Nada

Antonio scolds Andrea for drinking the vegetable broth she was about to throw out. Andrea continues to forsake food for the sake of small luxuries, “eating nothing but my ration of bread, the little loaf I devoured in the morning” (101). She explains, however, that she is used to living this way, and despite her hunger, she feels “a rebirth […] the happiest time in my life” (102) because she feels free, independent, and at home in her friendship with Ena.

The rest of the family is also starving, however. During a scene wherein Juan beats Gloria while her grandmother cries out for them to calm down for the baby’s sake, Andrea observes that all three of them are skeletally thin. Juan throws Gloria in the bathtub and cruelly holds her under cold water with her clothes on.

While Andrea attempts to dry Gloria and warm her up, Gloria defensively repeats, “I’m good, very good.…Even your granny says so. I like to wear a little makeup and have a good time, but chica, that’s natural at my age” (106). She claims that they were fighting because Juan doesn’t want her to see her “sister who’s been like a mother to me.…All because she’s a poor woman and doesn’t put on airs” (106). Gloria bemoans that she shouldn’t have married an aspiring artist, but should have married a laborer.

Juan is angry that Gloria is selling his paintings for too little money, his pride injured since the nude portrait of Gloria only went for ten duros. 

Ena begins to date an intelligent young man named Jaime. They both appear to love one another genuinely, and Andrea observes that their relationship makes Ena happy. Ena has a complex perspective on relationships, however, enjoying the dominance of unequal affection where she can toy with suitors’ feelings:

 My mother knows only one side of me: the joking, mischievous person, which is how she likes to see me. I make everybody in the house laugh at the brash things I say to my suitors.…Everybody except my grandfather, naturally; my grandfather almost had an apoplectic fit this summer when I turned down a respectable and very rich gentleman I’d been flirting with.…Because I like it when men fall in love, you know? I like to look inside them […] Still, for me it’s delicious to have them in my hands, to confuse them with their own snares and to toy with them like a cat with mice (110).

Jaime invites Ena to come to the country with him, and Ena insists that Andrea come along so she can claim to her mother that she spent the day with her friend. They have a wonderful time at the beach and begin to take regular trips as a threesome. Kissing Jaime, Ena delightedly exclaims, “How I love you! […] And you too, darling.…You’re really my sister, Andrea” (111). Ena darkly suggests, however, that there’s someone else she loves equally, and that she can “have a secret even from the two” of them (112).

Despite the depth of their friendship, Ena and Andrea argue over trifles, and they gradually grow distant from one another. Andrea thus seeks out the company of Gerardo, who walks with her around Barcelona: through Montjuich Park, Calle de Cortes, the Exposition gardens, and the Miramar, where they see “the rusted skeletons of ships sunk during the war” (116). Throughout their walk, however, Andrea feels that Gerardo is putting on annoying airs. When they stop and see people eating at a restaurant and Andrea’s hunger is stirred, Gerardo asks “in a contemptuous tone, as if [her] answering in the affirmative would be barbaric, ‘You don’t want anything, do you?’” (116) He thus displays his class privilege and arrogance.

As they walk home, Gerardo kisses Andrea. She finds the kiss disgusting “because of the saliva and heat from his heavy lips” (117). She pushes him away and refuses to go out with him again because she does not love him.

Back at home, Antonia tells her that Ena has been there with Román “all afternoon” (118). Andrea and Ena gaze at each other in strange silence as Ena’s eyes appear “phosphorescent, like a cat’s” (119).

The next day, Ena approaches Andrea at the university and tells her not to come over to her house after school for a while because she has “something going on right now” (120). This prohibition is not only emotionally distressing, but scholastically problematic for Andrea, who frequently uses Ena’s textbooks to study. When Andrea asks Román about the conversation he had with Ena—because “since that day, we stopped being friends”—he refuses to engage with her, saying, “I have nothing to do with silly schoolgirl stories” (122). Andrea notices, however, that he is playing his ode to Xochipilli on the piano.

One afternoon, a “very childish […] small and slim” (123) student named Pons runs into Andrea at the university library. He kindly offers to lend Andrea extra textbooks, and invites her to join a bohemian group of artists, writers, and painters from the university. He leads her to the studio of the group’s leader, Guixols, taking her through a new part of the city and stopping in the church of Santa Maria del Mar, as it is “an example of pure Catalan Gothic […] burned during the war” (124). Noticing Andrea’s happiness in these surroundings, Pons buys her small bunches of flowers from a vendor.

Andrea finds the bohemian atmosphere of Guixols’s studio comfortable because she is amused by the “absolute irresponsibility and careless happiness” (129) of the wealthy young men in the group. She reflects that the work of these young artists is superior to Juan’s. The men are, however, pretentious and condescending to Andrea, asking her to make them coffee and sandwiches. Pons is very concerned about the effect these men have on Andrea and keeps scanning her face for her reaction. 

Gloria thinks Román is trying to marry Ena. Andrea protests that Ena only comes over to listen to his music but appears unsettled by Gloria’s suggestion.

At the university, Andrea approaches Ena and asks about Jaime. Ena confirms that she is no longer dating him, and that she is not finished with her mysterious “business” (131). She asks, however, if Andrea will join her that afternoon.

Ena prefers the company of people like Román and Andrea to the bourgeois members of her family, reveling in their imagined shock at her being friends with such poor people:

 ‘What do you think my father or grandfather would say about you if they knew what you were really like? If they knew, the way I do, that you go without eating and don’t buy the clothes you need so you can have the pleasure of enjoying a millionaire’s delicacies with your friends for three days.…If they knew that you liked wandering around alone at night. That you’ve never known what you want and that you’re always wanting something’ (132).

Ena even muses that she wishes her mother had married someone more “artistic” (132) like Román. She says that she likes people who “see life with eyes different from everyone else’s” (133). Humbled by their conversation, Andrea tells Ena she can “come to the house whenever [she] want[s]” (135).

Andrea comes home to an eerie silence and the unsettling sound of Antonia’s witchlike cackling. Gloria and Juan’s baby is very sick. When Antonia went to the pharmacy for medicine, she couldn’t get credit because “people in the neighborhood know how things are in this house” (136).

Juan leaves at Gloria’s bidding to do a job at a warehouse. As soon as he leaves, Gloria puts on her nicest dress and makeup (implying that she is going to earn money as a prostitute). She leaves the baby with Andrea’s grandmother, and goes to her sister’s house to ask for medicine money.

Unable to control his suspicion that Gloria has gone to her sister’s bar, Juan returns to the apartment early and discovers that she has indeed left. Enraged, he leaves to “bring Gloria back […] drag her by her hair” (140). Andrea’s grandmother orders Andrea to follow him, terrified “he’ll kill” his wife (140).

Andrea follows Juan through poorer and poorer Barcelona neighborhoods until she finds herself in the Barrio Chino: the neighborhood Angustias had warned her never to enter. The sounds and visuals trigger Andrea’s memory of an experience going to a carnival as a very young girl with her mother, hiding behind her mother’s skirt:

 ‘The devil’s glitter’ that Angustias had told me about looked impoverished and gaudy […] The doors of the cabarets with featured attractions seemed like shacks at a fair […] All of that was merely the frame to a nightmare, unreal like everything external to my pursuit (142-43).

Andrea and Juan make their way through “grotesque” bodies (142), the smell of wine, and the sound of discordant music, pausing at a back alley where a drunk man is thrown out of a door. The man falls against Juan, and Juan beats him furiously, roaring and rolling in the mud of the streets. Andrea yells at him and he suddenly recognizes her, saying, “I know very well why I’ve come” (145).

Andrea then follows Juan to the bar owned by Gloria’s sister. The sister confronts Juan, telling him that the only people who want his paintings are rag pickers and that his wife actually earns money by gambling:

 ‘And you can thank God, Joanet, that your wife loves you. With the body she has she could put some good horns on you without all the scars the pobreta goes through just to come here and play cards. So the great gentleman can think he’s a famous painter’ (147).

Gloria is probably earning at least some of that money from prostitution, but Juan is humbled by the revelation that Gloria has worked hard to provide for his family while attempting to preserve his artistic ego.

Gloria then emerges looking tired, possibly because she has been with a John, and asks whether their baby died. Juan shakes his head, bursts into tears, and embraces her until she also begins to cry.

Things appear to be going well with Román’s business—he orders a new suit and casually offers money to Andrea, who refuses without knowing why. When Román notices that Trueno, Antonio’s dog, is gaining weight and consuming precious resources, he threatens to slit its throat. Gloria speculates that Román is buying himself new clothes because he is in love with Ena and taunts Andrea with the idea that Román used to like her. Gloria’s insinuations disgust Andrea.

Outside in the street, Andrea sees an old beggar that Aunt Angustias used to question horribly about his life story. She gives him five cents as a kind of penance for Angustias’s cruelty, but from then on, he always greets her with vaguely religious praises that annoy her. One day, Andrea even gives him an entire packet of almonds she is eating, despite the fact that she is trembling “with unsatisfied hunger” (153).

Pons asks Andrea what she plans to do after school. When she replies, “Nothing, I don’t know…,” he responds, “Wouldn’t you rather get married?” (153). She does not respond despite knowing that a marriage to Pons could improve her material situation.

Andrea runs into Jaime, who asks her to tell Ena that he now understands and has “confidence in her” (154). Andrea is both confused and thrilled by his vagueness.

Jaime drops Andrea off at Guixols’s group, and the group members speak snidely of Jaime, calling him a “spoiled rich kid” (156) even though they, themselves, are all also spoiled and rich. One of the group members, a young man named Iturdiaga, waxes longingly about a beautiful blonde woman he saw at a bar the night before.

After Andrea leaves the studio, she decides to walk, and a few members from the group (including Iturdiaga) accompany her. As they pass Ena’s house, Andrea tells Ena that she saw Jaime and relays his earlier message. Ena thanks her, but Andrea notes with disappointment: “She hadn’t even let me see her eyes” (159).

Iturdiaga recognizes Ena as the blonde “Russian or Norwegian” (157) woman he saw in the bar and asks, “Where was she born?” (159). Andrea replies flatly, “She’s Catalan” (159). Iturdiaga notes that he saw Ena with a man who looked like Andrea’s father and Andrea realizes he is referring to Román.

Andrea discovers bedbugs in her room at the Calle de Aribau apartment. She wears her bathing suit to clean the room. Ironically, she wore the same bathing suit during pleasant, leisurely days with Ena and Jaime on the beach. As she cleans, she wishes she could know the thoughts and activities of Ena and her Uncle Román.

Román sees her cleaning and compares her newfound domestic wifeliness to that of Juan, who is feeding the baby. Román is making an insinuating remark about his marriage to Gloria, who no longer hides her trips to “play cards” for money (163). Juan responds with violent anger, characteristic of the rage he has directed lately toward all members of the household.

At Guixols’s place, Pons continues to overwhelm Andrea with his infatuation. He insistently asks her to come to Saint Peter’s Day at his parents’ home. While Andrea is hesitant to accept Pons’s invitation because she does not love him, she is drawn by the possibility of a romantic dance, which “evoked an exciting dream of evening clothes and gleaming floors, the effect of my first reading of the story Cinderella” (166).

That night, Andrea secretly observes Román attempting to coerce Gloria into sleeping with him. Gloria recalls the night before her wedding to Juan when Román cruelly turned her away from his bedroom in full view of other soldiers, humiliating her and making a mockery of her genuine devotion to him. She reveals that she is the one who denounced him to the authorities, and that she would do it again:

 ‘You made me cry a lot, but I’ve been waiting for this moment.…If you think I’m still interested in you, you’re wrong. If you think I’m desperate because you take that girl up to your room, then you’re even dumber than Juan. I hate you, chico. I’ve hated you since the night you humiliated me, when I forgot about everything because of you.…And do you want to know who denounced you so they’d shoot you? Well it was me! Me! Me! Do you want to know whose fault it was that you were in jail? It was mine. And do you want to know who would denounce you again if she could? Me! Now I’m the one who can spit in your face, and I do’ (169-70).

Andrea worries over what she will tell Ena. Román, meanwhile, locks himself in his room for three days, furiously composing music. The dog Trueno interrupts him, and emerges from Román’s room with “the red mark of a bite” (172) on his ear.

Feeling weighed down by the savage chaos of her household, Andrea looks at the calendar and counts the days until Pons’s party.

Andrea recalls how she was never referred to as “pretty” when she was a “sallow, skinny girl,” imagining the party with Pons as an opportunity to transform herself “into a blond princess” (176). The morning of Pons’s party, Andrea encounters a grim scene of “cockroaches [scurrying]” across empty spaces of “missing furniture” (177). After five days, Román emerges from his room and discovers to his fury that Gloria has sold some of his mother’s valuable pieces to the rag merchant. The grandmother protests, however: “No, child, no. I sold them, they’re mine; I sold them because I needed to, because it’s my right” (177).

Román callously wishes the grandmother would die to free up resources for the rest of them: “so incongruous to hear that unfortunate old woman talk of rights when she was capable of dying of hunger so there’s be more for others, or of cold so the baby would have another blanket in his cradle” (177). On the day Román bit Trueno, Gloria saw Ena running down his stairs “like she was crazy” (178) and hasn’t seen her since.

Andrea feels out of place and poorly dressed next to the elegant women at Pons’s party. In the midst of trivial party conversation, she overhears two wealthy young men discussing profiteering: “But in that case, do you realize how much we can make in the war? Millions, man, millions!” (180). When Andrea expresses her discomfort to Pons, he accuses her of petty jealousy. Andrea decides to leave, much to Pons’s dismay, since it’s clear to both “that from now on we’d only run into each other by accident” (183).

Walking toward home, Andrea is intercepted by Ena’s mother, who has been waiting for Andrea to return to the apartment. Ena’s mother seems eager to talk to her and invites her out for an ice cream.