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Authors: Josep Maria de Sagarra
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senyor Baró, it can’t be done for less than a thousand pessetes.”
“This is unthinkable, Dorotea. Dealing as you are with a client of my wife’s category …”
“La Baronessa will understand perfectly. Look at the risk I’m exposing myself to …”
“You mean the risk we are all exposing ourselves to, surely.”
“Oh, no, sir. It can’t be done for less than a thousand pessetes. As el senyor Baró knows, I am under no obligation. What’s more, you have requested something that is quite dear and hard to find. I assure you that if the Baró and Baronessa didn’t have these qualms, another kind of person could be found, let’s say of a more decent class, more well-bred, a fine young man, in a word; and then the price would be more reasonable.”
“But Dorotea!”
“You must understand, there are many possibilities. But who could trust a person like that, a so-called fine young man? What I am offering you is foolproof. He can’t possibly compromise anyone, and what’s more, he’s authentic, the genuine article. This is the truth:it’s hard to find someone like this. You can’t imagine the repugnance one must face, the transactions one must engage in. All of this with kid gloves, for fear someone might have suspicions. What would the clients and even my staff think if they saw a character like that come in my door? I would do anything for the Baronessa, but for God’s sake, you must understand my position!”
“All right, Dorotea, not another word. A thousand pessetes.”
“Believe me, I would prefer not to earn this money. It burns my fingers, senyor Baró. If it were not for the esteem in which I hold you …”
“Enough, enough, let’s get on with it, Dorotea.”
“Just a moment. I am going to make sure everything is in order, and that the passage to the dining room is ‘free,’ so we won’t run into … You know …”
“Yes, yes, we know, Dorotea.”
The couple, now all by themselves in the fitting room, seemed stunned. The man’s features looked boiled, as if sucked in by an inexplicable inner fever. His cheeks had a grayish pallor and his eyes the soft dull stare of a dead hare. They didn’t dare look at each other or say a word, but their lips trembled with the rhythm of a mechanical toy.
In ethnographic museums you can often find those shrunken heads produced by Ecuadorean savages, in which the features appear to have been reduced by a strange force pulling from the center of the cranium, pressing and compressing the external muscles, sucking away the volume of flesh, until only a minimal, but horrificallyexpressive, amount remains. And there in Dorotea’s fitting room, his head and her head reminded you of those repugnant little heads, because there, too, it seemed as though there were a force pulling and shrinking their faces, making them more expressive. Surely what was reducing and impoverishing their features, minimizing their flesh, and injecting into them the sharp expression of a specter was the moral suppuration forged by their desire.
Her extraordinary beauty and extraordinary elegance vanished. Morality has its own aesthetic, and aesthetic catastrophes are implacable.
When Dorotea returned, the baron and the baronessa stood up, and both of them snapped to. With great effort – an effort perhaps akin to self-esteem – they swapped the grayish pallor on their faces for a more normal skin color. Dorotea ushered them to the “scene of the crime,” and softly closed the door.
If someone had caught Dorotea’s smile at the moment she closed the door, he would have been hard put to say whether it was the smile of an experienced mother-in-law leading the newlyweds to their bedchamber after the wedding dinner, or the smile of an imperial executioner who would sew a man into a sack with a rooster, a serpent, and a monkey.
An hour and a half later, the young man disguised as a ditch digger had taken off his costume and was soaping up his face and neck in
“This is unthinkable, Dorotea. Dealing as you are with a client of my wife’s category …”
“La Baronessa will understand perfectly. Look at the risk I’m exposing myself to …”
“You mean the risk we are all exposing ourselves to, surely.”
“Oh, no, sir. It can’t be done for less than a thousand pessetes. As el senyor Baró knows, I am under no obligation. What’s more, you have requested something that is quite dear and hard to find. I assure you that if the Baró and Baronessa didn’t have these qualms, another kind of person could be found, let’s say of a more decent class, more well-bred, a fine young man, in a word; and then the price would be more reasonable.”
“But Dorotea!”
“You must understand, there are many possibilities. But who could trust a person like that, a so-called fine young man? What I am offering you is foolproof. He can’t possibly compromise anyone, and what’s more, he’s authentic, the genuine article. This is the truth:it’s hard to find someone like this. You can’t imagine the repugnance one must face, the transactions one must engage in. All of this with kid gloves, for fear someone might have suspicions. What would the clients and even my staff think if they saw a character like that come in my door? I would do anything for the Baronessa, but for God’s sake, you must understand my position!”
“All right, Dorotea, not another word. A thousand pessetes.”
“Believe me, I would prefer not to earn this money. It burns my fingers, senyor Baró. If it were not for the esteem in which I hold you …”
“Enough, enough, let’s get on with it, Dorotea.”
“Just a moment. I am going to make sure everything is in order, and that the passage to the dining room is ‘free,’ so we won’t run into … You know …”
“Yes, yes, we know, Dorotea.”
The couple, now all by themselves in the fitting room, seemed stunned. The man’s features looked boiled, as if sucked in by an inexplicable inner fever. His cheeks had a grayish pallor and his eyes the soft dull stare of a dead hare. They didn’t dare look at each other or say a word, but their lips trembled with the rhythm of a mechanical toy.
In ethnographic museums you can often find those shrunken heads produced by Ecuadorean savages, in which the features appear to have been reduced by a strange force pulling from the center of the cranium, pressing and compressing the external muscles, sucking away the volume of flesh, until only a minimal, but horrificallyexpressive, amount remains. And there in Dorotea’s fitting room, his head and her head reminded you of those repugnant little heads, because there, too, it seemed as though there were a force pulling and shrinking their faces, making them more expressive. Surely what was reducing and impoverishing their features, minimizing their flesh, and injecting into them the sharp expression of a specter was the moral suppuration forged by their desire.
Her extraordinary beauty and extraordinary elegance vanished. Morality has its own aesthetic, and aesthetic catastrophes are implacable.
When Dorotea returned, the baron and the baronessa stood up, and both of them snapped to. With great effort – an effort perhaps akin to self-esteem – they swapped the grayish pallor on their faces for a more normal skin color. Dorotea ushered them to the “scene of the crime,” and softly closed the door.
If someone had caught Dorotea’s smile at the moment she closed the door, he would have been hard put to say whether it was the smile of an experienced mother-in-law leading the newlyweds to their bedchamber after the wedding dinner, or the smile of an imperial executioner who would sew a man into a sack with a rooster, a serpent, and a monkey.
An hour and a half later, the young man disguised as a ditch digger had taken off his costume and was soaping up his face and neck in
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