Sacred Families: Three Novellas by José Donoso

Author:José Donoso [Donoso, José]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780394402222
Google: 1qgsAAAAMAAJ
Amazon: 0394402227
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Published: 1977-06-14T14:00:00+00:00

Gaspard

de la Nuit

1

SYLVIA CORDAY dropped the mirror and tweezers she was plucking her eyebrows with onto the red felt cushions of her immense sofa, and picked up the latest issue of Italian Vogue to study Valentino’s fall collection; this year it was simply sensational. Ramón hadn’t phoned yet to arrange what they were going to do today—Sunday—and when they would see each other. Everything more or less depended on how Sylvia was going to handle her brand-new role of mother. Mauricio had arrived out of the blue, after a phone call from the boy’s father in Madrid saying he was sending their son to her for the summer because he would be making frequent trips abroad and Granny, who deserved a rest, had booked passage on a cruise organized by her Bridge Club friends. This arrival threatened to fix Sylvia and Ramon’s life in an artificial and unaccustomed routine. Up till now it had been so agreeably free. If this had been one of those few Sundays they spent in Barcelona during the warm season, Ramón would have slept in Sylvia’s apartment and spent this lazy morning reading newspapers, magazines, letters, talking on the phone, the two of them sunbathing nude on the penthouse’s large terrace, and having a leisurely breakfast of black coffee and toast. Last night, it was true, they had gone to bed late after Ramon’s ex-partner’s wedding. Or rather, Jaime Romeu’s daughter’s wedding. There, after something more than the usual number of whiskies required to keep him afloat in such a terribly conventional milieu—golf, private schools, S’Agaró, the Floating Dike—Ramón had begun to sing “L’Internationale.” This created a delightful panic, but it was already getting late, so there were no consequences more serious than a frown from a stuffed shirt who looked at his Patek Philippe then got up, and a woman who sent for her mink after somebody whispered in her ear what it was that was being sung by poor Rosario del Solar’s son.

Ramón had been perfectly right to split professionally with Jaime Romeu. As the years passed, it became increasingly obvious that they hadn’t been born to be partners, in spite of their friendship dating back to days with the Jesuits. Now, after Ramón’s little number at the reception, it was unlikely that what was left of a nominal friendship would last longer than a few months. Sylvia was just as happy. That particular world no longer understood Ramón or his architecture . . . and so what? she thought. Her passport to these circles consisted more in blood relationships rarely acknowledged than her fame as a fashion model. Jaime Romeu was the exact equivalent of Sylvia’s husband in Madrid: an opulent decadent who was closer to the village than to the international set. And poor little Mauricio had had to grow up in that environment. But what else could she do? Sylvia and her husband had been separated since Mauricio was ten: her then-lover and the “desertion of domicile” of which she

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