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THE MOVIES
by
José A. Zorrilla
(Translated by Asa Zatz)
Tuesday, January 7 (1)
This is page one of my diary. I am María del Carmen García González, married, about to have a baby, the doctor doesn’t know if it´s a boy or girl, and the Old Man says you still can´t find out that kind of things so fast these days, the Old Man is my husband, okay, and that´s what I call him, I´m twenty-three and am going to write the story of my life on account of it is very interesting and things have happened to me like in a novel.
I was born in Madrid on October 25, 1950. My father worked on the railroad and when he died they were going to make him a foreman at the warehouse. He was always bringing home presents for me and was very special about them as he carved them himself out of wood, little dolls, baskets, boats, and my mother would say to him, So long as you are spending your time on that and not other things!-mom used to say. My mother was the one who woke me up every morning for school and got me on my way no matter how hot or cold it was. If I made believe I was sick she would put her hand to my forehead and if I didn’t have fever, a couple of good whacks would get me out of bed. Poor mama, so loving with me now and how we laugh when she tells about the things I would do in school! I was a tomboy. I jumped walls, caught tadpoles, had stone fights in empty lots...Imagine! I came home one time with a big bump on the forehead from getting hit with one, but what I told was that I fell down and hit my head on the sidewalk and they believed me and so it was okay. Grandpa says I´m a dummy, more like a hick, let alone a lady from Madrid but mama tells him the stuff now is nothing compared to how I used to drive her wild when I was a kid. She still remembers the time we swiped a slingshot that belonged to Ramón, the leader of the boys. I tried to hit a lamp post with a stone but didn’t know how to aim and broke a window in the egg store! Wow, did I get a licking when I got home!
Not long after, I entered a parochial school. the Saint Teresa Academy for Girls, because I got my Primary Studies Certificate real soon and loved math, I always got good marks, and so I continued school on my scholarship till fourth year but kept on being just as rambunctious. Then, mama said I had to go to work so they put me in secretarial school. I learned stenography and typing and made lots of friends there. I went dancing, always at places where it was free for the girls and had a great time. We had fun getting the boys peeved and sometimes we would let them treat us and then we´d dump them. Once I met a boy by the name of Julian who worked in a Savings Bank. What stuff he would tell me! And he was very serious. We went out often and he talked to me a lot, he wanted something different out of life, had a yen to rise in the world, to better himself, to be somebody, was never satisfied with just anything. Mama said he had a future but I was just a kid and only wanted to have fun, and so we went out for a little while and it was very nice, well, but it wasn’t like with the Old Man who made me fall in love with him like a fool, but the Old Man is different, I married him, wasn’t that something!, with that genius face of his... Who would have foretold it! Now, it seems like he knows everything, and he´s so different and so sure of himself… My best girlfriend, Pilar, the one who came the day before yesterday and we went to the movies, said that it was because he was a student and students learn a lot of things we don´t know about. For instance, lawyers study in the Code, that love doesn’t exist, but the Old Man says that no, of course, he didn’t study law but being a professor in the University he will know that. Well, I call him a know-it-all, he looks like one of those old owls in the films that live in a tree and all the animals come to ask them things and they growl at them but are really very kindhearted and end up telling everything and giving advice.
I met the Old Man in a coffee shop. We were Merche, Paloma, Marta, Pilar, the one who came the day before yesterday and who sells Avon, and me; well, the whole gang. What a ball: all of us laughing, carrying on, me, especially, of course, I was like the team captain and in comes José Luis with Roberto, that friend of his who is such a drip, and they later broke off, and after flirting around a while, they invite us to dance, and we say all or none and, okay, we girls all enter without paying, they too, what nerve! They sneaked in without the doorman noticing, and he stuck with me all afternoon, dancing, telling me stuff that was all Greek to me, I thought he was making fun of me, and when we left he wanted to kiss me. Naturally, I told him to hold off, of course, what did he think I was, Swedish? (2) Because he had been working there, which was what he had told me, and so we began going out and mama got hold of me and told me to watch out, that students only wanted to have fun and the only thing they thought about was A that, and we got along fine. He had a car he named Robustiano and we would go out practically every day, and what stuff happened to us...one time the police stopped us and gave us a ticket because he put his hand on my shoulder and it is against the law to drive like that; another time we ran out of gas and it was ten o´clock at night. I hitched a ride and he stayed, I got home late and caught hell.
I guess mama didn’t like me having a boyfriend. As a matter of fact, she confessed afterwards that she had been keeping check on the calendar to make sure I wasn´t getting late(3). Poor mama, always so worried. And then one day he said to me: How would you like for us to get engaged? For real, eh? For me, out of this world. So, that´s when I got closer to Pilar because he went off to finish his ROTC(4) in Cadiz and me, I stayed at the station crying like a fool. Poor Pilar! She was a lot prettier than me but it seems like she was having very hard luck, because all the fellows didn’t last very long with her. Then, I practically didn’t see her until the other day and then the Old Man finished up his service and came back and when he was hired by the university we got married, because as always he got such high grades that he was hired and started to teach. The wedding was a simple one because the Old Man said that it was no time for..., what word did he use?, pomp, I think it was, well, that getting married with music and candles was a thing of the past and that it wasn’t a question of saving money, what a disappointment for his folks, but to him who always gets his way it didn’t mean a thing. Me, I couldn’t care less. Even if it was a civil wedding,(5) it would be all the same to me, what I cared about was him. Going aboard on our honeymoon was out of the question for it would have meant borrowing even more from his folks. So, we went to Panticosa, a lovely place, because he said that everybody goes to Mallorca and that it wasn’t anything special after all.(6) The owners of the hotel were very nice and we still write to each other. We live in an apartment that´s a doll and that we decorated ourselves but the Old Man who is a stickler says that it´s very small and he doesn’t like the neighborhood much because it´s very new and the people take too much notice of him, but to me it´s wonderful compared to where I used to live. Of course for him it´s different because of his parents´ apartment in Gijón, I was there only one time, but the thing is you get lost, and what carpets and pictures!; I tell him, don´t worry, when you win the Nobel we´ll buy a house like your parents´ but he says it´s a museum and who needs that either but when he gets a professorship, which he will, we will have servants and an apartment that´s bigger and with a swimming pool. It doesn’t matter to me, to tell you the truth, I´d settle for this one. Of course, picking out the curtains was the only thing he left up to me. And that´s how we were living for a year until I was expecting. Sure, this first year, he would say, we had to live like we were courting, and then we would be taking on more responsibilities because it isn’t that he didn’t want children, he has always said that us women were built for it, that we need it to feel complete and that if not we get hysterical, but that it was necessary to wait a little and so we waited and then after the first days passed that were really bad I feel terrific. My mother says that you can never tell about that. That you have to wait and that I have to take care of myself because a pregnancy is a pregnancy. It´s a drag when she calls me but it makes me feel very good. I understand my mother better now and I like to feel that she´s close by. Naturally she couldn’t come to live with us, nor would she want to, well, maybe the last month, of course, I don´t know, we’ll see what the know-it-all thinks. He doesn’t like her much. And that´s the story. I have told everything that has happened to me up to now and I haven´t done anything for a long, long time but write. That´s what´s happening with me for having listened to Pilar. Well, I’ve forgotten the most important part: about the movies and that I went out with Pilar (which is why I am writing this Diary) and about the Christmas present but I’ll put it in tomorrow because it´s very late for me today and at this rate José won´t be getting his supper.
Wednesday, January 9
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Now that I look over what I wrote a few days ago, I realize how much I forgot and how short it all came out on me. It is hard to believe that I had so many things to say! And all out of order besides. For instance, I left out that my father died when I was 15 and that on being left alone in the house I had to go to work. Papa was very big and very strong, with a voice that scared you and a thick mustache, but really bushy. The Old Man says it´s normal that I should have loved him and be reminded of him because women love their fathers and men their mothers according to the psychiatrists and he liked reading that kind of books very much. Well my father in spite of his looking tough and the way he banged on the table with his fists he never laid a hand on me. My mother was the one who spanked me but, for the mischief I did it was normal. Sometimes, I think that since he is so much older and so serious that the Old Man looks something like papa and he always talks to me like I was a little girl, I don´t like it of course, as he says, I´m just spoiled.
After papa died I began working as a secretary because before that mama wanted me to be a salesgirl at El Corte Inglés with a very good salary and I wouldn’t need to go to school but papa wanted me to be a secretary. The mother superior said it was a shame for me to be dropping out, we said a very sad goodbye and I entered secretarial school.
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The director´s name was Don Luis and we called him The Dude because he was such a sloppy dresser. Absolutely wrinkled trousers and always the same corduroy jacket with horrible stains. The kids would be throwing pebbles from the window but he acted like he didn’t see anything. All in all, I didn’t do so bad there. I learned shorthand and typing very well and got a job right away in the bank as secretary to Don Miguel who was a very fine person and not like the bosses in the comics who keep trying to get the secretary to sit on their lap. I learned a lot at the bank and everybody was nice to me, and besides, as I had money and gave it all to my mother, it wasn’t as though she didn’t have enough with her pension but I gave it to her and right away, yes, she would buy me whatever I wanted, that´s a very pleasant time in my life. I used to go out with my girlfriends until met José Luis. Then, when I fell in love it was wonderful. It was like living inside another person because it seemed so incredible that I could be the same person as the one I was before knowing the Old Man. More than anything he taught me the kind of person I was. Very often he would say to me: you are like this and do this because of that. I realized it was true but how did he learn so much? Nobody ever worried about me until then, I didn’t matter to them, that is, of course, mama loved me but it was different, hey, to figure out why I did things seems to me unbelievable, that there should be so much interest! As if I had something special! And then that he always hit the nail on the head.
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I didn’t know what to say, I felt foolish. One time he and his friends were talking about me while I walked ahead of them and they were saying that it was better I didn’t know, that they preferred it that way, but I didn’t like playing dumb all the time in the middle of strange words because acting like a fool is not a very nice thing. And it wasn’t that I´m an idiot. My girlfriends understand me and so does my mama. But him, being such a star, he says he´s just a bookworm and that I´m better off not being one, that one scholar in the family is plenty and bad enough that he was it. That´s for sure, what circles under the poor guy´s eyes because he wanted to get top grades in everything! And the nights without sleep! The same now. Like I say: all that studying, just so he can study more now. Because he hasn’t missed reading a book even for one single day. And all of them full of numbers and letters nobody can understand. José says I should understand because they are in a universal language. Universal I don´t know, but if people like me don´t understand, how universal could it be, I say. But that never comes up. What else could you expect, that´s his job. Of course we never argued about anything either. The only quarrel we had was one day when we agreed to meet at a certain time and I got there pretty early and so I waited quite a while and then left a hair´s breadth (according to him) before the time. He got there on the dot, I wasn’t there anymore, and it was your fault, or was it my fault, a big fuss. My mother told me not to stand my ground, that us women are always the losers, but I put my foot down, insisting he was in the wrong, but we made up right away.
The truth is that the other day we also had a quarrel because he said I don´t know what about my mother, that she was messing up everything or I don´t know what but that now it didn’t matter so much. But one thing yes, he didn’t like me working because just to see other men around me made him feel sick. Me, I am not jealous of him, even though mom keeps telling me that men are all alike, but Grandpa with that solemn face of his, pooh! Of course, when he puts on his specks, he looks real cute.
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At last, I´m going to tell about Pilar who is at the bottom of the whole thing. We weren’t seeing each other for a bunch of years; I couldn’t even find her to invite her to my wedding, she had run away from home, she was always very wild, the kind that´ll be going with one today and another tomorrow; how bad mama took it when José left and I began going out with her! So, well, the bell rings, I was home alone, four o´clock or so, because it was all the same to José if it was vacation time or not, he was always at the Faculty, anyway, so I open the door and it´s an Avon salesgirl and before I could say boo, what do you know, Mari Carmen, what are you doing here? Pilar, what a surprise, what´s with you, tell me all, come in. Okay, so I tell her the works, that I got married, what I was doing, that I was having a baby, what José was like... She told me a bunch of stuff. Holy smoke! She´d been to Barcelona, to Valencia, to Costa del Sol, to San Sebastian. ..! Just like that, reeling it off like it was nothing. And for me who´s practically never been even out of Madrid it was like made up, and more stuff that she told me is not fit for print. What a life she had! Poor Pilar! For me, in spite of all that she knows and has lived through, I feel very sorry for her. Let her not tell me she is happy doing what she does! And living alone the way she lives! She reminded me a little of the girl on the third floor, Ana, the one that lives alone. Anyway, to celebrate she said we should go to a movie, that it was her treat, and that she went a lot. For me to be going out without José didn’t look right but she insisted and I began going out with her! So, I did a quick change, we went out, and what a surprise. She had a Fiat 600, my dear, who would have imagined it, and I would like to have a driver´s license, too, but José says that it is bad when expecting and being a mother comes first.