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but Isabel observed him openly, taking a rigorous inventory of his antiquated suit, his strange accent, his manners as out of date as his clothing and of course his protruding ears.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.
“King 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.