“You must be grateful for this little luxury, my dears. It has cost your father very trying moments, but do not be common. Poverty is no excuse for bad manners.”
Angie was the first one to make the nefarious discovery. She held up the puff she had opened, under the overhanging lamp, for all to see: “This pastry is bad. Look, it is green inside.”
Doña Dolores looked, they all looked. Vicenta had appeared at the dining-room door and also looked. This was a real crisis and Doña Dolores rose to it:
“Rotten!” she exclaimed in piercing tones. “Even that! Poor people must be given rotten things, because they have no money to buy at the right places—” She was beside herself. “That is too much. We may be poor, but too proud to permit such insolence!” The children’s mouths were already drooping and trembling at the corners. “Take them back immediately, Hilarión!” Angie began to bawl shamelessly, a true Desdemona, and her brother bit his lip and cast his eyes down, a little man in distress. Doña Dolores fell prone upon the table, wiping aside the guilty puff: “Mockery, Hilarión — rotten mockery!” she wailed prostrate by the shock.
Vicenta surveyed the scene in perplexity. Don Hilarión gathered the offending puffs back into their box of shame and left like one walking to his doom, muttering between his teeth: “How long, my Lord, how long?” He returned the pastry, got his money back, and bought himself some cigars instead.
That incident had been one of the high, cherished moments of the Coello family.
“Just when poor Hilarión, happy at having earned some money, wanted to celebrate by giving his children something sweet, which they so seldom have.” Doña Dolores concluded: “I am supposed to dance a fandango for sheer happiness.”
At that moment the doorbell rang. Mr. Robinson had arrived.
Vicenta walked the length of the corridor wiping her hands on her apron and opened the door. Mr. Robinson introduced himself and in that roundabout manner which every salesman considers deceptive and enticing, he hinted at the purpose of his call. Such linguistic subtleties were beyond Vicenta’s neglected knowledge of English and she called her mistress:
“Doña Dolores, please come and see what this man wants.”
Doña Dolores was slightly more successful than her servant and understanding that the man had something good for her husband, she led Mr. Robinson, who had not removed his derby, into her husband’s office: “Hilarión, this gentleman has come to see you.”
Don Hilarión removed his gold-rimmed spectacles and regarded the gentleman. He assumed his most important manner, meanwhile trying to rise unsuccessfully: “Please have a seat, sir. In what can I serve you? Forgive me for not rising, but as you see, this furniture—”
“Don’t bother. It’s perfectly all right,” said Mr. Robinson, squeezing past some furniture and into a chair. “My name is Robinson of the —” he gave the name of some insurance company, and with that he opened his briefcase and spread his subject’s literature before the prospective client, right over the newspaper that the latter was reading. Then in a speech not too short to be unimpressive and not too long to be wearisome, he stated his case, being careful to make himself clear to this foreigner.
Don Hilarión and his wife, who stood in the doorway, listened, the former pompously, the latter politely. Then when Don Hilarión thought naively enough that Mr. Robinson had finished, he cleared his throat and began: “You see, Mr. Robinson, I do not believe in life insurance policies, I—”
The other took ready advantage of Don Hilarión’s halting English to lunge confidently onto well-trod ground: “What do you mean you don’t believe? I don’t care how rich you are. No one can afford to be without this protection. What about your wife, your children? Suppose you die one of these days. If you have the policy I have been speaking of, your wife won’t have the added expense of your funeral, and she will get some money besides—”
“Holy Virgin!” Doña Dolores cried on the verge of a faint. “Listen to what this man is saying. He is talking about your death, and he dares suggest that I profit by it.” Her face had gone from pallor to deep red. “Listen, mister. We may be poor, but we are no ghouls and when anyone dies in this family, God forbid, we shall obtain the money somehow to give them a decent, Christian burial. Listen to him!”
“Please, woman! Let me bear this cross alone,” Don Hilarión said, while Mr. Robinson looked from one to the other endeavoring to make out these foreigners. “Pardon, Mr. Robinson, but as I said before, I do not believe in life insurance. No one can insure his life. One never knows when one will die and therefore there is no use—”
“Listen, brother. You don’t know what you are talking about. If you would let me explain—”
Don Hilarión had succeeded in rising: “I don’t know what I am talking about? Did you say I don’t know what I am talking about?” He smiled a superior smile and deliberately placed his gold-rimmed spectacles upon his nose. “Perhaps you don’t know whom you are talking to, sir. I happen to be a notario. Do you hear? A notario.”
“So what? What’s so wonderful about that? I am a notary also, and I can prove it.”
There was a silence. Doña Dolores approached, Don Hilarión removed his glasses and leaning on his desk scrutinized his visitor, hat and all.
“You are also a notario?”
“Sure! What’s wrong with it? Anybody can be one. All you do is pay a few dollars and you are a notary.”
Don Hilarión staggered and, holding on to the arms of his chair, he slid down into his seat slowly, dejectedly, like one crushed to dust that settles gradually. Another silence followed, a longer one, like the kind that comes after an explosion.
“For a few dollars — anybody — a notario—” he managed to whisper hoarsely.
Doña Dolores precipitated herself forward and reached across the desk, a hand gripping her husband’s shoulder: “Hilarión, Hilarión! Oh my God!”
“What did I do now?” questioned Mr. Robinson, puzzled. These foreigners were too much for him.
“What have you done?” Doña Dolores had turned on him like a lioness: “You have killed him!”
“But madam, I only—”
“Go away, please. Can’t you see that he is ill? Go away!”
“All right, lady.” Mr. Robinson picked up all his papers. “I’ll be back when he is feeling better.” He walked out hurriedly despite the furniture. He had nearly sold his best policy to a man who could die at the slightest provocation.
Doña Dolores was hovering over her fallen husband: “What is it, Hilarión? Speak to me.”
Don Hilarión heaved a sigh that was like lifting a ton of bricks: “Nothing, woman, nothing — I prefer not to speak now,” and then he began to talk. That man usually of so few chosen words began to talk rapidly, carelessly, in a manner his wife had never heard before. He poured out his soul. He spoke of his life, a subject he had always skipped with dignified reticence. He spoke of his hopes and illusions, of his disappointments and subsequent pessimism.
“Forgive me,” he ended. “I have been talking a good deal and one should not burden a woman with one’s troubles, but sometimes a man talks as he swims: to save himself from drowning. Talking is for the soul what motion is for the body. The body moves, does; the soul speaks, explains. I had to talk, but now I have to rest. I feel very tired. You go about your things and let me rest awhile.” And Don Hilarión leaned his head on a hand that also shielded eyes no longer adorned with gold-rimmed spectacles.
“My poor Hilarión! What a blow!” said Doña Dolores, or rather, her lips formed the phrase silently, and silently she left the room, and once in the corridor she walked with more resolution to the kitchen.