“Forgive me, Pepe, I won’t mention my mamma to you again. Oh, the poor dear! Listen, Pepe, will you buy me a flower? I’d like you to buy me a red camellia. Going with you, it’s best to wear a keep-off sign. . . .”
Pepe the Chip smiles with great pride and buys a red camellia for Señor Suárez.
“Put it in your buttonhole.”
“Wherever you like.”
After establishing that the lady is dead, quite dead, the doctor looks after Don Leoncio Maestre, for the poor man is suffering from a nervous attack, is almost senseless, and kicks about in all directions.
“Oh, doctor, what if this one dies on us now?”
Doña Genoveva Cuadrado de Ostolaza is profoundly alarmed.
“Don’t worry, madam, there’s nothing much the matter with him—a severe shock and that’s all.”
Lying back in an easy chair, Don Leoncio shows the whites of his eyes and foams at the mouth. Meanwhile, Don Ibrahim has organized the residents of the house.
“Keep calm, above all keep perfectly calm. Let every head of household make a conscientious search of his apartment. Let us all serve the cause of justice by lending it all the support and co-operation within our power.”
“Yes, sir, very well put. At moments like these it’s best if one man commands and the rest of us obey.”
The tenants of the house of the murder, being Spaniards to a man, contribute, each in his fashion, a lapidary phrase.
“Would you make a cup of lime-blossom tea for him?”
“Yes, doctor.”
Don Mario and Eloy, the graduate, both agree to go to bed early.
“Okay, fellow. And tomorrow we’ll get going, huh?”
“Yes, indeed, sir, you’ll see how satisfied you’re going to be with my work.”
“I hope so. Tomorrow at nine you can start showing me. Where are you going to?”
“Home. Where else should I go? Home to bed. Will you go to bed early, too?”
“Have done so all my life. I’m a man of regular habits.”
Eloy Rubio Antofagasta feels like toadying. Being a toady is, in all probability, his natural condition.
“Well, if you’ve nothing against it, Señor Vega, I’ll see you home first.”
“Just as you like, friend Eloy, and much obliged to you. One can see you know well enough that a few more cigarettes will come your way.”
“That’s not the reason, Señor Vega, believe me.”
“Come on and don’t be a fool, man. As the bishop said to the monk, we’ve all been cooks before being friars.”
Although it is a rather cold night, Don Mario and his new proofreader take a stroll, with the collars of their coats turned up. If Don Mario is allowed to speak of his favorite subjects, he heeds neither cold nor heat nor hunger.
After quite a long walk, Don Mario and Eloy Rubio Antofagasta run into a huddle of people standing at the entrance of a street where two policemen let nobody pass.
“What has happened?”
A woman turns round: “I don’t know, but people say there’s been a murder, two old ladies stabbed to death.”
“Good Lord!”
A man intervenes: “Don’t exaggerate, madam. It wasn’t two ladies, only one.”
“‘And isn’t that enough for you?”
“No, ma’am, it’s too much for me. But if it had been two, I’d find it even more.”
A young lad joins the group.
“What’s up?”
Another woman informs him: “They say there’s been a murder, a young girl strangled with a turkish towel. They say she was an actress.”
The two brothers Mauricio and Hermenegildo decide to go on a spree.
“I tell you what, tonight’s just the night for having a bit of fun. If they give you that job, we’ll have it celebrated in advance, and if they don’t, it’s just too bad. If we don’t go on the town, all you’ll do is turn things round and round in your head the whole night. You’ve done what you can, now all that’s left is wait and see what the others do.”
Hermenegildo is preoccupied.
“I suppose you’re right. Like this, thinking about the same thing all day long, the only result I get is that I’m a bundle of nerves. Let’s go where you like, you know Madrid best.”
“Do you feel like having a few glasses of sherry?”
“Yes, let’s. But—just like this, on our own?”
“We’ll find company, don’t you worry. At this time of the night there’s no shortage of birds.”
Mauricio Segovia and his brother Hermenegildo go bar-hopping from one bar to the next in the Calle de Echegaray. Mauricio is the guide, Hermenegildo follows in his wake and pays.
“Let’s take it that we’re celebrating my getting the job. The drinks are on me.”
“Agreed. And if you haven’t enough left to get home, tell me, and I’ll help you out.”
In a cheap tavern in the Calle de Fernández y González, Hermenegildo jabs his elbow into his brother.
“Look at those two, they’re having a petting party.”
Mauricio turns round.
“Tut, tut! And poor Marguerite Gautier there doesn’t seem too well, poor girl. Just look at the red camellia in her buttonhole! Really, brother mine, they’ve got a nice collection here.”
From the other end of the room a mighty voice roars: “Don’t be too greedy, Lady Photographer, leave something for later on!”
Pepe the Chip rises from his seat.
“Let’s see if somebody wants to get slung out of this place.”
Don Ibrahim explains to the judge-magistrate: “You see, Your Honor, we have been unable to throw any light on the matter. Every one of the tenants in this house has searched his own apartment, and none of us have found anything worth our attention.”
A tenant from the first floor, Don Fernando Cazuela, solicitor, looks at the floor. He has indeed found something.
The magistrate puts Don Ibrahim through an interrogation: “Let’s go step by step. Had the deceased any family?”
“Yes, Your Honor, a son.”
“Where is he?”
“Pooh, how should anyone know? He’s a man of bad habits, Your Honor.”
“A womanizer?”
“Well, no, Your Honor, not that.”
“A gambler, maybe?”
“Well, no, not to my knowledge.”
The magistrate looks at Don Ibrahim. “A drinker?”
“No, no, not a drinker either.”
The magistrate forces a little smile.
“Tell me, then, what do you call bad habits? Collecting stamps?”
Don Ibrahim is piqued.
“No, sir, I call a number of things bad habits, for instance, being a pansy.”
“Ah, I see. The son of the deceased is a homosexual.”
“Yes, Your Honor, a pansy through and through.”
“I see. Well, gentlemen, thank you all very much. If you please, go back to your quarters. If I need you, I shall send for you.”
Obediently the tenants go back to their apartments. When Don Fernando Cazuela enters his apartment, first floor on the right, he finds his wife in a flood of tears.
“Oh, Fernando, kill me if you like, but don’t ever let our little boy know anything about it.”
“My dear girl, I wouldn’t dream of killing you with the whole Magistrate’s Court milling about in this house. Come on, go to bed. The only thing it needs to make it all quite perfect would be for your lover to turn out to have murdered Doña Margot.”
By now the crowd in the street is several hundred strong. For its amusement, a small gypsy boy of about six sings flamenco songs which he accompanies by clapping his hands.
He is an attractive little gypsy, but we have seen rather a lot of him. . . .
“A master tailor was
Cutting a pair of trousers,
When a gypsy lad came past,
Who was a young shrimp seller.”
When Doña Margot is carried out of the house on
her way to the mortuary, the boy stops his singing reverently.
Chapter Three
AFTER lunch Don Pablo goes to a quiet café in the Calle de San Bernardo to have his game of chess with Don Francisco Robles y López-Patón, and leaves there between five and half past to fetch Doña Pura for the little walk that invariably leads them to Doña Rosa’s café, where he drinks his cup of chocolate, though he always finds that it tastes a little watery.
At the next table, by the window, four men play dominoes: Don Roque, Don Emilio Rodríguez Ronda, Don Tesifonte Ovejero, and Señor Ramón.
Don Francisco Robles y López-Patón, a specialist in venereal diseases, has a daughter named Amparo who is married to Don Emilio Rodríguez, also a physician. Don Roque is the husband of Doña Visi, Doña Rosa’s sister; and according to his sister-in-law, he is the worst man in the world. Don Tesifonte Ovejero y Solano, a captain in the Army Veterinary Corps, is a nice little country dandy, rather shy, who wears a ring with an emerald. And finally there is Señor Ramón, a baker who owns a biggish bakehouse not far away.
These six cronies who meet every afternoon are quiet, serious men, with their harmless peccadilloes; they get on well together, have no rows, and sometimes have talks with each other from table to table, apart from the patter belonging to the games, which do not always hold their interest.
Don Francisco has just lost a bishop.
“This doesn’t look too good.”
“Not too good? If I were you, I’d give up.”
“Well, I won’t.”
Don Francisco looks at his son-in-law, who is paired with the vet.
“Tell me, Emilio, how’s the girl?”
The girl is Amparo.
“She’s well. She’s really quite well now. Tomorrow I’ll let her get up.”
“Delighted to hear it. Her mother will be round at your place this evening.”
“That’s fine. Will you be coming?”
“I don’t know yet. We’ll see if I can.”
Don Emilo’s mother-in-law is called Doña Soledad, Doña Soledad Castro de Robles.
Señor Ramón has at long last laid down the double-five with which he had been stuck. Don Tesifonte produces the time-honored joke: “Lucky at games. . . .”
“And the other way round, captain, if you get me.”
Don Tesifonte makes a grimace while the others laugh. To tell the truth, Don Tesifonte is lucky neither with women nor at dominoes. He spends his whole day within his four walls and only comes to have his little game of dominoes.
Don Pablo, sure of his victory, is distrait and pays no attention to the chessboard.
“Say, Roque, your sister-in-law was in a foul temper last night.”
Don Roque dismisses this with a gesture, as though to say that he is in possession of all the facts anyway.
“She always is. I think she was born with a foul temper. My dear sister-in-law is a nasty creature. If it hadn’t been for my girls, I should have told her some juicy home truths long ago. But after all, you know: ‘Patience, and shuffle the cards. . . .’ Fat, boozy old hags like her generally don’t last long.”
Don Roque is convinced that, if he only sits it out, the café La Delicia will belong to his daughters, and a good many other things. At bottom Don Roque isn’t far wrong. The inheritance is certainly worth putting up with a lot, even the trouble of waiting fifty years. Paris is well worth a Mass.
Doña Matilde and Doña Asunción meet every afternoon immediately after lunch at a dairy in the Calle de Fuencarral, where they are friendly with the owner, Doña Ramona Bragado, a very entertaining old woman with dyed hair, who had been an actress ‘way back in the days of General Prim. Doña Ramona was once the heroine of a major scandal when she was left a legacy of fifty thousand pesetas by the Marquis de Casa Peña Zurana, the well-known senator who was twice Undersecretary of Finance. He had been her lover for at least twenty years. As a woman of some common sense she did not waste the money, but bought the lease of the dairy, quite prosperous, with steady, faithful customers. In addition, Doña Ramona, being nobody’s fool, makes money out of anything that comes along; she is the sort that draws blood out of a stone. One of her most profitable branches of commerce is to act as go-between and procuress under cover of her dairy. Here she whispers cleverly gilded lies into the ears of a young girl who is longing for a nice handbag; there she dips into the pockets of one of those idle young gentlemen who hate to bestir themselves and expect to get everything served on a silver tray. There are people who can turn their hand to anything.
This afternoon it is a gay little party at the dairy.
“Will you bring us some buns, Doña Ramona—on me?”
“But, my dear, what’s this? Have you won at the lottery?”
“Well, there’s lotteries and lotteries, Doña Ramona. I’ve had a letter from Bilbao, from Paquita. Look what she says here.”
“Let’s hear, what is it?”
“You read it, my sight’s getting worse every day. Read the bit here down at the bottom.”
Doña Ramona puts on her glasses and reads: “ ‘My friend’s wife had died of pernicious anemia.’ Goodness, Doña Asunción, then it’s no wonder—”
“Go on, go on.”
“ ‘And my friend says we shall no longer take precautions, and if I get with child, he is going to marry me.’ Well, my dear, you are a lucky woman!”
“Yes, God be praised, I’ve been pretty lucky with the girl.”
“And her friend’s that professor, isn’t he?”
“That’s right. Don José María de Samas, professor of psychology, logic, and ethics.”
“Congratulations, my dear. You’ve placed her well in the world.”
“Not too badly.”
Doña Matilde, too, has her piece of good news; it is nothing definite such as the story with Paquita may turn out to be, but good news all the same. Her son, Florentino de Mare Nostrum, has been offered a very good contract for one of the halls of the Paralelo in Barcelona, in a high-class show entitled Melodies of the Race, for which official backing can be expected because of its patriotic background.
“It will be a great relief for me if he’s working in a big city. People in small towns have no education, sometimes they even throw stones at artists of his kind. As if they were different from others! One day at Jadraque it was so bad the Civil Guards had to intervene. If they hadn’t got there in time, my poor, poor boy would have been skinned alive by those soulless savages who love nothing better than a row and shouting vulgar things at the best artists. My poor angel—what a shock that was for him!”
Doña Ramona quite agrees.
“Oh, yes, in a large capital like Barcelona he’ll be much better off. There his art will be more appreciated and they’ll respect it more, and all that.”
“Indeed they will. Why, if he tells me he’s going on a tour in the provinces, it gives my heart quite a turn. Poor dear Florentino, being so sensitive and having to play to such ignorant audiences so full of prejudice, as he says. It’s simply dreadful!”
“That’s true, but after all, things are looking up now.”
“Yes—if it lasts.”
Laurita and Pablo usually have their coffee in an exclusive bar behind the Gran Via where a casual passer-by would hardly dare to enter. To get to the tables—a mere half dozen, each with its tablecloth and a vase of flowers in the center—you have to walk past the bar counter which is nearly deserted, except for a couple of young ladies sipping brandy and four or five scatter-brained youngsters gambling their fond parents’ money away at dice.
“Hullo, Pablo. Nowadays you don’t speak to anybody any more. Of course, since you’re in love. . . .”
“Hullo, Mari Tere. Where’s Alfonso?”
“With his family, dear. He’s quite a reformed character these days.”
Laurita wrinkles her nose. When they sit down at the table, she does not grasp Pablo’s hands as usual. At bottom, Pablo feels something like relief.
“Tel
l me, who’s that girl?”
“A friend of mine.”
Laurita turns half sad, half captious. “A friend, just like I am now?”
“No, dear.”
“But you did say a friend.”
“An acquaintance, then.”
“Oh, an acquaintance . . . Pablo, listen.”
All at once Laurita’s eyes are full of tears.
“What is it?”
“I’m so terribly unhappy.”
“Why?”
“Because of that woman.”
“Now listen, my child, stop it and don’t be a nuisance.”
Laurita heaves a sigh.
“There you are, you’re scolding me on top of it all.”
“No, pet, not on top and not at bottom. Don’t be more tiresome than you can help.”
“You see!”
“I see what?”
“Now you’re scolding me.”
Pablo changes tactics.
“No, darling, I’m not scolding you. It’s just that these little displays of jealousy get on my nerves. There’s nothing one can do about it. It’s been the same all my life.”
“The same with all your girl friends?”
“No, Laurita. With some more and with others less.”
“And with me?”
“With you more than with the rest.”
“Of course, because you don’t love me. One’s only jealous if one’s very much in love, very, very much, like I am with you.”
Pablo stares at Laurita with an expression on his face as though staring at a most peculiar insect. Laurita turns affectionate.
“Listen, Pablito.”
“Don’t call me Pablito. What is it?”
“Oh, Pablo, you’re as prickly as a hedgehog.”
“Maybe, but don’t go on saying it; say it differently for a change. It’s something I’ve been told by too many people already.”
Laurita smiles.
“But I don’t mind if you’re prickly. I like you just as you are. Only I’m so frightfully jealous. Pablo, if you stop loving me one day, will you tell me?”
“Yes.”
“The thing is, one can’t really believe you. You’re such liars, you men.”
The Hive Page 11
