The Quest | Page 8

if the dust of many years had settled upon the articles and clung to the sweat of several generations of lodgers.
By day the dining-room was dark; by night it was lighted by a flickering kerosene lamp that smudged the ceiling with smoke.
The first time that Manuel, following his mother's instructions, served at table, the landlady, as usual, presided. At her right sat an old gentleman of cadaverous aspect,--a very fastidious personage who conscientiously wiped the glasses and plates with his napkin. By his side this gentleman had a vial and a dropper, and before eating he would drop his medicine into the wine. To the left of the landlady rose the Biscayan, a tall, stout woman of bestial appearance, with a huge nose, thick lips and flaming cheeks; next to this lady, as flat as a toad, was Do?a Violante, whom the boarders jestingly called now Do?a Violent and now Do?a Violated.
Near Do?a Violante were grouped her daughters; then a priest who prattled incessantly, a journalist whom they called the Superman,--a very fair youth, exceedingly thin and exceedingly serious,--the salesmen and the bookkeeper.
Manuel served the soup and all the boarders took it, sipping it with a disagreeable inhalation. Then, according to his mother's orders, the youngster remained standing there. Now followed the beans which, if not for their size then for their hardness might have figured in an artillery park, and one of the boarders permitted himself some pleasantry about the edibleness of so petreous a vegetable; a pleasantry that glided over the impassive countenance of Do?a Casiana without leaving the slightest trace.
Manuel sat about observing the boarders. It was the day after the conspiracy; Do?a Violante and her daughters were incommunicative and in ugly humour. Do?a Violante's inflated face at every moment creased into a frown, and her restless, turbid eyes betrayed deep preoccupation. Celia, the elder of the daughters, annoyed by the priest's jests, began to answer violently, cursing everything human and divine with a desperate, picturesque, raging hatred, which caused loud, universal laughter. Irene, the culprit of the previous night's scandal, a girl of some fifteen or sixteen years with a broad head, large hands and feet, an as yet incompletely developed body and heavy, ungainly movements, spoke scarcely a word and kept her gaze fixed upon her plate.
The meal at an end, the lodgers went off to their various tasks. At night Manuel served supper without dropping a thing or making a single mistake, but in five or six days he was forever doing things wrong.
It is impossible to judge how much of an impression was made upon the boy by the usage and customs of the boarding roost and the species of birds that inhabited it; but they could not have impressed him much. Manuel, while he served at table in the days that followed, had to put up with and endless succession of remarks, jests and practical jokes.
A thousand incidents, comical enough to one who did not have to suffer them, turned up at every step; now they would discover tobacco in the soup, now coal, ashes, and shreds of coloured paper in the water-bottle.
One of the salesmen, who was troubled with his stomach and spent his days gazing at the reflection of his tongue in the mirror, would jump up in fury when one of these jokes was perpetrated, and ask the proprietress to discharge an incompetent booby who committed such atrocities.
Manuel grew accustomed to these manifestations against his humble person, and when they scolded him he retorted with the most bare-faced impudence and indifference.
Soon he learned the life and miracles of every boarder and was ready to talk back in outrageous fashion if they tried his patience.
Do?a Violante and her daughters,--especially the old lady, showed a great liking for the boy. The three women had now been living in the house for several months; they paid little and when they couldn't pay at all, they didn't. But they were easily satisfied. All three occupied an inner room that opened onto the courtyard, whence came a nauseating odour of fermented milk that escaped from the stable of the ground floor.
The hole in which they lived was not large enough to move about in; the room assigned to them by the landlady--in proportion to the size of their rent and the insecurity of the payment--was a dark den occupied by two narrow iron beds, between which, in the little space left, was crammed a cot.
Here slept these gallant dames; by day they scoured all Madrid, and spent their existence making arrangements with money-lenders, pawning articles and taking them out of pawn.
The two young ladies, Celia and Irene, although they were mother and daughter, passed for sisters. Do?a Violante, in her better days, had led the life of a petty courtesan and had succeeded in