The Youngest Children of Our Great-Grandparents

Gilda

We still haven't found Aunt Gilda's birth certificate. We do not know if or when she was born, if her great-grandparents were already living in the Capital or if they were still living in La Atalaya. What I know for sure is that she was born between 1880, the year my grandfather Tancredo was born, and 1885, the year Aunt Delia was born. I think the most likely year is 1883 because, if I remember correctly, she was two years older than Aunt Delia.

According to what they said, she was baptized Gildipa , although her brothers and everyone called her Gilda . Also in her funeral notice, published in the Montevideo newspapers, her name appeared as "Gilda Pugliese de Roux."

She married Julio Roux , a brother of your grandfather Alejandro , and settled in Montevideo where she lived until her death. He had only one daughter, María Angélica (Nené ), born in 1913. It was Nené who told me that her father had a dredging company in which, at least for a time, my grandfather Tancredo also worked.

Julio Roux died young, when Nené was twelve or thirteen years old. Shortly after Uncle Julio died, Aunt Gilda's house burned down and from that moment on Aunt Gilda, who was quite fearful, went to live with Nené at Aunt Delia's house who also lived in Montevideo.

She was always very thin, a build that Nené inherited, and I think taller than her sisters. You remember her as a rather dry and severe woman, but the aunts spoke of her as the funniest of all the sisters and the anecdotes they told painted her as very impulsive and witty. When I met her she was already old, but the photos that portray her as a young woman show her as a pretty girl, with very large dark eyes, very white skin and black hair.

The occasions when Aunt Gilda went to Buenos Aires were always festive: she invariably arrived accompanied by Nené and to attend birthdays, weddings or some party. Since I, when I was a child, had a certain resemblance to my grandfather Tancredo, who had been his favorite brother, he liked me very much and our dialogue was favored by my whistle voice because I was quite deaf.

Aunt Gilda always stayed at her aunts' house, in Pasaje San Mateo, and, when she did, she occupied Aunt Delia's room. It was funny on those occasions to see that the Pugliese sisters had a deep-rooted sense of hierarchies and that the older ones ruled over the younger ones: Aunt Gilda, despite being the visitor, was the one who decided what time people ate and didn't cut themselves. a hair in bossing his sisters. On one occasion he even told Aunt Delia to stop lotioning her face and go to sleep once and for all. The most extraordinary thing was that Aunt Delia, without saying a word despite her very strong character, obeyed her sister's order without protest.

I remember that in the "assault" that took place at the aunts' house at the end of the '50s, at one point, out of a joke, the Uruguayan anthem began to be sung. Aunt Gilda was outraged and told everyone that hymns were not something to play with. The point is that everyone had to stand up and sing the Uruguayan and Argentine anthems with the same correction and anointing as if they were at school...

She had a very sweet tooth, a weakness we shared. At Betty's wedding there were some delicious meringues and between the two of us we made a magnificent "pinza": she told the waiters to bring meringues to her nephew Augusto, while I did the same for my elderly aunt Gilda. We cleaned entire plates telling each other not to eat so much because it would make us sick.

I think it was from 1967 that I began to travel to Montevideo and a couple of times I spent the summer in Carrasco with Aunt Gilda and Nené. They lived in an apartment on Soriano Street, furnished with enormous and superb antique furniture. Aunt Gilda, now very old, used to spend most of her time sitting in an easy chair next to the window. One afternoon we arrived from the street with Nené and when we greeted her she told us: "Poor girl, she has been standing all afternoon and nothing, not one..." . Since we didn't know what he was talking about, we asked him what he meant. Then he pointed out a little slut who was standing on the corner and with great sadness told us that in the entire afternoon he had been watching her he had not gotten a single client. I had a fit of laughter but Nené was most disconcerted by her mother's "modernity."

The first time I went to her house was shortly after the death of Arturito, Aunt Delia's son. It was a terrible tragedy for Nené, from which she never recovered. Since she had grown up with them, Aunt Delia and Arturito represented, along with her mother, what she loved most, but Aunt Gilda by then was no longer very lucid and only found out at times what was happening.

Aunt Gilda died, if I remember correctly, in 1969.

Grigelia Pugliese (Tia Quita)

She was born in Capital on October 30, 1886. She was baptized with the name Cricelia Angélica María . I don't know why she signed as "Grigelia Pugliese" and I think it could have been because that is how it would appear in a later document such as the ID or the civic booklet. Another curious fact is that in their baptism certificate the address of their great-grandparents is Chacabuco 742, so I don't know if they moved from Chacabuco 740 to the house next door or if the house had both numbers.

Aunt Quita was short, the shortest of all the siblings. I remember her being somewhat plump, white hair cut quite short, very pronounced cheekbones, dark skin and gray eyes. She was even soft-spoken and on very rare occasions I saw her get upset about something. Despite that softness, he was quite a character and when he fixed his eyes on you he stopped you dead. I think that, of all of them, she inherited the most of our great-grandfather's character and the least of our great-grandmother's explosive genius.

She remained single by vocation and choice since she had no shortage of suitors who had the approval of the family but, as she confessed to me time and time again, the idea of sleeping with someone (who could even snore!) gave her an invincible apprehension.

Between being single and the family's changing fortunes, he had to earn a living and he did it with music. It must have been quite difficult because she lived at a time when the possibilities for a single woman from a good family were quite limited, but she pulled through successfully and I never heard her complain. With his guitar lessons he bought the houses in which he lived, including the one in Pasaje San Mateo, he made the life he wanted and was completely independent. My grandfather, Aunt Delia and Aunt Amanda lived in that house.

Aunt Quita played the guitar extraordinarily well. Now that I live in the country of the guitar, I understand better than ever the art of it and I regret that no recording of it exists. I remember the clarity of the sound, which is something very difficult to achieve, especially for a woman, because you have to use a lot of force with your left hand. I suppose our great aunt, so small and soft, must have had a left hand for cracking nuts. Naturally, the house was full of guitars but she only used two that were illustrious: a "Simplicio" and a "García" the work of great luthiers. Herberto, Ana Inés's father, had baptized the "Simplicio" as "La Bendita" and that is what we called her. Perhaps, if she had been born a few decades later, Aunt Quita would have been able to have a career as a concert performer (in fact, she gave several concerts) but until Segovia imposed it, the guitar was considered a minor instrument.

As a good guitarist, she took great care of her hands. At one time he had taken to not even opening the doors and Etel or whoever was nearby had to open them for him to pass through, but luckily that extravagance did not last too long.

He had many students, although of all of them Roberto Bergonzi was the only one, as far as I know, who dedicated himself to the guitar professionally. Once a year Aunt Quita organized a "festival" in which everyone had to play at least one piece. They usually played and sang really well, but I can't remember my one performance without blushing...

One day they came to me with the news that Gustavo, my brother, had started learning guitar with Aunt Quita. She was delighted because from the start he was very good at it, he was diligent, she liked it a lot and he had aptitudes. I felt myself corroded by the blackest of envies. Imagine: it was a time when the guitar was all the rage and I couldn't resist the idea of becoming the center of meetings thanks to my musical skills. That's how for months, like a drop that pierces the stone, I insisted until both my parents and Aunt Quita agreed for me to start taking classes too. My project was to quickly learn "Zamba de mi Esperanza", "El Indio Muerdo" and four or five other things like that, which more than satisfied my musical-social desires, but the reality was a bucket of cold water: Tía Quita It started with theory and music theory and the guitar, not even looking at it. To make matters worse, I had homework and each class began by answering questions about what was supposedly learned in the previous class. A horror. I couldn't understand what need an aspiring guitar player had to know how many semi-fusas fit into a white note. When the classes began to be with guitar it was even worse, since the theory was added to the very boring scales and exercises that you had to repeat until you got them perfect or your fingers fell off, whichever came first. As you can imagine, by the second or third class I already wanted to quit but it was impossible because my father had the mania that what was started had to be finished, as if the word "test" did not exist in his dictionary. This is how Aunt Quita and I found ourselves tied to the mortifying ritual of a weekly class, an ordeal that lasted for two very long years. One day, when I was eleven or twelve years old, after a lot of reflection, I gathered the courage to tell Aunt Quita that I didn't like the guitar and why didn't we quit. When, naturally, he answered that my father would be very angry, I decided to ask him not to tell him and to commit to continuing going to his house as if I were still taking classes. To my surprise and joy she accepted (I think she was as fed up as I was) and I continued going weekly in the exclusive capacity of visiting nephew, freed from any other obligation other than that of distracting his old aunts. That commitment was so pleasant that my father died without finding out about my musical desertion and I continued going periodically to my aunts' house until Aunt Quita's death.

She was one of the most charming conversationalists I have ever met, since, in addition to being cultured, she was always up to date. You could talk to her about anything, from Greek history to the latest news in national politics. I remember one time when we university students had risen up against a law that the Onganía government had dictated. For safety reasons we went to the demonstrations in pairs so we could disperse pretending that we were dating. I got a girl who was a member of the Communist Party, since all the student groups were against the government. We went to the demonstration, we shouted all kinds of things against Onganía and a couple of Molotov cocktails were thrown. The police charged with their usual brutality and my circumstantial companion and I rushed out to start walking hugging as soon as we had traveled a safe distance. But this girl, much more experienced than me in these matters, began to say that they were following us. I didn't notice anything, but since she knew more than me I started to get worried. So, wandering from one street to another, we arrived near Aunt Quita's house and, although it was quite late, it occurred to me that there were few safer places to go. Etel showed us in and when we entered Aunt Quita was already in bed and had on the cap she used to sleep. He made us sit down, treated us to port, and I told him the details of the demonstration and all the trouble that had arisen. I almost killed Diana, that was my partner's name, when she said she was from the PC; but nothing, Aunt Quita talked to her about politics calmly and, when we left, she also thanked her for visiting her. As soon as the door closed Diana told me: "how I would like to have an aunt with a cap..." .

A practicing Catholic, she had a relationship with the priests of the Guadalupe parish who sometimes went to say mass at her house. When problems began between Perón and the Church and some churches were burned, the priests of Guadalupe, as a precaution, distributed the valuable things that were in the church among the most trusted parishioners. My grandfather and his aunts received a gold monstrance in which there were two splinters of the "true cross." The monstrance was missing two or three zircons and Aunt Quita asked my mother if she could have them put on by my other grandfather, who was a jeweler. Since at that time, in addition to being anti-Peronists, we were also very Catholic, mom immediately accepted and we took the monastery home. Although it was very interesting to see and touch the vial with the papal seal that contained the two little chips, it was equally annoying to have to genuflect and cross ourselves every time we passed by my grandfather's workshop, which we did hundreds of times a day because It was in the middle of the house and we were kind of Indians who always ran around everywhere. When we returned the relic, once repaired, I felt quite relieved because living with such a thing turned your house into a kind of church and, besides, I couldn't fucking tell it! because the thing was very secret...

It must have been in '69 or '70 that he fell and broke his hip. They operated on her and she came out of the operation well, but she did not walk again and quickly became weaker until she died. He used to pray a lot to the "Christ of the good death" and I can say that his prayers were not in vain. I remember that in his last hours a few nephews surrounded his bed. Aunt Quita did not suffer and spent most of her time sleeping. At one point he opened his eyes, looked at us all one by one and asked, did I die? . Of course we laughed and said no, but Julio Ortega, María Amelia's father, who was the doctor who treated her, explained to us that being like this, surrounded by everyone she loved, was her idea of heaven. .

Beatriz Amanda (Tía Amanda)

The youngest of all the siblings was born in Capital on February 4, 1892. She was baptized in the parish of San Telmo with the names of Beatriz Amanda . The family always called her Amanda and I think she learned her first name when she got married.

She married Pedro Raúl Puig , a doctor, with whom she had three children: Marta (the mother of Ana María, Marta María and Liliana Otero), Raúl ("Raulito", father of Alicia) and Beatriz ("Betty", mother of Flora and Marian Paz).

She was the prettiest of the family, with a thin, angular face and blue eyes. He had such a fantastic ear that it allowed him to play any music on any instrument just after hearing it once. She was also very funny and fond of playing with words. As he suffered from asthma and always carried a glass and rubber pipette, his voice was somewhat breathless and his laughter almost completely silent. In summer it was impossible to see her without a fan - something that was not fashionable then - and which she handled with unconscious, very elegant dexterity, opening it, fanning herself briefly and slowly and closing it with a dry and harmonious movement.

Aunt Amanda was less rigid than her sisters. I remember that when we were kids we loved him playing something on the guitar called "the chicken step", a very fun and rhythmic little music that he made by strumming and sliding his left hand along the strings. We asked for it until we were bored and he gave it to us with patience worthy of a better cause. I also owe him everything I know about the Creole side of the family, since he liked to tell us stories about his grandmother and his relatives in the days of Rosas. That fascinated us because they were very dramatic, with shootings, beheadings and all kinds of gruesome episodes that neither Aunt Quita nor Aunt Delia told about. I regret to remember only the little I told you when writing to you about the great-grandmother. When you are a child, the truculences are recorded much more than the names of the protagonists of the drama.

Two typical phrases from Aunt Amanda were: "What I hate, the neck," whenever chicken was served and "study, study, you'll be a big pig" whenever they asked us about our studies. It seems that both originated from a Galician servant who was in our great-grandparents' house whose son was studying to be a priest and who was very rude. I assume that the would-be "pig" never became ordained because otherwise he would have been adopted as the family priest.

No bad words were said at the aunts' place. At that time, saying bad words was a man's thing and as long as there were no women present. Aunt Amanda's transgression was to insert them sometimes into the conversation (always out of jest and never out of anger) deleting the first letter or slightly modifying the word. The last time I saw her, at Betty's house, she was in an oxygen tent. When I asked him how he was, he replied: "Like the ulo, baby, like the ulo ." [In Spanish the phrase “como el culo” means you’re not doing well – literally translates to “like the ass”]