Despite all this, his mother loved him dearly and Benina adored him, because he had no equal as an actor when it came to playing the repentant son. His wild sprees were normally followed by days alone at home, with floods of tears and sighs and promises that he would change, always accompanied by feverish kisses planted on the cheeks of his two fond mothers. Their tender hearts, taken in by these charming demonstrations of affection, were easily lulled into a state of cosy confidence. Then, suddenly, in the midst of all the billing and cooing, whether it was real or faked, the young criminal would jump up again like a jack-in-the-box hidden in a tin of sweets and the boy would be off once more on his shameless forays and the two poor women would be plunged back into despair.
Unfortunately – or fortunately, it’s difficult to decide which – there was by now neither any household silver left nor anything else made out of precious metal. The young devil laid hands on whatever he could find, even objects of scarcely any value at all and, having made off with all their umbrellas and sunshades, he started on their underclothes, and one day, after a meal, he even whisked away the tablecloth and two napkins when his mothers and sister weren’t looking. As for his own clothes, he walked the streets in the depths of winter wearing neither overcoat nor cloak, apparently proof against pneumonia, warmed no doubt by the inner fire of his perversity. Doña Paca and Benina no longer knew where to hide things, fearing that he would take the chemise off their backs if they let him. Suffice it to say that one night, the cruet disappeared, along with a needlecase belonging to Obdulia, on another night, two irons and a pair of tweezers, and on subsequent occasions, various lengths of worn elastic, snippets of cloth and other useful but valueless items. There were no books left in the house and Doña Paca did not dare to borrow any, scared that she would be unable to return them. Even their prayer-books had vanished and at the same time, or on some earlier occasion, opera-glasses, a serviceable pair of gloves and a birdcage with no bird in it.
Although Obdulia’s character was completely different from her brother’s, she too caused her fair share of problems. From the age of twelve, she became so neurotic that her two mothers did not know which way to turn. Being strict with her did no good at all and it was worse still if they spoiled her. As she grew up, she moved seamlessly from epileptic freneticism to listlessness. Her profound melancholia worried the poor women as much as her bouts of hysteria, which were accompanied by great physical and mental activity. Feeding Obdulia became the household’s main concern, her lack of appetite and her propensity for starving herself wasted her mothers’ time and even caused them to lose patience, a commodity God had fortunately supplied them with in abundance. One day they would give her delicious, nourishing food obtained at great sacrifice and the girl would throw it out of the window, the next, she would gobble up all the leftovers and get terrible flatulence as a result. Sometimes she would spend whole days and nights crying, for no discernible reason. At other times she displayed a peevish irritability that tormented the two women even more. One doctor, who visited them because he felt sorry for them, and others who gave free consultations, concluded that all the girl’s nervous and psychological disorders were due to anaemia. For that the only cure was a regime of iron tablets, good fillet steaks and cold baths.
Obdulia was a pretty girl, with delicate features, a pale, opalescent complexion, brown hair, a slim, elegant figure, gentle eyes and when she was not in a sulk, a demure, rather affected way of speaking. No more unsuitable background can be imagined for such a difficult, ailing child than the poverty in which she had grown up and continued to live. From time to time she showed signs of affectation, or a desire to please, or favoured one person over another, all symptoms that typically accompany puberty. This was welcomed by Doña Paca, because she had plans for the girl and the good lady would do her best to bring those plans to fruition, if only Obdulia would become more stable and make an effort to complete her education, which was much neglected, for she had terrible handwriting and was ignorant of the rudiments of knowledge possessed by almost every other middle-class girl her age. Doña Paca dreamt of marrying her off to one of her cousin Matías’ sons. Matías owned land in Ronda and his sons were good-looking, well-brought-up lads, who were studying in Seville and sometimes came up to Madrid for the San Isidro fair. One of them, Currito Zapata, liked Obdulia. An amorous relationship had started to develop but, given the girl’s temperament and her fussy ways, it never came to anything. Her mother, though, did not entirely give up on the idea, or rather, she used it as a balm for all her troubles, cherishing it in her thoughts.
However, when the family were living in Calle del Olmo, a kind of bush telegraph started up between Obdulia and a boy living opposite, whose father ran an undertaker’s. This seemed to happen almost overnight though no one knew how. The young good-for-nothing was not unattractive; he was a student and knew lots of pretty things that were new to Obdulia and were like a revelation to her. Literature and poetry, little verses and countless trifles culled from the sum of human knowledge passed from him to her in their notes, conversations and innocent encounters.
Doña Paca, who still planned to marry her off to the boy from Ronda, viewed all this with some disapproval, but the girl, who, under the boy’s instruction, had mastered many of the elements of romanticism, reacted like a mad thing when she found herself frustrated in her spiritual longings. She would fall into terrible epileptic fits, during which she would slap her own face and scratch her hands. One day Benina came upon her grinding up matchheads in a glass of brandy, which she fully intended to swallow. The resulting uproar almost defies description. While Doña Paca dissolved into tears and Obdulia stamped and leapt up at the ceiling, Benina wondered if she ought not to tell the undertaker all about it, so that, by means of a good hiding or some other efficacious remedy, he might cure his son of the passion for corpses, cypresses and cemeteries with which he had infected poor Obdulia.
Time passed and still they could not wean the errant Obdulia from her courtship with “the boy from the funeral parlour”. Indeed they had to permit it from time to time because of her epilepsy and to avoid still worse disasters, but God ordained that the conflict should come to a swift and simple resolution. In fact this solution saved both families a lot of headaches, because the undertaker’s family were equally distraught and desperate to save their son from rushing headlong into the abyss. One fine morning the girl managed to give her two mothers the slip and escape from the house; the youth did the same. They met outside in the street, firmly intending to go to some poetic spot where they could end their miserable lives, locked in each other’s arms, dying at the same moment, with no possibility of one surviving the other. That being their immediate decision, they began to run, and as they ran they tried to think of the best way of killing themselves, quickly and painlessly, thus passing up into the pure regions inhabited by liberated souls, in the twinkling of an eye. When they were some distance from Calle del Almendro, they had a sudden and entirely mutual change of heart; their views on death underwent a radical transformation. Quite by chance, the boy had some money on him, simply because the previous afternoon he had been to collect payment of two bills, one for “a zinc-lined coffin” and the other for a “full service of coach with canopy, drawn by six horses, with all the trimmings.” The fact of having money effected a prodigious change of mind, diverting their thoughts from suicide to ways of prolonging their existence, and they turned round and went first to have lunch at a café and then to a house nearby. Later still they repaired to another house, from where they wrote to their respective families informing them that “they were now married.”
Strictly speaking, they were not married, but the formalities still to be concluded had become inevitable. The young man’s father presented himself at Doña Paca’s house and there it was decided – while she wept and he stamped with rage – that they had no alternative but to recognise and accept what had happened. And since Doña Francisca could endow her daughter with neither mon
ey nor possessions, not even the minimal amount needed to buy a bed, he would provide Luquitas with lodgings above the warehouse where the coffins were stored and a job with a small salary in his publicity department. This, together with the commission Luquitas would be able to earn on the sale of goods to funeral parlours, the selling of “luxury commodities”, and as an agent for embalming work, would allow the newly-weds to make an honest, if modest, living.
9
The unfortunate lady had not yet recovered from her distress at her daughter’s folly, and still spent long hours lamenting her fate, when Antonio received his call-up papers. The poor woman did not know whether to be glad or sorry. It was sad to see him in uniform with his rifle slung across his back. He was, after all, a young gentleman and army life was unlikely to suit him. But she also thought that some military discipline might be just what he needed to cure him of his bad habits. Fortunately, or unfortunately, for the boy, he drew a very high number and so became a reservist. Some time later, after an absence of four days, he reappeared and told his mother he was getting married, that it was what he wanted and if she refused to give him her consent then he would go ahead anyway.
“My dear boy, of course I give you my consent!” said his mother, bursting into tears. “You do what you want with God’s blessing and leave Benina and me alone in peace at last. If you’ve found someone prepared to take you on and look after you and put up with you, well and good. I’ve done all I can.”
To the usual questions about the name, family and fortune of his fiancée, the lad replied that he believed her to be very rich and a model of virtue. It soon came out that she was the daughter of a seamstress, a wonder at backstitching, and that her only dowry was her thimble.
“Well, child,” Doña Paca said to him one afternoon, “I’ve certainly made a fine mess of things as far as my children are concerned. At least Obdulia won’t go short of a crust of bread or of a coffin for that matter. But how are you going to live? Off the needle and thread of your paragon of a fiancée? Of course, being such a hard worker yourself and so economical, you’ll be able to supplement her earnings with yours! Good God, what a curse has fallen on me and mine! I only hope I die soon so as not to see the horrors yet to come!”
But it was remarkable how the moment Antonio became engaged to the seamstress’ daughter, he began to lose his acquisitive vices and was finally completely cured of them. His character underwent a radical change; he was affectionate towards his mother and Benina and seemed resigned to having no money beyond the tiny amount they could give him. And it was clear from the language he used that he now kept more honest and decent company than before. This contributed to Doña Paca’s decision to give her consent, without meeting the fiancée or expressing any desire to do so. Chatting with her mistress about the matter, Benina suggested that perhaps the family’s luck would change through the indirect route of the young rascal’s marriage, because, as we all know, good luck never arrives the way you would logically expect it to, but always via the most extraordinarily circuitous byways. Doña Paca remained unconvinced because, preyed on as she was by a gnawing melancholy, she could see nothing ahead now but dark storms. Although the two women were less harassed and slightly better off now that both children had left home, they could not get used to their solitude and they missed the “little ones”. This is a very normal reaction, because the fact of the matter is that parents do generally remain deeply attached to their children, however much they torment, mistreat and dishonour them.
Soon after the two weddings had taken place, Doña Paca moved from Calle del Almendro to Calle Imperial, in search of still cheaper lodgings. These, however, did nothing to solve the problem of how to live on nothing at all. Her resources had shrunk to zero, because what remained of her pension was barely enough to keep her minor creditors quiet. Almost every day was anxiously devoted to devising ways of raising a little cash and, by then, this had become extremely difficult, since there was nothing of value left in the house. She had exhausted her credit at shops and market stalls. She could not hope for any help from the children, who had to struggle hard themselves to make ends meet. The situation, then, was desperate, the ship was irremediably lost and they were adrift amongst huge waves without a plank or log to cling to. During that time, Benina showed incredible ingenuity in overcoming their problems and providing food for her mistress on a shoestring budget. Having been a good customer in her better days, Benina knew people in the markets and so was able to procure food for very little money and could get bones for broth, bruised cabbage leaves (red and white) and bits of pork offal for free. She also had good friends and a good reputation in the shops catering specially for the poor that line almost the whole of Calle de la Ruda, and for next to nothing, or occasionally on credit, she obtained such things as stale, undersized or cracked eggs, a handful of chickpeas or lentils, an ounce or two of leftover brown sugar and various other unsavoury items which she served up to her mistress as the genuine article.
By an irony of fate, although Doña Paca was afflicted with a number of infirmities, she had retained her appetite and her liking for good food, and these needs and tastes became, in a way, another kind of illness and one of the hardest to treat since the “medicine” required was obtainable only at food stores, and food cost money. By making superhuman efforts that demanded all Benina’s energy, concentration and native wit, she kept her mistress supplied as well as she could, sometimes very well indeed, with tasty delicacies. She was driven both by a deep sense of charity and by the passionate affection she felt for the poor lady, as if, in her own way, she hoped to compensate her for all her trials and tribulations. Benina herself could get by with a few bones to gnaw on and scraps to nibble at, but only when Doña Paca had eaten her fill. Yet for all her charitable deeds and affectionate acts, she still clung to her instinctive vice, that of always retaining part of the money she had so painfully collected, hiding it from her mistress and keeping it to build up a new fund, a new nest egg.
Within a year of their weddings, both son and daughter – who had entered married life with a certain sense of relief – began to suffer the blows of Fate, as if they had inherited the curse that hung over their poor mother. Obdulia, who could not get used to living with the coffins, fell into a deep depression. She had a miscarriage. She lost all control of her nerves. Poverty and the little or no attention she got from her neglectful husband only worsened her condition. Receiving only meagre help from her in-laws, she lived in a garret in Calle de la Cabeza, badly clothed and worse fed, indifferent to her husband, wasting away in a fatal idleness that only encouraged her already overheated imaginations.
Antonio, on the other hand, was a reformed character since his marriage, doubtless thanks to the virtue, good sense, and industriousness of his wife, who had turned out to be a real treasure. But all these qualities, which had produced the miracle of Antonio’s moral redemption, were not enough to save him from poverty. The couple lived in a tiny room in Calle de San Carlos, which was neat and cosy as a doll’s house. You had only to set foot across the threshold to see how much hard work had gone into it. More fortunate still, Antonio – who previously might have been categorised as a parasite – had acquired a taste for productive work and, finding nothing better to occupy himself, he had become a runner for an advertising agency. He worked like a Trojan all day, racing from one company to the next, from newspaper to newspaper, and although the considerable cost in shoe-leather had to be deducted from his commission, there was always something left over to help keep the family pot boiling and to take some of the pressure off Juliana, slaving away at her sewing machine. She was a girl who did nothing by halves. Her fertility was as great as her talent for housekeeping, for her first pregnancy resulted in twins. A wet-nurse had to be found and one more mouth to feed meant that the sewing machine had to work twice as fast and Antonio had to run twice as far through the streets of Madrid. Before the arrival of the twins, the ex-parasite used to surprise his mother with gifts and toke
ns of filial affection, the only pleasures the unfortunate lady had enjoyed for many a year. He would bring her a peseta, perhaps two, even two and a half, and Doña Paca was more grateful than if her relatives in Ronda had made her a gift of a farm. But as soon as the twins took over the home, greedy for life and for the milk which could only be produced by good food, the happy but hard-pressed father could no longer donate any of his surplus earnings to the babies’ grandmother, because there was none. He was now in a position to receive aid not to give it.
Misericordia (Dedalus European Classics) Page 6