Taratuta and Still Life With Pipe: Two Novellas by José Donoso

Author:José Donoso [Donoso, José]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780393034363
Google: -jKdQgAACAAJ
Publisher: W.W. Norton
Published: 1993-12-14T13:00:00+00:00

XII

What a stupendous ending!” Pepita exclaimed.

“Wait,” I told her. “That’s the story of what happened to a part of the Schmidt legacy. But the fate of the other part is just as unfortunate. The truth is that it’s never been stipulated as to whether the inheritance was only for the Bolsheviks or for the Mensheviks too, and the fights between them for what remained of the fortune went on. Elizaveta, probably at Taratuta’s urging, demanded money that she said Lenin owed her. But the demands came from San Remo, I imagine, when the cards were bleeding the redhead’s pockets. The Mensheviks allege that they had documents to show that Lenin coerced the heiresses into handing over the whole sum of the legacy to him and that he’d hidden away a much larger amount than the 100,000 rubles he said he had left. All of a sudden the documents and the money disappeared, there was a scandal, several arrests, and the Party denied Lenin funds to continue publishing his periodicals.

“The filched funds suddenly reappeared and a semblance of financial order was restored. Lenin continued in control of what was left of the Schmidt legacy. But the whole matter had reached a state of such confusion that the Central Committee of the Social Democratic Party decided to place everything that was left out of danger by entrusting it to a committee made up of three politicians of absolute confidence. They, for greater security, deposited the money in a bank account in Germany in the year 1912. When World War I broke out in 1914, the German Ministry of Finance seized everything deposited to the account of persons or institutions of enemy nationality in German banks. In that way, what was left of the Schmidt legacy served to finance the cannons with which the Germans fought Russia.”

“I’m about to cry!” Pepita exclaimed, laughing. “It can’t be! But I must admit it’s a spectacular ending. . . , a very ending sort of ending!”

“I think so,” I replied. “The only bad part is that I don’t think it’s the real ending yet.”

“I don’t understand at all.”

“Why not? It’s quite simple: the real ending is here, now, right before our eyes.”

“Explain to me, please.”

“In this café. Look at them. . . ,” I said, indicating with a gesture the couple who ran the establishment where we’d already spent so much time.

“Should we ask him if he’s Horacio Carlos?”

“I refuse to do it,” I said. “They’ve got a look of having turned their backs on something. . . , if it is they. . . , and I like to respect the masks people put on.”

Pepita called the waiter, who approached slowly, with his brass tray in his hand hanging below his knees alongside the seam in his pants. I remembered the agile Taratuta of years gone by with his tray balanced high over his head and the flame of his red hair as he leaned over to serve the drinks at a table beside a window.

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