.
Her heart would swell with pride every time a priest would say to her in the church:
"Take good care of don Ramón. Thanks to him the wave of demagogy halts at the temple door and evil fails to triumph in the District. He is the bulwark of the Lord against the impious!"
And when, after such a declaration, which flattered her worldly vanity and assured her of a mansion in Heaven, she would pass through the streets of Alcira in her calico wrapper and a shawl not over-clean, greeted affectionately, effusively, by the leading citizens, she would pardon don Ramón all the infidelities she knew about and consider the sacrifice of her fortune a good investment.
"If it were not for what we do, what would happen to the District. … The lower scum would conquer—those wild-eyed mechanics and common laborers who read the Valencian newspapers and talk about equality all the time. And they would divide up the orchards, and demand that the product of the harvests—thousands and thousands of duros paid for oranges by the Englishmen and the French—should belong to all." But to stave off such a cataclysm, there stood don Ramón, the scourge of the wicked, the champion of "the cause" which he led to triumph, gun in hand, at election time; and just as he was able to send any rebellious trouble-maker off to the penal settlement, so he found it easy to keep at liberty all those who, despite the various murders that figured in their biographies, lent themselves to the service of the government in this support of "law and order!"
The patrimony of the House of Brull went down and down, but its prestige rose higher and higher. The sacks of money filled by the old man at the cost of so much roguery were shaken empty over all the District; nor were several assaults upon the municipal treasury sufficient to bring them back to normal roundness. Don Ramón contemplated this squandering impassively, proud that people should be talking of his generosity as much as of his power.
The whole District worshipped as a sacred flagstaff that bronzed, muscular, massive figure, which floated a huge, flowing, gray-flecked mustache from its upper end.
"Don Ramón, you ought to remove that bush," his clerical friends would say to him with a smile of affectionate banter. "Why, man, you look just like Victor Emmanuel himself, the Pope's jailer."
But though don Ramón was a fervent Catholic (who never went to mass), and hated all the infidel turnkeys of the Holy Father, he would grin and give a satisfied twirl at the offending mouth-piece, quite flattered at bottom to be likened to a king.
The patio of the Brull mansion was the throne of his sovereignty. His partisans would find him there, pacing up and down among the green boxes of plantain trees, his hands clasped behind his broad, strong, but now somewhat stooping back—a majestic back withal, capable of supporting hosts and hosts of friends.
There he "administered justice," decided the fate of families, settled the affairs of towns—all in a few off-hand but short and decisive words, like one of those ancient Moorish kings who, in that selfsame territory, centuries before, legislated for their subjects under the open sky. On market-days the patio would be thronged. Carts would stop in long lines on either side of the door. All the hitching-posts along the streets would have horses tied to them, and inside, the house would be buzzing like a bee-hive with the chatter of that rustic gentry.
Don Ramón would give them all a hearing, frowning gravely meanwhile, his chin on his bosom and one hand on the head of the little Rafael at his side—a pose copied from a chromo of the Kaiser petting the Crown Prince.
On afternoons when the Ayuntamiento was in session, the chief could never leave his patio. Of course not a chair in the city hall could be dusted without his permission; but he preferred to remain invisible, like a god, knowing well that his power would seem more terrible if it spoke only from the pillar of fire or from the whirlwind.
All day long city councilors would go trotting back and forth from the City Hall to the Brull patio. The few enemies don Ramón had in the Council—meddlers, doña Bernarda called them—idiots who swallowed everything in print provided it were against the King and religion—attacked the cacique persistently, censuring everything he did. Don Ramón's henchmen would tremble with impotent rage. "That charge must be answered! Let's see now: somebody go and ask the boss!"
And a regidor would be off to don Ramón's like a greyhound; and arriving at the patio panting, out of breath, he would heave a sigh of relief and contentment at sight of "the chief" there, pacing up and down as usual, ready to get his friends out of their difficulties as if the limitless resources of Providence were at his command. "So-and-So said this-and-that!" Don Ramón would stop in his tracks, think a moment, and finally say, in an enigmatic oracular voice: "Very well, tell him to put this in his pipe and smoke it!" Whereupon the henchman, mouth agape, would rush back to the session like a racehorse. His companions would gather about him eager to know the reply that don Ramón's wisdom had deigned to suggest; and a quarrel would start then, each one anxious to have the privilege of annihilating the enemy with the magic words—all talking at the same time like magpies suddenly set chattering by the dawn of a new light.
If the opposition held its ground, again stupefaction would come over them. Another mad dash in quest of a new consultation. Thus the sessions would go by, to the great delight of the barber Cupido—the sharpest and meanest tongue in the city—who, whenever the Council met, would observe to his early morning shaves:
"Holiday today: the usual race of councilors bare-back."
When party exigencies forced don Ramón to be out of town, it was his wife, the energetic doña Bernarda, who attended to the consultations, issuing statements on party policy, as wise and apt as those of "the chief" himself.
This collaboration in the upbuilding and the up-holding of the family influence was the single bond of union between husband and wife. This cold woman, a complete stranger to tenderness, would flush with pleasure every time the chief approved her ideas. If only she were "boss" of "the Party!" … Don Andrés had often said as much himself!
This don Andrés was her husband's most intimate friend, one of those men who are born to be second everywhere and in everything. Loyal to the family to the point of sacrifice, he served, with the couple itself, to fill out the Holy Trinity of the Brull religion that was the faith of all the District. Where don Ramón could not go in person, don Andrés would be present for him, as the chief's alter ego. In the towns he was respected as the supreme vicar of that god whose throne was in the patio of the plantain trees; and people too shy to lay their supplications before the god himself, would seek out that jolly advocate—a very approachable bachelor, who always had a smile on his tanned, wrinkled face, and a story under his stiff cigar-stained mustache.
Don Andrés had no relatives, and spent almost all his time at the Brull's. He was like a piece of furniture that seems always to be getting in the way at first; but when all were once accustomed to him, he became an indispensable fixture in the family. In the days when don Ramón had been a young subordinate of the Ayuntamiento, he had met and liked the man, and taking him into the ranks of his "heelers," had promoted him rapidly to be chief of staff. In the opinion of the "boss," there wasn't a cleverer, shrewder fellow in the world than don Andrés, nor one with a better memory for names and faces. Brull was the strategist who directed the campaign; don Andrés the tactician who commanded actual operations and cleaned up behind the lines when the enemy was divided and undone. Don Ramón was given to settling everything in a violent manner, and drew his gun at the slightest provocation. If his methods had been followed, "the Party" would have murdered someone every day. Don Andrés had a smooth tongue and a seraphic smile that simply wound alcaldes or rebellious electors around his little finger, and his specialty was the art of letting loose a rain of sealed documents over the District that started complicated and never-ending prosecutions against troublesome opponents.
He attended to "the chief's" correspondence, and was tutor and playmate to the little Rafael, taking the boy on long walks through the orchard country. To doña Bernarda he was confidential adviser.
That surly, severe woman showed her bare heart to no one in the world save don Andrés. Whenever he called her his "señora," or his "worthy mistress," she could not restrain a gesture