I hurried back home. It must be ages since I left. I don't know where the time has gone. I have a vague feeling that there is some difficult matter I must resolve, that there is something I have forgotten. Perhaps I should set off early tomorrow on a journey. The men in the booth were still playing and I thought I saw a couple of women with them. They'll make the most of their night there alone. No one greets me. The few people I meet pretend not to know me. Just as well, that makes everything easier. It's awful walking through a city where everyone knows everyone else, or thinks they do. I'm fed up with all the Good luck, See you later, All the best, I'll bring it round later. Bah! The street door was open. The concierge was standing outside on the pavement talking to a group of women. She just looked at me and said nothing. Poor woman. I raced upstairs and, unthinkingly, rang the bell. Out of habit, I leaned over the stairwell and saw the concierge looking fearfully up at me. A question was forming inside me, did she not recognise me. As soon as the maid opened the door, they're obviously back, I pushed straight past her. The maid, who's easily frightened, gave a cry. I go straight to my bedroom, I'm tired and want to lie down. I lie down on the still unmade bed without bothering to take off my clothes. I hear noises in the corridor, alarmed voices. It's not possible, You don't know what you're saying. I almost recognise the inflections of those voices, although every time I hear Who is he, they sound farther off, stranger and more desperate. Someone knocks at the door. I don't want to be bothered. When I don't answer, the door opens cautiously and through the narrow crack I see my mother, my sister, the two maids, my little cousin Chucho who they must have brought back with them from the country and who is a terrible little whinger, I see how frightened they all are, they're trembling. I start to feel uncomfortable. I get up to tell them to let me sleep, that I've already had supper and that I won't be going to university tomorrow, and I find my father, visibly shaken, doing his best to speak calmly. I don't really understand what's wrong with him. He began by saying, and I can't reproduce his cold tones, that I must have got the wrong apartment. That room belonged to his son (yes, I know, but, in that case, why mention it!) and that there had obviously been some mistake (how could I mistake the room and the hollow in the mattress?) and Be so good as to leave, sir, otherwise I shall be obliged to ... I suddenly saw their serious, hostile faces. They didn't love me any more. I wondered darkly if they had discovered something. But it's odd, this unanimously scornful look of suppressed fury. `This is my son's room, You must have made a mistake,' my father was saying again, calmer now. I didn't say anything. I realised that when they rapped at the door it was not in order to offer me some supper or to ask Where have you been? How was the journey? nor to let me know they were back. It was in order to throw me out, to inform me that the room was no longer mine. I sensed that it would be useless telling them that I had slept for some months on that mattress and that it was almost mine, that ... There was no point. Who was I. Where can I go now, where can I stretch out my weary bones tonight. I put on my overcoat, which was draped over the back of a chair, and I left. My father no longer looked like my father when I said Goodnight, the expression on his face had grown so hard. As f o r the others ... They, who are usually so easily reduced to tears, didn't shed a single one. Six heads, far up on the first landing.
I buttoned up my trousers as I was going slowly down the stairs. It had grown cooler outside in the street. I turned up my coat collar and set off in no particular direction, feeling faintly desolate. I would like to say something out loud, but I'm afraid I might not recognise my voice. I say nothing. At least tomorrow I can collect my German marks from the Customs and leave, and perhaps begin to live. It's twenty-three twenty and I'm hungry. I haven't eaten anything all day and now ... But where am I going to sleep. Who can I explain my sadness to. I'll take good care of the tickets from Customs and Left Luggage and tomorrow I'll decide what to do. Now I'm going to go for a stroll about the city, although with my unshaven face ... I do wish people wouldn't keep staring at my overcoat ...
Translated by MargaretJull Costa
Alonso Zamora Vicente (Madrid, 1916) is a renowned literary critic and linguist, author of the standard work on Spanish dialectology. He was a professor at Madrid University and at the Instituto de Filologia in Buenos Aires. Throughout his life, he has also been, in his own words, a Sunday writer of short stories. His books include: La voz de la tierra (1958), Primeras hojas (1959) and Vegas bajas (1987). He won the 1980 Spanish National Prize for Literature for Mesa, sobremesa. `A Poor Man' is taken from Smith y Ramirez (1957) a collection of seven stories about the anxieties of life in the city.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Bernardo Atxaga An Exposition of Canon Lizardi's Letter 11
Max Aub The Raincoat 27
Gustavo Adolfo Becquer The Kiss 39
Juan Benet Fables 9, 10 and 10a 53
Juan Benet The Catalyst 59
Pere Calders The Desert 67
Noel Claraso Beyond Death 73
Isabel del Rio No one 91
Isabel del Rio The Key 99
Isabel del Rio Countdown 103
Pilar Diaz-Mas The Little Girl Who Had No Wings 107
Rafael Dieste Concerning the Death of Bieito 115
Wenceslao Fernandez Florez How My Six Cats Died 119
Anxel Fole How the Tailor Bieito Returned to Hell 127
Pere Gimferrer A Face 133
Juan Goytisolo The Stork-men 135
Alberto Insua The Shooting Gallery 143
Julio Llamazares The Yellow Rain 149
Javier Marias Gualta 157
Eduardo Mendoza No News from Gurb 165
Jose Maria Merino The Companion 179
Jose Maria Merino The Lost Traveller 187
Juan Jose Millis The One Where She Tells Him A Story 201
Quirn Month Family Life 207
Quim Monzo Gregor 219
Carlos Edmundo de Ory The Preacher 225
Emilia Pardo Bazin The Woman Who Came Back To Life 231
Joan Perucho The Holocanth 237
Merce Rodoreda My Cristina 241
Alfonso Sastre From Exile 251
Ramon J. Sender Cervantes' Chickens 263
Jose Angel Valente The Condemned Man 305
Ramon del Valle-Inclan My Sister Antonia 307
Enrique Vila-Matas In Search of the Electrifying Double Act 325
Alonso Zamora Vicente A Poor Man 341
The Dedalus Book of Spanish Fantasy Page 34