If the apartment which Doña Nogueira de Pardiñas and her only son
Rogelio occupied in Madrid was neither the sunniest nor the most
spacious to be found in the city, it possessed, on the other hand, the
inestimable advantage of being situated in the Calle Ancha de San
Bernardo, so close to the Central University that to live in it was, as
one might say, the same as living in the university itself.
Seated in her leather-covered easy-chair by the window, widening and
narrowing the stocking she was
[Illustration: “Seated in her leather-covered easy-chair by the
window.”]
knitting without once looking at it, Señora de Pardiñas would follow her
adored boy with her gaze, which, traversing space and passing through
the solid substance of the walls, accompanied him to the very
lecture-room of the university. She saw him when he went in and when he
came out--she noticed whether he stopped to chat with any one, whom he
talked to, whether he laughed; she knew who his companions were, whom he
liked and whom he disliked; who were the industrious students and whom
the idle ones; who were regular and who were irregular in their
attendance. She was familiar, too, with the faces of the professors, and
made a study of their expression and their manner of returning the
salutations of the pupils, drawing from external signs important
psychological deductions bearing on the problem of the examinations:
“Ah, there comes old Contreras already, the Professor of Procedure. How
amiable he looks! what a saint-like face he has. How slowly he walks,
poor man. ’Tis easy to see that he suffers from rheumatism as I do. The
more’s the pity! I like him on that account, and not on that account
alone, but because I know that he is indulgent and that he will give
Rogelio a good mark in his examination. Now comes Ruiz del Monte, so
stiff and so conceited. He looks as if he were made all in one piece.
Poor us! Neither favor nor influence nor anything else is of any use
with him. He would have the boys know the studies as well as he does
himself. If he wants that let him give them his place in the
college--and the pay as well. Ah, here we have Señor de Lastra. He
stoops a little. What comical caricatures the boys make of him in the
class! And he is familiar to a fault. There he is now clapping Benito
Diaz, Rogelio’s great friend, on the back. He looks to me like a good
easy-going man. My blessing upon him! I don’t know what there is to be
gained by torturing poor boys and distressing their parents.”
Pausing in her soliloquy, the good lady ran her knitting needle through
the coil of her hair, now turning gray, and scratched her head lightly
with it. Suddenly her withered cheek flushed brightly as if a breath of
youth had blown across it.
“Ah, there is Rogelio,” she cried.
The student emerged from the building, wrapped in his crimson plush
cloak, his low, broad-brimmed hat slightly tipped to one side, his
glance fixed, from the first moment, on the window at which his mother
was sitting. Generally he would give her a smile, but sometimes,
assuming a serious air, he would raise his hand to his hat, and, with
the stiff movement of a marionette, mimic the salutation of the dandies
of the Retiro. The mother would return his salutation, shaking her hand
threateningly at him, convulsed with laughter, as if this were not a
jest of almost daily repetition. Then the boy would stop to chat for a
few minutes with some of his fellow-students; he would exchange a word
in passing with the match-vender, the ticket-vender, the orange-girl at
the corner, and the clerks of the neighboring shops, winding up with
some half-jesting compliment to the servants who stood chatting at the
doors; and finally he would ascend the steps of his own house, where
Doña Aurora was already waiting for him in the hall. His first words
were generally in the following strain:
“_Mater amabilis_, set quickly before your offspring corporeal
sustenance. I have an appetite that I don’t know where I got it. Ah-h-h!
If the beefsteak does not soon make its appearance, dreadful scenes of
cannibalism will be enacted.”
“Yes,” his mother would answer, smiling, “and it will all amount to your
eating a couple of olives and a morsel of meat. Go away with you, you
humbug! You have the appetite of a bird.”
The room in which they liked best to sit was neither the parlor--which
was almost always solitary and deserted,--nor Rogelio’s study, nor his
mother’s room; it was the dining-room, which adjoined the
reception-room. Here was the clock which informed Rogelio, negligent
about winding his watch, when it was time to go to college; here the
little table on which stood the work-basket with the unfinished stocking
buried under a pile of numbers of _Madrid Comico_, _Los Madriles_, and
all the _Ilustraciones_ that had ever been published; here the low,
broad, comfortable sofa and the capacious easy-chairs; here, on the
sideboard, refreshments for the inner man--a bottle of sherry and some
biscuits, or, in summer, fruits, which the boy ate with enjoyment; here,
in a glass, the branch of fresh lilacs, or the pinks which he wore in
his button-hole; here the earthen water jar exuding moisture from its
sides, and the bottle of syrup of iron, and the Japanese fan, and the
unfinished novel, with the marker between the leaves, and the
text-book, worn more by the ill-humor and displeasure with which it was
handled than by use; and finally, the little fireplace that had so good
a draught, which made up for the icy class-rooms, and the dilapidated
courts and passages of the temple of Minerva. With what enjoyment did
Rogelio go to warm himself by the fire before taking off his cloak when
he came in from college, stretching out his hands, cold as icicles, to
the blaze. The genial heat thawed his stiffened muscles, quickened his
impoverished blood, and gave him strength to ask, with a comical
pretense at scolding and coaxing entreaties mingled, for his breakfast,
almost regretting the promptness with which it was served, since it left
him a subject the less for his humorous jests. Before it had crossed the
threshold of the door, Doña Aurora was already crying out:
“Fausta! Pepa! Here is the señorito; bring the breakfast. Quick! Hurry!
Child, your syrup of iron. Shall I count your bitter drops for you!”
“What more bitterness do I want than the pangs of starvation! Here, you
who preside over the culinary department, may I be permitted to know
with what delicacies you intend to assuage to-day the pangs of hunger
that are gnawing my vitals? Have you prepared for me celestial ambrosia,
nectar from the calyxes of the flowers, or tripe and snails from the
Petit Fornos? Relieve me from this cruel uncertainty?
(Suppressed laughter in the kitchen.)
“Bring this crazy boy his breakfast, so that he may hold his tongue!”
Mother and son being seated at the table, the drops counted out and
drank, the steaming soup was set before them, followed by the couple of
[Illustration: “Suppressed laughter in the kitchen.”]
fried eggs, round and crisp-edged, and the beefsteak, invariably sent in
from the neighboring _café_. Only on this condition would Rogelio eat
it. No matter what pains Fausta, the Biscayan, might take, she could
never succeed in supplanting the cook of the _café_. The succulent piece
of underdone steak would come between two plates, with its accompaniment
of fried potatoes, tender, juicy, and appetizing. While Rogelio cut and
ate the meat, his mother watched him eagerly and anxiously, as if she
had never before seen this delicate youth, so different from the ideal
of a Galician mother. Twenty summers run to seed, a pale, dull
complexion, eyes black and sparkling, but with the eyelids drooping, and
surrounded by purple rings, a sarcastic mouth, the lips delicately
curved and somewhat pale, shaded by a light mustache, hair smooth and
silky, a head narrow at the temples, a slender throat, the back of the
neck slightly hollowed in, flat wrists and a graceful shape made up a
figure still immature, interrupted in its development by the _chlorosis_
which is the result of a hothouse existence in which the plant that
requires the pure, free air, dwindles and wilts. So that Doña Aurora did
not enjoy a moment’s peace of mind because of this son who, if not
exactly sickly, was of a nervous and delicate constitution, as was
evidenced by his moods of childlike gayety followed by periods of
causeless gloom. Therefore it was that she watched him at his meals as
eagerly as if every mouthful he swallowed were entering her own stomach
after a two days’ fast. In thought she said to the succulent meat: Go,
strengthen the child. Give him muscle, give him blood, give him bone.
Make him robust, manly, independent. Make him grow to be like a young
bull--although he should have all the savageness of one. No matter, all
the better, I only wish it might be so! Consider that all there is left
me in the world now to love, is that puny boy. And she would say aloud
to Rogelio:
“Eat, child, eat; flesh makes flesh.”