La Duquesa de Pitiminí

La Duquesa de Pitiminí, nicknamed the Grand Duchess of Pitiminí, is an elderly resident of the psychiatric hospital whose extravagant self-presentation makes her one of Alice Gould’s most striking early encounters there. She claims Russian royal descent, speaks as though she can assign rooms and attendants, and asserts control over Pedro Ivanovich. The later account of her acute crisis and confinement places this theatrical display within a more consequential institutional reality: she is not simply an eccentric spectacle but a patient whose grandiose behavior can lead to severe treatment.

Identity and Background

When Alice first sees her, La Duquesa de Pitiminí is described as about eighty years old. Her costume appears assembled from whatever is at hand rather than from a coherent outfit: a thick towel serves as a turban, a sheet falls from her neck like a cape, and another towel is tied at her waist like a miniskirt. A red brassiere remains visible, one leg is covered by a fishnet stocking and the other is bare; very high heels complete the ensemble. The details make her appearance deliberately difficult to classify as either dress or undress, and the narrator presents her as a startling embodiment of extravagance.

Her social identity is similarly divided between what others know and what she claims. A later explanation identifies her as a former governess to a family of Russian exiles. In her own account, however, she belongs to the legitimate branch of the Russian tsars. She adds a scandalous family anecdote involving her grandmother and Rasputin, insisting that it left no trace. These assertions are part of her grandiose self-presentation, not independently confirmed facts about her ancestry. Her nickname, which elevates her to ducal rank, gives that imagined status a memorable public form among the residents.

Encounter with Alice Gould

La Duquesa de Pitiminí descends a staircase speaking loudly and ordering the people around her to leave. Her entrance interrupts Alice Gould’s thoughts and redirects attention from reflection to the immediate commotion. Yet she distinguishes Alice from the crowd: addressing her as Mrs. Almenara, she says her instruction does not apply to her and indicates that she already knows Alice’s real name, as she knows everyone’s. The moment makes her both disruptive and observant. She performs an imposing social role while demonstrating an awareness of the people around her.

She then speaks as if she has authority over Alice’s arrangements. She announces that she will change the room she had reserved for her and provide a different attendant. The scene does not establish that she actually controls hospital accommodation or staff; rather, her confident announcement shows how completely she inhabits a position of command. She also sorts the Almenara family into supposed regional lineages, attaching insults and dubious histories to branches associated with Córdoba, Toledo, Valencia, and Murcia. The specificity of these claims gives her speech the texture of a private system of rank and classification, even as its foundations are plainly fantastical.

Her attention turns to Pedro Ivanovich, whom she pulls toward her and presents as a person who obeys her like a robot. She claims to have cut his tongue when he was young and describes controlling him by placing one hand on his nose and another at the back of his head. The narrative reports these as her assertions, not as verified events or as evidence that she possesses real authority over him. When the dining rooms open, her stream of speech breaks off and she runs toward the smell of food. The abrupt shift from commanding performance to appetite punctures the grandeur of her claims without making the disturbance disappear.

Crisis and Treatment

A later account connects the woman who caused an uproar in the dining room with the Grand Duchess nickname and with the hospital’s crisis units. She has, the account says, just experienced an acute crisis and has been shut into one of those units under a very severe treatment regimen. The residents call the unit Saco. This is a change in her circumstances, not merely another flourish in her imagined court: the character who had spoken as though she arranged other people’s rooms is now subject to institutional decisions about where she may stay and how she will be treated.

A hospital doctor’s description adds a more explicitly clinical and dismissive perspective. He characterizes her as an exhausting old woman, a tireless machine of incoherence who believes herself born from the horns of the moon. He also describes her as fond of dressing up and wanting others to touch her so that she can test how firm and youthful her flesh is. These remarks frame her performance through the staff’s interpretation of her behavior; they are not a neutral biography. Read beside her elaborate clothing and commanding speech, they show how the same acts that make her memorable to other residents become signs of illness within the medical account.

Narrative Role and Significance

La Duquesa de Pitiminí is introduced through sensory and social disruption: a loud voice on the stairs, an outlandish costume, a stream of classifications, and a sudden dash toward lunch. The scene does not pause to give her a complete history. Instead, the reader first encounters the force of her presence, then receives the institutional explanation that she was a governess and has recently undergone an acute crisis. That sequence allows her to appear at once as an individual with a distinctive repertoire and as a patient whose conduct is interpreted and managed by others.

Her episode also exposes the unstable boundary between apparent authority and actual power inside the hospital. She speaks as a duchess who can assign rooms, choose attendants, and command Pedro Ivanovich, but her crisis ends in confinement and severe treatment. The contrast is not proof that every part of her self-presentation is consciously staged; the narrative gives no such explanation. It does, however, make her performance consequential: the royal identity that organizes her speech cannot protect her from the institution’s control. Through her, the hospital’s residents, staff, and treatment arrangements come into view not as a uniform background but as competing ways of naming and responding to behavior.