by Pierre Louys
That particular day was scorching, as I’ve said, and the women showed no hesitation in taking advantage of the tolerant attitude that allows them to undress themselves as they please in the unbearable atmosphere in which they have to live from June to September. Such a regulation is only humane, for the temperature in these long rooms is infernal, and it’s only fair to grant the poor girls the same rights as ship’s stokers. All the same, the end result is far from uninteresting.
The most fully-clothed – and these were the prudes – had nothing but a chemise about their body; but nearly everyone worked stripped to the waist, in a plain linen petticoat, loosened at the belt and sometimes pushed halfway back up the thighs. It made for a motley spectacle, depicting woman at every stage of her existence: there were the children, the elderly, the young and the not so young – obese, fat, thin or emaciated. Some were pregnant. Others were breast-feeding their little ones. Others still weren’t even nubile. You could find all sorts in this naked throng – except, no doubt, virgins. Some of the girls were even rather pretty.
I passed along the compact rows, looking left and right, sometimes solicited for alms and sometimes rudely greeted with the most cynical jokes, for the entry of a lone man into this colossal harem arouses a good deal of excitement. Believe you me, they don’t mince their words once they’ve lowered their chemises, and they accompany what they’re saying with certain gestures whose indecency, or rather simplicity, is somewhat disconcerting, even for a man of my age. These girls are every bit as shameless as respectable women!
I didn’t reply to all of them. After all, who can hope to have the last word with a female cigar maker? But I watched them carefully, and as their nakedness accorded ill with the impression I got of an arduous occupation, I imagined that all these busy hands were hastily manufacturing for themselves numerous little lovers made from tobacco leaves. Moreover, they did all that was necessary to suggest the idea to me.
The contrast between the shabbiness of their linen and the extreme attention they lavish on their abundant hair is striking. They style it with a small pair of curling tongs, just as if they were off to a ball, and they powder themselves right up to the tips of their breasts, and even over the holy medals they wear around their necks. There’s not one of them who doesn’t have forty hairpins and a red flower in her chignon; not one who doesn’t have a small mirror and a white powder-puff at the bottom of her kerchief. They might be mistaken for actresses dressed up as beggars.
I considered them one by one, and it seemed to me that even the quietest let themselves be examined with some show of vanity. I also noticed that at my approach a few of the young ones, as if quite by chance, assumed more relaxed poses. I gave a few small coins, or perras, to those with children; to others the little bunches of carnations with which I’d filled my pockets, and which they immediately hung at their breasts from the small chains of their crosses. There were, to be sure, a few rather pitiful anatomies in this heterogeneous herd, but they were all interesting, and I stopped more than once in front of an admirable female body, such as one only really finds in Spain: a warm, fleshy bosom, velvety like a fruit and amply clad in the sleek skin, uniformly dark in colour, against which the curly astrakhan under the arms and the almost black rings of the breasts stand out strongly.
I saw fifteen that were beautiful. That’s a lot, out of five thousand women.
Half-deafened, and a little weary, I was just going to leave the third room when, amidst all the shouting and the lively conversation, I heard a small, crafty voice close by saying:
“Caballero, if you give me a perra as well, I’ll sing a little song for you.”
I recognised the speaker: it was Concha! I was quite astounded. I can picture her even now: she had on a long chemise which was a little worn, but which fitted her well around the shoulders and wasn’t too low-cut. She was looking at me as she straightened a cluster of pomegranate flowers that she had in the first tress of her black pigtail.
“How did you get here?”
“Heaven knows. I don’t remember any more.”
“But what about your convent in Avila?”
“Girls that go back there through the door leave by the window.”
“And that’s how you left?”
“I’m a respectable girl, caballero. I didn’t go back at all, for fear of committing a sin. Give me five perras, then, and I’ll sing you a flamenco song while the supervisor’s at the other end of the room.”
You can just imagine how the other girls nearby were staring at us during this little dialogue. I was doubtless rather discomfited by this myself, but Concha was quite unperturbed.
“So, who are you living with in Seville, then?” I went on.
“With mama.”
I shuddered. For a young girl a lover is at least some sort of a safeguard, whereas a mother – spells ruin!
“Mama and me, we keep ourselves busy. She goes to church, and I come here. It’s the age difference.”
“Do you come here every day?”
“More or less.”
“Only ‘more or less’?”
“Yes. When it’s not raining, when I’m not feeling sleepy, when I get bored of going out for walks. You can come and go as you please here – ask the others. But you must be here at midday, or else you won’t be let in.”
“No later than that?”
“Don’t joke. Midday – Heaven’s above! As if that wasn’t early enough! I know some who can’t manage to get up in time two days running, and so they find the gate shut. And for what we earn, you know, we’d be better off staying at home.”
“How much do you earn?”
“Seventy-five céntimos for a thousand cigars or for a thousand packets of cigarettes. As I do a good job, I get a peseta; but it’s not exactly a fortune … Give me a peseta too, caballero, and I’ll sing you a lively song that you haven’t heard before.”
I tossed a coin worth a napoleon into her box and, giving her ear a tweak, I left.
There comes, sir, during the youth of people who are happy, a precise moment when their luck turns, when the slope that was rising falls again, when the winter months set in. That was mine, right then. That gold coin thrown down in front of that girl was the fatal dice in my game. I date from then my disgrace, moral decline, and present way of life, as well as the changes you can see here upon my brow. You’ll soon find out why. It’s really a very simple story, almost banal in fact, save in one particular. But it has destroyed me.
I’d gone outside and was slowly walking down the hot, sunny street when I heard the sound of little footsteps running along behind me. I turned round: she’d caught up with me.
“Thank you, sir,” she said.
I noticed that her voice had changed. I hadn’t realised the effect that my little offering must have had upon her; but now I saw that it had been considerable. A napoleon is worth twenty-four pesetas – the price of a bouquet. For a girl employed making cigars that represents a month’s work. Furthermore, it was a gold coin, and gold is rarely seen in Spain, except in the moneychanger’s shop-window.
Without meaning to, I’d conjured up for her all the excitement of wealth.
Naturally, therefore, she lost no time in leaving the cigarette packets she’d been cramming since morning where they were. She put her petticoat, stockings and yellow shawl back on, picked up her fan and, after hastily powdering her face, she rejoined me as fast as she could.
*
“Come along,” she continued, “you’re my friend. Thanks to you I’m on holiday now, so you can walk me back home to mother’s.”
“Where does she live, your mother?”
“Calle Manteros. It’s not far. You’ve been very nice to me, but you weren’t interested in my song, and that was wrong of you. So now, as a punishment, you’re going to recite one for me.”
“Oh no I’m not.”
“Yes you are. I’ll whisper it to you.”
She leaned forward towards my ear.
&nbs
p; “This is how it goes:
‘Is there anyone listening? – No.
– Do you want me to tell you? – Tell.
– Have you got a lover then? – No.
– Do you want me to be him? – Yes.’
But it’s only a song, you know, and those aren’t my replies.”
“Is that really true?”
“Oh, absolutely!”
“And why’s that?”
“Guess.”
“Because you don’t like me?”
“I do though. I find you charming.”
“But you already have a sweetheart?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“It’s because of your piety then?”
“I’m very pious, but I haven’t made any vows, caballero.”
“And I doubt that it’s out of indifference.”
“No, sir.”
“There are too many questions that I can’t ask you, my dear child. If you have a reason, then tell me.”
“Ah, I knew you wouldn’t be able to guess! It was too difficult.”
“Well, what is it then?”
“I’m still a virgin.”
CHAPTER SIX
IN WHICH CONCHITA MAKES HERSELF KNOWN, HOLDS HERSELF BACK, AND DISAPPEARS
She said these words with such aplomb that I stopped short, feeling quite disconcerted, and rather embarrassed for her.
What was going on in the pretty little head of this provocative and rebellious child? What was the meaning of her confident behaviour, her open and perhaps honest expression, her sensual lips which proclaimed themselves intransigent as if deliberately to tempt one to take liberties with them?
I didn’t know what to think, but I understood perfectly well that she greatly attracted me, that I was delighted to have found her again, and that I was now doubtless going to seek out every possible opportunity for watching her as she went about her life.
We arrived at the front door of her house, where a fruit-seller was unpacking her baskets.
“Buy me some tangerines,” she said. “I’ll offer them to you inside.”
We went upstairs. I found the house disquieting. Nailed to the first door was a card with a woman’s name on it, but not her profession. On the floor above there was a florist, and next door to her an apartment with closed shutters, from behind which came the sound of laughter. I was beginning to wonder whether this little girl wasn’t simply leading me to the most banal of rendezvous. But then again, the surroundings didn’t prove anything: impoverished cigar makers don’t have much choice when it comes to lodgings, and anyway I don’t like to judge people simply according to the name of the street they live on.
She stopped on the landing of the top floor, along which ran a wooden bannister, and rapped three times on a brown door, which only opened with some difficulty.
“Let us in, mama,” the child said. “I’ve brought a friend home with me.”
Her mother – a dark-skinned woman, who still retained some traces of an otherwise faded beauty – looked me up and down distrustfully. But from the way in which her daughter pushed open the door and invited me to come right in, it immediately struck me that only one person was mistress in this hovel, and that the queen mother had abdicated the regency.
“Look, mama: a dozen tangerines … and look again: a gold coin!”
“Heaven’s above!” exclaimed the old woman, clasping her hands together. “And how did you earn all that?”
I quickly explained to her about our double encounter, first in the railway carriage and again in the Fábrica, and then I tried to get her to talk about herself.
Which she did – endlessly.
She was, or at least claimed to be, the widow of an engineer who’d died at Huelva. Having returned to Seville without a pension or any other means of support, she’d run through her husband’s savings in four years, despite leading a frugal lifestyle. In short, whether true or not, it was a story that I’d heard a dozen times before, and that always ends with a cry for help.
“What can I do? I don’t have a trade; I only know how to take care of the house and pray to the Holy Mother of God. I was offered a job as a concierge, but I’m too proud to work as a servant. I spend my days at the church. I prefer to kiss the flagstones in the choir than sweep those by someone else’s front door, and I’m counting on the Good Lord to provide for me before it’s too late. Two women on their own are so vulnerable! Ah! There are no lack of temptations for those so inclined, caballero! We’d be rich, my daughter and I, if we hadn’t kept to the straight and narrow. We’d have slippers and necklaces! But sin has never spent the night under our roof. We’re honest souls, we are, more upright than St. John’s finger pointing to Heaven, and we put our trust in God, who always knows and looks after His own.”
During this speech Conchita had been standing in front of a mirror that was nailed to the wall, working away on her swarthy little face with a couple of fingers and some powder, like an artist with his crayons. When she’d finished she turned round, and it seemed to me that her mouth was quite transfigured by the radiant smile of satisfaction that now lit up her features.
*
“Ah!” her mother went on, “How I worry when I see her setting off for the Fábrica in the morning! What a bad example they set her there! What nasty words they teach her! Those girls don’t know the meaning of shame, caballero. You never know where they’ve just come from when they arrive there in the morning, and if my daughter had listened to them, she’d have run off and left me long ago.”
“Why do you make her work there, then?”
“It’d be just the same elsewhere. You know how it is, sir: when two girls are working together for twelve hours on end, they spend eleven and three-quarter hours talking about what they oughtn’t, and the rest of the time they’re silent.”
“If they only talk, there’s not much harm in that.”
“Mention food, and mouths water. Bah! Young girls are led astray by women’s advice, not men’s looks. I wouldn’t trust the best of ‘em an inch. She that carries a rosary in her hand, carries the devil in her skirt. Neither old nor young – no girlfriends: that’s how I’d like it to be for my daughter. And there she has five thousand of them.”
“In that case,” I interrupted, “let her never return there again.”
And I took two banknotes from my pocket and placed them on the table.
Exclamations … Clasped hands … Tears … – I’ll spare you the details, which you can easily guess. But once their cries had died down, the mother, shaking her head, ruefully declared that her child would nevertheless certainly have to go back to work again, for the amounts owing to the landlord, the grocer, the chemist and the second-hand clothes dealer were long overdue. In short, I doubled my gift, and immediately took my leave, modesty and self-interest both prompting me to keep quiet about my feelings that day.
*
* *
I won’t deny that next morning, when I knocked at their door, it was barely 10 o’clock.
“Mama’s out,” Concha told me. “She’s gone shopping. But come on in, my friend.”
She looked at me, and then began to laugh.
“Well now, I’m very well-behaved in front of mama, don’t you think?”
“Indeed you are.”
“But please don’t imagine it’s because I’ve been taught good manners or anything like that. Fortunately for me, I’ve brought myself up all alone – for my poor mother would’ve been quite incapable of doing so. I’m a respectable girl, and she likes to brag about the fact. But I could be propped up on my elbows at the window, calling out to the passers-by, and she’d just gaze at me and exclaim: “How funny!” I do exactly as I please, from morning to night, and so I deserve some credit for not simply doing whatever takes my fancy, because she certainly wouldn’t be the one to hold me back, for all her fine words.”
“And so, young lady, the day a prospective fiancé comes forward, you’re the one he’ll have to talk to?”
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br /> “That’s right. Why, do you know of any?”
“No.”
I was in front of her, sitting in a wooden armchair, the left arm of which was broken. I can still picture myself there, with my back to the window, and a ray of sunshine streaking the floor beside me …
All of a sudden she sat herself down on my lap, placed her hands on my shoulders, and asked:
“Is that really true?”
This time I didn’t answer.
I’d instinctively put my arms around her, and now with one hand I drew her sweet face, which had assumed a serious expression, towards me; but she forestalled my gesture, and eagerly pressed her burning lips to mine, while giving me a searching look.
Impulsive and incomprehensible: that’s the way she’s always been, ever since I’ve known her. The suddenness of her affection intoxicated me like a shot of strong liquor. I hugged her even closer, and her waist yielded to the pressure from my arm. I could feel the warmth and the roundness of her legs pressing down on me through her skirt.
Then she stood up.
“No,” she said, “no. Go away.”
“Very well, I will – together with you. Come along.”
“You want me to leave with you? Where on earth to? To your house? You’d better not count on it, my friend.”
I took her in my arms again, but she broke free.
“Don’t touch me, or I’ll cry out, and then we’ll never see each other again.”
“Concha … Conchita … my sweet – are you mad? What! I come to see you as a friend, I speak to you just as I would to a stranger; all of a sudden you rush into my arms – and then you start accusing me …?”