The Hive

by Camilo José Cela

  Martin spits vigorously and stops, his body sagging against the gray wall of a house. He sees everything blurred and for several moments he does not know whether he is alive or dead.

  Martin is exhausted.

  The González’s bedroom has furniture made from plywood which once was aggressively brilliant, but now is faded and discolored: the bed, two night tables, a small chest of drawers, and a wardrobe. They have never been able to afford a looking glass for the wardrobe. In the place destined for it, the plywood is left bare, raw, pale and self-betraying.

  The ceiling lamp with its green glass globes seems to have been switched off. But the ceiling lamp with its green glass globes is innocent of light bulbs, it is ornamental. The room is lighted by a small lamp without a shade that stands on Don Roberto’s night table.

  On the wall over the head of the bed, a chromolithograph of Our Lady of Succours, a wedding present from Don Roberto’s colleagues in the Council offices, has already presided over five successful deliveries.

  Don Roberto puts down the paper.

  The couple kiss with a certain skill. In the course of the years Don Roberto and Filo have discovered an almost limitless world.

  “But, Filo, have you looked at the calendar?”

  “What do we care about the calendar, Roberto! If you only knew how much I love you. Every day more!”

  “All right, but shall we do it . . . like this?”

  “Yes, Roberto, like this.”

  Filo’s cheeks are rosy, almost flushed.

  Don Roberto argues like a philosopher.

  “Well, after all, where five kids can eat there will be something for six. Agreed?”

  “Yes, of course, dear, of course. God grant us our health, and as for the rest. . . . Now look here: if we won’t have more room we’ll have a little less room, and that’s that.”

  Don Roberto takes off his spectacles, puts them in their case and places it on the night table next to the glass of water in which his denture floats like a mysterious fish.

  “Don’t take off your nightdress, you’ll get cold.”

  “I don’t mind, all I want is that you like me.”

  Filo smiles with a touch of roguery.

  “All I want is that my darling likes me very much.”

  Naked, Filo retains a certain beauty.

  “Do you like me still?”

  “Very much, every day more.”

  * * * *

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I thought I heard one of the children crying.’

  “No, dear, they’re all asleep. Go on. . . .”

  Martin pulls out his handkerchief and wipes his mouth. At a watering spout he crouches down and drinks. He thought he would go on drinking for an hour, but his thirst is soon quenched. The water is cold, almost freezing, with a little white-frost rim round it.

  A watchman comes up, his head wrapped tight in a muffler.

  “Having a drink, what?”

  “Well, yes. That’s it. . . . Having a little drink. . . .”

  “What a beauty of a night, isn’t it?”

  The night watchman walks on, and Martin searches his envelope by the light of the street lamp to find another stub in fairly good condition.

  “The policeman was a very pleasant man, really. He asked me for my papers just under a street lamp, and that must have been because he didn’t want to give me a scare. What’s more, he let me go quickly. No doubt he noticed that I don’t look like somebody who gets involved in things, and that I’m all against sticking my nose into things that don’t concern me. Those people are trained to spot such differences. He had a gold tooth and a marvelous greatcoat. Yes, I’m sure he’s a grand fellow, a very pleasant man. . . .”

  Martin feels his whole body atremble and notes that his heart again beats more violently in his breast.

  “I could get over all this for fifteen pesetas.”

  The master-baker calls his wife. “Paulina!”

  “What is it?”

  “Bring me the basin.”

  “What, again?”

  “Yes. Be quiet now, and come here.”

  “Coming, coming! Any one would think you were twenty!”

  Their bedroom is furnished with pieces of robust carpentering in sound, solid walnut, strong and straightforward as their owners. From the wall there shine, resplendent in three matching gilt frames, a reproduction of “The Last Supper” on white metal, a lithograph of one of Murillo’s Immaculate Conceptions, and a wedding portrait with Paulina in a white veil, a black dress and a smile, and Señor Ramón in a trilby hat, with his mustache erect, and a golden watch chain.

  Martin walks down the Calle de Alcántara to the chalets, turns into the Calle de Ayala, and calls the night watchman.

  “Good evening, sir.”

  “What’s that? No, not this place.”

  By the light of an electric bulb he sees the name of the little house: “Villa Filo.” Martin has still a vague, inconcrete, shadowy feeling of respect for his family. What happened with his sister. . . . Well, what’s done is done, and water that has flowed past can’t drive the mill. His sister is no slut. Affection is a thing that ends goodness knows where. And one doesn’t know where it begins either. This business of his sister’s . . . Bah, when all’s said and done, a man isn’t fussy when he’s in heat. In this we human beings are still just like the animals.

  The letters that spell “Villa Filo” are black, uncouth, chilling, all too straight, and quite without shapeliness.

  “I beg your pardon, but I think I’ll go round to the Calle de Montesa.”

  “Just as you wish, sir.”

  Martin thinks: “This night watchman is a wretch. They’re all wretches, these night watchmen. They never give a smile and never lose their tempers without first having made their calculations. If this one knew that I haven’t a bean, he would have kicked me out of here and given me a thrashing with his stick.”

  Already in bed, Doña María, the lady who lives in the mezzanine, is talking to her husband. Doña María is a woman of forty or a couple of years more; her husband appears to be some six years older than she.

  “Listen, Pepe.”

  “What?”

  “You’re a bit cross with me.”

  “Not at all.”

  “Yes, I think you are.”

  “Don’t be absurd.”

  Don José Sierra treats his wife neither well nor badly. He treats her as if she were a piece of furniture to which—out of one of those fixed ideas people have—one sometimes speaks as to a person.

  “Listen, Pepe.”

  “What?”

  “Who’s going to win the war?”

  “What does it matter to you? Now come, forget about it and go to sleep.”

  Doña María fixes her eyes on the ceiling. After a short while, she addresses her husband again.

  “Listen, Pepe?”

  “What?”

  “Would you like me to fetch the towel?”

  “All right, fetch whatever you like.”

  In the Calle de Montesa all you have to do is to push open the garden gate and knock with your knuckles on the front door. The bell has lost its push button and the iron shaft that is left may give you an electric shock. Martin knows this from previous occasions.

  “Hullo, Doña Jesusa, how are you?”

  “All right. And you, dearie?”

  “As you can see! Tell me, is Marujita about?”

  “No, dearie. Tonight she hasn’t come, I can’t think why. Perhaps she’ll turn up later. Would you like to wait for her?”

  “All right, I’ll wait. It isn’t as if I had anything else to do.”

  Doña Jesusa is a fat, amiable, servile woman, a peroxide blonde who looks as if she once had been very handsome; she is quick and resourceful.

  “Come along, sit with us in the kitchen. You’re like one of the family.”

  “Ye-es. . . .“

  Around the kitchen range, on which several pots with water are
boiling away, sit five or six girls, wearily dozing, looking neither happy nor sad.

  “How cold it is!”

  “Yes, indeed. It’s good in here, isn’t it?”

  “I should say so. It’s very good in here.”

  Doña Jesusa comes close to Martin.

  “Here, come near the fire, you’re frozen. Haven’t you got an overcoat?”

  “No.”

  “You poor thing!”

  Martin is not amused by kindness. Fundamentally, Martin, too, is a follower of Nietzsche.

  “Tell me, Doña Jesusa, isn’t the Uruguayan here either?”

  “Yes, but she’s engaged. She came in with a gentleman and shut herself up with him. They’re staying here over the night.”

  “Really!”

  “Tell me, if it isn’t indiscreet to ask, what did you want Marujita for? Did you want to stay with her for a while?”

  “No, it’s just that I wanted to give her a message.”

  “Now look here, don’t be daft. Is it because you’re badly off just now?”

  Martin Marco smiles. He is beginning to feel warm.

  “Not badly, Doña Jesusa—worse.”

  “You’re foolish, dearie. After all this time you might really trust me better, seeing how fond I was of your poor mother, God rest her soul.”

  Doña Jesusa taps one of the girls sitting near the fire on her shoulder. She is a thin little thing who has been reading a novel.

  “Listen, Pura, go with this fellow. Weren’t you feeling unwell? Go to bed, you two—and don’t come down again, Pura. Don’t worry, tomorrow I’ll arrange things for you.”

  Pura, the girl who is unwell, looks at Martin and smiles. She is a very pretty young woman, small, thin, and rather pale, with deep shadows round her eyes and with something about her that suggests a virgin going in for vices.

  Martin takes Doña Jesusa’s hand.

  “Thank you, Doña Jesusa, thank you. You’re always so kind to me.”

  “Nonsense, you flatterer. Anyway, you know you’re like a son in this place.”

  Three flights of stairs, and a garretlike room. A bed, a wash-stand, a small white-framed mirror, a clothes rack, and a chair. A man and a woman.

  Where tenderness is absent, you try to find warmth. Pura and Martin throw all their clothing on the bed to be warmer. They put out the light (“No, no, keep still, my girl, quite still . . .”) and go to sleep in one another’s arms like two newlyweds.

  Out in the street, the night watchman cries from time to time: “Coming!”

  Through the matchboard partition sounds the creaking of a mattress, as meaningless and as frank as the chirping of a cricket.

  About half past one or two in the morning, night closes down on the strange heart of the city.

  Thousands of men are sleeping with their arms round their wives, forgetful of the harsh and cruel day that may be lying in wait for them a few hours hence, crouched like a wild cat.

  Hundreds and hundreds of bachelors lapse into the intimate, exalted, utterly refined vice of the solitary.

  And several dozens of girls are hoping—what are they hoping for, O God? Why do You let them be thus deceived?—with their minds full of golden dreams. . . .

  Chapter Five

  JULITA is usually back home by half past eight in the evening or even earlier.

  “Hullo, Julita darling.”

  “Hullo, Mamma!”

  Her mother looks her over, from top to toe, with a foolish pride.

  “Where have you been?”

  The girl puts her hat on the piano and smoothes her hair in front of the looking glass. She chatters at random, without glancing at her mother.

  “Oh, you know, I’ve been about.”

  Her mother assumes a tender tone, as if trying to please.

  “About . . . about . . . you spend the whole day out, and then, when you come home, you don’t tell me anything. And you know how I love to hear about what you’re doing! You don’t tell anything to your mother who loves you so. . . .”

  The young girl puts on lipstick, looking at her face in the polished back of the powder compact.

  “And where’s Papa?”

  “I don’t know. Why? He went out a while ago and it’s early for him to be back. Why do you ask?”

  “Oh, for no special reason. I thought of him because I saw him in the street.”

  “That’s funny in such a big city as Madrid.”

  Julita goes on talking.

  “Big? It isn’t bigger than a hankie. I saw him in the Calle de Santa Engracia when I was coming out of a house where I got myself photographed.”

  “You didn’t tell me that.”

  “I wanted to give you a surprise. . . . He was going into the same house; apparently he’s got a sick friend there.”

  The girl looks at her mother’s reflection in the glass. Sometimes she thinks that her mother looks stupid.

  “He didn’t tell me a word about it either.” Doña Visi looks sad. “None of you ever tells me anything.”

  Julita smiles and goes to her mother to give her a kiss. “How sweet my old lady is!”

  Doña Visi kisses her, leans away, and raises her eyebrows.

  “Pooh, you smell of tobacco.”

  Julita pouts. “Well, I haven’t been smoking. You know I don’t smoke because I think it just isn’t feminine.”

  Her mother attempts to look stern. “Then—somebody must have kissed you.”

  “Good Lord, Mamma, who do you take me for?”

  The poor woman grasps both her daughter’s hands. “Forgive me, darling, you’re quite right. I do talk nonsense.”

  For a few moments she remains thoughtful and talks quietly, as if to herself. “You see, a mother imagines everywhere dangers for her eldest daughter.”

  Julita sheds two tears. “You say such awful things . . .”

  The mother forces a smile and strokes the girl’s hair. “Come, don’t be a baby, don’t take any notice of me, I was only teasing.”

  Julita is absent-minded, she seems not to hear her. “Mamma . . .”

  “Yes?”

  Don Pablo considers that his wife’s nephew and niece have come specially to spoil things for him; their visit has wasted his whole afternoon. At this time of the day, he is always at Doña Rosa’s café, drinking his cup of chocolate.

  His wife’s niece is called Anita, her nephew-by-marriage, Fidel. Anita is the daughter of one of Doña Pura’s brothers who is a clerk at the City Council of Saragossa and was awarded a Cross of Merit for having rescued a lady from drowning in the Ebro; it turned out that this lady was first cousin to the President of the Provincial Assembly. Anita’s husband Fidel owns a confectioner’s shop in Huesca. They are spending a few days in Madrid on their honeymoon.

  Fidel is a young lad with a tiny mustache who wears a pale green tie. Six or seven months back he won a tango competition in Saragossa, and on that night he was introduced to the girl who is now his wife.

  Fidel’s father, also a confectioner, had been a rough fellow who took sand as a purgative and talked of nothing else but Aragonese dances and Our Lady of the Pillar. He prided himself on his culture and enterprise, and used two different visiting cards. One read, Joaquín Bustamante, Tradesman, while the other, in Gothic type, read, Joaquín Bustamante Valls. Author of the Plan to Double the Agricultural Output of Spain. At his death he left an enormous amount of deckle-edged paper covered with figures and drawings. He wanted to double the crops by a scheme of his own invention: huge terraced mounds packed with fertile soil were to be irrigated from artesian wells and to enjoy constant sunshine through a system of mirrors.

  Fidel’s father had changed the name of the cake shop when he inherited it from his eldest brother who died in the Philippines in 1898. Formerly it had been called “The Sweetener,” but this name did not seem meaningful enough to him and he called it instead “The Site of Our Forefathers.” It took him more than six months to decide on a new name, and in the end he had listed at
least three hundred of them, nearly all in the same style.

  During the Republic, Fidel took advantage of his father’s death and changed the name of the shop once more, to “The Golden Sorbet.”

  “Confectioner’s shops ought not to have political names,” he said. With rare intuition, Fidel associated the name “The Site of Our Forefathers” with certain currents of thought.

  “What we’ve got to do is to serve our buns and éclairs to whoever comes. The Republicans pay with the same sort of pesetas as the Traditionalists.”

  The young people, as you heard, have come to Madrid to spend their honeymoon, and felt obliged to pay a long visit to their uncle and aunt. Now Don Pablo does not know how to get rid of them.

  “So you like Madrid, do you?”

  “Yes, we do . . .”

  Don Pablo waits a few seconds before he says: “Good.”

  Doña Pura is quite put out. The young couple, however, do not seem to be very observant.

  Victorita goes to the Calle de Fuencarral, to Doña Ramona Bragado’s dairy: the dairy of the former mistress of that gentleman who was twice Undersecretary of Finance.

  “Hullo, Victorita, I’m so pleased to see you.”