Benina humbly repeated that she had worked late at Don Romualdo’s, that Don Carlos Trujillo had kept her a long time and that she had then gone on to the Calle de la Cabeza.
“God knows, God knows, you gadabout, what sort of places you’ve been to. Let’s see, let’s see if you smell of wine.” Smelling her breath, she broke out into expressions of disgust and horror. “Away, go away, you drunkard. You stink of spirits.”
“I haven’t had a drop, madam, believe me.” But Doña Paca insisted, for at such moments her suspicions became certainties, which she clung to obstinately. “Believe me,” repeated Benina, “all I had was a glass of wine that Señor de Ponte treated me to.”
“I’m beginning not to like the sound of that Señor de Ponte, he’s a crafty old rogue. You’re two of a kind, for you are a sly one too. Don’t think you fool me, you hypocrite. In your dotage, you’re becoming depraved – sowing your wild oats! Good Lord, who’d believe the things that happen, how vice, accursed vice, can get the upper hand! You don’t say a word, so it’s true. No, and even if you denied it I wouldn’t believe you, because when I say something, it’s because I know. I have an eye for such things.” And without giving the delinquent time to defend herself, she suddenly changed tack: “And what else? What reception did you get from my relative Don Carlos? How is he? Well? Not dead yet? You needn’t say a word, because I know the whole conversation, just as if I had been there hidden behind a curtain. Aren’t I right? He told you that my misfortunes come from the bad habit of not keeping accounts. There’s no way of getting that idea out of his head. Every madman has his fixation: my relative’s particular form of madness is to solve all problems with figures. He got rich with figures, robbing the Treasury and private individuals, and now at the end of his life he wants to save his soul with figures, and to us poor people he prescribes the medicine of figures, which won’t get him to heaven and is no use at all to us. Aren’t I right? Was this what he told you?”
“Yes, madam, it’s as if you’d been listening.”
“And after harping on all that drivel about debit and credit, I suppose he gave you a charitable gift for me. He doesn’t realise that my pride rebels at receiving it. I can see him opening the drawers reluctantly, taking out the bag he keeps his bank notes in, keeping it out of sight so that you can’t see it; I can see how he fondles the bag and puts it away carefully and locks it up again – and what that pig comes out with is not worth a pig’s dinner. I can’t say exactly how much he’s likely to have given you for me, because it’s so difficult to guess how a miser’s mind works; but I can definitely state without fear of error, that it was under forty duros.”
Benina’s expression on hearing this was indescribable. Her mistress, who was watching her closely, said after a brief pause: “True, I’ve gone too far. Not forty, but – stingy and mean though he is – he wouldn’t have gone below twenty-five. I can’t believe that he could have gone below that, Nina. I can’t believe it.”
“Madam, you’re out of your mind,” said Benina, bringing her firmly down to earth. “Señor Don Carlos gave me nothing, nothing at all. As from next month, he will begin to give you an allowance of two duros a month.”
“You swindler! You cheat! Do you think you can fool me with your tricks? All right, all right, there’s no point in my getting upset, it does me no good and I’m in no state to have a row. Yes, I see it all, Nina, I see it all. You’ll have to make it up with your conscience. I’ll have nothing to do with it, I leave it to God to punish you as you deserve.”
“What for, madam?”
“Now pretend to be innocent, like the cat that got the cream! Don’t you realise that I saw through you and your tricks right away? Come on, woman, confess it, don’t make a bad deed worse by lying.”
“But what about, madam?”
“About falling for temptation; confess it and I’ll pardon you. Won’t you admit it? Well then, all the worse for you and for your conscience, because I’ll make you blush for it. Shall I tell you? Well, those twenty-five duros that Don Carlos gave you for me, you’ve given them to that Frasquito Ponte so that he can pay his debts, eat in restaurants, buy himself ties, make-up and a brand new cane. There! You wicked rascal, now you see that I’ve guessed it all and you can’t hide anything from me, I’m cleverer than you are. Now you’ve decided to protect that Don-Juan-served-up-cold, and you love him better than you love me, and you look after him and neglect me, and you’re sorry for him and don’t care what happens to me, though I love you so much.”
She burst into tears, and Benina, who had wanted to smack her like a naughty child for all those uncalled-for accusations, softened at the sight. She knew that tears heralded the end of the fit of anger, a calm, shall we say, after the storm, and that when this occurred the best cure was laughter, transforming the quarrel into a hearty joke.
“Why yes, Doña Francisca,” she said, embracing her. “Did you really think that now that I’ve got such a glamorous, such a handsome fiancé, I can leave him penniless and not come to his rescue?”
“Don’t think that I believe a word of your little jokes, you scoundrel, you scamp,” said her mistress, already beaten and disarmed. “I assure you that I don’t care what you’ve done, because I wouldn’t have taken money from that miserable Trujillo. I would prefer to die of hunger than stain my hands with anything of his. Give it away, give it to anyone you like, you ungrateful woman, and leave me in peace, leave me to die, forgotten by you and everybody else.”
“Neither of us is going to die soon, because we’ve got plenty of fight in us yet,” said the servant, busily preparing to make her mistress’s lunch.
“Let’s see what rubbish you’ve brought today: show me the basket. But my dear girl, aren’t you ashamed to bring that disgusting offal home for your mistress to eat? And what else? A cauliflower! You’ll poison me with your cauliflowers. They give me flatulence and indigestion which lasts three days. Oh well, what are we here for but to suffer? Let’s have it quickly then, however nasty it is. And eggs too? You know that I can’t get them down, unless they’re very fresh.”
“You’ll eat what’s put before you, without grumbling, because it’s an offence against God to be so critical of the good things he’s given you.”
“Well, my girl, whatever you say. We’ll eat what there is and thank God for it. But you must eat too, for I hate seeing you so overworked, killing yourself for others, forgetting yourself and not looking after your own needs. Sit with me and tell me what you have done today.”
By mid-afternoon they were eating, sitting together at the kitchen table. Doña Paca, sighing deeply between each mouthful, rattled on as the thoughts bubbled in her brain: “Tell me, Nina, there are so many strange, incomprehensible things in the world, there must be a way, some sort of a – what shall I call it? – a magic spell, that could bring us from rags to riches; so that all the excesses of wealth, now in the hands of so many misers, could be transferred to our empty ones?”
“What do you mean, madam? You think that in the twinkling of an eye we could stop being poor and become rich, and our house, maybe, could be full of money and all God’s gifts?”
“That’s what I mean. If it’s true that miracles do happen, why couldn’t one happen to us? After all, we deserve it.”
“And who says that it won’t happen, that we shan’t have our miracle?” answered Benina, into whose mind there suddenly came, with brilliant clarity, the words of the spell that Almudena had taught her, words which could conjure up the riches of the earth.
20
Her blind friend’s story and the images it conjured up so took hold of Benina that she almost told her mistress all about the miraculous method of summoning up the King of the Underworld. But fearing that the more the secret leaked out the less effective it would be, she held her tongue and simply said that it could well happen that a fortune would drop out of the skies overnight. When she lay down in her bed next to Doña Paca’s – for they shared the same room – she de
cided that Almudena’s story was all nonsense and that it would be utterly foolish to take it seriously. She tried to sleep but could not; she found herself beginning to look more favourably on the plan: it would, she thought, be possible to carry out; and the more she fought against it, the more firmly the crafty idea lodged in her brain.
“What do I lose by trying it out?” she mused, snuggling down under the covers. “Maybe it’s not true. But suppose it were? How often do lies turn out to be true after all, as true as day! I’m all for trying it. Tomorrow with the first money I get I’ll buy the earthenware lamp – without speaking. The trouble is I don’t know how one can explain something without speaking – I’ll just have to pretend to be deaf and dumb. Then I’ll buy the staff, also without speaking. Then the old Moor will have to teach me the prayer and I’ll have to get it word perfect.”
After a short sleep, she woke up convinced that in the small sitting-room next door there were many large baskets or hampers, full of diamonds, rubies, pearls and sapphires. It was too dark to see anything, but she had no doubt at all that the treasure was there. She picked up the box of matches and was just about to strike one to have the pleasure of seeing it all, but scared of waking Doña Paca, who was a very light sleeper, she decided to leave the inspection of those marvels until next morning. After a short while, she began to laugh at her own fancy, saying to herself: “What a fool I am! It’s too soon for the stuff to arrive.”
At dawn, she was woken by the barking of two white hounds which emerged from under the beds; she heard the doorbell, jumped out of bed and ran to open the door in her night-dress, convinced that one of the adjutants or gentlemen-in-waiting of the green-robed, long-bearded King would be outside. But there was no one, there was not a soul at the door.
She got ready to go out, got her mistress’s breakfast ready and tidied up the flat; at seven she was already off with her basket on her arm, heading for the Calle Imperial. As she hadn’t a penny in her pocket nor the means of obtaining any, she made first for St Sebastián’s and as she went she thought of Don Romualdo and his family, for by dint of talking about them and describing them so often, she had come to believe in them herself. “What an idiot I am,” she thought “I made up Don Romualdo and now I think of him as real and wonder if he might help me. Don Romualdo is simply another word for begging, blessed begging, and that is what I must go and do, and let’s hope something turns up, with the Corporal’s permission.”
It was a favourable day: as she went in, Pulido told her that there was a first-class funeral, and a wedding in the vestry. The bride was the niece of a minister, “pleniputentiary”, said Pulido, and the groom was “on the newspapers”. Benina took up her usual place and a lady soon gave her two céntimos. Her colleagues tried to force out of her the reason why Don Carlos had summoned her, but she answered evasively. La Casiana thought that Señor de Trujillo must have told Señá Benina that she could have the leftovers from the meals in his household and so treated her with consideration, doubtless in order to claim a share of her bounty.
But the funeral party distributed little and although the wedding guests were a bit more open-handed, such a crowd of beggars had gathered from all directions, and there was so much noise and confusion, that some collected five times their share and others nothing at all. When they saw the bride come out, all bedecked and beribboned, and the ladies and gentlemen who accompanied her, they fell upon them like a cloud of locusts, crushing the best man’s overcoat and even crumpling his hat. The good gentleman had great difficulty in shaking off the terrible plague; the only way was to throw a handful of small change into the middle of the courtyard. The more agile of the beggars reaped a rich harvest, the crippled and the lame crawled as best they could, but in vain. The Corporal and Eliseo tried to restore order and when the bride and bridegroom and their party got into their carriages, the rabble remained by the church, snarling and kicking. They scattered, then swirled noisily together again. Like any street riot, this finally petered out as the participants became exhausted. Their parting shots were: “You took most … They’ve pinched mine … There’s no decency round here … What scoundrels.”
La Burlada, who had scooped up as much as anyone, spat out a stream of foul language, inciting all the others against the Corporal and Eliseo. The police finally intervened, threatening to “take them in” if they did not keep quiet. This was as effective as if God had spoken. The intruders made off; the regulars retired into the passageway. Benina had made twenty-two céntimos out of the day’s campaign, funeral and wedding together, and Almudena seventeen. Casiana and Eliseo were rumoured to have collected a peseta and a half each.
When Benina and the blind man left together, bemoaning their ill fortune, they found themselves as before in the Plaza del Progreso, and sat down under the statue to discuss the difficulties and trials of the day. Benina had no idea which way to turn; the charity she had received would get her nowhere, because she had to pay some small debts in the shops of the Calle de la Rueda, and this would sustain her credit and allow her to muddle through a few days longer. Almudena told her that he was quite unable to help her; the most he could do would be to let her have the few pennies he’d got that morning and that evening he would give her whatever he made during the rest of the day, begging in his usual spot in the Calle del Duque de Alba, near the Civil Guard barracks. The old woman refused this generosity, because he too had to live and feed himself, to which Almudena replied that a coffee with bread dunked in it, in the Cruz del Rastro, would do him until evening. Benina again refused the offer and brought up the question of the King of the Underworld, with a faith and confidence attributable to her great need. The occult and the mysterious find their adepts amongst those desperate souls who can turn nowhere else for consolation.
“I’ll buy the things now,” said the poor woman. “Today is Friday and tomorrow – Saturday – we’ll try it out.”
“You buy things without speaking.”
“Of course, without saying a word. What do we lose by trying it out? And tell me, must it be exactly at midnight?”
Almudena told her that it must and repeated the rules and essential conditions for the spell to be effective, and Benina tried to fix it all in her memory.
“If you make mistake,” he said, “King no come.”
“I know you’ll be at the little fountain in the Calle del Duque de Alba for the rest of the day. If I forget anything I’ll come and ask you, and I’ll want you to teach me the prayer. That’s going to take me a long time to learn, if you won’t translate it into a Christian tongue, for in yours, my dear boy, I don’t know how I can be sure I won’t make a mistake.”
Depressed by these difficulties, Benina left her companion, anxious to collect a few pence to make up what she needed for that day and, unable to get anything further on credit, she began to beg at the corner of the Calle de San Millán, near the door of the Café de los Naranjeros, importuning the passers-by with tales of her misfortunes: she had just come out of hospital, she said, her husband had fallen off some scaffolding, she hadn’t eaten for three weeks – and other heart rending stories.
Some money did come her way and she would have got more if a cursed policeman had not appeared and threatened to take her to the cells at the Latina police station, if she did not make herself scarce, and quickly. She then embarked on the purchase of the objects necessary for the magic spell, a tiresome process as it had to be done by sign language, and returned home thinking as she went how difficult it would be to work this devilish piece of witchcraft without her mistress finding out. The only way to avoid this would be to pretend that Don Romualdo had fallen seriously ill and that she had to go and watch by his bedside during the night, going instead to Almudena’s – but La Pedra’s presence there might stand in the way of success; not only would there be the danger that a sceptical witness might stop the charm working, but also there would be the grave disadvantage that, if it succeeded, that drunkard would wish to commandeer all or part of the
treasure donated by the King. Indeed, how much better it would be if, instead of precious stones, it were to come in coins of the realm, or in bundles of bank notes, neatly held together by rubber bands, as she had seen at the money changers. For what a business it would be, having to go to the jewellers to offer so many pearls, sapphires and diamonds for sale. Well, anyway, she thought, let them bring it in whatever form they please: we’re hardly in a position to criticise or make conditions.
She found Doña Paca in a sorry state, because in the early morning an employee of the shop had called and had insulted her, using brutal, horrid words. The poor lady was in tears and, tearing her hair, she begged her faithful friend to scrape every barrel in search of the few duros which were needed, so that she could throw them in the beastly shopkeeper’s face. Benina racked her brains to find a solution to the terrible problem.
“For pity’s sake,” her mistress continued, in floods of tears, “think of something. Friends are for occasions like this. When things are desperate, one must put one’s pride in one’s pocket. Does it not occur to you, as it does to me, that your Don Romualdo could get us out of our predicament?”
The servant didn’t answer. As she prepared her mistress’s meal, she turned over the most complicated schemes in her mind. When Doña Paca repeated her proposal, Benina gave the impression that she thought it not unreasonable. “Don Romualdo? Yes indeed, I’ll go and ask him,” she said. “But I guarantee nothing. They may not trust us: charity is one thing, a loan is another. And we shan’t be out of the wood for less than ten duros… What did that brute Cabino say?” she went on, “That he would be back again tomorrow to make a scene? What a swine and a thief. He adulterates all his wares. Then again, if it’s as much as ten duros, I don’t know if Don Romualdo – well, he might, but his sister’s very tight-fisted. Ten duros! I’ll go and see, but madam mustn’t mind if I’m rather late back. It’s difficult to know how best to tackle such things. It’ll all depend on their first reactions. They’ll probably just say: ‘Come back later.’ I’m off, I’m off. I’ve a horrid feeling about it. I shall be a long time but it’s never too late to come home, as they say.”
Misericordia (Dedalus European Classics) Page 13