Read Online The Spanish Marriage by Madeleine Robins - Free Book Online Page B

she
heard as she crossed the threshold into the kitchen were Matlin’s.
    “It is not possible,” he was saying.
    It took more than a moment for Thea to understand that he
was refusing the gesture and insisting that they could not possibly turn their
hosts from their room. It was obvious to her that he was not arguing from
politeness, but out of conviction.
    “ Mi esposo,” she began urgently, her hand
on his sleeve. It was the first time she had called him husband. The look Matlin
gave her was not one of gratification; it was impatient and resentful. If these
people truly wished to make the sacrifice, she thought, it was hardly civil to
refuse. “Mi esposo, “ she began again.
    He shook her hand off his arm angrily. “Cállete,” he commanded between his teeth. Be quiet. Then, to the innkeeper he said
slowly, “It is not possible. I....” He looked off into the air for
a moment, trying to find the words. “I took a vow to the Virgin. Until we
reach my wife’s relatives....” He shrugged. At the fireside table
one of their fellow travellers chuckled ribaldly, and Thea felt herself blush.
    The innkeeper nodded, puzzled but satisfied. The landlady, a
little wiser than her husband, stalked off muttering of unnatural promises and
poor children abandoned on their wedding days. The other guests turned their
attention to food and wine and ignored the young couple pointedly.
    “A vow?” Thea said, “I don’t
understand.”
    “Go to sleep,” Matlin said urgently. “You
must be tired. We can talk in the morning.” He patted her shoulder
awkwardly, then turned away toward the door. “I’m going to get a
breath of air.”
    The landlord frowned at Thea. “Do as your husband
suggests, Señora. It’s hard enough for a man to keep any vow without a
disobedient wife to plague him.”
    Stiffly, Thea nodded and walked past him, past the curious
drinkers at the table, into the women’s room, alone.

Chapter Five
    After the exhaustion and bitter confusion of her wedding
day, Thea awoke the next morning after far too little sleep with her hair
matted and great dark circles under her eyes. She made a few motions at tidying
herself before she pulled her shawl down firmly over her fair hair and went out
to meet Matlin in the yard. “Very convincing,” he murmured to her. “You
look the complete peasant woman.” Then he began to abuse her loudly in
rough Spanish for a lazy, good-for-nothing wife, and Thea forced herself to remember
the parts they were playing. Later, as they passed women who walked or rode
paces behind their men, or listened to submissive murmurs, “Si, mi
esposo,” Thea remembered, and added their mannerisms to her own part.
    They stopped each night in grimy, crowded posadas much
like the first, where for a few coins they had a place to sleep, and where the
food they had brought with them would be cooked in the same greasy pan which
moments earlier had held the landlord’s dinner or a farmer’s
sausage. Thea would then stumble off, dizzy with exhaustion, to the
women’s bedding, usually no more than one huge straw pallet on which all
female visitors slept, while Matlin stayed behind, listening to the men talk.
In the women’s room there was always gossip, and somehow Thea always was
brought to admit that she was newly wed; after that there was coarse, well-meant
raillery to be endured, all the more uncomfortable for her in her odd halfway
state, wife but no wife. A question plagued her even after her bedmates had dropped
off to sleep: what is wrong with me?
    On the fifth day of traveling they stopped under a scruffy
tree at a roadside to eat. During these informal meals Matlin would relax a
bit, talk with her, even amuse her with stories as he had done on the afternoon
of their wedding day. “So far all I have had to do is answer simple
questions and listen,” he admitted ruefully and in English. “I go
in terror that sooner or later I will have to make a full declarative sentence
without grunts