“No, I don’t want a glass of milk, all I want is to die. To die, and to die quickly. The smell of onions is getting stronger all the time.”
“Don’t talk nonsense.”
“I shall talk as I like. It does smell of onions.”
The man burst out crying.
“It smells of onions.”
“All right, dear, all right, it smells of onions.”
“Of course it smells of onions. It stinks.”
The woman opened the window. The man, his eyes full of tears, began to shout: “Shut the window. I don’t want the smell of onions to go.”
“As you like.”
The woman shut the window.
“I want water, but in a cup, not in a glass.”
The woman went into the kitchen to get a cup full of water for her husband.
The woman was just washing out the cup when she heard a hideous bellow, as if a man had suddenly burst both his lungs.
She did not hear the fall of the body on the flagstones in the courtyard. Instead she felt a pain in her temples, an icy, stabbing pain as though a very long needle had pierced them.
“Oooh!”
The woman’s cry went out by the open window. No one answered her. The bed was empty.
A few neighbors looked out of their courtyard windows.
“What’s the matter?”
The woman could not speak. Had she been able to speak, she would have said: “Nothing, there was a slight smell of onions.”
Before going to Doña Rosa’s café to play the violin, Seoane drops in at an optician’s shop. He wants to find out about the price of dark glasses because his wife’s eyes are getting worse and worse.
“Have a look at these, with fancy frame and Zeiss lenses: two hundred and fifty pesetas.”
Seoane smiles politely.
“Oh, no, I should like a less expensive pair.”
“Very well, sir. Perhaps this model suits you. A hundred and seventy-five pesetas.”
Seoane keeps smiling.
“No, perhaps I haven’t made myself clear. I should like to see something at fifteen or twenty pesetas.”
The assistant gives him a look of profound scorn. He wears a white overall and ridiculous pince-nez; his hair is parted in the middle; when he walks he waggles his bottom.
“You’ll find that type at a druggist’s. I’m sorry I can’t help you, sir.”
“All right. Good-by. Sorry to have troubled you.”
Seoane stops on his way at the show windows of druggist’s shops. The better ones, the kind that also develop films, hate in fact colored glasses in their windows.
“Have you any sunglasses at fifteen pesetas?”
The assistant is a pretty and obliging girl.
“We have, but I wouldn’t recommend them, sir, they’re very brittle. At a slightly higher price, we could offer you a fairly good model.”
The girl searches in the drawers of the counter and brings out a few trays.
“Here you see, twenty-five pesetas, twenty-two, thirty, fifty, eighteen—these aren’t so good—twenty-seven . . .”
Seoane knows that all he has in his pocket is fifteen pesetas.
“Now these at eighteen, would you say they are really bad?”
“Yes, they are. The difference in price isn’t worth it. These here, at twenty-two, are quite another thing.”
Seoane smiles at the girl.
“Thank you, Señorita, thank you very much. I’ll think it over and come back. I’m sorry to have troubled you.”
“Not at all, sir, that’s what we’re here for.”
At the bottom of her heart, Julita’s conscience pricks her a little. Those afternoons at Doña Celia’s suddenly appear to her edged with the flames of eternal damnation.
This is only for a moment, a bad moment—then she is herself again. The little tear that very nearly trickled down her cheek is blinked away.
The girl shuts herself in her room and takes from her chest of drawers a notebook of black American cloth, in which she enters certain strange accounts. She finds a pencil, notes down a few figures, and smiles at herself in the mirror, her lips pursed, her eyes half closed, her hands on the nape of her neck, and the buttons of her blouse undone.
Julita is lovely, very lovely, as she winks at the mirror.
“Today Ventura came up to his record.”
Julita smiles and her lower lip quivers; even her chin begins faintly to tremble.
She puts away her notebook, after breathing on the covers to remove the dust.
“The truth is, I’m going a pace that’s . . . that’s . . .”
While she turns the key, which she has adorned with a pink ribbon, she reflects almost with compunction: “That Ventura is insatiable!”
All the same, that’s how things are—a gush of optimism floods her mind as she leaves the bedroom.
Martin takes leave from Nati and makes for the café where he was thrown out the day before for not paying.
“I’ve forty odd pesetas left,” he argues. “I don’t think it would be stealing if I bought myself cigarettes and gave a lesson to that repulsive old woman at the café. I can make Nati a present of a couple of small engravings, which will cost me twenty-five to thirty.”
He takes trolley No. 17 and gets out at the Glorieta de Bilbao. Before the mirror of a barber’s window he smoothes down his hair and straightens his tie.
“I think I look pretty good . . .”
Martin enters the café by the same door through which he came out yesterday. He wants to get the same waiter and if possible the same table.
There is a sticky, dense heat in the café. The musicians are playing “La comparsita,” a tango that has some vague, sweet, remote memories for Martin. So as to keep in practice, the proprietress is shouting away amid the general indifference, raising her arms to heaven and letting them fall heavily on her belly with studied effect. Martin sits down at a table adjoining that of yesterday’s scene. The waiter comes up to him.
“She’s in an awful temper today. If she sees you, she’ll sure kick.”
“Let her. Here’s five pesetas, and bring me a coffee. One-twenty for yesterday’s and one-twenty for today’s is two-forty. You can keep the change. I’m not a down-and-out.”
The waiter is taken aback; he looks even more foolish than usual. Before he is out of reach Martin calls him back.
“Send me the bootblack.”
“Right.”
Martin persists. “And the cigarette boy.”
“Right.”
It has cost Martin an enormous effort. His head aches a little, but he has not the courage to ask for an aspirin.
Doña Rosa is talking to the waiter and throwing stupified glances at Martin. Martin pretends not to see.
He gets his coffee, takes a couple of sips, and rises to go to the lavatory. Later he will not be certain whether or not it was there he had taken his handkerchief from the pocket in which he had put the money.
Back at the table he has his shoes cleaned and spends five pesetas on a packet of cigarettes.
“Give this dishwater to your mistress, she can drink it herself, d’you hear? It’s a filthy malt brew.”
He rises haughtily, almost with solemnity, and pushes the door open with a restrained movement.
Out in the street, Martin notes that his whole body is trembling, but he considers that everything has been worth his while: at least he has behaved like a man.
Ventura Aguado Sans says to his fellow boarder, Don Tesifonte Ovejero, captain in the Veterinary Corps: “Make no mistake, Captain, in Madrid there is a positive glut of love affairs. And now, since the war, more than ever. Nowadays every woman is more or less out for what she can get. All you’ve got to do is to spend a short while with them every day! You can’t catch trout without getting your trousers wet.”
“Yes, yes, I’m aware of that.”
“Of course you are, of course you are. How can you have fun if you don’t do something about it yours
elf? You may be sure, the women won’t come and seek you out. We haven’t got to that stage yet, not here in this country.”
“That’s true enough.”
“So there you are. You’ve got to be quick on the uptake, Captain, you’ve got to have enterprise and lip, a lot of lip. And above all you mustn’t be put off by failures. Suppose you fail once with a woman—what of it? There’s more than one fish in the sea.”
Don Roque sends a note to Lola, the maid of Doña Matilde, the widow with a pension: ‘‘Come at eight to Santa Engracia. Your R.”
Lola’s sister, Josefa López, was for many years maid in the house of Doña Soledad Castro de Robles. From time to time she said that she had to go home to her village on a visit, and went into the Maternity Hospital for a few days. In the end she had five children who were brought up on charity by nuns at Chamartín de la Rosa: the eldest three were by Don Roque, the fourth by Don Francisco’s eldest son, and the fifth by Don Francisco himself, who was the last to discover the lay of the land. In each case, the paternity was beyond doubt.
“I may be whatever you like,” Josefa would say, “but as long as a man pleases me, I wouldn’t deceive him. When a girl has had enough of a man she shows him the door, and that’s that. But till then it’s like the turtledoves, one male, one female.”
Josefa used to be a handsome woman, rather on the big side. Now she keeps a boarding house for students in the Calle de Atocha, where she lives with her five offspring. Gossip-mongers among her neighbors maintain that she has an understanding with the gasman, and that one day she made the grocer’s boy, a lad of fourteen, go red like a turkeycock. It is very difficult to find out what is true in all this.
Her sister Lola is younger, but she too is large and full-breasted. Don Roque buys her cheap trinkets, such as bracelets, and treats her to cakes, and she is delighted. Less decent than Josefa, she apparently goes in for affairs with one or the other of the young bucks as well. One day Doña Matilde caught her in bed with Ventura, but preferred not to say anything about it.
As soon as the girl gets Don Roque’s note, she dresses up and makes for Doña Celia’s place.
“Hasn’t he come yet?”
“No, not yet, but go in there.”
Lola goes into the bedroom, undresses, and sits down on the bed. She wants to give Don Roque the surprise of opening the door to him, mother-naked.
Doña Celia looks through the keyhole; she likes to watch girls undressing. Sometimes, when she feels very flushed, she calls her lap dog: “Pierrot, Pierrot, come to your mistress, pet.”
Ventura cautiously opens the door of the room he is using. “Señora!”
“Coming.”
Ventura puts fifteen pesetas in Doña Celia’s hand. “Please let the young lady go out first.”
Doña Celia agrees to everything: “Just as you wish.”
Ventura goes into a lumber room, to light a cigarette and let some moments pass while the girl gets away; she walks down the stairs with downcast eyes.
“Good-by, dear.”
“Good-by.”
Doña Celia raps on the door of the room where Lola im waiting.
“Do you want to go to the big bedroom? It’s no longer occupied.”
“Thanks.”
On the landing of the mezzanine Julita meets Don Roque.
“Hullo, my girl, where have you come from?”
Julita is embarrassed.
“From . . . from the photographer’s. And you, where are you going to?”
“Well . . . to see a sick friend. The poor man’s in a very bad way.”
It costs the daughter an effort to think that her father is going to Doña Celia’s, and her father feels the same about her.
“No, it’s too silly of me. What an idea!” thinks Don Roque.
“The story about his friend must be true,” thinks the girl. “Papa’s bound to have affairs, but it would be frightfully bad luck if he came here, of all places.”
As Ventura is on his way out, Doña Celia stops him.
“Just wait half a moment, there’s someone at the door.”
Don Roque enters, looking rather pale.
“Hullo. Has Lola come?”
“Yes, she’s in the front bedroom.”
Don Roque gives two light taps on the door.
“Who is it?”
“Me.”
“Come in.”
Ventura goes on talking to the captain, almost eloquently.
“Look here, at the present moment I’ve a little affair, quite a regular one, with a young girl whose name doesn’t matter. The first time I saw her I thought ‘nothing doing.’ I went up to her because it would have been a pity to let her out of sight without having a go at her; I said a few nice things, bought her two vermouths and shrimps—and now, you see, now I’ve got her on a string like a pet lamb. She does everything I ask for, and dare not even say a loud word. I met her at the Barcelo towards the end of last August, and within the week, just on my birthday, I had her in bed with me. But if I’d kept away like a silly fool, watching others flirt with her and paw her, I should now be in the same state as you.”
“Yes, that’s all very well, but I can’t help thinking that things are just a matter of luck.”
Ventura leaps in his seat.
“Luck? That’s precisely where you’re wrong. There is no such thing as luck, my dear chap. Luck is like a woman, it falls to the man who goes after it, and not to somebody who sees it walk past in the street and doesn’t drop it a single word. Anyway, one thing is absolutely wrong: to stay in here all the blessed day long, as you do, looking after that bloodsucker, the mamma of the sissy, and studying the diseases of cows. I tell you, that’s no way to get anywhere.”
Seoane puts his violin on the piano, after having finished playing “La comparsita,” and says to Macario: “I’m going to the W.C. for a moment.”
Seoane treads his way between the tables. The prices of spectacles are still going round in his head.
“It’s really worth while to wait a bit longer. Those at twenty-two are rather good, it seems to me.”
He kicks open the door marked “Gentlemen”: two pans fixed to the wall, and a weak fifteen-watt bulb screened by a few wires. A cake of disinfectant presides over the scene.
Seoane is alone. He walks up to the wall, looks at the floor and exclaims: “What?”
Saliva sticks in his throat, his heart leaps, a long-drawn hum fills his ears. Seoane focuses his glance on the floor; the door is closed. Seoane stoops quickly. Yes, it’s twenty-five pesetas. A bit wet, but that doesn’t matter. Seoane dries the note with his handkerchief.
Next day he goes back to the druggist’s shop.
“The ones at thirty, miss, please give me the ones at thirty.”
Lola and Don Roque have a talk sitting side by side on the couch. Don Roque is still in his overcoat and holds his hat on his knees. Lola is naked, with her legs crossed. An oilstove burns in the room; it is fairly warm. The wardrobe mirror throws back the image of their two figures, a truly strange pair: Don Roque muffled up and looking worried, Lola naked and in a bad temper. Don Roque has finished talking.
“That’s all.”
Lola scratches her navel, after which she smells her finger.
“D’you know what I think?”
“What?”
“That your daughter and I are birds of a feather and could shake hands.”
Don Roque shouts at her: “Shut up, I tell you. Shut up!”
“All right, I can shut up.”
Both are smoking. Lola, plump, naked, and puffing smoke, looks like a performing seal.
“Your girl’s story about the photographer is the same as yours about your sick friend—”
“Will you shut up?”
“Now that’s enough of your ‘shut ups’ and your silly rubbish. It’s just as if you hadn’t got any eyes in your head.”
In another place we have already said the following: “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.”
Don Obdulio is on the right-hand side of the wardrobe, behind a flower stand. On the left hangs a portrait of the mistress of the house in her youth, surrounded by lap dogs.
“Come on, get dressed. I’m no good for anything now.”
“All right.”
Lola thinks: “That girl is going to pay me for this, as sure as God’s in Heaven. She’s going to pay for it, and how!”
Don Roque asks her: “Will you go out first?”
“No, you go, I’ll get dressed in the meantime.”
Don Roque leaves, and Lola bolts the door.
“Nobody will miss him if he isn’t here,” she thinks.
She unhooks Don Obdulio and puts him in her bag. Then she damps down her hair at the basin and lights a cigarette.
Captain Tesifonte seems to respond at last. “Right . . . we’ll try our luck. . . .”
“You don’t really mean it?”
“Yes, certainly, you’ll see. One day when you’re going on a spree, call for me and we’ll go together. Agreed?”
“Yes, sir, agreed. Next time I go on the prowl, I’ll let you know.”
The junk dealer’s name is José Sanz Madrid. He has two pawnshops where he buys and sells secondhand clothes and “objets d’art,” and where he hires out dress suits to students and morning coats to penniless bridegrooms.
“Go in there and try some on, there’s plenty to choose from.”
Indeed there is plenty to choose from: hung on hundreds of clothes-hangers, hundreds of suits are waiting for the customer who will give them an airing.
One of the pawnshops is in the Calle de los Estudios and the other, the more important one, in the Calle de la Magdalena, about halfway up.
After his evening snack, Señor José takes Purita to the pictures; he likes to relax before going to bed. They go to the Ideal Cinema, opposite the Calderon, where they are showing His Brother and He with Antonio Vico and A Family Affair with Mercedes Vecino, both “passed by the censor.” The Ideal has the advantage that the performance is continuous and that it is so large that there are always some seats.
The Hive Page 23
