Juanita la Larga: a Novel

Chapter 8

Chapter 8 Don Paco reflected a great deal on that conversation, weighing and interpreting Juanita’s words. She had called him “grandfather,” but with an affable smile. We men, all of us, grandfathers and grandsons, usually have high hopes and are almost always inclined to lend the most favorable interpretation to whatever is said by the women we court. There could be no doubt, it being a question of a science as exact as arithmetic, that he could have been Juanita’s grandfather. Don Paco made the following calculation: “I’m fifty-three. Fifty-three less seventeen is thirty-six, and at the age of nineteen I could certainly have had a daughter, and this daughter could have married and had Juanita at seventeen.” Then Don Paco added: “Nineteen and seventeen, plus another seventeen, Juanita’s age right now, are fifty-three, which is my age. Therefore, I could, quite effortlessly, be that mischievous girl’s grandfather.” E pur si muove,1 he continued, because to a certain extent he was a learned man. He knew a little Italian, having heard many operas sung, and he was familiar with the words attributed to Galileo, as well as several other maxims expressed in the language of Dante, for example: Chi va piano, va sano, e va lontano.2 The first maxim applied to his situation meant that, despite be37 1. Words attributed to Galileo (“Nevertheless it does move”) when he rose from his knees at the trial during which he was forced to abjure his belief that the Earth was a moving body. 2. Loosely translated, “If you take it easy, you live a long, healthy life.” 38 Juanita la Larga ing able to be Juanita’s grandfather, he wanted to and could be something very different; and the second maxim, which Don Paco also remembered, meant that he should not act rashly, that he should proceed very cautiously and very carefully because “Rome wasn’t built in a day,”3 and because deep down the girl was not surly, nor probably as tough and hard on the inside as, thanks to the collision he had had with her, he knew her youthful physique was on the outside. Furthermore, far from being dashed, hope grew in his heart as he saw himself as more of an unlikely grandfather than an unlikely lover. In order to corroborate this flattering affirmation, Don Paco contemplated himself in the mirror at which he shaved, and although not big, it was not so small that it did not reflect nearly all of him. And he exclaimed upon seeing his image, like Virgil’s shepherd Corydon or Lope’s Marramaquiz: Well, I’m not that ugly!4 And in truth Don Paco was not ugly, nor did he look old either. Don Paco gave a flattering interpretation to Juanita’s last words, but perhaps it was a more involved one than he wished. When the girl told him to talk to her mother to arrange for sewing to be done, was it not clear that Juanita indicated a willingness to enter into a certain kind of relationship, although not on the sly, but out in the open, and with the blessing of maternal authority? Whatever the case, Don Paco, feeling smitten with Juanita, resigned himself to putting up with anything, but, like a prudent man, he decided not to venture any more than was necessary and not to show his hand for the time being. That he could enter into a serious relationship with Juanita, one conducive to the desired end, was hampered by two considerations: the first was the excessive, suspicious, and intimate familiarity that 3. The original is No se ganó Zamora en una hora (Zamora was not won in one hour). 4. Corydon is the shepherd in Virgil’s Eclogues II and VII. For Marramaquiz, see Chapter 1, note 4, to La Gatomaquia. Juanita la Larga 39 Juanita had with Antoñuelo, the son of the blacksmith; and the second was the virtual certainty that Doña Inés would hit the roof upon learning that he had a serious commitment with Juanita. Doña Inés inspired panic in her father and he always tried to avoid her anger as he would a drawn sword. Nevertheless, his decided fondness for the girl overcame the obstacles , as a valiant steed jumps over the barrier that has been erected to halt his run...