Donde conocemos a Mr Verloc, su familia, y el negocio de venta de material erótico que posee en su casa. Del original inglés The Secret Agent, de Joseph Conrad.
Encontramos una definición para gas jets y apuntamos las ideas principales más abajo.
Mr Verloc, going out in the morning, left his shop nominally in charge of his brother-in-law. It could be done, because there was very little business at any time, and practically none at all before the evening. Mr Verloc cared but little about his ostensible business. And, moreover, his wife was in charge of his brother-in-law.
The shop was small, and so was the house. It was one of those dirty brick houses which
existed in large quantities before the era of reconstruction dawned upon
London. The shop was a square box of a
place, with the front glazed in small panes.
In the daytime the door remained closed; in the evening it stood
discreetly but suspiciously half closed.
The window contained photographs of more or less
undressed dancing girls; nondescript packages in wrappers like patent
medicines; closed yellow paper envelopes, very fragile, and marked two-and-six
in heavy black figures; a few numbers of ancient French comic publications hung
across a string as if to dry; a dingy blue china bowl, a chest of black wood,
bottles of marking ink, and rubber stamps; a few books, with titles hinting at
impropriety; a few apparently old copies of obscure newspapers, badly printed,
with titles like The Torch, The Gong—rousing titles. And the two gas jets inside the panes were always turned low,
either for economy’s sake or for the sake of the customers.
These customers were either very young men, who hung
about the window for a time before slipping in suddenly; or men of a more
mature age, but looking generally as if they were not in funds. Some of that last kind had the collars of
their overcoats turned right up to their moustaches, and traces of mud on the
bottom of their rear garments, which had the appearance of being much worn and
not very valuable. And the legs inside
them did not, as a general rule, seem of much account either. With their hands plunged deep in the side
pockets of their coats, they dodged in sideways, one shoulder first, as if
afraid to start the bell going.
The bell, hung on the door by means of a curved
ribbon of steel, was difficult to circumvent.
It was hopelessly broken; but of an evening, at the slightest
provocation, it clattered behind the customer with impudent virulence.
It clattered; and at that signal, through the dusty
glass door behind the painted deal counter, Mr Verloc would issue hastily from
the parlour at the back. His eyes were
naturally heavy; he had an air of having wallowed, fully dressed, all day on an
unmade bed. Another man would have felt
such an appearance a distinct disadvantage.
In a commercial transaction of the retail order much depends on the
seller’s engaging and amiable aspect.
But Mr Verloc knew his business, and remained undisturbed by any sort of
æsthetic doubt about his appearance.
With a firm, steady-eyed impudence, which seemed to hold back the threat
of some abominable menace, he would proceed to sell over the counter some
object looking obviously and scandalously not worth the money which passed in
the transaction: a small cardboard box with apparently nothing inside, for
instance, or one of those carefully closed yellow fragile envelopes, or a
soiled volume in paper covers with a promising title. Now and then it happened that one of the
faded, yellow dancing girls would get sold to an amateur, as though she had been
alive and young.Les Pieds Nickeles, 1954
Sometimes it was Mrs Verloc who would appear at the
call of the cracked bell. Winnie Verloc
was a young woman with a full bust, in a tight bodice, and with broad
hips. Her hair was very tidy. Steady-eyed like her husband, she preserved
an air of deep indifference behind the wall of the counter. Then the customer of comparatively tender
years would get suddenly disconcerted at having to deal with a woman, and with
rage in his heart would proffer a request for a bottle of marking ink, retail
value sixpence (price in Verloc’s shop one-and-sixpence), which, once outside,
he would drop silently into the gutter.
The evening visitors—the men with collars turned up
and soft hats rammed down—nodded familiarly to Mrs Verloc, and with a muttered
greeting, lifted up the flap at the end of the counter in order to pass into
the back parlour, which gave access to a passage and to a steep flight of
stairs. The door of the shop was the
only means of entrance to the house in which Mr Verloc carried on his business
of a seller of shady goods, exercised his vocation of a protector of society,
and cultivated his domestic virtues.
These last were pronounced. He
was thoroughly domesticated. Neither his
spiritual, nor his mental, nor his physical needs were of the kind to take him
much abroad. He found at home the ease
of his body and the peace of his conscience, together with Mrs Verloc’s wifely
attentions and Mrs Verloc’s mother’s deferential regard.
Winnie’s mother was a stout, breathless woman, with
a large brown face. She wore a black wig
under a white cap. Her swollen legs
rendered her inactive. She considered
herself to be of French descent, which might have been true; and after a good
many years of married life with a licensed victualler of the more common sort,
she provided for the years of widowhood by letting furnished apartments for
gentlemen near Vauxhall Bridge Road in a square once of some splendour and
still included in the district of Belgravia.
This topographical fact was of some advantage in advertising her rooms;
but the patrons of the worthy widow were not exactly of the fashionable
kind. Such as they were, her daughter
Winnie helped to look after them. Traces
of the French descent which the widow boasted of were apparent in Winnie
too. They were apparent in the extremely
neat and artistic arrangement of her glossy dark hair. Winnie had also other charms: her youth; her
full, rounded form; her clear complexion; the provocation of her vast reserve,
which never went so far as to prevent conversation, carried on on the lodgers’
part with animation, and on hers with an equable amiability. It must be that Mr Verloc was susceptible to
these fascinations. Mr Verloc was an
intermittent patron. He came and went
without any very apparent reason. He
generally arrived in London (like the influenza) from the Continent, only he
arrived unheralded by the Press; and his visitations set in with great
severity. He breakfasted in bed, and
remained self-pitying there with an air of quiet enjoyment till noon every
day—and sometimes even to a later hour.
But when he went out he seemed to experience a great difficulty in
finding his way back to his temporary home in the Belgravian square. He left it late, and returned to it early—as
early as three or four in the morning; and on waking up at ten addressed
Winnie, bringing in the breakfast tray, with jovial, exhausted civility, in the
hoarse, failing tones of a man who had been talking vehemently for many hours
together. His prominent, heavy-lidded
eyes rolled sideways amorously and languidly, the bedclothes were pulled up to
his chin, and his dark smooth moustache covered his thick lips capable of much
honeyed joking.
Nombres
Mr. Verloc
Winnie Verloc
Winnie´s mother
Vauxhall Bridge Road
Belgravia
Vocabulario
Gas jets:
another name for gas burner.
Ideas
principales
Mr. Verloc lived in a small house where he had a
shop. He sold comics, magazines and books of naked women. The shop was opened
in the evenings. The customers entered the shop quickly and did not want
anybody to see them.
Mr Verloc did not care about his appearance. His
wife usually had her hair tidy and was indifferent to the customers. Verloc
lived with his wife, Winnie, his brother-in-law and Winnie´s mother.
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