Everything is Nice (24 page)

"Oh yes, very famous. I will see you then soon?"

"Perhaps."

Señorita Cordoba had nothing to do but to go back to the table and submit to the stares of Señor Ramirez and the appraising glances of the traveler. Out of exuberance Señor Ramirez decided to focus his attention on his older, eleven-year-old child, Consuelo.

"Now I think it would do you some good if you drank a big glass of beer," he said. "The Germans always give their children beer and look what a fine race of people they are."

"I don't want any beer, thank you, papa."

"You've never tried it so you don't know whether or not you like it." He poured her some beer and put it in front of her but she made no attempt to drink it. "You heard papa say that he wanted you to drink some beer."

"What kind of a crazy idea is this?" asked Señora Ramirez.

"What kind of a crazy girl is that that she won't drink beer?" answered Señor Ramirez.

"Yes, drink, Conseulo," said Señora Ramirez. "What is the matter with you?" She pushed the glass up to her daughter's lips but Consuelo refused to drink, although her mouth was covered with foam. The girl's eyes were beginning to shine. With a sudden jerking of her arm she knocked the glass out of her mother's hand, and the beer flowed over the table. Then she jumped up and down and screamed. Señorita Cordoba turned halfway around in her chair and looked at her bitterly. And partly for this reason, and partly because Consuelo was herself in love with the traveler and certain that the traveler in turn loved Señorita Cordoba, Consuelo lunged toward her and started to scratch Señorita Cordoba's face and to tear her coiffure apart. Violeta, with an icy smile on her face, stuck her leg out in order to trip Conseulo, but in so doing she miscalculated and slid off her chair onto the floor. Consuelo ran from the room, and both the traveler and Señor Ramirez helped Violeta up from the floor. She leaned her head on her hand and cried a little because the incident had so unnerved her. Señor Ramirez ordered a glass of beer for Señorita Cordoba.

"You drink that, Señorita," he said, "and when I am finished eating I will beat my daughter. I promise you that."

"I hope that you will," said Señorita Cordoba.

"Never before," said the English lady, "have I met three such horrid people. The daughter is a real Fury, unable to control herself, the father a child-beater, and the young woman full of revenge, willing to have the child beaten. My digestion is spoiled." She threw her napkin onto the table and left the room.

"Who is that one?" Señor Ramirez asked his wife.

"A tourist who eats here every day."

"She takes everything hard," said the traveler, turning to Señorita Cordoba. "Single women of her age do, you know. In our country we call them old maids."

"What is the difference what she is," said Señorita Cordoba. "To me she is no more than a flea."

"That's right," said Señor Ramirez. "That's right. Most people are fleas—fleas with big stomachs but nothing in their heads."

"But those big stomachs have to be fed," said the traveler, thinking that this was going to be a political discussion. "Or do you believe in letting them eat cake?"

"Cake? I don't care what they eat." The traveler decided not to explain about Marie Antoinette. Señorita Cordoba had composed herself completely by now, and she turned to Señor Ramirez.

"I am Señorita Violeta Cordoba," she said to him, disregarding all traditions of ladylike behavior, for she had always been able to throw tradition to the four winds without being in the least revolutionary. "Thank you for having lifted me from the floor onto my seat."

"And what about me?" said the traveler. "Don't I count in this at all?" Señorita Cordoba nodded to him without smiling. Ramirez stood up and toasted Señorita Cordoba with his beer. "To a beautiful lady," he said, "as beautiful as a red rose." They were speaking together in English.

"A thousand thanks," said Señorita Cordoba quickly. "Let us hope that you mean what you say, and are not just a poet."

"I can be a poet when I want to be, but it is only one of twenty or thirty things that I can do."

Señor Gutierres' hotel was austere but very elegant. The patio around which it was built was very small and almost always very dark. Looking down into it from the third floor, it was hard to distinguish the bushes and the few flower beds. Each bedroom was decorated in order to look as much like the bedroom of a Spanish king or nobleman as possible. The beds were on raised daises and the monogram of the hotel was on each pillow slip. The walls were rough and decorated with crossed sabres and blue or gold banners. The chairs were made of a very dark wood with carved narrow backs and little satin cushions tied to the seats by means of four tassels. Off the patio were two small dining rooms for those guests who preferred not to eat in the presence of strangers, and one large dining room that was public. In the public living room there was a veritable collection of sabres with fancy hilts, and chairs with backs that reached halfway up the wall. It was impossible to see in this room at all during the day, and at night the weak electric lamps left the corners of the room in total darkness.

Señor Gutierres was a gloomy businessman born in Spain who claimed to have noble blood. He was out in the back court, a place to which the guests had no access, wrangling with the cook about a chicken which he was holding by its feet and pinching. He was very thin and had deep circles under his eyes. There were a great many badly made rabbit hutches around and a tremendous chicken coop. He was one of the few people in the country who kept his chickens in a coop. However, there were three large holes in the wiring and the chickens stepped in and out of the coop freely. The courtyard was a mess and it was just beginning to drizzle when Señor Ramirez came out and clapped his friend on the shoulder. "How about coming down to the bar and having a drink with me?" Señor Gutierres nodded and smiled for a second and together they went to the bar, which was underground and smelled very strongly of new wood. The bar stools were made of barrels. Señor Ramirez sat down on one of these and Señor Gutierres dropped the chicken, which he was still holding, onto the floor. The chicken began to strut around the shiny wooden floor, pecking at whatever it saw.

"How do you like my bar now that it is completed?"

"I will like your brandy even better when I have completed a bottle of that."

"Do you like my bar?" Señor Gutierres said again, determined to get an answer out of Señor Ramirez.

"Beautiful."

"I have designed the whole hotel for movie actresses and actors when they are on their vacations. They will be coming down over that highway like flies when it is finished." He looked at Señor Ramirez to see if he was of the same opinion, but his friend was staring hard at the labels on the bottles.

"A lot people on their honeymoons, too. Rich people who like to go far, far away when they get married." He took down a bottle of brandy from the shelf and served himself and Señor Ramirez.

"You don't think much about this new highway. I dream about it by day and by night. You will see a difference in the hotels in this country when it is built. You won't recognize the place you were born in inside of five years. No?"

Señor Gutierres could never get it through his head that Norberto Ramirez was not interested in anything but having a good time and wielding a certain amount of power. He had inherited most of his money and was successful because he had the character of a bully. Señor Gutierres could not imagine that anyone as important and as impressive as Señor Ramirez should not be interested in business. He believed that his friend's disinclination to talk on any subject of interest was merely a ruse, which he had long ago decided to ignore.

"I have built my hotel purposely so soon because later it will not be so cheap. I have already quite a few guests who come here because they know they get good quality. They are all quality people. Everything has to be right for them. It is just as cheap to be right as to be wrong, my friend, you know that, and with a war coming in Europe, all those with quality who used to go to Biarritz will come here. And I am not going to make cheap prices for them. They mustn't pay anything different from what they were paying in Biarritz, otherwise they will say to themselves, Look, what is this? There is something wrong—so cheap, and they will even get to worry that there might be lower-class people in the same hotel. No, they must be taken like sleeping babies from one bed to another, quietly, so they don't wake up. A little Spanish decoration for a change will be all right. But if you notice this hotel is made to remind you more or less of a palace."

One of the Indian servants appeared in the doorway. She looked to be about forty and she was nursing a baby at her breast and smiling. "What do you want, Luz?" asked Señor Gutierres.

"I have come for the chicken, Señor. He must feel very sad for he is estranged from the other chickens, his brothers and his sisters, and the poor little thing cannot find anything to eat here." She started to chase it. The chicken spread its wings and ran as fast as it could around and around the room. The baby started to howl.

"Stop it, stop it!" shouted Señor Gutierres. "You can come and get him later."

"No, wait a minute, man," said Señor Ramirez, climbing down from his stool. "I will get this chicken." He spread his arms out and chased it from corner to corner, making terrible scratches in the wooden floor with the heels of his shoes, to the horror of Señor Gutierres, who began to rub his nose nervously with the back of his hand. Señor Ramirez was quite red in the face by now and beginning to lose his balance. He made a lunge toward the chicken and managed to corner it, but in so doing he fell sideways onto the floor and managed to crush the chicken beneath him.

"Ay," said the servant. "Now it is dead we shall have to cook it for tomorrow night's supper."

"Take it away, for the love of God," said Señor Gutierres, lifting his friend to his feet and handing the bloody chicken to the servant.

"What a shame, what a shame." The servant shook her head and left the room. They had another brandy together and did not bother to clean up the blood and the feathers which stuck both to one side of Señor Ramirez' coat and to the floor.

Señorita Cordoba meanwhile had had enough of waiting around the patio for the problematic return of Señor Ramirez. "My God," she said to herself, "I have no time to lose. I am behaving like a person with not a brain in her head." Besides, it had begun to rain and it was incredibly gloomy sitting there under the eaves, which projected a little bit from the house for the purpose of protecting one from the sun and from the rain. She went into her room, painted her face a bit more, and changed to a short dress. Then she decided to knock on Señora Ramirez' door and by some ruse try to find out where this lady's husband was likely to be. This she did and at first received no answer.

She knocked a little harder. "Come in," said Señora Ramirez in a voice that was caught in her throat. Señorita Cordoba opened the door and saw that Señora Ramirez and the two girls were lying on their beds, in a row. Consuelo's dark eyes showed intense suffering as she rolled them slowly in the direction of the door. Lilina, seeing that it was Señorita Cordoba, pulled her pillow out from behind her head and buried her face beneath it. Señora Ramirez' eyes were swollen with sleep and she looked very much as though nothing would ever interest her again. Señorita Cordoba decided to ignore the mood that was in the room and she went hastily to the foot of Señora Ramirez' bed.

"I thought perhaps that you would be feeling rather badly as a result of this afternoon's events, and I came in to tell you more or less not to brood about it, and to ask you whether or not I could help you with anything."

Señora Ramirez nodded her head, and closed her eyes. Señorita Cordoba was growing impatient. She looked down at Consuelo. "You, young girl." she said, "You should apologize to me." Consuelo shook her head from side to side. "No," she said, "no, you are a very bad woman." She patted her heart.

"Well, Señora Ramirez, your daughter is a maniac. I am a religious woman and I am a very busy woman. That is all that anybody can say of me."

"Certainly," agreed Señora Ramirez, opening her eyes. "That is all anyone can say. And of me they can say that I am a mother of two children, and also a woman with a great many heartaches."

"I suppose you are wondering where your husband is at this very moment."

"No, no," said Señora Ramirez. "He is always outside somewhere."

Señorita Cordoba was exasperated. "But
where
? Where could he be?"

"With Gutierres, drinking."

"Who is Gutierres?"

"He is the owner of a hotel. It is called the Hotel Alhambra. My husband has never taken me to meet him and I shall probably never meet him before the day that I die."

Having gathered the information that she had been seeking, Señorita Cordoba hurriedly took her leave, warning Consuelo at the door that she had better repent shortly. And then she was on her way, with an even and decided gait, like someone who has been sent on an important mission by the head of an organization. She was not a person who envisioned failure often, but only the interminable steps towards success.

When she arrived at the hotel she found a servant in the patio and inquired of her where she could find Señor Gutierres. "He is in the bar," said the servant, leading the way slowly.

"Good evening," said Señorita Cordoba, entering the room. "I hope that I have not interrupted a serious business conversation. Women have a very bad habit of doing this."

"Women have no bad habits," said Señor Ramirez, climbing down from his stool and taking her by the arm a little roughly.

"I got it into my head," said Señorita Cordoba, "that I would like to look at some rooms here."

"I am sure you will take great pleasure in seeing them." Señor Gutierres had bounded to the door in his eagerness, but Señor Ramirez held his hand up in the air.

"Before the rooms," he said, "we are all going to have a drink together to celebrate the arrival of a lady. Champagne for her, Gutierres. Sit down, Señorita."