_SINA_ TONA'S FAMILY
And the years rolled on with nothing further to disturb the monotonous
course of life for the family sheltered in the tavern-boat. The Rector
had grown up to be a lusty sailor, stingy of words, fearless in danger.
From _gato de barca_ he had graduated to the rank of able-bodied seaman
and was the man of the crew on whom _tio_ Borrasca most relied. Every
month Pascualet handed four or five _duros_ over to his mother to keep
for him.
Tonet was not settling down to any trade. A stubborn fight was going on
between him and his mother. Tona would run her legs off finding him jobs
which he would proceed to lose. For about a week he was apprentice to a
cobbler. Then he went for a couple of months as "cat" on _tio_
Borrasca's boat; and not even that stern disciplinarian was able to kick
any obedience into him. Then he tried his hand at coopering, the
steadiest of all trades; but his boss bounced him to the sidewalk in a
very few days. Then he joined a stevedore's _colla_ in town; but he
never worked unloading the steamers more than two days a week, and that
much quite against his will.
But his many shortcomings as vagrant and rowdy found easy excuse in
_sina_ Tona's eyes, when she would see him of a holiday--and what days
were not holidays for that rascal?--with that fluffy flat silk cap of
his topping off a brown face with just the suggestion of a mustache
showing, a blue denim coat fitting close to his figure, and a black silk
sash wound around his waist over a flannel shirt with black and green
checks. Any woman would be proud to own a boy like that! He was going to
be another terror on the lines of that Martinez--curse the wretch--but
with more "seasoning," more get-up-and-go, to him. To be sure of that,
it was enough to watch the girls in the Cabanal when he was around. They
would be willing to scratch each other's eyes out to get him for a
lover! Tona was kept posted on all his adventures, and was immensely
flattered at the boy's popularity and "social position." A bit too fond
of brandy, yes--and what a pity!--but a regular fellow, quite different
from that big good-natured booby of a Pascualet, who wouldn't say a word
if a cart ran over him.
One Sunday evening in a tavern appositely labeled the "Inn of Good
Morals," he began to throw bottles at some stevedores who had accepted a
cut in wages; and when the police came in to restore order, they caught
him, red-handed, chasing his enemies over the tops of the tables with
his knife drawn. More than one week-end he spent in the jail at
headquarters whence his mother's tears and the "pull" _tio_ Mariano had
as a politician and distributor of election money, would finally
extricate him. And arrest proved so salutary to him that on the very
night of one of his discharges he was taken again for drawing a knife on
two English sailors, who, after a number of treats, tried to explain
some of the details of the Marquis of Queensbury rules to him. Not much
good at drudgery, but able to drink anybody under the table, and do it
night after night, passing from dive to dive, and not showing his face
at home for weeks at a time!
Tonet had an intimate way of conducting his more serious love-affairs
that made many people suspect him of anticipating legal ceremonies. But
his mother took no stock in such reports. She did not insist on a
princess for her Tonet, but how could any one think he would ever marry
that girl of _tio_ Paella the truckman! Dolores, shameless hussy, was
pretty enough, to be sure, but bound to make the woman who got her for a
daughter-in-law lead a song--and a dance! What could you expect of a
girl brought up without a mother by that _tio_ Paella, a tippler who
could never walk straight as he went out to hitch up at daylight, and
who was getting thinner and thinner from alcohol, except for his nose
that was growing so big it almost covered his puffy cheeks.
A tough customer was _tio_ Paella, and no one said a good word for him.
His trade was all in town, in the Fishmarket section of Valencia. When
an English boat came in, he openly offered his services to take sailors
to places only he knew about; and on summer nights he would load his
wagon up with girls in white wrappers, with painted cheeks and flowers
in their hair, and drive parties of men off with them to various resorts
along the shore, where they would have one grand carousal till sunrise,
while he sat off in a corner, his whip in one hand and a wine mug in the
other, paternally chaperoning what, sacrilegiously, he called his
"flock."
And he talked right out regardless of his girl's presence. The language
he used to her was the language he used to the women he knew in town.
When he was drunk he would tell everything to the last detail; and
little Dolores, crouching at a safe distance from her father's boots,
would listen to the whole story with her eyes wide open in amazement
and, written on her face, an eager unhealthy curiosity in all the filthy
things _tio_ Paella would be talking about in his brutal soliloquy,
gloating over the infamous revelries he had been witnessing.
That was good training for a girl, wasn't it! What she didn't know was
probably not worth knowing. And Tona was to be mother-in-law of a piece
like that! Pretty as she was, all that had kept her off the streets so
far was the good advice some of the women of the neighborhood gave her.
Even so, her conduct with Tonet was getting to be the talk of the
village. The boy went in and out in her house as though he were quite at
home; and he took his meals there, knowing very well that the truckman
would not be back till late at night. Dolores did his washing and even
rifled _tio_ Paella's pockets to get money for her lover; and that made
the teamster vomit mouthfuls of vile oaths on the subject of false
friendship, because he thought his tavern companions had robbed him
while he was drunk. One thing at a time, Tonet was moving all his
belongings from the tavern-boat to the truckman's cabin, as though the
girl were foreclosing on his property.
And _sina_ Tona was living more and more by herself. The Rector was
always off peseta-hunting, as he said, either fishing, or sometimes
shipping on one of the _lauds_ that ran to Torrevieja for salt. Tonet
was hanging around the liquor places or staying up at _tio_ Paella's.
Poor Tona was growing old behind the counter of her little shop,
carrying the yellow-headed baby around, loving her with a strange
vehemence at times, and then again hating her at the thought of that
thief of a Martinez--whom the Devil take in due time!
So it was only off and on that God looked after decent people! Things
were not going so well as they used to go, in the early days of Tona's
widowhood. Other old hulks had been turned by copy-cats into taverns
along the beach; and the fishermen could choose where they would go.
She, besides, was not so pretty as she had been once; and the younger
fellows were not so eager to buy drinks of her on the chance of getting
something more. The tavern was living on its old habitues, and bringing
in just enough to keep the wolf from the door. More than once Tona would
walk down to the water as she used to and sadly look back at the two
stoves now cold, the fences now rickety and tumbling down, the pig-pen
where a lean hog scarcely ever grunted at all, and the half dozen hens
hungrily pecking about the sands. How time dragged for her in that
stultifying life of solitude, which was enlivened only when Tonet got
into trouble or when Tona's eyes would fall on a picture of _sinor
Martines_ in uniform, which she had hung up in the stateroom as a
constant and refinedly cruel reminder of her one mistake.
Little Roseta, a favor left behind in the tavern-boat by the considerate
patrolman, gave her mother hardly a moment's peace. She was growing up
like an untameable wildcat. Every evening Tona had to go and hunt for
her before she could shut her up in the boat after a hard spanking; and
from morning till night she would never be seen unless she happened to
be hungry. Thy will be done! One more cross for poor Tona to drag
through this vale of tears! Taciturn and fond of her own company, Roseta
would lie out full length on the wet sand, playing with shells or making
piles of seaweed. She would sit for hours with her blue eyes staring
into space with fixed hypnotic vacancy, the breeze twirling her yellow
locks, as twisted and withy as so many snakes, or blowing up the faded
old frock that reached the knees of two slim legs, shiny white, which
had known no stockings other than the coat of brown the sun burned over
their extremities in summer. Or for hours also she would lie face
downward on the sand, which would take on the imprint of her body under
her, bathing her face in the thin ripple of water that the surf threw up
and sucked back again over the shining beach spangled with all the
capricious tracings of moire.
She was an incorrigible truant, a chip of the old block, as Tona put it,
thinking of that loafer who had been responsible for her, and who also
sat staring day in day out at the horizon like a good-for-nothing idiot,
half awake. If Tona had had to depend on that girl for a living, a fine
mess she would have been in! Lazy, irresponsible, was no name for it!
Couldn't wipe a plate or wash a glass in the cafe without breaking up
housekeeping! Put a herring on to fry when she was tending the fire and
she'd burn it black! Much better to let her run the beach or go to the
dressmaker's shop in the Cabanal.
At times the child showed a mad eagerness to study, and at the risk of a
whipping, would run away from home and go to the village school. But
when Tona found this out and was inclined to encourage her, she would
play truant all the time. It was only in summer that she was of any use
at all. Then a fondness for money could be reconciled with her passion
for roving aimlessly here and there; so during the bathing season, she
would take a jar almost as big as herself, fill it with water from the
_font de Gas_, and go glass in hand among the bathers, or even among the
carriages driving on the pier, shaking her tangled yellow head of hair
and crying in rather a faint voice: _Al ua fresqueta!_ Other times it
would be a basket, instead, filled with cakes, seasoned some with salt
and some with sugar, which she hawked plaintively about: _Salaes y
dolses!_ In this way Roseta would bring as many as two _reals_ to her
mother in the evening, and Tona's face would brighten up, for with
business going as it was, she was getting selfish.
That was the story of Roseta's infancy and girlhood--a frowning
antipathy toward people generally; a menacing submissiveness to her
mother's whippings; hatred for Tonet who had never paid the slightest
attention to her; a smile at times for the Rector, who, on his brief
visits home, would playfully twitch one of her yellow curls; and scorn
for the ragamuffins of the beach whom she refused to play with and held
off with the haughty reserve of a queen forty inches long.
Tona eventually lost all interest in the child, though Roseta was her
last resource in that miserable hovel which, in the long nights of
winter, was as lonely as a tomb. Tonet and the teamster's daughter were
her one concern. That wench was bent on carrying off everything Tona had
in the world! First it had been Tonet; but now Dolores had stolen the
Rector also. For when Pascualet came ashore of late he would barely look
in at the tavern-boat and then be off to the truckman's house where,
evidently, he was a far from troublesome witness to what the lovers were
doing. But it wasn't so much that, in itself, as the influence Dolores
was coming to have with the boys, and thus spoiling a plan that Tona had
had for a long time, of marrying Tonet to the daughter of an old friend
of hers.
For mere looks, Rosario could not, of course, compare with the daughter
of _tio_ Paella; but her goodness--the strong point of insignificant
human beings--was something Tona could not praise highly enough, though
she never mentioned the most important thing of all, that Rosario was an
orphan. Her parents had kept a store in the Cabanal, and from them Tona
had bought her stock. Now that they were dead, the girl was left with a
fortune almost, three or four thousand _duros_, to put it low. And how
the poor thing loved Tonet! Whenever she met him on the streets of the
Cabanal, she always had one of her placid wistful smiles for him; and
she spent her afternoons with _sina_ Tona on the beach, just because the
old lady was the mother of that bantam who was forever turning the
village upside down.
But nothing good would ever come of that rogue! Not even Dolores, with
all the control she had over him, could keep him in hand when one of his
fits of deviltry came on. He would disappear for weeks at a time, when
everything was as nice as you please, and then you would learn, not from
him but from what people said, that he had been in Valencia, sleeping
daytimes in some house in the Fishmarket district, getting drunk every
night, beating the bad women of cheap lodging houses, and setting the
whole town in an uproar whenever he had come off a heavy winner in some
gambling-dive of the slums.
It was on one of these sprees that he took the foolish step which cost
his mother days and days of lamentation and weeping. Tonet, with some
other boys of his kind, went and joined the navy. Life in the Cabanal
had grown too tame for them, and the wine there had lost its flavor. And
the time came when the wretched scamp, in a blue sailor suit, a white
cap cocked over one ear, and a bundle of clothes over his shoulders,
dropped in to bid Dolores and his mother good-by, on his way to
Cartagena where he had been ordered to report for service.
Good riddance, after all! _Sina_ Tona was fond of her boy, but he
wouldn't be getting into trouble again for a while! What a pity, though,
for that poor girl Rosario, so modest and unassuming and never saying a
word, who took her sewing down to the beach with Roseta, and was always
timidly asking whether _sina_ Tona had had any word from Tonet. As time
went on, the three women from the old hulk there on the shore followed
all the voyages and stops of the schoolship _Villa de Madrid_ with Tonet
on board as able seaman. And how excited they would get when the postman
would throw down on the wet counter a narrow envelope, sometimes sealed
with red wax and then again with bread dough, and a complicated address
written all over it in huge fat letters: "_For sinora tona The Woman who
keeps The little cafe near The barn on the Beach._"
A strange exotic perfume seemed to come from the four pages of rough
paper--a suggestion of trees and flowers the poor women did not know, of
tempestuous seas, of shores draped in rosy mists under skies of fire, of
Cuban negroes and Philippine Chinese, or of great cities of South
America. What a boy, eh? What a lot he would have to talk about when he
came home! Perhaps that crazy idea he had had of going away to see the
world would be the making of him in the end. And _sina_ Tona, with a
return of the preference which made her idolize her younger son, felt an
occasional flare of jealous anger as she pictured her Tonet, her fine
brave little boy, off on that navy vessel under the strict discipline of
cross officers, while the other one, the Rector, whom she had always
thought a sleepy-head, was getting on in the world like anything, and
had come to be quite a person in fishing circles.
Whenever Pascualet went out now, it was on shares with the skipper of
his boat; and he had his secrets with _tio_ Mariano, the important
individual whom Tona fell back on in all her plights. The boy was making
money, I'll bet you, and _sina_ Tona was hurt to the quick that he never
brought a cent home any longer, and, indeed, now called at the
tavern-boat, and sat a moment or two under the shelter outside, more for
appearance's sake than anything else. He was saving his earnings, then!
Well, who was keeping the money for him! Dolores! Dolores, of course,
that witch who had given love-philters to both her boys--otherwise, why
were they always following round after her as if they didn't dare say
their soul was their own?
The Rector stuck to the teamster's house as if the poor fool thought he
had some business there! Didn't he know, idiot, that Dolores was for the
other one? Hadn't he seen Tonet's letters and the answers she got a
neighbor who had been to school to write for her? But three times donkey
that he was, without paying the least attention to his mother's gibes,
the Rector kept on going there and taking the favored place his brother
had enjoyed, and apparently without appreciating the progress he was
making. Dolores was now attending to him as she had to Tonet. She kept
his clothes mended, and,--something she had never been troubled with in
the case of that roistering loafer--she also was taking care of his
savings.
One day _tio_ Paella was brought home dead. He had got drunk and fallen
from the seat of his cart, both wheels passing over him. But he died
true to his reputation and just as he had lived, his whip clutched in
one hand, sweating brandy from every pore, and the wagon full of the
girls he spoke of, sacrilegiously, as his "flock." Dolores had no one
else to lean on in her trouble than her _tia_ Picores, the fish-woman, a
chaperone not in every sense desirable, for she tempered kindness with
fisticuffs.
Then it was, some two years after Tonet had gone away, that the big
surprise occurred. Dolores, _gran dios!_ and the Rector, were getting
married. The Cabanal sat up nights discussing the overwhelming piece of
news. And she did the proposing, I'll have you know! And people added
other spicy bits of information that kept the laughing going. Tona
talked more picturesquely than she had ever talked before. So Her Royal
Highness of the Horseshoe, that wench of a teamster's daughter, was
getting into the family, as she had always meant to do! Well, that Queen
Virtuous knew which side her bread was buttered on. Just what she
needed--a husband with a thick skull and nothing inside it, who would be
able to work like a cart-horse from morning till night. The pickpocket!
Just like her to steal the only man in the family that could earn a
cent!
But then suddenly Tona thought of something, and she broke off her
tirade. Better let them get married! That simplified the situation and
favored her own plans. Tonet would now take Rosario! Though it was hard
to swallow it all, she consented even to attend the wedding and say
_filla mehua_ to that scheming hussy who changed her men as she changed
her clothes!
But what would Tonet say, what would Tonet do, when he heard the glad
tidings? That was something to worry about, because everybody remembered
the kind of temper he had when he got angry. So another surprise was due
when the boy wrote back that everything was all right and that he was
glad of it. Been away so long, you see, new faces, new places! That,
doubtless, was why he found it so natural that Dolores should take a
husband, since she had no one else to fall back on. Besides,--and this
is what Tonet himself said--it was better for her to marry his brother
than run any risk on some one else; and the Rector was a good sort, too.
And the sailor showed himself just as reasonable when he turned up in
the Cabanal one evening, with his discharge papers in his pocket and his
bundle of clothes slung over his shoulder, surprising everybody with the
fine appearance he made and with the reckless way he threw money around
from the back pay he had just collected. Dolores he greeted
affectionately as a sister he was fond of. Oh, that? What the devil!
Don't even think of that! It was all right, all right! He had not been
having a bad time himself on his trip around the world! And, in the
midst of the popularity he was enjoying as a returned hero, Tonet seemed
to forget all about Dolores and the Rector.
In front of the door of _tio_ Paella's old place, now occupied by
Pascualet, the villagers would sit in the open air all night sometimes,
on low stools or on the ground, listening open-mouthed while the sailor
told about the countries he had visited, embroidering his adventures
with harmless embellishments to rouse greater thrills in his
simple-minded audience. As compared with the uncouth fishermen they
knew, dull and stupid from the routine of daily toil, or with the
stevedores he used to work with in Valencia, Tonet looked like an
aristocrat to the girls of the Cabanal, with his palish-dark face, his
carefully curled mustache, his hands clean and well manicured, his hair
sleek and neatly brushed with a parting in the middle and--pasted down
on his forehead--two cowlicks just visible under a silk cap!
_Sina_ Tona, for her part, was quite satisfied with her boy. As much of
a scamp as ever, but he had himself more in hand, and it was evident
that the navy discipline had done him good. The same old Tonet, but he
had been taught to dress better and cleaner, and he could drink without
drinking too much. A dandy still, but not sure to be getting into jail
every other minute, and less bent on venting the caprices of a
law-breaking daredevil than on satisfying the selfish cravings of a
rake!
Proof of such progress was that he now took kindly to his mother's
suggestions. Marry Rosario? No objection! Good girl, and a penny or two,
that would be just the thing for a man of ideas, and the brains to carry
them out. Money, after all, was what he needed. You couldn't expect a
fellow fresh from the Royal Navy to go back to lugging bags and boxes on
a wharf! Anything but that! And to _sina_ Tona's unbounded delight,
Tonet took Rosario to wife.
Everything went finely. That was a handsome pair now, wasn't it?--a tiny
little thing, Rosario, timid, obedient, believing in her husband as she
believed in God; and Tonet, proud of his good luck, carrying himself as
stiffly as if, under his flannel shirt, he had a coat-of-mail, made of
his wife's silver dollars, dispensing favors to right and left, living
like a village squire, smoking his pipe all afternoon and evening in the
tavern, and sporting long rubber boots on days when it rained!
Dolores showed no trace of emotion in the presence of her former
sweetheart--only in her domineering eyes one might have seen an intenser
sparkle, a glint of golden fire,--telltale evidence of yearnings
unconfessed. And a happy year went rapidly by. But the money which penny
by penny had been painfully assembled in the wretched store where
Rosario had been born, streamed away between the fingers of the
spendthrift husband; and the cow was running dry, as the mistress of the
tavern-boat observed to her son one day, in a lecture on prodigality.
Along with poverty, discord, tears, and finally the flying fist entered
Tenet's house. Rosario joined the neighbors on the beach and began to
dirty her hands on the slimy fish baskets. Falling from her high estate
as heiress and lady she became a fish-woman, one of the poorest and
hardest-working followers of that soul-killing trade. She was up now
every morning shortly after midnight, waiting on the shore with her feet
in the puddles, drawing a frayed and threadbare shawl about her
shivering body, when the storms blew. All the way to Valencia she would
go on foot carrying that back-breaking load of fish, and it would be
dark again by the time she got home, faint with hunger and fatigue, but
happy withal because her lord and master could still live the life of a
gentleman without any humiliations to translate into swear-words and
beatings. That Tonet might pass his night in the cafe, swapping stories
with engineers from the steamers or skippers from the fishing boats, she
would, many a time in the Fishmarket in town, stifle the hunger that
gripped her at sight of the cups of steaming chocolate and the breaded
chops her companions were busy with at the tables in their stalls.
The important thing was to keep her idol appeased, an idol so quick to
wrath, so prone to curse the rotten marriage he had made. He had to have
his _peseta_ for the night's session at coffee and dominoes. He had to
have his square meal and his flashy flannel shirts. He had a reputation
to keep up. And so long as he had what he wanted, the poor little wife,
thinner and more peaked every day, found all her struggles well worth
while, cost her what it might. She was an old woman before thirty, but
she could boast of exclusive proprietorship of the handsomest buck in
the Cabanal.
Privation brought them closer to the Rector's household, which, while
they were going down and down, was going up and up, on the wings of
prosperity. Brothers have to stand together in hard luck. Of course!
And Rosario, though much against her inner preferences, went to see
Dolores often, and accepted a renewal of intimate friendship between her
husband and his sister-in-law. She was worried, but there must not be an
open quarrel. The Rector would get mad; and he it was who kept them
going on weeks when no fish came in, or when the village dandy found
nothing to get a commission on as go-between in one of the little
business deals that feature life in a seaport town. But the moment came
when the two women, deadly enemies underneath, could pretend cordiality
no longer. Four years after her marriage, Dolores was at last able to
announce the coming of an heir to the Rector's fortune; and the Rector,
with a silly smile on his moon-face, advertised the auspicious event on
every hand--and all his acquaintances were delighted, though they smiled
with a sly wink he did not notice. No one really knew, to be sure. But
funny, wasn't it! That rather deliberate decision of Dolores
corresponded strangely with the time Tonet had become a less frequent
visitor to the cafe and had begun to spend more of his time in his
brother's house.
The two women now spoke their minds with the savage frankness of their
station. The breach between them became permanent. Tonet kept going to
the Rector's place, but alone; and that made Rosario very angry, and the
quarrels in her home now ended always in ferocious cudgelings. And the
time came when Rosario began to say openly that the baby looked like
Tonet. Her husband meanwhile stuck closer than ever to the Rector, who
had revived his old fondness for his younger brother, letting himself be
sponged on in spite of his tight-fistedness. The pretty daughter of
_tio_ Paella poked biting fun at that wreck she had for a sister-in-law,
that old hen, quite _passee_, poor as a rat, a mere day laborer of the
meanest kind, who couldn't hang on to the man she had married! Tonet, in
fact, as in earlier days, was again following Dolores around like an
obedient dog, sitting up when he was told to sit up, and charging when
he was told to charge.
A withering blast of relentless hatred, of flaying jest and stinging
insolence, swept from the old home of _tio_ Paella, now repainted and
with a new ell, toward the wretched tumble-down shack where Rosario had
finally taken refuge in her penury. And well-meaning busybodies, with
the holiest good-will toward both, kept telling what Rosario had said
about Dolores and what Dolores had said about Rosario, taking care that
every apostrophe should reach its destination and receive its fit reply.
When Rosario, flaming with anger and weeping from sheer despair, would
simply have to tell some one of her troubles, she would go off to the
tavern-boat, which, like its mistress, was also aging rapidly with the
years. There she would be listened to in silence, with an expression of
sorrow, or a shake of the head from _sina_ Tona and Roseta, who were
living on in sullen antipathy toward one another in spite of their
relationship, agreeing only on one thing, that men were beneath
contempt. The old hulk, that served them as lair, was a sort of vantage
point from which they were able to follow the war between the two
families.
"Men! Men! What fleas!" _sina_ Tona would say, with a glance at the
picture of the patrolman, who seemed to be the presiding genius of the
place. "Men! Crooks every one of them, not worth the rope to hang them
with!" And Roseta, with her big bright sea-green eyes--the eyes of a
virgin who knows all about the world and is quite sure of herself--would
murmur for once approvingly: "And those who are not scamps like Tonet
are like the Rector--puddingheads!"