One day, Don Lope tried to remind the unfortunate lady of her past, but saw only blank ignorance on her face, as if he were speaking to her of some previous life. She understood nothing, could remember nothing, and did not even know who Pedro Calderón was, thinking at first that he was perhaps a house agent or the owner of the removal carts. On another occasion, he found her washing her slippers, with, beside her, laid out to dry, her photograph albums. Tristana, with tears in her eyes, stood observing this picture of desolation, and shot an imploring look at that friend of the family, urging him to leave the poor, sick woman alone. The worst of it was that the good gentleman also had to resign himself to paying the unfortunate family’s many expenses, which, what with the endless moving, the frequent breakages and damage to the furniture, mounted relentlessly. That soap-fueled deluge was drowning them all. As luck would have it, after one of those changes of domicile or perhaps because they had arrived in a new house whose walls positively ran with damp or perhaps because Josefina was wearing a pair of shoes that had recently been submitted to her new cleaning system, the time came for her to surrender her soul to God. A rheumatic fever, which rampaged through her body, sword in hand, brought an end to her sad days. The most depressing aspect of her death was that, in order to pay the doctor, the pharmacist, and the undertaker, as well as the bills that Josefina had run up buying food and perfumes, Don Lope had to dig still deeper into his already depleted fortune and sacrifice his most beloved possession: his collection of weapons, ancient and modern, which he had accumulated with all the eagerness and deep pleasure of the connoisseur. The unimaginably noble and austere collection of rare muskets and rusty harquebuses, pistols, halberds, Moorish and Christian flintlocks, hilted swords, breastplates and backplates, which adorned the gentleman’s living room along with many other fine objects from the worlds of war and hunting, was sold for a song to a mere hawker. When Don Lope saw his precious arsenal leave his house, he felt troubled and bewildered, but his large soul was nonetheless able to suppress the grief rising up within him and to put on a mask of stoical, dignified serenity. All he had left now was his collection of portraits of beautiful women, which included both delicate miniatures and modern photographs, in which truth replaces art: a museum of his amorous encounters, just as his collection of guns and flags had spoken of the grandeur of a once glorious kingdom. That was all he had left, a few eloquent, albeit silent images, which, while important as trophies, meant very little in terms of base metal.

When she died, Josefina, as so often happens, partly recovered the mind she had lost, and thanks to that, briefly relived her past, recognizing and cursing, like the dying Don Quixote, the follies of her widowhood. Before she turned her eyes to God, she had time to turn them to Don Lope, who was at her side, and to commend to him her orphaned daughter, placing her under his protection; and the noble gentleman accepted this charge effusively, promising what people always promise on these solemn occasions. In short: Reluz’s widow closed her eyes, easing, as she passed to a better life, the lives of those who had hitherto been groaning beneath the tyranny of her constant house-moves and cleaning. Tristana went to live with Don Lope and (hard and painful though it is to say), after only two months, he had added her to his very long list of victories over innocence.

*Golden Age plays by, respectively, Tirso de Molina, Juan Ruíz de Alarcón, and Pedro Calderón de la Barca.

4

THE CONSCIENCE of this warrior of love was, as we have seen, capable of shining forth like a bright star, but on other occasions, it revealed itself to be as horribly arid as a dead planet. The problem was that the good gentleman’s moral sense lacked a vital component, and like some terribly mutilated organ, it functioned only partially and suffered frequent deplorable breakdowns. In accordance with the fusty old dogma of a knight sedentary, Don Lope accepted neither guilt nor responsibility when it came to anything involving the ladies. While he would never have courted the wife, spouse, or mistress of a close friend, he considered that, otherwise, everything was permitted in matters of love. Men like him, Adam’s spoiled brats, had received from heaven a tacit bull that allowed them to dispense with all morality, which was the policeman of the common herd, not the law of the gentleman. His conscience, so sensitive on other points, was, on that point, harder and deader than a pebble, with the difference being that the pebble, when struck by the rim of a wagon wheel, usually gives off a spark, whereas Don Lope’s conscience, in affairs of the heart, would have given off no sparks at all even if it had been pounded by the hooves of Santiago’s horse.

He professed the most erroneous and tenuous of principles, and backed them up with historical facts, which were as ingenious as they were sacrilegious. He held that in the man-woman relationship, the only law is anarchy—if anarchy can be a law—and that sovereign love should bow only to its own intrinsic rules, and that any external limitations placed on its sovereignty weakened the race and impoverished the blood flowing through humanity’s veins. He said, rather wittily, that the articles of the Ten Commandments dealing with the peccata minuta had been added by Moses to God’s original work for purely political reasons, and that those reasons of State have continued to influence successive ages, necessitating some policy of the passions; however, as civilization has progressed, those reasons have lost all logical force, and the fact that the effects subsisted long after the causes had disappeared was due entirely to habit and human idleness. Repeal of those outdated articles was long overdue, and the legislators should stop shilly-shallying and set to work. Society itself was crying out for such changes, rejecting what their leaders insisted on preserving despite growing pressure from the customs and realities of life. Ah, if that good old man Moses were to look up, he would be the first to correct his work, recognizing that life moves on.

Needless to say, all those who knew Garrido, myself included, abominate such ideas and wholeheartedly deplore the fact that this foolish gentleman’s conduct proved to be such a faithful application of his perverse doctrines. It should be added that among those of us who value the major principles that form the basis . . . etcetera, etcetera . . . , it makes our hair stand on end just to think what the social machine would be like if its enlightened operators took it into their heads to adopt Don Lope’s mad ideas and repeal the articles or commandments which he, in word and deed, proclaimed useless. If hell did not exist, it would be necessary to create one just for Don Lope, so that he could spend an eternity doing penance for his mockery of morality and thus serve as a perennial lesson for the many who, while without openly declaring themselves to be his supporters, are nonetheless to be found throughout this sinful world of ours.

The gentleman was very pleased with his acquisition, for the girl was pretty, bright, with graceful gestures, firm skin, and a seductive voice.