“Gazpacho. Oh Lord! These people continue to live in Spanish territory and to be gradually conquered by the pacific penetration of the refrigerator.”
“It does make fixing the gazpacho more easy with all those ice cubes.”
“Easy, that’s it, easy. Ease is what brings about the downfall of a country.” The Moor collapsed on the chair that had recently played the part of a bull and pointed his shillelagh at Lunarito: “It is little things like that which are dangerous. First a refrigerator — easy. Then flat shoes — easy. Then after that, the vanishing paella and you forget your language, you forget yourself—” The shillelagh fell dejectedly across his knees “—and you are nothing, but then the refrigerator also vanishes and everything comes to nothing.”
Lunarito and the woman called Carmen began to clear the table and carry things back to the kitchen, Lunarito doing most of the work. The fellow with the thick lenses excused himself saying that he was going to see someone who had promised him a job. I watched him go, walking gently on the bias, his head slightly to one side, his back a picture of clandestine humility.
I was still thinking about my experience with him, questioning it as much as its alternative dictated, while his footsteps faded in the corridor, and after an interval, I heard the front door close. Although I did not know it then, that supernatural experience was to be repeated. I looked at Dr. de los Rios. He was pacing calmly back and forth, conversing with the Moor, the personification of peripatetic post-prandial innocence.
The bullfighter, after a soulful look at his trastos on the sideboard, had gone back to his newspaper. That left Bejarano and myself sitting on the large sofa with Garcia who was, of course, closest to the window.
With feline smoothness Garcia reached, and I threatened: “If you read to me, I’ll read to you.”
“Please, gentlemen,” came from Dr. de los Rios, “sheathe your respective literary weapons. I am sure that everything can be settled amicably.”
“Be a good fellow,” Garcia was saying. “This is the end of the first part of my novel and it is almost ready for final correction. I want you to hear it.”
“But you are imposing on Bejarano also. He has just fed you and this is no way to show your gratitude.”
“Nothing of the kind.” Bejarano was politeness itself again: “I like listening to literature.” And immediately he frowned and his face assumed a look of attentive concentration which he must have thought fitting to the circumstances and to his interest in cultural things.
Too full of paella and wine, the world could have come tumbling down without arousing me from that comfortable and lethargic position and while Garcia began, the words of Don Pedro ran through my mind: “Ease, ease — the destruction — your undoing — the vanishing paella—”
One day Trini broke into Julieta’s apartment wildly. Her hat was unintentionally on one side, her face congested and her dyed hair in disorder. She was in a frenzy:
“Is that beautiful husband of yours around?” She crossed the room like a tornado and looked into the next.
“No, he has not been home since yesterday.”
“Of course. Just as I thought. I knew I would miss him. The low dog!”
Julieta looked at her sister-in-law blankly. Nothing seemed to surprise her anymore.
“Do you know what? That chulo, that thief, is carrying on with that French girl, the charming Mademoiselle Gerard who called herself your friend. She and her mother are nothing but rampant, lousy peseteras. Monsieur Gerard, the poor fool, has gone back to France because he could not stand the life they led him. He should have knifed them as a Spaniard would do. And your darling Paco has brought that puta and the Celestina of her mother to live right here in the apartment two flights up.”
There came a rhythmic, rumbling noise. Garcia and I looked at Bejarano, who was fast asleep. Garcia regarded him silently, his mouth tight and drooping at the ends, his eyebrows raised, his forehead wrinkled. Then he expelled his breath with heavy resignation and resumed:
Julieta did not answer. She listened to Trini, who vented her fury in indecent language. The children looked on bewildered, and only then Julieta said:
“Don’t use that language, Trini, before the children.”
Trini left as she had come, like a whirlwind. She ran up the stairs and, with a piece of chalk she must have brought for the purpose, wrote on the door of the French women “Zorras” and departed.
That evening Paco came in and did not touch dinner. He changed clothes whistling all the time and went out without a word.
Julieta heard him ascending the stairs. She waited and listened. Then heard him descend accompanied by a woman’s voice and steps.
Julieta listened until the voices and steps faded and then laughed long. Her laugh was the same silvery laugh but somewhat strident, and the children, seeing her laugh, laughed too. Then she sent them to bed.
That night, when Paco returned late, he found Julieta awaiting him. She wore a bright shawl and a high comb. Her face had a very strange expression.
Paco looked at her quizzically: “What is the matter? Going to a verbena?”
“Look, Paco, look!” She cried with a high, shrill voice: “I am as beautiful as they, more beautiful than all of them. Why don’t you love me?” Her eyes stared and darted straight to him and all around him.
Paco was quite drunk and his sense of values deranged, but through his fog, he felt that something was wrong. He moved toward her: “Come on, Julieta, what is this? Don’t talk so loudly.”
But Julieta continued with rising voice: “It was my fault, Paco. I don’t blame you. I was careless about myself. No man likes a shabby woman. Dear Paco.” She caressed his cheek and he averted her touch as if it were an intended blow. “But now I will take care of myself for you, only for you, to win you back. It was all my fault.” She tried to embrace him and he drew away with annoyance.
“Why, Paco? Why don’t you want me? Is a little love so much to give?” Then she staggered to the bed where she fell crying.
Paco laid a hand on her: “Pull yourself together, Julieta. I am tired and want to sleep.”
She slid off the floor and, on her knees, held his coat: “Don’t treat me like this, Paco. You are killing me. I never thought that I would beg, but you have the upper hand. Nature is on your side. It has made me low. Help me— Oh God! Help me!”
“Come on, Julieta. I am tired.” He began to remove his clothes.
“But how can you do this?” She held on to him.
“Let go, Julieta! I am losing my patience.” He wrenched himself free.
Julieta was deathly pale, her hair undone, the comb had fallen down. She pointed at the ceiling: “But with her yes, with that accursed. ”
Paco’s hand crossed her mouth: “Don’t ever say that about a lady,” he said contemptuously.
Kneeling as she was, Julieta drew back livid as a corpse: “Coward, coward!” she repeated with obsession, her voice rising. “Coward, coward!” she howled.
Paco expelled his breath very slowly, then finished undressing and turned the light out, leaving her kneeling in the darkness, her voice subsiding, still repeating: “Coward, coward!”
What thoughts go through the head of a suicide before the critical moment?
What thoughts swarm in that desperate brain while the preparations are being taken for the climax? Are they fully awake? Do they go through it mechanically, like somnambulists?
What terrible moments to live through, when one knows that one is going to die by one’s own hand! In those last moments, how do they see the day? How do they regard life? Will they look in a mirror and recognize the face of the assassin who is going to murder them? Will they think of their past? Will they remember their childhood?