Juanita la Larga: a Novel

Chapter 4

Chapter 4 A t the moment in which the action of this true tale begins, Juana had to be a good forty years old, although there were still traces of her former beauty, which had been remarkable when she was twenty. But as she was very poor then and had neither discovered nor demonstrated her tremendous abilities, she did not meet, despite her worth, a future husband who suited her and so she had to remain single. The story goes that a certain cavalry officer who arrived at those parts to buy horses for the service’s supply, and who was devilishly handsome and very amusing and witty, fell in love with Juana and won her love in return. Nobody knows whether or not he promised to marry her, but the fact of the matter is that the good officer had to go off to the civil war that was raging in the Basque provinces, and that he was killed there by a Carlist bullet1 to the head that penetrated his brain. So Juana ended up a semiwidow. Posthumously or not posthumously , she gave birth to a beautiful baby girl who was baptized with the same name as her mother. Afterwards the common people added the same epithet to the name, whereby this baby girl, who will be the principal heroine of our story, came to be called Juanita la Larga. Her mother raised her with much love and great care, openly and without pretending that she was not her daughter, which in that 21 1. The reference is to one of the Carlist Wars fought on behalf of Fernando VII’s brother, Carlos, who sought to replace Isabel, Fernando’s daughter, on the throne of Spain. The first war was from 1833 to 1840, the second from 1846 to 1848, and the third (and last) from 1872 to 1876. It seems likely that the reference is to the second one. 22 Juanita la Larga town, where everything was known, would have been the most futile of pretenses. So Juana nursed Juanita, always called her daughter, and Juanita, from the time she began to talk, called Juana mother straight out. This was considered blatant effrontery by the town’s more stern residents, who clamored against scandal and bad example, but, little by little, they became accustomed to the situation, and after a few years nothing seemed more natural nor more right than that Juanita should be Juana’s daughter. Juana did not lack defenders—some of them reasonable, others passionate—who praised the love and physical attachment of mother and daughter, and who, when they were being somewhat disparaging, did not fail to compare Juana with other women who passed for honor personified and who were even insolent enough to think themselves almost saintly. The more or less reliable gossip about them was that they too had had offspring, and not legitimate, that they had gotten rid of their infants, either by sending them to the foundling home or by some other means known only to God or the devil. The epithet “la Larga” came to Juanita not only by way of inheritance , but also by way of conquest. At the age of seventeen Juanita had sprouted so much that she was the tallest and most lissome girl in Villalegre. Some of the cavalry officer’s bellicose blood had been infused into her, and the mannish and free upbringing that she had received had developed her agility and her mettle. When she walked she had both a martial and a graceful air; she ran like a deer; she made stone throws with such accuracy that she killed sparrows; and with one long leap she sat atop the back of the most ill-tempered mule or the most unbroken colt. And not astride, which her decorum and natural, innate sense of propriety would not permit, but sidesaddle, which is more difficult , even making the beast trot and gallop, spurring it on with her heels or whipping it with the end of the halter or the headstall, when she had one, and was not riding bareback without a bridle or rein of any sort. Juanita la Larga 23 The early years of Juanita’s youth had been somewhat hard because her mother had not yet gained the extraordinary reputation that she enjoyed afterwards, nor the well-being nor the riches that we have already described. Juanita never attended the girls...