The Studio—The Life Led by Roberto Hasting—Alex Monzón Roberto had got out of bed. Dressed in his street clothes, seated before a table heaped with documents, he was writing.
The room was a low-ceiled garret, with a large window that overlooked a patio. The centre of the room was occupied by two clay statues with an inner framework of wire,—two figures of more than natural size, huge and fantastic, both merely sketched, as if the artist had been unable to complete them; they were two giants exhausted by weariness, with small, clean-shaven heads, sunken chests, bulging stomachs and long, simian arms. They seemed crushed by a profound dejection. Before the wide window extended a sofa covered with flowered percaline; on the chairs and upon the floor lay statues half swathed in damp cloths; in one corner stood a box filled with dry bits of scagliola, and in a corner, a tub of clay.
From time to time Roberto would glance at a pocket watch placed upon the table amidst his papers. Then he would get up and pace for a while up and down the room. Through the window he could see tattered, filthy women moving[4] about in the galleries of the houses across the way; up from the street rose a deafening racket of cries from the huckstresses and the peddlers.
Roberto, however, was not at all disturbed by the continuous din, and after a short while would resume his seat and continue writing.
In the meantime Manuel was climbing and descending every stairway in the neighbourhood, in search of Roberto Hasting.
Manuel was inspired with the earnest resolution to change his mode of living; he felt capable now of embracing an energetic determination and carrying it through to the end.
His elder sister, who had just married a fireman, had presented him with a pair of torn trousers that her husband had discarded, an old jacket and a frayed muffler. To these she had added a cap of most absurd shape and colour, a battered derby and a few vague bits of good advice concerning industriousness, which, as everyone knows, is the father of all virtues, just as the horse is the noblest of animals and idleness the mother of all vice.
It is quite possible—almost certain—that Manuel would have preferred to these kindly, vague counsels, this cap of absurd shape and colour, this old jacket, this frayed muffler and the pair of outworn trousers, a tiny sum of money, whether in small change, silver or bills.
Such is youth; it has neither goal nor compass; ever improvident, it imputes greater value to material gifts than to spiritual, unable in its utter ignorance[5] to realize that a coin is spent, a bill is changed, and both may be lost, while a piece of good advice may neither be spent nor changed, nor reduced to small change, possessing furthermore the advantage that without the slightest expenditure or care it lasts forever, without mildewing or deteriorating. Whatever his preferences may have been, Manuel had to be satisfied with what he got.
With this ballast of good advice and bad clothing, unable to detect a gleam of light on his way, Manuel ran over mentally the short list of his acquaintances, and it occurred to him that of them all, Roberto Hasting was the only one likely to help him.
Penetrated with this truth, which to him was of supreme importance, he went off in quest of his friend. At the barracks they had not seen him for some time; Do?a Casiana, the proprietress of the boarding-house, whom Manuel came upon in the street one day, knew nothing of Roberto’s whereabouts, and suggested that perhaps the Superman would be able to tell.
“Does he still live at your place?”
“No. I got tired of his never paying his bills. I don’t know where he lives; but you can always find him at the office of El Mundo, a newspaper over on the Calle de Valverde. There’s a sign on the balcony.”
Manuel set out for a newspaper office on the Calle de Valverde and found it at once. He walked up the steps to the main floor and paused before a door with a large glass pane, on which[6] were depicted two worlds,—the old and the new. There was neither bell nor knocker, so Manuel began to drum with his fingers upon the glass pane, directly upon the area of the new world, and was surprised in this selfsame occupation by the Superman, who had just come from the street.
“What are you doing here?” asked the journalist, eyeing him from top to toe. “Who are you?”
“I’m Manuel, Petra’s son. The woman who worked at the boarding-house. Don’t you remember?”
“Ah, yes!... And what do you want?”
“I’d like you to tell me whether you know where Don Roberto lives. I believe he’s now a writer for the newspapers.”
“And who is Don Roberto?”
“That blonde chap.... The student who was a friend of Don Telmo’s.”
“Oh, that lit’r’y kid?... How should I know?”
“Not even where he works?”
“I think he is an instructor at Fischer’s academy.”
“I don’t know where that academy is.”
“It seems to me it’s on the Plaza de Isabel II,” replied the Superman sullenly, as he opened the glass door with a latch-key and walked inside.
Manuel hunted up the academy. Here an attendant informed him that Roberto lived in the Calle del Espíritu Santo, at number 21 or 23, he[7] could not say exactly which, on a top floor, where there was a sculptor’s studio.
Manuel sought out the Calle del Espíritu Santo; the geography of this section of Madrid was somewhat hazy to him. It took him a little time to locate the street, which at this hour was thronged with people. The market-women, ranged in a row on both sides of the thoroughfare, cried their kidney-beans and their tomatoes at the top of their lungs; the maidservants tripped by in their white aprons with their baskets on their arms; the dry-goods clerks, leaning against the shop-doors, swapped gossip with the pretty cooks; the bakers threaded their way hurriedly through the maze, balancing their baskets upon their heads; and the coming and going of the crowd, the shouting of one and the other, merged into a medley of deafening sound and variegated, picturesque spectacle.
Manuel, elbowing his way through the surging throng and the baskets of tomatoes, asked after Roberto at the houses that had been indicated; the janitresses, however, knew no such fellow, and there was nothing left but to climb to the upper stories and enquire there.
After several ascents he located the sculptor’s studio. At the top of a dark, dirty staircase he stumbled into a passageway where a group of old women were chatting.
“Don Roberto Hasting? A gentleman who lives in a sculptor’s studio?”
“It must be that door over there.”
[8]
Manuel opened the door half way, peered in and discovered Roberto at his writing.
“Hello. Is that you?” greeted Roberto. “What’s up?”
“I came to see you.”
“Me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How are you getting along?”
“I’m at the end of my rope.”
“What do you mean,—end of your rope?”
“Out of work.”
“And your uncle?”
“Oh, it’s some time since I left him.”
“How did that happen?”
Manuel recounted his troubles. Then, seeing that Roberto continued rapidly writing, he grew silent.
“You may go on,” murmured Hasting. “I listen as I write. I have to finish a certain assignment by tomorrow, so I must hurry. But I am listening.”
Manuel, despite the invitation, did not go on with his story. He gazed at the two grotesque, distorted giants that occupied the middle of the studio, and was astounded. Roberto, who noticed Manuel’s stupefaction, asked him, laughing:
“What do you think of it?”
“How should I know. It’s enough to scare anybody. What’s the meaning of those men?”
“The artist calls them The Exploited. He intends them to represent the toilers exhausted by their labour. The theme is hardly apt for Spain.”
[9]
Roberto went on with his writing. Manuel removed his glance from the two huge figures and inspected the room. There was nothing sumptuous about it; it was not even comfortable. It struck Manuel that the student’s affairs were not progressing very favourably.
Roberto cast a hurried glance at his watch, dropped his pen, arose, and strode around the room. His elegant appearance contrasted with the wretched furnishings.
“Who told you where I lived?” he asked.
“Someone over at the academy.”
“And who told you where the academy was?”
“The Superman.”
“Ah! The great Langairi?os.... And tell me: how long have you been out of work?”
“A few days.”
“What do you intend to do?”
“Whatever turns up.”
“And if nothing turns up?”
“I think something will.”
Roberto smiled banteringly.
“How Spanish that is! Waiting for something to turn up. Forever waiting.... But, after all, it’s not your fault. Listen to me. If you can’t find a place where to sleep during the next few days, stay here.”
“Fine. Many thanks. And your inheritance, Don Roberto? How is it coming?”
“Getting along little by little. Within a year you’ll behold me a rich man.”
“I’ll be happy to see the day.”
[10]
“I told you already that I imagined there was a plot on the part of the priests in this affair. Well, that’s exactly how the matter stands. Don Fermín Nú?ez de Letona, the priest, founded ten chaplaincies for relations of his bearing the same name. Knowing this, I inquired about these chaplaincies at the Bishopric; they knew nothing; several times I asked for the baptismal certificate of Don Fermín at Labraz; they told me that no such name appeared there. So, a month ago, in order to clear up the matter, I went to Labraz.”
“You left Madrid?”
“Yes. I spent a thousand pesetas. In the situation I’m now in, you may easily imagine what a thousand pesetas mean to me. But I didn’t mind spending them. It was worth it. I went, as I told you, to Labraz; I saw the baptismal register in the old church and I discovered a gap in the book between the years 1759 and 1760. ‘What’s this?’ I said to myself. I looked; I looked again; there was no sign of a page having been torn out; the number of the folios was all in due order, yet the years did not agree. And do you know what was the matter? One page was glued to the other. Thereupon I proceeded to the Seminary of Pamplona and succeeded in finding a list of the students who attended toward the end of the XVIIIth century. On that list is Don Fermín, who signs himself Nú?ez de Letona, Labraz (Alava). So that Don Fermín’s baptismal certificate is on that pasted page.”
“Then why didn’t you have the page unglued?”
“No. Who can tell what would happen then?[11] I might scare away the game. Let the book stay there. I have sent my script to London; when the letters requisitorial arrive, the Tribunal will name three experts to go to Labraz, and before them in the presence of the Judge and the Notary, the pages will be unglued.”
Roberto, as always when he spoke of his fortune, went into an ecstasy; his imagination opened wonderful vistas of wealth, luxury, marvellous travels. In the midst of his enthusiasm and his illusions, however, the practical man would intrude; he would glance at his watch, at once calm down, and return to his writing.
Manuel arose.
“What? Are you leaving?” asked Roberto.
“Yes. What am I going to do here?”
“If you haven’t the price of lunch, take this peseta. I can’t spare more.”
“And how about you?”
“I eat at one of my pupils’ houses. Listen: if you come here to sleep, let my companion know beforehand. He’ll be here in a moment. He hasn’t got up yet. His name is Alejo Monzón, but they call him Alex.”
“Very good. Yes, sir.”
Manuel breakfasted on bread and cheese and within a short while returned to the studio. A chubby fellow with a thick, black beard, wearing a white smock, with a pipe in his mouth, was modelling a nude Venus in plaster.
“Are you Don Alejo?” Manuel asked him.
“Yes. What do you wish?”
[12]
“I am a friend of Don Roberto’s, and I came to see him today. I told him I was out of work and homeless, and he said I might sleep here.”
“You’ll have to use the sofa,” replied the man in the white smock, “for there’s no other bed.”
“That’s all right, I’m used to it.”
“So! Have you anything special to do?”
“No.”
“Well, suppose you step on to the platform, then; you can serve as my model. Sit down on this box. So. Now rest your head on your hand as if you were thinking of something. Fine. That’s excellent. Look up a bit higher. That’s it.”
The sculptor sat down, with a single blow of his fist smashed the Venus that he had been modelling, and began upon another figure.
Manuel soon grew weary of posing and told Alex, who said that he might rest.
In the middle of the afternoon a group of the sculptor’s friends invaded the garret; two of them rolled up their sleeves and began to heap up clay on a table; one long-haired fellow sat down upon the sofa. Shortly afterward a fresh contingent arrived and they all began to talk at the top of their voices.
They mentioned and discussed a number of things, concerning painting, sculpture, plays. Manuel imagined that they must be important personages.
They had everybody pigeon-holed. So-and-so was admirable; Such-and-such was detestable; A was a genius; B, an imbecile.
[13]
Of a surety they had no use for middle tints and middle terms; they seemed to be the arbiters of opinion,—juries and judges over everything.
At nightfall they prepared to leave.
“Are you going out?” asked the sculptor of Manuel.
“I’ll go out for a moment, just to get supper.”
“All right. Here’s the key. I’ll be back around twelve, and I’ll knock.”
“Very well.”
Manuel ate another meal of bread and cheese and then took a stroll through the streets. After night had fallen he returned to the studio. It was cold up there,—colder than in the street. He groped his way to the sofa, stretched himself out and awaited the sculptor’s return. It was nearly one when Alex knocked at the door and Manuel opened for him.
Alex came back in an ugly mood. He went to his alcove, lighted a candle and began to pace about the room, talking to himself.
“That idiot of a Santiuste,” Manuel heard him mutter, “says that not completing a work of art is a sign of impotence. And he looked at me as he spoke! But why should I pay any attention to what that idiot says?”
Since nobody could gave a satisfactory reply to the sculptor’s query, he continued to measure the length of the room, bewailing in a loud voice the stupidity and the enviousness of his comrades.
Then, his fury abated, he took the candle, brought[14] it close to the group called The Exploited, and examined it for a long time minutely. He saw that Manuel was not asleep, and asked him frankly:
“Have you ever seen anything more colossal than this?”
“It’s a mighty rare thing,” answered Manuel.
“I should say it is!” replied Alex. “It possesses the rareness of all works of genius. I don’t know whether there’s anybody in the world capable of producing the like. Rodin, maybe. H’m.... Who can say? Where do you think I’d place this group?”
“I don’t know.”
“In a desert. On a pedestal of rough, unadorned, squared granite. What an effect it would produce. Hey?”
“I should imagine.”
Alex took Manuel’s astonishment for admiration, so, with the candle in his hand, he went from one statue to another, removing the cloths that covered them and exhibiting them to the boy.
They were horrible, monstrous shapes. Aged hags huddled together with hanging skin and arms that reached almost to their ankles: men that looked like vultures; hunchbacked, deformed children, some with huge heads, others with diminutive, and bodies utterly lacking proportion or harmony. Manuel wondered whether this mysterious fauna might be some jest of Alex’s; but the sculptor spoke most enthusiastically of his work and explained why his figures did not possess the stupid academic correctness[15] so highly lauded by imbeciles. They were all symbols.
After this exhibition of his works Alex sat down in a chair.
“They don’t let me work,” he exclaimed despondently. “And it grieves me. Not on my own account. Don’t imagine that. But for the sake of art. If Alejo Monzón doesn’t triumph, sculpture in Europe will go back a century.”
Manuel could not declare the contrary, so he lay down upon the sofa and went to sleep.
The following day, when Manuel awoke, Roberto was already dressed with finicky care and was at his table, writing.
“Are you up so soon?” asked Manuel, in amazement.
“I’ve got to be up with the dawn,” answered Roberto. “I’m not the kind that waits for things to turn up. The mountain doesn’t come to me, so I go to the mountain. There’s no help for it.”
Manuel did not understand very clearly what Roberto meant with this talk about the mountain; he stretched his limbs and arose from the sofa.
“Get along,” said Roberto. “Go for a coffee and toast.”
Manuel went out and was back in a jiffy. They breakfasted together.
“Do you want anything more?” asked Manuel.
“No, nothing.”
“Don’t you intend to return before night?”
“No.”
[16]
“You have so many things to do?”
“Plenty, I assure you. At about this time, after having invariably translated ten pages, I go to the Calle Serrano to give a lesson in English; from there I take the tram and walk to the end of the Calle de Mendizábal, return to the heart of the town, go into the publishing office and correct the proofs of my translation. I leave at noon, go to my restaurant, eat, take coffee, write my letters to England and at three I’m in Fischer’s Academy. At half past four I go to the Protestant colegio. From six to eight I stroll around, at nine I have supper, at ten I’m in the newspaper office and at midnight in bed.”
“What an awful day’s work! But you must be earning a fortune,” commented Manuel.
“Eighty to ninety duros.”
“And with that income you live here?”
“You have eyes for only the income, not the expenses. Every month I have to send thirty duros to my family, so that my mother and sister can exist. The litigation costs me fifteen to twenty duros per month, and with the rest I manage to get along.”
Manuel contemplated Roberto with profound admiration.
“Why, my boy,” exclaimed Roberto, “there’s no help for it if a fellow is to live. And that’s what you ought to do,—hunt, ask, run around, look high and low. You’ll find something.”
It seemed to Manuel that even were the promise of kingship held out to him, he would be unable to bestir himself so actively, but he kept silence.
He waited for the sculptor to get up and the two[17] exchanged impressions as to life’s difficulties.
“See here. For the present you work for me as a model,” said Alex, “and we’ll manage to find some arrangement that will assure us food.”
“Very well, sir. As you please.”
Alex had credit at the bakery and the grocer’s, and calculated that Manuel’s board would cost him less than a model would ask for services. The two decided to feed upon bread and preserves.
The sculptor was by no means a lazy fellow but he lacked persistence in his work and was not master of his art; he was never able to bring his figures to completion, and noting, as he attacked the details of the modelling, that the defects stood out more prominently than ever, he would leave them unfinished. Then his pride induced in him the belief that the exact modelling of an arm or a leg was an unworthy, decadent labor; in which his friends, who were afflicted with the same impotency of artistic effort, agreed with him.
Manuel troubled himself little with questions of art, but often it occurred to him that the sculptor’s theories, rather than sincere convictions, were screens behind which to conceal his deficiency.
Alejo would make a portrait or a bust, and they would say to him: “It doesn’t look like the subject.” Whereupon he would reply: “That’s a distinctly minor matter.” And in everything he did it was the same.
Manuel grew to like these afternoon reunions in the studio, and he listened attentively to all that Alex’s friends had to say.
[18]
Two or three were sculptors, others painters and writers. Not one of them was known. They spent their time scurrying from one theatre to another, and from café to café, meeting anywhere at all for the pleasure of berating their friends. Outside of this especial theme in which all blended into a perfect harmony, they discussed other matters with peaceful digressions. There was a continuous debating and planning, affirming today, denying tomorrow; poor Manuel, who possessed no basis for judgment, was thrown off the track completely. He could not make out whether they were speaking in jest or in earnest; every moment he heard them shift opinions and it shocked him to see how the selfsame fellow could defend such contradictory ideas.
At times a veiled allusion, a criticism concerning this one or that, would exasperate the entire conclave in so violent a manner that every word quivered with overtones of rage, and beneath the simplest phrases could be detected the pulse of hatred, envy, and mortifying, aggressive malice.
In addition to these young men, almost all of them with venomously sharp tongues, there used to come to the studio two persons who remained tranquil and indifferent amidst the furor of the discussions. One was already somewhat old, serious, thin; his name was Don Servando Arzubiaga. The other, of the same age as Alex, was called Santín. Don Servando, although a man of letters, was devoid of literary vanity, or, if he possessed any, kept it so deep down, so subterraneous, that none could discern it.
[19]
He came to the studio for relaxation; with cigarette between his lips he would listen to the varying opinions, smiling at the exaggerations and joining the conversation with some conciliatory word.
Bernardo Santín, the younger of the indifferent members, did not open his mouth; it was exceedingly difficult for him to understand how men could battle like that over a purely literary or artistic question.
Santín was meagre; his face was evenly formed, his nose thin, his eyes sad, his mustaches blond and his smile insipid. This man spent his life copying paintings in the Museo and making them progressively worse; but ever since he had begun to frequent Alex’s studio he had lost completely the little fondness he had for work.
One of his manias was to talk familiarly to everybody. The third or fourth time he met a person he was already addressing him with the intimate pronoun.
Of course, these gatherings in Alex’s studio were not enough for the bohemians, so that at night they would come together again in the Café de Lisboa. Manuel, without being considered one of them, was tolerated at their meetings, although he was given neither voice nor vote.
And just because he said nothing he paid all the more attention to what he heard.
They were almost all of evil instincts and malicious intent. They felt the necessity of speaking ill one of the other, of insulting one another, of damaging one another’s interests through schemes and treachery, yet at the same time they needed to see[20] one another and exchange talk. They possessed, like woman, the need of complicating life with petty trifles, of living and developing in an atmosphere of gossip and intrigue.
Roberto mingled in their midst, calm and indifferent; he paid no attention to their plans or to their debates.
Manuel seemed to feel that it vexed Roberto to see him so deeply taken up with the bohemian life, and in order to enter into his friend’s good graces, one morning he accompanied Roberto as far as the house where he gave his English lesson. On the way he told him that he had made a number of unsuccessful efforts to find work, and asked what course to pursue further.
“What? I’ve already told you more than once what you have to do,” answered Roberto. “Look, look and keep on looking. Then work your very head off.”
“But suppose I can’t find a place.”
“There’s always a job if you really mean business. But you have to mean it. The first thing you’ve got to learn is to wish with all your might. You may answer that all you want is to vegetate in any old way; but you won’t succeed even in that if you keep hanging around with the loafers who come to this studio. You’ll sink from a mere idler to a shameless tramp.”
“But how about them?...”
“I don’t know whether or not they’ve ever done anything wrong; as you will readily understand, that doesn’t concern me one way or the other. But when[21] a man can’t get a real grasp upon anything, when he lacks will power, heart, lofty sentiments, all ideas of justice and equity, then he’s capable of anything. If these fellows had any exceptional talent, they might be of some use and make a career for themselves. But they haven’t. On the other hand, they’ve lost the moral notions of the bourgeois, the pillars that sustain the life of the ordinary man. They live as men who possess the ailments and the vices of genius, but neither the genius’s talent nor soul; they vegetate in an atmosphere of petty intrigues, of base trivialities. They are incapable of carrying anything to completion. There may be a touch of genius in those monsters of Alex’s, in Santillana’s poetry; I don’t say there isn’t. But that’s not enough. A man must carry out what he’s thought up, what he’s felt, and that takes hard, constant, daily toil. It’s just like an infant at birth, and although that comparison is hackneyed, it is exact; the mother bears it in pain, then feeds it from her own breast and tends it until it grows up sound and strong. These fellows want to create a beautiful work of art at a single stroke and all they do is talk and talk.”
Roberto paused for breath, and continued more gently.
“And at that, they have the advantage of being in touch with things; they know one another, they know the newspaper men, and believe me, my friend, the press today is a brutal power. But no, you can’t get into the newspaper game; you’d require seven or eight years of preparation, hunting up friends[22] and recommendations. And in the meantime, what would you earn a living at?”
“But I don’t want to be one of them. I realize well enough that I’m a common workingman.”
“Workingman! Indeed! I only wish you were. Today you’re nothing more than a loafer who has yet to become a workingman: a fellow like me, like all the rest of us who toil for a living. At present, activity is a genuine effort for you; do something; repeat what you do until activity becomes a habit. Convert your static life into a dynamic one. Don’t you understand? I want to impress upon you the need of will power.”
Manuel stared at Roberto dispiritedly; they each spoke a different language.