Felipe Alfau - Chromos

He taunted me: “Are you sure you want me to read?” and I said yes, to go ahead, that I had already grown hardened.

Laughing, he made himself comfortable in my soft chair and was on:

Ruin had fallen suddenly upon the Sandoval family. The summer residence outside Madrid had been sold long ago. Then the creditors descended like vultures upon the jewelry shop to tear it apart. It did not even pay one-tenth of what it owed.

The Sandoval family was in utter misery, but not the metaphoric misery of rich people who come to less, but literal misery of no food, of nothing to turn to.

The day when the crisis took visible shape, they were all in a room upstairs, cringing together like victims of a shipwreck, listening to the noise going on in the shop below.

Ledesma was on the sidewalk looking at people behaving inside and outside of the store with vulgar authority. He beheld the shameful sign in the window. He had rendered his last accounts and then had been shoved aside by the creditors as something worthless.

He was old and he had nowhere to go after that. In a week he would be turned out of his pensión and he would die of hunger. He would not beg for alms. He had no friends and had he had them, he would not use them.

He went upstairs to tell them that there was no more to be done. He found them all in a group. All except Enrique, who had not been living with them for some time. Jorge had one arm about Lolita and she clung to him like a child. Trini sat straight, stiff. She had grown very thin and her hair was streaked white and lent her an ugly, weird aspect. Fernando sat half asleep in a chair.

“Well” said Ledesma, “this is the end.”

Lolita hid her face in her brother’s shoulder. Fernando did not move. Trini said without even looking:

“There is no hope, Ledesma.” She pointed at Fernando. “That man is finished. His brain is gone.”

Fernando looked flatly at Ledesma: “There is nothing I can do about it. No, there is nothing.” And he bent his head and closed his eyes again.

“Listen, Ledesma,” Trini said. “We must move somewhere. We can’t stay here. Even the furniture is going.” She took a pin from her dress: “This is my last jewel and it does not even have a story to go with it, not even a memory to make this a last gesture. Go and sell it so that we can go somewhere.”

Ledesma took the jewel mechanically and left. He returned an hour or so later and handed Trini a few bills. Fernando had opened his eyes and saw him: “Thank you, Ledesma, my good Ledesma.”

Ledesma felt that this was unjust, but why explain? There had been so much injustice! He turned on his heel and left. He knew that he was parting with this family forever and there was no good-bye.

In the street he stopped: “And now what?” he said to himself.

He had dedicated all of his life to them and to the business. There had been no gratitude, only phrases of politeness. The last sentence of Fernando continued to echo in his ear. It had been the only time he had expressed gratitude sincerely, the only time that it had not been deserved. Ledesma was used up. He was but a leftover and he thought that death was inevitable.

“Now I belong to the sewers of the city.”

That last thought stayed with him and all the way, as he walked, he looked at the gutter and the manholes along the way.

He stopped at a corner and looked at the hole under the sidewalk, like a gaping mouth of a hideous, abject monster, the dirty water rushing into its perennial thirst. He looked and then laughed, and his laugh sounded strange to him.

He realized that it was years, countless years since he had laughed, and he walked on.

He stopped in front of a jewelry shop and looked and then saw his reflection in the glass.

He realized that he had not looked at himself for a long time.

“Oh! You are old, very old. Nothing but a bag full of years, of rotten, wasted years.” And then he saw that he was shabby. “Yes, a bag full of holes too, for the years to run out, for the empty years to run out. You are old, too old to hold your own time.”

And he realized that he had not thought of himself for many years, for countless years.

“You are only a piece of dirt for the gutter, to drift through the gutter into the sewers of the city.”

And he walked on looking at the gutter all the time.

In his room he felt he wanted to write a note. He did not know to whom he would address it, but he wanted to write a note. He did not know what he was going to say, but he wanted to write a note.

He took a piece of paper and while he thought, he scribbled on it with a pencil. Then he decided not to write at all, and when he looked at the paper, he saw he had written a name on it. Only one name.

He looked at this name and suddenly his head dropped on his arms and he cried for a long time.

The Sandovals moved to a gloomy ground floor apartment at the end of the Calle Mayor. It had bars on the windows and even in a land where gratings can be so cheerful, those were only bars, cold bars that lent the place the sordid air of a prison. It was dark inside also, very dark.

They scarcely had any furniture there and one or two boxes, in which some of their objects had been moved, remained to contribute to the depressing aspect.

And Fernando had chosen to sit on a box and to look into space. He was in the last period of his ailment and in a state of utter idiocy. He begged for food constantly.

Jorge left the house and did not return until night. Trini and Lolita wandered through that empty house quarreling, insulting one another like two creatures possessed, like two specters of a strange fantasy.

One day Jorge came in and dropped in a chair with exhaustion: “You know? Ledesma committed suicide.”

There was a long silence during which no one looked at the others and no one knew what the others thought, or perhaps knew it too well. They did not ask how it had happened. Possibly they did not want to hear the details. Possibly they were indifferent.

Fernando did not seem to notice and only began to cry for food. Then Jorge said: “Here are five duros I got from a friend so that you can eat something. I ate with him already.”

“Go ahead and get something, Lolita,” said Trini, motioning toward Fernando. “This man is sick and starving.”

Lolita went out and Jorge went with her. Trini stood there looking at them distractedly and then she caressed Fernando’s head.

“I want food, Trini. Just a piece of bread.”

“Yes, dear. You will get it soon. Lolita has gone to get it.”

“Good Lolita, good Lolita.”

Trini scowled and for a moment something indescribable descended upon her.

When Lolita returned, she found Enrique there. He and Trini were talking loudly.

“So you still come and ask for money, when we have been starving. There is Lolita. She has gone to get the first food we will have in thirty-six hours.”

“She went to get food? Where is my share of the money?”

Fernando had stood up and dragged himself to Enrique. He thought he was Ledesma. He had not even recognized him: “Ledesma, my good Ledesma. Do me the last favor. Give me a few centimes for a piece of bread.” Bread as a symbol of food had gotten a terrible hold on his mind: “I am hungry,” and he tried to put his hand in Enrique’s pocket.

Enrique was possessed of an insane fury. He lifted his hand and struck Fernando in the face several times, knocking him down to the floor nearly unconscious.

Lolita dropped her bundle and bent over her father. She looked at Enrique and the whole thing was beyond her comprehension.

Trini had remained there like a statue of stone. Then she said: “Enrique, you are mad. You will be hopelessly mad if you continue the life you have lived, and I, your mother, will stop it. I know it is that accursed vice that is destroying you and those women who will kill men for money, men who pay to be slowly murdered, mentally and physically. Enrique, even if I have to fight from woman to woman, I will save you yet. I will recover my son and you will live to repent and to justify my action. You will not leave us again, you will stay with us, and I will not lose sight of you.” There was an icy coldness in her manner that was fearful: “You struck your father. Here!” She lifted her hand and slapped his face.