Snapshots of Madrid

THE HIVE (257 pp.)--Camllo Jose Cela--Farrar, Straus & Young ($3.50).

Camilo Jose Cela is a 37-year-old Spanish novelist with a rare distinction: although he fought in Generalissimo Franco's army during the civil war, joined the Falange and to this day lives and works under the Fascist regime, his novel about Madrid is being cheered by emigre Spanish Republicans. So rare a distinction stems from a rare quality. In the face of dictatorship, Novelist Cela has the courage to write the truth as he sees it and the talent to transform his merciless vision of contemporary Madrid into a series of Goya-like vignettes.

The Hive tells no story. It "sets out to be ... a slice of life told step by step," and consists of short sketches, most of them only a page or so in length. Out of these hundreds of fragments, a world takes shape, peopled, according to the author's own count, by no less than 160 characters. None of the characters holds a central role. They first come into focus in a shabby cafe, and are followed with an artful candid camera about the wintry city as they hunger for food or affection and disclose, in commonplace words and gestures, the misery that grips most of them. The resulting snapshots go deeper than a surface image: P:The little flamenco street singer has the face of "a perverted farmyard beast. He is too young in years for cynicism--or resignation--to have slashed its mark across his face, and therefore it has a beautiful, candid stupidity." He sings from 1 p.m. to 11, spends more than half of what he earns on supper, then sings until 2 a.m. before hopping the bumper of the last tram. He is six years old. P: Victorita is 17 and well built. The boy she loves has TB and lies in bed all day long. He warns her not to kiss him or she may catch his disease, but she kisses him anyway. One day, pale and haggard, she tells him that he can be cured with medicine and plenty of food. Her voice thick, she adds, "A young girl is always worth money . . . If it means that you get well again, I'll go with the first rich man who wants me as a mistress." She is a little shocked when he answers, "All right." P: Filo has five children, and in one day will be 34. "I have gotten old, haven't I?" she asks her brother. "Look at the wrinkles in my face. Now all that's left is to wait till the children grow up, get older and older, and then die. Like Mamma, poor dear."

P: At night Madrid is silent. "Thousands of men are sleeping with their arms around their wives, forgetful of the harsh and cruel day that may be lying in wait for them a few hours hence, crouched like a wild cat . . . And several dozens of girls are hoping--what are they hoping for, 0 God? Why do You let them be thus deceived?"

Such scenes, written in a bare, vigorously perceptive prose, infuse The Hive with uncommon power. It is too bad that Novelist Cela's method is self-defeating. He spreads himself too thinly over too many characters, and his vignettes, taken together, lack the sharpness that they have separately. But many a lesser, more successful novelist would give his best typing finger to be able to evoke the bitterness, insight and compassion that Novelist Cela packs into brief scenes that plunge straight at the heart.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.