The Hive

by Camilo José Cela

  “Come here!”

  Pepe scarcely dares look at her. “What is it, madam?”

  “Did you kick him?”

  “Yes, madam.”

  “How often?”

  “Twice.”

  The proprietress rolls her eyes behind her glasses, takes her hands from the pockets, and passes them slowly over her face where the coarse stubble begins to show, not quite hidden by her rice powder.

  “Where did you kick him?”

  “Where I could. On the legs.”

  “Well done. That’ll teach him. Another time he won’t try to steal decent people’s good money.”

  Doña Rosa, her fat little hands on her belly, which is swollen like a goatskin filled with oil, is the very image of the revenge of the well-fed upon the hungry. Rascals! Dogs! Her fingers, like sausages bursting out of their skin, reflect the electric light in beautiful, almost voluptuous glints.

  Pepe moves away from his mistress with a humble look. At bottom, though he is not fully aware of it, his conscience is clear.

  Don José Rodríguez de Madrid talks with two friends who are playing checkers.

  “There you see, forty pesetas, forty lousy pesetas. And then people go round talking their silly heads off.”

  One of the players grins at him. “It’s more than you’d get out of a stone, Don José.”

  “Oh, well, just a little more. What can you do with forty pesetas?”

  “Admittedly, old man, you can’t do much with forty pesetas, and that’s the truth. But after all, what I say is, everything’s welcome but a kick in the pants.”

  “That’s true, too. When all’s said and done it didn’t give me much trouble to earn them.”

  The violinist who was fired because he had answered back to Don José would have made forty pesetas last a week. He ate little and badly, he only smoked what he was given, but he managed to eke out forty pesetas over a whole week; no doubt there were others who kept alive on still less.

  Señorita Elvira calls the cigarette boy. “Padilla!”

  “Coming, Señorita Elvira.”

  “Give me two Tritons. I’ll pay tomorrow.”

  “All right.”

  Padilla takes the two cigars from the packet and puts them in front of Señorita Elvira.

  “One’s for later, you know, for after supper.”

  “That’s right. We trust you here, you know.”

  The cigarette boy’s smile has a touch of gallantry. Señorita Elvira smiles back.

  “Listen, would you give Macario a message for me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ask him to be so kind as to play Luisa Fernanda!”

  The cigarette boy drags his feet towards the musicians’ dais. A gentleman who has been exchanging glances with Señorita Elvira for some time now decides to break the ice.

  “These zarzuelas have some pretty tunes, haven’t they, Señorita?”

  Señorita Elvira agrees with a pout. The gentleman is not discouraged; he interprets her grimace as a sign of sympathy.

  “And they are very sentimental, too, don’t you think?”

  Señorita Elvira rolls her eyes. The gentleman gathers new strength.

  “Do you like the theater?”

  “If it’s good . . .”

  The gentleman laughs as if to applaud a wisecrack. He clears his throat, offers Señorita Elvira a light, and resumes: “Of course, of course. And the pictures? Do you like the pictures, too?”

  “Sometimes. . . .”

  The gentleman makes a gigantic effort, an effort that makes him blush to the roots of his hair: “Those dark little cinemas, eh, what about them?”

  Señorita Elvira answers in a tone of dignity and mistrust. “I only go to the cinema to see the film.”

  The gentleman beats a retreat.

  “Of course, naturally, so do I. . . . What I said was meant for the young people, of course, for those nice young couples— we’ve all been young once. . . . But say, Señorita, I’ve noticed you’re a smoker; I think it’s a very good thing if women smoke, a very good thing, naturally. After all, what’s wrong with it? The best thing for everyone is to live one’s own life, don’t you think? I mention this because, if you’ll allow me—I’ve got to go now, I’m in a great hurry, but we’ll meet another time to continue our chat! If you’ll allow me. I’d be delighted . . . well, I mean . . . to offer you a packet of Tritons.”

  The gentleman speaks hastily and in trepidation. Señorita Elvira answers with a certain distaste, as one who has the upper hand: “All right, why not? If you’re set on it. . . .”

  The gentleman calls the cigarette boy, buys the packet and hands it to Señorita Elvira with his best smile. Then he gets into his overcoat, takes his hat, and leaves. But first he says to Señorita Elvira: “Well, Señorita, it has been a pleasure. Leoncio Maestre, at your service. As I’ve said, we must meet another time. We may well become very close friends.”

  The proprietress calls the manager. The manager’s name is López, Consorcio López; he comes from Tomelloso in the province of Ciudad Real, a big, beautiful, and very prosperous market town. López is a young man, handsome and rather natty, with large hands and a narrow forehead. He is a little indolent and doesn’t give a hoot for Doña Rosa’s tempers. “The best thing with that woman,” he always says, “is to let her talk, then she stops by herself.”

  Consorcio López is a practical philosopher and, really, his philosophy is serving him well. Once in Tomelloso, ten or twelve years ago and shortly before his coming to Madrid, Consorcio had refused to marry a girl friend whom he had saddled with twins. Her brother had said to him: “Either you marry Encarna, or I’ll geld you next time I get you in a corner.” As Consorcio wished neither to marry nor to be made a eunuch, he took the next train and departed for Madrid; and the affair must have been forgotten as time went by, for the fact was that they never bothered him again. Consorcio always carried two photos of his twins in his wallet. One was taken when they were a few months old and lying mother-naked on a cushion, and the other on the day of their first Communion; the second photo was sent to him by his former girl friend, Marujita Ranero, who by then had become Señora de Gutiérrez.

  Doña Rosa, as we have said, calls the manager: “López!”

  “Coming, madam.”

  “How are we off for vermouth?”

  “All right for the moment.”

  “And for anis?”

  “Not too bad. We’re getting short of one or two brands.”

  “Then let them drink others. I won’t go in for extra expense now, I just don’t feel like it. The things people expect to get! Now listen, did you buy that stuff?”

  “The sugar? Yes, they’ll bring it tomorrow.”

  “At fourteen-fifty, after all?”

  “Yes, madam. They wanted fifteen, but we agreed that they’d come down by fifty centimos the kilo because it’s a bulk order.”

  “Good. And now you know, a little sugar in a paper bag with every order, and no second helping for anyone. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, madam.”

  The young man who is writing verse licks his pencil and stares at the ceiling. He is one of those poets who writes poems with “ideas.” This afternoon he has his idea but not yet his rhymes. He has got a few down on paper. What he is looking for is something to rhyme with stream, which must be neither seem nor team. He is turning redeem and gleam round in his mind.

  “I’m shut up in a stupid armor, in the shell of a common clod. The girl with the deep blue eyes. . . . But I want to be strong, more than strong. . . . The girl, blue-eyed and fair. . . . Either the work kills the man or the man kills the work. She of the wheat-gold hair. . . . To die! To die, just that, and leave a slender book of poetry behind. How fair, how fair she is!”

  The young poet is pale, he is very white and has two pink spots on his cheekbones.

  “The girl of the deep blue eyes . . . stream, stream, stream. . . . The girl, blue-eyed and fair . . . seem, team, seem, team. She of t
he wheat-gold hair . . . redeem. And suddenly his free will to redeem. The girl of the deep blue eyes. . . . In rapture his free will so to redeem. The girl of the deep blue eyes. . . . And free again my will I shall redeem. The girl of the deep blue eyes. . . . Or turn your face towards the gentle gleam. The girl of the deep blue eyes . . . the girl with. . . . What sort of eyes has the girl? . . . And reap the corn in golden summer gleam. . . .”

  Suddenly the young man sees the café all blurred.

  “Kissing the universe, a golden gleam. That’s funny.”

  He sways a little like a child that gets dizzy, and feels a wave of intense heat mount to his temples.

  “I feel rather . . . perhaps my mother. . . . Yes, gleam, that’s it, gleam. . . . Over a naked woman flies a man. . . . What a team. . . . No, not team. . . . And then I shall say to her: ‘Never!’ . . . That’s funny. Very funny . . .”

  At a table in the background, two women, both living on pensions and both smothered in paint up to their eyebrows, are discussing the musicians.

  “He’s a real artist; I love to listen to him. As my poor dear Ramón used to say, God rest his soul: ‘Matilde, just watch the way he brings the violin up to his chin.’ There you see how things are in this life; if that young man had somebody to pull strings for him, he’d go far.”

  Doña Matilde shows the whites of her eyes. She is fat, grubby, and pretentious. She smells and she has a huge dropsical belly.

  “He’s a real artist, a first-class artist.”

  “It’s quite true. I look forward to this hour the whole day. He’s a real artist, I absolutely agree. Whenever he plays the waltz from The Merry Widow as only he can, I feel a different woman.”

  Doña Asunción has the condescending mien of a sheep.

  “Don’t you think it was a different kind of music in those days? More refinement, I mean, and more feeling.”

  Doña Matilde has a son who is an impersonator and lives in Valencia.

  Doña Asunción has two daughters: one is married to a clerk at the Ministry of Public Works called Miguel Contreras, and the other is unmarried, a reckless creature who lives with a university professor in Bilbao.

  The moneylender wipes the little boy’s mouth with a handkerchief. He has shining, kindly eyes and shows a certain distinction, although he is not really well groomed. The boy has had a mugful of white coffee and two buns and is ready for more. Don Trinidad García Sobrino neither thinks nor moves. He is a mild man, an orderly man, a man who wants to live in peace. His grandson looks like a little gypsy, thin yet potbellied. He wears a knitted cap and knitted leggings; he is a child who wears a good many warm clothes.

  “Is there anything wrong, young man? Are you not feeling well?”

  The young poet does not answer. His eyes are wide open and bewildered, and he seems to be struck dumb. A tuft of hair has fallen onto his forehead.

  Don Trinidad puts his grandson down on the seat, gets up, and takes the poet by his shoulders.

  “Are you ill?”

  A few heads turn. The poet smiles a foolish, listless smile.

  “Would somebody help me to hold him up? It looks as if he’d been taken ill.”

  The poet’s feet slide, and his body falls under the table.

  “Lend me a hand, somebody. I can’t manage alone.”

  People get up. From the counter, Doña Rosa is watching: “Some people like to make trouble. . . .”

  The boy knocked his forehead against the table when he collapsed.

  “Let’s take him to the lavatory. It must be a dizzy spell.”

  While Don Trinidad and three or four other guests take the poet to the W.C. so that he should recover a little, Don Trinidad’s grandson amuses himself with eating the crumbs of the buns off the table.

  “The smell of the disinfectant will bring him round. It must be a dizzy spell.”

  Seated on the lavatory, his head resting against the wall, the poet smiles as if in bliss. Even though he does not know it, he is happy at heart.

  Don Trinidad returns to his table.

  “Is he better now?”

  “Yes, it wasn’t much, just a dizzy spell.”

  Señorita Elvira gives the two Tritons back to the cigarette boy.

  “And here’s one for yourself.”

  “Thanks. That was lucky, wasn’t it?”

  “Well—better than nothing.”

  Once Padilla called an admirer of Señorita Elvira’s a mug, and she was offended. Since then the cigarette boy has been more respectful.

  A tram nearly knocks down Don Leoncio Maestre.

  “Idiot!”

  “Idiot yourself, you poor fool. What are you dreaming about?”

  Don Leoncio Maestre is dreaming about Elvirita.

  “She’s pretty, yes, very pretty. I should say so! And she seems a well-bred girl. . . . Surely she isn’t a tart. How can one know? Everybody’s life is a novel by itself. To look at, she’s a girl of good family who has quarreled with her people. Now she will be working in an office, most probably in one of the syndicates. She’s got sad, deliberate features. What she needs is, I think, affection and a lot of petting and somebody to show her his admiration the whole day long.”

  Don Leoncio Maestre’s heart leaps beneath his shirt.

  “I’ll go back there tomorrow. I certainly shall. If she’s there it’s a good sign, and if not . . . if she isn’t . . . I must find her.”

  Don Leoncio Maestre turns up the collar of his overcoat and makes two little hops.

  ‘‘Elvira, Señorita Elvira. It’s a nice name. I imagine that packet of Tritons must have pleased her. Every time she smokes one she’ll remember me. . . . Tomorrow I’ll tell her my name again. Leoncio, Leoncio. Leoncio. Perhaps she’ll one day call me by a more affectionate name, something based on Leoncio. Leo. Oncio. Oncete. . . . I’ll have a glass of beer now, I feel like it.”

  Don Leoncio Maestre enters a bar and has a glass of beer at the counter. A girl sitting on a stool next to him gives him a smile. Don Leoncio turns his back to her. To tolerate that smile would be like a betrayal, his first betrayal of Elvirita.

  “No, not Elvirita. Elvira. It’s a simple name and a very pretty name.”

  The girl sitting on the stool addresses him from the rear.

  “Would you give me a light, misery?”

  Don Leoncio almost trembles as he lights her cigarette. He pays for his beer and hurries out into the street.

  “Elvira . . . Elvira . . .”

  Before Doña Rosa leaves the manager, she asks: “Have you given the musicians their coffee?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then give it to them now. They look exhausted.”

  The musicians on their dais drag out the final notes of a piece from Luisa Fernanda, the lovely bit that begins:

  “Among the oak woods

  Of my Extremadura

  Lies my little house

  Quiet and secure.”

  Before it they had played the Moment Musical, and before that something from The Girl with the Bunch of Roses, the number about the “pretty girl from Madrid, flower of the fair.”

  Doña Rosa walks over to them.

  “I’ve told them to bring you your coffee, Macario.”

  “Thank you, Doña Rosa.”

  “Not at all. You know I never go back on my word. A promise is a promise with me.”

  “Oh, I know, Doña Rosa.”

  “So there.”

  The violinist, who has the large, bulging eyes of a weary ox, is looking at her while he rolls himself a cigarette. He purses his lips as though in scorn, and his hands are unsteady.

  “And you’ll get yours too, Seoane.”

  “Good.”

  “Well, well. You don’t exactly waste words, I notice.”

  Macario intervenes to pour oil on troubled waters.

  “The fact is, he’s got stomach trouble, Doña Rosa.”

  “That’s no reason for being so dull, I should say. The manners of some people. . . . When one
’s got to tell them something, they kick, and when one’s doing them a favor they ought to be pleased with, all they say is ‘Good,’ just as if they were noble lords. My foot!”

  Seoane keeps quiet while his colleague appeases Doña Rosa. Then he asks the nearest guest: “What about that young boy?”

  “Recuperating in the Gentlemen’s. It was nothing.”

  Vega, the printer, offers his tobacco pouch to the flatterer at the next table.

  “Go on, roll yourself a fag and don’t snivel. I was once worse off than you are. And d’you know what I did? I got down to work.”

  “That’s a great thing.”

  “Of course, man, of course, work—and no thought for anything else. And now, as you see, I can afford my cigar and my drink every afternoon.”

  The other makes a movement with his head which means exactly nothing.

  ”And if I told you that I want to work and can’t find anything to work at?”

  “Nonsense. There’s only one thing needed for working, and that’s to want to. Are you quite sure you want to work?”

  “Goodness, yes.”

  “Then why don’t you carry luggage to the station?”

  “I couldn’t. I’d crack up in three days. I’m a graduate . . .”

  “And what good has it done you?”

  “Not much, I admit.”

  “What’s wrong with you, friend, is just what’s wrong with a lot more people. They sit about in a café in comfort, twiddle their thumbs, and never do an honest stroke of work. Then one day they fall down in a faint like the sissy they’ve just carried indoors, and that’s that.”

  The graduate gives back the printer’s tobacco pouch and does not contradict him. “Many thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it. Are you really a graduate?”

  “Yes, sir. On the curriculum of 1903.”

  “Good, then I’ll give you a chance so you don’t have to end up in a poorhouse or in the queue for leftovers at a barracks. Do you want to work?”