United States or North Korea ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
But for all of Tona's desperation, in a few weeks she was handing out drinks across the counter while she nursed a white sickly girl baby, a tiny little thing with blue eyes and an over-sized yellow head that looked like a ball of gold. And the years rolled on with nothing further to disturb the monotonous course of life for the family sheltered in the tavern-boat.
She had taken well to heart all the curses she had heard her mother heap on men in her bitterest moments of despair down there in the loneliness and gloom of the tavern-boat. No one had spoken for some time. The fish continued sizzling in the frying-pan. Tonet was still picking disconnected chords from his mandolin.
But the money which penny by penny had been painfully assembled in the wretched store where Rosario had been born, streamed away between the fingers of the spendthrift husband; and the cow was running dry, as the mistress of the tavern-boat observed to her son one day, in a lecture on prodigality. Along with poverty, discord, tears, and finally the flying fist entered Tenet's house.
"Remember me to mother!" he said, as he turned down to the beach, leaving his sister to go on alone along the road toward the tavern-boat. But it was late that night before the influence of that disquieting conversation was lifted from Pascualo's mind. Tonet was at home when he arrived, but did not seem at all embarrassed in his presence. All a lie, of course!
When Rosario, flaming with anger and weeping from sheer despair, would simply have to tell some one of her troubles, she would go off to the tavern-boat, which, like its mistress, was also aging rapidly with the years.
Then, she was afraid, yes, sir, afraid, that her Pascualet, her poor little Rector, would go the way his father went; and as the words hung tremulously upon her lips, she looked off toward the tavern-boat, just visible from the Mayflower's splendid hull, in which that martyr of the sea had met his frightful end.
On walking past the ox-barn they glanced casually at the tavern-boat, blacker and more ramshackle every day. Adiós, mare! They had caught sight of their mother's glossy wrinkly face peering over the counter in front of the opening into the wine store, her head swathed as usual in a white kerchief like a coif.
One thing at a time, Tonet was moving all his belongings from the tavern-boat to the truckman's cabin, as though the girl were foreclosing on his property. And siñá Tona was living more and more by herself. The Rector was always off peseta-hunting, as he said, either fishing, or sometimes shipping on one of the laúds that ran to Torrevieja for salt.
The boy was making money, I'll bet you, and siñá Tona was hurt to the quick that he never brought a cent home any longer, and, indeed, now called at the tavern-boat, and sat a moment or two under the shelter outside, more for appearance's sake than anything else. He was saving his earnings, then! Well, who was keeping the money for him! Dolores!
Pascualet was little Tonet all over again, the frail nervous child he had tended like a nurse-maid in the tavern-boat. No, that was Tonet's boy, no use denying it, the living, visible proof of his dishonor!
Word Of The Day