Nada

“There was the long, difficult history of their love—I couldn’t remember exactly what it was…perhaps something connected to the loss of a fortune. But in those days the world was optimistic and they loved each other very much. They were the first tenants in this apartment on Calle de Aribau, which was just beginning to take shape then […] I imagined her in the same blue dress, the same charming hat, walking for the first time into the empty apartment that still smelled of paint. I’d like to live here, she must have thought when she saw the empty spaces through the windows. It’s almost in the outskirts, and it’s so quiet! And the house is so clean, so new…” 

In the course of reconciling the differences between her own great expectations of Barcelona and the dilapidated, chaotic reality of her family’s household, Andrea empathizes with the changes her grandmother has faced. Through her imagination of her grandmother’s experience, Andrea suggests how much both the apartment and the landscape of Calle de Aribau have decayed over time (and—more specifically—after the destructive Spanish Civil War). 

“‘Cities, my child, are hell. And in all of Spain no city resembles hell more than Barcelona […] Total prudence in one’s conduct in not enough, for the devil disguises himself in tempting ways.…A young girl in Barcelona must be like a fortress.’” 

Andrea’s Aunt Angustias expresses her concern over Andrea’s desire to wander the city, warning her against specific areas—such as the Barrio Chino—which she associates with sinful behavior. As a strict Catholic, Angustias suggests that wandering through areas of ill-repute will damage Andrea’s reputation and thus bring scrutiny toward her household. Angustias’s controlling authoritarian rhetoric echoes Falangism: a political ideology espoused by the semi-Fascist national Catholic regime of Francisco Franco. Phrases such as “the devil disguises himself in tempting ways” (15) also suggest that Aunt Angustias is no stranger to the sinful behavior she professes to abhor and that she herself wears a “disguise”. 

 “Juan painted laboriously and without talent, attempting to reproduce, brush stroke by brush stroke, that slender, elastic body […] What appeared on the canvas was a cardboard doll as stupid as the expression on Gloria’s face whenever she heard any conversation between Román and me. Gloria, in front of us, without her shabby dress, looked incredibly beautiful and white in the midst of all that ugliness, like a miracle of God […] A subtle, diluted intelligence along the warm surface of her perfect skin. Something that never shone in her eyes. This call of the spirit that attracts us in exceptional people, in works of art.” 

Andrea’s observations contradict her Aunt Angustias’s harsh words decrying Gloria as a sinful and unintelligent woman unworthy of marriage to her brother, a supposed “gentleman” and an artist. Juan is far from a gentleman or an artist, and his crude painting skills fail to match Gloria’s pure beauty, which, far from appearing sinful to Andrea, seems “like a miracle of God” (25). Furthermore, this passage suggests that there is more to Gloria—and to Gloria’s relationship with Román—than one can readily observe on her “shabby” (25) surface. As the reader later learns, Gloria in fact has a long history with Román which colors her behavior toward both him and Juan, and which generates tension between the two men. 

“‘I like things […] Downstairs they don’t know how to treat them. It seems the air is always filled with shouting…and the things are responsible for that, they’re asphyxiated, grief-stricken, heavy with sadness. As for the rest of it, don’t make up any novels about it: Our arguments and shouting don’t have a cause, and they don’t lead to any conclusion.…What have you begun to imagine about us?’” 

Upon visiting her Uncle Román’s room in an upstairs alcove removed from the rest of the apartment, Andrea discovers a comfortable haven of beautiful, well-tended furniture and instruments. Román explains his belief that much of the family’s sadness originates from their mistreatment of “things,” and their similar mistreatment of the histories, memories, and emotions attached to “things,” especially the many valuable items that belong to Andrea’s grandmother. Román also hints at his longing for Andrea’s attention and fascination. 

“So many useless days! Days filled with stories, too many troubled stories. Incomplete stories, barely started and already swollen like an old piece of wood left outdoors. Stories too dark for me. Their smell, the rotting smell of my house, caused a kind of nausea in me.…And yet they had become the only interest in my life.” 

 Andrea’s outburst develops the theme of “nothing” via Andrea’s sensation of “useless days” and “incomplete stories” (31): troubled stories from which no meaning can be derived. As she sits with her grandmother, listening to Gloria tell stories of how she met Juan during the war and came to live in the household, Andrea is overwhelmed to the point of literal illness by the cloying, “rotting” emotional history and a sense of nothingness. As Andrea foreshadows with the line, “they had become the only interest in my life,” this disturbing dual feeling of both too much meaning and no meaning at all is a thematic motif throughout Nada. 

“That night I had a very clear dream in which an old, obsessive image repeated: Gloria, leaning on Juan’s shoulder and crying.…Gradually, Juan underwent curious transformations. I saw him enormous and dark, with the enigmatic features of the god Xochipilli. Gloria’s face grew animated and began to revive; Xochipilli was smiling, too. Suddenly I recognized his smile: It was the white, somewhat savage smile of Román.” 

This dream follows a moment of connection between Andrea and her Uncle Román wherein he plays her a piano piece dedicated to the Aztec god of art, Xochipilli. In this song, Andrea recognizes her uncle’s genuine musical talent, but Román sadly remarks that “Poor Xochipilli is in decline” (40), suggesting that Román himself has decayed with age. Andrea’s Xochipilli dream serves to further complicate her image of Román and his connection to all the members of his household—he is simultaneously “dark,” “white,” and “savagely smiling” (41) in this dream-image. The dream also suggests Andrea’s growing subconscious awareness of the love triangle between Juan, Gloria, and Román. 

“‘Look, I wanted to talk to you, but it’s impossible. You’re a baby… ‘what’s good,’ ‘what’s bad,’ ‘what I feel like doing’…that’s what you have in your head, as clearly as a child. Sometimes I think you resemble me, that you understand me, that you understand the music of this house.…The first time I played the violin for you, I was trembling inside with hope, with a terrible joy when your eyes changed with the music.…I thought, little one, that you’d understand me even without words, that you were my audience, the audience I needed.…And you haven’t even realized that I have to know—that in fact I do know—everything, absolutely everything, that goes on downstairs […] Haven’t you realized that I manage all of them, that I rearrange their nerves, their thoughts?’” 

After Andrea develops a ritual of visiting her uncle upstairs and listening to him play music in the evening, Román accuses her of disappointing his initial hopes for her unique understanding. This sudden outburst suggests hidden feelings toward Andrea as a like-minded “audience”—and possibly as his secret daughter, or even as his prospective romantic interest, as Gloria later suggests. Román’s obsession with Andrea is also an extension of his obsession with all members of the household downstairs and his strange, manipulative attempts to “rearrange their nerves, their thoughts” (70). Román is a foil for the equally but very differently controlling Angustias, though both hypocritically break their own rules with their black market activities.

“‘For two weeks I’ve been asking God for your death…or for the miracle of your salvation. I’m going to leave you alone in a house that is no longer what it was […] Your grandmother was a saint, Andrea. In my youth, because of her, I lived in the purest of dreams, but now she’s gone crazy with age. And the hardships of the war that she apparently tolerated so well have made her crazy.’” 

After Aunt Angustias decides to leave the Calle de Aribau apartment and join a convent, she gives one final word of warning to Andrea, displaying her complicated feelings of identification and repulsion toward her niece. This horrifying, controlling good-bye where she expresses longing for Andrea’s death belies Angustias’s seemingly sympathetic and kind nature. It also further develops Andrea’s grandmother as a selfless, saint-like figure: a woman who longs to hold her family together but cannot overcome the extent to which the war has traumatized all of them. 

“‘Bah! […] I’m glad that Angustias is leaving, because right now she’s a living piece of the past that interferes with the progress of things.…My things. She bothers all of us, she reminds all of us that we aren’t mature, rounded, settled people like her, but blindly rushing waters pounding at the earth the best we can in order to erupt where least expected…’” 

Román elegantly summarizes the role Angustias plays within the household. Though she is oppressive and unyielding in her strict values, she provides a sense of order and a complex, uncomfortable awareness of the family’s history (see the above quote from page 80). Angustias’s obsession with “the past” prevents the family from moving forward and establishing “mature, rounded” identities. Román’s violent words—“blindly rushing waters pounding at the earth the best we can in order to erupt where least expected”—also foreshadow the chaos that will reign in Angustias’s absence when Juan and Román assume control. 

“‘You’re a wretch! Do you hear me? You didn’t marry him because your father decided to tell you that a shopkeeper’s son wasn’t good enough for you.…That’s whyyyy! And when he came back from America, married and rich, you amused yourself with him, you’ve been stealing him from his wife for twenty years…and now you don’t have the courage to go away with him because you think all of Calle de Aribau and all of Barcelona cares what you do.…And you have contempt for my wife! You evil woman! You and your saint’s halo!’” 

As Angustias leaves on a train for the convent, Juan shouts after her, drawing the attention of everyone around him. He thus ensures that all the people nearby are aware of Angustias’s long-running hypocrisy, which is obviously mortifying for Angustias, who is deeply concerned with her reputation among the neighbors on Calle de Aribau. The fury of his outburst foreshadows the increased level of violence Juan will direct toward all members of his family (but most especially his wife, Gloria, now that Angustias is no longer there to prevent her from going out and provoking Juan’s rage).

“I thought a rebirth was really beginning for me, that this was the happiest time in my life, since I’d never had a friend with whom I’d been so close, or the magnificent independence I enjoyed so much. I spent the last days of the month eating nothing but my ration of bread, the little loaf I devoured in the morning […] but I was beginning to get used to it, and the proof is that as soon as I received my allowance for March, I spent it exactly in the same way.” 

With the departure of Angustias, the household on Calle de Aribau tightens Andrea’s food allowance. This exclusion from daily meals is on the one hand freeing for Andrea, as it compels her to go out in search of food, fueling her sense of independence and introducing her to “flavors [she’d] never thought of before” (101). On the other hand, Andrea makes irresponsible sacrifices to enjoy luxuries, often feeling faint with hunger and desperately drinking the leftover broth that their cook, Antonia, intends to throw out (100). Worrying after the health of her granddaughter, Andrea’s grandmother eventually begins to leave behind portions of her own meals, forsaking her own comfort and well-being, as she ultimately does for every member of her household. Food and budgeting are strong motifs throughout the book, gesturing toward the tenuous balance between personal pleasures and sacrifices, especially for a once well-off family who appreciates finer things, but struggles to attain them in their state of post-war poverty. 

“‘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.…And what do you think about his not letting me see my own sister? A sister who’s been like a mother to me…All because she’s a poor woman and doesn’t put on airs.…But in her house you eat well.…White bread, chica, and good sausage.…Oh, Andrea! I’d have been better off marrying a worker.’” 

Gloria confides in Andrea about Juan’s increased violence toward her after Angustias’s departure. Frequently, this violence revolves around Gloria’s attempts to sneak out and supposedly visit her sister, though everyone in the household understands that Gloria is actually earning money as a prostitute in a back room of her sister’s bar. Gloria’s constant refrain when defending herself is that she’s “good”—like Andrea’s grandmother, she is a provider who looks out for the material well-being of her family. With her references to eating “well,” Gloria suggests her wholesome motivation for earning money by any means necessary. She also gestures toward the complicated in-between position she finds herself in as a woman married to an aspirational artist—and former “gentleman”—with her expression, “I’d have been better off marrying a worker” (106). Though Barcelona’s middle class has all but disappeared after the Spanish Civil War, and the distance between the extremely poor and the extremely wealthy only continues to widen, formerly middle class families such as Andrea’s have struggled to make the psychological adjustment to meager living. Gloria doesn’t understand this struggle—she comes from a poor family, has frugal, practical habits, and has less stringent expectations for socially appropriate—and “natural”—feminine behavior.  

“‘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.’” 

In this intimate conversation with Andrea, Ena beautifully illustrates the complexity of feminine desire and dating from a young woman’s perspective (a reoccurring theme throughout Nada). This conversation exemplifies the special bond of friendship Ena and Andrea share as women who are connected through common experience, pleasure-seeking, subtle Catalan pride, and—as the book later reveals—Andrea’s Uncle Román. Phrases such as “toy with them like a cat with mice” (110), which amusingly mirror Román’s own rhetoric, also slyly foreshadow the ways in which Andrea will romantically manipulate Román to avenge her mother . 

We went to Miramar and sat on the terrace of the restaurant to look at the Mediterranean, which in the twilight had wine-colored reflections. The huge port seemed small, for we had a bird’s-eye view of it. At the docks the rusted skeletons of ships sunk during the war broke the surface. To our right I made out the cypresses in the Southwest Cemetery and could almost detect the smell of melancholy facing the open horizon of the sea. Near us, at little tables on the terrace, people were eating. The walk and the salt air had awakened that cavernous sensation of hunger I always had when drowsy […] Gerardo followed the direction of my glance and said in a contemptuous tone, as if my answering in the affirmative would be barbaric, ‘You don’t want anything, do you?’” 

When her friendship with Ena cools, Andrea seeks solace with young men like Gerardo. When Andrea and Gerardo first connect, she appreciates his ability to broaden her view of Barcelona. Laforet also uses Andrea’s expanded wanderings to show the reader glimpses of Barcelona’s tragically transformed post-war landscape, with details such as “the rusted skeletons of ships sunk during the war” (116). Gerardo’s condescending comments, however, reveal his stark difference in perspective as a member of a much more privileged class than Andrea‘s. Furthermore, Gerardo’s contemptuous question—“You don’t want anything, do you?” (116)—and the implication that “no, nothing” (“nada”) is the only appropriate response—resonates with the title and thematic mantra of the novel.

“‘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.…Bah! Andrea, I think they’d cross themselves when they saw you, as if you were the devil.’” 

Ena attempts to explain her fascination with Andrea’s family by describing how foreign and strange Andrea’s willingness to sacrifice her health for a few moments of luxury is. Ena reveals how well she understands Andrea’s wayward and impractical desires—from "the pleasure of enjoying a millionaire’s delicacies” to “wandering around alone at night”—and exposes how deeply these shared desires differentiate Andrea—and, by extension, Ena—from Ena’s well-off family: “Andrea, I think they’d cross themselves when they saw you, as if you were the devil” (132). 

“I realized this was the beginning of the Barrio Chino. ‘The devil’s glitter’ that Angustias had told me about looked impoverished and gaudy and had a great abundance of posters of male and female dancers. The doors of the cabarets with featured attractions seemed like shacks at a fair. The music was bewildering as it came from every side in discordant waves that combined in disharmony […] Everyone seemed disguised with bad taste, and the noise and the smell of wine brushed past me. I wasn’t even frightened, just like the day when I shrank against my mother’s skirt and listened to the laughter and ridiculous contortions of people in masks. All of that was merely the frame to a nightmare, unreal like everything external to my pursuit.”

After Andrea’s grandmother orders her to follow Juan when he leaves the house at night in an angry, impassioned search for Gloria, Andrea ends up in the part of town that Angustias had forbidden her from entering. Andrea’s curiosity reveals the class prejudice in Angustias’s supposedly moral judgement of “the devil’s glitter” in the impoverished Barrio Chino: a neighborhood where “gaudy” (142) cabarets and bars are, after all, just a way for poor people to earn a living. The “nightmare” (142) atmosphere of the neighborhood—and the strange pursuit of Uncle Juan—also mirrors the eeriness of other haunted post-war spaces in Barcelona, such as the “rusted skeletons of ships” (116). 

“‘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 scares the pobreta goes through just to come here and play cards. So the great gentleman can think he’s a famous painter…’” 

Gloria’s sister reprimands Juan for his mistreatment of his wife. Gloria’s sister reveals that, unable to sell Juan’s terrible paintings for money, Gloria has been “gambling” at the bar. Though the reader can infer from the sister’s sly reference to cuckolding—“With the body she has she could put some good horns on you”—that she is probably earning at least some of that money from prostitution, Juan is ultimately humbled by the revelation that Gloria has worked so hard to provide for his family while attempting to preserve his artistic ego. 

“‘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.’”

When Uncle Román attempts to coerce Gloria into sleeping with him, Gloria responds by recalling a 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 thus reveals that she denounced him and insinuates that she would—and will—“denounce [him] again” (170), as she will in Chapter 21, when she reveals his black market trading to the police.

“‘No, child, no. I sold them, they’re mine; I sold them because I needed to, because it’s my right…’ It was 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, that Román smiled.”

As the household argues over items that have been sold to the ragman—Gloria’s latest effort to earn money for food—Andrea’s grandmother reminds Román that the objects are technically hers, and that it is her dubious “right” to sacrifice herself for the good of her family. The grandmother’s selflessness contrasts with Román’s malevolent thought that she should instead “die of hunger” to free up resources. 

“It embarrassed me to listen to her. I, who heard every day the most vulgar words in our language, and listened unperturbed to Gloria’s conversations filled with the most barbaric materialism—I blushed at that confession of Ena’s mother and began to feel uncomfortable. In those days I was bitter and intransigent, like youth itself. Everything in the story that spoke of failure and repression repelled me.” 

Ena’s mother reveals that when she was a young girl, she was in an ill-fated relationship with Román, and that Román manipulated her and treated her poorly, just like he would Gloria. Ena’s mother worries that he will have a similar effect on Ena, with whom he is now involved, though she notes that Ena is much stronger-willed than she was. It is significant that Andrea is “repelled” by the “failure” described in Ena’s mother’s story, since so much of the novel concerns the failure of relationships, tales, and attempted transitions that ultimately go nowhere, resulting in “nothing”/“nada”. 

 “‘You realize I can’t live here? I can’t.…He’ll kill me, and I don’t want to die. Life’s very sweet, chica. You’re a witness.…Weren’t you a witness, Andrea, when even he realized I was the only one doing anything to keep us from starving to death that night he found me playing cards?’”

As the family’s desperation increases and tensions rise, Juan beats Gloria even more mercilessly. In this moment, she recalls her role within the family—“I was the only one doing anything to keep us from starving to death” (202)—and expresses her strong will to live despite the obstacles she faces as Juan’s wife and as a woman attempting to navigate around his delicate masculinity. She significantly appeals to Andrea to be “a witness”: a fellow woman who can testify on her behalf. 

“If on that night—I thought—the world had ended or one of them had died, their story would have been completely closed and beautiful, like a circle. That’s how it happens in novels, movies, but not in life.…I was realizing, for the first time, that everything goes on, turns gray, is ruined in the living. There is no end to our story until death comes and the body decays…” 

Andrea reflects on the dark poetic beauty of the night when Juan confronted Gloria at her sister’s bar, and realizes that in a work of fiction, if “the world had ended or one of them had died, their story would have been completely closed and beautiful, like a circle” (206). Laforet thus offers a wry wink to the reader about her own book’s realism and genre-defiance. Nada is not a predictable novel, but rather a reflection of the ways in which life goes on and on—signifying “nothing/“nada”—“until death comes and the body decays” (206). This moment also resonates with earlier moments when Gloria and Román beckoned to Andrea’s sensibilities as a potential “audience” for their stories: their dramatic performances of life which oddly refract the “nada” of human experience. 

“‘You know my mother was in love with him when she was young?…That was the reason I wanted to meet Román. Then, what a disappointment! I began to hate him.…Doesn’t that happen to you, when you make up a legend about a specific person, and you see what lies under your fantasies and that he’s really worth even less than you, and you begin to hate him?’” 

After Ena confronts with Román, she explains her motivation in meeting, dating, and ultimately being cruel toward Román: to identify more deeply with and avenge her mother. This passage also gestures back to the motif of life as a force that both beckons to and resists narrativization.