El árbol de la ciencia: novela 🌳📚
In The Tree of Knowledge, Pío Baroja presents the story of Andrés Hurtado, a young man struggling to find his place in a world full of contradictions. Through his critical and insightful perspective, we explore the social and political tensions of early 20th-century Spain. This story reflects the constant search for meaning in human life, a reflection that leaves no one indifferent. Chapter 1. ANDRÉS HURTADO BEGINS HIS DEGREE. IT WAS 10 o’clock in the morning on an October day. In the courtyard of the School of Architecture, groups of students were waiting for class to begin. Young men were entering from the door on Calle de los Estudios, which opened onto this courtyard, and, upon finding themselves gathered, they greeted each other, laughed, and talked. Due to one of those classic anomalies of Spain, those students waiting in the courtyard of the School of Architecture were not architects of the future, but future doctors and pharmacists. The General Chemistry class for the preparatory year of Medicine and Pharmacy was held at this time in an old chapel at the San Isidro Institute, which had been converted into a classroom, and its entrance was through the School of Architecture. The number of students and their eagerness to enter the classroom was easily explained by the fact that it was the first day of school and the beginning of their studies. This transition from high school to college always gives students certain hope, making them believe they’re more of a man, that their life must change. Andrés Hurtado, somewhat surprised to find himself among so many classmates, was peering intently against the wall at the door at a corner of the courtyard through which they had to pass. The boys were gathered in front of that door like an audience at the entrance of a theater. Andrés was still leaning against the wall when he felt someone grab his arm and say, “Hello, kid!” Hurtado turned and ran into his classmate from the Institute, Julio Aracil. They had been classmates at San Isidro; but Andrés hadn’t seen Julio for a while . He had studied his final year of high school, he said, in the provinces. “So are you coming here too?” Aracil asked him. “You see. ” “What are you studying? ” “Medicine. ” “Well! Me too. We’ll study together. ” Aracil was in the company of a boy older than him, judging by his appearance, with a blond beard and light eyes. This boy and Aracil, both of them polite, spoke disdainfully of the other students, mostly provincial yokels, who expressed their joy and surprise at seeing each other with shouts and laughter. The classroom opened, and the students, hurrying and squeezing together as if they were about to see an entertaining show, began to file in. “We’ll have to see how they get in in a few days,” Aracil said mockingly. “They’ll be in the same hurry to leave as they are to get in now,” the other replied. Aracil, his friend, and Hurtado sat together. The classroom was the old chapel of the San Isidro Institute, which belonged to the Jesuits. Its ceiling was painted with large figures in the style of Jordaens; at the corners of the scotia were the four evangelists, and in the center a number of biblical figures and scenes. From the floor to near the ceiling rose a very steep wooden staircase with a central stairway, which gave the classroom the appearance of a theater coop. The students filled the pews almost to the top; the professor was not yet present, and since there were many noisy people among the students, some began to tap their canes on the floor; many others imitated him, and a furious uproar arose. Suddenly, a small door at the back of the gallery opened, and a very handsome old man appeared, followed by two young assistants. This theatrical appearance of the professor and the assistants caused a great deal of murmuring. Some of the more daring students began to applaud, and seeing that the old professor not only did not feel uncomfortable, but greeted them as if he were recognized, they applauded even more. “This is ridiculous,” Hurtado said. “He probably doesn’t think so,” Aracil replied, laughing. “But if he’s so stupid that he likes to be applauded, we’ll applaud him. ” The professor was a poor, presumptuous, ridiculous man. He had studied in Paris and acquired the mannered gestures and postures of a petulant Frenchman. The good gentleman began a speech of greeting to his students, very emphatic and high-flown, with some sentimental touches: he spoke to them of his teacher Liebig, his friend Pasteur, his comrade Berthelot, of Science, of the microscope… His white hair, his waxed mustache, his pointed goatee, which trembled as he spoke, his hollow and solemn voice gave him the appearance of a stern father from a drama, and one of the students, who noticed this resemblance, recited in a loud and cavernous voice the verses of Don Diego Tenorio, when he enters the Hostería del Laurel in Zorrilla’s play: That a man of my lineage descends to such a vile mansion. Those who were next to the disrespectful reciter began to laugh, and the other students looked at the group of troublemakers. “What’s that? What’s going on?” said the professor, putting on his glasses and approaching the railing of the tribune. Has anyone lost their horseshoe somewhere? I implore those standing next to that donkey, which brays with such perfection, to stay away from it, because its kicks must be deadly. The students laughed with great enthusiasm, the professor ended the class, leaving with a ceremonial bow, and the students applauded wildly. Andrés Hurtado left with Aracil, and the two, accompanied by the young man with the blond beard, whose name was Montaner, headed for the Central University, where the Zoology and Botany classes were being taught. At the latter, the students tried to repeat the scandal of the Chemistry class; but the professor, a curt and grumpy old man, came out to meet them and told them that no one laughed at him, nor did anyone applaud him as if he were an actor. From the University, Montaner, Aracil, and Hurtado marched toward the center. Andrés felt a considerable dislike for Julio Aracil, although he recognized his superiority in some respects; but he felt an even greater aversion to Montaner. The first words between Montaner and Hurtado were not very kind. Montaner spoke with a somewhat offensive certainty about everything; he undoubtedly believed himself to be a man of the world. Hurtado responded sharply several times. In this first conversation, the two classmates found themselves completely at odds. Hurtado was a republican, Montaner a defender of the royal family; Hurtado was an enemy of the bourgeoisie, Montaner a supporter of the wealthy class and the aristocracy. “Leave that stuff alone,” Julio Aracil said several times; “it’s just as stupid to be a monarchist as it is to be a republican; it’s just as foolish to defend the poor as it is to defend the rich. The point would be to have money, a little car like that one”—and he pointed to one—”and a woman like that one.” The hostility between Hurtado and Montaner was still evident in front of a bookstore window. Hurtado was a supporter of naturalist writers , whom Montaner disliked; Hurtado was enthusiastic about Espronceda, Montaner about Zorrilla; they didn’t understand each other at all. They arrived at Puerta del Sol and turned down Carrera de San Jerónimo. “Well, I’m going home,” Hurtado said. “Where do you live?” Aracil asked him. “On Atocha Street. ” “Well, the three of us live nearby.” They went together to Plaza Antón Martín and there they parted ways with very little affability. Chapter 2. THE STUDENTS. At this time, Madrid was still one of the few cities that retained a romantic spirit. All peoples undoubtedly have a series of practical formulas for life, a consequence of their race, history, and physical and moral environment. Such formulas, such a special way of seeing, constitute a useful, simplifying, synthesizing pragmatism. National pragmatism fulfills its mission as long as it leaves a clear path to reality; but if this path is closed, then the normality of A people are shaken, the atmosphere becomes rarefied, ideas and facts take on false perspectives. The Madrid of years past lived in an atmosphere of fiction, the remnant of an old and unrenewable pragmatism. Other Spanish cities had realized the need to transform and change; Madrid remained motionless, incurious, without desire for change. The Madrid student, especially those from the provinces, arrived at court with a Don Juan-esque spirit, with the idea of having fun, playing, chasing women, thinking, as the chemistry professor said with his usual solemnity, that they would soon burn out in an overly oxygenated environment . Except for a religious sense, most didn’t have one, nor did they care much about religion; the students of the late 19th century came to court with the spirit of a 17th-century student, with the hope of imitating, as far as possible, Don Juan Tenorio and of living life carrying on love and challenges with blood and fire . The educated student, even if he or she wanted to see things within the realm of reality and tried to acquire a clear idea of his country and the role it played in the world, couldn’t. The influence of European culture in Spain was truly restricted and limited to technical matters; the newspapers gave an incomplete picture of everything; the general tendency was to make people believe that what was great in Spain could be small outside of it, and vice versa, due to a kind of international bad faith. If in France or Germany they didn’t talk about things in Spain, or talked about them jokingly, it was because they hated us; we had great men here who were the envy of other countries: Castelar, Cánovas, Echegaray… All of Spain, and Madrid especially, lived in an atmosphere of absurd optimism. Everything Spanish was the best. This natural tendency toward lies, toward the illusion of a poor country that isolates itself, contributed to stagnation, to the fossilization of ideas. This atmosphere of immobility, of falsehood, was reflected in the academic world. Andrés Hurtado saw this when he began studying medicine. The preparatory year teachers were very old; some had been teaching for nearly fifty years. No doubt they weren’t retired because of their influence and the sympathy and respect that has always existed in Spain for the useless. Above all, that Chemistry class in the old chapel of the San Isidro Institute was scandalous. The old teacher remembered the lectures of the Institute of France, given by famous chemists, and he undoubtedly believed that by explaining the production of nitrogen and chlorine he was making a discovery, and he liked to be applauded. He satisfied his childish vanity by leaving the elaborate experiments until the end of the class, in order to leave to applause, like a magician. The students applauded him, laughing uproariously. Sometimes, in the middle of the class, one of the students decided to leave, got up, and walked away. As he descended the steps of the bleachers, the fugitive’s footsteps made a great deal of noise, and the other boys seated kept time by stamping their feet and using their sticks. In the classroom, people talked, smoked, and read novels; no one followed the explanations. One even showed up with a bugle, and when the professor was about to pour a piece of potassium chloride into a glass of water, he gave two warnings; another brought in a stray dog, and it was a real problem to get rid of it. There were some brazen students who reached the point of the greatest insolence; they shouted, brayed, and interrupted the professor. One of these students’ tricks was giving a false name when asked . “You,” the professor would say, pointing his finger at him, his beard shaking with anger, “what’s your name? ” “Who? Me? ” “Yes, sir, you, you! What’s your name?” the professor would add, looking at the list. “Salvador Sánchez.” “Alias Frascuelo,” someone who knew him said. “My name is Salvador Sánchez; I don’t know who would mind if I called you.” “Well, if anyone cares, let them speak up,” the student would reply, looking at the place where the voice had come from and feigning inconvenience. “Go away!” the other would retort. “Hey! Hey! Out! To the corral!” several voices would shout. “All right, all right. All right. Go now,” the professor would say, fearing the consequences of these altercations. The boy would leave, and a few days later he would repeat the joke, giving the name of some famous politician or bullfighter as his own. Andrés Hurtado was astonished during the first few days of class. It was all too absurd. He would have liked to find a discipline that was both strong and affectionate, and he found himself in a grotesque class where the students mocked the professor. His preparation for science could not have been more miserable. Chapter 3. ANDRÉS HURTADO AND HIS FAMILY. At almost every moment of his life, Andrés felt alone and abandoned. His mother’s death had left a great void in his soul and a tendency toward sadness. Andrés’s large family consisted of his father and five siblings. His father, Don Pedro Hurtado, was a tall, thin, elegant man, a handsome man, and a rake in his youth. Frenzied with selfishness, he considered himself the center of attention of the world. He had a disturbing disparity of character, an unbearable mixture of aristocratic and plebeian sentiments . His personality revealed itself in an unusual and unexpected way. He ran the house despotically, with a mixture of inconsistency and abandonment, of despotism and arbitrariness, which drove Andrés crazy. Several times, upon hearing Don Pedro complain about the care he was putting in the house, his children told him to leave it in Margarita’s hands. Margarita was already twenty years old and knew how to take care of the family’s needs better than her father; but Don Pedro wouldn’t let her. He liked to have his money at his disposal; he made it a rule to occasionally spend twenty or thirty duros on his own whims, even if he knew his house needed them for something essential. Don Pedro occupied the best room, wore fine underwear, and couldn’t use cotton handkerchiefs, like everyone else in the family, but rather linen and silk. He was a member of two casinos, cultivated friendships with people of position and some aristocrats, and managed the house on Atocha Street, where they lived. His wife, Fermina Iturrioz, was a victim; she spent her life believing that suffering was the natural destiny of a woman. After her death, Don Pedro Hurtado honored the deceased by recognizing her great virtues. “You don’t look like your mother,” he would tell his children; “she was a saint.” Andrés was annoyed that Don Pedro talked so much about his mother, and sometimes responded violently, telling him to leave the dead in peace. Of the sons, the eldest and youngest, Alejandro and Luis, were their father’s favorites. Alejandro was a degraded portrait of Don Pedro. Even more useless and selfish, he never wanted to do anything, neither study nor work, and had been placed in a government office, where he went only to collect his salary. Alejandro made embarrassing spectacles at home; he returned from taverns late at night , got drunk and vomited, and annoyed everyone .
When Andrés began his studies, Margarita was about twenty years old. She was a determined girl, a bit terse, domineering, and selfish. Pedro was second only to her in age and represented philosophical indifference and good money. He studied to be a lawyer and did well thanks to recommendations; but he didn’t care about his studies at all. He went to the theater, dressed elegantly, and had a different girlfriend every month. Within his means, he enjoyed life happily. His younger brother, Luisito, aged four or five, was in poor health. The family’s spiritual disposition was somewhat unusual. Don Pedro preferred Alejandro and Luis; he considered Margarita as if she were his own son. was an adult; he was indifferent to his son Pedro, and almost hated Andrés because he did not submit to his will. One would have to look very deeply into the matter to find any paternal affection in him. Alejandro felt the same sympathies within the house as his father; Margarita loved Pedro and Luisito more than anyone else, esteemed Andrés , and respected her father. Pedro was somewhat indifferent; he felt some affection for Margarita and Luisito and great admiration for Andrés. Regarding the latter, he loved his younger brother passionately, he was fond of Pedro and Margarita, although he quarreled with the latter constantly. He despised Alejandro and almost hated his father; he could not stand him; he found him petulant, selfish, foolish, and self-absorbed . Between father and son there existed an absolute, complete incompatibility; they could not agree on anything. It was enough for one to affirm one thing for the other to take the opposite position. Chapter 4. IN ISOLATION. Andrés’s mother, a fanatical Navarrese, had taken her children to confession when they were nine or ten years old. As a child, Andrés felt terrified at the mere thought of approaching the confessional. He carried the day of his first confession in his memory, like something transcendental, the list of all his sins; but that day, the priest was clearly in a hurry and dismissed him without giving much importance to his minor moral transgressions. This first confession was a cold shower for him; his brother Pedro told him that he had already confessed several times, but that he never bothered to recall his sins. At the second confession, Andrés was determined to tell the priest only a few things to get out of trouble. On the third or fourth time, he took communion without confession without the slightest qualms. Later, after his mother died, his father and sister would occasionally ask him if he had kept Easter, to which he would indifferently reply yes. The two older brothers, Alejandro and Pedro, had attended a boarding school while completing high school; but when Andrés’s turn came, his father said it was too much of an expense, and they took the boy to the San Isidro Institute, where he studied somewhat abandoned. That abandonment and hanging around with the street kids woke Andrés up. He felt isolated from his family, without a mother, very alone, and the loneliness made him focused and sad. He didn’t like going out to walks where there were people, like his brother Pedro; he preferred to stay in his room and read novels. His imagination raced, consuming everything in advance. “I’ll do this, and then this,” he thought. “And then what?” And then he’d decide on this later, and another and another would present themselves. When he finished high school, he decided to study medicine without consulting anyone. His father had told him many times: Study whatever you want; that’s up to you. Despite telling him so and advising him that his son should follow his inclinations without consulting anyone, he was inwardly indignant. Don Pedro was constantly predisposed against his son, whom he considered unruly and rebellious. Andrés would not yield to what he considered his right and stood up to his father and older brother with violent and aggressive stubbornness. Margarita had to intervene in these squabbles, which almost always ended with Andrés going to his room or going out into the street. The arguments began over the most insignificant thing; the disagreement between father and son didn’t need a special reason to manifest itself; it was absolute and complete. Any point touched upon was enough to spark hostility, and not a single kind word was exchanged between them. Generally, the reason for the arguments was political; Don Pedro mocked the revolutionaries, to whom he directed all his contempt and invective, and Andrés responded by insulting the bourgeoisie, the priests , and the army. Don Pedro asserted that a decent person could only be a conservative. In the advanced matches there was bound to be riffraff, according to him. For Don Pedro, the rich man was the man par excellence; he tended to consider wealth not as a coincidence, but as a virtue; he also assumed that with money, anything was possible. Andrés recalled the frequent case of imbecile young men from wealthy families and demonstrated that a man with a chest full of gold and a couple of million from the Bank of England on a desert island could do nothing; but his father didn’t deign to listen to these arguments. The arguments at Hurtado’s house were mirrored upstairs between a Catalan gentleman and his son. In the Catalan’s house, the father was the liberal and the son the conservative; now that the father was a naive liberal who spoke Spanish poorly, and the son a very mocking and malicious conservative. Many times, a thunderous voice with a Catalan accent could be heard coming from the courtyard, saying: “If La Gloriosa hadn’t stood in her way, we would have seen what Spain was like.” And shortly after, the son’s voice, mockingly shouting: “La Gloriosa! What a brave nonsense! ” “What stupid arguments!” Margarita said with a sneer of disdain, addressing her brother Andrés. “As if anything you two were going to resolve anything!” As Andrés grew older, the hostility between him and his father increased. The son never asked him for money; he wanted to consider Don Pedro as a stranger. Chapter 5. ANDRÉS’S CORNER. The house where the Hurtado family lived was owned by a marquis, whom Don Pedro had known at school. Don Pedro managed it, collected the rent, and spoke at length and enthusiastically about the marquis and his estates, which his son considered absolutely base. The Hurtado family was well-connected; Don Pedro, despite his arbitrary behavior and domestic despotism, was extremely kind to outsiders and knew how to maintain useful friendships. Hurtado knew everyone in the neighborhood and was very accommodating . He was very courteous to the neighbors, except for those in the attics, whom he hated. In his theory of money equaling merit, put into practice, disinherited had to be synonymous with miserable. Don Pedro, without thinking, was an old-fashioned man; the suspicion that a worker might consider himself a person, or that a woman might want to be independent, offended him like an insult. He only forgave the poor people’s poverty if they combined it with shamelessness and scoundrelism. Don Pedro reserved all his sympathies for the lower classes, to whom one could address them informally, pimps, party girls, gamblers. In the house, in one of the rooms on the third floor, lived two former dancers, protected by an old senator. Hurtado’s family knew them as the Moñete family. The nickname came from the daughter of the old senator’s favorite. The girl’s hair was styled in a very small bun. Upon seeing her for the first time, Luisito called her the Girl with the Bun, and later the nickname Bun was extended to her mother and aunt. Don Pedro frequently spoke of the two former dancers and praised them highly; his son Alejandro praised his father’s remarks as if they were from a comrade; Margarita became serious upon hearing allusions to the dancers’ licentious lives, and Andrés turned his head disdainfully, implying that he found his father’s cynical boasts ridiculous and out of place. Andrés only met with his family at mealtimes; at other times, he was never seen. During high school, Andrés had slept in the same room as his brother Pedro; but when he began college, he asked Margarita to be moved to a low room used for storing old junk. Margarita initially objected; But then he agreed, ordered the wardrobes and trunks to be removed, and Andrés moved in. The house was large, with those somewhat mysterious hallways and nooks and crannies typical of old buildings. To get to Andrés’s new room, you had to climb some stairs, which left him completely independent. The little room had the appearance of a cell: Andrés asked Margarita to lend him a closet and filled it with books and papers, hung the bones of the skeleton his uncle Dr. Iturrioz had given him on the walls, and left the room with a certain air of a magician’s or necromancer’s den. He was content there, alone; he said he studied better in that silence; but he often spent his time reading novels or simply looking out the window. This window overlooked the back of several houses on Santa Isabel and Esperancilla Streets, and some patios and gables. Andrés had given novelistic names to what could be seen from there: the mysterious house, the house with the staircase, the tower with the cross, the bridge of the black cat, the roof of the water tank… Andrés’s house cats would climb out the window and make long excursions through these gables and overhangs, steal from the kitchens, and one day, one of them showed up with a partridge in its mouth. Luisito would happily go to his brother’s room, watch the cats’ maneuvers, look at the skull with curiosity; it all filled him with great enthusiasm. Pedro, who had always had a certain admiration for his brother, would also go to see him in his den and admire him like a strange creature. At the end of his first year at university, Andrés began to be very afraid of doing poorly on his exams. The subjects were so overwhelming that anyone could be overwhelmed; the books were so thick that there was hardly any time to learn anything properly; Then the classes, in different places, far from each other, meant wasting time walking back and forth, which was a source of distraction. Furthermore, and Andrés couldn’t blame this on anyone but himself, many times, with Aracil and Montaner, he would leave class at the Palacio or Retiro bus stop, and then, at night, instead of studying, he would read novels. May arrived, and Andrés began devouring books to see if he could make up for lost time. He was terrified of doing poorly, especially because of his father’s nagging, who might say, “I don’t think you needed so much solitude for that.” To his great astonishment, he passed four subjects, and, to his own surprise, failed the last one, the chemistry exam. He didn’t want to confess his minor stumble at home and made up a story about not showing up. “Brave cousin!” his brother Alejandro told him. Andrés decided to study hard during the summer. There, in his cell, he would feel very well, very peaceful and at ease. He soon forgot his intentions, and instead of studying, he would look out the window with a pair of glasses at the people going out into the neighboring houses. In the morning, two young girls would appear on distant balconies. When Andrés got up, they would already be on the balcony. They were combing their hair and putting ribbons in their hair. Their faces couldn’t be seen clearly because the glasses, besides being short- range, weren’t achromatic and gave a strong iridescent cast to everything . A boy who lived across the street from these girls would shine a ray of sunlight on them with a small mirror. They would scold and threaten him until, tired, they would sit down on the balcony to sew. In a nearby attic, there was a neighbor who, upon waking, would put on her face. She doubtless didn’t suspect that anyone could be watching her and carried out her operation with great care. She must have been creating a true work of art. He looked like a cabinetmaker varnishing a piece of furniture. Andrés, despite reading and reading the book, understood nothing. When he began to review, he saw that, except for the first few lessons of Chemistry, he could barely answer anything else. He thought about getting some advice; he didn’t want to say anything to his father, and went to his uncle Iturrioz’s house to explain what was happening to him. Iturrioz asked him: “Do you know anything about Chemistry? ” “Very little. ” “Haven’t you studied? ” “Yes; but I forget everything quickly. ” “The thing is, you have to know how to study. Doing well on exams is a matter of mnemonics, which consists of learning and repeating the minimum of data until you master them…; but, anyway, it’s no longer time for that, I’ll recommend you take this letter to the professor’s house. Andrés went to see the professor, who treated him like a recruit. The exam he took a few days later amazed him with its detestability; he got up from his chair confused, filled with shame. He waited, certain that it would go poorly; but he found, to his great surprise, that he had passed. Chapter 6. THE DISSECTION ROOM. The following course, with fewer subjects, was somewhat easier; there weren’t as many things to remember. Despite this, Anatomy alone was enough to test even the most well-organized memory. A few months after the start of the course, in cold weather, the dissection class began. The fifty or sixty students were divided into ten or twelve tables and grouped five by five at each one. Montaner, Aracil, and Hurtado, along with two others whom they considered outsiders to their small circle, gathered at the same table . Without knowing why, Hurtado and Montaner, who had been hostile to each other the previous year, became very close friends the following one. Andrés asked his sister Margarita to sew him a blouse for dissection class; a black blouse with oilcloth sleeves and yellow piping. Margarita made it for him. These blouses weren’t at all clean, because scraps of flesh stuck to the sleeves, drying out beyond recognition. Most of the students were eager to get to the dissection room and plunge their scalpels into the corpses, as if they had some atavistic trace of primitive cruelty. They all displayed a display of indifference and joviality when faced with death, as if it were a fun and joyful thing to disembowel and cut into pieces the bodies of the unfortunates who arrived there. In the dissection class, the students liked to find death grotesque; they would place a cone in a corpse’s mouth or a paper hat. It was told of a second-year student who had tricked a friend of his, whom he knew was a bit squeamish, in this way: he took the arm of a dead person, wrapped his cloak around himself, and approached to greet his friend. “Hello, how are you?” he said, sticking the corpse’s hand out from under his cloak . “Fine, and you,” replied the other. The friend shook his hand, shuddered at its coldness, and was horrified to see the arm of a corpse sticking out from under the cloak. Another case that had occurred at that time was much discussed among the students. One of the hospital’s doctors, a specialist in nervous diseases, had ordered that an autopsy be performed on one of his patients, who had died in his ward, and that his brain be removed and taken home. The intern extracted the brain and sent it with a servant to the doctor’s home. The housemaid, upon seeing the package, thought it was cow brains, took them to the kitchen, prepared them, and served them to the family. Many stories like this were told, whether true or not, with genuine relish. There existed among the medical students a tendency toward class spirit, consisting of a common disdain for death, a certain enthusiasm for surgical brutality, and a great contempt for sensitivity. Andrés Hurtado showed no more sensitivity than the others; he was not affected in the least by the sight of corpses being opened, cut up, and dismembered. What did bother him was the procedure of removing the dead from the cart in which they were brought from the hospital morgue. The servants picked up these corpses, one by the arms and another by the feet, lifted them up, and threw them to the ground. They were almost always skeletal, yellow bodies, like mummies. When they hit the stone, they made a strange, unpleasant noise, like something without elasticity spilling; then, the young men picked up the dead, one by one, by the feet and dragged them along the ground; and when they passed some stairs that led down to a courtyard where the storage room of the room was, the heads fell miserably on the stone steps. The impression was terrible; it seemed like the end of a prehistoric battle, or a Roman circus fight, where the victors were dragging the vanquished. Hurtado imitated the heroes of the novels he had read and reflected on life and death; he thought that if the mothers of those unfortunates who went to the spoliarium had glimpsed the miserable end of their children, they would surely have wished to give birth to them dead. Another unpleasant thing for Andrés was seeing, after the dissections were completed , how they stuffed all the leftover pieces into cylindrical, red-painted cauldrons , where a hand appeared between a liver and a piece of brain matter, and an opaque, cloudy eye amidst the lung tissue. Despite the repugnance such things inspired in him, they didn’t worry him; anatomy and dissection sparked his interest. This curiosity to surprise life; He felt this very human instinct for inquisition , like almost all the students. One of those who felt it most strongly was a Catalan friend of Aracil’s, who was still studying at the Institute. Jaime Massó, as he was called, had a small head, very fine black hair , a yellowish-white complexion, and a prognathous jaw. Although he wasn’t very intelligent, he was so curious about the workings of organs that, if he could, he would take home a dead man’s hand or arm to dissect at his leisure. With the scraps, he said, he would fertilize flowerpots or throw them onto the balcony of a neighboring aristocrat whom he hated. Massó, particular about everything, bore the stigmata of a degenerate. He was very superstitious; he walked in the middle of the streets and never on the sidewalks; he said, half jokingly, half seriously, that as he walked, he left a trail, an invisible thread that shouldn’t be broken. Thus, whenever he went to a café or the theater, he would leave through the same door he had entered to pick up the mysterious thread. Another characteristic of Massó was his enthusiastic and uncompromising Wagnerianism, which contrasted with the musical indifference of Aracil, Hurtado, and the others. Aracil had formed a clique of friends around him whom he dominated and mortified, and among them was Massó; he would give him the cold shoulder, mock him, and treat him like a clown. Aracil almost always displayed a disdainful cruelty, without brutality, of a feminine nature. Aracil, Montaner, and Hurtado, as young men living in Madrid, rarely met with the provincial students; they felt great contempt for them. All those stories about the town casino, about his girlfriend, and about the pranks in the old town of La Mancha or Extremadura seemed to them plebeian stuff, good for people of inferior quality. This same aristocratic tendency, stronger especially in Aracil and Montaner than in Andrés, made them shy away from anything noisy, vulgar, and base; they felt a revulsion for those squabbles where provincial students failed year after year, stupidly playing billiards or dominoes. Despite the influence of his friends, who induced him to accept the ideas and lifestyle of a Madrid gentleman of high society, Hurtado resisted. Subject to the influence of his family, his classmates, and books, Andrés gradually shaped his spirit with the contribution of somewhat heterogeneous knowledge and information. His library grew with discarded materials; his uncle Iturrioz gave him several old books on medicine and biology; he found others, mostly serials and novels, at home; and he bought some at second-hand bookstores. An old lady, a friend of the family, gave him some illustrations and Thiers’s history of the French Revolution . This book, which he started thirty times and bored him thirty times, came to read and worry him. After Thiers’s history, he read Lamartine’s _Girondins_. With the somewhat rectilinear logic of a young man, he came to believe that the greatest figure of the Revolution was Saint Just. In many books, in On the first blank pages, he wrote the name of his hero, and surrounded him like a sunburst of rays. He kept this absurd enthusiasm secret; he didn’t want to tell his friends. His revolutionary affections and hatreds were kept to himself; they never left his room. In this way, Andrés Hurtado felt different when he talked with his classmates in the halls of San Carlos and when he dreamed in the solitude of his little room. Hurtado had two friends whom he saw from time to time. With them, he debated the same issues as with Aracil and Montaner, and was thus able to appreciate and compare their points of view. Of these friends, classmates from the Institute, one was studying to be an engineer and was named Rafael Sañudo; the other was a sickly boy, Fermín Ibarra. Andrés would see Sañudo on Saturday nights in a café on Calle Mayor called Café del Siglo. As time passed, Hurtado saw how his tastes and ideas diverged from his friend Sañudo, with whom he had once agreed so much as a boy. Sañudo and his classmates spoke in the café only about music: the operas of the Royal Academy, and above all, Wagner. For them, science, politics, the revolution, Spain—nothing was important compared to Wagner’s music. Wagner was the Messiah, Beethoven and Mozart the precursors. There were some Beethovenians who refused to accept Wagner, not even as the Messiah, nor even as a worthy successor of their predecessors, and they spoke only of the Fifth and Ninth, in ecstasy. Hurtado, who had no interest in music, found these conversations irritating. He began to believe that the general and vulgar idea that a taste for music signifies spirituality was inaccurate. At least in the cases he saw, spirituality was not confirmed. Among those student friends of Sañudo, very philharmonic, there were many, almost all of them, petty, ill-intentioned, envious. Without a doubt, thought Hurtado, who liked to explain everything, the vagueness of music makes the envious and the scoundrels, upon hearing the melodies of Mozart or the harmonies of Wagner, rest with delight from the internal bitterness produced by their bad feelings, like a hyperchlorhydric acid ingesting a neutral substance. At that Café del Siglo, where Sañudo went, the audience was mostly students; there were also some family groups, the kind that huddle around a table, much to the despair of the waiter, and a few young women with an ambiguous air. Among them, a very pretty blonde stood out, accompanied by her mother. The mother was a fat, short-tempered woman, with a crooked tusk and the gaze of a wild boar. Her story was known; After living with a sergeant, the girl’s father, she had married a German watchmaker, until he, fed up with his wife’s profligacy, kicked her out of the house. Sañudo and his friends spent Saturday nights badmouthing everyone, then discussing with the café’s pianist and violinist the beauty of a Beethoven sonata or a Mozart minuet. Hurtado realized that this wasn’t his center and stopped going there. Several nights, Andrés would go into some café singer with its stage for female singers and dancers. He liked flamenco dancing, and singing too, when it was simple; but those café specialists, fat men who sat on a chair with a stick and began to droop and make very sad faces, seemed repugnant to him. Andrés’s imagination made him see imaginary dangers that, with an effort of will, he tried to defy and overcome. There were some very closed cafés and gambling houses that Hurtado thought were dangerous; one of them was the Café del Brillante, where groups of pimps, waitresses, and dancers formed; the other was a gambling den on Magdalena Street, with the windows hidden by green curtains. Andrés would say to himself, “Nothing, we have to go in here,” and he would enter, trembling with fear. These fears varied in him. For some time, he was like a woman A strange woman, a hustler from Candil Street, with black eyes shaded with dark shadows and a smile that showed off her white teeth. Seeing her, Andrés shuddered and began to tremble. One day he heard her speak with a Galician accent, and without knowing why, all his terror disappeared. Many Sunday afternoons, Andrés went to the house of his classmate Fermín Ibarra. Fermín was ill with arthritis and spent his life reading recreational science books. His mother treated him like a child and bought him mechanical toys that amused him. Hurtado told him what he was doing, talked about his dissection class, the cafés cantantes, and Madrid’s nightlife. Fermín, resigned, listened with great curiosity. It was absurd; upon leaving the poor sick man’s house, Andrés had a pleasant idea of his life. Was it a malicious feeling of contrast? Feeling healthy and strong near the disabled and the weak? Outside of those moments, at other times, his studies, discussions, home, friends, his adventures—all of this, mixed with his thoughts, gave him an impression of pain, of bitterness of spirit. Life in general, and especially his own, seemed to him an ugly, murky, painful, and uncontrollable thing. Chapter 7. ARACIL AND MONTANER. ARACIL, Montaner, and Hurtado happily completed their first year of Anatomy. Aracil went to Galicia, where his father was employed; Montaner went to a village in the Sierra, and Andrés was left without any friends. The summer seemed long and tiresome to him; in the mornings he would go with Margarita and Luisito to the Retiro Park, where the three of them would run and play; then he spent the afternoon and evening at home reading novels; a number of the serials published in the newspapers over several years. Dumas Sr., Eugenio Sué, Montepín, Gaboriau, and Miss Braddon all fueled his thirst for reading. Such a dose of literature, crime, adventure, and mystery eventually bored him. The first days of the school year pleasantly surprised him. In those autumn days, the September fair was still going on at the Prado, in front of the Botanical Garden, and alongside the toy stalls, the merry-go-rounds, the shooting gallery, and the piles of walnuts, almonds, and acerola cherries, there were book stalls where bibliophiles gathered to rummage through and leaf through the dusty old volumes. Hurtado used to spend the entire time during the fair, searching through the tomes between the grave, black-clad, bespectacled, doctor-like gentleman and some skeletal priest in a threadbare cassock. Andrés was somewhat excited about the new year; he was going to study Physiology, and he believed that the study of the functions of life would interest him as much as, or more than, a novel; but he was mistaken; it didn’t. First of all, the textbook was a stupid book, made with clippings from French works and written without clarity and enthusiasm; Reading it, one couldn’t form a clear idea of the mechanism of life; man appeared, according to the author, like a closet with a series of devices inside, completely separate from one another, like the offices of a ministry. Then the professor was a man with no interest in what he was teaching, a senator, one of those tiresome types, who spent his afternoons in the Senate discussing nonsense and provoking the slumber of the ancestors of the Nation. It was impossible that with that text and that professor anyone would ever feel the desire to delve into the science of life. Physiology, studied like this, seemed a stolid and disjointed affair, without problems of interest or any attraction. Hurtado was truly disappointed. It was essential to take Physiology like everything else, without enthusiasm, as one of the obstacles to overcome in order to complete the degree. This idea, of a series of obstacles, was Aracil’s idea. He considered it madness to think they would find a pleasant study. Julio was right about this, and about almost everything else. His keen sense of reality rarely deceived him. That year, Hurtado became quite close to Julio Aracil. Julio was a year old A year and a half older than Hurtado, he seemed more like a man. He was dark-skinned, with bright, bulging eyes, a lively face, a quick wit, and a quick wit. Given these characteristics, anyone would have thought he’d be likable; but no, quite the opposite was true; most of his acquaintances showed little affection for him. Julio lived with elderly aunts; his father, employed in a provincial capital, was in a fairly modest position. Julio was very independent; he could have sought the protection of his cousin Enrique Aracil, who at that time had just obtained a position as a doctor in the hospital through competitive examinations and who could have helped him; but Julio didn’t want any protection; he wouldn’t even go to see his cousin; he claimed to owe everything to himself. Given his practical bent, this resistance to being protected was somewhat paradoxical. Julio, very clever, hardly studied anything, but always passed. He sought out friends less intelligent than himself to exploit; wherever he saw any superiority, regardless of the type of exam, he retreated. He even confessed to Hurtado that he hated hanging out with people taller than him. Julio learned all the games with great ease. His parents, by making a sacrifice, were able to pay for his books, tuition, and clothes. Julio’s aunt used to give him a penny a month to go to the theater, and Aracil managed by playing cards with his friends, so much so that after going to the café and the theater and buying cigarettes, at the end of the month, he not only had his aunt’s penny left , but two or three more. Aracil was a bit petulant; he took care of his hair, mustache, and nails, and liked to show off. His great desire deep down was to dominate, but he couldn’t exercise his dominance over a large area, nor could he devise a plan, and all his will to power and all his skill were spent on small things. Hurtado compared him to those active insects that circle a circular road with an unwavering and useless determination. One of Julio’s pleasant thoughts was the thought that there were many vices and depravities in Madrid. He liked the venality of politicians, the fragility of women, anything that signified surrender; that a comedian, in order to play an important role, would get involved with an old and repulsive businessman; that a woman, apparently honorable, would go to a brothel; he loved it. This omnipotence of money, unsympathetic to a man of delicate feelings, seemed to Aracil something sublime, admirable, a natural holocaust to the power of gold. Julio was a true Phoenician; he came from Mallorca and probably had Semitic blood in him. At least if the blood was lacking, the inclinations of the race were intact. He dreamed of traveling through the East, and always asserted that, if he had money, the first countries he would visit would be Egypt and Asia Minor. Dr. Iturrioz, Andrés Hurtado’s uncle, used to assert, probably arbitrarily, that in Spain, from a moral point of view, there are two types: the Iberian type and the Semitic type. To the Iberian type, the doctor assigned the strong, warlike qualities of the race; to the Semitic type, the rapacious, intriguing, and commercial tendencies. Aracil was a perfect example of the Semitic type. His ancestors must have been slave traders in some Mediterranean town. Julio was bothered by anything violent and exalted: patriotism, war, political or social enthusiasm; he liked pomp, wealth, and jewelry, and since he didn’t have the money to buy good ones, he wore fake ones and found anything forged almost more amusing than anything good. He attached so much importance to money, especially hard-earned money, that realizing how difficult it was to obtain pleased him. Since it was his god, his idol, if it had been given too easily, it would have seemed wrong to him. A paradise acquired without effort doesn’t excite a believer; At least half of the merit of glory lies in its difficulty, and for Julio the difficulty of obtaining money was one of his greatest difficulties. Charms. Another of Aracil’s conditions was to adapt to circumstances; for him, there were no unpleasant things; if he considered it necessary, he accepted anything. With his ant-like foresight, he calculated the amount of pleasure obtainable for a given amount of money. This constituted one of his greatest concerns. He looked at the goods of the earth with the eyes of a Jewish appraiser. If he convinced himself that something worth thirty cents had been bought for twenty, he felt truly disgusted. Julio read French novels by writers who were half naturalistic, half gallant; these accounts of the luxurious and vice-like life of Paris delighted him. If Iturrioz’s classification is correct, Montaner also had more of the Semitic type than the Iberian. He was an enemy of violence and exaltation, lazy, calm, and easygoing. Mild in character, he gave off a certain impression of bitterness and energy at first, which was merely a reflection of his family’s environment, which consisted of his father and mother and several spinster sisters, all of whom were harsh and sour. When Andrés got to know Montaner well, he became his friend. The three classmates finished the course. Aracil left, as he did every summer, for the town where his family lived, and Montaner and Hurtado stayed in Madrid. The summer was stifling; at night, Montaner, after dinner, would go to Hurtado’s house, and the two friends would stroll along Castellana and the Prado, which by then had taken on the character of a provincial promenade, dull, dusty, and languid. At the end of the summer, a friend gave Montaner a ticket to the Buen Retiro Gardens. The two of them went every night. They heard old operas being sung, interrupted by the shouts of people passing by in the carriage of a roller coaster that crossed the garden; They followed the girls, and when they left, they would sit down to drink horchata or lemon juice at some stand in the Prado. Montaner and Andrés almost always spoke ill of Julio; they agreed in considering him selfish, mean, sordid, incapable of doing anything for anyone. However, when Aracil arrived in Madrid, the two of them always met with him. Chapter 8. A FORMULA FOR LIFE. The following year, their fourth year of college, there was a source of curiosity for the students, and especially for Andrés Hurtado: Don José de Letamendi’s class . Letamendi was one of those universal men that were known in Spain a few years ago; universal men who were not even known by name beyond the Pyrenees. Such a lack of knowledge in Europe of such transcendental geniuses was explained by that absurd hypothesis, which, although no one clearly defended it, was accepted by all: the hypothesis of international hatred and bad faith that made great things in Spain seem small abroad and vice versa. Letamendi was a thin, short, scrawny man with gray hair and a white beard. He had a certain eagle-like appearance: a crooked nose, deep-set, shining eyes. One could see in him a man who had made a head for himself, as the French say. He always wore a somewhat fitted frock coat and a flat-brimmed top hat, the classic hat worn by the long-haired professors at the Sorbonne. In San Carlos, it was widely believed that Letamendi was a genius; one of those eagle-eyed men ahead of their time; everyone found him abstruse because he spoke and wrote with great pomp, a language that was half philosophical, half literary. Andrés Hurtado, who was eager to find something that would get to the heart of life’s problems, began reading Letamendi’s book with enthusiasm. He found the application of mathematics to biology admirable. Andrés was soon convinced. As anyone who believes they are in possession of a truth has a certain tendency toward proselytism, one night Andrés went to the café where Sañudo and his friends were meeting to discuss Letamendi’s doctrines, to explain and comment on them. As usual, Sañudo was with several engineering students. Hurtado joined them and took advantage of the first opportunity to steer the conversation to the desired topic. He presented Letamendi’s formula for life and attempted to explain the corollaries the author deduced from it. When Andrés stated that life, according to Letamendi, is an indeterminate function between individual energy and the cosmos, and that this function can only be addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, and that since it cannot be addition, subtraction, or division, it must be multiplication, one of Sañudo’s friends burst out laughing. “Why are you laughing?” Andrés asked, surprised. “Because in all of what you say there is a portion of sophistry and falsehood. First of all, there are many more mathematical functions than addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. ” “Which ones?” –Raising to a power, extracting roots… Then, even if there were only four primitive mathematical functions, it is absurd to think that in the conflict of these two elements—the energy of life and the cosmos, one of them, at least, heterogeneous and complicated, because there is no addition, subtraction, or division—there must be multiplication. Furthermore, it would be necessary to demonstrate why there can be no addition, why there can be no subtraction, and why there can be no division. Then it would be necessary to demonstrate why there can’t be two or three simultaneous functions. It’s not enough to say it. –But that’s what reasoning provides. –No, no; excuse me,–replied the student. –For example, between that woman and me there can be several mathematical functions: addition, if we both do the same thing by helping each other; subtraction, if she wants something and I oppose it and one of us wins against the other; multiplication, if we have a child, and division if I cut her into pieces or she cuts me into pieces. –That’s a joke,–said Andrés. “Of course it’s a joke,” replied the student, “a joke along the lines of your professor’s, but one that tends toward a truth, and that is that between the force of life and the cosmos, there are an infinite number of different functions; addition, subtraction, multiplication, everything, and it ‘s also quite possible that other functions exist that have no mathematical expression.” Andrés Hurtado, who had gone to the café believing that his propositions would convince the engineering students, was a little perplexed and saddened to realize his defeat. He read Letamendi’s book again, continued listening to his explanations , and became convinced that all that talk about the formula of life and its corollaries, which at first seemed serious and profound, was nothing more than sleight of hand, sometimes ingenious, sometimes vulgar, but always devoid of any reality, neither metaphysical nor empirical. All these mathematical formulas and their development were nothing more than vulgarities disguised as scientific apparatus, adorned with rhetorical concepts that the foolishness of teachers and students took for prophetic visions. Inside, that good man with long hair, with his eagle eye and his artistic, scientific, and literary dilettantism—a painter in his spare time, a violinist and composer, and a genius through and through— was an audacious mystifier with that ostentatious and gaudy background of the Mediterranean. His only real merit was his literary talent, a man of verbal talent. Letamendi’s verbiage aroused in Andrés a desire to delve into the philosophical world, and with this aim in mind, he bought inexpensive editions of books by Kant, Fichte, and Schopenhauer. He first read Fichte’s The Science of Knowledge and couldn’t understand anything. He got the impression that the translator himself hadn’t understood what he was translating. Then he began reading _Parerga and Paralipomena_, and found it an almost entertaining book, partly candid, and it amused him more than he had supposed. Finally, he tried to decipher _The Critique of Pure Reason_. He saw that with an effort of attention he could follow the author’s reasoning as one follows the development of a mathematical theorem; but it seemed too much of an effort for his brain, and he left Kant for later, and continued reading Schopenhauer, who He had the appeal of a humorous and amusing advisor. Some pedants told him that Schopenhauer was out of fashion, as if the work of a man of extraordinary intelligence were like the shape of a top hat. His classmates, astonished by these insights from Andrés Hurtado, would say to him: “But isn’t Letamendi’s philosophy enough for you? ” “That’s not philosophy at all,” Andrés replied. “Letamendi is a man without a single profound idea; he has nothing in his head but words and phrases. Now, since you don’t understand them, they seem extraordinary to you. ” During the summer vacation, Andrés read some new philosophical books by French and Italian professors at the National Library , and they amazed him. Most of these books had nothing more than suggestive titles; the rest was an endless rambling about methods and classifications. Hurtado cared nothing about the question of methods and classifications , or whether sociology was a science or a centipede invented by scientists; what he wanted to find was direction, a truth that was both spiritual and practical. The scientific bazaars of the Lombrosos and Ferris, of the Fouillées and the Janets, left a bad impression on him. This Latin spirit and its much-vaunted clarity seemed to him to be one of the most insipid, banal, and anodyne things. Beneath the pompous titles, there was nothing but vulgarity. This was, in relation to philosophy, what the specifics of the fourth page of newspapers are to true medicine. In every French author, Hurtado seemed to see a Cyranesque gentleman, assuming gallant poses and speaking in a nasal voice; in contrast, all the Italians seemed to him like baritones from a zarzuela. Seeing that he didn’t like modern books , he returned to Kant’s work and laboriously read the entire Critique of Pure Reason. He was already getting more out of what he read and retained the general outlines of the systems he was unraveling. Chapter 9. A LAGGER. At the beginning of autumn and the beginning of the following school year, Luisito, the younger brother, fell ill with a fever. Andrés felt an exclusive and sullen affection for Luisito. The boy worried him pathologically; it seemed to him that all the elements were conspiring against him. Dr. Aracil, Julio’s relative, visited the sick boy, and a few days later, he announced that it was typhoid fever. Andrés went through anguished moments; he read desperately in pathology books the description and treatment of typhoid fever and spoke with the doctor about the remedies that could be used. Dr. Aracil said no to everything. “It’s an illness that has no specific treatment,” he asserted. bathe him, feed him, and wait, nothing more. Andrés was in charge of preparing Luis’s bath and taking his temperature . The sick man had a very high fever for days. In the mornings, when the fever subsided, he kept asking for Margarita and Andrés. Andrés, during the course of the illness, was amazed by his sister’s resilience and energy ; he spent sleepless nights caring for the child; it never occurred to him, and if it did, he didn’t give it any importance, that he might catch the virus. From then on, Andrés began to feel great esteem for Margarita; Luisito’s affection had united them. After thirty or forty days, the fever disappeared, leaving the child thin, a skeleton. With this first attempt at medicine, Andrés acquired a great skepticism. He began to wonder if medicine was of any use. A good buttress for this skepticism was provided by the explanations of the professor of therapeutics, who considered almost all the preparations in the pharmacopoeia to be useless, if not harmful . It was not a way to encourage the students’ medical enthusiasm, but undoubtedly the professor believed it and was right to say so. After the fever, Luisito became weak and with each step he took to the family, an unpleasant surprise; one day it was a fever, the next convulsions. Andrés had to go to the doctor at two or three in the morning many nights and then go to the pharmacy. During this academic year, Andrés befriended a latecomer, already quite old, for whom each year of college cost at least two or three. One day this student asked Andrés what was wrong with him, making him so gloomy and sad. Andrés told him that his brother was sick, and the other tried to calm and console him. Hurtado thanked him for his kindness and became friends with the old student. Antonio Lamela, that was the latecomer’s name, was Galician, a thin, nervous fellow with a gaunt face, a sharp nose, a mop of black hair in his beard already tinged with gray, and a toothless, weak-willed mouth. Hurtado was struck by Lamela’s air of a mysterious man, and Andrés was undoubtedly shocked by Andrés’s concentrated appearance. Both of them had inner lives different from the rest of the students. Lamela’s secret was that he was in love, truly in love , with an aristocratic woman, a woman with a title, who drove around in carriages and went to the Royal Academy’s box office. Lamela took Hurtado as a confidant and told him about his love affairs in great detail. She was deeply in love with him, according to the student; but there were a number of difficulties and obstacles that prevented them from getting closer to each other. Andrés liked meeting someone who was different from the general public. In novels, a young man without a great love was presented as an anomaly; in life, the anomalous thing was to find a man truly in love. The first man Andrés met was Lamela; that’s why he was interested in her. The old student suffered from an intense romanticism, mitigated in some ways by a Boeotian tendency toward practicality: Lamela believed in love and God; but this didn’t stop him from frequently getting drunk and going on a rampage. According to him, the body had to be provided for its petty and coarse needs and the spirit kept clean. He summed up this philosophy, saying: “You have to give the body what belongs to the body, and the soul what belongs to the soul. ” “All that stuff about the soul is nonsense,” Andrés told him. “It’s stuff invented by priests to make money. ” “Shut up, man, shut up! Don’t be nonsense. ” Lamela was fundamentally a laggard in everything: in his career and in his ideas. He reasoned like a man from the beginning of the century. The current mechanical conception of the economic world and society didn’t exist for him. Nor did the social question. The entire social question was resolved with charity and having good-hearted people. “You’re a true Catholic,” Andrés told him; you’ve created the most comfortable world for yourself. When Lamela showed him his beloved one day, Andrés was stupefied. She was an ugly, black spinster with a cockatoo nose and older than a parrot. Besides her unfriendly air, she didn’t even pay attention to the Galician student, whom she looked at with disdain, with an unpleasant and sour expression. Reality never reached Lamela’s fantasizing spirit. Despite his smiling and humble appearance, he possessed extraordinary pride and self-confidence; he felt the tranquility of someone who believes he knows the depths of things and human actions. In front of his classmates, Lamela didn’t speak of his loves; but when he caught Hurtado on his own, he went overboard. His confidences were endless. He wanted to give everything a complicated and unusual meaning. “Boy,” he would say, smiling and grabbing Andrés’s arm. “I saw her yesterday. ” “Well! ” “Yes,” he added with great mystery. “She was with her ladyship; I followed her, she went into her house, and shortly after, a servant came out onto the balcony. Is that strange, huh?” “Strange? Why?” Andrés asked. “Then the servant didn’t close the balcony.” Hurtado stared at him, wondering how his friend’s brain worked to find the most natural things in the world strange. to believe in the beauty of that lady. Sometimes, as they walked through the Retiro Park, chatting, Lamela would turn around and say: “Look, be quiet! ” “What’s going on?” “That guy who comes over there is one of those enemies of mine who speak ill of me to her. He’s spying on me.” Andrés was astonished. When he was more familiar with him, he would say: “Look, Lamela, like you, I would present myself to the Psychological Society of Paris or London. ” “For what? ” And he would say: “Study me, because I believe I am the most extraordinary man in the world. ” The Galician would laugh with his good-natured laugh. “You’re just a child,” he would reply; “the day you fall in love, you’ll see how you’ll agree with me.” Lamela lived in a boarding house in the Plaza de Lavapiés; He had a small, untidy room, and since he was studying, while in bed, he would often unstitch his books and store them unbound in loose sheets in his trunk or spread out on the table. Hurtado occasionally visited him at home. His room was decorated with a series of empty bottles placed everywhere. Lamela bought the wine for himself and kept it in unlikely places, for fear that the other guests would enter the room and drink it, which, from what he said, was often the case. Lamela kept the bottles hidden inside the fireplace, in the trunk, in the dresser. At night, according to what he told Andrés, when he went to bed he would put a bottle of wine under the bed, and if he woke up he would take the bottle and drink half of it in one gulp. He was convinced that there was no hypnotic like wine, and that compared to it, sulfonal and chloral were complete rubbish. Lamela never discussed the professors’ opinions; they didn’t interest him much; for him, the only classification among them was that of well-intentioned professors, keen to pass, and ill-intentioned ones, who failed just to show off and show off. In most cases, Lamela divided men into two groups: the former, frank, honest, kind-hearted, and kind-hearted; the latter, mean-spirited and vain. For Lamela, Aracil and Montaner belonged to the latter class, the most mean-spirited and insignificant. It’s true that neither of them took Lamela seriously. Andrés would recount his friend’s extravaganzas at home. Margarita was very interested in these affairs. Luisito, who had the imagination of a sickly boy, had invented, while listening to his brother, a story called “The Love Affair of a Galician Student with the Queen of the Cockatoos.” Chapter 10. PASSAGE THROUGH SAN JUAN DE DIOS. Without great brilliance, but also without major failures, Andrés Hurtado was making progress in his career. At the beginning of his fourth year, Julio Aracil had the idea of attending some courses on venereal diseases given by a doctor at the San Juan de Dios Hospital. Aracil invited Montaner and Hurtado to accompany him; a few months later there would be examinations for residential students for admission to the General Hospital; all three of them planned to take them, and it wasn’t bad to see sick people frequently. The visit to San Juan de Dios was a new cause of depression and melancholy for Hurtado. He thought that for one reason or another the world was showing him its ugliest face. Within a few days of attending the hospital, Andrés was inclined to believe that Schopenhauer’s pessimism was an almost mathematical truth. The world seemed to him a mixture of a mental asylum and a hospital; being intelligent was a misfortune, and only happiness could come from unconsciousness and madness. Lamela, without thinking, living with his illusions, took on the proportions of a scholar. Aracil, Montaner, and Hurtado visited a women’s ward at San Juan de Dios. For an excited and restless man like Andrés, the spectacle had to be depressing. The patients were the most fallen and miserable. Seeing so many homeless wretches, abandoned, in a black ward, in a human dunghill; seeing and witnessing the rot that poisons sexual life, made a distressing impression on Andrés. That hospital, fortunately already demolished, was a filthy, dirty, and foul-smelling building; the ward windows faced Atocha Street and had, in addition to the bars, wire mesh so that the confined women couldn’t lean out and cause a scandal. This way, neither the sun nor the air got in. The ward doctor, a friend of Julio’s, was a ridiculous old man with long white sideburns. The man, although he didn’t know much, tried to put on the air of a professor, which no one could have considered a crime; the miserable, the vile thing was that he treated those unfortunate women sheltered there with useless cruelty and mistreated them with words and deeds. Why? It was incomprehensible. That petulant idiot ordered the sick women to be taken to the attics as punishments and kept locked up for a day or two for imaginary crimes. Talking from one bed to another during a visit, complaining during treatment, anything at all, was enough for these severe punishments. Other times, he ordered them to be put on bread and water. This fellow was a cruel monkey, who had been given such a humane mission as caring for poor sick women. Hurtado couldn’t stand the bestiality of that idiot with the white sideburns; Aracil laughed at his friend’s indignation. Once, Hurtado decided never to return there again. There was a woman who constantly kept a white cat on her lap. She must have been a very beautiful woman, with large, shadowed black eyes, a slightly crooked nose, and an Egyptian build. The cat was, without a doubt, the only thing left of a better past. When the doctor came in, the sick woman would surreptitiously take the cat down from the bed and leave it on the floor; the animal would hide, frightened, when it saw the doctor and his students enter. But one day the doctor saw him and began kicking him . “Catch that cat and kill it,” said the idiot with the white sideburns to the assistant. The assistant and a nurse began chasing the animal around the ward; the sick woman watched this pursuit in anguish. “And take this woman to the attic,” added the doctor. The sick woman followed the chase with her eyes, and when she saw them catch her cat, two large tears ran down her pale cheeks. “Scoundrel! Idiot!” exclaimed Hurtado, approaching the doctor with his fist raised. “Don’t be stupid,” said Aracil. “If you don’t want to come here, go. ” “Yes, I’m going. Don’t worry, so as not to kick that idiot in the guts, you miserable wretch.” From that day on, he never wanted to return to San Juan de Dios. Andrés’s humanitarian enthusiasm would have increased without the influences working on his spirit. One of them was Julio’s, who mocked all exaggerated ideas, as he called them; the other, Lamela’s, with his practical idealism; and finally, his reading of Schopenhauer’s Parerga and Paralipomena, which induced him to inaction. Despite these controlling tendencies, for many days Andrés was impressed by what several workers said at an anarchist meeting at the Liceo Ríus. One of them, Ernesto Álvarez, a dark-skinned man with black eyes and a graying beard, spoke at that meeting in an eloquent and exalted manner; he spoke of abandoned children, beggars , fallen women… Andrés felt the attraction of this sentimentalism, perhaps somewhat morbid. When he expounded his ideas about social injustice, Julio Aracil would confront him with his common sense: “Of course there are bad things in society,” Aracil would say. “But who ‘s going to fix them?” Those freeloaders who speak at rallies? Besides, there are misfortunes common to all; those bricklayers in popular dramas who come to us complaining about suffering from the winter cold and the summer heat aren’t the only ones; the same thing happens to the rest of us. Aracil’s words were the last straw in the exaltations. Andrés’s humanitarian work. “If you want to dedicate yourself to those things,” he would say, “become a politician, learn to speak. ” “But I don’t want to dedicate myself to politics,” Andrés replied indignantly. “Well, if not, you can’t do anything.” Of course, any reform in a humanitarian sense had to be collective and carried out through political means, and it wasn’t very difficult for Julio to convince his friend of the shady nature of politics. Julio brought the doubt to Hurtado’s romanticism; he didn’t need to insist much to convince him that politics is an art of agriculturalism. Truly, Spanish politics has never been anything high or noble; it wasn’t very difficult to convince a Madrilenian that he shouldn’t have confidence in it. Inaction, the suspicion of the inanity and impurity of everything, led Hurtado to feel increasingly pessimistic. He was leaning toward spiritual anarchism, based on sympathy and piety, without any practical solution. The just and revolutionary logic of the Saint Justs no longer excited him; it seemed artificial and unnatural. He believed that in life there was not, nor could there be, justice. Life was a tumultuous and unconscious current where the actors played out a tragedy they didn’t understand, and the men, having reached a state of intellectuality, contemplated the scene with a compassionate and pious gaze. These swings in ideas, this lack of plan and restraint, led Andrés to the utmost bewilderment, to a continuous and useless cerebral overstimulation. Chapter 11. A BOARD STUDENT. In the middle of the school year, boarding school examinations were held for students at the general hospital. Aracil, Montaner, and Hurtado decided to apply. The exam consisted of questions posed at random by the teachers about points from subjects already taken by the students. Hurtado went to see his uncle Iturrioz to ask for a recommendation. “Well, I’ll recommend you,” his uncle told him. “Do you have a taste for racing?” “Very little. ” “So, why do you want to join the hospital? ” “Yeah, what can I do? I’ll see if I can get into the habit. Besides, I’ll earn a few cents, which is good enough. ” “Very well,” Iturrioz replied. “With you, you know what to expect; I like that.” Aracil and Hurtado passed the exam. First, they had to be scriptwriters; their obligation consisted of going in the morning and writing down the prescriptions ordered by the doctor; in the afternoon, cleaning up the pharmacy, distributing it, and working shifts. From scriptwriters, earning six duros a month, they went on to become upper-class interns, earning nine, and then to assistants, earning twelve duros, which represented the respectable sum of two pesetas a day. Andrés was called by a doctor friend of his uncle, who was visiting one of the upper wards on the third floor of the hospital. The ward was the Medical Ward. The doctor, a studious man, had mastered diagnosis like few others. Outside of his profession, he wasn’t interested in anything: politics, literature, art, philosophy, or astronomy—anything that didn’t involve auscultation or percussion, analyzing urine or sputum—was a dead letter to him. He believed, and perhaps he was right, that the true morality of a medical student lay in focusing solely on medical matters and, beyond that, having fun. Andrés was more concerned with the ideas and feelings of patients than with the symptoms of illnesses. The ward doctor soon saw Hurtado’s lack of interest in the profession. “You think about everything except medicine,” he told Andrés sternly. The ward doctor was right. The new intern wasn’t on the path to becoming a clinician; he was interested in the psychological aspects of things; he wanted to investigate what the Sisters of Charity did, whether or not they had a vocation; he was curious to learn about the organization of the hospital and find out where the money allocated by the Provincial Council was being filtered. Immorality reigned within the ancient building. From the administrators of the Provincial Council to a society of inmates who sold the hospital’s quinine in the pharmacies on Atocha Street, there were surely all forms of infiltration. On duty, the inmates and the chaplains played monte, and in the Arsenal, a gambling den was almost constantly in operation, with the lowest position being a big jackpot. The doctors, among whom there were some very arrogant ones; the priests, who were no less so, and the inmates spent the night pulling Jorge’s ear. The chaplains gambled their eyelashes; one of them was a short, cynical, blond man who had forgotten his priestly studies and acquired a taste for medicine. Since a medical career was too long for him, he was going to take the exam to become a minister, and if he could, he planned to abandon the priesthood for good. The other priest was a brave young man, tall, strong, with energetic features. He spoke in a decisive and despotic manner; he would often tell risqué stories that provoked barbaric comment. If any devout person reproached him for the inappropriateness of his words, the priest would change his voice and gesture, and with marked hypocrisy, assuming a tone of false anointing, which did not fit well with his dark face and the expression of his bold, black eyes, he would claim that religion had nothing to do with the vices of his unworthy priests. Some inmates who had known him for some time and addressed him informally called him Lagartijo (the Lizard), because he somewhat resembled that famous bullfighter. “Listen, you Lagartijo,” they would say to him. “I would rather,” the priest would reply, “than exchange my stole for a muleta, and instead of helping someone die a good death, go kill bulls. Since he frequently lost in gambling, he was in a lot of trouble. Once, amid quaint oaths, he told Andrés: “I can’t live like this. I’ll have no choice but to take to the streets, say Mass everywhere, and swallow fourteen hosts every day.” Hurtado didn’t like these traits of cynicism. Among the interns were some very curious ones, real hospital rats, who had been there for fifteen or twenty years without completing their degrees, and who clandestinely visited the slums more than many doctors. Andrés became friends with the Sisters of Charity in his ward and some others. He would have liked to believe, despite not being religious, out of romanticism, that the Sisters of Charity were angelic; but the truth is, in the hospital, all you saw them was taking care of administrative matters and calling the confessor when a patient became seriously ill. Besides, they weren’t idealistic, mystical creatures who considered the world a vale of tears, but rather impoverished young women, some of them widows, who took up the position as a job, just to make a living. Then the good sisters had the best of the hospital reserved for them… Once, a nurse gave Andrés a small notebook found among old papers that had been taken from the Daughters of Charity ward. It was a nun’s diary, a series of very brief, very laconic notes, with some impressions about hospital life, covering five or six months. On the first page was a name: Sister María de la Cruz, and next to it a date. Andrés read the diary and was amazed. It contained such a simple, naive account of hospital life, told with such grace, that it moved him. Andrés wanted to know who Sister María was, if she lived in the hospital, or where she was. He soon found out that she had died. An elderly nun had known her. She told Andrés that shortly after arriving at the hospital, she was transferred to a typhoid ward, and there she contracted the disease and died. Andrés didn’t dare ask what he looked like, what his face looked like, even though he would have given anything to know. Andrés kept the nun’s diary like a relic, and often wondered what she would be like, and even became truly obsessed with her. A mysterious and strange man from the hospital, who attracted a lot of attention and about whom various stories were told, was Brother Juan. This man, whose origins were unknown, wore a black blouse, espadrilles, and a crucifix around his neck. Brother Juan cared for contagious patients out of pleasure. He was, apparently, a mystic, a man who lived in his natural center, amidst misery and pain. Brother Juan was a short man with a black beard, bright eyes, gentle gestures, and a mellifluous voice. He was a Semitic figure. He lived in an alley that separated San Carlos from the General Hospital. This alley had two glass bridges spanning it, and under one of them, the one closest to Atocha Street, Brother Juan had established his hovel. In this hovel, he locked himself away with a little dog for company. No matter the hour when they called for the brother, there was always a light in his hut, and he was always awake. According to some, he spent his life reading dirty books; according to others, he prayed. One of the inmates claimed to have seen him making notes in books in French and English about sexual psychopathies. One night when Andrés was on guard, one of the inmates said: “Let’s go see Brother Juan and ask him for something to eat and drink.” They all went to the alley where the brother had his hiding place. It was lighted; they looked to see if they could see anything, but they couldn’t find a crack through which to spy on what the mysterious orderly was doing inside. They knocked, and immediately the brother appeared in his black blouse. “We’re on guard, Brother Juan,” said one of the inmates; “we’ve come to see if you’ll give us something for a modest snack. ” “Poor things! Poor things!” he exclaimed. “You think I’m very poor.” But I’ll see, I’ll see if I have anything. And the man disappeared behind the door, closed it very carefully, and appeared a short time later with a packet of coffee, another of sugar, and another of biscuits. The students returned to the guardroom, ate the biscuits, drank the coffee, and discussed their brother’s case. There was no unanimity; some believed he was a distinguished man; others that he was a former servant; some believed he was a saint; others believed he was a sexual invert or something of that nature. Brother John was the strangest guy in the hospital. Whenever he received money, no one knew where it came from, he invited the convalescents to meals and gave away things the sick needed. Despite his charity and his good works, this Brother John was repulsive to Andrew; he made an unpleasant impression on him, a physical, organic impression . There was undoubtedly something abnormal about him. It is so logical, so natural for humans to flee from pain, from illness, from sadness! And yet, for him, suffering, pain, and filth must have been attractive. Andrés understood the other extreme: that man might flee from the pain of others as something horrible and repugnant, to the point of indignity and inhumanity. He understood that people might avoid even the idea of suffering around them; but deliberately seeking out the dirty, the sad, in order to coexist with it, seemed monstrous to him. So, whenever he saw Brother Juan, he felt that repellent, inhibited impression one experiences when faced with monsters. PART TWO. The Carnarias. Chapter 12. The Minglanillas. Julio Aracil had become close to Andrés. Their shared life in San Carlos and in the hospital was unifying their habits, though not their ideas or their affections. With his harsh philosophy of success, Julio was beginning to feel more esteem for Hurtado than for Montaner. Andrés had become a resident like him; Montaner not only failed to pass these exams, but also failed the course, and dropping out He completely started skipping school and spending his time making love to a girl next door. Julio Aracil was beginning to feel great contempt for his friend and to wish him all hell would break loose. With his small hospital salary, Julio did extraordinary, marvelous things; he even played the stock market, owned mining shares, and bought a bond. Julio wanted Andrés to follow in his footsteps as a man of the world. “I’m going to introduce you to the Minglanillas at the house,” he said to him one day, laughing. “Who are the Minglanillas?” Hurtado asked. “Some girls who are friends of mine. ” “Is that their name? ” “No; but I call them that because, especially the mother, she looks like a character from Taboada. ” “And what are they? ” “They’re girls, daughters of a widowed pensioner. Niní and Lulú. I’m in a relationship with Niní, the eldest; you can get along with the youngest.” –But how far along are you with her? –Well, far along. The two of us usually go to a corner on Cervantes Street, which I know, and which I’ll recommend to you when you need it. –Are you going to marry her afterward? –Get out of there, man! That wouldn’t be a bad idiot. –But you’ve rendered the girl useless. –Me! What stupidity! –Well, isn’t she your lover? –And who knows? Besides, who cares? –However… –Oh! We have to stop with the nonsense and take advantage. If you can do the same, you’ll be a fool if you don’t. Hurtado didn’t like this selfishness; but he was curious to meet the family, and went one afternoon with Julio to see them. The widow and her two daughters lived on Fúcar Street, in a sordid house, one of those with a courtyard and galleries full of doors. There was a rather sad atmosphere of misery in the widow’s house; The mother and daughters wore threadbare, patched dresses; the furniture was poor, save for a few indicators of past splendor; the chairs were ripped, and one’s foot would stick into the holes in the matting as one walked. Their mother, Donna Leonarda, was an unsympathetic woman; her face was yellowish, the color of quince; her expression was harsh, falsely friendly; her nose was crooked; she had a few moles in her beard; and her smile was forced. The good lady displayed grotesque aristocratic airs and recalled the days when her husband had been an undersecretary and the family had spent the summer in Saint-Jean-de-Luz. The girls’ names were Niní and Lulú because of their first nanny, a French woman. These memories of past glory, which Donna Leonarda evoked by waving her closed fan like a baton, made her roll her eyes and sigh sadly. Upon arriving home with Aracil, Julio began chatting with Niní, and Andrés continued the conversation with Lulú and her mother. Lulú was a graceful girl, but not pretty. She had dark green eyes shaded by dark circles under her eyes; eyes that Andrés thought were very human. The distance from her nose to her mouth and from her mouth to her beard was too great, giving her a somewhat ape-like appearance: a small forehead, a thin-lipped mouth with a smile somewhere between ironic and bitter; white, pointed teeth; a slightly upturned nose; and a pale, sour face. Lulú showed Hurtado that she had plenty of grace, mischief, and wit; but she lacked the main attractions of a young girl: naiveté, freshness, and candor. She was a product of work, poverty, and intelligence. Her eighteen years didn’t seem youthful. His sister Niní, with her imperfections and, above all, less spiritual, was more feminine, eager to please, hypocritical, and dissembling. Niní’s constant effort to present herself as naive and candid gave her a more feminine character, also more common and vulgar. Andrés was convinced that her mother knew the true relationship between Julio and her daughter Niní. She herself had undoubtedly He had let the girl get engaged, thinking that Aracil wouldn’t abandon her afterward. Hurtado didn’t like the house; taking advantage, like Julio, of the family’s misery to make Niní his mistress, with the idea of abandoning her when it suited him, seemed like a bad move. Even if Andrés hadn’t been in on the secret of Julio’s intentions , he would have gone to Doña Leonarda’s house without hesitation; but having the certainty that one day his friend’s love affair would end in a small tragedy of tears and wailing, in which Doña Leonarda would scream and Niní would faint, was a prospect that disgusted him . Chapter 13. A MESS. BEFORE Carnival, Julio Aracil said to Hurtado: “You know? We’re going to have a dance at the Minglanillas’ house. ” “Man! When’s that going to be? ” “On Carnival Sunday. The oil for the light and the pastries, the rental of the piano and the pianist, will be paid by everyone.” So if you want to be part of the gang, you’re already paying. “Okay. No problem. How much do we have to pay? ” “I’ll tell you one of these days. ” “Who’s going?” “Well, some girls from the neighborhood will go with their boyfriends; Casares, that journalist friend of mine; a comedy writer, and others. It’ll be fine. There will be pretty girls. On Carnival Sunday, after leaving the hospital on call, Hurtado went to the dance. It was already eleven at night. The night watchman opened the door for him. Doña Leonarda’s house was packed with people; there were even some on the stairs. When Andrés entered, he found Julio among a group of young men he didn’t know. Julio introduced him to a comedy writer, a stupid and gloomy man, who at the first few words, no doubt to demonstrate his profession, told a few jokes, each more familiar and vulgar than the last. He also introduced him to Antoñito Casares, a clerk and journalist, a man of great appeal with women. Antoñito was an Andalusian with the morals of a pimp; he believed that letting a woman pass without getting something from her was a great blunder. For Casares, every woman owed him, simply for being a woman, a contribution, a gabela. Antoñito classified women into two classes: one poor, for entertainment, and the other rich, to marry one of them for her money, if possible. Antoñito sought out rich women with the perseverance of an Anglo-Saxon. Since he looked good and dressed well, at first the girls he approached welcomed him as an acceptable suitor. The audacious man tried to gain ground; he spoke to the maids, sent letters, strolled the streets. This was what he called “working” a woman. The girl, as long as she considered the flirt a good catch, didn’t reject him; but when she learned that he was a humble clerk, a journalist, unknown and a freeloader, she never looked him in the face again. Julio Aracil felt a great enthusiasm for Casares, whom he considered a worthy friend. The two planned to help each other rise in life. When they started playing the piano, all the boys rushed to look for partners. “Do you know how to dance?” Aracil asked Hurtado. “I don’t. ” “Well, look, go to Lulú’s side, she doesn’t want to dance either, and treat her with consideration. ” “Why are you telling me this?” “Because just now,” Julio added ironically, “Doña Leonarda told me: ‘My daughters should be treated like virgins, Julito, like virgins.'” And Julio Aracil smiled, imitating Niní’s mother, with his smile of a malicious and scoundrel. Andrés made his way in. There were several kerosene lamps illuminating the living room and the study. In the small dining room, the table offered trays of sweets and pastries and bottles of white wine to the guests . Among the girls who caused the most sensation at the dance was a blonde, very pretty, very showy. This blonde had her own story. A rich man who was courting her took her to a hotel in La Prosperidad, And days later, the blonde escaped from the hotel, fleeing from her kidnapper, who was apparently a satyr. The girl’s entire family bore a certain stigma of abnormality. The father, a venerable old man by his appearance, had been tried for raping a child, and the blonde’s brother, after shooting his wife twice, attempted suicide. This pretty blonde, whose name was Estrella, was singled out by almost all the neighbors with furious hatred. Apparently, from what they said, she displayed on her balcony, to enrage the neighborhood girls, black fishnet stockings, silk chemises covered in bows, and other luxurious and splendid undergarments that could only have come from a less-than -honorable trade. Doña Leonarda didn’t want her daughters to associate with that girl; according to her, she couldn’t sanction friendships of a certain kind. Estrella’s sister, Elvira, twelve or thirteen years old, was very pretty, very cheeky, and was undoubtedly following in the footsteps of her eldest. “This little girl from the neighborhood is even more shameless!” said an old woman behind Andrés, pointing at Elvira. Estrella danced as the goddess Venus might have done, and as she moved, her hips and swollen chest stood out in a somewhat insulting way. Casares, seeing her pass, said to her: “Good heavens, warrior!” Andrés moved forward in the room until he sat next to Lulú. “You came very late,” she told him. “Yes, I’ve been on half-duty at the hospital.” ” What, aren’t you going to dance?” “I don’t know. ” ” No?” “No. And you? ” “I don’t feel like it. I get dizzy.” Casares approached Lulú to invite her to dance. “Listen, black woman,” he said. “What do you want, brazen?” she asked him impudently. “Don’t you want to go for a few turns with me? ” “No, sir. ” “And why? ” “Because it doesn’t come… from within,” she answered in a cocky manner. “You have bad blood, black woman,” Casares told her. “Yes, you must have good blood, brazen,” she retorted. “Why didn’t you want to dance with him?” Andrés asked her. “Because he’s a troublemaker; an unpleasant guy who thinks all women are in love with him. He can go away!” The dance continued with increasing animation, and Andrés remained speechless beside Lulú. “You make me laugh a lot,” she said suddenly, laughing, with a laugh that gave her the expression of a vermin. “Why?” Andrés asked, suddenly blushing. “Didn’t Julio tell you to come to an understanding with me? Yes, right?” “No, he hasn’t told me anything. ” “Yes, you are. Now, you’re too delicate to confess it. It seems quite natural to him. He takes a poor girlfriend, a prim young lady like us to amuse himself, and then he finds a woman with some money to marry. ” “I don’t think that’s his intention. ” “No? I certainly do! Do you think he’s not going to abandon Niní? As soon as he finishes his studies. I know Julio very well. He’s selfish and a scoundrel. He’s deceiving my mother and my sister… and anyway, what’s the point? ” “I don’t know what Julio will do… I know he wouldn’t do it. ” “Not you, because you’re different… Besides, there’s no point in you, because you’re not going to fall in love with me, not even for fun. ” “Why not? ” “Because no. She understood why men didn’t like her. She herself liked girls more, and it wasn’t that she had vicious instincts; But the truth was, she wasn’t impressed by men. No doubt the veil that nature and modesty had placed over all the motives of sexual life had been torn away too early for her; no doubt she had learned what woman and man were at a time when her instinct told her nothing, and this had produced in her a mixture of indifference and repulsion for all things romantic. Andrés thought this repulsion stemmed more than anything from her physical poverty, from the lack of food and air. Lulú confessed that she really wanted to die, without any romanticism; she believed she would never live well. The conversation made Andrés and Lulú very close friends. The dance had to end at twelve-thirty. This was an indispensable condition, set by Doña Leonarda; the girls had to work the next day, and despite everyone’s demand that it continue, Doña Leonarda was inflexible, and by one o’clock the house was cleared out. Chapter 14. THE FLIES. ANDRÉS went out into the street with a group of men. It was intensely cold. “Where should we go?” Julio asked. “Let’s go to Doña Virginia’s house,” Casares suggested. “Do you know her? ” “I do know her,” Aracil answered. They approached a nearby house on the same street, which was on the corner of Verónica’s. On a balcony on the main floor, this sign could be read by the light of a lantern: VIRGINIA GARCÍA , MIDWIFE WITH A DEGREE FROM THE COLLEGE OF SAN CARLOS _Sage femme._ “She must not have gone to bed, because it’s light out,” said Casares. Julio called the night watchman, who opened the door for them, and they all went up to the main floor. An old maid came out to greet them and showed them to a dining room where the midwife was sitting at a table with two men. They had a bottle of wine and three glasses in front of them. Doña Virginia was a tall, blond, plump woman, with the face of a Rubens angel who had been flying around the world for forty-five years. She had a radiant, reddish complexion, like the skin of a roasted pig, and moles on her chin that made her look like a bearded woman. Andrés knew her by sight, having met her in San Carlos at the birthing clinic, dressed in light-colored suits and rather ridiculous girlish hats. Of the two men, one was the midwife’s lover. Doña Virginia introduced him as an Italian language teacher at a school. This man, from what he said, gave the impression of one of those characters who have traveled abroad living in two-franc hotels and then can’t get used to the lack of comfort in Spain. The other, a sinister-looking man with a black beard and glasses, was none other than the editor of the magazine El Masón Ilustrado. Doña Virginia told her visitors that she was on duty that day, caring for a woman in labor. The midwife had a rather large house with mysterious offices overlooking Verónica Street; there she housed the girls, daughters of families, whose every misstep would leave them in a compromising situation. Doña Virginia tried to demonstrate that she was exquisitely sensitive. “Poor things!” she would say of her guests. “How wicked you men are!” Andrés found this woman repulsive. Seeing that they couldn’t stay there, the entire group of men went out into the street. After a few steps, they met a young man, the nephew of a moneylender from Atocha Street, accompanying a chulapa with whom he planned to go to the Zarzuela dance. “Hello, Victorio!” Aracil greeted him. “Hello, Julio!” the other replied. “How are you? Where did you come from? ” “From here; from Doña Virginia’s house. ” “You brave woman! She exploits those poor girls she deceives into her house. A moneylender calling a midwife an exploiter!” Undoubtedly, the case was not entirely common. The editor of El Masón Ilustrado, who met with Andrés, told him with a grave air that Doña Virginia was a woman to be reckoned with; She had sent two husbands to the other world with two blows; nothing frightened her. She caused abortions, abolished children, kidnapped girls and sold them. Accustomed to gymnastics and massages, she was stronger than a man, and it was nothing to her to hold a woman like a child. In these abortion and third-party dealings, she displayed enormous audacity . Like those sarcophagous flies that flock to butchered animals and dead meat, Doña Virginia appeared with her words. friendly, there where he could smell the ruined family being dragged to the spoliarium. The Italian, the editor of El Masón Ilustrado assured, was not a language teacher, far from it, but an accomplice in Doña Virginia’s nefarious business dealings, and if he knew French and English, it was because he had been a pickpocket for a long time, robbing people in hotels. They all went with Victorio to Carrera de San Jerónimo; there, the moneylender’s nephew invited them to accompany him to the Zarzuela ball; but Aracil and Casares assumed Victorio wouldn’t want to pay for their admission, and they said no. “Let’s do something,” Casares’s sainetero friend suggested. “What?” Julio asked. “Let’s go to Villasús’s house. Pura will have left the theater by now. Villasús, according to what Andrés was told, was a playwright who had two daughters who were chorus girls. This Villasús lived on Cuesta de Santo Domingo. They headed for Puerta del Sol; they bought pastries on the corner of Calle del Carmen and Calle del Olivo; then they went to Cuesta de Santo Domingo and stopped in front of a large house. “Let’s not make a fuss here,” warned the comedian, because the night watchman wouldn’t let us in. The night watchman opened the door, they entered a spacious doorway, and Casares and his friend, Julio, Andrés, and the editor of El Masón Ilustrado, began to climb a wide staircase to reach the attics, lighting themselves with matches. They knocked on a door, a girl appeared and showed them into a painter’s studio, and shortly afterward, a man with a graying beard and hair, wrapped in a greatcoat, appeared. This gentleman, Rafael Villasús, was a poor devil, author of detestable comedies and dramas in verse. The poet, as he called himself, lived his life as an artist, as a bohemian; he was, at heart, a complete fool, who had ruined his daughters for a stupid romanticism. Pura and Ernestina had a disastrous path; neither of them had any talent for the stage; but their father believed in nothing but art, and had taken them to the Conservatory, then gotten them into a theater with partitions and associated with journalists and comedians. Pura, the eldest, had a son with a sainetera friend of Casares, and Ernestina was involved with a reseller. Pura’s lover, besides being a proven imbecile, a maker of stupid jokes, like most of those in the trade, was a scoundrel, ready to steal anything he saw. That night he was there. He was a tall, thin, dark man with a hanging lower lip. The two saineteras showed off their wit, bringing out a collection of old and hackneyed jokes. The two of them and the others, Casares, Aracil, and the editor of El Masón Ilustrado, took Villasús’s house as if it were their own territory and made a number of horrors with villainous malicious intent. They laughed at the father’s craziness, who believed that all this was the artistic life. The poor fool didn’t notice the ill will everyone put into his jokes. The daughters, two stupid and ugly women, avidly ate the cakes the visitors had brought, ignoring nothing. One of the comedians acted like a lion, throwing himself on the floor and roaring, and the father read some quatrains that were met with wild applause. Hurtado, tired of the noise and the jokes of the comedians, went to the kitchen to drink a glass of water and ran into Casares and the editor of El Masón Ilustrado. The latter was determined to soil himself in one of the kitchen pots and then throw it into the water jug. He thought his idea was hilarious. “But you’re an idiot,” Andrés said brusquely. “What? ” “That you’re an idiot, a vile beast.” “You’re not saying that to me!” shouted the mason. “Can’t you hear me saying it? ” “You don’t repeat that to me on the street. ” “On the street and everywhere.” Casares had to intervene, and as he undoubtedly wanted to leave, he took the opportunity to accompany Hurtado, saying that he was going to avoid any conflict. Pura went down to open the door for them, and the journalist and Andrés went together to the Puerta del Sol. Casares offered Andrés his protection; no doubt, he promised protection and help to everyone. Hurtado went home, not very impressed. Doña Virginia, exploiting and selling women; those young men, mocking poor, unfortunate people. Mercy was nowhere to be found. Chapter 15. LULÚ. The conversation he had at the dance with Lulú made Hurtado want to get closer to the girl. The girl was truly pleasant and gracious. Her eyes were uneven, one higher than the other, and when she laughed, she narrowed them until they became two slits, which gave her a very malicious expression. Her smile raised the corners of her lips upward, and her face took on a sharp, satirical air. She didn’t mince her words when she spoke. She habitually said horrible things. There was no dam in her to stop her spiritual unbridledness, and when she reached the most scabrous point, an expression of cynicism shone in her eyes. The first day Andrés went to see Lulú after the dance, she recounted her visit to Doña Virginia’s house. “Were you all to see the midwife?” Lulú asked. “Yes .” “You brave aunt pig! ” “Little girl,” exclaimed Doña Leonarda, “what are those expressions? ” “Well, what is she, if not a pimp or something worse? ” “Jesus! What words! ” “She came to me one day,” Lulú continued, “asking me if I wanted to go with her to an old man’s house. What a filthy aunt! ” Hurtado was amazed at Lulú’s mordacity. She didn’t have that vulgar repertoire of jokes heard at the theater; everything about her was streetwise, popular. Andrés began to go to the house frequently, just to hear Lulú. She was, without a doubt, an intelligent, cerebral woman, like most young women who work hard in large cities, with a greater desire to see, to learn, to distinguish themselves, than to experience sensual pleasures. Hurtado was surprised; but she didn’t give him the slightest idea of making love to her. It would have been impossible for him to think that he could ever have more than a cordial friendship with Lulú. Lulú embroidered for a workshop on Segovia Street and used to earn up to three pesetas a day. This, along with Doña Leonarda’s small pension, was enough to support the family; Niní earned little because, although she worked, she was clumsy. When Andrés went in the afternoons, he would find Lulú with the frame on her knees, sometimes singing loudly, other times very silently. Lulú quickly picked up songs from the street and sang them with admirable mischief. Above all, those naughty little ditties with grotesque lyrics were the ones she liked most. That tango that begins with: A very famous cook from Cádiz compares women to stew, and those others in which women are in fifth gear, or have to be sailors, the one about the “What’s the Girl?”, or the one about women who ride bicycles, in which there is that amusing concern, expressed like this: ” That’s why there are a thousand arguments now , about whether they should wear skirts or pants.” She sang all these popular songs with great grace. Sometimes she lacked humor and had those thought-filled silences of restless, neurotic girls. In those moments, her ideas seemed to converge inward, and the force of the ideation drove her to silence. If someone called her suddenly, while she was lost in thought, she would blush and become confused. “I don’t know what she’s up to when she’s like that,” her mother would say; “but it can’t be anything good.” Lulú told Andrés that as a child, she had gone a long time without wanting to talk. At that time, talking made her very sad, and ever since then, these fits of anger have remained with her. Often, Lulú would leave her frame and go out into the street to buy something at the nearby haberdashery, and she would reply to the remarks of the vulgar people. in the most shameless and impudent manner. This lack of concern for defending the interests of the class seemed to Doña Leonarda and Niní a true shame. “Keep in mind that your father was quite a character,” Doña Leonarda would say emphatically. “And we’re dying of hunger,” Lulú would retort. When it grew dark and the three women stopped working, Lulú would retreat into a corner, leaning on several places at once. As if boxed in, in a narrow space formed by two chairs and the table or by the chairs and the dining room cupboard, she would begin to talk with her usual cynicism, scandalizing her mother and sister. Anything that was deformed in a human sense delighted her. She was accustomed to showing no respect for anything or anyone. She couldn’t have friends her own age because she liked to scare off prudes with outrageous things; On the other hand, she was good to the elderly and the sick; she understood their quirks, their selfishness, and laughed at them. She was also helpful; it didn’t bother her to carry a dirty child in her arms or take care of a sick old woman in the attic. Sometimes, Andrés found her more depressed than usual; among those parapets of old chairs, she would sit with her head resting on her hand, laughing at the squalor of the room, staring at the ceiling or at one of the holes in the matting. Other times, she would begin to sing the same song without stopping. “But, girl, shut up!” her mother would say. “You’re driving me crazy with that refrain.” And Lulú would fall silent; but soon she would return with the song. Sometimes a friend of Doña Leonarda’s husband, Don Prudencio González, would come by the house. Don Prudencio was a fat pimp with a bulging abdomen. He wore a black frock coat and a white vest, from which hung a watch chain covered in charms. He had small, disdainful eyes, a short, painted mustache, and a red face. He spoke with an Andalusian accent and assumed academic postures in conversation. The day Don Prudencio came, Doña Leonarda multiplied. “You, who have known my husband,” she would say in a tearful voice. “You, who have seen us in another position.” And Doña Leonarda would talk with tears in her eyes about past splendors . Chapter 16. MORE ABOUT LULU. On some holidays, in the afternoons, Andrés accompanied Lulú and her mother for a walk through the Retiro Park or the Botanical Garden. Lulú liked the Botanical Garden better because it was more popular and closer to her house, and because of the acrid scent given off by the old myrtles in the avenues. “Because it’s you, I’ll let you accompany Lulú,” Doña Leonarda would say, with a certain sarcasm. “Well, well, Mama,” Lulú would reply. All that’s unnecessary. At the Botanical Garden, they would sit on a bench and chat. Lulú would recount her life and impressions, especially those of her childhood. Her childhood memories were deeply etched in her mind. “It makes me sad to think about when I was a little girl!” she would say. “Why? Did you live well?” Hurtado would ask her. “No, no; but it makes me very sad.” Lulú would say that as a child, they used to hit her so she wouldn’t eat the plaster off the walls and the newspapers. At that time, she had had migraines and nervous breakdowns; but it had been a long time since she had suffered from any disorder. She was, however, a little uneven; one moment she felt capable of sitting upright for an inordinate amount of time, another moment she would find herself so tired that the slightest effort would exhaust her. This organic unevenness was reflected in her spiritual and material character . Lulú was very arbitrary; she displayed her likes and dislikes without any reason. She didn’t like to eat in an orderly manner, nor did she want hot food; She only craved cold, spicy things, with vinegar, pickled vegetables, oranges… “Oh! If I were part of your family, I wouldn’t allow you to do that,” Andrés would say to her. “No? ” “No.” “Then say you’re my cousin. ” “Laugh,” Andrés would reply; “but I’d put you in your place. ” “Oh, oh, oh, I’m getting dizzy!” she would reply, singing shamelessly. Andrés Hurtado knew few women; if he had known more and been able to compare, he would have come to appreciate Lulú. Deep down, despite her lack of enthusiasm and morals, at least ordinary morals, this girl had a very human and very noble idea of things. She didn’t mind adultery, vices, or the greatest enormities; what bothered her was duplicity, hypocrisy, and bad faith. She felt a great desire for loyalty. She said that if a man pursued her, and she saw that he truly loved her , she would go with him, whether he was rich or poor, single or married. Such a statement seemed monstrous, indecent to Niní and Doña Leonarda. Lulú didn’t accept rights or social practices. “Everyone should do what they want,” she said. The ease of her initial life gave her the courage to express her opinion very greatly. “Would you really go with a man?” Andrés asked her. “If you truly loved me, I’d say so!” Even if he hit me afterward. “Without getting married? ” “Without getting married, why not? If I lived two or three years with hope and enthusiasm, well, nobody could take that away from me. ” “And then?” “Then I’d continue working like now, or I’d poison myself. ” This tendency toward a tragic end was very common in Lulu; she was undoubtedly attracted to the idea of ending, and ending melodramatically. She said she wouldn’t like to grow old. In her extraordinary frankness, she spoke with cynicism. One day she said to Andrés: “You see: a few years ago I was on the verge of losing my honor, as we women say. ” “Why?” Andrés asked, astonished, upon hearing this revelation. “Because some brute from the neighborhood tried to force himself on me. I was twelve years old. And thank goodness I was wearing trousers and started screaming; otherwise… I’d be dishonored,” she added in a booming voice. “It seems the idea doesn’t frighten you much.” “For a woman who isn’t pretty, like me, and who always has to be working, like me, it’s not a big deal. What was true in Lulú’s obsession with sincerity and analysis?” Andrés wondered. “Was it spontaneous, was it heartfelt, or was there some ostentation to seem original? It was difficult to determine. Some Saturday nights, Julio and Andrés would invite Lulú, Niní, and her mother to go to the theater, and then they would go into a café. Chapter 17. MANOLO EL CHAFANDÍN. A friend with whom Lulú often provided mutual services was an old woman, a neighborhood ironer named Venancia. Mrs. Venancia was about sixty years old, and she worked constantly; winter and summer she was in her little room, without a moment’s pause from ironing. Mrs. Venancia lived with her daughter and son-in-law, a chulapo whom they called Manolo el Chafandín. This Manolo, a man of many trades and of none, worked only rarely and lived at his mother-in-law’s expense. Manolo had three or four children, the last of whom was a baby girl who was frequently tucked into a basket in Mrs. Venancia’s room, and whom Lulú would carry around in her arms on the porch. “What could this child be?” some would ask. And Lulú would reply, “A slut, a slut,” or something harsher, and add, “They’ll take her around like Estrella.” Mrs. Venancia’s daughter was a lazy, drunken, and scheming cow who spent her life arguing with the neighborhood gossips. Since Manolo, her husband, didn’t like to work, the whole family lived at Mrs. Venancia’s expense, and the money from the ironing shop wasn’t enough, naturally, to meet the household needs. Whenever Venancia and her son-in-law argued, Manolo’s wife always came to her husband’s defense, as if the lazy man had the right to live off the work of others. Lulú, who was a vigilante, one day, seeing her daughter run over her mother, came to Venancia’s defense and insulted Manolo’s wife; she called her a bitch, a drunk, a dog, and added that her husband was a bastard. The other woman told her that she and her entire family were A few starving coquettes, and thanks to the intervention of other neighbors, they didn’t pull each other’s hair out. Those words caused a conflict, because Manolo el Chafandín, who was a boring pimp, one of those cowards, decided to demand an explanation from Lulú for her words. Doña Leonarda and Niní, upon learning what had happened, were scandalized. Doña Leonarda yelled at Lulú for mixing with those people. Doña Leonarda had no sensitivity except for matters that concerned her social respectability. “You’re determined to outrage us,” she said to Lulú, half-weeping. “What are we going to do, my God, when that man comes? ” “Let him come,” Lulú replied. “I’ll tell him he’s a lazy bum and that it would be better for him to work than live off his mother-in-law. ” “But what do you care what other people do? Why do you mix with those people?” Julio Aracil and Andrés arrived in the afternoon, and Doña Leonarda informed them of what had happened. “What the hell! Nothing will happen to you,” said Andrés; ” we’ll be here.” Aracil, upon learning what was happening and the Chafandín’s announced visit, would have gladly left, because he wasn’t one for brawls; but to avoid being seen as a coward, he stayed. In the middle of the afternoon there was a knock at the door, and a voice was heard: “May I come in? ” “Come in,” said Andrés. Manolo Chafandín appeared, dressed for a holiday, very elegant, very well-groomed, with a wide-brimmed bullfighter’s hat and a large silver watch chain. On his cheek, a curly black mole traced as many turns as the spring of a pocket watch. Doña Leonarda and Niní trembled when they saw Manolo. Andrés and Julio invited him to explain. Chafandín placed his club on his left forearm and began a long tirade of reflections and considerations about honor and words spoken carelessly. It was clear he was probing to see if he dared to act brave, because those young gentlemen could be just as much a pair of idiots as two braggarts who would bore him with their insults. Lulú listened nervously, moving her arms and legs, ready to pounce. Chafandín began to embolden himself when he saw that they weren’t answering him, and he raised his voice. “Because here,” he pointed at Lulú with the club, “you’ve called my lady a bitch, and my lady isn’t a bitch; there must be others who are bigger bitches than her, and here,” he pointed at Lulú again, “you’ve said I’m a bastard, and damn her! I’ll eat the liver of anyone who says that. ” As he finished his sentence, Chafandín slammed his club down on the ground. Seeing that Chafandín was getting out of hand, Andrés, a little pale, stood up and said, “Okay, sit down. ” “I’m fine like this,” said the pimp. “No, man. Sit down. You’ve been talking standing up for a long time, and you’re going to get tired. ” Manolo Chafandín sat down, somewhat suspicious. “Now, tell me,” Andrés continued, “what is it you want, in summary. ” “In summary? ” “Yes. ” “Well, I want an explanation. ” “An explanation, of what? ” “Of the words you’ve said here,” he pointed again at Lulú against my wife and against this servant. “Come on, man, don’t be an idiot. ” “I’m not an idiot. ” “What do you want this young lady to say? That his wife isn’t a slut, or a drunk, or a dog, and that you’re not a bastard?” ” Okay, Lulú, say that so this good man can go away in peace.” “No chicken’s foolin’ me,” said Chafandín, standing up. “What I’m going to do,” said Andrés irritably, “is hit him over the head with a chair and kick him down the stairs. ” “You? ” “Yes, me.” And Andrés approached the pimp with the chair in the air. Doña Leonarda and her daughters began to shout; Chafandín quickly approached the door and opened it. Andrés went to him; but Chafandín closed the door and escaped through the gallery, shouting bravado and insults. Andrés wanted to go out and warm her ribs to teach her how to treat people; but the women and Julio convinced him to stay. Throughout the entire argument, Lulú was vibrant, ready to intervene. When Andrés said goodbye, she shook his hand more firmly than usual. Chapter 18. THE STORY OF VENANCIA. The comical scene with Manolo el Chafandín made Andrés a hero in Doña Leonarda’s house . Lulú took him one day to Venancia’s workshop. Venancia was one of those dry, clean, hardworking old women; she spent the day without a moment’s rest. She led a curious life. As a young woman, she had been a maid in several houses, until her last mistress died and she stopped serving. Venancia’s idea of the world was a bit capricious. For her, the rich, especially the aristocrats, belonged to a class higher than the human. An aristocrat had the right to everything: vice, immorality, selfishness; he was as if above common morality. A poor woman like her, fickle, selfish, or adulterous, seemed monstrous to him; but he found the same thing excusable in a lady. Andrés was amazed by such a strange philosophy, according to which one who possesses health, strength, beauty, and privileges has more right to other advantages than one who knows nothing but illness, weakness, ugliness , and filth. Although the scientific guarantee of this is unknown, according to people, there is a saint in the Catholic heavens, Saint Pascual Bailón, who dances before the Almighty, and who always says: More, more, more. If one is lucky, He gives him more, more, more; if one is unlucky, He also gives him more, more, more. This dance-like philosophy was that of Señora Venancia. Señora Venancia, while ironing, told stories about her masters. Andrés went to listen to her with pleasure. The first housekeeper Venancia served was a capricious and insane woman with a fiendish temper. She beat her children, her husband, and the servants, and liked to make enemies of her friends. One of her tricks was to have a person hide behind a curtain when another person arrived, and then incite the person to speak ill of the person hiding and overhearing. The lady forced her eldest daughter to dress in a shabby and ridiculous manner so that no one would notice her. Her wickedness went so far as to hide some cutlery in the garden and accuse a servant of being a thief, having him taken to jail. Once in this house, Venancia was watching over one of the lady’s sons, who was in a very serious condition. The child was in agony, and around ten o’clock at night, he died. Venancia went weeping to tell her mistress what was happening and found her dressed for a ball. He gave her the sad news, and she said, “Well, don’t say anything now.” The lady went off to the ball, and when she returned she began to cry, feigning despair. “What a wolf!” said Lulu upon hearing the story. From this house, Lady Venancia had moved to another house owned by a very beautiful, very generous, but terribly unrestrained duchess. That one kept lovers in pairs,” said Venancia. “She often went to the church of Jesus wearing a brown sergeant habit and spent hours and hours praying there, and when she left her lover would wait for her in a carriage and she would go with him. “One day,” the ironer related, “the duchess was with her lover in the bedroom; I was sleeping in a nearby room that had a connecting door. Suddenly I heard a clatter of bells ringing and knocking. Here’s the husband,” I thought. I jumped out of bed and entered my lady’s room through the back door. The duke, for whom a servant had opened the door, was pounding furiously on the bedroom door; the door had only a light bolt, which would have given way at the slightest force; I barred it with a curtain rod. The lover, embarrassed, did not know what to do; he looked very ridiculous. I led him through the back door, gave him my husband’s clothes, and sent him upstairs. Then I dressed quickly and went to see the duke, who was bellowing furiously. with a pistol in his hand, banging on the bedroom door. The lady, hearing my voice, understood that the situation was resolved and opened the door. The duke looked around every corner, while she stood calmly contemplating him. The next day, the lady embraced and kissed me, telling me that she wholeheartedly repented, that from then on she would lead a modest life; but within two weeks she had already taken another lover. Venancia knew all the intimate life of the aristocratic world of her time: the rashes on the arms and the erotic fury of Isabel II; the impotence of her husband; the vices, the illnesses, the customs of the aristocrats she knew from details she had seen with her own eyes. Lulú was interested in these stories. Andrés claimed that all those people were a filthy rabble, unworthy of sympathy and pity; but Señora Venancia, with her strange philosophy, did not accept this opinion. On the contrary, she said that they were all very good, very charitable, that they gave large alms and alleviated many miseries. Sometimes Andrés tried to convince the ironer that the money of the rich came from the work and sweat of the miserable poor who worked the fields, the pastures, and the farms. Andrés claimed that such a state of injustice could change; but for Señora Venancia, this was a fantasy. “That’s how we found the world, and that’s how we’ll leave it,” the old woman said, convinced that her argument was unchallengeable. Chapter 19. OTHER GUYS IN THE HOUSE. One of Lulú’s characteristic features was that she concentrated her attention on the neighborhood and the surrounding area to such an extent that what happened in other parts of Madrid held no interest for her. While she worked on her frame, she kept track of the ups and downs of what was happening among the neighbors. The house where they lived, although at first glance didn’t seem very large, had a lot of space and was inhabited by a large number of families. Above all, the attic population was numerous and picturesque. A number of strange types from the Madrid underworld and the poor passed through . One tenant in the attic, who always caused trouble, was Aunt Negra, an elderly greengrocer. The poor woman would get drunk and suffer from a political alcoholic delirium, which consisted of cheering the Republic and insulting the authorities, the ministers, and the rich. The security agents considered her a blasphemer and occasionally took her to the shadows to spend a fortnight; but when she came out, she was back to her old ways. Aunt Negra, when she was sane and without alcohol, wanted to be called Mrs. Nieves, for that was her name. Another strange old woman in the neighborhood was Mrs. Benjamina, who was nicknamed Doña Pitusa. Doña Pitusa was a small old woman with a crooked nose, very lively eyes, and a mouth like a drainpipe. She used to go begging at the Church of Jesus and the Church of Montserrat; she would constantly say that she had suffered many family misfortunes and losses of fortune; perhaps she thought this justified her fondness for aguardiente. Señora Benjamina traveled halfway across Madrid begging under various pretexts, sending tearful letters. Often, at dusk, she would stand at a crossroads with her black veil thrown over her face and surprise passersby with a tragic tale, expressed in theatrical tones . She said she was the widow of a general; that her twenty-year-old son, the sole support of her life, had just died ; that she had no means of shrouding him or lighting a candle to illuminate his body. The passerby would sometimes shudder, sometimes retorting that she must have many twenty-year-old sons, since one of them died so frequently . Benjamina’s real son was over twenty; his name was Chuleta, and he worked in an undertaker’s. He was short, very thin, somewhat hunchbacked, and sickly-looking, with saffron-colored hairs in his beard and sea bream eyes. People in the neighborhood said he was the inspiration for his mother’s melodramatic stories. Chuleta was a funereal figure; It must have been truly unpleasant to see him in the store amidst his coffins. Chuleta was very vengeful and spiteful; he never forgot anything; he harbored an insatiable hatred for Manolo el Chafandín. Chuleta had many children, all with the same dejected, tragically stupid appearance as their father, and all as malicious and spiteful as he was. There was also a guest house in the attic owned by a cross-eyed Galician woman, as wide at the top as at the bottom. This Galician woman, Paca, had as pupils, among others, a one-eyed student from the dissection class at San Carlos, whom Aracil and Hurtado knew; a nurse from the General Hospital; and an unemployed person, whom they called Don Cleto. Don Cleto Meana was the philosopher of the house; he was a well-educated and cultured man who had fallen into poverty. He lived off some charity received from friends. He was a short, thin old man, very clean, very tidy, with a trimmed gray beard; his suit was threadbare but spotless , and his shirt collar was impeccable. He cut his own hair, washed his clothes, dyed his boots when they had a white indentation, and trimmed the fringes of his trousers. Venancia used to iron his collars for free. Don Cleto was a stoic. “With a roll a day and a few cigars, I live as well as a prince,” the poor man would say. Don Cleto strolled through the Retiro and Recoletos districts; he sat on benches, struck up conversations with people. If no one was watching, he would pick up a few cigarette butts and save them, because, being a gentleman, he didn’t like to be caught in the act of certain chores. Don Cleto enjoyed street spectacles; the arrival of a foreign prince, the burial of a politician, were major events for him. Lulú, whenever she found him on the stairs, would say to him: “Are you leaving already, Don Cleto? ” “Yes; I’m going for a little walk. ” “Off on a pyre, eh? You’re a real rascal, Don Cleto. ” “Ha, ha, ha,” he laughed. “What girls these are! What things they say!” Another well-known man in the house was the Maestrín, a very pedantic and know-it-all from La Mancha, a druggist, healer, and leech-slinger. The Maestrín had a small shop on Fúcar Street, and he would often be there with Silveria, his daughter, a fine, very pretty girl, whom Victorio, the moneylender’s nephew, would often spot. The Maestrín, very jealous of matters of honor, was ready, or so he said, to stab anyone who tried to dishonor him. All these people in the house paid their contributions in cash or in kind to Victorio’s uncle, the moneylender on Atocha Street, named Don Martín, who was known by his nickname as Uncle Miserias. Uncle Miserias, the most important figure in the neighborhood, lived in his own house on Verónica Street, a small, one-story , village-style house with two balconies filled with flowerpots and a grille on the ground floor. Uncle Miserias was a hunched, clean-shaven, and frowning old man. He wore a square, black rag over one eye, which made his face even more somber. He always dressed in mourning; in winter, he wore selvedge slippers and a long cape, which hung from his shoulders like a coat rack. Don Martín, the human being, as Andrés called him, left his house very early and was always on guard in the back of his establishment . On cold days, he spent his time in front of a brazier, constantly breathing air laden with carbon monoxide. At dusk, he would retire to his house, take a look at his flowerpots, and close the balconies. Don Martín had, in addition to the store on Atocha Street, another of lesser standing on Tribulete Street. In the latter, his main business was pawning sheets and mattresses from the poor. Don Martín didn’t want to see anyone. He felt that society owed him attentions that it denied him. A clerk, apparently a good young man, in whom he had placed his trust, played a trick on him. One day, the clerk took an axe they had at the pawn shop to to make kindling with which to light the brazier, and rushing at Don Martín, he began to beat him, and almost split his head. Then the boy, assuming Don Martín was dead, took the coins from the counter and went to a house of change on San José Street, and there they arrested him. Don Martín was outraged when he saw that the Court, accepting a series of extenuating circumstances, sentenced the boy to only a few months in prison. “It’s a scandal,” the usurer said thoughtfully. “Honest people are not protected here . There is no benevolence except for criminals.” Don Martín was tremendous; he forgave no one. He seized the milk donkeys of a neighboring donkey owner because he didn’t pay him a certain amount of money , and despite the donkey owner’s insistence that if he didn’t let him have the donkeys, it would be more difficult to get him to pay, Don Martín refused. He would have eaten his fill of donkeys to take advantage of them. Victorio, the moneylender’s nephew, promised to be a bigwig like his uncle, although from a different school. This Victorio was a pawnbroker’s Don Juan . Very elegant, very dashing, with his twisted mustache, his fingers full of jewelry, and the smile of a satisfied man, he wreaked havoc on women’s hearts. This young man exploited the moneylender. The money that Uncle Miserias had extorted from the unfortunate neighbors went to Victorio, who spent it wisely. Despite this, it wasn’t lost; on the contrary, he was on the way to getting rich and increasing his fortune. Victorio owned a bar on Calle del Olivar, where illegal games were played, and a tavern on Calle del León. The tavern brought Victorio great profits because it ran a very productive social circle. Various points agreed upon with the household would begin a game of gambling, and when there was money on the table, someone would shout, “Gentlemen, the police!” And a few solicitous hands would take the coins, while the police officers in cahoots would enter the room. Despite his status as an exploiter and a philanderer of young women, the people of the neighborhood did not hate Victorio. They all thought what he did was very natural and logical. Chapter 20. UNIVERSAL CRUELTY. Andrés had a great desire to comment philosophically on the lives of the neighbors of Lulú’s house. His friends were not interested in these comments and philosophies, and one morning on a holiday, he decided to go see his uncle Iturrioz. At first, Andrés did not meet his uncle until he was fourteen or fifteen years old. Iturrioz seemed to him to be a dry and selfish man, who took everything with indifference; Then, without knowing exactly how far his selfishness and acerbity extended, he found himself one of the few people with whom it was possible to converse about transcendental matters. Iturrioz lived on the fifth floor of the Argüelles neighborhood, in a house with a beautiful rooftop terrace. He was assisted by a servant, a former soldier from the time when Iturrioz had been a military doctor. Between master and servant, they had fixed the roof, painted the tiles with tar, no doubt to make them waterproof, and put in steps where the wooden boxes and buckets filled with soil where their plants were placed. That morning when Andrés showed up at Iturrioz’s house, his uncle was bathing, and the servant took him to the rooftop. From there, the Guadarrama River could be seen between two tall houses; To the west, the roof of the Montaña barracks hid the hills of the Casa de Campo, and on one side of the barracks stood the Móstoles tower and the Extremadura highway, with some windmills nearby . Further south, in the April morning sun, the green patches of the San Isidro and San Justo cemeteries, the two towers of Getafe, and the hermitage of Cerrillo de los Ángeles shone. Shortly after, Iturrioz came out onto the roof. “What, is something wrong?” he said to his nephew when he saw him. “Nothing; I came to chat with you for a while. ” “Very well, sit down; I’m going to water my flowerpots.” Iturrioz opened the fountain he had in a corner of the terrace, filled a tub, and began pouring water on the plants with a container. Andrés spoke of the people in Lulú’s neighborhood, of the scenes at the hospital, as strange cases worthy of comment; of Manolo el Chafandín, of Uncle Miserias, of Don Cleto, of Doña Virginia… “What conclusions can be drawn from all these lives?” Andrés finally asked. “For me, the conclusion is easy,” Iturrioz replied, holding the jar of water. “That life is a constant struggle, a cruel hunt in which we devour one another. Plants, microbes, animals. ” “Yes, I’ve thought about that too,” Andrés replied, “but I’m abandoning the idea.” First of all, the concept of the struggle for life applied to animals, plants, and even minerals, as is often done, is nothing more than an anthropomorphic concept. Then, what struggle for life is that of that man, Don Cleto, who abstains from combat, or that of that Brother Juan, who gives his money to the sick? “I’ll answer you piecemeal,” Iturrioz replied, leaving the can to water, because these discussions fascinated him. “You tell me, this concept of struggle is an anthropomorphic concept. Of course, we call all conflicts struggle, because it is the human idea that most closely approximates that relationship that for us produces a victor and a vanquished. If we didn’t have this concept at our core, we wouldn’t speak of struggle. The hyena that picks the bones of a corpse, the spider that sucks up a fly, does nothing more and nothing less than the kind tree that takes from the earth the water and salts necessary for its life. The indifferent spectator, like me, sees the hyena, the spider, and the tree, and explains them. The righteous man shoots the hyena, crushes the spider with his boot, and sits in the shade of the tree, and believes he is doing the right thing. “So for you there is no struggle, nor is there justice? ” “In an absolute sense, no; in a relative sense, yes. Everything that lives has a process to first seize space, occupy a place, and then to grow and multiply; this process of the energy of a living being against the obstacles of its environment is what we call struggle. Regarding justice, I believe that what is just, at its core, is what is good for us. Suppose, in the previous example, that the hyena, instead of being killed by the man, kills the man, that the tree falls on him and crushes him, that the spider gives him a poisonous bite; well, none of that seems just to us, because it is not good for us.” Even though there’s nothing more to it than this, a utilitarian interest, who doubts that the idea of justice and equity is a tendency that exists within us? But how are we going to realize it? –That’s what I ask myself: how to realize it? –Should we be indignant because a spider kills a fly?– Iturrioz continued.–Good. Let’s be indignant. What are we going to do? Kill it? Let’s kill it. That won’t stop spiders from eating flies. Are we going to take away from man those fierce instincts that repugn you? Are we going to erase that saying of the Latin poet: Homo hominis lupus, man is a wolf to man? Fine. In four or five thousand years we can achieve it. Man has made a carnivore like the jackal into an omnivore like the dog; but that takes many centuries. I don’t know if you’ve read that Spallanzani had trained a dove to eat meat and an eagle to eat and digest bread. There you have the case of those great religious and secular apostles; they are eagles that feed on bread instead of vibrant meat; they are vegetarian wolves. There you have the case of Brother John… “I don’t think he’s an eagle, nor a wolf. ” “He might be an owl or a marten; but with disturbed instincts. ” “Yes, it’s quite possible,” replied Andrew, “but I think we’ve strayed from the point; I don’t see the consequence. ” “The consequence, which I was getting at, was this: that in the face of life there are only two practical solutions for the serene man: either abstention.” and the indifferent contemplation of everything, or action limited to a small circle. That is to say, one can be quixotic against an anomaly; but to be quixotic against a general rule is absurd. “So, according to you, whoever wants to do something has to restrict their just action to a small environment. ” “Of course, to a small environment; you can encompass in your contemplation the house, the town, the country, society, the world, everything living and everything dead; but if you try to carry out an action, and a just action, you will have to restrict yourself to the point that everything will be too much for you, perhaps even your conscience itself. ” “That’s the good thing about philosophy,” Andrés said bitterly; it convinces one that the best thing is to do nothing. Iturrioz walked around the rooftop a few times and then said: “That’s the only objection you can make; but it’s not my fault. ” “I know that.” “To move toward a sense of universal justice,” Iturrioz continued, “is to lose oneself; adapting Fritz Müller’s principle that an animal’s embryology reproduces its genealogy, or as Haeckel says, that ontogeny is a recapitulation of phylogeny, one can say that human psychology is nothing more than a synthesis of animal psychology. Thus, all forms of exploitation and struggle are found in man: that of the microbe, that of the insect, that of the beast… That usurer you described to me, Uncle Miserias, what vicissitudes he has in zoology! There are the sucking akinetids that absorb the protoplasmic substance of other infusoria; there are all the species of aspergillus that live on decomposing substances . Are these antipathies of depraved people not admirably represented in this irreducible antagonism of the blue pus bacillus with the anthrax bacteridia?” “Yes, it’s possible,” murmured Andrés. “And among insects, how many Miserias! How many Victorios! How many Manolos the Chafandines! There aren’t any! There’s the ichneumon, which places its eggs in a worm and injects it with a substance that works like chloroform; the sphex, which seizes small spiders, grabs them, holds them, wraps them in webs, and throws them alive into their larval cells to be devoured; there are the wasps, which do the same, throwing the small insects into the spoliarium, which serves as a pantry for their young, paralyzed by a lancet delivered to their crotches; there’s the staphylinus , which sneakily throws itself at another individual of its species, holds it, wounds it, and sucks out its juices; There’s the _meloe_, which surreptitiously penetrates the bee hives, introduces itself to the alveolus where the queen lays her larva, gorges itself on honey, and then eats the larva; there it is… “Yes, yes, don’t go on any further; life is a horrible hunt. ” “That’s what Nature is like; when it tries to destroy someone, it destroys them thoroughly. Justice is a human illusion; deep down, everything is about destruction, everything is about creation. Hunting, waging war, digesting, breathing are forms of creation and destruction at the same time. ” “So, what to do?” Andrés murmured. “Go into unconsciousness? Digest, wage war, hunt, with the serenity of a savage? ” “Do you believe in the serenity of a savage?” Iturrioz asked. “What an illusion! That’s also our invention. The savage has never been serene.” “Is there no plan for living with a certain decorum?” Andrés asked. “Those who have one have invented one for their use. Today I believe that everything natural, that everything spontaneous, is bad; that only the artificial, that created by man, is good. If I could, I would live in a London club; I would never go to the country, but rather to a park; I would drink filtered water and breathe sterilized air… ” Andrés no longer wanted to pay attention to Iturrioz, who was beginning to fantasize for entertainment. He stood up and leaned on the roof railing. Pigeons fluttered over the neighboring rooftops; cats ran and played in a large gutter. Separated by a high wall, there were two gardens in front: one belonged to a girls’ school, the other to a convent of friars. The convent’s garden was surrounded by leafy trees; the school’s had only a few flowerbeds of grass and flowers, and it was a strange sight, giving a certain allegorical impression, to see at the same time the girls playing, running and shouting, and the friars passing silently in lines of five or six around the courtyard. “Life is one thing, and life is the other,” Iturrioz said philosophically, beginning to water his plants. Andrés went out into the street. “What to do? What direction to give life?” he asked himself anxiously . And people, things, the sun, seemed unreal compared to the problem posed in his mind. PART THREE. Sorrows and Sorrows. Chapter 21. CHRISTMAS DAY. One day, already in his final year of college, before Christmas, when Andrés returned from the hospital, Margarita told him that Luisito was spitting blood. Hearing this, Andrés went cold as death. She went to see the boy; he barely had a fever, his side didn’t hurt, and he was breathing easily; only a slight tinge of pink colored one cheek, while the other was pale. It wasn’t an acute illness. The thought that the child had tuberculosis made Andrés tremble. Luisito, with the unconsciousness of childhood, was recognizable and smiled. Andrés picked up a blood-stained handkerchief and took it to the laboratory for analysis. He asked the doctor on his ward to recommend the test. During those days, he lived in constant anxiety; the laboratory report was reassuring: no Koch bacillus had been found in the blood on the handkerchief; however, this didn’t leave Hurtado completely satisfied. The ward doctor, at Andrés’s urging, went to the house to examine the sick boy. Percussion revealed a certain opacity at the apex of the right lung. This could have been nothing; but, combined with the slight hemoptysis, it most likely indicated incipient tuberculosis. The professor and Andrés discussed treatment. Since the child was lymphatic and somewhat prone to catarrh, they considered it advisable to take him to a temperate country, on the Mediterranean shores if possible. There they could feed him intensively, give him sunbathing, keep him outdoors and indoors in a creosote-like atmosphere, and provide him with all kinds of conditions to strengthen him and overcome childhood. The family didn’t understand the seriousness of the situation, and Andrés had to insist, convincing them that the child’s condition was dangerous. The father, Don Pedro, had cousins in Valencia, and these cousins, bachelors, owned several houses in towns near the capital. They wrote to them and responded quickly; All her houses were rented except one in a small town near Valencia. Andrés decided to go see her. Margarita warned him that there was no money at home; she hadn’t received her Christmas bonus yet. “I’ll ask for money at the hospital and go third-class,” said Andrés. “In this cold! And on Christmas Eve! ” “It doesn’t matter. ” “Well, go to your aunt and uncle’s house,” Margarita warned him. “No, why would that be?” he replied. “I’ll see the house in the town, and if it seems right to me, I’ll send you a telegram saying: Tell them yes. ” “But that’s rude. If they find out… ” “What will they find out! Besides, I don’t want to go on ceremony and with nonsense; I get off in Valencia, go to the town, send you the telegram, and come back right away. ” There was no way to convince him. After dinner, he took a cab and went to the station. He got into a third-class carriage. The December night was cold and cruel. The steam froze on the window panes and the icy wind blew through the cracks in the door. Andrés pulled his cloak up over his eyes, turned up his collar, and put his hands in his trouser pockets. That idea of Luisito’s illness troubled him. Tuberculosis was one of those diseases that caused him a terrible terror; it was an obsession for him. Months earlier, it had been rumored that Robert Koch had invented an effective remedy for tuberculosis: tuberculin. A professor from San Carlos went to Germany and brought back tuberculin. The trial was conducted on two patients who were injected with the new remedy. The feverish reaction it produced initially raised some hope; but later, it was seen that not only did they not improve, but their deaths were hastened. If the boy was truly tuberculous, there was no salvation. With those unpleasant thoughts, Andrés traveled in the third-class car , half asleep. At dawn, he woke up, his hands and feet freezing. The train was traveling across the Castilian plain, and dawn was just beginning to appear on the horizon. In the car was only a strong villager, with the energetic and tough appearance of a La Mancha native. This villager said to him: “So, are you cold, my good friend? ” “Yes, a little. ” “Take my blanket. ” “And you? ” “I don’t need it. You gentlemen are very delicate.” Despite Andrés’s harsh words, he thanked him for the gift from the bottom of his heart. The sky was clearing, a red band bordered the countryside. The landscape was beginning to change, and the once flat ground revealed hills and trees that passed in front of the train window. Once past La Mancha, cold and barren, the air began to warm. Near Játiba, the sun rose, a yellow sun, spilling over the countryside, warming the atmosphere. The land now took on a different appearance. Alcira appeared, with the orange trees full of fruit, with the deep, slow-flowing Júcar River. The sun was rising in the sky; it was beginning to get warm; As we crossed the Castilian plateau into the Mediterranean, nature and people were different. At the stations, men and women, dressed in light-colored suits, spoke loudly, gesticulated, and ran. “Hey, you, _ché_,” they could be heard saying. Plains with rice paddies and orange groves, white shacks with black roofs, and the occasional palm tree passed swiftly as if touching the sky, could be seen. The Albufera lagoon was seen shimmering a few stations before reaching Valencia, and shortly after, Andrés appeared on the open air of the Plaza de San Francisco, in front of a large lot. Andrés approached a horse-drawn carriage driver, asked how much he would charge to take him to the small town, and, after discussions and bargaining, they agreed on one duro each to go, wait half an hour, and return to the station. Andrés got in, and the carriage crossed several streets in Valencia and turned onto a road. The cart had a white tarp behind it, and as it flapped in the wind, the road was bright and dusty; the light was blinding. In half an hour, the cart entered the village’s first street, which revealed its tower and shining dome. Andrés thought the layout of the village was perfect for what he wanted; the surrounding countryside wasn’t orchards, but rather dry, semi-hilly land . At the entrance to the village, on the left, he saw a small castle and several groups of enormous sunflowers. He took the cart down the long, wide street, a continuation of the road, until he stopped near an esplanade raised above street level. The cart stopped in front of a low, whitewashed house with a very large blue door and three very small windows. Andrés got out; a sign posted on the door indicated that the key was in the house next door. He looked out the nearby doorway, and an old woman, her complexion tanned and blackened by the sun, gave him the key, a piece of iron that looked like a prehistoric combat weapon. Andrés opened the shutter, which creaked sharply on its hinges, and entered a spacious hall with an arched door that opened onto the garden. The house had barely any depth; through the archway of the vestibule, one exited onto a wide and beautiful veranda with a trellis and a green-painted wooden fence. From the veranda, which ran parallel to the road, one descended four steps into the orchard, surrounded by a path that bordered its walls. This orchard, with several bare fruit trees, was crisscrossed by two avenues that formed a small central square and divided it into four equal plots. Thick weeds and weeds covered the ground and obscured the paths. In front of the vestibule arch was an arbor made of poles, over which were supported the branches of a wild rosebush, whose foliage, adorned with tiny white flowers, was so dense that it blocked out the sunlight. At the entrance to this small gazebo, on brick pedestals, stood two plaster statues, Flora and Pomona. Andrés entered the arbor. On the back wall was a blue and white tile painting with figures depicting Saint Thomas of Villanova dressed as a bishop, holding his staff, with a black man and a black woman kneeling beside him. Then Hurtado toured the house; it was what he had wanted; he drew a map of the rooms and the garden and sat resting for a moment on the stairs. It had been so long since he had seen trees or vegetation, that this abandoned little orchard, overgrown with weeds, seemed like paradise. This splendid, luminous Christmas day filled him with peace and melancholy. From the village, from the countryside, from the transparent atmosphere, came silence, interrupted only by the distant crowing of roosters; bluebottles and wasps shone in the sun. How gladly he would have lain on the ground, gazing for hours at that sky, so blue, so pure! A few moments later, a high-pitched bell began to ring. Andrés handed over the key at the nearby house, woke the half-asleep tartanero in his tartan, and started back. At the Valencia station, he sent a telegram to his family, bought something to eat, and a few hours later he was returning to Madrid, wrapped in his cloak, exhausted, in another third-class carriage. Chapter 22. CHILDHOOD LIFE. Upon arriving in Madrid, Andrés gave his sister Margarita instructions on how they should settle into the house. A few weeks later , Don Pedro, Margarita, and Luisito took the train. Andrés and his other two siblings stayed in Madrid. Andrés had to review his bachelor’s degree subjects. To free himself from the obsession with the child’s illness, he began to study as he had never done before. Sometimes he would visit Lulú and tell her his fears. “If that boy were better,” he murmured. “Do you love him very much?” Lulú asked. “Yes, as if he were my son. I was already grown up when he was born, just imagine .” In June, Andrés took the exams for the course and the degree and did well. “What are you going to do?” Lulú told him. ” I don’t know; for now I’ll see if that child gets better; later I’ll think about it. ” The trip was different for Andrés, and more pleasant than in December; he had money, and he took a first-class ticket. His father was waiting for him at the Valencia station . “How’s the boy?” Andrés asked him. “He’s better.” They gave the porter the luggage receipt and boarded a wagon, which quickly took them to the town. At the sound of the wagon, Margarita, Luisito, and an old maid came out to the door . The boy was well; he had a slight fever from time to time , but he was clearly improving. The one who had changed almost completely was Margarita; the fresh air and the sun had given her a look of health that beautified her. Andrés saw the orchard, the pear trees, the apricot trees, and the pomegranate trees full of leaves and flowers. The first night Andrés couldn’t sleep well in the house because of the smell of roots coming from the earth. The next day Andrés, helped by Luisito, began to pull up and burn all the weeds in the yard. Then they planted among the Two melons, pumpkins, garlic, whether it was the season or not. Of all his plantings, the only thing that grew was the garlic. These, along with the geraniums and the dompedros, produced a few vegetables; the rest died from the heat of the sun and the lack of water. Andrés spent hours and hours drawing buckets from the well. It was impossible to have a patch of green garden. As soon as he watered, the soil would dry up, and the plants would sadly bend over their stems. On the other hand, everything that had been planted previously—the passionflowers, the ivy, and the creepers—despite the dry soil, spread out and produced beautiful flowers; the grapevines turned red, the pomegranates filled with red blossom, and the oranges grew fatter on the bush. Luisito led a hygienic life, sleeping with the window open in a room that Andrés watered with creosote at night. In the morning, upon getting out of bed, he would take a cold shower in Flora and Pomona’s gazebo. At first, he didn’t like it, but then he got used to it. Andrés had hung a huge watering can from the gazebo ceiling, and attached a rope to the handle, passing over a pulley and ending in a stone held on a bench. When he dropped the stone, the watering can tilted and poured down a shower of cold water. In the morning, Andrés and Luis went to a pine grove near the village, and often stayed there until noon. After their walk, they ate and went to sleep. In the afternoon, they also had their entertainment: chasing lizards and salamanders, climbing the pear tree, and watering the plants. The roof was almost lifted off by wasp nests; they decided to declare war on these fearsome enemies and take away their nests. It was a series of skirmishes that thrilled Luisito and gave him cause for much conversation and comparison. In the afternoon, as the sun set, Andrés continued his struggle against the drought, drawing water from the well, which was very deep. In the midst of this stifling heat, the bees grumbled, the wasps went to drink the irrigation water, and the butterflies flitted from flower to flower. Sometimes, patches of winged ants appeared on the ground or aphid scabs on the plants. Luisito was more inclined to read and talk than to play violently. This precocious intelligence gave Andrés pause. He wouldn’t let him look at any books and sent him to join the street children. Andrés, meanwhile, sat on the threshold of the door, holding a book , and watched the carts pass by on the street, covered in a thick layer of dust. The carters, tanned by the sun, their faces shiny with sweat, sang as they lay on oil or wineskins, while the mules marched in single file, half asleep. At dusk, some girls who worked in a factory would pass by and greet Andrés with a rather curt goodbye, without looking at his face. Among these girls was one they called La Clavariesa, very pretty, very trim; she used to carry a silk scarf in her hand, waving it in the air, and she dressed in rather garish colors, but they suited the bright, luminous surroundings very well. Luisito, blackened by the sun, now speaking with the same Valencian accent as the other boys, played on the road. He didn’t become completely wild and untamed, as Andrés would have liked, but he was healthy and strong. He talked a lot. He was always telling stories, which demonstrated his excited imagination. “Where does this boy get these things he tells?” Andrés asked Margarita. “I don’t know; he makes them up. Luisito had an old cat that followed him and said he was a witch. The boy caricatured the people who came to the house.” An old woman from Borbotó, a neighboring town, was one of Luisito’s best imitators. This old woman sold eggs and vegetables and would say, “Ous, figues!” Another gleaming, fat man with a headscarf, who kept saying, “Sap?”, was also one of Luisito’s models. Among the street kids, there were some who worried him a lot. One of them was Roch, the healer’s son, who lived in a nearby cave district. Roch was a bold, small, blond, scrawny, toothless boy with bleary eyes. He told how his father performed his mysterious cures, both on people and horses, and spoke of how he had discovered their curative power. Roch knew many procedures and witchcraft techniques for curing sunstroke and warding off evil eyes that he had heard about in his house. Roch helped the family live, always running around with a basket on his arm. “Look at these snails,” he would say to Luisito, “well, with these snails and a little rice, we’ll all eat at home. ” “Where did you get them?” Luisito would ask. “Somewhere I know,” replied Roch, who didn’t want to share his secrets. Also living in the caves were two other marauders, about fourteen or fifteen years old, friends of Luisito: Choriset and Chitano. Choriset was a troglodyte, with the spirit of a primitive man. His head, his build, his expression were those of a Berber. Andrés used to ask him questions about his life and his ideas. “For a real, I’d kill a man,” Choriset would say, showing his shining white teeth. “But they’d catch you and take you to prison. ” “Oh! I’d hide in a cave near mine and stay there. ” “And eat? How were you going to eat? ” “I’d go out at night to buy bread. ” “But with a real, it wouldn’t last you many days. ” “I’d kill another man,” Choriset would reply, laughing. Chitano’s only tendency was to steal; he was always on the prowl to see if he could steal something. Andrés, although he had no interest in making friends there, was getting to know the people. Village life was absurd in many ways; women walked separately from men, and this separation of the sexes existed in almost everything. Margarita was annoyed by her brother’s constant presence at home and urged him to go out. Some afternoons, Andrés would go to the café in the square, learn about the conflicts in the town between the music of the Republican Casino and that of the Carlist Casino, and Mercaer, a Republican worker, would explain to him in a picturesque way about the French Revolution and the torments of the Inquisition. Chapter 23. THE OLD HOUSE. Don Pedro traveled to and from Madrid to the village several times. Luisito seemed to be well; he didn’t have a cough or fever; but he retained that tendency to fantasize that made him wander and reason in a manner inappropriate for his age. “I don’t think it’s right for you to stay here,” said the father. “Why not?” asked Andrés. “Margarita can’t live forever tucked away in a corner. It won’t matter to you, but it will to her. ” “Let her go to Madrid for a while. ” “But do you think Luis isn’t cured yet? ” “I don’t know; but it seems better to me that he stays here. ” “Well, we’ll see what can be done.” Margarita explained to her brother that her father said they didn’t have the means to support two households like that. “He doesn’t have the means for this; but he does have the means to spend at the Casino,” replied Andrés. “That doesn’t matter to you,” Margarita answered angrily. “Well, what I’m going to do is see if they’ll give me a job as a village doctor and take the boy. I’ll keep him in the country for a few years, and then he can do what he wants. ” In this uncertainty, and without knowing whether they were going to stay or go, a lady from Valencia, also Don Pedro’s cousin, appeared at the house. This lady was one of those determined and bossy women who like to arrange everything. Doña Julia decided that Margarita, Andrés, and Luisito should spend a while at their aunt and uncle’s house. They would be very happy to welcome them. Don Pedro found the solution very practical. “What do you think?” he asked Margarita and Andrés. “Whatever you decide, I’ll be happy to,” Margarita replied. “It doesn’t seem like a good solution to me,” Andrés said. “Why?” “Because the boy won’t be well. ” “Well, the climate’s the same,” replied the father. “Yes; but living in the interior of a city, among narrow streets, isn’t the same as living in the country. Besides, those gentlemen relatives of ours, being bachelors, will have their share of naughty places and won’t like boys. ” “No; not that. They’re friendly people, and they have a house big enough for freedom. ” “Okay. Then we’ll try.” One day they all went to see the relatives. Just having to iron Andrés’s shirt put him in a devilish mood. The relatives lived in a large old house in the old part of town. It was a large house, painted blue, with four balconies, widely spaced, and square windows above. The porch was spacious and opened onto a paved courtyard like a small square with a lantern in the middle. From this courtyard led the wide, white stone exterior staircase, which entered the building on reaching the first floor through a lowered arch. Don Pedro knocked, and a maid dressed in black showed them into a large, sad, and dark room. It housed a tall grandfather clock with an inlaid case , antique Empire-style furniture, several cornucopias , and a map of Valencia from the early 18th century. Shortly after, Don Juan, Hurtado’s father’s cousin, a man between forty and fifty, emerged, greeted them all very politely, and showed them into another room where an old man, reclining in a wide armchair, was reading a newspaper. The family consisted of three brothers and a sister, all single. The eldest, Don Vicente, suffered from gout and rarely went out; the second, Don Juan, was a man who tried to pass for a young man, with a very elegant and neat appearance; the sister, Doña Isabel, was very pale, had very black hair, and a tearful voice. The three of them seemed preserved in an urn; they must always be in the shade in those convent-like rooms. The idea was discussed with Margarita and her siblings spending some time there, and the bachelors accepted the idea with pleasure. Don Juan, the youngest, showed Andrés the house, which was spacious. A wide glass-enclosed gallery circled around the patio. The rooms were paved with shiny, slippery tiles and had steps leading up and down, bridging the differences in level. There were countless doors of different sizes. At the back of the house, at the level of the first floor facing the street, a very tall orange tree sprouted from the middle of a shady little vegetable garden. All the rooms presented the same silent, somewhat Moorish appearance, with veiled light. The room designated for Andrés and Luisito was very large and faced the blue roofs of a church tower. A few days after the visit, Margarita, Andrés, and Luis settled into the house. Andrés was ready to go to a game. He read the vacancies for rural doctors in El Siglo Médico , found out what kind of towns they were in, and wrote to the town clerks asking for information. Margarita and Luisito were doing well with their aunt and uncle; Andrés was not; he felt no sympathy for these bachelors, protected by their money and their house against the inclemencies of fate; he would have gladly ruined their lives. It was a somewhat scoundrel instinct, but that’s how he felt. Luisito, who was pampered by his aunt and uncle, soon stopped living the life Andrés recommended; he didn’t want to go out to sunbathe or play in the street; he was becoming more demanding and finicky. The scientific dictatorship Andrés tried to exercise was not recognized in the house. Many times he told the old maid who swept the room to leave the windows open to let the sun in; but the maid didn’t obey him. “Why are you closing the room?” she asked him once. “I want it open. Do you hear?” The maid barely knew Spanish, and after a confused conversation, She replied that she was closing the room to keep out the sun. “That’s precisely what I want,” Andrew asked her. “Have you heard of microbes? ” “No, I haven’t, sir. ” “Haven’t you heard that there are germs… a kind of living things that move through the air and cause diseases? ” “Living things in the air? They must be flies. ” “Yes; they’re like flies, but they’re not flies. ” “No; well, I haven’t seen them. ” “No, you can’t see them; but they exist. These living things are in the air, in the dust, on the furniture… and these living things, which are bad, die with the light… Do you understand? ” “Yes, yes, sir.” “That’s why you have to leave the windows open… to let the sun in.” ” Exactly.” The next day the windows were closed, and the old maid told the others that the young master was crazy, because he said there were flies in the air that couldn’t be seen and that the sun killed them. Chapter 24. BOREDOM. The efforts to find a town to go to didn’t yield results as quickly as Andrés had hoped, and in view of this, to kill time, he decided to study for his doctorate. Afterwards, he would go to Madrid, and then somewhere else. Luisito was spending the winter well; apparently he was cured. Andrés didn’t want to go out; he felt intensely unsociable. It seemed like a drag to have to meet new people. “But, man, aren’t you going out?” Margarita asked him. “I’m not. Why would I? I’m not interested in anything that happens outside.” Walking the streets bored him, and he didn’t like the countryside around Valencia, despite its fertility. This orchard, evergreen, cut by ditches of murky water, with its lush, dark vegetation, didn’t make him want to wander. He preferred to be at home. There he studied and gathered information on a point of psychophysics that he planned to use for his doctoral thesis. Below his room was a shady, mossy terrace with a few pots of prickly pears and agave marigolds where the sun never shone. Andrés used to stroll there during the hottest hours. Opposite was another terrace where an old priest from the nearby church paced back and forth, praying. Andrés and the priest greeted each other very amiably when they saw each other. At dusk, from this terrace Andrés went to a small, very high rooftop built over the lantern on the staircase. He would sit there until nightfall. Luisito and Margarita would go for rides in a cart with his aunt and uncle. Andrés contemplated the town, asleep in the sunlight and the splendid sunsets. In the distance, the sea could be seen, an elongated patch of pale green, separated in a straight, clear line from the sky, a somewhat milky color on the horizon. In that old neighborhood, the nearby houses were large; their walls were peeling, the roofs covered with green and red moss, with tufts of yellowish weeds at the eaves. White, blue, and pink houses were visible, with their terraces and flat roofs; on the fences of the terraces, tubs of earth were propped up, into which prickly pears and agave berries extended their stiff, wide paddles. On some of those terraces, piles of furrowed, pot-bellied gourds could be seen, and others round and smooth. The dovecotes rose up like large, blackened cages. On the nearby terrace of a house, undoubtedly abandoned, rolls of matting, piles of scouring cords, and broken pots and pans scattered on the ground. On another rooftop, a peacock appeared, wandering loose on the roof, uttering high-pitched, unpleasant cries. Above the terraces and rooftops, the town’s towers appeared: the Miguelete, squat and strong; the dome of the cathedral, aerial and delicate; and then here and there a series of small turrets, almost all covered with blue and white tiles that shone with sparkling reflections. Andrés contemplated that town, almost unknown to him, and made a thousand whimsical predictions about the lives of its inhabitants. He saw Down this street, this narrow, winding gap between two rows of mansions. The sun, which at midday cut it into a zone of shadow and another of light, would, as the afternoon progressed, climb the houses on a sidewalk until it shone on the windows of the attics and the skylights, and then disappear. In the spring, swallows and swifts would trace capricious circles in the air, uttering shrill cries. Andrés followed them with his eyes. At dusk, they would withdraw. Then a few owls and hawks would fly by. Venus would begin to shine more brightly, and Jupiter would appear. In the street, a gas lamp flickered sadly and sleepily… Andrés would go downstairs for dinner, and often at night he would return to the roof to contemplate the stars. This nocturnal contemplation produced in him a flood of disturbing thoughts. His imagination would launch into a race, galloping across the fields of fantasy. Many times, thinking about the forces of nature, about all the germs of the earth, the air, and the water, developing in the middle of the night, made him dizzy. Chapter 25. FROM A DISTANCE. As May approached, Andrés told his sister he was going to Madrid to take his doctorate exams. “Are you going to come back?” Margarita asked him. “I don’t know; I don’t think so. ” “What an aversion you’ve developed toward this house and the town. I can’t explain it. ” “I don’t feel well here. ” “Of course. You do your best to feel well!” Andrés didn’t want to argue and went to Madrid; he took his doctorate exams and read the thesis he had written in Valencia. In Madrid, he felt ill; he and his father were still as hostile as before. Alejandro had married and was taking his wife, a poor wretch, to dinner at his house. Pedro was living the life of a socialite. If Andrés had had money, he would have gone and traveled the world; but he didn’t have a room. One day, he read in a newspaper that the doctor of a town in the province of Burgos needed a substitute for two months. He wrote; they accepted him. He told his family at home that a colleague had invited him to spend a few weeks in a town. He booked a return ticket and left. The doctor he was supposed to replace was a wealthy widower, dedicated to coin collecting. He knew little about medicine and had no interest other than history and coinage. “You won’t be able to show off your medical knowledge here,” he said mockingly to Andrés . “Here, especially in the summer, there are hardly any sick people: a few colic cases, some enteritis, a few rare cases of typhoid fever, nothing.” The doctor quickly moved from this professional matter, which didn’t interest him, to his coins, and showed Andrés the collection; the second largest in the province. As he mentioned the second, he sighed, indicating how sad it was for him to make this declaration. Andrés and the doctor became very close friends. The numismatist told him that if he wanted to live in his house, he would be happy to offer it to him, and Andrés stayed there in the company of an old maid. The summer was delightful for him; he had the whole day free to walk and read. Near the village, there was a treeless hill called El Teso, made up of rocky outcrops, in whose joints grew rockroses, rosemary, and lavender. At dusk, it was a delightful smell and freshness. Andrés realized that pessimism and optimism are organic results, like good or bad digestion. He felt admirably in that village, with a serenity and joy unknown to him; he felt that time passed too quickly. He had been in this oasis for a month and a half when one day the postman handed him a well-thumbed envelope in his father’s handwriting. No doubt the letter had traveled from town to town until reaching this one. What could be inside? Andrés opened the letter, read it, and was astonished. Luisito had just died in Valencia. Margarita had written two letters to her brother, telling him to come, because the child asked a lot about him; but as Don Pedro didn’t know Andrés’s whereabouts; he couldn’t send them. Andrés thought about leaving immediately; but upon rereading the letter, he saw that the child had been dead and buried for eight days. The news caused him great astonishment. His departure, his having left Luisito healthy and strong, prevented him from experiencing the grief he would have felt when he had been near the sick man. His indifference, his lack of pain, seemed a bad thing to him. The child had died; he felt no despair. Why provoke unnecessary suffering in himself? This point he debated for many hours in solitude. Andrés wrote to his father and Margarita. When he received his sister’s letter , he was able to follow the progress of Luisito’s illness. He had had tuberculous meningitis, with a prodromal period of two or three days, and then a high fever that caused the child to lose consciousness; he had spent a week screaming, delirious, until he died in his sleep. Margarita’s letter revealed that she was devastated by emotions. Andrés remembered seeing a boy, six or seven years old, with meningitis in the hospital. He remembered that within a few days he had become so thin he seemed translucent, with an enormous head, a bulging forehead, frontal lobes as if the fever had severed them, one cross-eyed eye, white lips, sunken temples, and a hallucinated smile. This little boy screamed like a bird, and his sweat had a special, mouse-like smell, like that of a tubercular patient. Although Andrés tried to imagine Luisito’s appearance as sick, he never imagined him stricken with the terrible illness, but rather happy and smiling, as he had seen him the last time on the day of the departure. PART FOUR. Inquisitions. Chapter 26. PHILOSOPHICAL PLAN. After his two months as a substitute were up, Andrés returned to Madrid. He had sixty duros saved, and since he didn’t know what to do with them, he sent them to his sister Margarita. Andrés made arrangements to get a job, and in the meantime, he went to the National Library. He was prepared to leave for any town if he couldn’t find anything in Madrid. One day, in the reading room, he ran into Fermín Ibarra, his sick classmate, who was already doing well, although he walked with a limp and leaned on a thick cane. Fermín approached Hurtado to greet him effusively. He told him he was studying to be an engineer in Liège and usually returned to Madrid during the holidays. Andrés had always treated Ibarra like a boy. Fermín took him to his house and showed him his inventions, because he was an inventor; he was making a toy electric streetcar and a host of other mechanical devices. Fermín explained how they worked and said he was thinking of applying for patents on several things, including a rim with pieces of steel for automobile tires. Andrés thought his friend was delirious; but he didn’t want to dampen their hopes. However, some time later, when he saw automobiles with rims made of pieces of steel like the ones Fermín had invented, he thought Ibarra must have the true intelligence of an inventor. Andrés, in the afternoons, visited his uncle Iturrioz. He almost always found him on his rooftop reading or watching the maneuvers of a solitary bee or a spider. “This is Epicurus’s rooftop,” Andrés would say, laughing. Many times uncle and nephew argued at length. Above all, Andrés’s further plans were the most debated. One day the discussion was longer and more thorough: “What are you planning to do?” Iturrioz asked him. “Me! I’ll probably have to go to a village to be a doctor. ” “I see you’re not keen on the prospect. ” “No, that’s true. There are some things about my studies that I like, but not the practical work. If I could get into a physiology laboratory, I think I would work with enthusiasm. ” “In a physiology laboratory! If only there were one in Spain! ” “Oh, of course, if only there were. Besides, I have no scientific training.” He studies poorly. “The same thing happened in my time,” said Iturrioz. “Teachers serve no purpose other than the methodical brutalization of studious youth. It’s only natural. The Spanish still don’t know how to teach; they’re too fanatical, too lazy, and almost always too much of a pretender. Teachers have no other goal than to collect their salaries and then fish for pensions to get through the summer. ” “Besides, there’s a lack of discipline. ” “And many other things. But, well, what are you going to do? Aren’t you enthusiastic about visiting? ” “No. ” “So what plan do you have? ” “A personal plan? None .” “Damn. Are you that short on projects? ” “Yes, I have one: to live with the maximum of independence. In Spain, in general, they don’t pay for work, but for submission. I would like to live off work, not favors. ” “It’s difficult.” “And as a philosophical plan? Are you still delving? ” “Yes. I’m looking for a philosophy that is first and foremost a cosmogony, a rational hypothesis of the formation of the world; Then, a biological explanation of the origin of life and of man. I doubt very much that you’ll find it. You want a synthesis that completes cosmology and biology; an explanation of the physical and moral Universe. Isn’t that it? Yes. And where have you gone to look for that synthesis? Well, in Kant, and in Schopenhauer above all. Wrong way, replied Iturrioz; read the English; science with them is wrapped up in a practical sense. Don’t read those German metaphysicians; their philosophy is like an alcohol that intoxicates and doesn’t nourish. Do you know Hobbes’s Leviathan? I’ll lend it to you if you want. No; why? After reading Kant and Schopenhauer, those French and English philosophers give the impression of heavy carts that squeak along and raise dust. Yes, they may be less agile in their thinking than the Germans; but, on the other hand, they don’t distance you from life. So what? replied Andrés. One has the anguish, the despair of not knowing what to do with life, of not having a plan, of finding oneself lost, without a compass, without a light to guide one. What do you do with life? What direction do you give it? If life were so strong that it dragged one along, thinking would be wonderful, something like a walker stopping and sitting in the shade of a tree, something like penetrating an oasis of peace; but life is stupid, without emotions, without accidents, at least here, and I believe everywhere, and thought is filled with terrors as compensation for the emotional sterility of existence. “You’re lost,” Iturrioz murmured. “That intellectualism can’t lead you to anything good. ” “It will lead me to knowledge, to understanding. Is there any greater pleasure than this?” Ancient philosophy gave us the magnificent façade of a palace; behind that magnificence there were no splendid halls, no places of delight, but dark dungeons. That is Kant’s outstanding merit ; He saw that all the wonders described by the philosophers were fantasies, mirages; he saw that the magnificent galleries led nowhere . “What a merit!” murmured Iturrioz. “Enormous. Kant proves that the two most transcendental postulates of religions and philosophical systems are indemonstrable: God and freedom. And the terrible thing is that he proves that they are indemonstrable despite himself. ” “So what? ” “So what! The consequences are terrible; the universe no longer has a beginning in time or a limit in space; everything is subject to the chain of causes and effects; there is no longer a first cause; the idea of a first cause, as Schopenhauer said, is the idea of a piece of wood made of iron. ” “This doesn’t surprise me. ” “It does. It seems to me the same as if we saw a giant marching, apparently with a goal, and someone discovered that he had no eyes. After Kant, the world is blind; There can no longer be freedom or justice, but rather forces acting on a principle of causality in the realms of space and time. And this, so serious, is not all; there is also Another thing that emerges clearly for the first time from Kant’s philosophy is that the world has no reality; that space and time and that principle of causality do not exist outside of us as we see them, that they can be different, that they can not exist. “Bah. That’s absurd,” murmured Iturrioz. “Ingenious, if you will, but nothing more. ” “No; not only is it absurd, but it’s practical. Before, it was a great shame for me to consider the infinity of space; believing the world to be endless made a great impression on me; thinking that the day after my death, space and time would still exist saddened me, even though I considered my life not to be an enviable thing; but when I came to understand that the idea of space and time are necessities of our spirit, but that they have no reality; when I convinced myself, through Kant, that space and time mean nothing; at least that the idea we have of them may not exist outside of us, I calmed down.” It is a consolation to me to think that just as our retina produces colors, our brain produces the ideas of time, space, and causality. Once our brain is finished, the world is finished. Time no longer follows, space no longer follows, there is no longer a chain of causes. The comedy is over, but definitively. We can assume that a time and a space continue for others. But what does that matter if it is not ours, which is the only real one? “Bah. Fantasies! Fantasies!” said Iturrioz. Chapter 27. REALITY OF THINGS. ” No, no, realities,” replied Andrés. “What doubt can there be that the world we know is the result of the reflection of the cosmos part of the sensible horizon in our brain? This reflection, united and contrasted with the images reflected in the brains of other men who have lived and who live, is our knowledge of the world, it is our world. Is it really like this outside of us? We do not know, we can never know. ” “I don’t see clearly.” All of that seems like poetry to me. —No; not poetry. You judge by the sensations your senses give you. Isn’t that true? —True. —And you’ve been evaluating those sensations and images since childhood with the sensations and images of others. But are you certain that this external world is as you see it? Are you even certain that it exists? —Yes. —Practical certainty, of course; but nothing more. —That’s enough. —No, it’s not enough. It’s enough for a man with no desire to know; otherwise, why would they invent theories about heat or light? They would say: there are hot and cold objects, there is the color green or blue; we don’t need to know what they are. —It wouldn’t be bad for us to proceed this way. Otherwise, doubt devastates, destroys everything. —Of course it destroys everything. —Mathematics itself is left without a basis. —Of course. Mathematical and logical propositions are only the laws of human intelligence; they may also be the laws of Nature external to us, but we cannot affirm that. Intelligence carries with it, as inherent necessities, the notions of cause, space, and time, just as a body carries three dimensions. These notions of cause, space, and time are inseparable from intelligence, and when it affirms its truths and axioms a priori, it merely indicates its own mechanism. “So there is no truth? ” “Yes; the agreement of all intelligences on the same thing is what we call truth. Outside of the logical and mathematical axioms, in which one cannot assume that there is no unanimity, in all other respects all truths have as their condition being unanimous. ” “So they are true because they are unanimous?” Iturrioz asked. “No, they are unanimous because they are true. ” “It’s all the same to me. ” “No, no. If you tell me: gravity is true because it is a unanimous idea, I will tell you no; gravity is unanimous because it is true. There are some difference. For me, within the relative nature of everything, gravity is an absolute truth. –Not for me; it can be a relative truth. –I disagree, –said Andrés. –We know that our knowledge is an imperfect relationship between external things and our self; but since that relationship is constant, in its degree of imperfection, it doesn’t detract from the relationship between one thing and another. For example, regarding the Celsius thermometer: you can tell me that dividing the temperature difference between frozen water and boiling water by one hundred degrees is arbitrary, true; but if it’s twenty degrees on this roof and fifteen in the cave, that relationship is exact . –Okay. All right. It means you accept the possibility of the initial lie. Let me assume the lie across the entire scale of knowledge. I want to assume that gravity is a custom, that tomorrow some fact will disprove it. Who’s going to stop me? –No one; but you, in good faith, cannot accept that possibility. The chain of causes and effects is science. If that chain didn’t exist, there would no longer be any basis; everything could be true. –So your science is based on utility. –No; it’s based on reason and experience. –No, because you can’t take reason to its ultimate consequences. –It’s already known that it isn’t, that there are clearings. Science gives us the description of a phalanx of this mammoth called the universe; philosophy wants to give us the rational hypothesis of what this mammoth might be like. That neither empirical data nor rational data are all absolute? Who doubts it! Science values the data of observation; it relates the various particular sciences, which are like islands explored in the ocean of the unknown, it builds bridges between them so that as a whole they have a certain unity. Of course, these bridges can only be hypotheses, theories, approximations to the truth. –Bridges are hypotheses, and so are islands. –No, I don’t agree. Science is the only strong construction of humanity. Against this scientific bloc of determinism, already affirmed by the Greeks, how many waves have not broken? Religions, morals, utopias; today all those petty superstitions of pragmatism and strong ideas… and yet, the bloc remains unshaken, and science not only overwhelms these obstacles, but takes advantage of them to perfect itself. “Yes,” Iturrioz replied, “science overwhelms these obstacles and overwhelms man as well. ” “That is partly true,” Andrés murmured, strolling across the roof. Chapter 28. THE TREE OF SCIENCE AND THE TREE OF LIFE. Now, for you,” Iturrioz said, “science is not an institution with a human purpose; it is something more; you have turned it into an idol. ” “There is hope that the truth, even that which is useless today, may be useful tomorrow,” Andrés replied. “Bah!” Utopia! Do you think we’re ever going to take advantage of astronomical truths ? –Sometimes? We’ve already taken advantage of them. –In what? –In the concept of the world. –Fair enough; but I was talking about a practical, immediate use. I, deep down, am convinced that truth as a whole is bad for life. That anomaly of nature called life needs to be based on whim, perhaps on lies. –I agree with that,– said Andrés. –The will, the desire to live, is as strong in animals as in humans. In humans, understanding is greater. The more one understands, the less one desires. This is logical, and it is also borne out in reality. The desire to know awakens in individuals who appear at the end of an evolutionary process, when the instinct to live languishes. Humans, whose need is to know, are like the butterfly that breaks out of the chrysalis to die. The healthy, lively, strong individual does not see things as they are; because it is not good for them. He is in a hallucination. Don Quixote, whom Cervantes intended to give a negative meaning; it’s a symbol of the affirmation of life. Don Quixote lives longer than all the sane people around him; he lives more and with more intensity than others. The individual or the people who want to live envelop themselves in clouds like the ancient gods when they appeared to mortals. The vital instinct needs fiction to affirm itself. Science, then, the instinct of criticism, the instinct of inquiry, must find a truth: the quantity of lies that is necessary for life. Are you laughing? –Yes, I laugh, because what you’re expressing with words of the day is said in none other than the Bible. –Bah! –Yes, in Genesis. You’ve read that in the center of paradise there were two trees, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The tree of life was immense, leafy, and, according to some holy fathers, granted immortality. The tree of knowledge isn’t described ; it would probably be mean and sad. And do you know what God said to Adam? “I don’t remember; the truth.” “Well, when he had Adam before him, he said: You may eat all the fruits of the garden; but beware of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, because the day you eat its fruit you will die a death. ” And God, surely, added: Eat from the tree of life, be beasts, be pigs, be selfish, roll on the ground happily; but do not eat from the tree of knowledge, because that sour fruit will give you a tendency to improve that will destroy you. Isn’t that admirable advice? ” “Yes, it is advice worthy of a bank shareholder,” replied Andrés. “How clear the practical sense of that Semitic rascality is!” said Iturrioz. “How those good Jews, with their crooked noses , sensed that the state of consciousness could compromise life! ” “Of course, they were optimists; Greeks and Semites had a strong instinct for life; they invented gods for themselves, a paradise exclusively their own. I believe that deep down they understood nothing about nature. “It didn’t suit them. ” “Surely it didn’t suit them. On the other hand, the Turanians and the Aryans of the North tried to see nature as it is. ” “And yet, despite that, no one paid any attention to them and they allowed themselves to be domesticated by the Semites of the South? ” “Oh, of course! Semitism, with its three impostors, has dominated the world; it has had the opportunity and the strength; in an age of wars, it gave men a god of battles, women and the weak a reason for lamentation, complaint, and sentimentality. Today, after centuries of Semitic domination, the world is returning to sanity, and the truth appears like a pale dawn after the terrors of the night. ” “I don’t believe in that sanity,” said Iturrioz, “nor do I believe in the ruin of Semitism.” Jewish, Christian, or Muslim Semitism will continue to rule the world, taking on extraordinary vicissitudes. Is there anything more interesting than the Inquisition, so Semitic in nature, dedicated to cleansing the world of Jews and Moors? Is there a more curious case than that of Torquemada, of Jewish origin? Yes, that defines the Semitic character, the confidence, the optimism, the opportunism… All of that has to disappear. The scientific mentality of the men of Northern Europe will sweep it away. But where are those men? Where are those precursors? In science, in philosophy, in Kant above all. Kant was the great destroyer of the Greco-Semitic lie. He encountered those two biblical trees you mentioned earlier and began to separate the branches of the tree of life that were strangling the tree of knowledge. After him, in the world of ideas, there remains only a narrow and arduous path: science. Behind him, perhaps lacking his strength and greatness, comes another destroyer, another bear from the North, Schopenhauer, who refused to let stand the subterfuges that the master lovingly maintained out of lack of courage. Kant asks for mercy that that thick branch of the tree of life, which is called freedom, responsibility, right, may rest next to the branches of the tree of science to give perspective to man’s gaze. Schopenhauer, more austere, more honest in his thought, removes that branch, and life appears as a dark and blind thing, powerful and juicy without justice, without goodness, without end; a current carried by a force X, which he calls will and which, from time to time, in the midst of organized matter , produces a secondary phenomenon, a cerebral phosphorescence, a reflection, which is intelligence. It is already clear in these two principles: life and truth, will and intelligence. “There must already be philosophers and biophiles,” said Iturrioz. “Why not? Philosophers and biophiles. In these circumstances, the vital instinct, all activity and confidence, feels wounded and has to react, and it does. The former, mostly writers, place their optimism in life, in the brutality of instincts, and praise the cruel, scoundrel, infamous life, life without purpose, without object, without principles, and without morals, like a panther in the middle of a jungle. The others place optimism in science itself. Against the agnostic tendency of Du Boie Reymond, who affirmed that human understanding would never understand the mechanics of the universe, there are the tendencies of Berthelot, Metchnikoff, and Ramón y Cajal in Spain, who assume that the end of humanity on Earth can be determined . Finally, there are those who want to return to old ideas and old myths because they are useful for life. These are professors of rhetoric, those with the sublime mission of telling us how people sneezed in the 18th century after taking snuff, those who tell us that science is failing, and that materialism, determinism, and the chain of cause and effect are crude, and that spiritualism is something sublime and refined. What a laugh! What an admirable commonplace for bishops and generals to collect their salaries and for merchants to sell rotten cod with impunity! Believing in an idol or a fetish is a symbol of superiority; believing in atoms, like Democritus or Epicurus, is a sign of stupidity! An Aissaua from Morocco who smashes his head with an axe and swallows crystals in honor of divinity, or a good Mandingo in his loincloth, are refined and cultured beings; on the other hand, the scientist who studies nature is a vulgar and coarse being. What an admirable paradox to dress up in rhetorical finery and nasal sounds from the mouth of a French academic! You have to laugh when they say that science fails. Nonsense: what fails is the lie; science marches forward, sweeping everything away. Yes, we agree, we have said it before, sweeping everything away. From a purely scientific point of view, I cannot accept this theory of the duplicity of the vital function: intelligence on one side, will on the other, no. “I’m not saying intelligence on one side and will on the other,” Andrew replied, “but rather a predominance of intelligence or a predominance of will. A worm has will and intelligence, a will to live as much as a man, it resists death as best it can; man also has will and intelligence, but in other proportions. ” “What I mean is that I don’t believe that will is only a desiring machine and intelligence a reflecting machine. ” “What that is in itself, I don’t know; but this seems to us rationally. If every reflection had an end for us, we might suspect that intelligence is not only a reflecting apparatus, a moon indifferent to whatever is placed on its sensible horizon; but consciousness reflects what it can grasp without interest, automatically, and produces images. These images, devoid of the contingent, leave a symbol, a schema, which must be the idea. ” “I don’t believe in that automatic indifference you attribute to intelligence.” We are not a pure intellect, nor a desiring machine, we are men who simultaneously think, work, desire, execute… I believe there are ideas that are forces. –I don’t. Force lies in something else. The same idea that drives a romantic anarchist to write ridiculous and humanitarian verses, It’s what makes a dynamite man plant a bomb. Bonaparte has the same imperialist illusion as Lebaudy, the Emperor of the Sahara. What differentiates them is something organic. “What confusion! What a labyrinth we’re finding ourselves in,” murmured Iturrioz. “Summarize our discussion and our different points of view. ” “In part, we agree. You want, starting from the relativity of everything, to give an absolute value to the relationships between things. ” “Of course, what I was saying before; the meter itself, an arbitrary measure; the 360 degrees of a circle, an equally arbitrary measure; the relationships obtained with the meter or the arc, exact. ” “No, we agree! It would be impossible for us not to agree on everything that concerns mathematics and logic; but when we move away from this simple knowledge and enter the domain of life, we find ourselves in a labyrinth, in the midst of the greatest confusion and disorder.” In this masked ball, where millions of motley figures dance, you say to me: Let’s get closer to the truth. Where is the truth? Who is this masked man passing in front of us? What does he hide beneath his gray cloak? Is he a king or a beggar? Is he an admirably educated young man or a frail, ulcer-ridden old man? Truth is a crazy compass that doesn’t work in this chaos of unknowns. –True, outside of mathematical truth and the empirical truth that is slowly being acquired, science doesn’t tell you much. We must have the probity to acknowledge this… and wait. –And, in the meantime, refrain from living, from asserting? In the meantime, we won’t know if the Republic is better than the Monarchy, if Protestantism is better or worse than Catholicism, if individual property is good or bad; as long as Science doesn’t reach that point, silence. –And what remedy is left for the intelligent man? –Well, yes. You recognize that outside the domain of mathematics and empirical sciences, there exists, today, an enormous field where the indications of science have yet to reach. Isn’t that so? ‘ ‘Yes. ‘ ‘And why not take utility as the standard in that field? ‘ ‘I find it dangerous,’ said Andrés. ‘This idea of utility, which at first seems simple, harmless, can end up legitimizing the greatest enormities, enthroning all prejudices. ‘ ‘It’s also true, taking truth as the standard, one can descend into the most barbaric fanaticism. The truth can be a weapon of combat. ‘ ‘Yes, by falsifying it, making it not so. There is no fanaticism in mathematics, nor in the natural sciences. Who can boast of defending the truth in politics or morality? He who boasts thus is as fanatical as he who defends any other political or religious system . Science has nothing to do with that; it is neither Christian, nor atheistic, nor revolutionary, nor reactionary. –But that agnosticism, for all things that are not scientifically known, is absurd because it is anti-biological. We must live. You know that physiologists have shown that, in the use of our senses, we tend to perceive, not in the most exact way, but in the most economical, most advantageous, most useful way. What better standard of life than its usefulness, its aggrandizement? –No, no; that would lead to the greatest absurdities in theory and practice. We would have to accept logical fictions: free will, responsibility, merit; we would end up accepting everything, the greatest extravagances of religions. –No, we would only accept what is useful. –But for what is useful, there is no proof like there is for what is true, –Andrés replied. –Religious faith for a Catholic, besides being true, is useful; for an irreligious person, it can be false and useful, and for another irreligious person, it can be false and useless. –Fine, but there will be a point on which we all agree, for example, on the usefulness of faith for a given action. Faith, within the natural, undoubtedly has great power. If I believe I’m capable of jumping one meter, I’ll do it; if I believe I’m capable of jumping Of two or three meters, maybe you’ll do it too. –But if you think you’re capable of making a jump of fifty meters, you won’t do it no matter how much faith you have. –Of course not; but that doesn’t matter for faith to be useful within the range of the possible. Therefore, faith is useful, biological; therefore, it must be preserved. –No, no. What you call faith is nothing more than the awareness of our strength. That always exists, whether we like it or not. The other faith should be destroyed; leaving it is dangerous; behind that door that a philosophy based on utility, convenience, or efficiency opens onto the arbitrary, all human madness enters. –On the other hand, by closing that door and leaving no rule but the truth, life languishes, becomes pale, anemic, sad. I don’t know who said that legality kills us; like him, we can say: Reason and science overwhelm us. The wisdom of the Jew is increasingly understood as this point is emphasized: on one side the tree of knowledge, on the other the tree of life. “We must believe that the tree of knowledge is like the classic apple tree, which kills anyone who takes refuge in its shade,” Andrés said mockingly. “Yes, laugh. ” “No, I’m not laughing.” Chapter 29. DISSOCIATION. I don’t know, I don’t know,” Iturrioz murmured. “I think your intellectualism won’t get you anywhere. Understanding? Explaining things? What for? You can be a great artist, a great poet, you can even be a mathematician and a scientist, and still not understand anything deep down. Intellectualism is sterile. Germany itself, which has held the scepter of intellectualism, today seems to repudiate it. In today’s Germany , there are almost no philosophers; everyone is eager for a practical life. Intellectualism
, criticism, anarchism, are on the decline. ” “So what?” “So many times have they been on the decline and reborn !” Andrés replied. “But can anything be expected from such systematic and vengeful destruction? ” “It is neither systematic nor vengeful. It is destroying whatever does not affirm itself; it is bringing analysis to everything; it is dissociating traditional ideas to see what new aspects they take on; what components they have. Through the electrolytic disintegration of atoms, these poorly understood ions and electrons begin to appear. You also know that some histologists have believed they have found in the protoplasm of cells grains that they consider to be elementary organic units, and which they have called bioblasts. Why shouldn’t what Roentgen and Becquerel are doing in physics right now, and Haeckel and Hertwig in biology, be done in philosophy and morality?” Of course, neither politics nor morality are based on the assertions of chemistry and histology , and if tomorrow the means of decomposing and transmuting simple bodies were found, there would be no pope of classical science who would excommunicate the researchers. –Against your dissociation on moral grounds, it wouldn’t be a pope who would protest, it would be the conservative instinct of society. –That instinct has always protested against everything new and will continue to protest; what does that matter? Analytical dissociation will be a work of sanitation, a disinfection of life. –A disinfection that can kill the patient. –No, there’s no need to worry. The instinct of conservation of the social body is strong enough to reject everything it cannot digest. No matter how many germs are sown, the decomposition of society will be biological. –And why decompose society? Are we going to build a new world better than the current one? –Yes, I think so. –I doubt it. What makes society evil is the selfishness of man, and selfishness is a natural fact, a necessity of life. Do you suppose that man today is less selfish and cruel than he was yesterday? You are mistaken. If only we could! The hunter who chases foxes and rabbits would hunt men if he could. Just as ducks are held and fed so that their livers become enlarged, we would have marinated women to make them softer. We civilized people make jockeys like the ancient monsters, and if it were possible we would remove the brains of the porters to make them stronger, just as Holy Mother Church used to remove the testicles of the singers in the Sistine Chapel so they could sing better. Do you think selfishness is going to disappear? Humanity would disappear. Do you suppose, like some English sociologists and anarchists, that the love of oneself will be identified with the love of others? No; I suppose there are forms of social grouping, some better than others, and that we should leave the bad ones behind and take the good ones. This seems very vague to me. A community will never be moved by saying: There might be a better social form. It’s as if a woman were told: If we unite, perhaps we’ll live bearably. No, women and the community must be promised paradise; This demonstrates the ineffectiveness of your analytical and dissociative idea. The Semites invented a materialistic paradise in the bad sense at the beginning of man; Christianity, another form of Semitism, placed paradise at the end and outside of man’s life; and the anarchists, who are nothing more than neo-Christians, that is, neo-Semites, place their paradise in life and on earth. Everywhere and in all times, the leaders of men are promisers of paradise. Yes, perhaps; but sometimes we have to stop being children, sometimes we have to look around us with serenity. How many terrors has analysis removed from us! There are no more monsters in the heart of the night, no one stalks us anymore. With our own strength we are becoming masters of the world. Chapter 30. THE COMPANY OF MAN. Yes, it has taken away our terrors,” exclaimed Iturrioz; “but it has also taken away our life. Yes, it is clarity that makes present-day life completely vulgar!” Suppressing problems is very convenient; but then nothing remains. Today, a kid reads a novel from 1930, and the despairs of Larra and Espronceda, and laughs; he has the evidence that there are no mysteries. Life has become clearer; the value of money increases; bourgeoisie grows with democracy. It’s now impossible to find poetic corners at the end of a winding passageway; there are no more surprises. –You’re a romantic. –And you too. But I’m a practical romantic. I believe in affirming the set of lies and truths that are yours until it becomes a living thing. I believe in living with the madness you have, taking care of it and even taking advantage of it. –That seems to me the same as if a diabetic were to use the sugar in his body to sweeten his cup of coffee. –You’re caricaturing my idea, but it doesn’t matter. “The other day I read in a book,” Andrés added mockingly, “that a traveler tells of how, in a remote country, the natives assured him that they were not men, but red-tailed parrots. Do you think one should affirm ideas until one sees their feathers and tail? ” “Yes; believing in something more useful and greater than being a parrot, I believe one must affirm them strongly. To be able to give men a common rule, a discipline, an organization, you need faith, an illusion, something that, even if it’s a lie coming from within ourselves, seems like a truth from outside. If I felt energetic, do you know what I would do? ” “What?” “A militia like the one Loyola invented, with a purely human character. The Company of Man. ” “The Basque appears in you.” “Perhaps. ” “And for what purpose were you going to found this company? ” “This company would have the mission of teaching courage, serenity, repose; to eradicate all tendency toward humility, renunciation of sadness, deceit, rapacity, sentimentality… –The school of the hidalgos. –That’s right, the school of the hidalgos. –Of the Iberian hidalgos, naturally. No Semitism. –Nothing; a hidalgo clean of Semitism; that is, in spirit Christian, you’d seem like a perfect person to me. “When you found that company, remember me. Write to me in the village. ” “But are you really thinking of leaving? ” “Yes; if I don’t find anything here, I’m going to leave. ” “Soon? ” “Yes, very soon. ” “You’ll keep me informed of your experience. I find you ill-equipped for that test. ” “You haven’t even founded your company yet…” “Ah, it would be very useful. I believe so.” Tired of talking, they fell silent. Night was beginning to fall. The swallows circled in the air, screeching. Venus had risen in the west, orange in color, and shortly afterward Jupiter shone with its blue light. The windows in the houses were beginning to light up . Rows of lanterns were being lit, forming two parallel lines on the Extremadura road. From the rooftop plants, from the pots of sandalwood and mint, came scented gusts… PART FIVE. The experience in the town. Chapter 31. ON A JOURNEY. A few days later, Hurtado was appointed physician in charge of Alcolea del Campo. This was a town in central Spain, located in that zone between Castile and Andalusia. It was a sizable town, with eight to ten thousand inhabitants; to reach it, one had to take the Córdoba line, stop at a station in La Mancha, and continue to Alcolea by car. Immediately after receiving the appointment, Andrés packed his luggage and headed for the Mediodía station. The afternoon was summer, heavy, stifling, with dry, dusty air. Although the trip was at night, Andrés assumed it would be too bothersome to travel third class, and bought a first-class ticket. He entered the platform, approached the cars, and got ready to board one that had a non-smoking sign. A small, clean-shaven man dressed in black with glasses said to him in a honeyed voice with an American accent: “Listen, sir; this car is for non-smokers.” Andrés ignored the warning and settled into a corner. A little while later, another passenger appeared, a tall, blond, muscular young man with his mustache curled over his eyes. The short man, dressed in black, gave him the same warning: no smoking. “I see you here,” replied the somewhat annoyed traveler, and got into the car. The three of them remained inside the car without speaking to each other; Andrés gazed vaguely out the window and thought about the surprises the town had in store for him. The train started moving. The small black man took out a kind of yellowish tunic, wrapped it around himself, put a handkerchief on his head, and lay down to sleep. The monotonous pounding of the train accompanied Andrés’s inner soliloquy; The lights of Madrid were seen in the distance several times in the middle of the countryside. They passed three or four deserted stations, and the conductor entered. Andrés took out his ticket, the tall young man did the same, and the little man, after taking off his slouch, searched his pockets and showed a ticket and a piece of paper. The conductor warned the traveler that he had a second-class ticket. The little man in black, without further ado, became angry and said that this was rude; he had told the station he wanted to change classes; he was a foreigner, a well-to-do person, with a lot of money, yes, sir, who had traveled all over Europe and all of America, and only in Spain, in a country without civilization, without culture, where no attention was paid to foreigners, could such things happen. The little man insisted and ended up insulting the Spanish. He was already eager to leave this miserable, backward country; fortunately, the next day he would be in Gibraltar, on his way to America. The conductor didn’t reply. Andrés looked at the little man who was screaming in a discomposed manner, with that syrupy and repulsive accent, when the blond young man, standing up, said to him in a violent voice: “I will not allow you to talk like that about Spain. If you are a foreigner and you do not If you want to live here, go back to your country quickly, and without speaking, because if not, you risk being thrown out the window, and it’s going to be me; right now. “But, sir!” exclaimed the foreigner. “They’re trying to run me over… ” “That’s not true. It’s you who are running over them. Traveling requires education, and traveling with Spaniards doesn’t speak ill of Spain. ” “I love Spain and the Spanish character,” exclaimed the little man. “My family is all Spanish. Why did I come to Spain if not to get to know the mother country? ” “I don’t want explanations.” “I don’t need to hear them,” replied the other in a dry voice, and he lay down on the couch as if to show how little esteem he felt for his traveling companion. Andrés was astonished; the young man had really been well. With his intellectualism, he wondered what kind of guy the short man dressed in black must be; The other had made a resounding statement about his country and his race. The little man began to explain himself, talking to himself. Hurtado pretended to be asleep. A little after midnight, they arrived at a crowded station ; a troupe of actors was changing trains, leaving the Valencia line , where they had come from, to take the Andalusia line. The actresses, wearing gray smocks; the actors, wearing straw hats and caps, all approached like people who are not in a hurry, who know how to travel, who consider the world their own. The actors settled into the train, and shouts could be heard from car to car: “Hey, Fernández, where’s the bottle?” “Molina, the character is calling you!” “Let’s see that change of direction, it’s been lost!” The actors calmed down, and the train continued on its way. Already at dawn, in the pale light of the morning, they could see lands of vineyards and olive groves in rows. The station where Andrés had to get off was close at hand. He got ready, and when the train stopped, he jumped onto the deserted platform. He walked toward the exit and walked around the station. In front of him, toward the town, was a wide street with large, white houses and two rows of dim electric lights. The waning moon lit up the sky. There was a sweet smell in the air like dry straw. He said to a man who was passing on his way to the station: “What time does the coach leave for Alcolea?” “At five. It usually leaves from the end of this same street.” Andrés walked down the street, passed in front of the illuminated toll booth , left his suitcase on the ground, and sat down on it to wait. Chapter 32. ARRIVAL IN THE TOWN. It was already late morning when the coach left for Alcolea. The day was shaping up to be scorching. The sky was blue, without a cloud; the sun was bright; the road ran straight, cutting between vineyards and the occasional olive grove of old, bent olive trees. The passing of the stagecoach raised clouds of dust. In the carriage was only an old woman dressed in black, carrying a basket on her arm. Andrés tried to converse with her, but the old woman was either a man of few words or didn’t feel like talking at that moment. The landscape didn’t change the whole way; the road wound up and down gentle hills between identical vineyards. After three hours of walking, the town appeared in a hollow. It seemed enormous to Hurtado. The carriage turned down a wide street of low houses, then crossed several crossroads and stopped in a square in front of a large white mansion, one of whose balconies read: Fonda de la Palma. “Will you stop here?” the porter asked. “Yes, here.” Andrés got out and entered the entrance. Through the gate, a courtyard, in the Andalusian style, with stone arches and columns could be seen . The iron gate opened, and the owner came out to greet the traveler. Andrés told him he would probably be there for quite a while, and to give him a spacious room. “We’ll put you down here,” and led him to a fairly large room with a window overlooking the street. Andrés washed and went back out into the courtyard. At one o’clock they ate. He sat down in one of the rocking chairs. A canary in its cage, hanging from the ceiling, It began to chirp loudly. The solitude, the coolness, and the canary’s song made Andrés close his eyes and sleep for a while. He was awakened by the servant’s voice, saying, “You may come in for lunch.” He entered the dining room. There were three traveling salesmen at the table. One of them was a Catalan who represented factories in Sabadell; another, a man from La Rioja who sold tartrates for wines; and the last, an Andalusian who lived in Madrid and repaired electrical appliances. The Catalan wasn’t as petulant as most of his fellow countrymen in the same trade; the man from La Rioja didn’t act like a brat or a brute, and the Andalusian didn’t try to be funny. These three white blackbirds of commission were very anticlerical. The food surprised Andrés because there was nothing but game and meat. This, combined with the very alcoholic wine, was bound to produce a true inner incandescence. After eating, Andrés and the three travelers went to the inn for coffee. The street was stiflingly hot: the air came in dry gusts, like something out of a furnace. One couldn’t look to the right or left; the snow-white houses, plastered with lime, reflected this vivid, cruel light until it blinded one. They entered the inn. The travelers ordered coffee and played dominoes. A swarm of flies buzzed in the air. After the game , they returned to the inn for a siesta. Upon stepping outside, the same blast of heat surprised Andrés; in the inn, the travelers went to their rooms. Andrés did the same, and lay down lethargically on his bed. Through the cracks in the wood, a brilliant light like a sheet of gold entered; silver cobwebs hung from the black beams, the spaces between them painted blue . In the courtyard, the canary continued to sing its squeaky trill, and with every step, slow , mournful chimes could be heard… The innkeeper had warned Hurtado that if he needed to speak to someone from the town, he wouldn’t be able to see him until at least six o’clock. At that hour, Andrés left the house and went to visit the town clerk and the other doctor. The clerk was a rather petulant fellow, with curly black hair and lively eyes. He considered himself a superior man, placed in a low-class position. The clerk immediately offered Andrés his protection. “If you want, ” he said, “we’ll go right now to see your colleague, Dr. Sánchez. ” “Very well, let’s go.” Dr. Sánchez lived nearby, in a shabby-looking house. He was a fat, blond man with expressionless blue eyes, a sheepish face, and a rather unintelligent air. Dr. Sánchez steered the conversation to the question of profit and told Andrés not to believe that much could be made there, in Alcolea. Don Tomás, the town’s aristocratic doctor, had all the wealthy clientele. Don Tomás Solana was from there; he had a beautiful house, modern appliances, connections… “The owner can only live poorly here,” said Sánchez. “What can we do?” murmured Andrés. “We’ll try.” The secretary, the doctor, and Andrés left the house to go for a walk. That exasperating heat continued, that swollen, dry air. They passed through the plaza, with its church full of additions and alterations, and its stalls selling things made of iron and esparto grass. They continued along a wide street of white mansions, with its central balcony full of geraniums, and its filigree grille, with a Calatrava cross at the top. From the doorways, you could see the entrance hall with a blue plinth and the floor paved with small stones, forming patterns. Some of the side streets, with large earth-colored walls, enormous doors, and small windows, looked like they belonged in a Moorish village. In one of those courtyards, Andrés saw many men and women in mourning praying. “What is this?” he asked. “Here they call it a prayer,” said the secretary; and he explained that it was a custom to go to the houses where someone had died to pray the rosary. They left the village along a dusty road; four-wheeled wagons were returning from the fields laden with piles of sheaves. “I’d like to see the whole village; I have no idea how big it is,” said Andrew. “Then we’ll go up here, to this little hill,” the secretary indicated. “I’ll leave you there because I have a visit to make,” said the doctor. They said goodbye to him, and the secretary and Andrew began to climb a red hill, which had on its summit an ancient, half-ruined tower. It was horribly hot; the whole countryside seemed scorched, calcined; the leaden sky, with copper reflections, illuminated the dusty vineyards, and the sun was setting behind a thick veil of haze, through which it remained a whitish, dull disk. From the top of the hill, the plain could be seen, enclosed by gray hills, toasted by the sun; In the distance, the immense village stretched out, with its white walls, its ash-colored roofs, and its golden tower in the middle. Not a single grove, not a single tree, only vineyards and vineyards could be seen as far as the eye could see; only within the walls of some corrals did a fig tree spread its broad, dark leaves. In that evening light, the village seemed immaterial; one would have thought that a breath of wind would sweep it away and dissipate it like a cloud of dust over the heated, dry earth. There was an empyreumatic, sweet, pleasant smell in the air. “They’re burning orujo in some still,” said the secretary. The secretary and Andrés came down from the hill. The wind raised gusts of dust on the road; the bells were beginning to ring again. Andrés went into the inn for dinner and left at night. It had cooled down; that impression of the town’s unreality was accentuated. On both sides of the streets, the tired electric lamps languished. The moon rose; the enormous city, with its white facades, slept in silence; geraniums shone on the central balconies above the blue-painted gate ; the railings, with their crosses, gave an impression of romanticism and mystery, of convent-like holes and escape routes; over some wall, shining white like a snow floe, hung a garland of black ivy, and this entire town, large, deserted, silent, bathed in the soft moonlight, seemed like an immense tomb. Chapter 33. FIRST DIFFICULTIES. ANDRÉS Hurtado spoke at length with Dr. Sánchez about the obligations of his position. They agreed to divide Alcolea into two sections, separated by Ancha Street. One month, Hurtado would visit the right side, and the next, the left. That way, they would avoid having to cover the entire town together. Dr. Sánchez demanded as an indispensable condition that if any family in the section visited by Andrés wanted him to visit them, or vice versa, it would be done according to the patient’s wishes. Hurtado agreed; he already knew that no one would have a preference for calling him, but he didn’t care. He began to make the visits. Generally, the number of patients assigned to him didn’t exceed six or seven. Andrés made the visits in the morning; later, generally, in the afternoons, he didn’t need to leave the house. He spent his first summer at the inn; he led a sleepy life; he listened to the traveling salesmen dissing at the table, and occasionally he went to the theater, a hut built in a courtyard. Visiting, in general, gave him few headaches; without knowing why, he had assumed during the first few days that he would have constant troubles; he believed that those people from La Mancha would be aggressive, violent, proud; but no, most were simple, affable, without petulance. At the inn, at first, he felt fine; But he soon grew tired of being there. The travelers’ conversations were becoming tiresome; the food, always meat-based and seasoned with hot spices, made his digestion difficult. “But aren’t there any vegetables here?” he asked the waiter one day. “Yes. ” “Well, I’d like to eat vegetables: beans, lentils.” The waiter was stupefied, and after a few days, he told him it couldn’t be; a special meal had to be prepared; the other guests didn’t want to eat vegetables; the innkeeper assumed it was a real disgrace to his establishment to serve a dish of beans or lentils. Fish couldn’t be brought in during the height of summer because it wasn’t in good condition. The only fresh fish were frogs, which was a bit comical as food. Another difficulty was bathing: there was no way. Water in Alcolea was a luxury, and an expensive luxury. It was brought in by cart from a distance of four leagues, and each jug cost ten cents. The wells were very deep; drawing enough water from them for a bath was a great deal of work; it took at least an hour. With that diet of meat and the heat, Andrés was constantly excited. At night, he would go for walks alone through the deserted streets. Early in the morning, groups of women and children would come out to breathe in the doorways of houses . Often, Andrés would sit on a doorstep on Ancha Street and look at the two rows of electric lights shining in the murky atmosphere. How sad! What physical discomfort that atmosphere caused him! At the beginning of September, Andrés decided to leave the inn. Sánchez found him a place to stay. It wasn’t convenient for Sánchez to have his rival doctor stay at the best inn in town; he was in contact with travelers there, in a very central location; he could take away his visitors. Sánchez took Andrés to a house on the outskirts, in a neighborhood called Marrubial. It was a large, old, white farmhouse with a blue-painted pediment and a walled-in porch on the first floor. It had a wide balcony over the doorway and a carved grille overlooking a narrow street. The master of the house was from the same town as Sánchez, and his name was José; but he was mockingly called Pepinito throughout the town. Andrés and Sánchez went to see the house, and the housekeeper showed them a small, narrow, very ornate room, with an alcove at the back hidden by a red curtain. “I would like,” said Andrés, “a room on the ground floor, and if possible, a large one. ” “On the ground floor,” she said, “I have nothing but a large room, but not a renovated one. ” “If you could show it to me.” “Good.” The woman opened an old, unfurnished room with an ornate grille to the alleyway called the Carretones. “And is this room free? ” “Yes. ” “Oh, well, I’ll stay here,” said Andrés. “Well, as you wish; it will be bleached, swept, and the bed brought in. ” Sánchez left, and Andrés spoke to his new landlady. “You don’t have a useless water tub?” she asked. “What for? ” “To bathe in. ” “There’s one in the corral.” “Let’s go see it.” The house had an adobe wall covered with twig fencing at the back, bordering several courtyards and corrals, as well as the stable, the shed for the cart, the vine-shed, the winepress, the cellar, and the olive press. In a small room that had served as a bakery and that overlooked a corral, there was a large earthen jar cut in half and sunk into the ground. “Will you lend me this jar?” Andrés asked. “Yes, sir; why not?” “Now I’d like you to tell me a servant who would be in charge of filling the jar every day; I’ll pay you whatever you tell me. ” “Okay. The servant will do it. And what about food? What do you want to eat? What we eat at home? ” “Yes, the same. ” “Don’t you want anything else? Poultry? Cold cuts?” “No, no.” In that case, if you don’t mind, I’d like you to serve a plate of vegetables at both meals.” With these warnings, the new landlady believed that her guest, if not crazy, wasn’t far off. Life in the house seemed more pleasant to Andrés than at the inn. In the evenings, after the sultry hours, he would sit in the courtyard talking with the people of the house. The landlady was a dark-skinned woman, with a white, almost perfect face; she had a Dolorosa type: jet-black eyes and hair as shiny as jet. Her husband, Pepinito, was a stupid man, with a degenerate appearance, a bunioned face, ears set far back on his head, and a drooping lip . Consuelo, the twelve- or thirteen-year-old daughter, was neither as unpleasant as her father nor as pretty as her mother. With a first glance, Andrés determined her likes and dislikes in the house. One Sunday afternoon, the maid picked up a baby sparrow from the roof and brought it down to the courtyard. “Look, take the poor thing to the corral,” said the housekeeper, “so that it can go away.” “It can’t fly,” replied the maid, and set it down. At this point, Pepinito came in, and seeing the sparrow, went up to a door and called to the cat. The cat, a black cat with golden eyes, appeared in the courtyard. Pepinito then startled the bird with his foot, and seeing it flutter about, the cat pounced on it and made it whimper. Then it ran away with its eyes shining and the sparrow in its mouth. “I don’t like to see this,” said the housekeeper. Pepinito, the boss, laughed with a gesture of pedantry and the superiority of a man who is above all sentimentality. Chapter 34. MEDICAL HOSTILITY. Don Juan Sánchez had arrived in Alcolea more than thirty years before as a master surgeon; later, after passing a few examinations, he became a licensed surgeon. For many years, Hurtado was in a position of inferiority with the former doctor , and when the other died, the man began to grow up and think that since he had to suffer the previous doctor’s inconvenience, it was logical that the next one would suffer his own. Don Juan was an apathetic and sad man from La Mancha, very serious, very grave, and a great bullfighter. He never missed any of the important bullfights in the province and even went to the town festivals in Lower La Mancha and Andalusia. This fondness was enough for Andrés to consider him a fool. The first clash between Hurtado and him was over Sánchez having gone to a bullfight in Baeza. One night, Andrés was called from the Molino de la Estrella, a flour mill located a quarter of an hour from the town. They went to get him in a buggy. The miller’s daughter was sick; her stomach was swollen, and this swelling had been complicated by urinary retention. Sánchez visited the sick woman; But that day, when they called him early in the morning, they heard from the doctor’s house that he wasn’t in; he had gone to the bullfights in Baeza. Don Tomás wasn’t in town either. The coachman explained to Andrés what had happened, while urging the horse on with his whip. It was a wonderful night; thousands of stars shone superbly, and every now and then a meteor passed across the sky. In a few moments, and bumping a few times in the potholes in the road, they arrived at the mill. When the coach stopped, the miller leaned out to see who was there and exclaimed: “What? Wasn’t Don Tomás here? ” “No. ” “And who are you bringing here? ” “The new doctor.” The miller, enraged, began to insult the doctors. He was a rich and proud man, who thought himself worthy of everything. “They’ve called me here to see a sick woman,” said Andrés coldly. ” Should I see her or not? Because if not, I’ll go back. ” “Well, what can you do!” Come up. Andrew climbed a ladder to the main floor and followed the miller into a room where a girl was in bed with her mother watching over her. Andrew approached the bed. The miller continued to grumble. “Good. Be quiet,” Andrew told him, “if you want me to examine the sick woman.” The man remained silent. The girl was dropsical, vomiting, short of breath , and having slight convulsions. Andrew examined the sick woman; her stomach It looked swollen like a frog’s; palpation clearly showed the fluctuation of the fluid filling the peritoneum. “What? What’s wrong with her?” the mother asked. “This is a chronic, serious liver disease,” Andrés replied, withdrawing from the bed so the girl couldn’t hear him. “Now the dropsy has become complicated by urinary retention. ” “And what must be done, my God? Or is there no cure? ” “If we could wait, it would be better for Sánchez to come. He should know the progress of the disease. ” “But can we wait?” the father asked in an angry voice. Andrés examined the patient again; her pulse was very weak; her respiratory insufficiency, probably the result of the absorption of urea into the blood, was increasing; the convulsions were becoming more frequent. Andrés took her temperature. It was below normal. “We can’t wait,” Hurtado said, addressing the mother. “What must be done?” exclaimed the miller. “Now… ” “We should perform the abdominal puncture,” replied Andrew, still speaking to the mother. “If you don’t want me to do it… ” “Yes, yes, you do. ” “Good; then I’ll go home, get my case, and come back. ” The miller himself stood at the driver’s seat of the carriage. It was clear that Andrew’s disdainful coldness irritated him. The two of them traveled without speaking to each other. When they arrived home, Andrew got out, took his case, some cotton, and a sublimate tablet. They returned to the mill. Andrew cheered the sick woman up a little, soaped and rubbed the skin at the chosen site, and plunged the trocar into the girl’s swollen belly. When he withdrew the trocar and replaced the cannula, water flowed out, greenish and full of serous matter, as if from a fountain into a basin. After emptying the fluid, Andrés was able to catheterize the bladder, and the patient began to breathe easily. Her temperature immediately rose above normal. The symptoms of uremia were disappearing. Andrés had the girl given milk, and she calmed down. There was great rejoicing in the house. “I don’t think this is over,” Andrés said to the mother, “she’ll probably reproduce. ” “What do you think we should do?” she asked humbly. “I, like you, would go to Madrid to consult a specialist.” Hurtado said goodbye to the mother and daughter. The miller climbed onto the coach’s box to take Andrés to Alcolea. Morning was beginning to smile in the sky; the sun shone on the vineyards and olive groves; pairs of mules went to the fields, and the peasants, dressed in black, mounted on the backs of donkeys, followed them. Large flocks of crows flew through the air. The miller drove on without speaking the entire way; pride and gratitude were struggling in his soul. Perhaps he expected Andrés to speak to him , but Andrés didn’t speak. When he arrived home , he got out of the carriage and murmured: “Good morning. ” “Goodbye!” And the two men said goodbye like two enemies. The next day, Sánchez approached Andrés, more apathetic and sadder than ever. “You want to harm me,” he said. “I know why you say that,” Andrés replied, “but it’s not my fault. I visited that girl because they came looking for me, and I operated on her because there was no other option, because she was dying. ” “Yes; but you also told her mother to see a specialist in Madrid, and that’s not to your benefit or mine. ” Sánchez didn’t understand that Andrés had given this advice out of integrity, and he assumed it was to harm him. He also believed that, because of his position, he had a right to collect a kind of contribution for all of Alcolea’s illnesses. Uncle So-and-so caught a severe cold, so it meant six visits for him; he suffered from rheumatism, so it could mean up to twenty visits. The case of the miller’s girl was widely discussed everywhere and led one to believe that Andrés was a doctor familiar with modern procedures . Sánchez, seeing that people were inclined to believe in the new doctor’s science, launched a campaign against him. He said he was a man of books, but without any practice, and that, furthermore, he was a mysterious man, untrustworthy. Seeing that Sánchez openly declared war on him, Andrés was on his guard. He was too skeptical about medical matters to be rash. When surgical cases were required, he sent the patient to Sánchez, who, as a man of rather elastic conscience, wasn’t alarmed at leaving someone blind or crippled. Andrés almost always used medicines in small doses; many times they were ineffective; but at least he wasn’t in danger of making a mistake. He was not without success; but he naively admitted to himself that, despite his successes, he almost never made a correct diagnosis. Of course, out of prudence, he didn’t guarantee anything in the first few days; but illnesses almost always surprised him. A supposed case of pleurisy would appear as a liver lesion; typhoid fever would turn into real influenza. When the illness was clear, smallpox or pneumonia, then he knew about it, and the neighborhood gossips and everyone else knew about it. He didn’t claim that his successes were due to chance; that would have been absurd; but neither did he flaunt them as a result of his expertise. There were grotesque things in his daily practice: a patient who took a little simple syrup and found himself cured of a chronic stomach ailment; another who, with the same syrup, said he was facing death. Andrés was convinced that in most cases, highly active therapy could only be beneficial in the hands of a good clinician, and to be a good clinician, in addition to special abilities, extensive practice was essential. Convinced of this, he dedicated himself to the expectant method. He gave a lot of water with simple syrup. He had already confidentially told the apothecary: “You charge as if it were quinine.” This skepticism about his knowledge and his profession gave him prestige. He recommended hygienic precepts to certain patients, but no one listened. He had a client, the owner of a winery, an old man with arthritis, who spent his life reading pamphlets. Andrés advised him not to eat meat and to walk. “But I’m dying of weakness, doctor,” he would say. “I only eat a small piece of meat, a glass of sherry, and a cup of coffee. ” “All that is terrible,” Andrés would say. This demagogue, who denied the usefulness of eating meat, outraged the well-to-do… and the butchers. There is a phrase by a French writer that is meant to be tragic and is enormously comical. It goes like this: For thirty years now, there has been no pleasure in being French. The arthritic winemaker must have said: Since this doctor came , there has been no pleasure in being rich. The town clerk’s wife, a very prim and fussy woman, wanted to convince Hurtado that he should get married and stay permanently in Alcolea. “We’ll see,” Andrés replied. Chapter 35. ALCOLEA DEL CAMPO. The customs of Alcolea were purely Spanish, that is to say, completely absurd . The town lacked the slightest social sense; families shut themselves away in their homes, like troglodytes in their caves. There was no solidarity; no one knew how or could use the power of association. The men went to work and sometimes to the casino. The women only went out on Sundays for mass. Due to a lack of collective instinct, the town had been ruined. During the time of the wine treaty with France, everyone, without consulting one another, began to change the cultivation of their fields, abandoning wheat and cereals and planting vineyards; soon the river of wine in Alcolea became a river of gold. In this time of prosperity, the town grew, the streets were cleaned, sidewalks were laid, electric lights were installed…; then came the completion of the treaty, and since no one felt the responsibility of representing the people, it never occurred to anyone to say: Let’s change the way we farm; let’s return to our old way of life; let’s use the wealth produced by wine to transform the land for today’s needs. Nothing. The people accepted the ruin with resignation. “Before, we were rich,” each Alcolean said to themselves. “Now we’ll be poor. It’s the same; we’ll live worse; we’ll suppress our needs.” That stoicism finally sank the people. It was only natural that it should be this way; every citizen of Alcolea felt as separated from their neighbor as from a foreigner. They had no common culture —no culture of any kind; they shared no common admiration: only habit, routine united them; deep down, they were all strangers to each other. Many times, Hurtado thought Alcolea was a city under siege . The besieger was morality, Catholic morality. There was nothing there that wasn’t stored and collected: the women in their houses, the money in the folders, the wine in the jars. Andrés wondered: What do these women do? What do they think about? How do they spend their days? It was difficult to find out. With this regime of guarding everything, Alcolea enjoyed admirable order ; only a well-kept cemetery could surpass such perfection. This perfection was achieved by ensuring that the most inept governed . The law of selection in towns like that worked in reverse. The sieve separated the wheat from the chaff, then the chaff was collected, and the grain was wasted. Some scoffer might have said that this exploitation of the chaff among Spaniards was not unusual. Because of this reverse selection, it turned out that the most capable there were precisely the most inept. In Alcolea, there were few robberies and blood crimes: at one time , there had been among gamblers and thugs; the poor people did not move, living in languid passivity; in contrast, the rich were agitated, and usury was sucking all the life out of the town. The humble farmer, who for a long time had a house with four or five pairs of mules, suddenly appeared with ten, then twenty; his lands expanded ever more, and he placed himself among the wealthy. The politics of Alcolea responded perfectly to the town’s state of inertia and distrust. It was a politics of caciquismo, a struggle between two opposing factions, called the Mice and the Owls; the Mice were liberal, and the Owls were conservative. At that time, the Owls dominated. The main Owl was the mayor, a thin man, dressed in black, very clerical, a gentle-mannered chieftain, who gently took everything he could from the municipality. The liberal chieftain of the Mice party was Don Juan, a barbaric and despotic figure , corpulent and powerful, with the hands of a giant, a man who, when he took charge, treated the town like a conqueror. This great Mouse didn’t dissemble like the Little Owl; he kept everything he could, without bothering to decorously hide his thefts. Alcolea had grown accustomed to the Little Owls and the Mice, and considered them necessary. Those bandits were the pillars of society; they shared the loot; they had a special taboo for each other, like that of the Polynesians. Andrés could study in Alcolea all those manifestations of the tree of life, and of the harsh life of La Mancha: the expansion of selfishness; of envy, of cruelty, of pride. Sometimes he thought all this was necessary; he also thought that one could go so far, in intellectualist indifference, as to enjoy contemplating these expansions, violent forms of life. Why bother, he asked himself, if everything is determined, if it is fatal, if it can’t be any other way? Wasn’t the fury that often swept over him when he saw the injustices of the people a little scientifically absurd? On the other hand: was it not also determined, was it not fatal, that his brain had an irritation that made him protest against that state of affairs violently? Andrés often argued with his landlady. She couldn’t understand why Hurtado claimed that it was a greater crime to steal from the community, the City Council, the State, than from a private individual. She said no; that defrauding the community couldn’t be as much as stealing from a person. In Alcolea, almost all the rich defrauded the Treasury, and they weren’t considered thieves. Andrés tried to convince her that the damage done to the community by stealing was greater than that done to the pocket of a private individual; but Dorotea wasn’t convinced. “How beautiful a revolution would be,” Andrés would say to his landlady, ” not a revolution of orators and miserable charlatans, but a real revolution! Little owls and mice, hanging from the lampposts, since there are no trees here; and then everything stored up according to Catholic morality, taken from its corners and thrown into the street: the men, the women, the money, the wine—” Everything out on the street. Dorotea laughed at her host’s ideas, which seemed absurd to her. As a good Epicurean, Andrés had no inclination toward the apostolate. The Republican Center had told him to give lectures on hygiene; but he was convinced that all of that was useless, completely sterile. What for? He knew that none of these things would be effective, and he preferred not to concern himself with them. When they spoke to him about politics, Andrés would say to the young republicans: “Don’t form a protest party. What for? The least bad thing it can be is a collection of rhetoricians and charlatans; the worst thing is for it to be another gang of Owls or Mice. ” “But, Don Andrés! Something must be done. ” “What are you going to do! It’s impossible! The only thing you can do is leave here.” Andrés’s time in Alcolea seemed very long. In the morning he made his visit; then he returned home and took his bath. Upon crossing the corral, he would meet the landlady, who was overseeing some household chore. The maid would often be washing clothes in a half-tub, cut lengthwise, resembling a canoe, while the little girl would run from one side to the other. In this corral, they had a sarmentera, where the sheaves of vine shoots were dried , and piles of firewood from old vines. Andrés would open the old bakery and bathe. Then he would go to eat. Autumn still felt like summer; it was customary to take a siesta. These siesta hours seemed tiresome, horrible to Hurtado. In his room, he would throw a mat on the floor and lie down on it in the dark. A sliver of light entered through the crack in the windows; the town was completely silent; everything was lethargic under the heat of the sun; a few flies muttered on the glass; the sultry afternoon was endless. When the day wore on, Andrés would go out into the courtyard and sit in the shade of the arbor to read. The housekeeper, his mother, and the maid would sew near the well; the little girl would make bobbin lace with threads and pins stuck into a pillow; at dusk, they would water the pots of carnations, geraniums, and basil. Often, street vendors would come to sell fruit, vegetables, or game. “Hail Mary, Most Pure!” they would say as they entered. Dorotea would see what they were bringing. “Do you like this, Don Andrés?” Dorotea would ask Hurtado. “Yes, but don’t worry about me,” he would reply. At dusk, the owner would return. He was employed in a wine cellar and would finish his work at that hour. Pepinito was a petulant man; knowing nothing, he had the pedantry of a professor. When he explained something, he would lower his eyelids, with such an air of self-sufficiency that Andrés felt like strangling him. Pepinito treated his wife and daughter very badly; he constantly called them stupid, donkeys, and clumsy; he was convinced that he was the only one who did things right. “That this brute should have such a pretty and nice wife is truly unpleasant!” Andrés thought. Among Pepinito’s manias was that of being considered terrible. He liked to tell stories of fights and deaths. Anyone, hearing him, would have thought there were constant killings in Alcolea. He would recount a crime that had occurred five years earlier in the town, and he would give it such variations and explain it in such different ways that the crime doubled and multiplied. Pepinito was from Tomelloso, and he related everything to his town. Tomelloso, according to him, was the antithesis of Alcolea; Alcolea was commonplace, Tomelloso was extraordinary. Whatever was said , Pepinito would tell Andrés: “You should go to Tomelloso. There isn’t a single tree there. ” “Nor here either,” Andrés would reply, laughing. “Yes. Some here,” Pepinito would counter. “The whole town there is riddled with wine caves, and don’t think they’re modern, no, they’re ancient.” There you see large vats buried in the ground. All the wine made there is natural; often bad, because they don’t know how to prepare it, but natural. “And here? ” “Here they already use chemistry,” said Pepinito, for whom Alcolea was a town degenerated by civilization: “tartrates, campeche, fuchsin, they put the devils in the wine.” At the end of September, a few days before the grape harvest, the landlady said to Andrés: “Haven’t you seen our winery? ” “No. ” “Well, let’s fix it up now.” The servant and the maid were removing firewood and vine shoots, which had been stored in the winepress all winter; and two bricklayers were chipping away at the walls. Dorotea and her daughter showed Hurtado the old-fashioned winepress, with its beam for pressing, the wooden and esparto slippers that the treaders wear on their feet, and the bandages to hold them in place. They showed her the basins where the must falls and is collected in buckets, and the modern winery, capable of two harvests, with barrels and wooden cones. “Now, if you’re not afraid, we’ll go down to the old cave,” said Dorotea. “Afraid of what? ” “Ah! It’s a cave where there are goblins, so they say. ” “Then we must go and greet them.” The waiter lit a candle and opened a door that led to the corral. Dorotea, the girl, and Andrés followed him. They went down to the cave by a crumbling staircase. The ceiling oozed damp. At the bottom of the stairs, a vault opened that led to a veritable catacomb, damp, cold, very long, and winding. In the first section of this cave, there were a series of large jars half-embedded in the wall; On the second floor, with a lower ceiling, were the tall, enormous jars from Colmenar, lined up in a row, and next to them were the small, filthy ones made in El Toboso, resembling fat, grotesque old women. The light from the lamp, illuminating the cavern, seemed to alternately enlarge and shrink the swollen bellies of the vessels. It was understood that people’s imagination had transformed those wine amphorae into goblins, of which the pot-bellied and bulging jars from Toboso resembled dwarfs; and the tall, graceful ones made in Colmenar had the air of giants. Still at the back, a large opening held twelve large jars. This space was called the Hall of the Apostles. The waiter asserted that human bones had been found in that cave , and he pointed to a handprint on the wall that he assumed was blood. “If Don Andrés liked wine,” said Dorotea, “we would give him a glass of this old wine we have in the solera. ” “No, no; save it for the big holidays.” A few days later, the grape harvest began. Andrés approached the winepress, and seeing those men sweating and tossing in the low, roofed corner made an unpleasant impression on him. He didn’t believe this work was so arduous. Andrés remembered Iturrioz, when he said that only artificial things are good, and he thought he was right. The refined rural labors, a source of inspiration for poets, seemed stupid and bestial to him. How much more beautiful, even if they were beyond all conception of beauty! Traditional, the function of an electric motor, not this muscular, rough, barbaric, and wasted labor! Chapter 36. CASINO TYPES. When winter arrived, the long, cold nights forced Hurtado to seek refuge outside his home where he could distract himself and pass the time. He began going to the Alcolea casino. This casino, “La Fraternidad,” was a vestige of the town’s former splendor; it had immense, poorly decorated rooms, full-length mirrors , several pool tables, and a small library with a few books. Among the generality of vulgar, obscure, blurred types who went to the casino to read the newspapers and talk politics, there were two truly picturesque characters. One of them was the pianist; the other, a certain Don Blas Carreño, a wealthy nobleman from Alcolea. Andrés became quite close to both of them. The pianist was a thin, shaven old man with a narrow, long face and thick-lensed glasses. He dressed in black and spoke in a somewhat effeminate manner. He was also the church organist, which gave him a certain ecclesiastical appearance. The other gentleman, Don Blas Carreño, was also thin, but taller, with an aquiline nose, salt-and-pepper hair, a sallow complexion, and a martial air. This good gentleman had come to identify with ancient life and to convince himself that people thought and acted like the characters in classic Spanish works. To such an extent that he had gradually made his language archaic, and between mockery and seriousness, he spoke with the convoluted wit of the characters of Feliciano de Silva, who so enchanted Don Quixote. The pianist imitated Carreño and considered him a model. Upon greeting Andrés, he said: “This my lord Don Blas, dear and dear friend of the Moors, has been kind enough to present me to your grace as a favorite son of Euterpe.” But I am not, though it pains me, and your grace will have been able to verify this with the myrtle of your good judgment, more than a poor man, but a humble aficionado of the Muses, who works with these clumsy hands to entertain the members’ evenings on the frigid nights of the freezing winter. Don Blas listened to his disciple smiling. Andrés, upon hearing that gentleman express himself thus, believed he was a madman; but then he saw that he was not, that the pianist was a person of common sense. The only thing that happened was that both Don Blas and he had acquired the habit of speaking in this emphatic and high-flown manner until they became familiar with it. They had ready-made phrases, which they used at every turn: the ember of intelligence, the arrow of wisdom, the pearl necklace of judicious observations, the garden of good saying… Don Blas invited Hurtado to come to his house and showed him his library with several cabinets full of Spanish and Latin books. Don Blas made it available to the new doctor. “If any of these books interest you, you can take them,” Carreño told him. “I’ll take advantage of your offer.” For Andrés, Don Blas was a case worthy of study. Despite his intelligence, he didn’t notice what was happening around him; the cruelty of life in Alcolea, the iniquitous exploitation of the poor by the rich, the lack of social instinct—none of this existed for him, and if it did, it had the character of a bookish thing; it served to say: “Scaliger says…” or: “Huarte affirms in his _Examen de ingenios_…” Don Blas was an extraordinary man, without nerves; for him there was no heat, nor cold, pleasure, nor pain. Once, two members of the casino played a transcendental joke on him: they took him to dinner at an inn and deliberately gave him some detestable crumbs, which seemed like sand, telling him they were the true crumbs of the country, and Don Blas found them so excellent and praised them in such a way and with such hyperbole that he managed to convince his friends of their goodness. The most insipid delicacy , if given to him by the claim that it was made with an old recipe and that it appeared in La Lozana Andaluza, seemed marvelous to him. At home, he enjoyed offering his friends his sweets. “Here, take these sweets, which were brought to me expressly from Yepes…”; you won’t drink this water everywhere; it’s from the Maillo spring. Don Blas lived in complete arbitrariness; for him, there were people who had no right to anything; on the other hand, others deserved everything. Why? Probably because they did. Don Blas said they hated women, that they had always deceived him; but it wasn’t true; deep down, this attitude of his served to quote passages from Martial, Juvenal, Quevedo… Don Blas called his servants and farmhands “loafers,” scoundrels, rascals, almost always without reason, just for the pleasure of using these quixotic words. Another thing Don Blas loved was naming towns by their ancient names: We were once in Alcázar de San Juan, the ancient Alce… In Baeza, the Biatra of Ptolemy, we met one day… Andrés and Don Blas were mutually astonished. Andrés said to himself: “To think that this man and many others like him live in this lie, poisoned by the remains of literature and affected verbiage is truly extraordinary!” On the other hand, Don Blas looked at Andrés smiling and thought: “What a strange man! ” Several times they argued about religion, politics, and the doctrine of evolution. These Darwinian things, as he said, seemed to Don Blas like things invented for amusement. To him, proven data meant nothing. Deep down, he believed that writing was done to demonstrate wit, not to clearly express ideas, and that a scholar’s research could be shot down with a funny phrase. Despite their disagreement, Hurtado was not disliked by Don Blas. The one who was, however, unpleasant and unbearable to him was a young man, the son of a loan shark, who in Alcolea was considered a prodigy and who frequently went to the casino. This young man, a lawyer, had read some reactionary French magazines and believed himself to be at the center of the world. He said that he viewed everything with an ironic and pious smile. He also believed that one could discuss philosophy using the commonplaces of Spanish traditionalism, and that Balmes was a great philosopher. Several times the young man, who viewed everything with an ironic and pious smile, invited Hurtado to discuss things; but Andrés shied away from the discussion with this man who, despite his veneer of culture, seemed to him to be fundamentally imbecile. This sentence by Democritus, which he had read in Lange’s History of Materialism, seemed very accurate to Andrés: He who loves contradiction and verbosity is incapable of learning anything serious.
Chapter 37. SEXUALITY AND PORNOGRAPHY. In town, the stationery store was also a bookstore and a subscription center. Andrés went there to buy paper and some newspapers. One day, he was shocked to see that the bookseller had fifteen or twenty volumes with a cover depicting a naked woman. They were French-style novels; pornographic, clumsy novels with a certain psychological gloss, designed for the use of soldiers, students, and the lesser-minded. “Is that for sale?” Andrés asked the bookseller. “Yes; it’s the only thing that sells.” The phenomenon seemed paradoxical, and yet it was natural. Andrés had heard from his uncle Iturrioz that in England, where internal customs were extraordinarily free, books, even those least suspected of licentiousness, were prohibited, and the novels that French or Spanish young ladies read in front of their mothers were considered nefarious. In Alcolea, the opposite was true; life was morally terrible; Taking a woman without marrying her was harder than kidnapping the Giralda in Seville at twelve o’clock; but, on the other hand, pornographic books were read, grotesquely pornographic because of their transcendental nature. All this was logical. In London, as sexual life expanded due to freedom of manners, pornography shrank; in Alcolea, As sexual life shrank, pornography grew. “What a paradox this sexuality is,” Andrés thought as he went home. ” In countries where life is intensely sexual, there are no reasons for lubricity; on the other hand, in towns like Alcolea, where sexual life was so mean and poor, erotic allusions to sexual life were everywhere. And it was natural; it was, at bottom, a compensatory phenomenon.” Chapter 38. THE DILEMMA. Little by little, and without knowing how, a bad reputation developed around Andrés ; he was considered a violent, proud, ill- intentioned man who attracted everyone’s antipathy. He was a demagogue, evil, harmful, who hated the rich and disliked the poor. Andrés began to notice the hostility of the people at the casino and stopped going there. At first, he was bored. Days passed, each day bringing the same hopelessness, the certainty of not knowing what to do, the certainty of feeling and inspiring antipathy, ultimately without reason, due to a lack of intelligence. He had decided to fulfill his duties as a doctor to the letter. Achieving pure, complete abstinence from the small social life of Alcolea seemed like perfection to him. Andrés wasn’t one of those men who consider reading a substitute for living; he read because he couldn’t live. To mingle with these stupid, ill-intentioned people from the casino, he preferred to spend his time in his room, in that whitewashed and silent mausoleum. But how gladly he would have closed his books if there had been something important to do—something like setting fire to the town or rebuilding it! Inaction irritated him. If there had been big game, he would have liked to go to the countryside; but to kill rabbits, he preferred to stay home. Not knowing what to do, he paced like a wolf around that room. Many times he tried to stop reading these philosophy books. He thought perhaps they irritated him. He wanted to change his readings. Don Blas lent him a number of history books. Andrés became convinced that history is an empty thing. He believed, like Schopenhauer, that whoever reads The Nine Books of Herodotus attentively has all the possible combinations of crimes, dethrones, heroisms and injustices, goodness and evil that history can provide. He also attempted a less than humane study and brought from Madrid and began to read a book on astronomy, Klein’s Guide to the Sky, but he lacked the basics of mathematics and thought he didn’t have the brainpower to master this. The only thing he learned was the stellar plane. Orienting himself in that infinity of luminous points, where Arthur and Vega, Altair and Aldebaran shine like gods, was for him a somewhat sad pleasure ; traversing with his thoughts those craters of the Moon and the Sea of Serenity; Reading these hypotheses about the Milky Way and its movement around that supposed central sun called Alcyone , which is in the Pleiades group, gave him vertigo. It also occurred to him to write; but he didn’t know where to begin, nor did he have sufficient command of the mechanism of language to express himself clearly. All the systems he devised to channel his life left insoluble precipitates, which demonstrated the initial error of his systems. He was beginning to feel a deep irritation with everything. After eight or nine months of living thus excited and flattened at the same time, he began to suffer from joint pains; in addition, his hair was falling out profusely. “It’s chastity,” he told himself. It was logical; he was a neuroarthritic. As a child, his arthritis had manifested itself in migraines and a hypochondriac tendency. His arthritic condition was becoming more acute. Waste substances were accumulating in the body , and this was bound to produce products of incomplete oxidation, especially uric acid. He considered the diagnosis to be accurate; the treatment was the difficult part. This dilemma faced him. If he wanted to live with a woman, he had to to marry, to submit. That is, to give up all his spiritual independence for a single thing in life , to resign himself to fulfilling social obligations and duties, to showing consideration to a father-in-law, a mother-in-law, a brother-in-law; something that horrified him. Surely among those girls from Alcolea, who only went to church on Sundays, dressed like parrots, with exorbitantly bad taste, there were some, perhaps many, pleasant, likeable ones. But who knew them? It was almost impossible to talk to them. Only the husband could ever know their way of being and feeling. Andrés would have married anyone, a simple girl; but he didn’t know where to find her. The two young ladies he knew a little were the daughter of Doctor Sánchez and the secretary’s daughter. Sánchez’s daughter wanted to become a nun; the secretary’s daughter was truly poisonous in her sentimentality; He played the piano very badly, he copied the little plates of “Black and White” and then illuminated them, and he had ridiculous and false ideas about everything. If he didn’t marry, Andrés could compromise and go with the town’s lost souls to the house of Fulana or Zutana, on these two streets where women of unruly life lived like in ancient medieval brothels; but this promiscuity was offensive to his pride. What greater triumph for the local bourgeoisie and greater defeat for his personality if his dalliances had been revealed? No; he preferred to be sick. Andrés decided to limit his diet, eat only vegetables and avoid meat, wine, or coffee. Several hours after lunch and dinner, he drank large quantities of water. Hatred for the spirit of the people sustained him in his secret struggle; it was one of those profound hatreds that can bring serenity to the one who feels it, an epic and haughty contempt. For him, there was no mockery; it all slipped through his impassive shell. Sometimes he thought this attitude illogical. A man who wanted to be a scientist and was upset because things weren’t as he would have wished! It was absurd. The land there was dry; there were no trees, the climate was harsh, the people had to be harsh as well. The wife of the town clerk and president of the Society of Perpetual Help said to him one day: “You, Hurtado, want to prove that one can have no religion and still be better than the religious people. ” “Better, madam?” Andrés replied. “Really, that’s not difficult.” After a month of the new regimen, Hurtado was better; the meager, plant-based food, the bathing, the outdoor exercise were making him a man without nerves. Now he felt deified by his asceticism, free; he was beginning to glimpse that state of ataraxia, praised by the Epicureans and the Pyrrhonians. He no longer felt anger toward things or people. He would have liked to share his impressions with someone and thought of writing to Iturrioz; but then he believed his spiritual state was stronger, with him alone as the sole witness to his victory. He was beginning to lose his aggressive spirit. He would get up very early, at dawn, and walk through those flat fields, through the vineyards, to an olive grove he called the tragic one because of its appearance. Those ancient, centuries-old, twisted olive trees looked like sick people attacked by tetanus; among them rose a low, isolated house with balustrades, and at the top of the hill was a windmill so extraordinary, so absurd, with its squat body and creaking arms, that it always left Andrés in awe. Many times he would leave the house while it was still night and see the evening star throb and dissolve like a pearl in the furnace of the dazzling dawn. At night, Andrés took refuge in the kitchen, near the low hearth. Dorotea, the old woman, and the girl did their chores by the fire, while Hurtado chatted or watched the vine shoots burn. Chapter 39. Uncle Garrota’s Wife. One winter night, a boy went to call Andrés; a woman had fallen into the street and was dying. Hurtado wrapped himself in his cloak and, accompanied by the boy, quickly reached a remote street near a muleteer’s inn called the Parador de la Cruz. He encountered a woman unconscious, being assisted by several neighbors who formed a group around her. She was the wife of a pawnbroker named Uncle Garrota; her head was covered in blood, and she had lost consciousness. Andrés had the woman taken to the tent and a light brought; the old woman had a concussion. Hurtado bled her arm. At first, the black, clotted blood wouldn’t flow from the open vein; then it began to flow slowly; then more regularly, and the woman breathed relatively easily. At this moment, the judge arrived with the clerk and two guards, and began to question first the neighbors and then Hurtado. “How is this woman feeling?” he said. “Very ill. ” “Can we question her? ” “Not for now.” We’ll see if she regains consciousness. “If she does, let me know right away. I’m going to see where she jumped and question her husband.” The store was a pawnshop filled with old junk in every corner and hanging from the ceiling; the walls were lined with antique rifles and shotguns, sabers, and machetes. Andrés waited on the woman until she opened her eyes and seemed to realize what was happening to her. “Call the judge,” Andrés told the neighbors. The judge came immediately. “This is getting complicated,” she murmured; then she asked Andrés. “What? Do you understand anything? ” “Yes, it seems so.” Indeed, the woman’s expression was intelligent. “Did you jump, or did they throw you from the window?” the judge asked. “Hey!” she said. “Who threw you?” “Hey!
” “Who threw you?” “Garro… Garro…” the old woman murmured with an effort. The judge, the clerk, and the guards were surprised. “You mean Garrota,” said one of them. “Yes, it’s an accusation against him,” said the judge. “Don’t you think so, doctor? ” “It seems so. ” “Why did he throw her at you?” “Garro… Garro…” the old woman repeated. “He doesn’t mean anything more than that he’s her husband,” affirmed a guard. “No, it’s not that,” replied Andrés. “The lesion is on the left side. ” “What does that matter?” asked the guard. “Shut up,” said the judge. “What do you suppose, doctor?” “I suppose this woman is in a state of aphasia. The lesion is on the left side of her brain; probably the third frontal convolution, which is considered the center of language, is damaged. This woman seems to understand, but she can only articulate that one word.” “Let’s see, ask him something else. ” “Are you better?” said the judge. “Hey!
” “Are you better now? ” “Garro… Garro…” she replied. “Yes; he says the same thing,” affirmed the judge. “It’s a case of aphasia or verbal deafness,” added Andrés. “However… there are many suspicions against the husband,” replied the clerk. The priest had been called to administer the sacrament to the dying woman. They left him alone and Andrés went up with the judge. Uncle Garrota’s pawnshop had a spiral staircase leading to the first floor. This consisted of a vestibule, the kitchen, two bedrooms, and the room from which the old woman had thrown herself. In the middle of this room there was a brazier, a dirty shovel, and a series of bloodstains that continued to the window. “The thing looks like a crime,” said the judge. “Do you believe it?” asked Andrés. “No, I don’t believe anything; It must be admitted that the clues are presented like something out of a detective novel, meant to mislead public opinion. This woman, who is asked who threw her, gives her husband’s name; this shovel full of blood; the stains reaching the window—everything suggests what the neighbors have already begun to say. “What do they say?” “They’re accusing Uncle Garrota, this woman’s husband. They suppose that Uncle Garrota and his wife had an argument; that he hit her on the head with the shovel; that she fled to the window to cry for help, and that then he, grabbing her by the waist, threw her out into the street. ” “That may be so. ” “And that may not be so.” This version was supported by Uncle Garrota’s bad reputation and his obvious complicity in the deaths of two gamblers, Cañamero and Pollo, which occurred some ten years earlier near Daimiel. “I’m going to put this shovel away,” said the judge. “Just in case it wasn’t touched,” replied Andrés; “the fingerprints could be very useful.” The judge put the shovel in a closet, locked it, and called the clerk to seal it. The room was also locked and the key put away. When Hurtado and the judge went down to the pawnshop, Uncle Garrota’s wife was dead. The judge ordered the husband to be brought before him. The guards had tied his hands. Uncle Garrota was an old man, corpulent, of poor appearance, one-eyed, with a grim face covered in black marks from a shotgun blast that had been fired into his face years before. During the interrogation, it became clear that Uncle Garrota was a drunk, and he frequently talked about killing someone or someone else. Uncle Garrota didn’t deny that he mistreated his wife; but he did deny that he had killed her. He always concluded by saying: “Your Honor, I didn’t kill my wife. I’ve said, it’s true, many times that I was going to kill her; but I didn’t.” After the interrogation, the judge sent Uncle Garrota to prison incommunicado. “What do you think?” the judge asked Hurtado. “It’s clear to me; this man is innocent.” That afternoon, the judge went to see Uncle Garrota in jail and said he was beginning to believe the pawnbroker hadn’t killed his wife. Popular opinion suggested that Garrota was a criminal. That evening, Dr. Sánchez stated in the casino that it was beyond doubt that Uncle Garrota had thrown his wife out the window, and that the judge and Hurtado were inclined to save him, God knows why; but that the autopsy would reveal the truth. Upon learning this, Andrés went to see the judge and asked him to appoint Don Tomás Solana, the other doctor, as a referee to witness the autopsy, in case there was a discrepancy between Sánchez’s report and his own. The autopsy was performed the following afternoon; a photograph was taken of the head wounds caused by the shovel, and some bruises on the woman’s neck were noted. The three cavities were then opened, and the skull fracture was discovered, involving parts of the frontal and parietal bones, which had caused death. Small, round blood stains appeared in the lungs and brain . The three doctors agreed on the autopsy results ; they differed in their opinions regarding the cause of death. Sánchez gave the popular version. According to him, the deceased, feeling her head injured by the blows from the shovel, ran to the window to call for help; there, a powerful hand grabbed her by the neck, causing a contusion and the beginnings of asphyxiation, evident in the petechial stains on her lungs and brain. Later, she was thrown out onto the street, suffering a concussion and a fractured skull, which caused her death. The same woman, in her agony, had repeated her husband’s name, indicating who her killer was. Hurtado first said that the head wounds were so superficial that they were not made by a strong arm, but by a weak and convulsive hand; that the bruises on the neck came from contusions prior to the day of death, and that, with respect to the blood stains on the lungs and brain, they were not caused by the beginning of asphyxiation, but by the inveterate alcoholism of the deceased. With this information, Hurtado asserted that the woman, in an alcoholic state, evidenced by the liquor found in her stomach, and seized by suicidal mania, she had begun to wound herself on the head with the shovel, which explained the superficiality of the wounds, which barely touched the scalp. Then, seeing the negative result for death, she had opened the window and thrown herself headfirst into the street. Regarding the words she had spoken, it was clearly demonstrated that when she said them she had been in an aphasic state. Don Tomás, the aristocratic doctor, balanced his report and, on the whole, said nothing. Sánchez was in the public eye; everyone believed Uncle Garrota was guilty, and some went so far as to say that, even if he wasn’t, he should be punished because he was a heartless man capable of any misdeed. The matter impassioned the town; a number of tests were taken; the fresh bloody fingerprints on the shovel were studied, and it was seen that they did not match the pawnshop’s fingers; a prison employee , a friend of his, was made to get him drunk and coax him out of him. Uncle Garrota confessed his participation in the deaths of Pollo and Cañamero; but he repeatedly stated, amid furious oaths, that he hadn’t and that he hadn’t. He had nothing to do with his wife’s death, and even if he were condemned for saying no and acquitted for saying yes, he would say no, because that was the truth. The judge, after repeated interrogations, understood the tenant farmer’s innocence and set him free. The town considered itself disappointed. By indications, by instinct, the people acquired the conviction that Uncle Garrota, although capable of killing his wife, had not killed her; but they refused to acknowledge the integrity of Andrés and the judge. The capital’s newspaper that defended the Mochuelos wrote an article entitled “Crime or Suicide?” in which it assumed that Uncle Garrota’s wife had committed suicide. However , another newspaper in the capital, defending the Ratones, claimed that it was a crime and that political influence had saved the pawnbroker. “We’ll have to see what the doctor and the judge got paid,” people said. Sánchez, on the other hand, was praised by everyone. “That man went with loyalty.” “But what he said wasn’t true,” someone countered. “Yes; but he went with honor. And there was no way to convince the majority of them otherwise.” Chapter 40. FAREWELL. ANDRÉS, who until then had enjoyed sympathy among the poor people, saw that sympathy was turning into hostility. In the spring, he decided to leave and resign from his position. A day in May was the one set for his departure; he said goodbye to Don Blas Carreño and the judge and had a violent altercation with Sánchez, who, despite seeing that his enemy was leaving, was foolish enough to reproach him bitterly. Andrés answered rudely and told his companion a few somewhat explosive truths. In the afternoon, Andrés packed his things and then went out for a walk. It was a stormy day with vague flashes of lightning flashing between two clouds. At dusk, it began to rain, and Andrés returned home. That afternoon, Pepinito, his daughter, and her grandmother had gone to Maillo, a small spa near Alcolea. Andrés finished packing his things. At dinnertime, the landlady entered his room. “Are you really leaving tomorrow, Don Andrés? ” “Yes.” “We’re alone; we’ll have dinner whenever you want. ” “I’ll finish in a moment.” “I’m sorry to see you go. We already considered you family . ” “What can you do? They don’t want me in town anymore.” “You’re not saying that for us. ” “No, I’m not saying that for you. I mean, I’m not saying it for you. If I’m sorry to leave the town, it’s, more than anything, for you. ” “Bah!” Don Andrés. –Believe it or not, I have a high opinion of you. You seem to me to be a very good, very intelligent woman… –Good heavens, Don Andrés, you’re going to confuse me!–she said laughing. –Confuse yourself all you want, Dorotea. That doesn’t mean that “Let’s see the bad thing…” she replied with feigned seriousness. ” The bad thing about you,” Andrés continued, “is that you are married to a man who is an idiot, a petulant imbecile, who makes you suffer, and whom, like you, I would cheat on with anyone. ” “Jesus! My God! What things you are telling me! ” “They are the truths of farewell… I have really been an idiot not to have made love to you. ” “Now you remember that, Don Andrés? ” “Yes, now I remember. Don’t think I haven’t thought about it before; but I have lacked determination. Today we are alone in the whole house. No? ” “Yes, we are alone. Goodbye, Don Andrés; I’m leaving. ” “Don’t go, I have to talk to you.” Dorotea, surprised by Andrés’s commanding tone, stayed. “What do you want from me?” she said. “Stay here with me. ” “But I am an honorable woman, Don Andrés,” Dorotea replied in a stifled voice. “I know, an honorable and good woman, married to an idiot. We are alone, no one would know that you had been mine. Tonight for you and me would be an exceptional, strange night… ” “Yes, and remorse? ” “Remorse?” Andrés, lucidly, understood that he should not argue this point. “A moment ago I didn’t believe I was going to tell you this. Why am I telling you? I don’t know. My heart is beating like a forge hammer.” Andrés had to lean against the iron bedstead, pale and trembling. “Are you feeling sick?” Dorotea murmured in a hoarse voice. “No; it’s nothing.” She was also upset, palpitating. Andrés turned off the light and approached her. Dorotea could not resist. Andrés was completely unconscious at that moment… At dawn, daylight began to shine through the cracks in the wood. Dorotea sat up. Andrés tried to hold her in his arms. “No, no,” she murmured in terror, and, getting up quickly, fled from the room. Andrés sat up in bed, astonished, amazed at himself. He was in a state of complete irresolution; his back felt as if there were a plate clamping down his nerves, and he was afraid to touch the floor with his feet. Sitting dejected, he rested his forehead on his hands until he heard the sound of the carriage coming to fetch him. He got up, dressed, and opened the door before the knock, for fear of the sound of the knocker. A porter entered the room and carried the trunk and suitcase to the carriage. Andrés put on his coat and got into the coach, which began to move along the dusty road. “How absurd!” “How absurd all this is!” he exclaimed then. “And he was referring to his life and to this last night, so unexpected, so devastating. On the train, his nervous state worsened. He felt faint, dizzy. When he arrived in Aranjuez, he decided to get off the train. The three days he spent here calmed and soothed his nerves. PART SIX. The Experience in Madrid Chapter 41. COMMENTARY ON WHAT HAPPENED. A few days after arriving in Madrid, Andrés was unpleasantly surprised to learn that war was about to be declared on the United States. There were riots, demonstrations in the streets, and blaring patriotic music . Andrés hadn’t been following the colonial wars in the newspapers; he didn’t know exactly what it was about. His only criterion was that of Dorotea’s old maid, who used to sing this song at the top of her voice while washing: ” It’s unbelievable that we’re having such a bad time because of some mulattoes .” They take the flower of Spain to Cuba , and here nothing remains but the rabble. All of Andrés’s opinions about the war were condensed in this old maid’s song. Seeing the turn the matter was taking and the intervention of the United States , Andrés was astonished. Everywhere there was talk of nothing but the possibility of success or of failure. Hurtado’s father believed in a Spanish victory, but in a victory without effort. The Yankees, who were all bacon sellers, upon seeing the first Spanish soldiers, would lay down their weapons and run. Andrés’s brother, Pedro, lived the life of a sportsman and wasn’t worried about the war; Alejandro was the same; Margarita remained in Valencia. Andrés found a job in a stomach clinic, replacing a doctor who had gone abroad for three months. In the afternoon, Andrés went to the clinic, stayed there until nightfall, then went home for dinner, and at night he went out in search of news. The newspapers contained nothing but nonsense and bravado; the Yankees weren’t prepared for war; they didn’t even have uniforms for their soldiers. In the land of sewing machines, making a few uniforms was a huge conflict, so they said in Madrid. To top off the ridiculousness, there was a message from Castelar to the Yankees. It’s true that it didn’t have the bombastic, comical proportions of Victor Hugo’s manifesto to the Germans to respect Paris; but it was enough for even the most sensible Spaniards to feel the full emptiness of their great men. Andrés followed the preparations for war with intense emotion. The newspapers reported completely false calculations. Andrés came to believe there was some reason for optimism. Days before the defeat, he met Iturrioz in the street. “What do you think of this?” he asked. “We’re lost. ” “But they say we’re prepared? ” “Yes, prepared for defeat. Only that Chinaman, whom we Spaniards consider the height of candor, can be told the things the newspapers are telling us. ” “Well, I don’t see that. ” “Well, all you have to do is keep an eye on things and compare the strength of the fleets. Just look; we have six old, bad, slow-moving ships in Santiago de Cuba ; They have twenty-one, almost all new, well-armored, and faster. Our six together displace approximately twenty-eight thousand tons; their first six, sixty thousand. With two of their ships, they can sink our entire fleet; with twenty-one, they won’t have a place to aim. “So, you think we’re headed for defeat? ” “Not defeat, a hunt. If any of our ships can be saved, it will be a great thing. ” Andrés thought Iturrioz might be mistaken, but events soon proved him right. The disaster had been, as he said: a hunt, a ridiculous thing. Andrés was outraged by the people’s indifference upon hearing the news. At least he had believed that the Spaniard, inept at science and civilization, was an exalted patriot, and found that he was not; after the disaster of the two small Spanish fleets in Cuba and the Philippines, everyone went to the theater and the bullfights without a care in the world; those demonstrations and shouts had been foam, smoke, nothing. When the shock of the disaster had passed, Andrés went to Iturrioz’s house; there was a discussion between them. “Let’s leave all that aside, since fortunately we’ve lost the colonies,” said his uncle, “and talk about something else. How have things gone for you in the village? ” “Quite badly. ” “What happened to you? Did you do something terrible? ” “No; I was lucky. As a doctor, I’ve done well. Now, personally, I’ve had little success. ” “Tell me, let’s look at your odyssey in that land of Don Quixote.” Andrés recounted his impressions in Alcolea; Iturrioz listened attentively. “So you haven’t lost your virulence there, nor have you assimilated the environment? ” “Neither. I was a bacterium there placed in a broth saturated with carbolic acid. ” “And those people from La Mancha, are they good people? ” “Yes, very good people, but with impossible morals.” –But isn’t that morality the defense of the race that lives in a poor land with few resources? “It’s quite possible; but if so, they don’t realize this reason. ” “Ah, of course! Where else would a rural town be a collection of people with a conscience? In England, in France, in Germany? Everywhere , man, in his natural state, is a scoundrel, an idiot, and selfish. If he’s a good person there in Alcolea, it must be said that the people of Alcolea are superior. ” “I’m not saying no. Towns like Alcolea are lost, because selfishness and money aren’t distributed equally; only a few rich people have it; on the other hand, among the poor, there’s no sense of individuality. The day every Alcolean sits down and says: ‘I won’t compromise,’ that day the town will move forward. ” “Of course; but to be selfish, you have to know; to protest, you have to reason. I believe that civilization owes more to selfishness than to all the religions and philanthropic utopias.” Selfishness has made the path, the road, the street, the railroad, the ship, everything. –We’re satisfied. That’s why it’s undignified to see these people, who have nothing to gain from the social machinery that, in exchange for taking their child and sending it to war, gives them nothing but misery and hunger in their old age, and yet they defend it. –That has great individual importance, but not social. There has never yet been a society that has attempted a system of distributive justice, and, despite that, the world, let’s not say it’s moving along, but at least it’s crawling along, and women are still willing to have children. –It’s imbecile. –Friend, nature is very wise. It’s not content with just dividing men into the happy and the unhappy, into the rich and the poor, but it gives the rich the spirit of wealth, and the poor the spirit of misery. You know how worker bees are made; the larva is enclosed in a small alveolus and given a poor diet. The larva develops incompletely; it is a worker, a proletarian, who has the spirit of work and submission. This is what happens among men, between the worker and the soldier, between the rich and the poor. “All this outrages me,” Andrés exclaimed. “A few years ago,” Iturrioz continued, “I was on the island of Cuba at a sugar mill where they were doing the harvest. Several Chinese and black people were carrying the cane in bundles to a machine with large cylinders that crushed it. We were watching the machine work when suddenly we saw one of the Chinese people dragged along. The white foreman shouted to stop the machine. The machinist ignored the order, and the Chinese man disappeared and immediately emerged as a sheet of blood and crushed bones. We white people who were witnessing the scene were dismayed; the Chinese and black people, on the other hand, laughed. They had the spirit of slaves. “It’s unpleasant. ” “Yes, as you wish.” But these are the facts, and we must accept them and adapt to them. Anything else is simple-minded. Trying to walk among men, to be superior, as you tried to do in Alcolea, is absurd. “I haven’t tried to present myself as a superior being,” Andrés replied briskly. ” I’ve gone there as an independent man. So much work, so much salary. I do what I’m told, I get paid, and that’s it. ” “That’s not possible; every man is not a star with its own independent orbit. ” “I believe that whoever wants to be one is. ” “They will have to suffer the consequences. ” “Ah, of course! I’m prepared to suffer them. He who has no money pays for his freedom with his body; it’s an ounce of flesh that must be given, and they could just as easily take one’s arm as one’s heart. A true man seeks his independence above all else; you have to be a poor devil or have the soul of a dog to find freedom wrong. Isn’t it possible? Can’t man be as independent as one star is from another?” To this, there’s nothing more to say than that it’s true, unfortunately. –I see you’re coming from the village, lyrical. –It must be the influence of the crumbs. –Or the La Mancha wine. “No; I haven’t tried it. ” “And you wanted them to like you and despise the best product in town? Well, what are you going to do? ” “See if I can find somewhere to work. ” “In Madrid? ” “Yes, in Madrid. ” “Another experience? ” “That’s right, another experience. ” “Well, let’s go to the rooftop now.” Chapter 42. FRIENDS. At the beginning of autumn, Andrés was left with nothing to do. Don Pedro had taken it upon himself to speak to his influential friends, to see if he could find a place for his son. Hurtado spent his mornings at the National Library, and in the afternoons and evenings he went for walks. One night, as he was passing in front of the Apolo Theater, he ran into Montaner. “Boy, it’s been a long time!” exclaimed the former classmate, approaching him. “Yes, it’s been some years since we last saw each other.” They climbed the slope of Alcalá Street together, and when they reached the corner of Peligros Street, Montaner insisted that they go into the Café Fornos. “Well, let’s go,” said Andrés. It was Saturday and there was a large crowd; the tables were full; the night owls, returning from the theater, were preparing for dinner, and some prostitutes were looking around the room with their painted eyes . Montaner eagerly took the hot chocolate they brought him and then asked Andrés: “And you, what are you doing? ” “Nothing now. I’ve been to a village. And you? Did you finish your studies? ” “Yes, a year ago. I couldn’t finish because of that girl who was my girlfriend. I spent the whole day talking to her; but the girl’s parents took her to Santander and married her off there. I then went to Salamanca, and I stayed until I finished my studies. ” “So it was a good thing for you that your girlfriend got married off?” “Partly, yes.” “Although being a doctor is of no use to me!” “Can’t you find work? ” “Nothing. I’ve been with Julio Aracil. ” “With Julio? ” “Yes. ” “What for? ” “As an assistant. ” “Does Julio need assistants now? ” “Yes; now he’s opening a clinic. Last year he promised to protect me. He had a position on the railroad, and he said that when he didn’t need it, he’d give it to me. ” “And he hasn’t given it to you? ” “No; the truth is, it’s not enough to support his household. ” “So what does he do? Does he spend a lot? ” “Yes. ” “He used to be very stingy. ” “And he still is. ” “Isn’t he getting ahead? ” “As a doctor, he doesn’t make much of a profit, but he has resources: the railroad, some convents he visits; he’s also a shareholder in “La Esperanza,” a company that deals with doctors, pharmacies, and funeral services, and he has a stake in a funeral home. ” “So he’s involved in the exploitation of charities?” “Yes.” Now, as I was saying, he has a clinic he set up with his father-in-law’s money. I’ve been helping him; the truth is, he’s taken me for a ride. For over a month I’ve been working as a bricklayer, a carpenter, a porter, and even a nanny. Then I’ve been spending time at the clinic helping poor people, and now that things are starting to go well, Julio tells me he has to go into partnership with a young man from Valencia named Nebot, who has offered him money, and that when he needs me, he’ll call me. “In short, he’s kicked you out. ” “Just what you say. ” “And what are you going to do? ” “I’m going to look for some kind of job. ” “As a doctor? ” “As a doctor or not as a doctor? It’s all the same to me. ” “Don’t you want to go to a village? ” “No, no; never. I don’t leave Madrid. ” “And the others, what have they done?” asked Andrés. “Where is that Lamela? ” “In Galicia. I don’t think he practices, but he lives well.” I don’t know if you remember Cañizo … –No. –One who failed his Anatomy course. –No, I don’t remember. –If you saw him, you’d remember right away,–replied Montaner. –Well, this Cañizo is a happy man; he has a butcher’s newspaper. I think he’s very greedy, and the other day he said to me: Boy, I’m very happy; the Butchers give me pork loin, they give me steaks… My wife treats me well; she gives me lobster some Sundays. “What a beast! ” “Ortega, you remember. ” “A short, blond one? ” “Yes. ” “I remember. ” “He was a military doctor in Cuba, and he got used to drinking terribly . I’ve seen him a few times, and he told me: ‘My ideal is to reach alcoholic cirrhosis and become a general. ‘” “So no one of our classmates has fared well. ” “No one, or almost no one, except for Cañizo with his butcher’s newspaper and his wife who gives him lobster on Sundays. ” “It’s all sad. Always in this Madrid, the same temporary position, the same chronic anguish, the same lifeless life, everything the same. ” “Yes; this is a swamp,” Montaner murmured. ” More than a swamp, it’s a field of ashes. And Julio Aracil, does he live well? ” “Well, depending on what you mean by living well.” “His wife, what is she like?” “She’s a showy girl, but he’s prostituting her. ” “Why? ” “Because he’s giving her the air of a cocotte. He makes her wear exaggerated outfits, takes her everywhere; I think he himself advised her to wear makeup. And now he’s preparing the final blow. He’s going to bring that Nebot, who’s a rich young man, to live in his house and he’s going to expand the clinic. I think what he’s trying to do is get Nebot to get along with his wife. ” “Really? ” “Yes. He’s had Nebot’s room put in the best part of the house, near his wife’s bedroom. ” “Damn! Doesn’t he love her? ” “Julio doesn’t love anyone; he married her for her money. He has a mistress who’s a rich lady, already old. ” “So deep down, he’s moving on? ” “What do I know! He could just as easily go down as get rich.” It was already very late, and Montaner and Andrés left the café and each went home. A few days later, Andrés met Julio Aracil getting into a car. “Do you want to go for a ride with me?” Julio said to him. “I’m going to the end of the Salamanca neighborhood to pay a visit. ” “Okay. ” They both got into the car. “I saw Montaner the other day,” Andrés said. “Would he speak ill of me to you? Of course. Among friends, it’s indispensable. ” “Yes; it seems he’s not very happy with you. ” “It doesn’t shock me. People have a stupid idea of things,” Aracil said in an angry voice. “I would rather deal with absolute, complete egotists, not with sentimental people who tell you with tears in their eyes: ‘Take this piece of stale bread, which I can’t bite into, and in return, invite me to dinner every day at the best hotel.'” Andrés burst out laughing. “My wife’s family is also one of those who have an idiotic idea of life,” Aracil continued. “They’re constantly putting obstacles in my way. ” “Why? ” “Nothing. Now they’re coming up with the idea that the partner I have at the clinic is making love to my wife and that I shouldn’t have him in the house. It’s ridiculous. Am I going to be an Othello? No; I’ll let my wife have her way. Concha won’t deceive me. I trust her. ” “You’re right.” “I don’t know what idea these old-fashioned people have of things,” Julio continued, “as they say. Because I can understand a man like you who is a puritan. But them! If I were to show up tomorrow and say, ‘I haven’t wanted to charge for these visits to Mr. So-and-so or Mrs. So-and-so because, honestly, I haven’t been right… the whole family would be pissing me off! ” “Oh! No doubt about it.” “And if that’s true, why are you coming up with these ridiculous morals? ” “And what’s wrong with you that you need a partner? Do you spend a lot? ” “A lot; but all the spending I do is indispensable. Today’s life demands it. A woman has to be well-off, fashionable, have clothes, jewelry… You need money, lots of money for the house, for food, for the dressmaker, for the tailor, for the theater, for the car; I find that money however I can. ” “And wouldn’t it be a good idea for you to limit yourself a little?” Andrés asked her. “What for? To live when I’m old? No, no; now better than ever. Now that you’re young. ” “It’s a philosophy; I don’t think it’s bad, but you’re going to demoralize your house. ” “Morality doesn’t concern me,” replied Julio. “Here, in confidence, I’ll tell you that an honorable woman seems to me one of the stupidest and most bitter products of life. ” “That’s funny. ” “Yes, I don’t like a woman who isn’t somewhat flirtatious. I think it’s fine for her to spend, to adorn herself, to show off. A marquis, a client of mine, used to say: An elegant woman should have more than one husband.” Everyone laughs when they hear him. “And why?” “Because his wife, as a husband, has only one; but, on the other hand, she has three lovers. ” “At the same time? ” “Yes, at the same time; she’s a very liberal lady. ” “Very liberal and very conservative, if her lovers help her live.” “You’re right, she could be called a conservative liberal.” They arrived at the client’s house. “Where do you want to go?” Julio asked him. “Anywhere. I have nothing to do. ” “Do you want to be dropped off at Cibeles? ” “Okay. ” “Go to Cibeles and back,” Julio said to the coachman. The two former classmates said goodbye, and Andrés thought that no matter how much his companion was riding on it, it wasn’t something to envy him. Chapter 43. FERMÍN IBARRA. A few days later, Hurtado ran into Fermín Ibarra on the street. Fermín was a stranger; tall, strong, and no longer needed a cane to walk. “One of these days I’m going,” Fermín told him. “Where? ” “For now, to Belgium; later, I’ll see. I don’t plan on staying here; I probably won’t come back. ” “No? ” “No. Nothing can be done here; I have two or three patents for things I’ve thought up, which I think are good; they were going to buy them in Belgium ; But I wanted to try it out in Spain first, and I ‘m leaving feeling discouraged and disheartened; nothing can be done here. “That doesn’t shock me,” said Andrés, “there’s no atmosphere here for what you do. ” “Oh, of course!” replied Ibarra. “An invention supposes the recapitulation, the synthesis of the phases of a discovery; an invention is often such an easy consequence of previous events that one can almost say it springs up effortlessly. Where in Spain does one go to study the evolutionary process of a discovery? With what means? In what workshops? In what laboratories?” ” Nowhere. ” “But, anyway, this doesn’t outrage me,” added Fermín, “what outrages me is the suspicion, the malicious intent, the petulance of these people… Here there are nothing but pimps and partying young gentlemen. The pimp rules from the Pyrenees to Cádiz…” Politicians, military men, professors, priests, they’re all pimps with an exaggerated ego. “Yes, it’s true.” “When I’m outside of Spain,” Ibarra continued, “I want to convince myself that our country isn’t dead to civilization; that here we discuss and think, but I pick up a Spanish newspaper and it disgusts me; it talks about nothing but politicians and bullfighters. It’s a disgrace.” Fermín Ibarra recounted his dealings in Madrid, Barcelona, and Bilbao. There was a millionaire who had told him that he couldn’t offer money without a basis, that after successful tests, he would have no problem giving money at a fifty-fifty rate. “Spanish capital is in the hands of the most abject rabble,” Fermín concluded. A few months later, Ibarra wrote to him from Belgium, saying that he had been made head of a workshop and that his businesses were progressing. Chapter 44. MEETING WITH LULÚ. A friend of Hurtado’s father, a senior employee in the Ministry of the Interior, had promised to find a position for Andrés. This gentleman lived on San Bernardo Street. Andrés visited his house several times, and he always told him there was nothing available. One day he said, “The only thing we can offer you is a hygienic doctor position that’s about to open up. Let me know if it’s right for you, and if it’s right for you, We’ll keep you in mind. “It’s good for me. ” “Well, I’ll let you know in time.” That day, as he was leaving the clerk’s house on Ancha Street, at the corner of Pez Street, Andrés Hurtado ran into Lulú. She was the same as before; she hadn’t changed at all. Lulú was a little embarrassed to see Hurtado, which was unusual for her. Andrés looked at her with pleasure. She was wearing her little mantilla, so fine, so slender, so graceful. She was looking at him, smiling a little blushing. “We have a lot to talk about,” Lulú told him. “I’d be happy to chat with you, but I have an errand to deliver. My mother and I usually go to the Café de la Luna on Saturdays. Do you want to go that way? ” “Yes, I’ll go. ” “Go tomorrow, it’s Saturday. From nine-thirty to ten. Don’t miss it, okay? ” “No, I won’t.” They said goodbye, and Andrés showed up at the Café de la Luna the next night . Doña Leonarda and Lulú were in the company of a young man with glasses. Andrés greeted his mother, who greeted him curtly, and sat down in a chair far from Lulú. “Sit here,” she said, making room for him on the couch. Andrés sat down next to the girl. “I’m so glad you came,” Lulú said; “I was afraid you wouldn’t want to come. ” “Why wouldn’t you come? ” “You’re such a bad person! ” “What I don’t understand is why you chose this café. Or is it that you don’t live there on Fúcar Street anymore? ” “Oh, man! Now we live here on Pez Street. Do you know who really solved our lives? ” “Who? ” “Julio. ” “Really? ” “Yes. ” “You see, he’s not as bad a person as you said. ” “Oh, just the same as I thought, or worse. I’ll tell you about it. And you, what have you done? How have you lived?” Andrés quickly recounted his life and his struggles in Alcolea. “Oh! What an impossible man you are!” exclaimed Lulú. “What a wolf!” The man with glasses, who was talking with Doña Leonarda, saw that Lulú didn’t stop talking to Andrés for a moment, and got up and left. “As for if you care at all about Lulú, you can be satisfied,” said Doña Leonarda in a disdainful and sour tone. “Why do you say that?” asked Andrés. “Because she has a truly strange affection for you. And the truth is, I don’t know why. ” “I don’t know that people are affectionate for anything either,” replied Lulú briskly. “You either love them or you don’t; that’s all . ” Doña Leonarda, with a contemptuous pout, picked up the evening paper and began to read it. Lulú continued talking to Andrés. “Well, you’ll see how Julio solved our life,” she said in a low voice. I was already telling you that he was a scoundrel who wouldn’t marry Niní. Indeed; when he finished his studies, the thief began to flee and no longer appear at home. I found out, and I knew he was making love to a young lady of good standing. I called Julio and we talked; he told me clearly that he didn’t intend to marry Niní. “Just like that, without hesitation? ” “Yes; that it wasn’t convenient for him; that it would be a hassle for him to marry a poor woman.” I remained calm and said to him: “Look, I would like you to go see Don Prudencio yourself and warn him about this. What do you want me to warn him about?” he asked me. “Well, nothing; that you’re not marrying Niní because you don’t have the means; in short, for the reasons you’ve given me. ” “He would be astonished,” Andrés exclaimed, “because he thought that the day I said it there would be a cataclysm in the family. ” He froze, in the utmost astonishment. “Well, well,” he said, “I’ll go see him and tell him. I told the news to my mother, who thought of doing something stupid, but didn’t; then I told Niní, who cried and wanted revenge. When they both calmed down , I told Niní that Don Prudencio would come and that I knew Don Prudencio liked her and that salvation lay in Don Prudencio. Indeed; a few days later Don Prudencio came in an attitude of diplomatic; she talked about whether Julio could find a place, whether it wasn’t convenient for him to go to a village… Niní was admirable. Since then, I no longer believe in women. “That statement is funny,” said Andrés. “It’s true,” replied Lulú, “because look, men are liars, well, women are even more so.” A few days later, Don Prudencio shows up at the house; he speaks to Niní and Mama, and about the wedding. And there you would have seen Julio a few days later at home, returning Niní’s letters, laughing like a rabbit, when Mama told him with her mouth full that Don Prudencio had so many thousands of duros and a farm here and another there… “I can see Julio with that sadness that comes over him thinking that other people have money. ” “Yes, he was frantic. After the honeymoon, Don Prudencio asked me, “What do you want? To live with your sister and me or with your mother?” I told her, “I’m not going to get married; I don’t like being out of work either; what I’d prefer is to have a little linen shop and keep working.” “Well, whatever you need, just tell me.” And I opened the shop. “And do you have one? ” “Yes, here on Pez Street.” At first, my mother objected, because of that nonsense about whether my father had been this or that. Everyone lives as best they can. Isn’t that true? ” “Of course. What a more dignified thing to do than to live off your work!” Andrés and Lulú continued talking for a long time. She had settled her life in the house on Fúcar Street, so much so that only what related to that environment interested her. They reviewed all the neighbors in the house. “Do you remember that old man, Don Cleto?” Lulú asked. “Yes; what did he do?” “The poor guy died…; I felt sorry for him.” “And what did he die of?” “Of hunger.” One night Venancia and I went into his room, and he was finishing up, and he was saying in that little voice of his: “No, I don’t have anything; don’t bother yourselves; just a little weakness,” and he was dying. At one thirty in the morning, Doña Leonarda and Lulú got up, and Andrés accompanied them to Pez Street. “Will you come this way?” Lulú told him. “Yes; I believe it! ” “Julio comes sometimes, too. ” “Don’t you hate him? ” “Hate? I feel contempt for him more than hate, but he amuses me, I find him entertaining, as if I were watching a bad bug hidden under a crystal glass. ” Chapter 45. Surgeon of Hygiene. A few days after receiving the appointment as surgeon of hygiene and beginning to hold the position, Andrés realized that it wasn’t for him. His antisocial instinct was increasing, turning into hatred for the rich, with no sympathy for the poor. “I who feel such contempt for society,” he said to himself, “having to recognize and patent prostitutes! I who would be happy if each one of them carried a toxin that would poison two hundred children of a family! ” Andrés remained at his post, partly out of curiosity, partly also so that the one who had given it to him wouldn’t consider him a fool. Having to live in this environment hurt him. There was nothing cheerful, nothing friendly in his life anymore; he felt like a naked man having to wade through brambles. The two poles of his soul were a state of bitterness, dryness, acrimony, and a feeling of depression and sadness. Irritation made him violent and brutal in his speech. Many times he would say to a woman who came to the Registry: “Are you sick? ” “Yes. ” “What do you want, go to the hospital or stay free? ” “I prefer to stay free.” “Fine. Do whatever you want; for all I know, you can poison half the world.” I don’t care. Sometimes, when I saw these whores escorted by some guard, laughing, I would rebuke them. “You don’t even have hatred. Have hatred; at least you’ll live more peacefully.” The women looked at him in astonishment. Hatred, why? he would ask himself. Some of them. As Iturrioz said: nature was very wise; it created the slave, and gave him the spirit of slavery; it created the prostitute, and gave him the spirit of prostitution. This sad proletariat of sexual life had its honor in the flesh. Perhaps the worker bees and aphids, which serve as cows for the ants, also have it in the darkness of the unconscious. From conversations with those women, Andrés gleaned strange things. Among the owners of brothels, there were decent people: a priest had two and exploited them with complete evangelical science. What more Catholic, more conservative work could there be than running a brothel! Only by simultaneously having a bullring and a pawn shop could something more perfect be conceived. Of those women, the free ones went to the Registry, others submitted to examination at their homes. Andrés had to go several times to make these home visits. In some of those distinguished brothels, he would meet young gentlemen of high society, and it was an interesting contrast to see these women with tired faces, covered in rice powder, and makeup, displaying a fictitious happiness, next to strong, buff, hygienic men , red-faced, and tough from sport. A spectator of social iniquity, Andrés reflected on the mechanisms that produce these scourges: prison, poverty, prostitution. “The truth is that if the people understood this,” Hurtado thought, “they would kill themselves to attempt a social revolution, even if it were nothing more than a utopia, a dream.” Andrés believed he saw in Madrid the progressive evolution of the rich people, who were becoming more beautiful, stronger, and becoming caste-like; while the common people evolved in reverse, weakening and degenerating more and more. These two parallel evolutions were undoubtedly biological: the people were on no path to cutting the shanks of the bourgeoisie, and, unable to fight, were falling into the furrow. The symptoms of defeat were revealed everywhere. In Madrid, the stature of the poor, malnourished young men who lived in shacks was noticeably smaller than that of the rich youths from well-off families who lived in outer apartments. Intelligence and physical strength were also lower among the people of the town than among the wealthy class. The bourgeois class was preparing to subjugate the poor and make them its slaves. Chapter 46. THE CLOTHING SHOP. It took Hurtado about a month to go see Lulú, and when he did, he found himself a little surprised upon entering the shop. It was a fairly large store , with a wide window adorned with children’s clothes, curly hats, and shirts full of ribbons. “You’ve come at last,” Lulú told him. “I haven’t been able to come before. But is this whole shop yours ?” asked Andrés. “Yes. ” “Then you’re a capitalist; you’re an infamous bourgeois.” Lulú laughed contentedly; then she showed Andrés the shop, the back room , and the house. Everything was very well arranged and in order. Lulú had a girl who served and a boy for errands. Andrés sat for a moment. Quite a few people were coming into the shop. “Julio came the other day,” said Lulú, “and we were talking badly about you. ” “Really? ” “Yes; and he said something to me, something you had said about me, that made me uncomfortable. ” “What did he say to you? ” “He told me that you had said once, when I was a student, that marrying me was the same as marrying an orangutan. Is it true that you said that about me? Will you answer? ” “I don’t remember; but it’s quite possible. ” “That you said it?” “Yes.” “And what should I do with a man who pays so much attention to me?” “I don’t know. ” “If only, instead of ‘orangutan,’ you had called me ‘monkey!'” “Another time. Don’t worry.” Two days later, Hurtado returned to the store, and on Saturdays he met with with Lulu and her mother at the Café de la Luna. He soon realized that the man with glasses was after Lulu. The man was a pharmacist who had his pharmacy on Fish Street, a very pleasant and educated man. Andrés and he talked about Lulu. “What do you think of this girl?” the pharmacist asked him. “Who? Lulu?” “Yes.” “Well, she’s a girl I have great esteem for,” said Andrés. “So do I. ” “Now, it seems to me that she’s not a woman to marry. ” “Why? ” “That’s my opinion; to me she seems like a cerebral woman, without organic strength or sensuality, for whom all impressions are purely intellectual. ” “What do I know! I don’t agree.” That same night Andrés could see that Lulu was treating the pharmacist too disdainfully. When they were alone together, Andrés said to Lulu: “You treat the pharmacist very badly. That doesn’t seem worthy of a woman like you, who has a foundation of justice. ” “Why?” “Because not. Just because a man falls in love with you, is there any reason for you to despise him? That’s brutal. ” “I feel like doing brutal things.” “I’d have to wish the same thing happened to you, so you’d know what it’s like to be scorned for no reason. ” “And do you know if the same thing happens to me? ” “No; but I imagine not. I have too bad an opinion of women to believe it. ” “Of women in general and of me in particular? ” “Of all of them. ” “You’re getting into such a bad mood, Don Andrés! When you’re old, no one will be able to put up with you. ” “I’m old now. It’s just that these stupid things from women infuriate me. What do you find wrong with that man to despise him like that? He’s a cultured, amiable, pleasant man, he earns a living… ” “Well, well; but it annoys me. Enough of that song.” Chapter 47. FROM THE PLAGUE SPOTS. ANDRÉS used to sit near the counter. Lulu saw him looking somber and thoughtful. “Come on, man, what’s the matter with you?” Lulu said to him one day when she saw he was more sullen than usual. “Truly,” Andrés murmured, “the world is a funny thing: hospitals, operating rooms, prisons, brothels; everything dangerous has its antidote; next to love, the brothel ; next to freedom, prison. Every subversive instinct—and nature is always subversive—has its policeman nearby. There’s no clean fountain without men putting their paws in it and dirtying it. It’s in their nature. ” “What do you mean by that? What’s happened to you?” Lulu asked. “Nothing; this dirty job they’ve given me is disturbing me. Today the wards of a house on Calle de la Paz wrote me a letter that worries me. They signed it, ‘Some wretches. ‘” “What do they say?” “Nothing; that they commit brutal acts in those brothels.” These _unfortunates_ who sent me the letter tell me horrors. The house where they live communicates with another. When there’s a visit from the doctor or the authority, all the unregistered women are hidden on the third floor of the other house. “Why? ” “To avoid being recognized, to keep them out of the reach of the authority, which, although unjust and arbitrary, can upset the housekeepers. ” “And these women must live badly? ” “Very badly; they sleep in any corner, crowded together, barely eat; they are beaten brutally; and when they get old and see that they’re no longer successful, they are taken and secretly taken to another town. ” “What a life! How horrible!” Lulu murmured. “Then all these brothel housekeepers,” Andrés continued, ” have a tendency to torment their pupils. There are some who carry a whip, like the end of a stick, to enforce order.” Today I visited a house on Barcelona Street, where the thug is an effeminate man known as “El Cotorrita” (Little Cotor), who helps the matchmaker kidnap the women. This invert dresses as a woman, puts on earrings, because he has holes in his ears, and he hunts for girls. “What a guy. ” “He’s a kind of hawk. This eunuch, from what the women of the house have told me, is terribly cruel to them, and he terrifies them.” “Here,” Cotorrita told me, “no woman is discharged .” “Why?” I asked him. “Because no,” and he showed me a five-dollar note. I continued questioning the pupils and sent four to the hospital. All four were ill. “But don’t those women have any defense?” “None; no name, no marital status, nothing. They call them whatever they want; they all answer to false names: Blanca, Marina, Estrella, África… On the other hand, the matchmakers and the thugs are protected by the police, made up of pimps and politicians’ servants. ” “Will they all live short lives?” said Lulú. “Very short.” All these women have a terrible mortality rate; every mistress of these brothels has seen generations of women come and go; illness, prison, the hospital, alcohol, dwindle away at these armies. While the matchmaker clings to life, all that white flesh, all those weak, lifeless brains, fall into the rot. “And how can they not at least escape? ” “Because they’re trapped by debt. The brothel is an octopus that holds these beastly, wretched women in its tentacles. If they escape, they’re denounced as thieves, and the whole rabble of the court condemns them. Then these matchmakers have resources. According to what I’ve been told at that house on Barcelona Street, a few days ago a girl was claimed by her parents from Seville at the courthouse, and they sent another woman, somewhat similar in appearance to her, who told the judge that she was living with a very well-off man and didn’t want to return home. ” “What people!” “All that is what remains of the Moor and the Jew in the Spanish; the consideration of women as prey, the tendency to deceive, to lie… It is the consequence of the Semitic imposture; we have the Semitic religion, we have Semitic blood. From that unhealthy ferment, compounded by our poverty, our ignorance, and our vanity, come all evils. ” “And are these women really deceived by their boyfriends?” asked Lulú, who was more concerned with the individual than the social aspect. “No; not generally. They are women who don’t want to work; or rather , who can’t work. It all takes place in perfect unconsciousness. Of course, none of this has the sentimental and tragic air that is supposed to have it. It is a brutal, imbecile, purely economic thing, without any romantic aspect. The only great, powerful, terrible thing is that all these women are left with an idea of honor as something formidable hanging over their heads.” A frivolous woman from another country, thinking of her youth, will surely say: Then I was young, beautiful, healthy. Here they say: Then I was not dishonored. We are a race of fanatics, and fanaticism for honor is one of the strongest . We have created idols that now mortify us. “And that couldn’t be suppressed?” Lulu said. “What? ” “The existence of those houses. ” “How can it be prevented! Ask the Bishop of Trebizond or the director of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, or the president of the white slave trade, and they will tell you: Ah, it is a necessary evil. My child, we must have humility. We should not have the pride of believing we know more than the ancients… My uncle Iturrioz, deep down, is right when he says, laughing, that spiders eating flies indicates nothing more than the perfection of nature. ” Lulu looked sadly at Andrés when he spoke so bitterly. “You should have left that fate,” she told him. –Yes; I’ll have to leave it eventually. Chapter 48. THE DEATH OF VILLASÚS. Under the pretext of being ill, Andrés left his job, and through the influence of Julio Aracil, he was made doctor at La Esperanza, a society for the medical care of poor people. In this new position, he didn’t have as many reasons for his ethical indignation, but, on the other hand, the fatigue was terrible; he had to make thirty or forty visits a day in the most distant neighborhoods; climb stairs and stairs, enter infamous hovels… Especially in the summer, Andrés was exhausted. Those people in the tenements, miserable, dirty, exasperated by the heat, were always prone to anger. The father or mother who saw their child dying needed to unload their pain on someone, and they unloaded it on the doctor. Andrés sometimes listened calmly to their rebukes, but other times he flew into a rage and told them the truth: that they were miserable and swine; that they would never rise from their prostration because of their carelessness and abandonment. Iturrioz was right: nature not only made the slave, but also gave him the spirit of slavery. Andrés had been able to verify in Alcolea as in Madrid that, as an individual rises in status, the means he has to circumvent the common laws increase. Andrés was able to demonstrate that the force of the law diminishes proportionally to the increase in the means of the victor. The law is always harsher on the weak. It automatically weighs heavily on the wretched. It is logical that the wretched instinctively hate the law. Those unfortunates did not yet understand that the solidarity of the poor could destroy the rich, and they knew nothing but to futilely complain about their condition. Anger and irritation had become chronic in Andrés; the heat and walking in the sun produced a constant thirst that forced him to drink beer and cold drinks that upset his stomach. Absurd thoughts of destruction crossed his mind. On Sundays, especially when he walked through the crowd on his way back from the bullfight, he thought about what a pleasure it would be for him to place half a dozen machine guns at every corner, and not leave one of those returning from the stupid and bloody fiesta behind. That filthy rabble of pimps were the ones who shouted in the cafes before the war, the ones who bragged and boasted and then sat quietly in their homes. The morality of a bullfight spectator had been revealed in them; the morality of a coward who demands courage from others, from the soldier on the battlefield, from the actor, or from the bullfighter in the circus. Hurtado would have imposed respect for the suffering of others on that mob of cruel and bloodthirsty, stupid and petulant beasts by force. Andrés’s oasis was Lulú’s shop. There, in the already cool darkness, he sat and talked. Lulú, meanwhile, sewed, and if a buyer arrived, she dispatched. Some nights Andrés accompanied Lulú and her mother to the Paseo de Rosales. Lulú and Andrés would sit together and talk, contemplating the black valley that stretched out before them. Lulú would gaze at the lines of broken lights from the roads and the suburbs and fantasize that there was a sea with its islands, and that one could travel by boat over these confused shadows. After chatting for a long time, they would return on the streetcar, and at the San Bernardo roundabout, they would say goodbye with a handshake. Apart from these hours of peace and quiet, all the rest were filled with displeasure and annoyance for Andrés… One day, while visiting an attic in a slum, as he passed through the corridor of a tenement house, an old woman, holding a child in her arms, approached him and asked if he would like to stop by to see a sick person. Andrés never refused this, and he entered the other small room. A gaunt, starving man, sitting on a cot, was singing and reciting verses. From time to time he stood up in his nightshirt and walked from one side to the other, tripping over two or three crates on the floor. “What’s the matter with this man?” Andrés asked the woman. “He’s blind, and now he seems to have gone mad. ” “Does he have no family? ” “A sister of mine and I; we’re his daughters. ” “Well, nothing can be done for this man,” said Andrés. The only thing would be to take him to the hospital or a mental hospital. I’ll send a note to the hospital director. What’s the patient’s name? “Villasús, Rafael Villasús. ” “Is this a man who acted out a lot? ” “Yes.” Andrés remembered him at that moment. He had aged ten or twelve years in an astonishing manner; but his daughter had aged even more. He had an air of insensitivity and stupor that only a deluge of misery can give a human creature. Andrés left the house thoughtfully. “Poor man!” he said to himself. “How unfortunate! This poor devil, determined to defy wealth, is extraordinary! What a comical example of heroism! And perhaps if he could think, he would think he had done well; that the lamentable situation in which he finds himself is a mark of glory for his bohemian lifestyle. Poor imbecile!” Seven or eight days later, upon returning to visit the sick child, who had relapsed, he was told that the attic neighbor, Villasús, had died. The tenants of the small rooms told him that the mad poet, as he was known in the house, had spent three days and three nights shouting, defying his literary enemies, laughing uproariously. Andrés went in to see the dead man. He was lying on the floor, wrapped in a sheet. The daughter, indifferent, remained huddled in a corner. A few ragged men, including one with a long hair, surrounded the corpse. “Are you the doctor?” one of them asked Andrés impertinently. “Yes; I am a doctor. ” “Then examine the body, because we believe Villasús is not dead. This is a case of catalepsy. ” “Don’t talk nonsense,” said Andrés. All those ragged men, who must have been bohemians, friends of Villasús, had done terrible things to the corpse: they had burned his fingers with matches to see if he had any feeling. Even after death, they didn’t leave the poor devil alone. Andrés, despite being convinced there was no such thing as catalepsy, took out his stethoscope and listened to the corpse’s heart. “He’s dead,” he said. At this point, an old man with white hair and a white beard entered, limping and leaning on a cane. He was completely drunk. He approached Villasús’s corpse and, in a melodramatic voice, shouted: “Goodbye, Rafael! You were a poet! You were a genius! That’s how I will die too! In misery!” Because I am a bohemian and I will never sell my conscience. No.” The ragged men looked at each other as if satisfied with the turn the scene had taken. The old man with the long hair was still rambling when the hearse porter appeared , his top hat tilted to one side, the whip in his right hand, and the butt of a cigarette between his lips. “Well,” he said, speaking in a pimply voice, showing his black teeth, “are you going to take the body down or not? Because I can’t wait here; there are other dead people to be taken to the East.” One of the ragged men, who had a rather dirty false collar sticking out of his jacket and a pair of glasses, approached Hurtado and said with a ridiculous affectation: “Seeing these things, it makes you want to put a dynamite bomb on your soft palate. ” The despair of this bohemian seemed to Hurtado too convoluted to be sincere, and leaving this whole mob of ragged men in the attic, he left the house. Chapter 49. LOVE, THEORY AND PRACTICE. ANDRÉS rambled on in Lulú’s shop, which was his great pleasure. She listened to him smiling, occasionally raising some objection. She always mockingly called him Don Andrés. “I have a little theory about love,” he told her one day. “You must have had a grand theory about love,” Lulú mockingly replied. “Well, I don’t. I’ve discovered that in love, as in medicine eighty years ago, there are two procedures: allopathy and homeopathy. ” “Explain yourself clearly, Don Andrés,” she replied sternly. “I’ll explain. Allopathic love is based on neutralization.” Opposites are cured by opposites. By this principle, a small man seeks a large woman, a blond man seeks a dark-haired woman, and a dark-haired man seeks a blonde. This procedure is the procedure of the timid, those who distrust themselves… The other procedure… –Let’s see the other procedure. –The other procedure is homeopathic. Like is cured by like. This is the system of those satisfied with their physique. The dark-haired man with the dark-haired woman, the blond man with the blonde. So, if my theory is correct, it will help us get to know people. –Yes? –Yes; you see a fat, dark-haired, flat-chested man next to a fat, dark-haired, flat-chested woman, because he is a conceited and self-confident man ; but the fat, dark-haired, flat-chested man has a skinny, blond, long-nosed woman; he has no confidence in his figure or in the shape of his nose. –So, I, who am dark-haired and somewhat flat-chested… –No; you are not flat-chested. “Nothing either? ” “No.” “Thank you very much, Don Andrés. Well then; I’m dark-skinned, and I think a bit flat-chested, although you say I’m not, if I were arrogant, I’d like that barber’s boy on the corner, and if I were completely humble, I’d like the pharmacist, who has a good nose. ” “You’re not a normal case. ” “No? ” “No. ” “Then what am I? ” “A case study. ” “I’ll be a case study; but nobody wants to study me. ” “Do you want me to study you, Lulú?” She looked at Andrés for a moment, with an enigmatic look, and then she began to laugh. “And you, Don Andrés, who are a wise man, who have discovered these theories about love, what is this love? ” “Love?” “Yes.” “Well, love, and I’m going to seem like a pedant to you, is the confluence of the fetishistic instinct and the sexual instinct. ” “I don’t understand. ” “Now for the explanation.” The sexual instinct drives man to woman and woman to man, indiscriminately; but the man who has the power to fantasize says: that woman, and the woman says: that man. Here begins the fetishistic instinct; on the body of the person chosen for no reason, a more beautiful one is forged, adorned, and beautified , and one becomes convinced that the idol forged by the imagination is the same truth. A man who loves a woman sees her internally deformed, and the woman who loves a man experiences the same thing; she deforms him. Through a bright, false cloud, the lovers see each other, and in the darkness laughs the ancient devil, who is none other than the species. “The species! And what does the species have to do with it? ” “The instinct of the species is the will to have children, to have offspring. A woman’s principal idea is the child. A woman instinctively wants the child first; But nature needs to clothe this desire in a more poetic, more suggestive form, and creates those lies, those veils that constitute love. –So love is ultimately a deception? –Yes; it’s a deception, like life itself; that’s why someone has said, quite rightly: one woman is as good as another, and sometimes more so; the same can be said of a man: one man is as good as another, and sometimes more so. –That must be for the person who doesn’t want to. –Of course, for the one who isn’t excited, deceived… That’s why marriages of love produce more pain and disappointment than those of convenience. –Do you really believe that? –Yes. –And what do you think is more worthwhile, to deceive yourself and suffer, or never to deceive yourself at all? –I don’t know. It’s hard to know. I don’t think there can be a general rule. These conversations entertained them. One morning, Andrés met a young soldier in the tent talking to Lulú. He continued to see him for several days. He didn’t want to ask who he was, and only when he stopped seeing him did he find out he was Lulu’s cousin. During this time, Andrés began to believe that Lulu was displeased with him. Perhaps she was thinking about the soldier. Andrés wanted to give up the habit of going to the clothing store, but he couldn’t. It was the only pleasant place where he felt good… One autumn morning, he went for a walk in Moncloa. He felt that slightly ridiculous melancholy of a bachelor. A vague sentimentality flooded his spirit as he contemplated the countryside, the pure, cloudless sky, the Guadarrama, blue as turquoise. He thought of Lulú and decided to see her. She was his only friend. He returned to Madrid, to Calle del Pez, and entered the little shop. Lulú was alone, dusting the cupboards with a feather duster. Andrés sat down in his place. “You look very good today, very pretty,” Andrés said suddenly. “What have you been treading on, Don Andrés, to be so amiable? ” “True. You look very good. Since you’ve been here, you’ve become more human. Before, you had a very satirical, very mocking expression, but not now; You’re starting to get a sweeter face. I think that dealing like this with mothers who come to buy hats for their children is starting to give you a maternal look. “And, you see, it’s sad always making hats for other people’s children. ” “Would you rather have them for your children? ” “If it could be, why not? But I’ll never have children. Who’s going to love me? ” “The pharmacist at the café, the lieutenant … you can act all modest, and you’re making conquests… ” “Me?” “You, yes.” Lulú continued dusting the shelves with the feather duster. “Do you hate me, Lulú?” Hurtado said. “Yes; because you talk nonsense to me. ” “Give me your hand.” “Hand?” “Yes. ” “Now sit next to me. ” “Next to you? ” “Yes. ” “Now look me in the eyes. Loyally. ” “I can look you in the eyes now.” Is there more to do? “Do you think I don’t love you, Lulu? ” “Yes… a little… you see I’m not a bad girl… but nothing more. ” “And if there were something more? If I loved you with affection, with love, what would you answer me? ” “No; it’s not true. You don’t love me. Don’t tell me that. ” “Yes, yes; it’s true,” and bringing Lulu’s head close to his, he kissed her on the mouth. Lulu blushed violently, then turned pale and covered her face with her hands. “Lulu, Lulu,” said Andrew. “Have I offended you?” Lulu got up and walked around the shop for a moment, smiling. “You see, Andrew; that madness, that deception that you call love, I’ve felt for you ever since I saw you. ” “Really? ” “Yes, really.” “And I’m blind? ” “Yes; blind, completely blind.” Andrés took Lulú’s hand in his own and brought it to his lips. The two of them spoke for a long time until Doña Leonarda’s voice was heard. “I’m leaving,” said Andrés, standing up. “Goodbye,” she exclaimed, hugging him. “And don’t leave me again, Andrés. Wherever you go, take me. ” PART SEVEN. The Son’s Experience. Chapter 50. THE RIGHT TO OFFspring. A few days later Andrés appeared at his uncle’s house. Gradually, he steered the conversation toward matters of conscience, and then he said: “I have a case of conscience. ” “Well! ” “Yes. Just imagine, a man I’m visiting, still young, but an arthritic, nervous man, has a fiancée, an old friend of his, weak and somewhat hysterical. And this man asks me: Do you think I can get married? And I don’t know what to answer. ” “I would say no,” Iturrioz replied. Now, let him do whatever he wanted afterward. –But we have to give him a reason. –What more reason! He’s almost sick, she too, he’s vacillating… enough; let him not marry. –No, that’s not enough. –For me, it is; I think of the child; I don’t believe, like Calderón, that man’s greatest crime is having been born. This seems like poetic nonsense to me. Man’s greatest crime is to cause birth. –Always? Without exception? –No. For me, the criterion is this: You have healthy children who are given a home, protection, education, care… we can grant absolution to the parents; you have sick children, tuberculous, syphilitic, neurasthenic, let’s consider the parents criminals. –But can that be known in advance? –Yes, I think so. –I don’t see it as so easy. –It’s not easy; but the danger alone, the possibility alone of fathering sickly offspring, should be enough for a man not to have them. Perpetuating pain in the world seems like a crime to me. –But can anyone know what their offspring will be like? I have a sick, crippled friend who recently had a healthy, very strong little girl. –That’s quite possible. It’s common for a robust man to have rickety children, and vice versa; but it doesn’t matter. The only guarantee of offspring is the robustness of the parents. “I’m shocked by that intellectual attitude in an anti-intellectualist like you, ” Andrés said. “I’m also shocked by that man- of-the-world attitude in an intellectual like you. I confess, to me, nothing is as repugnant as that prolific beast, who, amidst the fumes of alcohol , goes about producing children who must be sent to the cemetery or else swell the armies of prison and prostitution. I truly hate those people without conscience, who fill the earth with diseased and rotten flesh. I remember a maid in my house; she married a drunken idiot who couldn’t support himself because he didn’t know how to work. She and he were accomplices to sickly and sad children who lived in rags, and that idiot came to me to ask for money, believing it was a merit to be the father of his abundant and repulsive offspring. The woman, toothless, with her constantly swollen belly, had an animal-like indifference to pregnancies, births, and the deaths of children. Has one of them died?” “Well, he’ll do something else,” he said cynically. “No, it shouldn’t be lawful to produce beings who live in pain. ” “I believe the same. ” “Fertility can’t be a social ideal. It’s not quantity that’s needed, but quality. Let patriots and revolutionaries praise the prolific brute; for me, it will always be a hateful animal. ” “That’s all well and good,” Andrés murmured, “but it doesn’t solve my problem. What do I say to that man? ” “I would say: Get married if you want; but don’t have children. Sterilize your marriage. ” “That is to say, our morality ends up being immoral. If Tolstoy heard him, he would say: You’re a scoundrel of the faculty. ” “Bah! Tolstoy is an apostle, and apostles speak their truths, which, generally, are nonsense to others. I would speak clearly to that friend of yours ; I would say to him: Are you a selfish man, a little cruel, strong, healthy, resistant to your own pain and unsympathetic to the sufferings of others? Yes? Well, get married, have children: you will be a good family man… But if you are an impressionable, nervous man, who feels pain too much, then don’t get married, and if you do, don’t have children. Andrés left the rooftop in a daze. In the afternoon he wrote Iturrioz a letter telling him that the arthritic man who was getting married was him. Chapter 51. THE NEW LIFE. Hurtado wasn’t very concerned about matters of form, and he had no problem getting married in church, as Doña Leonarda wanted. Before getting married, he took Lulú to see her uncle Iturrioz, and they hit it off. She said to Iturrioz: “See if you can find Andrés some work that requires him to leave the house as little as possible, because when making calls, he is always in a terrible mood.” Iturrioz found the job, which consisted of translating articles and books for a medical journal that simultaneously published new specialized works. “Now they’ll give you two or three books in French to translate,” Iturrioz told him, “but start learning English, because in a few months they’ll ask you to translate something into that language, and then, if If you need anything, I’ll help you. Very well. I’m very grateful. Andrés left his position at the La Esperanza Society. He was looking forward to it; he took a house in the Pozas neighborhood, not far from Lulú’s store. Andrés asked the landlord to make one of the three rooms that faced the street , and not to wallpaper the space that remained afterward, but to paint it some color. This room would be the bedroom, the office, the dining room for the couple. They would constantly live together there. “People would have put the living room and the study here and then gone to sleep in the worst part of the house,” Andrés said. Lulú regarded these hygienic arrangements as fantasies, crazes; she had a special word for her husband’s extravaganzas . “What an ideological man!” she said. Andrés asked Iturrioz to lend him some money to buy furniture. “How much do you need?” his uncle asked him. “Not much; I want furniture that indicates poverty; I don’t intend to receive anyone. At first, Doña Leonarda wanted to go live with Lulú and Andrés; but Andrés was opposed. “No, no,” said Andrés, “let her go with your sister and Don Prudencio. She’ll be better off. ” “What a hypocrite! It’s just that you don’t love Mama. ” “Oh, of course. Our house must have a different temperature than the street. The mother-in-law would be a cold draft. Let no one come in, not from your family or from mine. ” “Poor Mama! What an idea you have of her!” Lulú would say, laughing. “No; it’s just that we don’t have the same concept of things; she believes that one should live out of doors, and I don’t.” Lulú, after some hesitation, came to an understanding with her old friend and neighbor, Venancia, and took her to her house. She was a very faithful old woman, who was fond of Andrés and Lulú. “If they ask you about me,” Andrés would tell her, “always say I’m not here.” “Well, sir.” Andrés was determined to do well in his new job as a translator. That bright, airy room, where the sun shone in, where he kept his books and papers, made him want to work. He no longer felt the impression of a hunted animal, which had been his norm. In the morning he would take a bath and then start translating. Lulú would return from the shop and Venancia would serve them dinner. “Eat with us,” Andrés would tell him. “No, no. It would have been impossible to convince the old woman that she could sit at the table with her masters. After eating, Andrés would accompany Lulú to the shop and then return to work in his room. Several times he told Lulú that they had enough to live on with what he earned, that they could leave the shop; but she didn’t want to. “Who knows what might happen?” Lulú would say; “you have to save, you have to be prepared just in case.” At night, Lulú still wanted to do some work on the typewriter; but Andrés wouldn’t let her. Andrés was increasingly enamored with his wife, his life, and his home. Now he was amazed at how he hadn’t noticed Lulú’s tidiness, order, and economy before. He worked with increasing gusto. That large room gave him the impression of not being in a house with neighbors and annoying people, but in the countryside, somewhere far away. Andrés did his work with great care and calm. The magazine’s editorial office had lent him several modern scientific dictionaries , and Iturrioz lent him two or three in other languages, which were very useful. After a while, he not only had to do translations, but also original studies, almost always based on data and experiments obtained by foreign researchers. He often remembered what Fermín Ibarra said: about the easy discoveries that emerge effortlessly from previous facts. Why were there no experimenters in Spain, when experimentation, to bear fruit, required nothing more than dedication? Undoubtedly, there was a lack of laboratories and workshops to follow the evolutionary process of a branch of science. there was also a little extra sun, A little ignorance and a good deal of the protection of the Holy Father, which is generally very useful for the soul, but very harmful to science and industry. These ideas, which would have long ago produced indignation and anger, no longer exasperated him. Andrew was feeling so well that he was afraid. Could this peaceful life last? Had he, through experimentation, achieved an existence not only bearable, but pleasant and sensible? His pessimism made him think that the calm would not last. “Something is going to come one day,” he thought, “that will upset this beautiful balance.” He often imagined that in his life there was a window open onto an abyss. Peering through it, vertigo and horror seized his soul. For any reason, for any reason, he feared that this abyss would open again at his feet. For Andrew, all those close to him were enemies; Truly, her mother-in-law, Niní, her husband, the neighbors, and the caretaker all regarded the happy state of their marriage as something offensive to them. “Don’t pay attention to what they tell you,” Andrés advised his wife. “A state of tranquility like ours is an insult to all those people who live in a perpetual tragedy of jealousy, envy, and foolishness. Keep in mind that they must want to poison us. ” “I’ll keep that in mind,” Lulú replied, mocking her husband’s grave recommendation. Some Sunday afternoons, Niní invited her sister to go to the theater. “Andrés, doesn’t he want to come?” Niní asked. “No. He’s working. ” “Your husband is a hedgehog. ” “Well, leave him.” When Lulú returned at night, she would tell her husband what she had seen. Andrés would offer some philosophical reflections that Lulú found very comical. They would have dinner, and after dinner, the two of them would walk for a while. In the summer, they went out almost every day at dusk. After finishing work, Andrés would pick up Lulú from the store, leave the girl at the counter, and go for a run around the Canalillo or the Dehesa de Amaniel. Other nights, they would visit the movie theaters in Chamberí, and Andrés would listen , amused, to Lulú’s comments, which had that naive, lively Madrid charm that bears no resemblance to the stupid, affected vulgarity of the Madrid experts. Lulú surprised Andrés greatly; he would never have guessed that this girl, apparently so bold, could be so profoundly shy. Lulú had an absurd idea of her husband; she considered him a prodigy. One night, when it was getting late, on their way back from the Canalillo, they ran into two unsightly men in a gloomy alley near the abandoned Patriarcal cemetery. It was already dark; A half-fallen lantern, fixed to the cemetery wall, illuminated the path, black with coal dust and open between two walls. One of the men approached them, begging in a somewhat suspicious manner. Andrés replied that he didn’t have a penny and took his house key out of his pocket, which flashed like the barrel of a revolver. The two men didn’t dare attack them, and Lulú and Andrés were able to reach San Bernardo Street without the slightest stumble. “Were you afraid, Lulú?” Andrés asked him. “Yes, but not much. Since I was with you…” “What a mirage,” he thought, “my wife thinks I’m a Hercules.” All of Lulú’s and Andrés’s acquaintances marveled at the harmony of their marriage. “We’ve come to truly love each other,” Andrés said, “because we had no interest in lying.” Chapter 52. AT PEACE. Many months passed, and the peace of their marriage was not disturbed. Andrés was unfamiliar. The way of life, not having to endure the sun, climb stairs, or see misery, gave him an impression of tranquility, of peace. Explaining himself like a philosopher, he would have said that the overall sensation of his body, the cenesthesia, was at that moment passive. Calm, sweet. His physical well-being prepared him for that state of perfection and intellectual balance, which the Epicureans and Greek Stoics called ataraxia, the paradise of the unbelieving. That state of serenity gave him great lucidity and a great deal of method in his work. The synthesis studies he did for the medical journal were very successful. The editor encouraged him to continue along that path. He no longer wanted him to translate, but to do original work for all the issues. Andrés and Lulú never had the slightest quarrel; they understood each other very well. Only in matters of hygiene and diet did she pay little attention to her husband. “Look, don’t eat so much salad,” he would tell her. “Why? I like it. ” “Yes; but that acid isn’t good for you. You’re arthritic like me. ” “Oh, nonsense! ” “It’s not nonsense.” Andrés gave all the money he earned to his wife. “Don’t buy me anything,” he would tell her. “But you need… ” “I don’t.” If you want to buy something, buy something for the house or for yourself. Lulú continued with the little shop; she went back and forth between the workshop and her house, sometimes wearing a mantilla, other times a small hat. Since she had married, she looked better; since she was more outdoors, her complexion was healthier. In addition, her satirical air had softened, and her expression was sweeter. Several times from the balcony, Hurtado saw that some chicken or some old man had come to the house, following his wife. “Look,” Lulú would say to him, “be careful; they’re following you. ” “Yes? ” “Yes; the truth is, you’re getting very pretty. You’re going to make me jealous. ” “Yes, very much so. You already know too well how much I love you,” she would reply. ” When I’m in the shop, I’m always thinking: What will that one do? ” “Leave the shop. ” “No, no. What if we had a son? We have to save. The son!” Andrés didn’t want to talk, or make the slightest allusion to this truly delicate point; it caused him great anxiety. Religion and old morals still weigh heavily on us, he said to himself; one cannot completely cast out the superstitious man who carries the idea of sin in his blood. Many times, when thinking about the future, he was seized by great terror; he felt that the window overlooking the abyss might open a crack. Husband and wife frequently went to visit Iturrioz, and He also often spent time in Andrés’s office. One year soon after they were married, Lulú became somewhat ill; she was distracted, melancholic, worried. “What’s wrong with her? What’s wrong with her?” Andrés asked himself anxiously. That period of sadness passed, but soon returned with renewed intensity; Lulú’s eyes were veiled, and signs of tears were evident on her face. Andrés, worried, made efforts to appear distracted; but there came a time when it was impossible for him to pretend he didn’t notice his wife’s condition. One night he asked her what was wrong, and she, embracing him , timidly confessed what was happening to her. It was what Andrés feared. The sadness of not having a child, the suspicion that her husband didn’t want one, made Lulú weep with tears, her heart swollen with grief. What attitude should one take in the face of such pain? How could one tell this woman, whom he considered a poisoned and rotten product, that she shouldn’t have children? Andrés tried to console her, to explain… It was impossible. Lulú cried, hugged him, kissed him with her face full of tears. “Whatever it is!” Andrés murmured. When Andrés woke up the next day, he no longer had his usual serenity. Two months later, Lulú, her eyes shining, confessed to Andrés that she must be pregnant. There was no doubt about it. Andrés was now living in constant anguish. The window in her life that had opened onto that abyss that had caused her vertigo was once again wide open. The pregnancy brought about a complete change in Lulú; from playful and cheerful, it turned her sad and sentimental. Andrés noticed that she loved him differently now; she had a jealous and irritated affection for him; it was no longer that affectionate and mocking sympathy so sweet; now it was an animal love. Nature was regaining its rights. Andrés, from being a man full of talent and a bit of an ideologist, had become her man. Already in this, Andrés saw the beginning of the tragedy. She wanted him to accompany her, to give her arm, she felt jealous, she supposed he was looking at other women. As the pregnancy progressed, Andrés noticed that his wife’s hysteria was becoming more pronounced. She knew that these nervous disorders occurred in pregnant women, and she didn’t attach any importance to them; but he trembled. Lulú’s mother began to frequent the house, and since she bore ill will toward Andrés, she poisoned all the issues. One of the doctors who collaborated with the magazine, a young man, came several times to see Lulú. According to him, she was feeling well; Her hysterical manifestations were of no importance; they were common among pregnant women. The one who was feeling increasingly worse was Andrés. His brain was under too much tension, and the emotions that anyone could feel in normal life were unbalancing him. “Go on, go out,” the doctor told him. But outside the house, he didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t sleep, and after trying several hypnotics, he decided to take morphine. The anxiety was killing him. The only pleasant moments of his life were when he got to work. He was doing a synthetic study of amines, and he worked with all his might to forget his worries and achieve clarity in his ideas. Chapter 53. HE WAS SOMETHING OF A PRECURSOR. WHEN the pregnancy came to term, Lulú’s belly was excessively enlarged. “Let’s see if I have two,” she would say, laughing. “Don’t say things like that,” Andrés murmured, exasperated and saddened. When Lulú thought the moment was approaching, Hurtado went to call a young doctor, a friend of hers and Iturrioz’s, who was a childbirth specialist. Lulú was very cheerful and very brave. The doctor had advised her to walk, and despite the fact that the pain made her curl up and lean against the furniture, she kept pacing around the room. She spent the whole day like this. The doctor said that first births were always difficult; but Andrés was beginning to suspect that this didn’t look like a normal birth. At night, Lulú’s strength began to fail. Andrés looked at her with tears in his eyes. “My poor Lulú, what you’re suffering,” he said. “I don’t care about the pain,” she replied. “If only the child were alive! ” “It will live, don’t worry!” the doctor would say. “No, no; I have a feeling it won’t.” The night was terrible. Lulú was exhausted. Andrés, sitting in a chair, stared at her stupidly. Sometimes she approached him. “You’re suffering too. Poor thing!” And she caressed his forehead and ran her hand over his face. Andrés, gripped by deadly impatience, consulted the doctor constantly ; this couldn’t be a normal delivery; there must be some difficulty; the narrowness of the pelvis, something. “If this doesn’t work out by dawn,” said the doctor, “we’ll see what to do. ” Suddenly, the doctor called Hurtado. “What’s going on?” he asked. “Get the forceps ready immediately. ” “What happened? ” “The umbilical cord is protruding. The cord is compressed.” No matter how quickly the doctor inserted the two blades of the forceps and performed the extraction, the baby came out dead. He had just died at that moment. “Is he alive?” asked Lulú anxiously. When they didn’t respond, she realized he was dead and fainted . She soon regained consciousness. Delivery had not yet occurred . Lulu’s condition was serious; her uterus had lost tone and was not expelling the placenta. The doctor allowed Lulu to rest. The mother wanted to see the dead child. Andrés, as he picked up the little body from a folded sheet, felt An impression of excruciating pain, and her eyes filled with tears. Lulu began to weep bitterly. “Well, well,” said the doctor, “enough; now we must have energy.” She tried to induce the expulsion of the placenta by means of compression, but she couldn’t. It was clearly attached. She had to extract it by hand. Immediately afterward, she gave the woman in labor an injection of ergotine, but she couldn’t prevent Lulu from hemorrhaging profusely. Lulu remained in a state of extreme weakness; her body didn’t react with the necessary strength. For two days she remained in this state of depression. She was sure she was going to die. “If I feel like dying,” she would say to Andrés, “it’s because of you. What are you going to do, poor thing, without me?” and she would caress his face. Other times it was the child that worried her, and she would say: “My poor son. As strong as he was. Why did he die, my God?” Andrés looked at her with dry eyes. On the morning of the third day, Lulú died. Andrés left the bedroom exhausted. Doña Leonarda and Niní were in the house with her husband. She already looked like a fat woman; he was an old pimp covered in jewelry. Andrés entered the small room where she slept, gave himself a morphine injection, and fell into a deep sleep. He woke up in the middle of the night and jumped out of bed. He approached Lulú’s body, gazed at the dead woman for a long time, and kissed her forehead several times. She had turned white, as if she were made of marble, with an air of serenity and indifference that surprised Andrés. He was absorbed in his contemplation when he heard someone speaking in the office. He recognized Iturrioz’s voice, and that of the doctor; there was another voice, but it was unknown to him. The three of them spoke confidentially. “For me,” said the unknown voice, “these constant examinations performed during births are harmful. I don’t know this case, but who knows?” Perhaps this woman, out in the countryside, without any assistance, would have been saved. Nature has resources that we don’t know about. “I’m not saying no,” replied the doctor who had treated Lulu; “it’s quite possible. ” “It’s a shame!” exclaimed Iturrioz. “This boy was doing so well now ! ” Andrés, hearing what they were saying, felt his soul pierced. He quickly returned to his room and locked himself in. In the morning, at the time of the burial, those who were in the house began to wonder what Andrés was doing. “It doesn’t surprise me at all that he doesn’t get up,” said the doctor, “because he takes morphine. ” “Really?” asked Iturrioz. “Yes.” “Let’s wake him up then,” said Iturrioz. They entered the room. Lying on the bed, very pale, with white lips , was Andrés. “He’s dead!” exclaimed Iturrioz. On the nightstand lay a glass and a bottle of Duquesnel’s crystallized aconitine. Andrés had poisoned himself. Undoubtedly, the rapidity of the poisoning did not cause convulsions or vomiting. Death had come from immediate paralysis of the heart. “He died without pain,” murmured Iturrioz. “This boy didn’t have the strength to live. He was an Epicurean, an aristocrat, although he didn’t believe it. ” “But there was something of a precursor in him,” murmured the other doctor. The Tree of Knowledge is a work that invites reflection on human nature, hopelessness, and suffering. At the end of this story, we are left with the feeling that, in a world full of uncertainty, there is always room for introspection and the search for answers. Thank you for joining us on this literary journey.
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