McTeague,
a Story of San Francisco, es una
novela de Frank Norris,
publicada por primera vez en 1899. McTeague
cuenta la historia de una pareja y su descenso a la pobreza, violencia y
asesinato como consecuencia de los celos y la ambición.
En vocabulario encontramos bunk-house y explicamos sobre draught
horse.
“McTeague remembered his mother, too, who, with the help of the
Chinaman, cooked for forty miners. She was an overworked slave, fiery and
energetic for all that, filled with the one idea of having her son rise in life
and enter a profession… ”
It was Sunday, and, according to his custom on that day, McTeague
took his dinner at two in the afternoon at the car conductors' coffee-joint on
Polk Street. He had a thick gray soup; heavy, underdone meat, very hot, on a
cold plate; two kinds of vegetables; and a sort of suet pudding, full of strong
butter and sugar. On his way back to his office, one block above, he stopped at
Joe Frenna's saloon and bought a pitcher of steam beer. It was his habit to
leave the pitcher there on his way to dinner.
Once in his office, or, as he called it on his signboard,
"Dental Parlors," he took off his coat and shoes, unbuttoned his
vest, and, having crammed his little stove full of coke, lay back in his
operating chair at the bay window, reading the paper, drinking his beer, and
smoking his huge porcelain pipe while his food digested; crop-full, stupid, and
warm. By and by, filled with steam beer, and overcome by the heat of the room,
the cheap tobacco, and the effects of his heavy meal, he dropped off to sleep.
Late in the afternoon his canary bird, in its gilt cage just over his head,
began to sing. He woke slowly, finished the rest of his beer—very flat and
tasteless by this time—and taking down his concertina from the bookcase, where
in week days it kept the company of seven volumes of "Allen's Practical
Dentist," played upon it some half-dozen very mournful airs.
McTeague looked forward to these Sunday afternoons as a period of
relaxation and enjoyment. He invariably spent them in the same fashion. These
were his only pleasures—to eat, to smoke, to sleep, and to play upon his
concertina.
The six lugubrious airs that he knew, always carried him back to
the time when he was a car-boy at the Big Dipper Mine in Placer County, ten
years before. He remembered the years he had spent there moving the heavy cars
of ore in and out of the tunnel under the direction of his father. For thirteen
days of each fortnight his father was a steady, hard-working shift-boss of the
mine. Every other Sunday he became an irresponsible animal, a beast, a brute,
crazy with alcohol.
McTeague remembered his mother, too, who, with the help of the
Chinaman, cooked for forty miners. She was an overworked slave, fiery and
energetic for all that, filled with the one idea of having her son rise in life
and enter a profession. The chance had come at last when the father died,
corroded with alcohol, collapsing in a few hours. Two or three years later a
travelling dentist visited the mine and put up his tent near the bunk-house. He was more
or less of a charlatan, but he fired Mrs. McTeague's ambition, and young
McTeague went away with him to learn his profession. He had learnt it after a
fashion, mostly by watching the charlatan operate. He had read many of the
necessary books, but he was too hopelessly stupid to get much benefit from
them.Bunk-house
Then one day at San Francisco had come the news of his mother's
death; she had left him some money—not much, but enough to set him up in
business; so he had cut loose from the charlatan and had opened his
"Dental Parlors" on Polk Street, an "accommodation street"
of small shops in the residence quarter of the town. Here he had slowly
collected a clientele of butcher boys, shop girls, drug clerks, and car
conductors. He made but few acquaintances. Polk Street called him the
"Doctor" and spoke of his enormous strength. For McTeague was a young
giant, carrying his huge shock of blond hair six feet three inches from the
ground; moving his immense limbs, heavy with ropes of muscle, slowly,
ponderously. His hands were enormous, red, and covered with a membrane of stiff
yellow hair; they were hard as wooden hammers, strong as vises, the hands of
the old-time car-boy. Often he dispensed with forceps and extracted a
refractory tooth with his thumb and finger. His head was square-cut, angular;
the jaw salient, like that of the carnivora.
McTeague's mind was as his body, heavy, slow to act, sluggish. Yet
there was nothing vicious about the man. Altogether he suggested the draught
horse, immensely strong, stupid, docile, obedient.
When he opened his "Dental Parlors," he felt that his
life was a success, that he could hope for nothing better. In spite of the
name, there was but one room. It was a corner room on the second floor over the
branch post-office, and faced the street. McTeague made it do for a bedroom as
well, sleeping on the big bed-lounge against the wall opposite the window.
There was a washstand behind the screen in the corner where he manufactured his
moulds. In the round bay window were his operating chair, his dental engine,
and the movable rack on which he laid out his instruments. Three chairs, a
bargain at the second-hand store, ranged themselves against the wall with
military precision underneath a steel engraving of the court of Lorenzo de'
Medici, which he had bought because there were a great many figures in it for
the money. Over the bed-lounge hung a rifle manufacturer's advertisement calendar
which he never used. The other ornaments were a small marble-topped centre
table covered with back numbers of "The American System of
Dentistry," a stone pug dog sitting before the little stove, and a
thermometer. A stand of shelves occupied one corner, filled with the seven
volumes of "Allen's Practical Dentist." On the top shelf McTeague
kept his concertina and a bag of bird seed for the canary. The whole place
exhaled a mingled odor of bedding, creosote, and ether… (Paragraphs from
Chapter 1, McTeague, by Frank Norris)
Vocabulario
Bunk-house:
a building providing sleeping quarters on a ranch or in a camp.
Bunk-house:
alojamiento, barracón, casa.
Para saber
A draft horse (US), draught
horse (UK) or dray horse, less often called a
carthorse, work horse or heavy horse, is a large horse bred to be a working
animal doing hard tasks such as plowing and other farm labor. There are a
number of breeds, with varying characteristics, but all share common traits of
strength, patience, and a docile temperament which made them indispensable to
generations of pre-industrial farmers.
De la web
Homestead, Miners´
Working conditions. Horribles condiciones de trabajo
de los mineros.
“Coal mines have long been among the most dangerous mines. There
has been the ever present danger of roof falls, premature detonation of
blasting charges, haulage accidents, methane gas and…”
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Trina demuestra ser una esposa frugal, negándose a
tocar el dinero ganado, que se invierte con su tío. Ella insiste en que deben
vivir del trabajo del marido… McTeague,
resumen
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