“What happen you?”
“Something terrible. It’s killing me. I’m in such a fix that if you don’t save me, I’ll throw myself off the viaduct, really I will.”
“My friend! Don’t throw!”
“The trouble is that I have debts so big that I don’t see how I can ever pay them. I’ll tell you straight out so that you know what I mean. I must have a duro.”
“A dur-r-r-r-o!” exclaimed Almudena, expressing by the sudden gravity of his face and the strength of his voice, the horror he felt at the magnitude of the sum.
“Yes, my dear boy, yes, a duro, and I can’t go home until I get it. I must have this duro. Think of something, because it’s got to be dug up from somewhere.”
“It’s much, much,” muttered the blind man, hanging his head.
“It’s not so much,” said Benina, trying to cheer him up with a dash of optimism. “What’s a duro? Everyone has a duro. So, can you find me one, yes or no?”
The blind man said something in his own strange tongue that Benina translated as “impossible”. She sighed deeply, a sigh that Almudena echoed no less pathetically, and sank for a moment into painful meditation, looking first at the ground, then at the sky, then at the statue of Mendizábel, that greenish-black gentleman in bronze; just who he was and why he was there, she had no idea. Dimly, for she was in a daydream brought on by her intense anxiety, she could see people, some hurrying, some loitering, make their way across the gardens. Some had a duro, others were on their way to make one. There were bank runners with little money-bags attached to their shoulders, wagons full of beer bottles and soda siphons, hearses carrying people to the cemetery who no longer had any use for duros. People were going into shops and coming out with parcels. Ragged beggars were pestering passers-by. Benina in her mind’s eye had a rapid vision of all those shop tills. She was convinced that not one of those receptacles was without its duro. Then she thought what a joke it would be if she walked into the shop nearby called Céspedes and asked if they wouldn’t mind giving her a duro, or even lending her one. They would certainly laugh at such absurd cheek on her part and would simply send her out on to the street. And yet it seemed natural and just that whenever a duro meant very little to its owner, it should be given to her, for whom it was… oh, such an enormous ATOM! And if that longed-for coin were to leave the hands of those who possessed many others, and pass into hers, no noticeable change would take place in the distribution of wealth: the rich would stay rich and she, and those like her, poor. This being so, why did the duro not come her way? Damn the world and the way it was run! A drop in the ocean was all Benina wanted, and there in front of her was a whole lake, like the lake in the Retiro park, yet not a drop could be spared for her. Let’s be frank, would the lake in the Retiro notice it, if it lost one little drop?
5
She was thinking along these lines when Almudena emerged from his calculations. They must have been gloomy if the expression on his face was anything to go by, and he said:
“You have nothing to pawn?”
“No, dear boy, everything’s been pawned already, including the pawn tickets. There’s no one who’ll give me credit any more. Wherever I go, I see their sour faces.”
“Señor Carlos call you tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow is a long way off and I need the duro now, and quickly, Almudena, quickly. I can feel the noose tighten around my neck with every minute that passes.”
“No cry, my friend. You was good to me. Me help you now, you see.”
“What have you thought up? Tell me quickly.”
“Me pawn clothes.”
“That suit you bought in the Rastro? How much do you think you can get for it?”
“Two and half pesetas.”
“I’ll get three for it. And for the rest?”
“We go my home,” said Almudena, standing up resolutely.
“Straightaway, dear boy, for there’s no time to lose. It’s very late and it’s a long walk to the Santa Casilda lodging-house.”
Hardly speaking, they set off hurriedly along Calle Mesón de Paredes. Benina was panting, more from anxiety than from the effort of walking. Her face was glowing and whenever she heard a clock chime she grimaced with despair. The cold north wind blew them down the street, their clothes billowing round them in full sail. Both had icy hands and red dripping noses. Their voices were hoarse and their words sounded hollow and sad.
Not far from where Calle Mesón de Paredes turns into the Ronda de Toledo they reached the Santa Casilda lodging-house, a huge hive of cheap dwellings in rows one on top of the other, divided by corridors. The entrance was a long narrow courtyard full of piles of garbage, every sort of rubbish that could be produced by mankind could be found there. Almudena’s room was the last on the ground floor, with no step at the threshold. It was divided in two by a rush mat hanging from the ceiling, on one side the kitchen, on the other the living-room, which also served as bedroom and dressing-room. With a well-beaten earth floor and white-washed walls it was cleaner than most of the others in this human rabbit warren. A chair was the only furniture, for the bed consisted of a palliasse and grey blankets, pushed up into a corner. The little kitchen was not lacking in pots, pans, bottles nor indeed food. In the middle of the living-room Benina saw a black heap, resembling a bundle of clothes or sacking. By the dim light that remained when the door was shut, she could make out that the bundle was alive. By touch rather than by sight, she realised that it was a human being.
“She here already, La Pedra, drunk,” said Almudena.
“Oh dear, oh dear! She’s the one who shares the rent, the shameless drunken hussy. But let’s not waste time, dear boy. Give me the suit. I’ll take it away and with God’s help I’ll get at least two pesetas eighty for it. Meanwhile, be thinking how you can get me the remainder. The Holy Virgin will provide and I’ll pray that she gives you double, because I’m quite sure she has no intention of giving me any.”
Responding to his friend’s impatience, the blind man took down the suit, which he called new, from a nail, just as they do in commercial deals, and handed it to her. In a trice she was through the courtyard and into the Ronda, from where she headed towards the area known as the Campilla de Manuela. Almudena, meanwhile, uttering words of anger that the writer is unable to reproduce as they were in Arabic, prodded the bundle of drunken womanhood lying in the middle of the narrow room. She answered the blind man’s wrathful words only with grunts, turned, stretched her legs and arms, then fell back into a deep, brutish stupor.
Almudena plunged his hand into her black garments, an inextricably entangled heap of rags, and began to search, muttering angrily as he did so. He rummaged in her flaccid bosom – he seemed to be kneading skin and rag together – working with such impatience that he revealed what should have remained covered and concealed what should have remained in the light of day. He brought out rosaries, scapulars, a sheaf of pawn tickets rolled in a piece of newspaper, bits of old iron picked up in the streets, teeth, both animal and human and other trash. Benina returned as he was finishing, her errand completed as rapidly as if she had been ferried to and fro by flying angels. She was panting hard from running through the streets and could hardly breathe, her face was perspiring and glowing and her eyes shone with happiness. “They gave me three pesetas,” she said, holding out the coins, “one of them in cuartos. I was lucky that Valeriano was there, for if the owner Raimunda had been there, it would have been hard to get much more than two.”
In response to the old woman’s gaiety, Almudena in triumphant delight held up a peseta in his fingers. “Me found here, in her bosom, took it for you,” he said.
“Oh what luck! Hasn’t she any more? Search her well, dear boy.”
“Has no more. Almudena search all things bosom.”
Benina began to shake the drunken woman’s clothes, in the hope that a coin would drop out. But all that came out was a few hairpins and some small lumps of charcoal. “Has no more,” said Almudena. He continu
ed to ramble on and from the description he gave of the character and habits of the woman, Benina gathered that if they had found her in a state of normal consciousness, she would have given them a peseta for the asking. He summed up his lodger with a short phrase: “Is good, is bad, picks up all thing, gives all thing.”
Then he lifted the mattress and, scratching the earth, brought out a dirty old cigar case which he had carefully hidden among the rags and cardboard boxes and inserting his fingers as if to take a cigar, he drew out a small twist of paper which, when opened, revealed a tiny two real coin, new and shining. Benina took it and then Almudena took from his pocket, in which he kept a large selection of utensils such as scissors, needles, a clasp-knife and so on, another package containing two pennies. He added to these the one he had received from Don Carlos and handed the lot to the poor old woman, saying: “My friend, now you fine.”
“Why yes,” she replied. “If I add what I got today I shall be so little short that I won’t bother you any more. Thank God! Who would have believed it? My dear boy, how good you are, you deserve to win the lottery and if you don’t, there’s no justice on earth or in Heaven. God reward you. I can’t hang about here, I must fly home. Stay here in yours and when this poor unfortunate woman wakes up, don’t beat the poor thing, my dear boy! To avoid suffering, each one of us gets drunk on what he can, she takes to the bottle, others take to something else. I do it myself, not that way, but with something down inside me. I’ll tell you about it, I’ll tell you some day.” And she shot off, thrusting the coins into her bosom, for fear that someone would steal them from her in the streets or that they might escape, flying off on the wings of her wild thoughts.
When he was alone, Almudena went to the kitchen. Among the pots and pans was a little tin bowl and a pitcher of water. He washed his hands and his face, then took an earthenware pan containing ashes and dead cinders and went to one of the neighbouring houses. He returned shortly afterwards with live embers on which he sprinkled a small handful of something from a packet which he kept near his bed. Dense smoke and a penetrating odour began to rise from the fire. He was burning gum-benzoin incense, the only custom from his native land that Almudena allowed himself in exile. The special odour, so characteristic of a Moorish house, was his consolation and his greatest pleasure, a custom that was both homely and religious. Wreathed in the smoke he began to mutter prayers that no Christian could understand.
The smoke made the drunken woman grunt again, clear her throat and cough as if trying to return to consciousness. The blind man took no more notice of her than of a dog, wrapped only in his prayers in a language that could have been Arabic or Hebrew. He covered his eyes with his hands before lowering his hands to his mouth to kiss them. After some time like this spent in meditation he became conscious of the little woman who was watching him with shifty eyes, tear-stained because of the thick incense smoke. Solemnly holding the palms of his hands out to her, he pronounced these words:
“You big slut! (There’s only one God). You drunk, you drunken sot! (only one God, one God only).”
The woman let out a loud laugh and put her hand to her bosom to remedy the disorder which the fumbling hand of her house-mate had wrought. So clumsy was she after her alcoholic sleep that she failed to arrange everything properly or even to cover what modesty has always required to be covered. “Jai, you’ve been searching me,” she said.
“Yes. (There’s only one God, one God only).”
“What do I care how many there are, they can have as many as they like. But tell me, you old sponger, you’ve taken my peseta, haven’t you? It doesn’t matter, it was meant for you.”
“One God, one God only,” he was saying but when she saw him take up the stick she put up her guard and said, “Hey, don’t beat me, Jai. No more incense now and start making supper. How much money have you got and what shall I bring you?”
“You drunk! Not have money. Took all from your underclothes when you asleep.”
“What shall I bring you?” mumbled the dark woman again, swaying and shutting her eyes. “Wait awhile, I’m sleepy, Jai.” She fell back into a deep stupor, and Almudena, who had taken up his stick as an infallible remedy against drunkenness, took pity and with a deep sigh muttered these – or similar – words: “I beat you next time.”
6
It would not be an exaggeration to say that, after leaving the lodging-house, Benina flew like an arrow along avenues, alleyways and streets clutching the coins that had helped allay her worst anxieties. Despite her sixty years, she had retained her agility and strength, along with a dogged perseverance. Most of her life had been spent in the kind of hard drudgery that calls for both physical exertion and a quick wit, making enormous demands on both mind and muscle. Such a training had strengthened her in body and spirit, creating in her the extraordinary qualities with which readers of this account of her life will soon become familiar. She darted into a pharmacy in Calle de Toledo and picked up the medicines she had ordered earlier that morning; she then called in at the butcher’s and at the grocer’s, emerging from each with two paper parcels containing her purchases, and then, lastly, she went into a house on Calle Imperial, on the corner of Calles Almotacén and Fiel Contraste. She squeezed through the narrow doorway, almost blocked by the hanging coils of rope sold by the ropemaker who had his shop on the premises, and mounted the stairs – with energetic step as far as the first floor, rather less energetic as far as the second – to arrive panting at the third and last floor, which was in fact the garret. She walked round the large stairwell, along a gallery lined with leaded windows. The floor was full of bumps and dips caused by subsidence in the ancient structure of the building. At last she reached a faded, panelled door and rang the bell. It was her home, her mistress’ home, and the mistress herself responded to the ring – which sounded more like that of a hoarse cowbell – feeling her way along the walls to the door, which she opened only after first peering through the spy-hole, square in shape and covered by an iron cross.
“Thank God, woman,” said her mistress, standing at the door. “What sort of time do you call this! I thought you must have been run over or had an accident of some kind.”
Without a word, Benina followed her mistress to a little room close by and they both sat down. The servant avoided giving any explanation of her lateness for fear of the consequences and, instead, went on the defensive, waiting to see what Doña Paca would say and what sort of mood the often irascible old woman was in. Benina was somewhat reassured by the tone of her reception: she had expected a strong reprimand, peevish words. But her mistress seemed to be in a good mood, her harshness doubtless tempered by her intense anxiety. As usual, Benina decided to dance to whatever tune the other played, and after a short time, once a few words had been exchanged, she relaxed.
“Oh, madam,” she said, “what a day I’ve had! I was worn to a frazzle, but would they let me leave that wretched house …”
“Don’t tell me,” said her mistress, who, despite forty years’ residence in Madrid, still spoke with a very slight Andalusian accent. “I know what happened. When I heard twelve strike, then one, then two, I said to myself: ‘Whatever can be keeping Nina?’ And then I remembered.”
“Right.”
“I remembered – since I know the whole calendar off by heart – that today is the day of San Romualdo, father confessor and bishop of Pharsalus.”
“Exactly.”
“The saint’s day of the priest you work for.”
“If I’d known you were going to guess the reason why I was late, I wouldn’t have worried so much,” said Benina, who, with her extraordinary capacity for concocting and telling lies, was quick to grasp the lifeline her mistress had thrown her: “And it was no easy task I can tell you!”
“I suppose you had to prepare lunch. I thought so. I’ll bet, Don Romualdo’s friends and colleagues, those plump clergymen from the local church, are all good trenchermen, I’ll be bound!”
“I should say!”
> “So tell me all about it. What did you serve them? I know, something with mayonnaise.”
“No, first I cooked a rice dish, which turned out perfectly. Goodness, how they praised it! They said I was the best cook in Europe, and if it wasn’t considered bad manners, they said, they would have licked their fingers.”
“And then?”
“Then a chicken casserole fit for the angels in heaven, followed by squid cooked in their own juice, followed by …”
“Now I know I’ve always told you not to bring me any leftovers, because I prefer my own God-given poverty to gnawing the bones from other people’s tables, but I’m sure you’ve brought me something this time. Where’s your basket?”
Caught out, Benina hesitated for a second. However, she was not one to shrink from danger and her talent for deception immediately produced the ingenious rejoinder:
“I left the basket of leftovers at Señorita Obdulia’s, madam. I felt her need was greater than ours.”
“Quite right too. An excellent idea, Nina. But tell me more. Was there no nice bit of sirloin?”
“Two and a half kilos’ worth, madam. Sotero Rico gave me the best there was.”
“And what about desserts and wines?”
“Why we even had champagne! Those priests are the very devil , they certainly don’t hold back. But let’s go into the kitchen, it’s terribly late, you must be quite faint with hunger by now.”
Misericordia (Dedalus European Classics) Page 4
