Cæsar impatiently awaited Señor Peribáñez’s reply, so that he might
return to Madrid. He was fed up with Don Calixto’s conversation and his
wife’s, and with the familiarity they had established with him.
Alzugaray, on the other hand, was entertained and content. Amparito’s
father showed a great liking for him and took him everywhere in his
automobile.
Cæsar, in order to satisfy his requirements for isolation, had begun to
get up very early and take walks on the highway. He almost always walked
too far, and was done up for the whole day, and at first he slept badly
at night.
He wanted to see, one by one, the parts of his future realm, the scene
where his initiative was to bear seed and his plans to be realized.
A lot of ideas occurred to him: to build a bridge here, to take
advantage there of the fall of the river and establish a big electric
plant for industrial purposes. He would have liked to change everything
he saw, in an instant.
To think of these sleeping forces irritated him: the waterfall, lost
without leaving its energy anywhere; the ravine, which might be
transformed into an irrigation reservoir; the river, which was flowing
gently without fertilizing the fields; the land around the hermitage,
which might have been converted into a park, with a bright, gay
schoolhouse; all these things that could be done and were not done,
seemed to him more real than the people with whom he talked and lived.
One morning Cæsar walked to Cidones; the sun shone strongly on the
highway, and he reached the town choked and thirsty.
The streets of Cidones were so narrow, so cold and damp, that Cæsar
shivered on entering the first one, and he turned back, and instead of
going inside that polypus of dark clefts, he walked around it by the
road. On a small house with an arbour, which was on a corner, he saw a
sign saying: ‘Café Español’; and went in.
THE CAFÉ ESPAÑOL.
The café was dark and completely empty, but at one end there was a
balcony where the sun entered. Cæsar crossed the café and sat down near
the balcony.
He called several times, and clapped his hands, and a girl appeared.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“Something to drink. A bottle of beer.”
“I will call Uncle Chinaman.”
The girl went out, and soon after a thick, chubby man came in, with a
bottle of beer in his hand, the label of which he showed to Cæsar,
asking him if that was what he wanted.
“Yes, sir; that will do very well.”
The man opened the bottle with his corkscrew, put it on the table, and
as he seemed to have a desire to enter into conversation, Cæsar asked
him:
“Why did the girl tell me that Uncle Chinaman would come? Who is the
Chinaman?”
“The Chinaman, or Uncle Chinaman, as you like; I am.”
“My dear man!”
“Yes, we all have nicknames here. They called my father that, and they
call me that. Psh! It makes no difference. Because if a person is cross
about it, it’s all the worse. A few days ago a muleteer from a town
in the district arrived here, and went to the inn, and as he had no
nickname and they are very fond here in Cidones of giving one to every
living creature, they said to him: ‘No matter how short a while you stay
here, you will be given a nickname’; and he answered contemptuously:
‘Bah! Little fear.’ Soon after, as he was crossing the square, a girl
said to him: ‘Good-bye, Little Fear!’ and Little Fear it remained.”
As Uncle Chinaman seemed very communicative, Cæsar asked him some
questions about life in the town.
Uncle Chinaman talked a great deal and with great clearness. According
to him, the cause of all trouble in the town was cowardice. The two or
three bosses of Castro and Father Martin ruled their party arbitrarily,
and the rest of the people didn’t dare breathe.
The poor didn’t understand that by being united they could offset the
influence of the rich, and even succeed in dominating them. Besides,
fear didn’t permit them to move.
“But fear of what?” said Cæsar.
“Fear of everything; fear that they will levy a tax, that they won’t
provide work, that they will take your son for a soldier, that they will
put you in jail for something or other, that the two or three bullies
who are in the bosses’ service might beat you.”
“Does their tyranny go as far as that?”
“They do whatever they choose.”
The Chinaman, who looked more like a Tartar, could make himself quite
clear. If it had not been that he used the wrong words and had an itch
for unusual ones, he would have given the impression of being a most
intelligent man.
He said he was anti-clerical, declared himself a pantheist, and spoke of
the “controversories” he maintained with different persons.
“A relative of mine who is a monk,” he said, “is always reprehending me,
and saying: ‘Lucas, you are a Free-Thinker.’... ‘And it’s greatly to
my credit,’ I tell him.”
Then, apropos of his monkish relative, he told a scandalous story. A
niece of the Chinaman’s, who had served for some while in the café, had
gone to live with this monk.
Uncle Chinaman’s account of it was rather grotesque.
“I had a niece,” he said, “in the house, you know, very spruce, very
good-looking, with breasts as hard as a rock. My wife loved her as
‘muchly’ as if she had been our daughter, and so did I. Suddenly we
heard the poor child had made a false step... or two false steps... and
a little while later the girl was in a bad condition. Well, then; she
went to town, and came back here to the café, and again we heard that
the poor child had made a false step... or two false steps; and as I
have daughters, you know, this ‘pro... missiousness’ didn’t please me,
and I went and told her: ‘Look here, Maria, this isn’t right at all, and
what you ought to do is get out.’ She understood me, and went away, and
went to her uncle the monk, and the two of them formed a ‘cohabit.’...
Curse her! I went after them; and if I ever find them, I’ll kill them.
All very well for the poor child to make a false step... or two false
steps; but this thing of getting into a ‘cohabit’ with a monk, and he
her uncle, that is a ‘hulimination’ for the family. You may believe that
we had to empty the cup down to the ‘drugs.’”