The Santa Casilda Hostelry—Jacob’s History—La Fea and La
Sinforosa—The Motherless Child—A not Very Merry Christmas
By the time spring came around Manuel was setting type with ease.
Somewhat later, the third compositor left, and Jesús advised the boss to
let Manuel fill the vacancy.
“But he doesn’t know anything,” replied the owner.
“What need he know? Pay him by the line.”
“No. I’ll raise his daily wage.”
“How much are you going to give him?”
“Eight reales.”
“That’s too little. The other fellow got twelve.”
“Very well. I’ll give him nine. But let him not come here to sleep.”
Manuel’s new position freed him from the duty of sweeping the shop.
He abandoned the sty in which he had been sleeping. Jesús took him to
the Santa Casilda hostelry, where he himself stayed; it was a huge,
one-story structure with three very large patios, situated on the Ronda
de Toledo. Manuel would have preferred not to return to this section,
which was linked in his memory to so many unpleasant recollections; but
his friendship with Jesús won him over. He got, at the hostelry, for a
fortnightly rent of eight reales, a tiny room with a bed, a broken reed
chair and a mat hanging from the ceiling and serving as the door. When
the wind blew from the direction of the fields of San Isidro, the rooms
and the corridors of the Santa Casilda hostelry were filled with smoke.
The patios of the place were more or less like those at Uncle Rilo’s
house, with identical galleries and numbered doors.
From the window of Manuel’s den could be seen three red, round-paunched
tanks of the gashouse, with their lofty iron girders that ended
in pulleys at the top; round about was the Rastro; to one side,
dumping-places blackened with coal and slag; farther on stretched the
arid landscape, the yellow slopes of which climbed into the horizon.
Directly before him rose the Los Ángeles hill with the hermitage on its
crest.
In the very next room to that which Manuel occupied were a carpenter,
his wife and a child. The couple would get drunk and beat the child
unmercifully.
Many a time Manuel was on the point of bursting into the room, for it
seemed to him that those beasts were torturing the little girl.
One morning, encountering the carpenter’s wife, he said to her:
“Why do you beat that poor little girl so?”
“Is it any of your business?”
“It certainly is.”
“Isn’t she my daughter? I can do what I please with her.”
“That’s what your mother should have done with you,” retorted Manuel.
“Beat the life out of you for a witch.”
The woman grumbled something or other and Manuel went off to the
printing-shop.
That night the carpenter stopped Manuel.
“What was it you said to my wife, eh?”
“I told her that she oughtn’t to beat her daughter.”
“And who told you to mix into this business?”
The carpenter was a ferocious-looking fellow with a wide, bulging space
between his eyebrows, and a bull neck. His forehead was crossed by a
swollen vein. Manuel made no reply.
Fortunately for him the carpenter and his wife soon moved from the place.
In the holes of the same corridor there lived also two aged gipsies
together with their families, both exceedingly noisy and thievish; a
blind maiden who sang gipsy songs in the streets, wiggling with epileptic
convulsions, and who was accompanied by another lass with whom she was
for ever fighting, and two very cheap, very slovenly sisters, with
painted cheeks and loud voices,—a pair of lying, quarrelsome strumpets,
but as happy as goats.
Jesús’s room was near Manuel’s, and this life in common both at the
printing-shop and at the house tightened the bonds of their friendship.
Jesús was an excellent youth, but he got drunk with lamentable frequency.
He had two maiden sisters, one a pretty chit with green cat’s eyes and an
impudent face, called La Sinforosa, and the other a sickly creature, all
twisted and scrofulous, whom everybody heartlessly called La Fea, ugly.
After they had been living thus for two months or so at the hostelry,
Jesús, in his peculiar, ironic tone, remarked one day to Manuel on the
way to the shop:
“Did you hear? My sister is pregnant.”
“That so?”
“That’s what.”
“Which of the two?”
“La Fea. I wonder who the hero could have been. He deserves a cross of
valour.”
The compositor continued to prattle about the misfortune, jesting upon it
indifferently.
This did not appear very just to Manuel; after all, she was the man’s
sister. But Jesús launched forth with his invectives against the family,
declaring that a fellow need not concern himself about his brothers and
sisters, his parents, or anybody.
“A fine theory for egotists,” answered Manuel.
“Why, the family is nothing but egotism that favours a few as against
humanity,” agreed Jesús.
“Much you care about humanity. As little as for your family,” retorted
Manuel.
This topic was the theme of a number of other discussions, in the heat of
which they spoke some bitter, mortifying words to each other.
Manuel was not much concerned about the theoretical problem. What
did fill him with indignation, however, was to see that Jesús and La
Sinforosa took no pity upon their sister, sending her on errands and
making her sweep the place when the poor rachitic creature couldn’t stir
because of her huge abdomen, which threatened to become monstrous. As a
result of these altercations there were days on which Manuel exchanged
scarcely two words with Jesús, preferring to chat with Jacob and ask him
questions about his native land.
Jacob, despite the fact that he was always lamenting the evil days he had
suffered in his country, was fond of speaking about it.
He came from Fez and was wildly enthusiastic over that city.
He depicted it as a paradise flourishing with gardens, palm-trees, lemon
and orange trees, and beribboned with crystalline streamlets. In Fez,
in the Jewish quarter Jacob had passed his childhood, until he entered
the service of a wealthy merchant who did business in Rabat, Mogador and
Saffi.
With his lively imagination and his exaggerated speech, which was so
picturesque and thronged with imagery, Jacob communicated an impression
of reality whenever he spoke of his country.
He pictured the procession of the caravans composed of camels, asses
and dromedaries. These last he described with their long necks and
their small heads, swaying like those of serpents, with their dull eyes
directed toward the sky. As one listened to him at the height of his
evocations one imagined that one was crossing those white sands in the
blinding sun. He described, too, the markets that were set up at the
intersection of several roads and characterized the folk who came to
them: the Moors of the nearby Kabyles, with their guns; the serpent
charmers; the sorcerers; the tellers of tales from the Thousand And One
Nights, the medicine men who draw worms from human ears.
And as the caravans departed, each proceeding on its different way, the
men mounted on their horses and mules, Jacob would imitate the cawing of
the crows that swooped down in flocks upon the market place and covered
it with a black cloak.
He pictured the effect of beholding thirty or forty Berbers on horseback,
with their flowing locks, armed with long muskets. As they passed a Jew
they would spit upon the ground. He told of the uncertain life there; on
the roads, earless, armless folk, victims of justice, begging alms in the
name of Muley Edris; during the winter, the dangerous crossing of the
rivers, the nights at the gates of the villages, while the _cus-cus_ was
being prepared, playing the _guembrí_ and singing sad, drowsy airs.
One Sabbath Jacob invited Manuel to eat with him at his house.
The Jew lived in the Pozas section, in a ramshackle house on a lane near
the Paseo de Areneros.
The tiny structure looked strange, somewhat Oriental. One or two low
pine tables; small mats instead of chairs, and, hanging from the walls,
coloured cloths and two small three-stringed guitars.
Manuel was introduced to Jacob’s father, a long-haired old fellow who
walked about the house in a dark tunic and a cap, to his wife, Mesoda,
and to a black-eyed child called Aisa.
They all sat down to table; the old man solemnly pronounced a number of
words in an involved language, which Manuel took for some Hebrew prayer,
and then they began to eat.
The meal had a taste of strong aromatic herbs and to Manuel it seemed
that he was chewing flowers.
At table the old man, employing that extravagant Castilian in which the
entire family spoke, recounted to Manuel the events of the African war.
In his version Prim, or, as he referred to him, Señor Juan Prim, assumed
epic proportions. Jacob must have respected the old man very deeply, for
he allowed him to speak on and on about Prim and about the Almighty.
Mesoda, who was very timid, only smiled, and blushed upon the slightest
provocation.
After the meal Jacob took down from the wall one of the small
three-stringed guitars and sang several Arabian songs, accompanying
himself on the primitive instrument.
Manuel bid adieu to Jacob’s family and promised to visit them from time
to time.
* * * * *
One autumn night, as Manuel was returning from work after a day during
which Jesús had not put in an appearance at the shop, he entered the
hostelry to find in the corridor leading to his room a knot of women
gossiping about Jesús and his sisters.
La Fea had given birth; the doctor from the Emergency Hospital was in her
room together with Señora Salomona, a kindly woman who made her living as
a nurse.
“But what has Jesús done?” asked Manuel, hearing the insults heaped upon
the typesetter by the angry women.
“What has he done?” replied one of them. “Nothing at all, only it’s come
out that he’s been living with La Sinfo, who’s the blackest of black
sheep. Jesús and she had taken to drink and that big fox of a Sinfo has
been taking La Fea’s pay from her.”
“That can’t be true,” said Manuel.
“Is that so? Well, Jesús himself was the one to tell it.”
“H’m. The other one isn’t any too decent herself when it comes to that,”
interpolated one of the women.
“She’s as decent as the best of them,” retorted the spokeswoman. “She
told everything to the doctor from the Emergency Hospital. One night when
she hadn’t had a bite in her mouth, because Jesús and La Sinfo had taken
every céntimo from her, La Fea went and drank a drop of brandy to quiet
her hunger; then she had another; she was so weak that she got drunk
right away. In came La Sinfo and Jesús, both stewed to the gills, and the
shameless fox, seeing La Fea in bed, said to her, she says: ‘Out with
you. We need the bed ourselves for ...’ and here she made an indecent
gesture. You know what I mean. And she goes and shows her sister the
door. La Fea, who was too tipsy to know what was going on, went into the
street, and an officer, seeing how drunk she was, took her to the station
and shoved her into a dark cell, where some tramp....”
“Who must have been drunk himself,” interjected a mason, who had paused
to hear the story.
“So there you are ...” concluded the gossip.
“I’ll bet that if there had been light in the cell nothing would have
happened, for the moment the guy caught sight of that face he would have
turned sober with fright,” added the mason, continuing on his way.
Manuel left the gabbling women and stopped in the doorway of Jesús’s
room. It was a desolating spectacle. The typesetter’s sister, pale,
with closed eyes, thrown across the floor on a few mats and covered
with burlap, looked like a corpse. The doctor was bandaging her at that
moment. Señora Salomona was dressing the newborn. A pool of blood stained
the stone flooring.
Jesús, leaning against the wall in a corner, was gazing impassibly at the
doctor and his sister out of glittering eyes.
The physician requested the neighbours to fetch a quilt and a few sheets;
when these articles had been brought they placed the quilt upon the mat
and laid La Fea carefully into the improvised bed. The poor twisted
creature looked like a skeleton; her breasts were as flat as a man’s, and
though she had no strength to move, when they brought the child to her
side she changed position and tried to suckle it.
Gazing upon this scene, Manuel glared angrily at Jesús.
He could have beaten the typesetter with pleasure for having permitted
his sister to come to this.
The physician, after having finished his task, took Jesús over to the end
of the gallery and engaged in private conversation with him. Jesús was
willing to do exactly as he was told; he would give every céntimo of his
pay to La Fea, he promised.
Then, when the physician had left, Jesús fell into the hands of the
women, who made a rag of him.
He denied nothing. Quite the contrary.
“During her pregnancy,” he confessed, “she slept on the floor, on the
mat.”
The chorus of women received the compositor’s words with indignation. He
shrugged his shoulders stupidly.
“Just imagine the poor creature sleeping on the mat while La Sinfo and
Jesús lay in bed!” exclaimed one.
And higher and higher rose the indignation against La Sinfo, that
shameless street-walker, whom they vowed to give an unmerciful drubbing.
Señora Salomona had to interrupt their chatter, for it kept the woman in
childbed awake.
La Sinfo must have suspected something, for she did not show up at
the hostelry. Jesús, frowning glumly, his cheeks aflame and his eyes
aglitter, went on the following days from house to shop without a word.
Manuel had a notion that the young man was in love with his sister.
During the period of her confinement the neighbours took affectionate
care of La Fea. They demanded every céntimo of Jesús’s pay, and he
surrendered it without any resistance whatsoever.
The newborn child, emaciated and hydrocephalic, died within a week.
La Sinforosa never appeared there again. According to gossip she had gone
into the _profession_.
* * * * *
The day before Christmas, toward evening, three gentleman dressed in
black came to the place. One was a diminutive old fellow with white
moustaches and merry eyes; the second was a stiff gentleman with a
greying beard and gold-rimmed spectacles; the other appeared to be a
secretary or a clerk, and was short, with black moustaches, burdened with
documents and tapping his heels as he walked. It was said that they came
from La Conferencia de San Vicente de Paul; they visited Jesús’ sister
and other persons who lived in the nooks and crannies of the house.
Behind these gentlemen attired in black went Manuel and Jesús, who only
slept at the hostelry and did not know the neighbourhood, so that they
walked about their own place as strangers.
“Hypocrites!” cried the mason at the top of his voice.
“But, man. Hush!” exclaimed Manuel. “They might hear you.”
“And suppose they do?” retorted the neighbour. “Let them! They’re nothing
but a gang of hypocrites. Who asks them to come here and pretend to be
charitable souls? They come here to show off, to put on airs,—that’s what
they come for. The mountebanks, the Jesuits! What in hell do they want
to find out? That we live badly? That we’ve turned to swine? That we
don’t attend to our children? That we get drunk? Very well. Let them give
us their money and we’ll live better. But don’t let them come here with
their certificates and their advice.”
The three visitors went into a hole a couple of metres square. On the
floor, upon a litter of rags and straw, lay a dropsical woman with a
swollen, silly face.
A young woman was seated in a chair, sewing by lamplight.
From the corridor Manuel could hear the conversation that was taking
place inside.
The little old man with the white moustaches was asking in his merry
voice what ailed the woman, and a neighbour who lived in an adjoining
room was relating an endless tale of wretchedness and squalor.
The dropsical woman bore her woes with extraordinary resignation.
Misfortune battened upon her and she sank lower and lower until she
reached this doleful position. She could not find a friendly hand, and
her sole benefactors had been a butcher and his wife, former servants
of hers in better days whom she had helped to set up in business. The
butcher’s wife, who was also a moneylender, used to purchase cloaks and
Manila handkerchiefs in the Rastro, and when there was anything to mend
or to put into order she would bring it to the invalid’s daughter for
repair.
This service the former servant rewarded by giving the daughter of her
mistress a heap of bones, and, at times, when she was particularly
pleased with a piece of work, by presenting her with the remainders of a
meal.
“A hell of a generous lady, the butcher’s wife!” commented the mason, who
had listened to the neighbour’s story.
“Even the common folk,” replied Jesús jestingly, recalling a zarzuela
refrain, “has its tender heart.”
The gentlemen from La Conferencia de Paul, after having heard so moving
an account, gave three food tickets to the dropsical woman and left the
room.
“Now the woman’s happy,” muttered Jesús, ironically. “She was going to
die tomorrow and now she can last until the day after. What more does she
want?”
“I should say,” chimed the mason.
The secretary,—the fellow burdened with so many documents, recalled a
case similar to that of the dropsical woman, and he declared that it was
most curious and extremely interesting.
As the three gentlemen were turning down one corridor to go into another,
an old lady approached them, addressing them as “Your grace,” and asking
them to accompany her. She led the way with a candle to a garret, or,
more exactly speaking, a dark nook beneath a staircase. On a heap of
rags, wrapped in a frayed cloak, lay an emaciated, filthy little girl,
her face dark and wan, her eyes black, shy and glittering. At her side
slept a little boy of two or three.
“I wish Your grace would place this little girl in an asylum,” said the
old woman. “She’s an orphan; her mother, who—begging your pardon—did not
lead a very good life, died here. She’s planted herself in this hole and
nobody can make her stir. She steals eggs, bread, whatever she can lay
her hands upon, sometimes in one house, sometimes in another, so that she
can feed the baby. I wish you could see that she’s placed in an asylum.”
The little girl stared out of her large eyes, frightened at sight of the
three gentlemen, and seized the infant by the hand.
“This little girl,” declared the secretary from behind his bundle of
documents, “has a genuinely curious affection for her tiny brother, and I
am not sure that it would not be cruel to separate them.”
“An asylum would be better,” insisted the old woman.
“We’ll see. We’ll see,” replied the old gentleman. The trio took their
departure.
“What’s your name?” asked Jesús of the girl.
“Me? Salvadora.”
“Do you want to come and live with me, together with your little brother?”
“Yes,” replied the lass, without a moment’s hesitation.
“Very well, then, let’s be going. Get up. La Fea will be happy to
have them,” said Jesús, as if to give an explanation of his impulse.
“Otherwise they’ll separate this little girl from her brother, and that
would be an outrage.”
The lass took the babe in her arms and followed Jesús. La Fea must have
received the two forsaken children with intense enthusiasm. Manuel was
not present, for a young man had stopped him in the corridor.
“Don’t you know me?” he asked directly in front of Manuel.
“Of course, man.... You’re El Aristón.”
“That’s me.”
“Do you live here?”
“Over in El Corral.”
El Corral was one of the patios of the hostelry, and opened upon that
pestilential Rastro which extends from La Ronda to the gashouse. El
Aristón was as full of necromania as ever. He spoke to Manuel only of
deaths, burials and funereal matters.
He told Manuel that on Sundays he visited burial grounds; for he
considered it a duty to fulfil that merciful work which bids one to bury
the dead.
During the course of the conversation the necromaniac insinuated
the notion that if the king were to die they could make a wonderful
interment; but despite this, he imagined that the burial of the Pope
would be even more sumptuous.
The necromaniac and Manuel passed through several corridors.
“Where are you taking me?” asked Manuel.
“If you want to come, you can see a corpse.”
“And what are you going to do with this corpse?”
“I’m going to watch over him and pray for him,” replied El Aristón.
In a tiny room lighted by two candles stuck in the necks of bottles,
there was a dead man stretched out on a mattress....
From afar came the sound of tambourines and songs; from time to time the
shrill voice of some drunken old hag would shout:
Ande, ande, ande
la marimorena;
ande, ande, ande,
que es la Nochebuena.
On with the fight,
Let no one grieve.
On with the row,
’Tis Christmas Eve.
In the room where the dead man lay, there was, at that moment, nobody.