The Hive

by Camilo José Cela

  Don José has always the same answer, which he seems to have learned by heart: “Bah, a lousy forty pesetas.”

  “There, there, old boy, don’t start explaining, we’re not going to ask for a share in it.”

  Don José is a magistrate’s clerk and seems to have some nice little savings. People say, too, that he married a rich wife, a girl from La Mancha who died soon afterwards, leaving all she had to Don José, and that he was in a great hurry to sell her four vineyards and two olive groves because he said the country air was bad for his respiratory tracts and the important thing was to look after one’s health.

  At Doña Rosa’s café Don José always orders the common ojén anis; he is neither a snob nor one of those poor devils who go in for white coffee. The proprietress regards him with something like sympathy because they have this affection for the drink in common. “Ojén is the best there is in the world; it is tonic, diuretic, and an aid to digestion; it is blood-building and banishes the specter of impotence.” Everything Don José says is apposite. Once, some years ago, shortly after the end of the Civil War, he had words with the violinist. Nearly everyone present maintained that the violinist was in the right, but Don José called the proprietress and said: “Either this impudent, rascally Red is kicked out at once, or I never set foot in this place again.”

  Upon this, Doña Rosa gave the violinist the sack, and that was the last anyone heard of him. The customers who had taken the violinist’s side began to change their minds and ended by declaring that Doña Rosa had done quite right, that one had to be firm and set a warning example. “You never know where you might end up with this sort of effrontery.” In saying this, the guests assumed a grave, judicious, somewhat apologetic air. “It’s impossible to do anything right or worth while if there’s no discipline,” they were saying at the tables.

  At the top of his voice a man already advanced in years tells a story about a joke he played on the notorious Madame Pimentón nearly half a century ago.

  “That stupid fool thought she was playing me for a sucker. Some hope! I stood her a glass or two of white wine, and when she left, she bashed her face against the door. Haw, haw! She bled like a stuck pig. And all she said was ‘Oh, la la, oh, la la,’ and off she went spitting out her guts. Poor wretched soul, she was drunk all the time, you really couldn’t help laughing.”

  From the neighboring tables, faces look at him in something like envy. They are the faces of people who smile, blissfully at peace, in those moments when they succeed in thinking nothing at all, without being quite aware of it. People are toadies out of stupidity, and at times they smile though they feel at the bottom of their hearts a boundless aversion, an aversion they have difficulty in restraining. It is possible to go to the length of murder out of flattery; surely more than one crime of violence has been committed to save face, to make up to somebody.

  “That’s the way to deal with spongers of her sort. We mustn’t let them get the better of decent people like us. Just as my old father used to say: ‘If you want grapes, come and get them—and you’ll get it!’ Haw, haw! The dirty old bitch didn’t turn up there again, no fear.”

  A fat and glossy cat is running about between the tables. A cat full of health and good cheer, a pompous, self-important cat. It makes its way between a woman’s legs, and the woman jumps.

  “You blasted cat, get out of here!”

  The teller of the story gives her a gentle smile: “But, madam, the poor cat—what harm has it done to you?”

  A long-haired youth writes verse in all this hubbub. His mind is far away, he takes no notice of anything around him; it is the only way to write fine verse. If he were to look right or left, his inspiration would elude him. This thing called inspiration must be rather like a little butterfly, deaf and blind, but luminous; otherwise many things would have no explanation.

  The young poet is composing a long poem entitled “Fate.” He had his doubts whether he should not call it “This Fate,” but after consulting various better-established poets, he finally decided that it was best to call it “Fate,” without any trimmings. It was simpler, more evocative, more mysterious. Also, calling it plain “Fate” would make it more suggestive, more-how to put it?—more indefinite and poetic. In this way it would not be clear whether fate as such was meant, or a particular fate, an undecided fate, a tragic fate, a blue fate, or a violaceous fate. “This Fate” would have tied it down too much and left less scope for imagination to take wing in free, untrammeled flight.

  The young poet has been working for months on this poem. By now there exist some three hundred finished verses, a carefully laid out dummy of the future edition of the work, and a list of potential subscribers who will in due course be sent a leaflet with a subscription form, in the hope that they will sign it. He has also chosen the type for the printer (a simple, clear, classical type one can read with ease—in a word, Bodoni) and drafted the copyright and subscription notice. Two doubts, however, still harass the young poet: whether or not to put Laus Deo below the colophon and whether or not to take it upon himself to write the biographical note for the blurb on the dust jacket.

  Doña Rosa is certainly not what one would call sensitive. “And it’s no news to you what I’m telling you. If I want wasters around I’ve got quite enough with that no-good, my brother-in-law! You’re very green still, d’you hear me? Very green. A fine thing that would be! Whenever have you seen a fellow without education or morals coming to this place, purling and blowing and stamping about as if he was a real gent? What’s more, I’ll take an oath that it won’t happen while I’ve got eyes in my head.”

  Doña Rosa has drops of sweat on her brow and her hairy upper lip.

  “And you there, you booby, slinking off to get the evening paper! There’s no respect or decency in this place, that’s all there is to it. One day I’m going to give you a proper thrashing if my monkey’s up. Has one ever seen such a thing?”

  Doña Rosa pins her small rat’s eyes on Pepe, the old waiter who came to town from the Galician village of Mondoñedo forty or forty-five years ago. Behind her thick lenses, Doña Rosa’s eyes resemble the startled eyes of a stuffed bird.

  “What are you looking at? What are you looking at like that, you fool? You’re just the same as you were on the day you came here. Not even God Almighty Himself could make you people lose your farmyard smell. Come on, wake up, and let’s have no more trouble. If you’d more guts, I’d have slung you out in the street long ago. D’you hear? I’ll be beggared!”

  Doña Rosa pats her belly and changes her mode of address.

  “Now come, come, man . . . everybody to his job. You know, we mustn’t lose our sense of proportion, hells bells, or the respect, d’you get me, or the respect!”

  Doña Rosa lifts her chin and takes a deep breath. The little hairs of her mustache quiver as though in challenge, jauntily and yet ceremoniously, like the black little horns of a courting cricket.

  A kind of sorrow floats in the air and sinks into men’s hearts. Hearts do not ache, and so they can suffer one hour after the other, for a whole lifetime, while we none of us ever understand with full clarity what it is that happens to us.

  A gentleman with a white goatee feeds bits of bun soaked in white coffee to a swarthy little boy sitting on his knee. The gentleman’s name is Don Trinidad García Sobrino, and he is a moneylender. Don Trinidad’s youth had been turbulent, full of complications and distractions, but when his father died, he told himself: “From now on you’d better be careful, Trinidad my lad, or you’ll land yourself in a mess.” So he devoted himself to business and a well-ordered life and ended by being rich. It had been the dream of his life to become a deputy in the Cortes; he considered it no small distinction to be one of five hundred among a people of twenty-five million. For some years Don Trinidad cultivated a few third-rankers in Gil Robles’s party, in the hope that they would make him a deputy; he did not mind for what constituency, having no predilection for any specific region. He spent money on enter
taining them, contributed to the propaganda fund, was patted on the back, but in the end was neither nominated as a candidate nor even taken along to the informal circle of the Big Boss. Don Trinidad had some moments of bitterness and mental crisis, and finally turned himself into a follower of Lerroux. He seems to have done quite well in the Radical Party, but then came the Civil War and with it the end of his not very brilliant and rather brief political career. Nowadays Don Trinidad keeps aloof from the res publica, as Don Alejandro Lerroux put it on a memorable day, and is content to be left in peace and not reminded of the past while he continues to apply himself to the lucrative business of lending money at interest.

  In the afternoons he takes his grandson to Doña Rosa’s café, plies him with food, and stays quiet, listening to the music or reading his paper, interfering with no one.

  Doña Rosa leans against a table and smiles. “Anything new, Elvira dear?”

  Señorita Elvira sucks at her cigar and tilts her head just a little. Her cheeks are creased and her lids rimmed with red as if she had weak eyes.

  “Did you settle that thing?”

  “What things?”

  “The affair with . . .”

  “No, it didn’t work. He went round with me for three days, and after that he made me a present of a bottle of hair lotion.”

  “Some people have no conscience at all, my dear.”

  “Well—so what?”

  Doña Rosa comes closer and speaks almost in her ear. “Why don’t you make it up with Don Pablo?”

  “Because I don’t want to. After all, Doña Rosa, one has one’s pride.”

  “I’ll be beggared! We’ve all got our weaknesses. But what I say to you, Elvira dear, is this—and you know I always want the best for you—what I say to you is that you were well off with Don Pablo.”

  “So-so. He asks a lot. And what’s more, he’s a dribbler. I loathed him in the end—but what can you do about it?—he made me feel quite sick.”

  Doña Rosa affects the sugary, persuasive voice of good advice: “You should have more patience, Elvira dear. You’re still a little girl.”

  “You think so?”

  Señorita Elvira spits under the table and wipes her mouth with the inside of a glove.

  A printer by the name of Vega who has made money—Don Mario de la Vega is his name—is smoking a colossal cigar that looks as if it were part of an advertisement. The man at the next table tries to ingratiate himself.

  “That’s a fine cigar you’re smoking there, my dear sir.”

  Vega answers gravely, but without looking at the man: “Yes, it’s not too bad, it cost me a cool five pesetas.”

  The man at the next table who is a smiling, an undersized little man, would like to say something such as, “I wish I were in your shoes,” but he has not the courage; fortunately, shyness shuts him up at the last moment. He looks at the printer, smiles his meek smile, and says: “Only five? I’d have thought at least seven pesetas.”

  “No, five it was, plus thirty centimos for the tip. That’s quite good enough for me.”

  “Yes, indeed.”

  “What d’you mean? I don’t think one’s got to be a millionaire like Romanones to smoke this sort of cigar.”

  “Not a millionaire, no, but . . . you see, I couldn’t afford one, and most of the people in this place couldn’t either.”

  “Would you like to smoke one?”

  “Well . . .”

  Vega smiles, almost as though he regrets in advance what he is going to say. “Then work as hard as I work.”

  And the printer gives a violent, a colossal guffaw. The smiling undersized man at the next table stops smiling. He turns red and feels that his ears begin to burn, his eyes to smart. He looks down because he doesn’t want to notice how the whole café stares at him; at least, he imagines that the whole café is staring at him.

  While Don Pablo, a miserable fellow who sees everything upside down, is grinning over his tale about Madame Pimentón, Señorita Elvira drops the butt of her cigar and stamps on it. Now and then Señorita Elvira has the gestures of a real princess.

  “What harm was that nice little cat doing you? Puss, puss, puss, come here!”

  Don Pablo glances at the woman.

  “And cats are such intelligent creatures! They’re more reasonable than certain people. They’re animals that understand everything. Puss, puss, puss, come here, come here. . . .”

  The cat walks away without turning its head and disappears into the kitchen.

  “I’ve a friend who’s got money, he’s a man with a lot of influence, don’t you think he’s one of those fellows without a penny to their name, and he has a cat called Sultan. That cat’s a marvel.”

  “Is it really?”

  “I’ll say he is. ‘Sultan,’ my friend says, ‘Sultan, come here.’ And there he is, waving his beautiful tail that’s just like a plume. ‘Sultan, off with you,’ he says, and off he goes like any great gentleman. I don’t think there are many cats like him, he must be the Duke of Alba of the cat world. My friend loves him like his own child, but then he’s a cat you can’t help being fond of.”

  Don Pablo lets his eyes wander round the café. For an instant they meet Señorita Elvira’s. Don Pablo blinks and turns his head.

  “And then, cats are so affectionate. Have you noticed how affectionate they are? Once they get fond of a person, they go on being devoted to him all their lives.”

  Don Pablo clears his throat and makes his voice sound grave and important. “Their example might serve as a lesson to many human beings.”

  Don Pablo takes a deep breath. He is pleased with himself. The fact is that the bit about “their example might serve” and so on has been a smash hit.

  Pepe the waiter returns to his corner without saying a word. Once in his own domain, he puts one hand on the back of a chair and gazes at himself in the mirrors, as though at something very odd and strange. He sees himself fullface in the nearest mirror, he sees his back in the mirror on the rear wall, and his profile in those at the corners.

  “What that damn old witch needs is somebody to slit her open one fine day. That old saw! That dirty old whore!”

  Pepe is a man with whom things soon blow over. He is content to mumble a little phrase he would never have dared to say aloud.

  “Bloodsucker! Old swine! Eating up the bread of the poor!”

  Pepe is very fond of using sententious expressions in his moments of bad temper. Afterwards his mind begins to wander, and soon he has forgotten all about it.

  Two little boys, five to six years old, are playing at trains between the tables, wearily and without any enthusiasm. When they are going towards the back of the café, one is the engine and the other the carriages. On the way back to the entrance they change places. Nobody takes any notice of them, but they go on stolidly, joylessly, running backwards and forwards with immense seriousness. They are a pair of thoroughly logical disciplinarians, two small boys who play at trains though it bores them stiff because they have decided to have fun, and, to have fun, they have decided that come what may they are going to play at trains the whole afternoon. If they don’t get any fun out of it, it is not their fault. They are doing their best.

  Pepe watches them and says: “It’s going to fall, you are.”

  Pepe has lived in Castile for half a century and speaks Castilian, but he still translates every word directly from his native gallege. The children answer: “No, we won’t,” and go on playing at trains, without faith, without hope, and even without charity, as though carrying out a painful duty.

  Doña Rosa enters the kitchen.

  “How many ounces of chocolate have you put in, Gabriel?”

  “Two, madam.”

  “There you are! There you are! Who could afford that? And on top of it, all those rules and regulations about wages, and overtime and whatnot. Didn’t I tell you in so many words to put in an ounce and a half, and no more? But it’s no good talking plain Spanish to you, you people don’t want to und
erstand and that’s that.”

  Doña Rosa takes breath and resumes her attack. When she breathes, it is like a steam engine, panting and puffing rapidly, with her whole body shaking, and a hoarse whistle in her chest.

  “And if Don Pablo thinks it isn’t thick enough, he can take his wife and go where they’ll give it to him stronger. A nice thing that would be! The cheek of him! That mean old beggar doesn’t seem to know that if there’s one thing we aren’t short of here it’s customers, thank the Lord. If he doesn’t like it, he can lump it, it wouldn’t be our loss. Who do they think they are—royalty? His wife’s a poisonous snake and I’m fed up with her. Yes, I’m fed up to the teeth with Doña Pura, that’s what!”

  Gabriel warns her, as he does every day: “They may hear you, madam.”

  “Let them hear me if they like, that’s why I’m saying it. My tongue isn’t fur-lined, so what? The thing I can’t understand is how that stupid old brute had the face to give Elvira the go-by, and she an absolute angel, with no thought in her head except how to make him happy. And then he puts up like a lamb with Doña Pura, that old mischief-maker who’s exactly like a fat snake and always laughing up her sleeve behind people’s backs. Well, as my old mother used to say, God rest her soul: ‘We live and learn.’ “

  Gabriel tries to straighten out the mess. “Would you like me to take out some of the chocolate I put in?”

  “You know for yourself what you ought to do as an honest man, as a man who’s got his wits about and isn’t a thief. When you feel like it, you know perfectly well what’s good for you.”

  Padilla, the cigarette boy, is talking with a new customer who has just bought a whole packet of tobacco.

  “Is she always like that?”

  “Yes, but she isn’t so bad. She’s got a strong temper all right, but she isn’t really bad.”