The people who write those things won’t earn enough to feed themselves unless they’ve got friends in high places. That’s how things work in gov’ment.”

“Well, do you know what I think?” said Tristana with great feeling. “I think I could make a go of it in government or politics too. No, don’t laugh. I know how to make speeches. It’s really easy. I would just have to read a few reports of the debates in parliament and I could cobble together enough words to fill half a newspaper.”

“No, you have to be a man to do that, Señorita! Our petticoats get in the way, just like they do when it comes to riding a horse. My late husband always used to say that if he hadn’t been so shy, he would have gone farther than most, because he used to come up with the kind of bright ideas you hear in parliament, from a Castelar or a Cánovas, you know, ways of saving the country and all that; but whenever the poor old thing wanted to say his piece at the Working Men’s Circle or at meetings with his ‘colleagues,’ his throat would tighten and he couldn’t even get the first word out, and that’s always the most difficult part, he just couldn’t get started. And of course if he couldn’t get started, he couldn’t be an orator or a politician.”

“Oh, how stupid. I certainly wouldn’t have any trouble getting started,” Tristana said, then added in a discouraged tone, “The problem is we’re stuck, tied down in a thousand ways. I’ve also thought that I could perhaps learn other languages. I’ve only got a smattering of French, which I learned at school, and I’m already forgetting that. But how wonderful to be able to speak English, German, Italian! It seems to me that I could, that I’d be a quick learner too. I have a sense—how can I put it?—I have a sense that I already know a little before I’ve even started studying, as if I had been English or German in another life and that had left a kind of linguistic trace in me.”

“Now languages,” said Saturna, looking at Tristana with maternal solicitude, “that’s something that would be worth learning, because you can earn quite a lot from teaching, and, besides, it would be good to be able to understand what foreigners were going on about. Perhaps the master could find you a good teacher.”

“Don’t mention your master to me. I expect nothing from him.” Then thoughtfully, staring at the light, she said, “I don’t know when or how this will end, but it will have to end somehow.”

She fell silent, plunged in somber thought. Pursued by the idea of escaping Don Lope’s house, she could hear in her mind the deep rumble of Madrid, she could see the dusting of lights shining in the distance, and she felt entranced by the idea of independence. Emerging from her meditations as if from a lethargy, she gave a long sigh. How lonely she would be in the world away from the house of her poor, aged gallant! She had no relatives, and the only two people she could call “relatives” were far, far away: her maternal uncle, Don Fernando, was in the Philippines, and her cousin Cuesta was in Majorca, and neither of them had ever shown the slightest desire to help her. She recalled too (while Saturna watched with sympathetic eyes) that the families who had been friends of her mother’s and used to visit them regularly, now regarded her coolly and with suspicion, the effect of the diabolical shadow cast by Don Lope. In response, Tristana took refuge in her pride, and despising those who insulted her gave her the kind of ardent feeling of satisfaction which, like alcohol, briefly fills one with courage, but in the long run destroys.

“Come on now, enough of these gloomy thoughts!” said Saturna, flapping her hand in front of her eyes, as if shooing away a fly.

6

“WHAT do you expect me to think about? Happy things? Well, where are they?”

To lighten the mood, Saturna would change the subject to something jollier, regaling Tristana with anecdotes and gossip from the garrulous society around them. On some nights, they would amuse themselves by making fun of Don Lope, who, finding himself in such straitened circumstances, had rejected the splendid habits of a lifetime and become rather stingy. Squeezed by his growing penury, he had cut back on the already minimal household expenses and was educating himself—at last!—in the art of domestic economics, so at odds with his chivalric philosophy. Grown meticulous and fussy, he now intervened in matters he had once deemed incompatible with his lordly decorum, and his new scowling, curmudgeonly demeanor disfigured him far more than the deep lines on his face and his graying hair. The two women drew much amusement and diversion from the misfortunes and the belatedly banal preoccupations of this fallen Don Juan. The comical thing was that since Don Lope knew absolutely nothing about the economics of the home, the more he prided himself on being a financier and a good administrator, the more easily Saturna found it to deceive him, being a past mistress in the art of pilfering and in the other skills required of cooks and those who go to market.

With Tristana, he was always as generous as his ever-worsening financial circumstances would allow. The beginnings of their growing poverty were quite sad enough, but it was in the area of clothes that a painful reduction in expenditure made itself most keenly felt. Don Lope, however, sacrificed his own vanity to that of his slave, which was no small sacrifice for a man who was such a devoted admirer of himself. Then came the day when poverty revealed its bare skull in all its ugliness, and both Don Lope and Tristana found themselves wearing equally threadbare, antiquated outfits. Aided by Saturna, the poor girl would sit up late at night laboring over her few poor rags, finding a thousand ways to recast them, each one a marvel of skill and patience.