.
When she wafted into the dining room in a delicate white Empire-style batiste gown caught beneath her breasts with a watermelon-colored sash, a fashion that exposed her long neck and round alabaster arms, with her feet shod in satin and a diadem of pearls in her black curls, Diego felt his knees turn to rubber and all reason flee. He bent to kiss her hand, and in his stupefaction at touching her sprayed her with saliva.
Horrified, he sputtered an apology, but Juliana smiled like an angel and quietly wiped the back of her hand on her nymph’s dress.
Isabel, in contrast, was so ordinary that she did not seem to be of the same blood as her dazzling sister. She was eleven, and not even a good eleven. Her teeth had not quite settled into place, and her bones poked out in various angles. From time to time one eye wandered slightly, which gave her a distracted and deceptively sweet expression because she was of rather peppery nature. Her chestnut hair was a rebellious tangle barely controlled by a half dozen ribbons; she had nearly outgrown the yellow dress she was wearing, and to complete her orphan like looks, she was wearing high-buttoned shoes. As Diego would tell Bernardo later, poor Isabel looked like a skeleton with four elbows, and she had enough hair for two heads. Diego, blinded by Juliana, barely glanced in her direction all night, but Isabel observed him openly, taking a rigorous inventory of his antiquated suit, his strange accent, his manners as out of date as his clothing and of course his protruding ears. She concluded that this young man from the Indies was mad if he thought he would impress her sister, a conviction underscored by his comical behavior. Isabel sighed, thinking that Diego was going to be a long-term project; he would have to be remade almost entirely, but fortunately she had good raw material to work with: pleasant personality, well-proportioned body, and those amber eyes.
Dinner consisted of mushroom soup, a succulent plate of gems of land and sea in which the fish rivaled the meat salads, cheeses, and to end, creme Catalan, all washed down with a red wine from the family vineyards. Diego calculated that with that diet, Tomas de Romeu would never grow to be an old man, and his daughters would end up as fat as their father. While the ordinary Spaniard was going hungry, the tables of the well-to-do were always well supplied. After the meal they went into one of the many inhospitable salons, where Juliana delighted them until after midnight with her harp, accompanied, un musically by the groans Isabel tore from a badly tuned harpsichord. At that hour, early for Barcelona and late for Diego, Nuria, the chaperone arrived to suggest to the girls that they should retire. She was a straight-backed woman of near forty, her fine features marred by a hard expression and the harsh severity of her attire: a black dress with starched collar and a black cap with a satin bow tied beneath the chin.
The rustling of her petticoats, her tinkling keys, and her squeaking boots announced her presence before she came into sight. She greeted Diego with a barely perceptible bow, after examining him from head to toe with aloof disapproval.
“What am I to do with that boy named Bernardo, that Indian from the Americas?” she asked Tomas de Romeu.
“If it were possible, sir, I would like for Bernardo to share my room. In fact, we are like brothers,” Diego intervened.
“Of course, senor. Do whatever needs be done, Nuria,” de Romeu ordered, somewhat surprised.
As soon as Juliana retired, Diego felt the onslaught of accumulated fatigue and the weight of dinner in his stomach, but he had to stay another hour, listening to his host’s ideas on politics.
“Joseph Bonaparte is an educated and sincere man; I am happy to tell you that he even speaks Spanish and attends the bullfights,” said de Romeu.
“But he has usurped the throne of the legitimate king of Spain,” Diego rejoined.
“K
ing Charles IV turned out to be an unworthy descendent of men as outstanding as his father and grandfather. The queen is frivolous, and the heir, Ferdinand, is inept; even his parents have no faith in him. They do not deserve to reign. The French, on the other hand, have brought modern ideas with them. If this country would allow Joseph I to govern, instead of waging war against him, it would leave its backwardness behind. The French army is invincible; ours, in contrast, is in ruins: no horses, weapons, boots and our soldiers are surviving on bread and water.”
“Nonetheless,” Diego interrupted, “the Spanish people have resisted the occupation for two years.”
“It is true that gangs of armed civilians are waging an insane guerrilla war, urged on by fanatics and by ignorant clergy. These masses are striking out blindly; they have no ideas, only resentment.”
“I have heard stories about the cruelty of the French.”
“Atrocities are committed by both sides, young de la Vega. The guerrillas are murdering Spanish civilians who refuse to help them, as well as the French. The Catalans are the worst; you cannot imagine the cruelty they are capable of. Maestro Francisco Goya has painted those horrors. Is his work known in America?”
“I believe not, senor.”
“You must see his paintings, Don Diego, in order to understand that in this war there are no good men, only bad,” sighed de Romeu, and held forth on other subjects until Diego’s eyes closed.
In the next months Diego de la Vega got a glimpse of how volatile and complex the situation in Spain had become, and how far behind the news lagged at home. His father reduced politics to black and white, because that was how it was in California, but in the confusion of Europe tones of gray predominated. In his first letter, Diego told his father about the voyage and his impressions of Barcelona and the Catalans, whom he described as zealous regarding their freedom, explosive in temperament, sensitive in questions of honor, and as hardworking as draft mules. They themselves cultivated their reputation for being tight-fisted, he said, but in private they were generous. He added that there was nothing they resented so much as taxes, especially when they had to pay them to the French. He also described the de Romeu family, omitting his ridiculous love for Juliana, which might be interpreted as an abuse of hospitality. In his second letter he tried to explain the political situation, though he suspected that when his father received it in a few months’ time, it would all have changed.
Esteemed Sir: You find me well and I am learning a lot, especially philosophy and Latin in the School of Humanities. It will please you to know that Maestro Manuel Escalante has accepted me in his Academy and honors me with his friendship, an undeserved honor, of course.
Allow me to tell you something about the situation here. Your close friend, Don Tomds de Romeu, is a great aficionado of all things French shall we say a Francophile. There are other liberals like himself who share his political ideas but still detest the French. They fear that Napoleon will convert Spain into a satellite of France, which apparently Don Tomds de Romeu would look upon with favor.
Just as you told me to do, I have visited Her Excellency Dona Eulalia de Callis. Through her I have learned that the nobility, like the Catholic Church and the common people, await the return of King Fernando VII, whom they call “The Desired.” The people, who distrust in equal measure the French, the liberals, the nobles, and change in any form, are determined to expel the invaders and fight with whatever they have at hand: axes, clubs, knives, picks, and hoes.
Diego found these topics quite interesting they talked of nothing else in the School of Humanities and in the house ofTomas de Romeu but he did not lose any sleep over them. He had a thousand different things on his mind, the main one being contemplation of Juliana. In that enormous house, impossible to light or heat, the family used only a few rooms on the main level and a wing of the second floor. More than once Bernardo caught Diego hanging like a fly from the balcony to spy on Juliana when she was sewing with Nuria or studying her lessons. The girls had been spared the convent school where daughters of fashionable families were educated, thanks to their father’s antipathy to religious instruction. Tomas de Romeu said that behind the convent shutters poor young girls were fodder for evil nuns who filled their heads with demons, and for clergy who pawed them under the pretext of confessing them. He assigned his girls a tutor, an emaciated little fellow with a pockmarked face, who swooned in Juliana’s presence and whom Nuria watched like a hawk. Isabel was also his student, although the teacher ignored her so totally that he never learned her name.
Juliana treated Diego like an unbalanced younger brother. She called him by his given name and spoke warmly to him, following the example of Isabel, who was affectionate from the beginning. Much later, when their lives became more complicated and they went through difficult times together, Nuria, too, warmed up to him. She came to love him like a nephew, but in that period she still addressed him as Don Diego: a simple first name was used only among family members or when speaking to an inferior. It was several weeks before Juliana suspected that she had broken Diego’s heart, just as she never realized she had done the same to her unhappy tutor. When Isabel pointed it out to her, she laughed with surprise; fortunately Diego never knew that until several years later.
It was only a brief time before Diego realized that Tomas de Romeu was neither as noble nor as rich as he had at first seemed. The mansion and lands had belonged to his deceased wife, the heiress to a bourgeois family that had made a fortune in the silk industry. Upon his father-in-law’s death, Tomas was left to handle the business affairs, but he was not especially gifted in commerce, and he immediately began to lose what he had inherited. Contrary to the reputation of most Catalans, Don Tomas knew how to spend money with grace, but he did not know how to earn it. Year after year his income had decreased, and at the rate he was going, he soon would be obliged to sell his house and descend in social level. Among Juliana’s numerous suitors was one Rafael Moncada, a noble with a considerable fortune. An alliance with him would resolve Tomas de Romeu’s problems, but in his defense I have to say that he would never press his daughter to accept Moncada. Diego estimated that his father’s hacienda in California was worth several times more than the properties of de Romeu, and he wondered whether Juliana might consider going to the New World with him. He laid that plan before Bernardo, and in his private language, his brother made Diego see that if he didn’t hurry, another more mature, handsome, and interesting candidate would make off with his damsel. Accustomed to Bernardo’s sarcasm, Diego was not disheartened, but he decided to speed up his education as much as possible. He could see the day when he could claim to be a true Spanish gentleman. He dedicated himself to learning Catalan, a tongue that he thought very melodious, he attended the School of Humanities, and he went every day to classes at Maestro Manuel Escalante’s Fencing Academy for the Instruction of Nobles and Caballeros.
The picture that Diego had in mind of the celebrated maestro did not coincide in any way with reality. After having studied Escalante’s manual down to the last comma, he imagined him to be an Apollo, a compendium of virtues and manly beauty. He turned out to be a disagreeable, meticulous, spruce little man with the face of an ascetic, disdainful lips, and pomaded mustache, a man to whom fencing seemed to be the one true religion. His students were of the finest lineage all except Diego de la Vega, whom Escalante accepted less on Tomas de Romeu’s recommendation than because Diego passed the admission examination with honors.
The maestro handed Diego a foil. “En garde, monsieur!” Diego adopted the preparatory position: right foot forward, the left at a right angle to the body, knees slightly bent, torso half turned, face forward, right arm extended over the right foot, the left held behind the body at approximately the same angle as the foil arm.
“Lunge! Recovery! Thrust! Engage! Coupe! Press! Bind!” Soon the maestro stopped issuing instructions. From feints they passed quickly through the entire array of attacks and parries in a violent and macabre dance. Diego war
med to the test and began to fight as if his life were at stake, with a fervor near anger. For the first time in many years Escalante felt sweat running down his face and soaking his shirt. He was pleased, and the trace of a smile began to lift the corners of his thin lips. He never praised anyone easily, but he was impressed with the speed, precision, and strength of this young man.
“Where did you say you had learned to fence, caballero?” he asked after crossing foils with him for a few minutes.
“With my father, in California, maestro.”
“California?”
“To the north of Mexico ”
“You need not explain, I have seen a map,” Manuel Escalante interrupted curtly.
“B-beg pardon, maestro,” Diego stammered. “I have studied your book and practiced for years ”
“I see that. You are a diligent student, it seems. But you must curb your impatience and acquire elegance. You have the style of a pirate, but that can be remedied. First lesson: calm. You must never fight in anger. The firmness and stability of the blade depend on equanimity of mind. Do not forget that. I shall receive you Monday through Saturday mornings on the stroke of eight. If you miss even one time, you need not return. Good afternoon, sir.”
With that, he dismissed him. Diego had to struggle not to whoop with joy, but once outside he jumped up and down around Bernardo, who was waiting at the door with the horses.