Prevod

José returned home at nightfall. His heart was heavy: snow was falling within it, just as it was beginning to fall on the roofs and streets, on the trees along the promenades and the granite statues of Spanish kings standing in the square. White flakes of mournful sorrow drifted slowly into the soul of the unemployed carpenter, who was going home with no light, warmth, supper, or hope to bring.

As he climbed the stairs and drew near his dwelling, he felt so disheartened that he sank onto a step, intending to spend what remained of that joyous night there. It was the icy, narrow staircase of a tenement house, where people of means lived on the mezzanine, first, and second floors, while needy artisans lodged on the third and fourth floors and in attics large and small. A gas jet lit the stairs as far as the second floor; above that, the darkness thickened, the air grew black and as foul as the breath of a filthy well. Never had the desolate appearance of the staircase and its landings affected José so deeply. For the first time, he shrank back, afraid to knock at his own door. Such fine news he had to bring!

With his knees drawn up, his elbows planted on them, and his clenched fists pressed against his face, the shivering carpenter went over the sources of his despair and stirred up the bitter sediment of his anger against everything and everyone. A dog's life, damn it, for the man who lived by the sweat of his brow! In summer, onions to eat, because the heat was scorching and the wealthy went away to bathe and cool themselves. At Christmas, onions again, because no one wanted building work done in cold weather, and no amount of money was enough for oak firewood and fur coats. Well, did a carpenter not eat in the dog days? Did he not need charcoal and coal when it froze? The master of the workshop had shaken his head and said, “What can I do, my boy? I can't make curls where there's no hair... Not a single order coming in, for love or money... You know I let three others go before you... But I'm not going to turn off my nephews, my sister's boys... understood? They're all I'm keeping on now... You'll have to find a living somewhere else... Use your wits, that's the thing...” Use his wits! And how was a man to use his wits when all he knew was working wood, and he could find no one who wanted that sort of work?

José had been out of work for a month. What weary days he spent tramping through Madrid in search of employment! In one place they sent him away with pitying words and vague promises; in another, with curt, harsh answers, even with open sarcasm... “Work! There's none for anyone this year...” the masters replied, angry, ill-tempered, or dejected. From every quarter rose the same cry of scarcity and distress; everywhere people lamented the same misfortunes: war, ruin, sickness, unrest, disasters, fear, tightened purse strings... And José went from door to door, begging for work as he might have begged for alms, only to return at night with a sullen face and furrowed brow, answering his wife's unchanging question with an equally unchanging shrug that plainly meant, “No, not yet.”

This run of bad luck had caught them already drained, after a long illness—typhoid fever in their eldest girl, Felisa, who was still convalescent and needed nourishing food; after the purchase of a chest of drawers and two wool mattresses, which had promptly found their way to the pawnshop; after paying three months' overdue rent all at once and hearing from the agent that they would not be allowed to fall behind again, and that at the first lapse they and their belongings would be put straight out into the street... At such a time, a month of idleness meant immediate hunger and a struggle to keep their heads above water for the whole of the coming year. And hunger in a large family! No one can imagine the torment of a man whose duty is to carry food in his beak to the nest of his loved ones, and who must return to it with his beak empty, his feathers wet, his wings drooping... Each time José knocked and entered the attic, the chill of the bare floor tiles and the snow-cold emptiness of the unlit stove took a stronger hold on his spirit; for winter is a terrible ally of hunger, and on an empty stomach the north wind bites a thousand times more fiercely as it slips through the cracks, bearing on its wings the furious cries of cats...

José brooded. No, he could not cross that threshold without bringing those who awaited him inside, hungry and chilled to the bone, if not the sweets and treats proper to Christmas Eve, at least something to clear the shadows from their eyes and hearten their spirits. He remained there in one of those states of dreadful indecision that are true crises of the soul, in which ideas and feelings rooted in habit and tradition founder. José was an honest man, and even in that hour of trial he entertained no criminal intent; his hands would wither before he stretched them out to take another man's property. But his honesty was in some measure instinctive; what was troubled and confused in José was his conscience, which now struggled against his natural instinct for decency and almost condemned it. He would never steal, no, never... But let us see: were those who stole in circumstances like his really as guilty as they seemed? He had no wish to suffer shame, to bear the ugly name of thief; a few hours in prison would cost him his life; he would die of rage and humiliation. Very well; those were his own concerns, refinements of his dignity—and a carpenter could have dignity too. But those who suffered no such scruples and did something desperate, not to indulge their vices but to support their wives and little ones... who knew whether they might be right? Who knew whether they might be better husbands, better fathers? He gave his family nothing but want and tears...

He groaned, dug his fingers into his hair, and, stupefied by bitterness, looked down toward the lighted part of the staircase. There was a great bustle below, doors opening, servants and shop assistants going up and down with parcels, little notes, trays: the last preparations for supper, the nougat arriving from the nougat shop, the great sponge cake sent by the confectioner, the gift from a friend who shared in the family's rejoicing with six bottles of sweet sherry and red pomegranates. Only one door, that of the elderly, devout widow, Doña Amparo, had not opened once. Suddenly there was a clatter, and a swarm of children set upon the bell: they were the lady's nephews and nieces, her only love, her weakness, her darlings... They entered like a flock of birds into a tomb; the house, silent until then, filled with voices, running feet, and laughter. A moment later the maid, a little old woman as pious as her mistress, came out onto the landing and called in a cracked voice:

“Hello, Señor José! Is Señor José there? Come down, I've a job for you...” In moments of despair, any echo of life seems a help, a comfort. A man who shuts his windows to light a brazier of charcoal and suffocate himself hears with tenderness the noises of the street, the strains of a street band, the barking of a stray dog... José started, rose, and, his voice hoarse with emotion, answered as he bounded down the stairs:

“Coming, coming, Señora Baltasara!”... “Come in,” murmured the old woman. “If you've nothing to do, you can put up the Nativity scene for us, because the children have come, and my mistress, well, she dotes on them so...”

“I'll fetch my tools,” answered the carpenter, pale with joy. “No need... We've a hammer and pincers here, and there were nails left over from last year; I keep everything, you see, so I put them away nice and tidy...”

José entered the apartment overrun by children and went into the room where the Nativity figures lay scattered among the boards of the framework on which the scene was to stand. Amid the uproar, the carpenter began to set about his work. With what joy he wielded the hammer, chose a nail, drove it into the wood, and clinched it! What a renewal of his whole being, what vigor and moral strength flowed into him as he grasped the tools of his trade after so long! Piece by piece, board by board, he set and fitted the parts of the platform on which the Nativity scene would display its painted cardboard turrets, its mossy meadows, its simple, roughly fashioned clay figures. The children followed the carpenter's work with interest, missing not a hammer stroke, asking questions, offering opinions, and greeting every advance of the contraption with claps and squeals. Meanwhile, the lady was hanging bronze-and-glass candle sconces on the wall. The servants came and went, busy and contented. Outside it was snowing, but no one remembered that; snow, which deepens the sufferings of poverty, also heightens the pleasant sense of comfort within, of a warm and kindly home. And José fitted and nailed the wood until he had swiftly finished his work, in a kind of rapture, a reaction to the dejection that only moments before had brought him to the brink of utter despair...

When the platform was quite ready, and José had made that final circuit with which a craftsman inspects his work, Doña Amparo, frail and asthmatic, beckoned him to follow her and led him to her sitting room, where she left him alone for a moment. José's eyes rested involuntarily on the furniture and decorations of that room, neither luxurious nor shabby; above all, his attention was caught from the first by an image standing prominently on the console table, lit by a little lamp of fine glass. It was a carved Saint Joseph, a modern sculpture of no artistic merit, though not without a certain feeling; and instead of being shown holding the Child in his arms or by the hand, as was usual, the saint stood at a carpenter's bench, wielding an adze and teaching the attentive, smiling little Jesus the law of work, the supreme law of the world. José stood spellbound. He thought the image was speaking to him; he thought it uttered words of comfort and infinite affection, words he had never heard before. When the lady returned and slipped two five-peseta coins into his hand, the carpenter, instead of thanking her, looked first at his benefactress and then at the image; and the mute eloquence of his eyes was answered by that of the little old woman's, who read as in a book the soul of that unfortunate man, shattered in body and spirit by a month of anxiety and unspeakable bitterness. And Doña Amparo, well accustomed to helping the poor, felt as though she had been struck in the heart: the want she went out to seek, visiting wretched garrets, was there within her own walls, two steps away, silent and ashamed, yet urgent and absolute. She raised her eyes once more to the image of the hardworking Patriarch and, coughing a little, said kindly to the carpenter:

“We'll send supper up to your home now, so that you can celebrate Christmas.”