Nada

Gloria calls out to the rag merchant, hoping to sell more furniture from the apartment. Juan becomes enraged and beats her as she protests, “we have to eat!” (201).

Afterward, Gloria appeals to Andrea not to just ignore Juan’s violence:

‘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?’ (202)

Gloria then reflects back on the events of that night, and Andrea wishes their life was part of a novel or movie, in which, “If on that night […] the world had ended or one of them had died, their story would have been completely closed and beautiful, like a circle” (206). Instead, in the real world, stories don’t end just because they reach a satisfying turn: “everything goes on, turns gray, is ruined in the living. There is no end to our story until death comes and the body decays” (206).

Andrea’s face becomes red because Ena, whom Gloria calls “Román’s mistress” (207), is coming over that afternoon. Andrea takes out her frustration on Gloria, shouting, “You and Juan are like beasts. Can’t there be anything else between a man and a woman?” (208). Andrea then seeks shelter in the streets of Barcelona, wandering around with a sense of foreboding and physical hunger.

When Andrea returns to the apartment, Ena is arguing with Román, mocking him: “That I’d marry you? That I’d go around in a panicky whole life, like my mother, fearing your demands for money?” (211). When Román attempts to retaliate, she claims she “has all the proofs” (211) to blackmail him (and presumably report his activities to the police) as revenge for his mistreatment of her mother. Román has his hand in his pocket, and Andrea realizes he has a gun. Fearing for her friend, Andrea throws her arms around Román and yells for Ena to run.

Román becomes calm after the outburst and turns his back on the women. Ena gazes at Andrea “mocking[ly]” and Andrea notes: “Her eyes wounded me” (213).

Andrea walks through the streets as stormy clouds gather in the sky. Leaning against the gate of the university—the first place where she and Ena met—she is suddenly greeted by Ena, who approaches with tears in her eyes. She says, “You know I love you very much, Andrea” (215) and explains that Andrea “saved” her that afternoon and that she has only been “mean” (216) to Andrea because her nerves have been greatly strained by the relationship with Román.

Ena explains that at first she found Román’s pursuit of her exciting because of the chance to humiliate him:

 ‘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?’ (217)

Ena ended their relationship on Saint John’s Eve, the night Gloria saw her running down the stairs. She says she has “never seen anything more abject than his face” (220).

Ena then explains that Jaime followed Román around and gathered information about his smuggling activities, which she had hoped to use against him. When she returned that day to collect some of her things from his room, she intended to use this information as “a safeguard” (222), though she was ultimately terrified of what might happen.

Andrea, Ena, and Jaime gather for a brief vacation before Ena moves to Madrid. Ena promises Andrea they will be together again soon.

Back at the apartment the next morning, Antonia wakes Andrea with a horrible scream: “He’s dead! He’s dead!” (226)—Román slit his own throat with a razor. Andrea’s grandmother is devastated and begs Juan to let her see him, but he refuses to let her pass. He orders Andrea away from the room also.

Andrea numbly retreats to the bathroom, where she stands in the shower, water “pounding [her] and refreshing [her]” (229), echoing Román’s earlier words that he, Juan, Gloria, and Andrea are “rushing waters pounding at the earth the best we can in order to erupt where least expected” (85).

After Román’s death, Gloria becomes sick and shuts herself off in her room. The enraged Antonia hopes for her death, calling her a murderer. In a delirium, Gloria asks about the painting Román made of her with the purple flowers in her hair. She claims that she didn’t love Román, saying “I denounced him to the police and that’s why he committed suicide.…They were supposed to come for him in the morning” (231). Andrea, however, does not believe her.

Andrea’s other two aunts arrive at the Calle de Aribau apartment after hearing of Román’s death. They confront Andrea’s grandmother about the difference between how she treated her daughters and her sons, excusing the men’s profligacy and mistakes:

 ‘You just have to look at the poverty in this house. They’ve robbed you, they’ve stripped you bare, and you’re blind to whatever they do. You never wanted to help us when we asked you to. Now we’ve been cheated out of our inheritance’ (234).

Gloria sells Román’s piano, inciting Juan’s murderous rage over this perceived act of disrespect for his brother’s legacy. The sale, however, enables the family to eat well for many days.

Román’s death feels unreal to Andrea until she visits his empty room days later and sees that is has lost the sense of comfort she found in it earlier:

 [E]verything had been stripped, miserably. The books and shelves had disappeared. The divan, without its mattress, was leaning upright against the wall, its feet in the air. Not a single charming trinket, of all those Román kept, had survived him” (236).

Andrea receives a letter from Ena in Madrid that “would change the direction of [her] life” (241).

Ena’s letter invites Andrea to move to Madrid, where her family has prepared a room for Andrea and Ena’s father has arranged a job for her in his office. The novel closes with Andrea’s departure as she leaves the apartment much the same way she came. As the car pulls away, Andrea watches Calle de Aribau “and all of Barcelona” (244) recede behind her.