The Hive

by Camilo José Cela

  The couple walked down the street to the Calle de San Bernardo. The gentleman was correctness itself; he did not take her arm, not even on crossing a street.

  “I’m very pleased to think that you will be happy with your fiancé. If it depended on me, you and he would marry tomorrow.”

  Victorita looked askance at the gentleman. He was talking to her without giving her a glance, as if he were talking to himself.

  “What better thing could anyone wish for a person he esteems than happiness?”

  Victorita walked as in a cloud. She was remotely happy, with a vague happiness of which she was barely conscious, a happiness that was at the same time a little wistful, a little distant and unreal.

  “We’ll go in here. It’s too cold to go for a walk.”

  “All right.”

  Victorita and the gentleman went into the Café San Bernardo and sat down at one of the tables furthest back, face to face with each other.

  “What would you like to order?”

  “A cup of hot coffee.”

  When the waiter came, the gentleman said: “Bring a café exprès with milk for the young lady, and a jam tart. Black coffee for me.”

  The gentleman took out a packet of Virginian cigarettes.

  “You smoke?”

  “No, I hardly ever smoke.”

  “What does ‘hardly ever’ mean?”

  “Well, I only smoke now and then, on Christmas Eve for instance. . . .”

  The gentleman did not insist. He lit his cigarette and stowed away the packet.

  “Well, yes, as I was saying, Señorita, if it depended on me, you and your fiancé would marry tomorrow, without fail.”

  Victorita looked at him. “And why is it that you want to get us married? What would you get out of it?”

  “I get nothing out of it, Señorita. You can well imagine that it is all the same to me whether you marry or stay single. If I mentioned it to you, it was only because I thought you’d be glad to get married with your fiancé.”

  “Of course I should be glad. Why should I tell you a lie?”

  “You’re quite right. By talking, people get to understand one another. For the matter I want to discuss with you, it’s all the same whether you’re a married woman or single.”

  The gentleman gave a little cough. “We’re in a public place, with people all round us and this table between us.”

  The gentleman brushed Victorita’s knees with his legs. “May I speak to you with complete frankness?”

  “Yes, do. As long as you don’t go too far.”

  “It’s impossible to go too far, Señorita, if one speaks frankly. What I’m going to tell you is a sort of business proposition. You can take it or leave it, you aren’t committed to anything.”

  The girl felt somewhat perplexed.

  “May I speak, then?”

  “Do.”

  The gentleman changed his position.

  “Well, look here, Señorita, let’s get to the point. At least you’ll agree that I’m not trying to deceive you and that I put things to you quite openly.”

  The café was stuffy, it was very hot, and Victorita pushed her light cotton overcoat from her shoulders.

  “The trouble is that I don’t know how to begin. . . . You’ve made a great impression on me, Señorita.”

  “So it’s just what I thought you were going to tell me.”

  “I believe you’re mistaken. Please don’t interrupt now, you’ll have your say at the end.”

  “All right, go on.”

  “Good. As I said before, Señorita, you’ve made a great impression on me. Your walk, your face, your legs, your waist, your breasts . . .”

  “I understand—everything.” The girl smiled for a fleeting moment, with a certain air of superiority.

  “Exactly. Everything. But don’t smile, I’m talking to you seriously.”

  Once more the gentleman brushed her knees and took one of her hands, which Victorita let him hold, well pleased and almost with deliberation.

  “I give you my word, I’m speaking to you in utter seriousness. Everything about you pleases me. I visualize your body, firm and warm and softly tinted. . . .”

  The gentleman squeezed Victoria’s hand.

  “I’m not rich and can offer you very little. . . .”

  The gentleman was amazed that Victorita did not withdraw her hand.

  “But what I’m going to ask of you is not much either.”

  The gentleman gave another little cough.

  “I should like to see you naked. To see you, no more.”

  Victorita squeezed the gentleman’s hand.

  “I must go now, it’s getting late for me.”

  “You’re right. But do give me an answer before you go. I want to see you naked. I promise you that I won’t touch one of your fingers, I won’t brush so much as a thread of your clothes. I know you’re a respectable girl and not a cocotte. . . . I beg you to keep this. Whatever your decision turns out to be, please accept this from me, to buy something as a souvenir.”

  Under cover of the table the girl took the bank note which the gentleman handed her. Her pulse did not beat faster as she took it.

  Victorita rose and walked out of the café. From one of the near-by tables a man hailed her.

  “Good night, Victorita, proud girl that you are! Since you’ve started hobnobbing with a marquis, you don’t see us poor people any more.”

  “Good night, Pepe.”

  Pepe was one of the printers who worked at El Porvenir.

  * * * *

  Victorita has been weeping for some time; in her head, plans are jostling one another like people coming out of the underground. Anything, from taking the veil to going on the streets, seems better to her than to stay at home and put up with her mother.

  Don Roberto raises his voice. “Petrita! Bring me the tobacco that’s in the pocket of my coat.”

  His wife intervenes. “Not so loud, dear, or you’ll wake the children.”

  “Nonsense, why should they wake up? They’re little angels; once they’re asleep nothing on earth will wake them.”

  “I’ll get you what you want. Don’t go on calling Petrita. The poor kid must be worn out.”

  “Never mind about her, her kind don’t even notice it. You’ve more reason to be worn out.”

  “Yes, and more years on my shoulders.”

  Don Roberto smiles. “Come now, Filo, don’t show off. So far they don’t exactly weigh you down yet.”

  The maid comes into the kitchen with the tobacco.

  “Bring me the newspaper, it’s in the hall.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And listen, put a glass of water on the night table for me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Again Filo intervenes. “I’ll put out everything for you, dear. Let her go to bed.”

  “To bed, you say? If you give her permission, she’d go out now, and not be back till two or three in the morning, you’ll see.”

  “Yes, that’s quite true, but . . .”

  Señorita Elvira is tossing and turning in her bed. She is uneasy and restless, and one nightmare chases the other. Señorita Elvira’s bedroom smells of worn clothing and of woman; women do not smell of perfume, they smell like stale fish. Señorita Elvira’s breath comes in pants and gasps, and her strained, unquiet sleep, the sleep of a hot head and a cold belly, makes her ancient mattress creak plaintively.

  A black, partly bald cat, with an enigmatic smile that is quite human and a frightening glint in its eyes, leaps upon Señorita Elvira from an enormous distance. The woman wards it off with kicks and blows. The cat falls on a piece of furniture and rebounds like a rubber ball, once more to assault the bed.

  The cat’s belly gapes open, red as a pomegranate, and from the hole in its behind there grows something like a poisonous, pestilentious, many-colored flower similar to a plume of fireworks. Señorita Elvira covers her head with the sheet. Inside the bed, a great number of dwarfs swarm round mad with fear, s
howing the whites of their eyes. The cat slips in like a ghost, seizes Señorita Elvira by the belly and licks her stomach, while it laughs in great guffaws that frighten the very soul. Señorita Elvira is terrified, she throws it out of the room; it costs her a colossal effort, for the cat is very heavy, it seems made of iron. Señorita Elvira takes care not to squash the dwarfs. One of them shouts at her, “Saint Mary! Saint Mary!”

  The cat comes back, passing under the door, stretching its body to the shape of a slice of dried cod. It has a baleful stare, like an executioner. It climbs on the night table and fixes its eyes on Señorita Elvira with a bloodthirsty expression. Señorita Elvira dares not even breathe. The cat jumps down on the pillow and licks her mouth and eyelids, gently, like a slobbery old man. Its tongue is warm like the inside of the groin, and as soft as velvet. It unties the ribbons of her nightdress with its teeth. The cat shows its gaping underbelly which palpitates in a regular beat, like a vein. With every moment the flower sticking out of its backside grows more lovely, more luxuriant. The cat has an infinitely soft skin. A blinding light begins to flood the bedroom. The cat grows to the size of a slim tiger. The dwarfs continue to mill about in despair. Señorita Elvira’s entire body is shaking. She gasps for breath, as she feels the cat’s tongue licking her lips. The cat goes on stretching and stretching to greater length. Señorita Elvira can no longer breathe, her mouth has gone dry. Her thighs open, first cautiously, then unashamedly.

  Suddenly Señorita Elvira wakes, and switches on the light. Her nightdress is soaked with sweat. She feels cold, gets up, and throws her coat over her feet. There is a slight hum in her ears, and her nipples rise rebelliously, almost haughtily, as in her good days.

  She goes to sleep with the light on, does Señorita Elvira.

  “Well, yes. So what? I let him have fifteen pesetas on account. Tomorrow is his wife’s birthday.”

  Señor Ramón never manages to show sufficient firmness; however hard he tries, he never manages to be firm enough.

  “What d’you mean by ‘so what’? You know very well. Haven’t you got eyes in your head? It’s up to you. If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a dozen times: like this we’ll never be anything but poor. Is that what we’ve been scraping and saving for?”

  “But my dear, it’s just an advance, I deduct it next time. What difference does it make to me? It isn’t as if I’d given it to him as a present.”

  “Oh, yes, I know: you deduct it—unless you forget!”

  “I haven’t forgotten ever.”

  “Not ever? And what about those seven pesetas of Señora Josefa’s? Where have those seven pesetas gone to?”

  “Now listen, that was because she needed some medicine. Even at that, look what state she’s in now.”

  “And what about us? Can you tell me what it matters to us if other people are ill?”

  Señor Ramón stamps out his stub.

  “Look, Paulina, I’ll tell you something.”

  “What?”

  “That I’m the boss when it comes to my money. Make a note of that. I know exactly what I’m doing, so let’s have no more of this.”

  Señora Paulina mutters the rest of her arguments under her breath.

  Victorita cannot go to sleep. She is beset by memories of her mother, who is a scold.

  “When will you give up that consumptive of yours?”

  “I shall never give him up. Consumptives are better company than drunkards.”

  Victorita would never have dared to say anything of that sort to her mother. If only her fiancé could be cured. . . . To get her fiancé cured, Victorita would be capable of doing anything, of doing everything she was asked to do.

  Twisting round in her bed, Victorita goes on weeping. A handful of pesetas would be enough to cure her young man. It’s an old story: poor people with T.B. die; rich people with T.B. either get cured, or they can at least take care of themselves and struggle along. Money is not easy to come by. Victorita knows it only too well. It needs luck. Everything else can be arranged for, but one can’t arrange for luck; luck comes if and when it chooses, and the fact is that it chooses almost never.

  The thirty thousand pesetas that gentleman had offered het were lost because Victoria’s fiancé had been full of scruples.

  “No, no. At that price I don’t want anything, not thirty-thousand pesetas and not five times as much.”

  “But what does it matter to us?” the girl had asked him. “It doesn’t leave any trace, and no one will ever know.”

  “Would you risk it?”

  “For you, yes. And you know it.”

  The gentleman who offered those thirty thousand pesetas was a moneylender of whom Victorita had heard.

  “He’ll lend you three thousand pesetas quickly enough,” they had told her. “You’ll have to go on paying them back for the rest of your life, but he’ll lend them you easily enough.”

  Victorita went to see him; on three thousand pesetas they would have been able to marry. Her fiancé was not yet ill. He caught colds, coughed, got easily tired, but he was not ill yet; he had not yet taken to bed.

  “So, young woman, you want three thousand pesetas?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And what do you want them for?”

  “Well, you see, for getting married.”

  “Ah, so you’re in love, eh?”

  “Well, yes . . .”

  “And you’re very fond of your fiancé?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very, very fond?”

  “Yes, sir, very fond.”

  “Fonder of him than of anyone else?”

  “Yes, sir, more than of anyone else.”

  The moneylender twisted his green velvet cap two times. His head was pointed, like a pear, and his hair was colorless, lanky and greasy.

  “Tell me, my girl, are you a virgin?”

  Victorita grew angry.

  “What the hell has that got to do with you?”

  “Nothing, baby, nothing at all. Curiosity, you know. . . . But your manners! D’you know that you’re rude?”

  “Look who’s talking.”

  The moneylender smiled. “Really, there’s no reason to be so cross. After all, whether your virginity is intact or not is your own affair, and your fiancé’s.”

  “That’s just what I think.”

  “There you are.”

  The moneylender’s small eyes shone like an owl’s. “Listen.”

  “What is it?”

  “If I gave you not three thousand pesetas, but thirty thousand, what would you do for me?”

  Victorita went red and hot. “Anything you asked me to.”

  “Everything I’d ask you?”

  “Yes, sir, everything.”

  “Everything?”

  “Yes, everything, sir.”

  “And your fiancé, what would he do to me?”

  “I don’t know. If you wish, I’ll ask him.”

  Two blush-pink patches flowered on the moneylender’s pallid cheeks.

  “And you, my pretty, d’you know what I want of you?”

  “No, sir, you tell me.”

  There was a slight quiver in the moneylender’s voice. “Listen, show me your breasts.”

  The girl lifted her breasts out of the low neck of her dress.

  “You know what that is—thirty thousand pesetas?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Have you ever seen so much money in a heap together?”

  “No, sir, never.”

  “Well, I’ll show it you. It’s all up to you, to you and your fiancé.”

  * * * *

  A slavish breeze drifted sluggishly through the room, butting against one piece of furniture after the other like a dying butterfly.

  “Agreed?”

  Victorita felt shamelessness rise to her cheeks in a gush.

  “For myself, yes. For thirty thousand pesetas I’m willing to spend the rest of my life doing what you want. And any other life I may have, too.”

  “And you
r fiancé?”

  “I’m going to ask him if he agrees.”

  The front door of Doña María’s house opens. The girl who comes out and crosses the street is almost a child.

  “Look here, look here, I think somebody’s come out of our house.”

  The policeman Julio García parts from the watchman Gumersindo Vega.

  “Good luck!”

  “That’s what I need.”

  Left alone, the night watchman first thinks about the policeman. Then he remembers Señorita Pirula. And then the way in which he had dealt with an importunate loafer last summer: a sharp prick in the small of the back with his pointed stick. The watchman has to grin: “How that beggar did run!”

  Doña María lowers the blind. “Goodness, what times we live in! The way people carry on!”

  For a few moments she keeps quiet. “What’s the time now?”

  “Going on twelve. Come, let’s go to bed, that’s the best.”

  “Shall we go to bed?”

  “Yes, that’s the best.”

  Filo makes the round of her children’s cots and blesses each of them with the sign of the Cross. This is—how shall we put it?—a precaution she never fails to take every night.

  Don Roberto cleans his denture and puts it in a glass of water, which he covers with a sheet of toilet paper. But first he manufactures little frills along the edge of the paper, like on the cornets in which almonds are sold at fairs. Then he smokes his last cigarette. Don Roberto enjoys a cigarette when he is in bed and has taken out his denture, and he smokes it every night.

  “Don’t burn a hole in my sheets.”

  “No, my dear.”

  The policeman goes up to the girl and takes her by the arm. “I thought you were never coming.”

  “Well, here I am.”

  “Why are you so late?”

  “Now listen. The kids wouldn’t go to sleep. And then it was the master with his things: ‘Petrita, bring me some water . . . Petrita, bring me the tobacco that’s in my coat pocket . . . Petrita, bring me the paper from the hall’ . . . I thought he’d go on all night sending me to fetch things for him.”

  Petrita and the policeman disappear in the mouth of an alley leading to the building plots in the Plaza de Toros.