Bernardo, with an unlimited conviction of his own knowledge, explained to the girl all the work he was doing and how he was going to arrange the laboratory. Whatever he had heard from Roberto he spouted forth to his sweetheart with the most unheard-of impudence. The girl found everything sailing along very nicely; doubtless she foresaw a rosy future.
Manuel, who saw through the swindle that Bernardo was perpetrating, wondered whether it would not be an act of charity to inform the blonde miss that her sweetheart was a good-for-nothing mountebank. But, after all, what business was it of his?
Bernardo now led a grand existence; he loitered, he bought jewelry on the instalment plan, he gambled at the Frontón Central. All he did in the house was issue contradictory orders and get matters into a hopeless tangle. In the meantime his father cooked away in the kitchen, indifferent to everything, and spent the day pounding in the mortar or mincing meat in the chopping bowl.
Manuel would go to bed so exhausted that he fell asleep at once; but one night, when he had not sunk into slumber so soon he heard Bernardo, from the next room, declare:
“I’m going to kill you.”
“Is he going to kill him?” asked the voice of the red-eyed old man.
“Take your time,” replied the son. “You made me lose my place.”
And he began his reading over again, for that was all it was, until he came once more to the sentence, “I’m going to kill you.” On the following nights Bernardo continued his reading, in terrible tones. This, without a doubt, was his sole occupation.
Bernardo was no more worried about things than was his father; all the rest was utterly indifferent in his eyes; he had wheedled the money out of his sweetheart and was now living on it, squandering it as if it were his own. When the camera and other apparatus arrived from Germany, at first he entertained himself by printing positives from plates that Roberto had developed. Soon, however, he wearied of this and did nothing at all.