Opposite Frasquito were two men who were eating a double serving of stew out of a large dish, and further off, in the opposite corner there was a character who was slowly and methodically consuming a portion of snails. Indeed he appeared to be a complete snail-eating machine, because for every one he ate he used exactly the same movements of mouth, hands and even eyes. He picked up the snail, removed it from its shell with a toothpick, put it into his mouth and sucked out the juice from the shell, casting as he did so a malevolent look at Francisco Ponte. He then put down the empty shell, picked up a full one, and repeated the whole process. It was always with the same movements, with the same gestures and the same grimaces used to remove the snail and to eat it, with the same glances, one of friendliness towards the snail as he picked it up and the other of malice towards Frasquito as he sucked the shell.
Time passed and that man, of mean and simian countenance, went on accumulating snail shells in a little heap, which increased as the pile of full ones decreased. Ponte, sitting opposite him, began to worry about the furious glances the snail eater gave him as he went through his routine, like one of those little figures on the top of a music box.
35
Ponte Delgado felt a strong urge to challenge the fellow to explain his rude gaze. The cause, he thought, could only be the novelty of the unmade-up face which he now presented in public and the good gentleman mused: “Why should anyone care whether I am made up or whether I’m not? I do with my appearance what I like and am not forced to please the world in general by always presenting the same one. Whether I’m wearing my old face or my young one I know how to command respect and keep my dignity.” He was just about to answer the fellow’s tiresome glare with a look of disdain, when the latter, having extracted, eaten and sucked the last of his snails and put the last shell down on the pile, paid his bill and, hitching his fallen cape on to his shoulders and putting on his cap, stood up and walked straight up to our faded friend, saying politely: “Señor de Ponte, would you permit me to ask you a question?” His tone was so friendly that Frasquito realised that he was one of those unfortunate people whose facial expression belies their personality.
“Go ahead.”
“With the greatest respect and if there is no offence, could you tell me if it is true that Antonio Zapata and his sister have come in for a legacy of millions and millions?”
“Hardly millions, I should think. My own share of the inheritance and that of Doña Francisca Juárez, is just an annuity, the precise extent of which is not yet known. But I shall be able to give you more definite information soon. Are you a journalist?”
“No sir, I am a heraldic artist.”
“Ah, I thought you were one of those people who find things out and put them in the papers.”
“What I do is sell advertising space. Since there is no demand for heraldic art these days, I act as an agent for advertisements and announcements. Antonio and I are in fierce competition with each other. I heard that he has become rich and would be grateful if you would ask him to pass his business over to me. I am a widower and have six children.” Uttering these words in the tones of a sincere and decent man, he gazed at Ponte with the look of a murderer as he strikes the fatal blow. Before the latter could answer, he went on: “I know that you’re a friend of the family and that you visit Doña Obdulia – and by the way, now that they are rich, Doña Obdulia or her mother will be wanting to take out papers of nobility. Well I would, in their position, because they come of a family of grandees. So, do not forget me Señor de Ponte. Here is my card. I design the coat of arms and the family tree, and draw up letters patent in gothic lettering with the capitals in gold paint, cheaper than anyone else you could find. You can judge my work by the samples I have at home.”
“I cannot give you any guarantees,” said Frasquito pompously, a toothpick between his teeth, “whether they will take out letters of nobility or not. Blue blood they have, more than enough of it. The Juarezs, the Zapatas, the Delgados and the Pontes are some of the most noble families of Andalusia.”
“The Pontes’ coat of arms is gules, a bridge vert, quartered azure and or.”
“Correct. I have no intention of taking out papers, however, as my legacy is not enough to justify it. As for the ladies, I have no idea. Obdulia deserves to be a duchess, and is one, to judge by her face and style, even if she never puts on a coronet. She deserves an empress’s crown, God knows. Anyway, I’m not getting involved: let’s leave heraldry aside and change the subject.” The snail man had by now sat down beside Frasquito and was terrorising the other customers with his sinister stare. “Since you are a publicity agent,” Frasquito continued, “can you suggest a good boarding house?”
“I did two only today, here they are in my briefcase for publication in the Imparcial and the Liberal. Listen, they’re good ones – excellent rooms, French cooking, five courses, thirty reales.”
“A cheaper one would suit me better, fourteen to sixteen reales.”
“I do those too. I can give you a list of at least six tomorrow, all of them reliable.”
Their conversation was interrupted by the sudden appearance of Antonio Zapata, who arrived out of breath and with a great bustle, exchanging pleasantries at the top of his voice with the proprietor and various customers. He came through to the inner room, and throwing the fat briefcase he was carrying on to the table, sat down beside Frasquito and the snail man.
“What an evening, dear sir, what an evening!” he exclaimed wearily. To the serving boy he said: “I’ll not have anything – I’ve eaten already. My lady mother stuffed my wife and me with a whole chicken, champagne on top of that and marzipan cakes on top of that.”
“Aren’t you the lucky one, my boy?” said the snail man with a soft tone and fierce look: “But you must give me an answer straightaway. Will you hand your business over to me or not?”
“You should have seen my wife when I said I wouldn’t work any more. I thought she would bite me and tear out my eyes. No good – we shall go on the same, she with her sewing-machine and I with my advertisements, because we don’t know how much the legacy will be worth, damn it. Ponte, my friend, do you know that estate, Almoraima? How much income will it yield?”
“I can’t tell you exactly,” replied Frasquito. “I know it’s a magnificent property, with woodland, pasture, cultivated land – and what’s more, the best place for quails taking off to cross the Straits.”
“We’ll go there one day. But my wife just won’t let me give up that job of mine. You’ll have to be patient for the moment, Polidura, because there’s no joking with my Juliana. I’m more scared of her than of a hungry lioness. Tell me, how have you done today? Ah, I forgot, my mother wants to buy a chandelier.”
“A chandelier?”
“Yes my boy, a hanging lamp for the dining-room. She wondered if I could find a really good looking one, second hand.”
“Why yes, you’ll get one in the sale rooms in the Calle de Campomanes,” said Polidura.
“Here’s another one. She also wants to know where she can get moquette and other pile carpets in good condition.”
“For that you need the sale rooms in the Plaza de Celenque. I have it here – everything for the house. Open from one till three. Dealers not admitted.”
“My sister, who, by the way, put away half a chicken this afternoon, now she wants a landau… with five windows.”
“Great Scot!”
“I advised Obdulia not to go in for coaches of her own, but to come to an arrangement with a livery stable,” Ponte added.
“Of course, but that damn farm of ours won’t run to it. A landau with five windows! I suppose it will be drawn by Señor Jacinto’s she-asses.”
Polidura laughed aloud, but when he saw that such jokes didn’t appeal to the gentleman from Algeciras, he tried to change the subject at once. However, that impudent fellow Antonio Zapata dared to say to Ponte: “Frankly, Don Frasco, I think you look better like that.”
“Like what?”
“Without the blacking. You cut a handsome figure as an elderly and reputable gentleman. You should realise that dye does not make you look younger; it makes you look like – a corpse.”
“My dear Antonio,” said Ponte, pursing his lips and wrinkling his nose to hide his anger and pretend to enter into the joke, “we old men like to scare young men off – so we can be left in peace. Young men these days, who think they know everything, really know nothing.” The poor gentleman was so flustered that he did not know what to say, and his fatuous remarks emboldened Zapata, who went on turning the screw:
“And now that we’ve got some cash, Ponte my friend, what you must do is put your sarcophagus on the retired list.”
“My what?”
“The top hat that you keep for specials occasions, the one which went out of fashion when they hanged Riego.”
“What do you know about fashions? They come in again and yesterday’s shapes will return tomorrow.”
“That may be true for clothing, but when people are finished, they’re finished. You are only a lot of bumps and your old business has all gone to your head. And you use them to think with.”
Frasquito was about to lose his temper, and he would certainly have thrown his plate at the young man’s head if Polidura had not tried to smooth over the ill-natured joke. “Shut up, you idiot” he said, “Señor de Ponte is not an inhabitant of ‘Old-ham’ yet and he wears his years better than we do.”
“He’s not old, not a bit, he’s just stuck in the time when ‘Ferdinand VII wore a frock-coat’. But if he’s offended, I’ll say no more. Señor de Ponte, you know we all love you very much and I only joke to pass the time. Take no notice, maestro, let’s change the subject.”
“Your jests are rather impertinent,” said Frasquito with dignity, “and maybe even insolent; but you are only a youth and…”
“Come now, it’s all over. I want to ask you one thing, respected Señor de Ponte: how will you spend the first money from your pension?”
“On a just and charitable deed. I shall buy Benina some boots and a new dress.”
“Well, I shall buy her an oriental outfit: she’ll need just that now she’s taken up with a Moor.”
“What’s that? Do you know where that angel is?”
“The angel is in El Pardo, which is the Paradise where they send all angels who beg without a licence.”
“You’re joking.”
“Life’s full of jokes, Señor de Ponte! I know that Nina went to St Sebastián’s, and stood at the door trying to pick up a penny or two. Necessity is a grim counsellor – fancy poor Nina having to do it! But I didn’t find out till today that she did it with a blind Moor… and that was her undoing.”
“Are you sure of this?”
“I’ve seen her. I’ve not told my mother, because I don’t want to upset her; but I know all about it. The police caught her and the fellow in a round up and bunged them in San Bernardino. Then they packed them off to the Pardo and Nina sent me a note from there asking me to do something to get her released. So what did I do this morning? I hired a bicycle and went off to the Pardo. Before I forget: if my wife finds out that I’ve been on a bicycle ride, there’ll be trouble at home. Take care, Polidura, don’t give me away, you know what Juliana can be like. Anyway, I got there and saw her. The poor thing is barefoot and her clothes are in rags. It’s pathetic. The Moor is so jealous. My God, when he heard me talking to her he went crazy and tried to beat me. ‘That fine gentleman!’ he kept saying, ‘I kill that fine gentleman!’ I’d have boxed his ears, but I didn’t want to cause a scandal.”
“I can’t believe that of Benina at her age,” said Frasquito, shyly.
“You’re hardly one to be surprised at old people being in love!”
“Well then,” said Polidura, turning his furious gaze on Antonio, “You must get her out. You’ll have to get a permit from the Civil Governor’s office.”
“Yes, yes, we must do it immediately,” said Ponte. “Is Pepe Alcanizes still Governor?”
“For God’s sake, man, what are you saying? When did you get off the ark?”
“That was at the time of the war in Africa, Señor de Ponte, or soon after,” said the snail man. “I remember when the Liberal Union was in power and Don Jose Posada Herrera was Home Secretary. I worked for La Iberia with Calvo Ascensio, Carlos Rubio and Don Práxedes: it’s no time ago.”
“Be that as it may, gentlemen,” said Frasquito, coming back to the present, “We must get Nina out.”
“With her Moor in tow. I’ll go and see a friend I have in the department tomorrow. Don’t either of you forget, Polidura especially, don’t put your foot in it. If Juliana finds out that I hired a bicycle, I shan’t hear the last of it for six months.”
“Will you go back to El Pardo?” asked Ponte.
“I may do. Can you ride a bicycle?”
“I have never tried. In any case, I would go on horseback.”
“So you ride? You’ve kept that pretty dark! Do you ride English or Spanish fashion?”
“I’ve no idea. I only know that I ride well. Shall I show you?”
“Yes, do. If you don’t break your pate I’ll pay the hacking fee.”
“And if you don’t fall off your bike and break your neck, I’ll pay for the hire of that.”
“Done. And what about you, Polidura?”
“I’ll go on Shanks’ pony.”
“So all three together. I invite you to snails.”
“And I invite you to anything you like,” said Frasquito, getting up. “And if we bring back Nina and the man from the Riff, I invite everybody.”
“A mighty feast!”
36
Doña Paca could not get over Nina’s absence, despite being surrounded by her children, who came to share her good fortune and let her participate in theirs. Of course all this happiness transported her to seventh heaven at once, where she could indulge in pleasant daydreams; but she would soon come back to reality and feel the vacuum created by her companion in misfortune’s absence. Obdulia would try to carry her off into an ideal world on the wings of her imagination, but with no success. Doña Francisca would let herself be borne away at first, since she had a natural tendency to do this, but she would soon come down to earth, leaving her daughter, dishevelled and panting, leaping from cloud to cloud, from one heaven to the next. The child had suggested that she and her mother should live together, now that they could do so in proper style. She would leave Luquitas but grant him an adequate pension. They would rent a town house with a garden; they would subscribe to several theatres; they would seek out people of good society. To which Doña Paca would say: “My dear, don’t run before you can walk. You don’t yet know how much your half of the income from Almoraima will come to. And though it will be a sum not to be sniffed at if I remember that fine property properly, you must realise that you’ll have to cut your coat according to your cloth.”
Saying this, widow Zapata echoed Nina’s practical ideas, which now dominated her thinking and shone in her mind like the stars in the sky. For the time being Obdulia left her house in the Calle de la Cabeza and moved in with her mother. She put off the idea of an immediate search for better quarters, all bright and new and in an attractive area, until the time came when she could put her money into her dream town house. Although Doña Paca was less affected than her daughter by the urge for grandeur, no doubt because of the beating she had had from bitter experience, she also let herself be tempted from the straight and narrow. Convinced that what she did was reasonable, she let herself acquire quite unnecessary and expensive objects. She had got it into her head that she must buy a good chandelier for the dining-room, and could not rest until her whim had been satisfied. That fellow Polidura carried out the transaction, providing a monstrous object which could hardly be got into the house and which, when hung up, was so low that its glass pendants touched the table. Given that they would soon be moving to a house with high ceilings, this wasn’t reckoned a disadvan
tage. The snail man also foisted some rosewood veneer furniture onto her, and some good carpets which were pleasantly soft to walk on, but which did not fit any of the rooms and could only be put down in pieces wherever space allowed.
Obdulia made continual inroads into her mama’s fortune to purchase pots of pretty plants at the nearby flower market in the Plazuela Santa Cruz and in a couple of days had transformed the house so that it was a joy to behold, the dirty passages became orchards and the sitting-room a bower of delight. Against the day when she would move into a town house, she also bought some very large decorative plants, such as palms, rubber-plants and tree ferns. Doña Francisca welcomed this eruption of the vegetable kingdom into her gloomy house and reacted with childish joy at the sight of such beauty, as if in her dotage she had gone back to playing with dolls. “Flowers are such blessed things,” she would say as she walked through her magic gardens, “for they bring joy to the house. Let us thank God, who – if He does not permit us to enjoy the country – allows us to bring the country cheaply into our homes.”
Obdulia spent the whole day looking after her plants and watered them so copiously that at one point one practically had to swim to get from the sitting-room to the dining-room. Ponte praised her fulsomely and with exaggerated enthusiasm encouraged her to continue buying flowers and turn the house into a sort of botanical gardens. But on the first and second day of this new life, Doña Paca had to scold Frasquito because whenever he went out he forgot to bring her the account book she had asked him to get. The old gallant blamed his many tasks for his forgetfulness, until one afternoon he returned with a number of purchases, among which she spied the book, and seized it immediately intending to begin noting down debits and credits far into the happy future. “I shall copy into it everything I have jotted down on this piece of paper first,” she said, “the food they bring from Botín’s, the chandelier, the carpets, other little things, medicines, absolutely everything. And now, my girl, please tell me the price of every flower you buy so that I can note it down exactly. Nothing must be left out. Be very careful, so that it balances. Isn’t that so, Frasquito, it must balance?”
Misericordia (Dedalus European Classics) Page 23
