The Hive

by Camilo José Cela

  Two of his chestnuts are cold and two burning hot.

  Pablo Alonso is a young man who affects the sporting manner of the modern businessman and has had a mistress called Laurita for the last fortnight.

  Laurita is pretty. She is the daughter of a portress in the Calle de Lagasca and is nineteen years old. Before, she never had so much as five pesetas to spend on fun, let alone fifty pesetas to buy a handbag. With her young man, who was a postman, she never went out anywhere. Laurita was sick of getting frozen on walks in the Paseo de Rosales; her fingers and ears began to be covered with chilblains. Her friend Estrella had been set up in a flat of her own, in the Calle de Menéndez Pelayo, by a gentleman who supplied olive oil on the black market.

  Pablo Alonso looks up.

  “A Manhattan.”

  “We’ve no Scotch, sir.”

  “Tell them at the bar that it’s for me.”

  “Very well, sir.”

  Pablo takes the girl’s hand once more.

  “As I was telling you, Laurita, he’s a great chap, he couldn’t be a better sort. Only nowadays you see him when he’s poor and shabby, perhaps with a dirty shirt he’s worn for a whole month, and with his toes sticking through his uppers.”

  “Poor boy! Doesn’t he do any work?”

  ”No, nothing. He goes round with all sorts of ideas revolving in his head, but when it comes to it he never does anything. It’s a pity, because he’s nobody’s fool.”

  “And has he got anywhere to sleep?”

  “Yes, at my place.”

  “At your place?”

  “Yes, I had a bed put up for him in a box room, and that’s where he sleeps. At least he’s out of the rain and can keep warm.”

  The girl, who is familiar with poverty, looks into Pablo’s eyes. She is a little moved at heart. “How kind you are, Pablo!”

  “No, silly. He’s an old friend of mine, a friend since before the war. It’s just that he now has struck a bad patch. Really, he’s never had a good time.”

  “And he is a graduate, is he?”

  Pablo laughs. “Yes, darling, he is. Come, let’s talk of something else.”

  Laurita, for a change, falls back on the litany on which she started a fortnight back.

  “Do you love me a lot?”

  “A lot.”

  “More than anyone else?”

  “More than anyone else.”

  “Will you always love me?”

  “Always.”

  “Will you never leave me?”

  “Never.”

  “Even if I were going about as dirty as your friend?”

  “Don’t talk drivel.”

  Bending down to set the drink on the table, the waiter smiles. “There was a drop of White Label left, sir.”

  “You see?”

  The little flamenco singer has been kicked by a drunken whore. His only comment is prim: “Lord, what a time of day to be drunk! Doesn’t she leave anything for later?”

  The boy does not fall, he only hits his nose against the wall. From a safe distance he shouts a couple of home truths after the woman, gently pats his face, and resumes his singing:

  “A master tailor was

  Cutting a pair of trousers,

  When a gypsy lad came past,

  Who was a young shrimp seller.

  “ ‘Now listen, master tailor,

  Make them nice and tight for me,

  So, when I go to Mass,

  The gentry will look and see.’ “

  The boy has the face, not of a person, but of a domestic animal, of a poor dirty beast, a perverted farmyard beast. He is too young in years for cynicism—or resignation—to have slashed its mark across his face, and therefore it has a beautiful, candid stupidity, the expression of one who understands nothing of anything that happens. For the little gypsy, every thing that happens is a miracle: he was born by a miracle, he eats by a miracle, has lived by a miracle, and has the strength to sing by sheer miracle.

  Days are followed by nights and nights by days. The year has four seasons: spring, summer, autumn, and winter. There are truths one feels in one’s body, such as hunger or the need to make water.

  The four chestnuts are soon finished, and with his one remaining twenty-five centimo piece Martin buys a ticket on the underground to the Calle de Goya.

  ‘‘Here we go rushing on, underneath all the people sitting in their lavatories. Colón Station: top class, dukes, notaries, and a few guards from the mint. How aloof they are, reading their newspapers or staring down at the folds across their bellies. Serrano: gentlemen and ladies. Ladies don’t go out by night; this is a district where life only goes on till ten o’clock. Now they’ll be having their suppers. Velázquez: more ladies. Most agreeable. This is a very smart underground line. ‘Shall we go to the opera?’ ‘All right.’ ‘Did you go to the races last Sunday?’ ‘No.’ Goya: end of the show.”

  On the platform Martin pretends to limp, as he sometimes does.

  “Perhaps I’ll get supper at Filo’s—don’t push, Señora, there’s no hurry!—if not, well, it won’t be the last time.”

  Filo is his sister, the wife of Don Roberto González—that beast González, his brother-in-law calls him—who is a clerk at the City Council and a Republican of Alcalá Zamorra’s crowd.

  The González family lives at the end of the Calle de Ibiza in one of the small flats created after the Salmón Act. They manage to make ends meet, though it costs them much toil and trouble. She works till she drops, what with five small children and a little maid of eighteen to look after them, and he takes on whatever work he can get outside office hours, and wherever he can get it. At present he is in luck; he goes twice a month to a perfumery to do its bookkeeping and gets twenty-five pesetas for that, and he also keeps the books of a rather flashy bakery where he is paid thirty pesetas a month. At other times, when Fortune turns her back on him and he cannot find an odd job for his spare hours, Don Roberto grows melancholy and broody. Then he is bad-tempered.

  For some odd reason, one of those things that happen in life, the two brothers-in-law cannot stand each other. Martin says that Don Roberto is a greedy swine, and Don Roberto says that Martin is a savage, ill-bred sort of a swine. Goodness knows which of them is right. Only one thing is certain: poor Filo, caught between the devil and the deep sea, spends her time inventing ingenious devices to weather the storm as best she can.

  If her husband is not at home, she fries her brother an egg or warms a drop of white coffee for him. And if this is out of the question because Don Roberto, in his old coat and slippers, would make a terrible row, calling Martin a loafer and a parasite, Filo saves the leftovers of their meals for him in an old biscuit tin which she sends downstairs with the maid.

  “Is this right, Petrita?”

  “No, sir, it isn’t.”

  “Oh, my dear, if it weren’t that you make this nasty mess taste a little sweeter to me . . .”

  Petrita blushes.

  “Come on, sir, let me have the tin, it’s cold here.”

  “No colder for you than for the rest of us, you wretched girl.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  Martin responds at once: “Don’t take any notice of me. Do you know that you’ve become a real woman by now?”

  “Get along, stop it.”

  “All right, I’ll stop it, if you say so. Do you know what I’d give you if I hadn’t too much of a conscience?”

  “Stop it.”

  “A good fright!”

  “Stop it . . .”

  Tonight Filo’s husband happens not to be at home, and Martin can have his egg and drink his cup of coffee.

  “There isn’t any bread. We’ve even got to buy some on the black market for the children.”

  “It’s all right like this, thank you. You’re very good, Filo, you’re a real saint.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  Martin’s eyes mist over.

  “A saint, yes, but a saint married to a skinflint. Your husband�
�s a skinflint, Filo.”

  “That’s enough. He’s very decent.”

  “Have it your own way. After all, you’ve given him no less than five pups.”

  For a few moments there is silence. From the other side of the flat sounds the reedy voice of a child saying his prayer.

  Filo smiles. “That’s little Javier. Tell me, have you got any money?”

  “No.”

  “Here, take these two pesetas.”

  “No. What for? What can I do with two pesetas?”

  “That’s true enough. But you know, he who gives what he has. . . .“

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Have you ordered your clothes as I told you, Laurita?”

  “Yes, Pablo. The coat fits very well, you’ll see, you’ll like me in it.”

  Pablo Alonso dons the benevolent, bovine smile of a man who gets his women, not through his looks, but through his pocketbook.

  “I’m sure I shall. . . . At this time of the year you’ve got to wrap up, Laurita. You girls can well look smart and keep warm at the same time.”

  “Of course.”

  “It’s perfectly possible to do both. It seems to me you women go out with not enough clothes on. Just think if you were to fall ill now!”

  “Not now, Pablo. Now I’m taking great care of myself so that we can be very happy together. . . .”

  Pablo accepts her love.

  “I should like to be the prettiest girl of Madrid, then I’d please you for ever and ever. . . . You can’t imagine how jealous I am.”

  The chestnut vendor is talking with a lonely unmarried woman who has creased cheeks and reddened eyelids, as if she had weak eyes.

  “Lord, it’s cold!”

  “Yes, it’s a filthy night. One day I’m going to pass out just like a sparrow.”

  The lonely woman puts a peseta’s worth of roast chestnuts into her bag: her evening meal.

  “See you tomorrow, Señora Leocadia.”

  “Good night, Señorita Elvira, and sleep well.”

  The lonely woman walks on in the direction of the Plaza de Alonso Martínez. Two men have a conversation behind one of the windows of the café on the corner of the boulevard. Both are young, one twenty odd, the other thirty odd. The older one looks like a member of the jury for a literary award, the younger one looks like a novelist. It is evident that their conversation runs more or less on the following lines: “I’ve submitted the manuscript of my novel under the title ‘Teresa de Cepeda,’ and in it I’ve treated a few neglected aspects of that eternal problem which . . .”

  “Oh, yes. Will you pour me a drop of water, if you don’t mind?”

  “With pleasure. I’ve revised it several times and I think I may say with pride that there is not a single discordant word in the whole text.”

  “How interesting.”

  “I think so. I don’t know the quality of the works my colleagues have sent in, but in any case I feel confident that good sense and honest judgment . . .”

  “Rest assured, we proceed with exemplary fairness.”

  “I don’t doubt it for a moment. It does not matter if one is defeated, provided the work that gets the award has unmistakable qualities. What’s so discouraging is . . .”

  In passing the window, Señorita Elvira gives them a smile-simply out of habit.

  Another silence falls between brother and sister.

  “Are you wearing an undervest?”

  “Of course I’m wearing a vest. I’d like to see who would walk about in the street without a vest these days.”

  “A vest marked P.A.?”

  “A vest marked as I please.”

  “Forgive me.”

  Martin has rolled himself a cigarette with Don Roberto’s tobacco.

  “You’re forgiven, Filo. But don’t talk so tenderly. It makes me sick to be pitied.”

  Filo suddenly bridles.

  “Here you go again!”

  “No. Tell me, hasn’t Paco been round? He should have brought a parcel for me.”

  “He hasn’t been, but Petrita met him in the Calle de Goya and he told her he would be waiting for you at eleven at the bar in the Calle de Narváez.”

  “What’s the time?”

  “I don’t know. It must be past ten.”

  “And Roberto?”

  “He’ll be some time yet. Today was his day to go to the bakery, and he won’t be back till after half past ten.”

  A short silence, unexpectedly rich in gentle sweetness, envelops brother and sister. Then Filo speaks, infusing her voice with tenderness and looking into Martin’s eyes: “Have you remembered that I’ll be thirty-four tomorrow?”

  “That’s true!”

  “Didn’t you remember?”

  “No—why should I tell you a lie? But I’m glad you told me now. I want to give you a present.”

  “Don’t be foolish. As if you could go in for presents!”

  “Just a little something to remember me by,”

  The woman puts her hands on the knees of the man.

  “What I would like is that you write me a poem, as you used to years ago. Remember?”

  “Yes “

  Filo stares sadly down at the table. “Last year neither you nor Roberto wished me many happy returns. You both forgot.”

  She gives her voice a plaintive inflection; a good actress would have made it sound dark and heavy.

  “I cried that whole night. . . .”

  Martin gives her a kiss. “Don’t be a silly. Anyone would think you were going to be fourteen tomorrow.”

  “I have gotten old, haven’t I? Look at the wrinkles in my face. Now all that’s left is to wait till the children grow up, get older and older, and then die. Like Mamma, poor dear.”

  At the bakery Don Roberto carefully blots his entry of the last transaction in the ledger. Then he shuts it and tears up several sheets with the drafts of the accounts.

  The song about the tight trousers and the gentry at Mass sounds through the street.

  “Good-by, Señor Ramón. Till next time.”

  “Good luck to you, González, till next time. Many happy returns to your good lady, and may you all keep well.”

  “Thank you, Señor Ramón. The same to you.”

  On the way home, two men cross the building sites by the bullring.

  “I’m frozen stiff. It’s cold enough to wean a vulture.”

  “Hear, hear!”

  Brother and sister carry on their talk in the small kitchen. On the cold iron plaque of the coal range stands a little gas burner which is lit.

  “We’ve got no pressure up here at this time of the night. Downstairs they have a gas stove that eats up the lot.”

  A stewpot, not very large, is simmering on the gas. Half a dozen pilchards are laid out on the table, ready for the frying pan.

  “Roberto’s very fond of fried pilchards.”

  “What a queer taste. . . .”

  “Leave him alone. What harm has he done to you? Martin dear, why do you hate him so much?”

  “As far as I’m concerned . . . I don’t hate him, it’s he who hates me. And I notice it and defend myself. I know our ways are different.”

  Martin assumes a somewhat declamatory manner and sounds like a schoolmaster.

  “To him, all things are the same, he believes the best he can do is to muddle along. I disagree. To me, all things are not the same, on the contrary. I know that there are good things and bad things, things one is bound to do and things one has to avoid.”

  “Now, stop it and don’t make speeches.”

  “Indeed! That’s what I get for it.”

  The light flickers for an instant in the lamp bulb, flares up, and is gone. The timid bluish gas flame is slowly licking the sides of the stewpot.

  “Now, there!”

  “It sometimes happens at night. The light has been very bad lately.”

  “There’s no reason why the light shouldn’t be as good as ever it was, it’s simply that the company wants to force
the price up. Until they get their increase, they won’t let you have good light, mark my words. How much do you pay now?”

  “Fourteen to sixteen pesetas, it varies.”

  “Soon you’re going to pay twenty to twenty-five.”

  “Well, it can’t be helped.”

  “If that’s how you want things to improve, you’re on the right way!”

  Filo says nothing, and Martin gets a glimpse of one of those solutions that never work out. In the uncertain little glow from the gas flame, he has the vague, incorporeal air of a magician.

  The blackout surprises Celestino in the back room.

  ‘‘Now we’re in for it. Those black-souled rascals are capable of looting my whole place.”

  The black-souled rascals are his customers.

  Celestino tries to grope his way out when he overturns a crate full of fizzy lemonade. Clattering on the tiled floor, the bottles make an infernal noise.

  “Blast and damn the electric light!”

  From the door a voice asks: “What’s up?”

  “Nothing. Just smashing what’s mine.”

  Doña Visitación holds the opinion that it would be one of the most effective means towards a betterment of the working classes if the ladies of the Women’s Association were to organize pinochle competitions.

  “The workers,” she thinks, “have got to eat, too, even if many of them are so Red that they don’t deserve so much consideration.”

  Doña Visitación is a kindly woman; she does not believe that one should kill the workers by slow starvation.

  After a short while the light comes back, first reddening the filament so that it looks for seconds as if made of blood-filled little veins, and then suddenly filling the kitchen with radiance. The light is whiter and stronger than before, and the small packets, cups, and plates on the dresser stand out more clearly, as though they had filled out, as though they were newly made.

  “It’s all very pretty, Filo.”

  “It’s clean. . . .”

  “I should say so!”

  With curiosity, as if he had not seen it before, Martin glances round the kitchen. Then he gets up and takes his hat. He squeezes his butt out in the sink and throws it, most considerately, into the dust bin.