The Hive

by Camilo José Cela

  “Mummy!”

  Every time Señor Suárez enters the apartment, he calls to his mother from the door, and then his voice is a feeble imitation of the Tyrolese mountaineers one hears yodeling in films.

  “Mummy!”

  The light in the front room is burning, but nobody answers.

  “Mummy, Mummy!”

  Señor Suárez begins to feel apprehensive.

  “Mummy! Mummy! Oh, God! Oh, I can’t go in there. Mummy!”

  Urged by some strange force, Señor Suárez hurries down the passage. This strange force is probably curiosity.

  “Mummy!”

  With his hand almost on the door handle, Señor Suárez turns back and flees. From the entrance to the flat he calls once more: “Mummy! Mummy!”

  After this he notes that his heart is beating very fast. He runs down the stairs taking two steps at a time.

  “Take me to the Carrera de San Jerónimo, opposite Congress.”

  The taxi takes him to the Carrera de San Jerónimo, opposite the Congress Building.

  Mauricio Segovia is sick of seeing and hearing how Doña Rosa insults her waiters; he gets up and leaves the café.

  “I don’t know who’s more wretched, that dirty old walrus in black or her bunch of outsize boobies. I hope they gang up one day and give her a sound thrashing.”

  Mauricio Segovia is kind-hearted, like all redheads, and cannot bear an injustice. If he favors the idea that the waiters would do best to give Doña Rosa a good hiding, it is because he has seen her treat them badly; at least they would be quits, then, one and all, and could start a fresh score.

  “It’s simply a question of guts. Some people’s guts must be large and soft, like slugs, and others’ small and hard, like the flint of a lighter.”

  Don Ibrahim de Ostolaza y Bofarull faces the looking glass, lifts his head, strokes his beard, and proclaims: “Gentlemen of the Academy, I do not wish to hold your attention much longer—and so on, and so forth.” (Yes, this works out beautifully. . . . The head in an arrogant pose. . . . Must be careful with the cuffs; sometimes they stick out too much and look as if they were about to fly off.)

  Don Ibrahim lights his pipe and paces up and down the room. Then, with one hand on the back of a chair and the other holding his pipe aloft, as though it were the scroll habitually brandished by the statues of important gentlemen, he continues: “How could we admit, as Señor Clemente de Diego would have us do, that usucaption is the method of acquiring rights by exercising them? The inconsistency of this argument, Gentlemen of the Academy, leaps to the eye. Pardon my insistence and allow me to stress once more my old appeal to logic; without logic, nothing is possible in the world of ideas. (Here, no doubt, there will be murmurs of approval.) Is it not evident, Gentlemen, that in order to use anything, one must first possess it? I can read it in your glances that you agree. (Possibly a member of the audience says at this moment, in a low voice: ‘Of course, of course!’) Now, since in order to use a thing one must possess it, we may transfer this statement into the passive mode and assert that nothing can be used without previous possession!”

  Don Ibrahim makes a step towards the footlights and strokes, with an elegant gesture, the lapels of his dressing gown; that is to say, of his tail coat. Then he smiles.

  “Very well, Gentlemen of the Academy: As, in order to use a thing, one must first possess it, one also must first acquire it in order to possess it. Under what title does not matter; as I have stated, the only precondition is to acquire it, since nothing, absolutely nothing, can be possessed without having previously been acquired.” (Here I may well be interrupted by applause. I shall have to be ready for it.)

  Don Ibrahim’s voice sounds as solemn as a bassoon. On the other side of the flimsy partition wall, a husband just back from his day’s work asks his wife: “Has our girlie done her big business?”

  Don Ibrahim feels chilly and tightens his muffler. In the looking glass he sees himself wearing the black bow tie that goes with a dress coat in the evening.

  Don Mario de la Vega, the printer with the cigar, has taken the graduate—curriculum of 1903—to supper.

  “Now listen, d’you know what I say? Don’t come to see me tomorrow, come to start work. That’s how I like doing things, on the hop.”

  First the graduate feels somewhat put out. He would like to say that for him it would be better to start in a couple of days because it would give him time to settle one or two small matters; but he tells himself that he would only risk a “No” for an answer.

  “As you wish, and thank you very much. I shall try to do my best.”

  “That will be to your own advantage.”

  Don Mario de la Vega grins.

  “So that’s agreed. And for a good start, I invite you to supper with me.”

  Things grow misty before the graduate’s eyes.

  “But-well. . . .”

  The printer cuts him short.

  “Come on, then. That’s to say, if you haven’t got another engagement, of course. I don’t want to intrude.”

  “Oh no, no, I assure you, you wouldn’t intrude, quite the opposite. I have no engagement.”

  The graduate summons his courage and adds: “I’ve no other engagement tonight. I’m at your disposal.”

  In the restaurant, Don Mario makes quite a bore of himself, explaining that he likes to treat his subordinates well, that his subordinates are a happy crowd, that his subordinates are well off, that his subordinates look on him as on a father, and that his subordinates come to feel an affection for the printing works.

  “No business will ever prosper without co-operation between the chief and his subordinates. And if a business prospers, everybody profits, the boss and his subordinates. Just a moment, I’ll make a telephone call, I’ve got to leave a message.”

  After the peroration of his new boss, the graduate is amply aware that his role is that of a subordinate. Just in case he had not grasped it completely, Don Mario suddenly throws at him, halfway through the meal: “You start at sixteen pesetas the day, but I won’t hear of a labor contract, is that understood?”

  “I understand, sir.”

  Señor Suárez gets out of his taxi in front of Congress and turns into the Calle del Prado; he has to find the café where he is expected. To make his eagerness less obvious, Señor Suárez has decided not to drive up to the café door in his taxi.

  “Oh, my dear boy, I’m most upset. Something dreadful must have happened at home—Mummy didn’t answer when I called her.”

  On entering the café, Señor Suárez’s voice becomes more affected than ever; it sounds nearly like that of a tart in one of the bars where one is served by special waitresses.

  “Leave her alone and don’t worry. She’ll be asleep.”

  “Oh, do you think so, really?”

  “Quite sure. Old women drop off to sleep just like that.”

  His friend is a smart fellow with the air of a spiv, a green tie, oxblood shoes, and striped socks. His name is José Giménez Figueras; although he looks fearsome with his hard stubble and Moorish stare, his incongruous nickname is Pepe the Chip.

  Señor Suárez smiles and almost blushes. “How handsome you look, Pepe!”

  “Shut up, you beast, or people’ll hear you.”

  “Oh, you beast, you’re always so affectionate!”

  Señor Suárez makes a face. Then he falls into a brown study. “What can have happened to Mummy?”

  “Can’t you shut up?”

  Señor Giménez Figueras, alias the Chip, twists the wrist of Señor Suárez, alias Lady Photographer.

  “Listen, ducky, are we here to have fun, or do you want to play me the record about your darling mamma?”

  “Oh, Pepe, how right you are! But please, don’t be angry with me, it’s only that I’m shaking all over with fright.”

  Don Leoncio Maestre has reached two fundamental conclusions. One: It is evident that Señorita Elvira is not just anybody. It shows in her face. Señorita Elvira is a re
fined young woman of good family, who had some sort of row with her parents and ran away from them. And a good thing too, damn it all. Or is it right and proper for parents to keep their children in bondage all their lives, as many of them believe? No doubt Señorita Elvira left home because her family had made life impossible for her for years. The poor girl! Well, every human existence is a mystery, but the fact remains that every face is the mirror of the soul.

  “However could it occur to anyone that Elvira might be a common slut? For God’s sake, man!”

  Don Leoncio Maestre is a little vexed with himself.

  Don Leoncio’s second conclusion is that he has to go back to Doña Rosa’s café after supper, to see if Señorita Elvira is about again.

  “Who knows? Girls like her, who are sad and depressed because they’ve had a little trouble at home, are very partial to cafés where they can hear music.”

  Don Leoncio eats his supper in haste, gives himself a good brush-up, once again puts on his overcoat and hat, and departs for Doña Rosa’s café.

  Mauricio Segovia has supper with his brother Hermenegildo, who has come to Madrid to try to get the job of secretary to the National-Syndicalist Center in his home town.

  “How are you getting on with your things?”

  “Well, I’m getting on. . . . Quite well, really, I think.”

  “Have you had any fresh news?”

  “Yes, this afternoon I was with Don José María, you know, the man who’s private secretary to Don Rosendo, and he told me he’ll push the proposal as much as possible. Now we shall see what they’ll do among the lot of them. Do you think they’re going to appoint me?”

  “I should think so. Why shouldn’t they?”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes I feel I’ve got it in the bag and other times I feel that all I’ll get from them in the end is a kick in the pants. The worst of it is this hanging about, not knowing which card to play.”

  “Don’t get discouraged. God made us all of the same clay. And then you know, nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

  “That’s what I think.”

  Over the rest of their meal the brothers sit almost in silence.

  “Say, the Germans have run into trouble head on.”

  “Yes, it smells to me as if they’d burned their fingers.”

  Don Ibrahim de Ostolaza y Bofarull pretends not to hear the discussion on the little girl’s big business in his neighbor’s apartment. He fiddles again with his muffler, again places his hand on the back of the chair, and goes on.

  “Yes, Gentlemen of the Academy, I, who have the honor to express my opinions before you, believe that my arguments are watertight. (This ‘watertight’—wouldn’t it sound too popular, and rather uncouth?) Applying the conclusions from the syllogism previously used to the jurisprudential concept that concerns us (applying the conclusions from the syllogism previously used to the jurisprudential concept that concerns us—this might be a bit long-winded . . .), we may assert that, just as we must first possess a thing in order to use it, we must equally, in order to exercise a right of whatever nature, possess this right first.” (Pause.)

  The tenant next door asks about the color of the little girl’s big business. His wife tells him it was the normal color.

  “And now, may I remind this distinguished gathering that a right cannot be possessed unless it has been previously acquired. I believe my words to be as clear as the flowing waters of a crystal brook. (Voices: ‘Hear, hear!’) Then if a right must first be acquired in order to be exercised, since one cannot exercise what one does not possess (‘Quite right!’), how is it thinkable, by the rules of strict logic, that there should exist a mode of acquisition by use, as Professor Diego, a man famed for much original thought, would have it, when this would be tantamount to the proposition that a right can be exercised before having been acquired, hence before being possessed?” (Insistent murmurs of approval.)

  Behind the partition, the neighbor asks: “Did you have to give her a dose?” [2]

  “No, I had it all ready, but then she did it nicely on her own. Look, I had to buy a tin of sardines because your mother told me the oil from the tin is better for that sort of thing.”

  “Never mind, we’ll have them for supper and that’s that. The story about the sardine oil is just one of those things of Mother’s.”

  Husband and wife smile affectionately at each other, they hug and they kiss. There are days when everything goes well. The little girl’s constipation had threatened to become a permanent worry.

  Don Ibrahim considers that in the face of the insistent murmurs of approval, he ought to make a short pause, inclining his forehead and gazing, as though far away in his thoughts, at the portfolio and the glass of water.

  “It seems redundant, Gentlemen of the Academy, to explain how necessary it is to remember that the use of an object—not the use or exercise of the right to use it, since this right does not yet exist!—which leads, by prescription, to its possession by the occupier in his capacity of owner, is a situation de facto, but never de jure.” (Very good!)

  Don Ibrahim smiles triumphantly and stays so for a few moments, without a thought in his head. At bottom—and on the surface as well—Don Ibrahim is a very fortunate man. What if nobody pays any attention to him? It does not matter. That’s what history is for.

  “Finally and in the long run, history metes out justice. And if in this base world genius is neglected, why should we worry, when within a hundred years we shall none of us have a hair left on our heads?”

  Don Ibrahim is roused from his gentle stupor by a violent, thundery, frantic ringing of his doorbell.

  “Disgraceful—what a riot! Some people are quite uncivilized. It would put the lid on it if they’d come to the wrong door.”

  Don Ibrahim’s wife, who had been knitting next to the brazier, while her husband held forth, gets up to open the door.

  Don Ibrahim lends an attentive ear. It is the man from the fifth floor who has been ringing.

  “Is your husband in, Señora?”

  “Yes, he is, he’s rehearsing his lecture.”

  “May I see him?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  The lady raises her voice: “Ibrahim, it’s our neighbor from upstairs.”

  Don Ibrahim replies: “Show him in, dear, show him in, don’t keep him out there.”

  Don Leoncio Maestre is pale.

  “Let’s see, my dear neighbor, what has brought you to my modest hearth?”

  Don Leoncio Maestre’s voice trembles: “She’s dead!”

  “Eh?”

  “I say she’s dead.”

  “What?”

  “She is, sir, she’s dead. I touched her forehead and it was ice-cold.”

  Don Ibrahim’s wife opens her eyes wide.

  “But who?”

  “The old lady next door.”

  “Next door?”

  “Yes.”

  “Doña Margot?”

  “Yes.”

  Don Ibrahim cuts in.

  “The mother of the ‘queer’?”

  Just as Don Leoncio answers “Yes,” Don Ibrahim’s wife reprimands her husband: “For goodness sake, Ibrahim, don’t talk like that!”

  “And she’s dead, definitely?”

  “Yes, Don Ibrahim, stone dead. She’s been strangled with a towel.”

  “With a towel?”

  “How frightful!”

  Don Ibrahim begins to issue orders, rush to and fro, and beg everyone to keep calm.

  “Genoveva, get on the telephone and call the police.”

  “What’s their number?”

  “How should I know! Look it up in the book, dear. And you, friend Maestre, keep watch on the stairs and don’t let anyone up or down. You’ll find a stick on the hatrack there. I’m going to notify the doctor.”

  When the door of the doctor’s flat opens to him, Don Ibrahim asks with unruffled calm: “Is the doctor at home?”

  “Yes, sir, please wait a moment.”

&nb
sp; Don Ibrahim is well aware that the doctor is at home. When he comes out to see why he is wanted, Don Ibrahim, apparently not quite sure where to begin, gives him a smile and asks: “How’s your little girl? Her tummy all right by now?”

  After supper, Don Mario de la Vega stands a coffee to Eloy Rubio Antofagasta—the graduate, curriculum of 1903. It is clear that he means to exploit his position.

  “Would you care for a good cigar?”

  “Yes, sir, thank you very much.”

  “My word, you don’t pass by much, do you?”

  Eloy Rubio Antofagasta smiles humbly. “No, sir.” After which he adds: “It’s because I’m so glad to have found a job, you see.”

  “And to have had supper?”

  “Yes, sir, and to have had supper, too.”

  Señor Suárez is smoking a cigar to which he has been treated by Pepe the Chip.

  “Oh, how nice it tastes! It has your own aroma, dear.”

  Señor Suárez looks deeply into his friend’s eyes.

  “Let’s go and have some sherry, shall we? I don’t feel like having supper. When I’m with you, I lose my appetite.”

  “Right, let’s go.”

  “Will you let me stand treat?”

  Arms entwined, the Lady Photographer and the Chip walk up the Calle del Prado, on the left-hand side where there are a few billiard saloons. Several people turn their heads on seeing them.

  “Shall we drop in here for a bit, to watch postures?”

  “No, leave it alone. The other day they almost bashed my teeth in with a cue.”

  “What foul beasts! Some people have no culture at all, I’m sure. What savages! It would have given you an awful shock, wouldn’t it, Chiplet?”

  Pepe the Chip gets angry. “Now listen, you can call your mother ‘chiplet,’ not me.”

  This gives Señor Suárez an attack of hysteria. “Oh, oh, my poor mummy! Oh, what can have happened to her! Oh, God!”

  “Will you be quiet?”