Felipe Alfau - Chromos

“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.

Don Hilarión remained in the same position for a few moments. Then his eyes opened and he noticed once again the Spanish paper he had been reading. In sudden rage, he crumpled it up into a shapeless ball and hurled it against the walls lined with his law books. Then he sat back, his breath coming in gasps, and his eyes roved over those books. For only a few dollars anybody could be a notario!

He felt an uncontrollable desire to tear those volumes from the shelves where they reposed, to trample them, to smash them. He made an effort to rise and something snapped inside of him sending a sharp pain from his chest along his arms. Everything reeled, everything went dark: “Dolores — Dolores—!” he cried with despair.

Doña Dolores was rushing along the long corridor, looking into every room: “Where are you? Where are you?” She finally reached his room: “Hilarión, what is it, Hilarión?”

Don Hilarión did not answer. He was leaning back in his chair, his head drooping on one shoulder, his arms hanging lifelessly down the sides.

“Hilarión, are you sick? Hilarión, speak! Hilarión—! Vicenta! Come!” she howled.

Don Hilarión was dead.

To try to convey in words the extremes to which Doña Dolores went in displaying her just, unquestionable sorrow, would be impossible and if possible, useless, since no one could conceive of it more than of the stellar light-years in a book of astronomy. One can conceive possibly the feelings of a panhandler who is seeking five cents for a cup of coffee and suddenly finds himself owning the treasures of Ali Baba, then one could raise that to the nth power, but it would do no good. One cannot conceive that, and yet this is but like an orange compared to the earth if one considers the sorrow of Doña Dolores, the full measure of her bereavement.

Even she felt that it was quite impossible to do complete justice to her position, and like a clever actor fearing that a role may lie beyond his dramatizing potentialities, she wisely and conveniently for the surrounding world chose to underact her part. In all her sympathy-acknowledging answers she was sober and introduced simple phrases such as: “No, nothing, my dear. He left us nothing but his good name and the honor of bearing it,” and “Yes, my dear, quite unexpected, but those who live honestly in spite of their poverty are always ready when the moment arrives,” or “That is right, my dear. Death is the common leveler and no amount of money can pave the road to the kingdom of heaven and it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle—” But her expression was a thing to behold and she always ended with the same words: “Ay! They did not baptize me Dolores for nothing!”

But throughout all this Doña Dolores smiled wisely, sadly and to herself, as one who is keeping a secret. She was preparing her great coup, her fitting and masterly stroke. When words failed, it was time for action, and since tears, sobbing, nervous attacks and bellowing could do no justice to the situation, she, Doña Dolores, the champion mourner, would not be caught napping. She would do something, she would do something that would show how she could feel such a thing, something that would break all previous records set by the loudest mourners in this world, something memorable that would put to shame the most rabidly unfortunate characters in history.

Two days after the death of Don Hilarión, Doña Dolores summoned a Spanish undertaker by the name of Zacatecas. They remained a long time closeted in Don Hilarión’s office, where the body lay in state. When they came out, enigmatic phrases were heard:

“You must reconsider the price, Señor Zacatecas. We are poor. He left us nothing but his good name and—”

“I know, madam, but this is a special job and besides, I may get into trouble and the least that could happen would be losing my license. Also remember that you would have had to buy a coffin.”