“
Only with Clara did she allow herself the luxury of giving in to her
overwhelming desire to serve and be loved; with her, however slyly,
she was able to express the secret, most delicate yearnings of her soul.
The long years of solitude and unhappiness had distilled her emotions
and purified her feelings down to a few terrible, magnificent passions,
which possessed her totally. She had no gift for small perturbations,
mean-spirited resentments, concealed envies, works of charity, faded
endearments, ordinary friendly politeness, or day-to-day acts of
kindness. She was one of those people who are born for the greatness
of a single love, for exaggerated hatred, for apocalyptic vengeance, and
for the most sublime forms of heroism, but she was unable to shape
her fate to the dimensions of her amorous vocation, so it was lived out
as something flat and gray trapped between her mother’s sickroom
walls, wretched tenements, and the tortured confessions with which
this large, opulent, hot-blooded woman—made for maternity,
abundance, action, and ardor—was consuming herself She was about
forty-five years old then, and her splendid breeding and distant
Moorish ancestors kept her looking fit and polished, with black, silky
hair and a single white lock on her forehead, a strong and slender body
and the resolute step of the healthy. Still, the emptiness of her life
made her look far older than she was. I have a photograph of Ferula
taken around that time, on one of Blanca’s birthdays. It is an old sepiatoned picture, discolored with age, but you can still see how she
looked. She was a regal matron, but with a bitter smile on her face that
revealed her inner tragedy. Those years with Clara were probably the
only happy period in her life, because only with Clara could she be
herself Clara was the one in whom she confided her most subtle
feelings, and to her she consecrated her enormous capacity for sacrifice
and veneration.
”
”