Frederic found himself again through these adventures; he found the lost taste for love, as he understood it. And these small evasions brought him vague reminiscences — occasionally precise memories — of what had been his greatest happiness in erotic affairs, his relations with Rosa Trènor.
Six years into his marriage, Rosa had become an obsession for him, but if indeed Frederic was a man of extremely malleable conscience, he was also spineless. He was afraid of his wife, afraid of her name, afraid of her father’s white moustaches, and even afraid of the last button on her father’s shirt that dug into the flesh on his neck. The thought of initiating the slightest negotiation with his former girlfriend produced an understandable alarm in him, because Rosa Trènor, even supposing she would have anything to do with Frederic, would not be one of those inconsequential afternoon trysts. Frederic feared, correctly, that taking up with her again would be his perdition. What’s more, the years had also gone by for Rosa Trènor. Most likely the woman he had known would have undergone pronounced evolutions in the tenuous ramifications of her nervous system, and the fragrance of Rosa Trènor’s heart would be for him like the disconcerting perfume of a boat that has sailed over many seas, picking up the contradictory resonances of all the ports where it has berthed.
Frederic spent fifteen years mulling over these questions. What gullies must Frederic Lloberola’s soul have fathomed to arrive at the spent air of that chamber, facing the glass eyes of a desiccated dog with a garter around its neck?
FOR MONTHS NOW Frederic and Rosa Trènor had been eyeing each other at the bar of the Hotel Colón. Penetrating the discipline she imposed with mascara, he had perceived a gaze that was neither indifferent nor ill-disposed. Seen from a distance, her make-up applied with severity, his former lover’s skin still had its effect. Frederic knew from his friends that Rosa’s situation was dire. She had lost any trace of regular patronage, and only her arts — praised by many who had had dealings with her — and the imperative of the air a woman who has been very beautiful never entirely loses, allowed Rosa Trènor, pushing forty, to risk still playing the role of a lady in the theater of love, retaining her dignity under the benign deference of the half-light.
The habitués and professionals of the demimonde knew Rosa Trènor by heart, and her presence or the memory of it elicited merciless commentaries. Still, from time to time, at her table, in the wee hours of the night or, if you will, in the first hours of the dawn, some gentleman of good intentions, fortified with a relative enthusiasm, would approach the florists of the most effervescent cabarets to choose and purchase, without haggling, the best bouquet of camellias for Rosa Trènor. One of those men who drink in moderation and do not entirely lose all respect at the sight of painted lips. Those admirable gentlemen, generally the object of ridicule in the view of rowdy and raucous youth, who have the distinction of considering that a woman is never, not even in her saddest condition, a beast inferior to a man, who can be brutalized as if she had no soul.
One of Frederic’s most loyal friends, Robert Xuclà, whom everyone knew as Bobby Xuclà — and this pretentious and somewhat gigoloesque name of Bobby was somewhat laughable as applied to a middle-aged bachelor with thinning hair, short of leg and large of girth, in whom all the most inoffensive and homely Barcelona essences came together — was the kind soul who acted as the intermediary between Frederic and Rosa Trènor.
In part because of her brilliant past, and a kind of cynical and offhanded way of behaving, proper to the aristocracy, but even more because of her taste for reading and penchant for argument, Rosa’s prestige as a superior woman was acknowledged among the vaporous clan of kept women who could flaunt their diamonds and even dump a five-star gent with relative impunity. One of these vamps was Mado, Bobby’s erstwhile girlfriend. Not that Bobby had the exclusive; Mado was a girl whose hospitality was luscious, inconstant, ephemeral, and as absolutely lacking in intelligence as a branch of lilac. Fidelity, for Mado, was just as impossible as wearing garters attached to a girdle. Whenever she had tried to put on such garters she had had to give up in the attempt, because they made her feel faint. This is why Mado was constantly pulling up her stockings, a peculiarity that lent her a rather lewd charm, of the kind seen in ports and sailors’ taverns.
Though Mado devoted every evening to humiliating Bobby, he was an understanding fellow, and even as he entered his girlfriend’s apartment, he would often wear the polite and somewhat beleaguered air of a man who is afraid he’s not welcome.
Mado’s little apartment was the place Rosa Trènor favored whenever she felt the irresistible desire to exercise her spiritual ascendancy. Even though Mado loved to deflate, denigrate, and tell horrible stories about Rosa Trènor, she held her in great esteem. More than once the kindness and good heart of Mado or some other girl had got Rosa out of a jam, and whenever she had received a favor from one of those young women, Rosa Trènor would put on such dignified airs and affect such grande dame simpers that no one could ever have doubted that it was precisely Rosa Trènor who had done the favor and was enjoying her own generosity.
Through Mado and Bobby, Frederic was gathering ideas about Rosa Trènor’s soft spots. Once Bobby had half-dragged him over to Rosa’s table, but Frederic had resisted. Under no circumstances did he want this event to take place in public. One of the characteristics of Frederic’s insignificance was that he thought of himself as a sort of central character on whom all eyes converged.
Other times Bobby had tried to bring them face to face, because Frederic was dying of anticipation, but the circumstances had not quite been ripe.
News had been reaching Bobby about Frederic’s irregular situation and his family disasters, but even though their friendship was longstanding, he behaved with the utmost discretion in this regard. Despite the confidence Bobby had always inspired in him, and unwilling, in the way of the Lloberolas, to surrender his lordly airs, Frederic had never said so much as half a word to his friend about what he called “unpleasant” things.
Frederic could tell Bobby about some despicable thing he had done, or reveal an intimate detail about his wife, with the crudity, vulgarity, or ferocity of a feudal lord; he could go on at length with the most boorish remarks about certain things of a physiological nature pertaining to his own person. But never, among all the sad confidences he had entrusted to Bobby, had Frederic told him that his father had mortgaged such-and-such a property or that he himself had been obliged to pawn his wife’s jewels.
And, once Frederic had made up his mind, when the circumstances were ripe for the encounter with Rosa Trènor, he had also hidden the “unpleasant” cause, the immediate and determining factor of his decision, from Bobby. Even though it was, in fact, an extremely unexceptional event. In the preceding years the economic disarray of Frederic and his wife had reached scandalous proportions. Everyone was aware of the situation both Frederic and his father faced. Everyone knew that the Lloberolas had had to sell off a great deal, and curtail their expenses. But Frederic was not about to relinquish his histrionic streak; he had covered things up any way he could, and at the point where this story begins, he was facing the threat of a loan about to come due. It was a personal credit extended to him without an underwriter. Frederic could not make the payment. There had been talk of an extension, but this would not be possible without his father’s guarantee. Naturally, Frederic was incapable of disavowing his signature or risking the consequences of non-payment. But horrible as these things seemed to him, the interview with his father filled him with even greater dread. The amount in question was considerable enough to produce scenes Frederic had no stomach for.