They told me how scared the maids were that he might throw a tantrum when they took him for a walk. The child seemed like a typical case of a spoilt brat brought up too close to his mother’s skirts. I wouldn’t deny there was a hint of that, particularly at the start. However, his condition was much more serious. Lluís was simply a sick child.
The afternoon when the Fabregats told me about this, our conversation drew to a dismal end. Nature is all pervasive: consideration of its monstrous sides produces deep depression. Of course, I did wonder what led these fine folk to reveal such things to a person they’ve only known for a few days and who, in the end, could be of no help. I decided the family must live in a constant state of repressed anguish as a result of their son’s condition. And that perhaps they went out of their heads when they decided so hastily to treat me as a confidant. At the last minute Sra Fabregat informed us that the pimple on the nape of her daughter’s neck had become poisoned and looked nasty. This news rounded off our depression.
Maria Teresa was almost seventeen and her face expressed that Romantic spirituality and vagueness that albuminaria — protein in the blood — sometimes gives youngish people. Yes, she was a very mild case of albuminaria. The insidious pimple and restless nights had in the end given her a divine air. She was in the grips of the first imprecise moments of female change, and was delightful. An almost imperceptible down covered her languid limbs. Gently undermined by an unconscious waywardness and involuntary over-eagerness, her graceful manner was quite charming. When she sat still and glanced at you in that vaguely purposeful way, her body adopted an antique pose that was fantastically elegant. She was tall, full, with a hesitant profile; her flesh was honeyed, tremulous, and a warm pinkish white that was firm and terse. She was auburn haired with heavy blue-gray eyes, delicate features, and lips that were often moist. They still dressed her like a young girl but her curves moved under her tight dress, like a trapped bird that wants to spread its wings. Imagining her knees was an unforgettable experience. I never tired of considering, with philosophic precision, the luscious beauty of young forms that were so eloquent and inspiring.
She was the ideal young lady, but possibly nothing besides. She was a young lady ripe for that moment, because each moment brings a specific kind of young lady. Her main trait was her absolute dearth of interest in anything. She lived a passive life of the purest indolence. She didn’t know how to do anything and never showed any inclinations or feelings of any depth. She possessed that element of envy, greed, vanity, and guile that a human being requires for their presence to be at all perceptible. However, the qualities and defects she might have had were present to such a mediocre, neutral degree, were so supine, that she found everything bland, and anything that wasn’t became a source of annoyance. She liked nothing, but passively, not actively. Her imagination and fantasy were non-existent, she was totally unable to express any emotion. She was sixteen but felt more like forty. Her taste — the only aspect of her personality that stood out at all — combined pretentiousness and reserve, embedded habits and feeble clichés: it was simply other people’s taste. She acted like a picky brat from a well-off family and, quick to scorn the pleasant things life brought her way, would sound off rudely. She was perhaps frustrated by her domineering mother or was the product of a particular kind of upbringing or perhaps didn’t know how to behave any differently. On the other hand, how pretty she was! Her purely passive life increased the charms of her splendid body. That afternoon, Sra Fabregat summoned me by phone. Don Ramon and their son had gone to Brussels to see the changing of the guard in front of the Royal Parliament. Matilde and her daughter were alone in their bedroom. I went there only to find them in a desolate state. The pimple was swelling and the girl was in pain and most distressed. She was lying on her bed: dressed, half laid low, half fretting. She was holding a handkerchief she kept clenching between her teeth and then wiping over her lips. The moment I arrived, her mother blurted out: “My dear!”
“Mommy!”
“Show the gentleman your pimple!”
The girl looked scared. I was astounded. However, I immediately saw that Donya Matilde was worried stiff. She whispered, “You never know, do you?”
And energetically to Maria Teresa, “Come, come! Show the gentleman your pimple …”
“But, mommy …”
“You know two pairs of eyes are better than one and that we’re a long way from home. I don’t want to be the only one held responsible.”
I thought her distress was a trifle forced. I tried to tell them, quite unsuccessfully, that Ostend was a city in Belgium, a country that was no savage, remote wilderness. I also informed her that I had no special knowledge of the subject and that I always thought it was best to be patient and let things run their course. In the end, I had to stand my ground.
“Senyora, what you’re asking of me is ridiculous. If you like, we can get a doctor. What’s the point in my looking at that pimple?”
But Sra Fabregat wasn’t used to being contradicted. She gave me an extremely withering look considering we’d only known each other a few days. It was probably years since anyone had rebuffed her. This was as obvious as the fact that, while the girl remained as frightened as ever, her mother had turned a bright red.
There was a moment of hesitation that Matilde abruptly ended. She blurted in my direction: “You keep in that armchair!”
Then she went over to her daughter and caressed her face.
“My dear, don’t you worry. We’re all from our beloved country …!”
Then she took her arm, eased her out of bed and walked her over to me. The girl moved slowly and meekly, keeping her hand over her pimple.
“This gentleman will take a look,” said Sra Fabregat, “and it’s not going to hurt at all …”
I felt delirious. Sra Fabregat, in fully imperious fashion, was acting stupidly once again. What sense did it all make? She carried out her decision to the letter. She placed the nape of her daughter’s neck right before my eyes, separated out her hair and out popped the humble, inoffensive little pimple. I noted that Maria Teresa had the loveliest, beautiful, firm, supple, shimmering neck.
“Well, what do you think?” asked Sra Fabregat a moment later.
“Senyora, what on earth do you expect me to say?”
“She seems to have a slight temperature. Do you think that’s important?”
“Senyora, I know nothing about such matters! Nothing whatsoever!”
However, I soon realized I was on the wrong track. My repeated, most reasonable protestations at my lack of knowledge only prompted an even more unpleasant, withering look. I reflected that she’d conclude that I was refusing to help my compatriots in foreign parts. “In foreign parts, just imagine, in foreign parts!” Sra Fabregat would tell her friends the minute she walked into her flat on the Carrer de Girona. I had no choice but to call on the usual clichés. In any case, it was true that my words had a visibly therapeutic, medical vagueness about them.
“If you want me to speak frankly,” I said solemnly, “this isn’t at all serious. However, we’d lose nothing if we took her to see a doctor.”