The Quest | Page 8

the vacation
season had passed, he would resume his studies.
On the day following his arrival the youngster assisted his mother at the
table.
All the borders, except the Baroness and her girl, were seated in the
dining-room, presided over by the landlady with her wrinkle-fretted,
parchment-hued face and its thirty-odd moles.
The dining-room, a long, narrow habitation with a window opening on
the courtyard, communicated with two narrow corridors that switched
off at right angles; facing the window stood a dark walnut sideboard
whose shelves were laden with porcelain, glassware and cups and
glasses in a row. The centre table was so large for such a small room
that when the boarders were seated it scarcely left space for passage at
the ends.
The yellow wall-paper, torn in many spots, displayed, at intervals,
grimy circles from the oil of the lodgers' hair; reclining in their seats
they would rest the back of the chairs and their heads against the wall.
The furniture, the straw chairs, the paintings, the mat full of
holes,--everything in that room was filthy, as 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 Doña Violante, whom the boarders jestingly called now Doña
Violent and now Doña Violated.
Near Doña 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 Doña Casiana without
leaving the slightest trace.
Manuel sat about observing the boarders. It was the day after the
conspiracy; Doña Violante and her daughters were incommunicative
and in ugly humour. Doña 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