“Come over here,” he called to his sister and when she came: “ ‘S funny, but doesn’t he remind you of someone, with that mustache and all?”
Angie looked carefully, her head to one side: “That’s right! That portrait in the principal’s office in the school.”
“Doesn’t it though?” They both laughed and then, forgetting all about it, resumed their play right in there.
Doña Dolores, who saw them as she came in from shopping, scolded them that time, but the scene was repeated often later and she minded it less each time and eventually noticed it no more. She was going through that critical age in which women sometimes become slightly stupefied.
Vicenta dusted Don Hilarión regularly like another piece of furniture. Once while thus occupied, she noticed that the pen had fallen from his hand. She tried to replace it but the fingers had contracted or separated and wouldn’t hold it. She tried to press them together and one of them came off in her hand. Vicenta contemplated this minor disaster stoically. She remained undecided with the finger in her hand looking for an adequate place to deposit the relic. At last she dropped it in the wastebasket. When Doña Dolores eventually spotted the missing finger, she simply sighed and said: “That Zacatecas — that Vicenta—!”
More time passed and one day when Doña Dolores had to use the desk, she discovered that her husband was in the way: “Come over, Vicenta, help me with this.”
Together they shoved Don Hilarión and chair and when Doña Dolores finished whatever she had to do at the desk, they forgot to replace the throne and master, and he remained in that position, on the side of the desk, like one applying for something to an invisible provider.
The family moved and lived about that corpse as if it were but an object, one more useless object which Vicenta had to attend to protestingly. One could often see Doña Dolores sitting there writing a letter or one of the children doing homework, with the vigilant, immobile figure next to them, frown, spectacles, mustache, smile, teeth and all.
The third anniversary passed unnoticed and when Doña Dolores remembered, she realized that it would have been an anticlimax to open a door which had been open already for such a long time. Besides, her friends were already completely familiarized with the presence of Don Hilarión. He had been very often included in their visits and two friends left the house once talking like this:
“But how is it that the authorities have not found out about this irregularity? Or if they have found out, why have they done nothing?”
“Well, you know. These foreign families can live in New York in their own colony, completely isolated from the rest of the town, like in an independent state. As long as they do not bother the rest, the city does not bother to find out. The thing remains among the group, but if anyone outside their circle has learned of it, it has been probably discarded as an old Spanish custom.”
This explanation was as good as any, and as for the children, they were entering that age in which they felt ashamed of being connected with anything different from the rest and they did not mention it. Perhaps they did not give it enough importance anymore.
Don Hilarión was still holding together in spots, but on the whole, he looked quite bad and threatened to disintegrate completely at any moment. Every time he was moved, one could feel something snap, crush and roll down to accumulate in the folds of his clothes, in small particles, like crumbled fragments of old cork that sometimes found their way to the floor and had to be swept up.
One day Vicenta said to her mistress: “You know, Doña Dolores? This thing is falling apart, and it is only in the way here. I think we could put it in a trunk and send it down to the basement. Then we will have more room and we certainly need it with all this heavy furniture.”
Doña Dolores pursed her lips and looked her husband up and down: “Yes — I suppose so. The purpose would be the same. I only promised not to let them take him away, and I am a woman of my word, but I suppose he will be better off that way.”
And Don Hilarión, in the collapsible condition he had reached, was easily crammed into a trunk and sent down to the basement.
Time moved on to the melancholy accompaniment of Doña Dolores’s lamentations, seasons followed seasons, and years pursued years with gradual acceleration, and the story might close one day when Mr. Goldstein, the landlord, called on the Coellos, thus saving them from perishing under the ruins of the building which had to be demolished, and incidentally to render them the service of another apartment in another building which he also owned. Mr. Goldstein did not know that day, when disregarding coat and hat he left his office on the other side of Mount Morris Park, that his visit would bring to an end the incidents of which he fortunately had never learned. He walked on one of those splendid New York summer days that last about an hour and was thinking big, generous, humane thoughts. His heart was warm toward his fellow man. That building had developed a weak spot and was unsafe. He might as well tell the tenants to move, since the building had to come down anyway. He wanted to keep a clear conscience.
As he reached the park’s sidewalk, he was nearly run down by a speeding car and one wonders what he thought of worrying about other people’s troubles.
At that moment Doña Dolores was speaking with bitterness to Vicenta: “I suppose I should be happy enough to sing, after all the misery I have known, after all the misfortune that has piled upon my head. I did not want to say anything the other day about the incident of Angustias’s party dress, but the procession. ”
The usual, unavoidable interruption was advancing loudly along the corridor.
Jerry entered the kitchen and suggested in comically deep tones: “What about food, Mama? I have to rush back for the meet.” His voice was changing and his gloom only seemed increased by his puberty.
“It is high time you thought of something else besides playing. If your poor father were alive. ”
The bell rang. Mr. Goldstein had arrived.
The moment he explained the object of his visit, Doña Dolores put her hands to her head. “Ay Dios mio! Vicenta! Listen to what this man says. The house is going to fall down. This is the very dregs in the cup of bitterness which has been my life. Even the house where I live is going to fall on me, all because poor people cannot afford to live in solid buildings. Oh my God, my God, my God! When a person is as unfortunate as I am, she has no reason for living. I may as well die right now. Let’s get out of here this minute!”
The magnanimous offer of Mr. Goldstein to move to another of his houses was accepted as soon as he had reassured Doña Dolores that all his other buildings were sound, solid as a rock, and the preparations for moving were begun at once.
The next day as Doña Dolores stood on the sidewalk and saw the two moving vans drive away packed with their belongings and heavy furniture, she turned exhausted on Vicenta: “Did we forget anything?” she asked feebly.
“I don’t think so, Doña Dolores,” the servant answered through a yawn that nearly turned her inside out.
“Well; it would make no difference anyway. We are too poor to own anything of any value. How tired I am!” She addressed her two children who stood there looking very bored and dutifully sad. “All right then, let’s go.”
The group walked slowly in the direction of the new house.
And the last incident one may accept since one has accepted so many others is that one day after the old unsafe building had been duly demolished and nothing remained but abandoned foundations replete with debris, a tramp was rummaging through and came upon a bundle of dark clothes covered with dirt and dust. He picked it up, shook it and more dust dropped from it, mixing with the other. Having found the clothes acceptable, he walked away still brushing and shaking from them the last traces of dust, without bothering to think whether it was the stuff houses are made of, or the stuff men are made of.