The Hive

by Camilo José Cela

  “Maybe. Any other father would have sent you to hell a long time ago. All right, but what I say is, ‘Will you ever be a notary?’ ”

  “Rome wasn’t built in a day, Dad.”

  “No, son, but look here, in seven years or more they’d have had time to build a second town next to it, wouldn’t they?”

  Ventura smiles. “Don’t you worry, Dad, I shall be public notary in Madrid. Have a Lucky?”

  “Eh?”

  “An American cigarette?”

  “Phew, no. I prefer my own, thank you.”

  What Don Ventura Aguado Despojols thinks is that a son who smokes Virginian tobacco like a fine young lady will never come to be a public notary. All the notaries he knows are serious, severe, cautious, and weighty men, and all smoke black tobacco.

  “D’you know your Castan by heart yet?”

  “Not by heart, that doesn’t make a good impression.”

  “And the Civil Code?”

  “Yes—ask me anything you like from any section you like.”

  “I was only curious.”

  Ventura Aguado Sans can do what he likes with his father. He bewilders him with phrases like “plan of campaign” and “out of focus.”

  The second of Doña Visi’s daughters, Visitación, has recently quarreled with the young man with whom she had been going for a year. His name is Manuel Cordel Esteban, and he is a medical student. For the last week the girl has been going out with another lad, also a medical student. The king is dead, long live the king!

  Young Visi has an intuitive gift for love. The first day, she let her new escort press her hand, quite calmly, as they were saying good-by at the door of her house; they had been having tea and cakes at Garabay’s. On the second day, she let him take her arm to cross the streets; they had been dancing and taking a light meal at the Casablanca. On the third day, she surrendered her hand and let him hold it the whole evening; they went to the Café María Cristina to listen to the music and gaze wordlessly at one another.

  “That’s the classic thing when a man and a woman are falling in love,” he made bold to say, after much pondering.

  On the fourth day, the girl did not object to his holding her arm; she pretended not to notice.

  “No, not to the cinema. Tomorrow!”

  On the fifth day, in the cinema, he kissed her hand, furtively. On the sixth, in the Retiro Park on an awfully cold day, she gave the excuse that is no excuse, the excuse of a woman who has lowered the drawbridge: “No, no, please. Let go of me, be good, I’ve forgotten my lipstick, people might see us. . . .“

  She was hot and flushed, and her nostrils quivered with every breath she took. It cost her an immense effort to refuse him, but she thought that it was better to leave it there, that it was more elegant.

  On the seventh day, in a box at the Bilbao Cinema, he put his arm round her waist and whispered into her ear: “We’re quite alone now, Visi . . . Visi darling . . . my love. . . .”

  And she, letting her head droop on his shoulder, spoke in a small voice, a tiny broken voice heavy with emotion: “Yes, Alfredo. I’m so happy!”

  Alfredo Angulo Echevarría felt his temples throbbing dizzily, as though with fever, and his heart beating at an unaccustomed rate. “The suprarenal glands; that’s my suprarenal glands discharging their adrenalin.”

  The third of the girls, Esperanza, is light as a swallow and shy as a dove. There is more to her than meets the eye, as there is to anyone, but she knows that her role as future wife sits well on her, and she talks very little, always in a gentle voice, and says to everyone: “As you like, I’ll do just as you like.”

  Her fiancé, Agustín Rodríguez Silva, is fifteen years older than she and owns a druggist’s shop in the Calle Mayor.

  The girl’s father is delighted; he considers his future son-in-law an efficient man. So does her mother.

  “Lagarto soap, prewar quality, think of it—nobody else has got it. But he brings me everything, absolutely everything I ask for, and in double-quick time.”

  Her friends regard her with a certain envy. What a lucky woman—Lagarto soap!

  Doña Celia is ironing sheets when the telephone rings.

  “Hullo?”

  “Doña Celia, is that you? Don Francisco speaking.”

  “Oh, Don Francisco! Have you any good news to tell?”

  “Nothing very much, I’m afraid. Will you be at home?”

  “Of course. You know I never stir from here.”

  “Right, then I’ll be round about nine.”

  “Whenever you like, I’m always at your service. Shall I send for. . . .”

  “No, don’t send for anybody.”

  “Very well.”

  Doña Celia hangs up the receiver, snaps her fingers, and goes to the kitchen to gulp a little glass of arm. There are days when everything works out well. The trouble is that there are other days when things go wrong, and you end without having earned enough for a box of matches.

  As soon as Doña Matilde and Doña Asunción are out of the dairy, Doña Ramona Bragado puts on her coat and goes to the Calle de la Madera, where she is trying to enroll a young girl working as a packer at a printer’s.

  “Is Victorita about?”

  “Yes, here she is.”

  Behind a large table Victorita is busy making book parcels.

  “Hullo, Victorita dear. Would you drop in at the dairy later? My nieces will be round, we’re going to play cards, and I think we’ll have a nice time and a bit of fun.”

  Victorita reddens.

  “Well, yes. Yes, I’ll come if you want me to.”

  Victorita is dangerously near to tears. She knows where she is heading. Victorita is not yet eighteen, but well developed for her age; she looks more like a woman between twenty and twenty-two.

  The girl has a young man who was discharged from the army because of T.B. The poor fellow is unable to work and he spends the whole day in bed waiting for Victorita to drop in after work.

  “How do you feel today?”

  “Better.”

  When his mother left the bedroom, Victorita would go over to his bed and kiss him.

  “Don’t kiss me, or you’ll catch it.”

  “I don’t care, Paco. Don’t you like kissing me?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Then that’s the only thing that matters. For you I wouldn’t mind doing anything. . . .”

  One day Victorita looked so pale and haggard that he asked: “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Nothing. I’ve been thinking.”

  “Thinking what?”

  “Well, I’ve been thinking that you could get rid of this trouble if you had medicine and plenty of food.”

  “Maybe, but there you are.”

  “I can get the money.”

  “You?”

  Victoria’s voice grew thick as if she had been drunk.

  “Yes, I can. A young girl is always worth money—it doesn’t matter if she isn’t pretty.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Victorita was quite calm.

  “Just what I said. If it means that you get well again, I’ll go with the first rich man who wants me as a mistress.”

  Paco went a little red, and his eyelids began to flutter. Victorita was slightly shocked when he answered: “All right.”

  But at bottom, Victorita loved him all the more for it.

  At the café Doña Rosa is fit to be tied. The scene she made with López because of the liqueur bottles has been an epic; you wouldn’t get many bust-ups like it in a bushel.

  “Don’t go on like that, madam. I’ll pay for the bottles.”

  “What? Of course you will, what else? A fine thing it would be if they had to come out of my own pocket, on top of it all. But it isn’t only that. What about the terrible scandal? What about the shock to the customers? And the bad impression of all that stuff rolling on the floor and getting spilt? What about that, eh? How’s that to be paid for? Who’s going to pay me for that? You an
imal! That’s what you are, an animal, and a dirty Red, and a rascal! It’s my fault for not reporting the lot of you to the police. You may well say I’m kind! Where were your eyes? What hussy were you dreaming of? You and the rest, you’re like oxen, you don’t know where you put your clumsy feet.”

  White as a sheet, Consorcio López tries to pacify her: “But it was an unfortunate accident, it wasn’t intentional.”

  “Whatever next, man? Of course! If you’d done it on purpose that would have been the limit. It would have been the last straw! What, have a little runt of a manager—for that’s what you are—smash my thing here in my café, right under my nose, simply because he wants to and it suits him? No, it hasn’t come to that yet, but one day it will, I can feel it in my bones. Only you and those others won’t be here to see it. The day I get enough I’ll send you straight to jail, one after the other, the whole pack of you. And you first, because you’re a rascal. Lucky for you that I don’t want to, because I would if I were as spiteful as you.”

  While the row is at its height and the whole café listens in silent awe to the shouts of the proprietress, a woman enters and sits down at a table facing the counter. She is tall, plump, not very young, but well preserved, handsome, and somewhat flashy. On seeing her, López loses what little color there is left in his face: after ten years, Marujita turns out to be a splendid, full-blooded, luxuriant woman, overflowing with health and vigor. Anyone who saw her in the street would put her down as what she is: a rich peasant, well settled in marriage, well dressed, well fed, accustomed to be the boss and to do as she pleases.

  “Are you the owner of this café?”

  “At your service.”

  “Then it was you I wanted to see. May I introduce myself: I’m Señora de Gutiérrez, Doña María Ranero de Gutiérrez. Here’s my card with the address. My husband and I live in Tomelloso in the province of Ciudad Real. That’s where we have our estate, a few farms that give us our income.”

  “I see.”

  “Yes, and now we’ve had enough of the country, we want to realize our property and come and live in Madrid. Down there things have gotten very bad since the war. There’s always such a lot of envy and ill will and so on, you know.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Well, there it is. And then, the boys are getting big now, and all the rest of it, the worry about school and getting them started on a career, the usual thing. If we don’t come to town with them, we shall lose them for good.”

  “Yes, that’s quite true. Have you got so many sons, then?”

  Señora Gutiérrez is not quite truthful. “There are five of them now. The two eldest are just on ten, they’re quite grown up. They’re twins, you know, the children from my first marriage. I was left a widow when I was very young. Here they are, look.”

  The faces of the two little boys dressed up for their first Communion remind Doña Rosa of somebody, but she can’t think of whom.

  “And of course, now we’ve come to Madrid we want to have a look round and see what’s doing, more or less.”

  “Naturally.”

  Doña Rosa has calmed down, she seems a different woman. Like all those who like to shout their heads off, she can be smoothed out like a kid glove by anyone who shows that he or she might shout even louder.

  “My husband’s been thinking that it mightn’t be a bad thing to have a café. One ought to do quite well out of it if one works hard.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, yes, we’re thinking of buying a café if the owner’s reasonable with the price.”

  “I’m not selling.”

  “Señora, nobody’s said anything to you. Anyway, one can never tell. Everything depends. All I say to you is: think it over. At the moment my husband’s ill, he’s going to have an operation for an anal fistula, but in any case we intend to stay in Madrid for some time. As soon as he’s better, he’ll come and talk to you himself. The money belongs to both of us, jointly, but you understand, it’s he who looks after everything. In the meantime think about it, if you like. Nobody’s committed to anything, nothing’s been signed, and so on.”

  Word that there is a lady who wants to buy the café runs from table to table like a train of gunpowder.

  “Which one?”

  “The one over there.”

  “She looks rich.”

  “My dear chap, if she wants to buy a café she can’t be living on a pension.”

  When the news reaches the counter, López, who is in any case on his last legs, knocks over another bottle. Doña Rosa swings round, chair and all. Her voice resounds like a cannon shot: “You animal! You’re an animal!”

  Marujita grasps the opportunity to send López a little smile. She does it so discreetly that nobody notices. Probably not López either.

  “Now look at that! If you end up with a café on your hands, you’d better be careful with this herd of cattle.”

  “They smash a lot, don’t they?”

  “Everything you let them touch. To my mind they do it on purpose. It’s sheer sordid envy. They’re rotten with it.”

  Martin is talking to Nati Robles, a girl who used to be his colleague in the days of the Republican Students’ Association. He had met her a while ago in the Red de San Luis. Martin was staring at a jeweler’s shop window, and she was in the shop to get the clasp of a bracelet repaired. Nati seemed a stranger; she had changed out of recognition. Gone was the thin, lanky, slovenly girl of undergraduate days who looked rather like a suffragette, with her low heels and face innocent of make-up. This was a slender, elegant, well-dressed, well-shod young lady who used cosmetics with coquetry and considerable skill. It was she who recognized him.

  “Marco!”

  Martin looked at her timorously. Martin is always a little afraid of looking into faces that seem somehow familiar but which he cannot identify. He thinks the people are going to pounce on him and start saying unpleasant things. Probably, if he were better fed, he would not have this reaction.

  “I’m Nati Robles, don’t you remember? Nati Robles!” Martin was struck dumb, stupified. “You?”

  “Yes, dear, me.”

  A feeling of great happiness overcame Martin. “But how marvelous, Nati. How well you look! Like a duchess.”

  Nati laughed.

  “I’m not, worse luck. And it isn’t because I wouldn’t want to. As you see me here I’m still unmarried and unengaged, as I used to be. Are you in a hurry?”

  He hesitated a moment. “Not really. The truth is, you know, that I’m a man who never has anything worth while hurrying for.”

  Nati took his arm. “Still the same old silly.”

  Martin felt embarrassed and tried to slip away. “People might see us.”

  Nati burst into a peal of laughter which made people turn round and stare. Nati had a lovely voice, high, musical, exhilarating, full of gaiety—a voice like a clear, delicate little bell.

  “Sorry, my dear, I didn’t realize that it might put you in a spot.”

  Nati pressed her shoulder against Martin’s and did not let go of his arm; on the contrary, she clung more tightly to him.

  “Oh, you are the same as ever.”

  “No, worse I think, Nati.”

  The young girl began to walk.

  “Come on, don’t be such a slowpoke. The best thing for you would be if somebody woke you up, it seems to me. Are you still writing poems?”

  Martin felt a little ashamed of still writing verse. “Well, yes, I’m afraid it’s incurable.”

  Nati broke into fresh laughter. “You’re a funny mixture, cocky, lazy, timid, and a hard worker, all at the same time.”

  “I don’t understand you.”

  “Nor do I. Come, let’s drop in someplace; we must celebrate our meeting.”

  “As you wish.”

  Nati and Martin went to the Café Gran Vía, which is lined with mirrors. In her high heels, Nati was slightly the taller of the two.

  “Shall we sit here?”

  “Yes,
that’s fine. Wherever you like.”

  “My dear, what gallantry! You sound as if I were your latest conquest.”

  And so they are sitting here. Nati’s scent is wonderful.

  In the Calle de Santa Engracia, on the left side near the Plaza de Chamberí, lives the widowed Doña Celia Vecino de Cortés. Her husband, Don Obdulio Cortés López, a shopkeeper, died after the end of the war and, according to a brief notice in the A.B.C., because of the hardships he had suffered under the Red rule.

  Don Obdulio had all his life been an exemplary, upright, and honorable man, what is called “the pattern of a gentleman.” His great hobby was carrier pigeons, and when he died, the pigeon fanciers’ own magazine devoted to him a deep-felt, affectionate obituary in the form of a photo, taken in his youth, with a caption that read: “Don Obdulio Cortés López, illustrious protagonist of Spanish pigeon fancying, author of the text of the anthem ‘Fly without let or hindrance, dove of peace,’ former president of the Royal Columbo-philic Society of Almería, founder and director of the—now extinct—excellent magazine Doves and Dovecots (monthly bulletin with reports from the whole world), to whom on the occasion of his demise we render the tribute of fervent admiration and lasting grief.” The photo was published with a wide black band printed all round it. The author of the caption was Don Leonardo Cascajo, secondary-school teacher.

  Don Obdulia’s widow, poor woman, ekes out her existence by letting several small, shabby-genteel rooms in a “Cubist” style, painted orange and blue, to a few discreet men friends; here the not very abundant comfort is supplied within the limits of the possible, cheerfully, tactfully, and with a great desire to please and be of service.

  In the front room, a sort of state room reserved for the best customers, there is Don Obdulio in a cheap, gaudy gilt frame. With bristling mustache and a gentle look in his eyes, Don Obdulio protects, like a malevolent yet roguish cupid, the clandestine affairs which make it possible for his widow to have something to eat.

  Doña Celia’s home oozes tenderness through every pore; a tenderness that is sometimes a little sour, and on certain occasions perhaps a tiny bit poisonous. Doña Celia has with her two little boys, the children of a young niece of hers who died four or five months ago, half of trouble and sorrow, half of avitaminosis. Every time a couple arrives, the little boys shout triumphantly down the passage: “Hurray, hurray, another gent’s come!” The little cherubs know that the arrival of a gentleman with a young lady hanging on his arm means a cooked meal next day.