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15. The Tertulia of the Three Duos
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154 [ 15 ] TH E TERTulia OF T HE TH RE E DUOS resPetillA hastened to inform Rosita that his master would go to the tertulia at her home that evening. He could not have given her a more pleasant piece of news. A spinster who was more than twenty-eight years old, Rosita had never found a man in the town on whom to impose her will. Holding despotic sway over her home, a thousand times more free and mistress of her wishes and actions than an unconstitutional queen, she did not get bored because her activity and her energy did not lend themselves to boredom, but she had very little diversion, and was abiding life like the person who attends the performance of a play that strikes him or her as silly and whose characters are of little or no interest. Rosita had a perfectly proportioned body, neither tall nor short, neither slight nor stout. Her complexion, on the dark side, was soft-looking and exceptionally fine, and highlighted by a vivid carmine on her smooth cheeks. Her lips, a bit thick, seemed to be of the reddest coral, and when a smile parted them, which occurred often, they revealed, in a somewhat large mouth, healthy, pristine gums and two rows of even, gleaming white teeth. Rosita ’s upper lip was shadowed ever so slightly by subtle and, like her hair, jet-black down. Two dark moles, one on her left cheek and the other on her chin, created the effect of two beautiful bamboo shoots in a meadow of flowers. Rosita’s brow was small and straight, like that of the Venus of Milo, and her nose, beautifully sculpted, was more full than ta- TERTuli a OF THE THRE E DUOS 155 pered. Her eyebrows, prettily outlined, were neither very sparse nor very dense, and her eyelashes, unusually long, turned outward and up, forming graceful arcs. The whole of her face expressed a mixture of mischief, haughtiness , arrogance, gaiety, tenderness, and desire for love impossible to describe . Fiery, black eyes—sometimes languid, sometimes active and fulminating like two machine guns—illuminated that movable physiognomy. Ramoncita, the notary’s other daughter, had a fair complexion, a small mouth, and no moles. She was taller than Rosita, and was also considered more good-looking, but not in a half dozen years would Ramoncita betray, to either the soul or the senses, what Rosita did in an instant. Just by showing herself Rosita gave an idea of heaven and hell; Ramoncita, of limbo. Although Rosita was tempted to deck herself out a little more than usual to receive Don Faustino, in the end pride overcame temptation and she awaited the arrival of her new visitor in the same percale dress, with the same silk kerchief around her neck, and in the same hairdo as usual. She did not even bother to replace the roses that she had had in her hair since morning, roses that were withered. She did no more than what she did every night before appearing at the tertulia: she brushed her teeth (of which she took excellent care) and washed her hands, which required this kind of attention in such a neat woman, inasmuch as they came in contact with the keys to the pantry and the money that she counted upon receipt or paid out to the workers . It is important to note, however, that neither Rosita’s face nor her hands suffered from housework, country air, and bustle in the pantries and wine cellars. Rosita was not a delicate sort, but a bronze beauty. Accompanied by Respetilla, the doctor kept his word, and shortly after nine o’clock in the evening joined the tertulia at the house of the Civils. The entire gathering consisted of Rosita, Ramoncita, Jacintica, their confidante and chaperon, and the future doctor, the apothecary’s son. The conversation was general for ten or twelve minutes, but then languished more and more on account of the evident propensity of Don Jerónimo , the apothecary’s son, to have asides with Ramoncita, and Respetilla’s no less evident desire to intone a duo with the widow Jacintica. This propensity prevailed in the end, taking hold of the spirits of Rosita and the doctor too, and after they had all been together for a quarter of an hour in the drawing room that was illuminated by a magnificent Lucena oil lamp, three natural pairings had been formed unconsciously. In one corner were Ramoncita and...