Leopoldo Alas (Clarín)
Translated by Juan LePuen
Original title: “Benedictino”
English translation copyright 2012 by Fario
Published at Smashwords by Fario
Don Abel was fifty years old, as was don Joaquín, but his fifty years looked very different from don Abel’s, even though the two of them, the lighthearted don Joaquín and the lifeless don Abel, were good-looking fellows in 1860, inseparable since their youth. Cain and Abel, the people called them, since they always saw them together, up ahead on the roads, both a bit stooped, both in top hat and frock coat, Cain always in front, Abel always behind, never side by side; it was that Abel walked as if he were being dragged along, because he liked walking east, and Cain, out of spite, would lead him west, uphill, for the joy of hearing him cough, according to Abel, who had his own guile. It was that the one who was in the lead usually went on with an impish smile, content with the victory that was always his, and the one walking in the rear made gestures of feeble protest and relative displeasure. Not once, in many years, did they stop quarreling as they set out on their evening outings; neither did it ever occur to them to separate and go each his own way, as Saints Paul and Barnabas did, and to think they were such great friends, and apostles. They didn’t separate because Abel always yielded.
Nor would Cain have consented to a separation, to going for a walk without his friend; but he didn’t yield because he knew Abel would, and for that reason he smiled, not because he liked to hear the other fellow’s cough. No, far from it. In fact, he would often say: “I don’t like the sound of Abel’s cough at all.” He was very fond of him, but there are many kinds of fondness, and Cain was fond of people for himself, and, if possible, to laugh at other people’s failings, especially if they were ridiculous, of if they seemed that way to him. His friend’s lack of will and his scant self-regard really made him laugh—they seemed to him very ridiculous—and he had in them a box full of tools for the comfort of his own person. When some wag saw the two old men, senior and junior officials of the civil government (don Joaquín, always in the lead, the senior official, of course), go by and disappear into the distance between the elms that lined the Galicia road, he would say with a laugh:
“He’s going to kill him today. Today is the fratricide. He’s taking him for a walk and he’s going to hit him with the jawbone of an ass. Don’t you see it? It’s that bulge he’s hiding under his frock coat.”
There was, in fact, a bulge. It generally was the bone of an animal, but it was surrounded by a lot of meat, not that of an ass, and it was always well seasoned. Good stuff. Nearly every evening they would snack like the shepherds of don Quixote, out in the open, licking their fingers, in some empty spot outside of town. Cain usually took the food and Abel the drink, because Abel had a brother-in-law who dealt in wine and spirits, and he gave him drink, and Cain, a sybaritic old bachelor, counted on the skill of his cook. Both of them had a little more than their salaries, although Abel’s was very little more; besides, he needed it more, because he had a wife and three girls, who, at the moment, now that they weren’t as fresh and as pretty as they once were, are called the Misses Public-Sector Litigation by gossips because their father was always talking about public-sector litigation, which he was in love with to the point that he considered the provincial legislators who adjudged these disputes great men. Wagging tongues had it that the nickname had been given the girls by Cain himself, who was, for all that, very fond of them and had given them quite a few pinches. It was their mother he couldn’t stand. She was his natural enemy, his rival, you could say. She had taken half of his Abel from him; she had taken him from the boarding house where he was of much more use to him than the chest of drawers and the night table put together. Now he himself, Cain, had to put away his clothes and pay the laundress’s bill, and if he wanted cigarettes and matches he often had to buy them, since Abel wasn’t at hand in the hours of greatest need.
*
“Hey, Abel! Now that old age is upon us, you envy my lot, my system, my philosophy,” said Joaquín, sitting in the green meadow with a llacón between his legs (a llacón, I think, is a ham).
“I don’t envy any such thing,” said Abel, who, in front of his friend, in the same position, was pulling the sealing wax off of a bottle and cleaning it with a handful of hay.