The Fencing Master (10 page)

Don Jaime stiffened proudly. Perhaps, as the young woman had just said, it had not been her intention to offend him, but nevertheless she had. "Ours is a dying art, madam," he replied. "Duels with foils are now rare events, given that the pistol is so much easier to handle and does not require such rigorous discipline. Fencing has become a frivolous pastime." He savored the scorn in his own words. "Now they call it a sport, as if it were on a par with performing gymnastics in an undershirt!"

She opened her fan; it had mother-of-pearl ribs and was decorated with hand-painted white flowers, a stylized version of almond blossoms. "You, of course, refuse to see it like that..."

"Of course. I teach an art, and I do so exactly as I was taught to, seriously and with respect. I'm a traditionalist."

The young woman clicked the fan shut and shook her head absently. "You were born too late, Don Jaime," she said at last, in a neutral voice. "Or perhaps you simply did not die at the right moment."

He looked at her, making no attempt to hide his surprise. "It's odd that you should say that."

"What?"

"About dying at the right moment." He made an evasive gesture, as if apologizing for his continued existence. The turn the conversation had taken seemed to amuse him, but it was clear that he was not joking. "In this century and after a certain age, dying a proper death is becoming increasingly difficult."

"I would love to know what you consider a proper death."

"I don't think you would understand."

"Are you sure?"

"No, I'm not. You might, but it doesn't matter. These are not things one can talk about to..."

"A woman?"

"To a woman."

Adela de Otero closed her fan and raised it slowly, until it touched the scar on her mouth. "You must be a very lonely man, Don Jaime."

He looked at her hard. There was no amusement in his gray eyes now; his eyes had become opaque. "I am." His voice sounded tired. "But I am the only one to blame for that. Actually loneliness has a kind of fascination; it's a state of egotistical, inner grace that you can achieve only by standing guard on old, forgotten roads that no one travels anymore. Do I seem like an absurd old man to you?"

She shook her head. Her eyes were gentle now. "No, I'm just appalled at your lack of common sense."

Don Jaime made a face. "One of the many virtues I am glad not to possess, madam, is common sense. You have doubtless realized that already ... But I wouldn't want to give you the impression that there is some moral justification behind it. Let's just say it is a purely aesthetic matter."

"One can't dine out on aesthetics, maestro," she murmured, with a mocking expression, as if thinking thoughts that she preferred not to put into words. "That, I can assure you, is something I know only too well."

Don Jaime looked shyly down at his shoes; his expression was that of a boy who has just confessed to some misdemeanor. "If you do, I am truly sorry," he said in a low voice. "As for myself, I would just say that, because of what I am, I can at least look myself in the face when I stand before the mirror each morning to shave. And that, madam, is more than many men I know can do."

T
HE
first street lamps were beginning to be lit, illuminating stretches of the road with gaslight. Armed with long poles, the city employees carried out the task in a fairly leisurely fashion, stopping every now and then at a tavern to slake their thirst. Over toward the Palacio de Oriente there was still a remnant of light, above which you could see the silhouette of the rooftops near the Teatro Real. The windows of the houses, open to the warm evening breeze, were lit by the flickering light from oil lamps.

Don Jaime murmured a "Good evening" as he passed a group of neighbors chatting on the corner of Calle Bordadores, sitting out in the cool on wicker chairs. That morning, near the Plaza Mayor, there had been a brawl involving students—nothing much, according to his acquaintances at the Café Progreso, who told him about the incident. According to Don Lucas, a group of troublemakers shouting, "Prim, freedom, down with the Bourbons," were forcibly dispersed by the police. Of course, Agapito Cárceles's version differed greatly from that provided—in a scornful voice and with a libertarian sigh—by Don Lucas, who insisted on seeing troublemakers rather than patriots athirst for justice. The forces of oppression, which were all that remained for the vacillating monarch and her awful entourage to rely on—Cárceles's voice took on a sarcastic tone here, and he gave a malicious smile—had once again crushed the sacred cause with blows and swords, etc. As Don Jaime could see for himself, however, occasional pairs of mounted Civil Guards were still patrolling the area, shadowy figures beneath their shiny patent-leather tricorn hats, auguring nothing good.

When he reached the palace, he saw the halberdiers standing guard there and then crossed to the balustrade overlooking the gardens. The Casa de Campo was just a large, dark smudge; on the horizon, the night was squeezing out the last faint line of blue light. Here and there, like Don Jaime, a few strollers stood watching the last flicker of daylight in that moment of placid sweetness.

Without quite knowing why, he felt himself drifting into a melancholy mood. He was, by nature, more inclined to take pleasure in the past than to ponder the present, and he preferred to savor his private nostalgias alone. But that usually happened undramatically, without bitterness; on the contrary, it left him in a state of agreeable absorption that might best be described as bittersweet. He took conscious pleasure in this, and when, by chance, he resolved to give some concrete form to these thoughts, he described them to himself as his sparse personal baggage, the only wealth he had managed to store up in his lifetime and which would go down with him into the grave, extinguished along with his spirit. Enclosed in that baggage was a whole universe, a lifetime of carefully preserved sensations and memories. Don Jaime relied on this to conserve what he defined as serenity: peace of mind and soul, the only fragment of wisdom to which human imperfection could aspire. His whole life lay before him, smooth, broad, and definitive, as untroubled by uncertainty as a river flowing to the sea. And yet it had taken only the chance appearance of a pair of violet-colored eyes for the fragility of that inner peace to reveal itself in all its disquieting reality.

He had yet to find out if he could mitigate the disaster, considering that, when all was said and done—since his spirit was far removed from passions that once would have revealed themselves immediately—he now found inside himself only a feeling of autumnal tenderness veiled with sadness. "Is that all?" he wondered, half relieved, half disappointed, while he leaned on the balustrade enjoying the spectacle of triumphant shadows filling the horizon. "Is that all I can now hope to feel?" He smiled, thinking about himself, about his own image, about his now declining powers, about his spirit, which, though old and tired, in some way was rebelling against the indolence imposed on it by the slow degeneration of his physical organism. And in that feeling overwhelming him, tempting him with its sweet danger, he recognized the feeble swan song proffered, as a pathetic, last-ditch rebellion, by his still-proud spirit.

The short lunge normally exposes anyone who executes it without judgment or prudence. Moreover, it must never be performed on encumbered, uneven, or slippery ground.

Amid the heat and the rumors, the days passed slowly. Don Juan Prim was busy tying conspiratorial knots on the banks of the Thames while long lines of prisoners snaked their way across fields seared by the sun, en route to prisons in Africa. Jaime Astarloa had no interest in all this, but it was impossible to ignore the effects. There was a great stir in the group he met with at the Café Progreso. Cárceles brandished like a flag a back number of
La nueva Iberia.
A much-talked-about editorial, bearing the headline "The Last Word," revealed certain secret agreements reached in Bayonne between the exiled parties of the left and the Liberal Union, with a view to the destruction of the monarchy and the election by universal suffrage of a constituent assembly. It was fairly old news, but
La nueva Iberia
had been the first to let the cat out of the bag. The whole of Madrid was talking about it.

"Better late than never," said Cárceles, waving the newspaper provocatively beneath Don Lucas Rioseco's sulkymustache. "Who was it said that such a pact was against nature? Who?" He brought his fist down exultantly on the printed page, already fairly well thumbed by the other members of the group. "Those traditional obstacles we were talking about have their days numbered, gentlemen. Revolution is just around the corner."

"Never! Revolution, never! Still less a republic." Despite his indignation, Don Lucas was somewhat overwhelmed by the news. "At the very most, and I mean at the very most, Don Agapito, Prim will already have come up with some alternative solution in order to retain the monarchy. The Conde de Reus would never condemn the country to the paralysis of revolution. Never! He is, after all, a soldier, and every soldier is a patriot. And since every patriot is a monarchist, therefore..."

"I will brook no insults," roared Cárceles excitedly. "I demand you withdraw that statement, Señor Rioseco."

Caught by surprise, nonplussed, Don Lucas looked at his antagonist. "I didn't insult you, Señor Cárceles."

Purple with rage, the journalist appealed to the other members as witnesses. "He says he didn't insult me, but you all heard this gentleman state quite clearly, in the most gratuitous and uncalled-for fashion, that I am a monarchist."

"I didn't say that you—"

"Can you deny it now, you, Don Lucas, who call yourself a man of honor? Go on, deny it, and may History be your judge!"

"I do deny it, and I am a man of honor, Don Agapito. And I don't give a damn about History. Besides, that's got nothing to do with it. Dammit, you have a terrible knack for making people lose their thread. What the devil was I talking about?"

Cárceles's accusing finger was leveled at the third button on Don Lucas's vest. "Sir, did you or did you not just state that all patriots are monarchists?"

"I did."

Cárceles gave a sarcastic laugh, like a prosecuting counsel about to send a self-confessed, convicted criminal to the executioner's block. "Am I a monarchist? Am I, gentlemen?"

All those present, including Don Jaime, were quick to assure him that they would never dream of saying so. Cárceles turned triumphantly back to Don Lucas. "You see!"

"What do I see?"

"I am not a monarchist and yet I am a patriot. You have insulted me, and I demand satisfaction."

"You are no patriot, Don Agapito, not even when you're drunk!"

"I...?"

At that point the ritual intervention by the other members of the group was necessary to prevent Cárceles and Don Lucas coming to blows. Once things had calmed down, the conversation returned to speculations about an eventual successor to Isabel II.

"Perhaps the Duke of Montpensier..." said Antonio Carreño quietly, "although they say that Napoleon III has vetoed him."

"You still can't rule out the possibility of an abdication in favor of the Infante Don Alfonso," said Don Lucas, adjusting his monocle, which had fallen out during the recent scuffle.

Cárceles leaped in again, as if someone had insulted his mother. "Puigmoltejo? You're dreaming, Señor Rioseco. No more Bourbons. That's all over with.
Sic transit gloria borbonici
and other such Latin phrases that I will refrain from repeating. We Spaniards have suffered quite enough under the grandfather and the mother. I'll say nothing about the father for lack of proof."

Carreño stepped in with the common sense of a tenured civil servant, a post that rendered him invulnerable to unemployment no matter which way the wind blew. "You must recognize, Don Lucas, that the patience of the Spaniards has been tried beyond endurance. Some of the palace scandals caused by Isabel would make even the most brazen blush."

"That's a slander."

"Well, slander or not, in the lodges we consider that things have overstepped the bounds of tolerance."

Don Lucas, his face flushed with monarchist fervor, was making a desperate defense beneath Cárceles's mocking. He turned to Don Jaime in a plea for help. "Do you hear that, Don Jaime? Say something, for God's sake. You're a reasonable man."

Don Jaime shrugged and calmly continued stirring his coffee with a teaspoon. "My business is fencing, Don Lucas," he said.

"Fencing? Who can think about fencing when the monarchy is in danger?"

Marcelino Romero, the music teacher, took pity on the beleaguered Don Lucas. He stopped munching his toast and made some innocent remark about how very Spanish, how very charming the queen was—surely no one could deny that. Carreño gave a sardonic little laugh, while Cárceles turned on the pianist in loud indignation.

"Being 'very Spanish' is hardly enough of a qualification to rule over a country, sir! That requires patriotism"—he gave a sideways glance at Don Lucas—"and a sense of shame."

"And she certainly has plenty to be ashamed of," put in Carreño with a wink.

Don Lucas struck the floor with his stick, impatient with such excesses. "It's so easy to condemn," he exclaimed, shaking his head sadly. "It's so easy to make firewood out of the tottering tree. And that
you
should do so, Don Agapito, you who were a priest..."

"Now, stop right there!" said Cárceles. "That should be said in the pluperfect."

"You were, though, however much you may dislike the fact," insisted Don Lucas, delighted to have found a way of irritating his colleague.

Cárceles placed a hand on his breast and called upon heaven itself to be his witness. "I renounce as a black symbol of obscurantism the habit I once wore as an obsessed young man."

Carreño nodded gravely, in silent homage to such rhetorical skill.

Don Lucas continued on the same theme. "But you were a priest, Don Agapito, and you should know better than anyone that charity is the greatest of Christian virtues. You must be generous and act with charity when judging the historic figure of our sovereign."