The Snow—More Tales From Don Alonso—_Las Injurias_—The _Asilo
del Sur_
Manuel slept like a log the whole of the following morning. Indeed, when
he got up it was past three in the afternoon.
He knocked at Jesús’s door. La Fea was at the machine and La Salvadora
was sitting in a tiny chair ripping some skirts; the tot was playing on
the floor.
“Where’s Jesús?” asked Manuel.
“I guess you know better than we do,” retorted La Salvadora, her voice
quivering with anger.
“I ... left him ...; then I met a friend....” Manuel forced himself to
invent a lie. “Perhaps he’s at the shop,” he added.
“No. He’s not at the printing shop,” replied La Salvadora.
“I’ll go look for him.”
Manuel left the hostelry of Santa Casilda in shame. He walked toward the
heart of the city and asked for his friend at the tavern on the Calle de
Tetuán.
“He was here,” answered the waiter, “until the place closed. Then he went
off as drunk as a lord, I don’t know where.”
Manuel returned to the house, and went back to bed with the intention
of going to the printing shop on the next day. But the following day he
awoke late again. He was overcome by an inertia that seemed impossible to
conquer.
He came upon La Salvadora in the corridor.
“Haven’t you gone to the shop today, either?” she asked.
“No.”
“Very well, then. Don’t trouble yourself ever to come back here again,”
rasped the girl, furiously. “We don’t need any tramps. While we’re here
slaving away, you fellows go out for a gay time. I’m telling you, now,
don’t ever show up here again, and if you see Jesús, tell him the same
for his sister and for me.”
Manuel shrugged his shoulders and left the house. It had been snowing all
day. In the Puerta del Sol gangs of street-sweepers and hose men were
clearing away the drifts; the filthy water ran along the gutters.
Several times Manuel stepped into the Café de Lisboa, hoping to come upon
Vidal. Not finding him there he had a bite at a tavern, after which he
went for a stroll through the streets. It got dark very early. Madrid,
enveloped in snow, was deserted. The Plaza de Oriente looked unreal,
somewhat like a scene set upon a stage. The monarchs of stone wore
white cloaks. The statue in the centre of the square stood out nobly
against the sky of grey. From the Viaduct there was a view of white
expanses. Toward Madrid lay a heap of yellowish structures and black
roofs, of towers jutting into the milky heavens, reddened by a luminous
irradiation.
Manuel returned to the house in low spirits; he threw himself into bed.
“Tomorrow I’m going back to the shop,” he said to himself. But on the
morrow he did not go back. He rose very early with that intention, and
was actually about to enter the printery when the idea occurred to him
that the boss might raise a rumpus, so he turned away. “If not here,
then I’ll find work elsewhere,” he thought, and he turned his steps back
in the direction of the Puerta del Sol, proceeding thence to the Plaza
de Oriente, through the Calle de Bailén, and the Calle de Ferraz to the
Paseo de Rosales. The avenue was silent and deserted.
From this point could be viewed the entire landscape white under the
snow, the dark groves of the Casa de Campo, and the round hills bristling
with black pine trees. The pallid sun hovered in a leaden sky. Near the
horizon, in the direction of Villaverde, shone a strip of clear blue sky
in a pink mist. Profound silence everywhere. Only the strident whistle of
the locomotives and the hammering in the workshops of the Estación del
Norte disturbed that calm. Not a footfall resounded on the pavement.
The houses along the avenue displayed snowy adornments upon balustrade
and coping; the trees seemed to flatten under that white mantle.
That afternoon Manuel returned toward the printing-shop, ventured inside
and asked the pressman for Jesús.
“He got a fierce call-down from the boss,” was the answer.
“Did he fire him?”
“Maybe not! Go up now and take _your_ medicine.”
Manuel, about to go up, paused.
“Has Jesús gone already?”
“Yes. He must be in the corner tavern.”
And he really was. He sat before a table drinking a glass of whisky.
There was a sad, doleful expression upon his face. He was a prey to his
sombre thoughts.
“What are you doing?” asked Manuel.
“Oh, it’s you, is it?”
“Yes. Did the old cripple discharge you?”
“Yes.”
“Were you thinking of anything?”
“Pse!... There’s nothing doing, anyway. Come on, let’s have a glass or
two.”
“No, not for me.”
“You’ll do as you’re told. I’ve got only forty céntimos, which is as good
as nothing. Hey, waiter! A couple of glasses.”
They drank and then walked off in the direction of the Santa Casilda
hostelry. It was still snowing. Jesús, his cheeks hectic, coughed
desperately.
“I warn you: Salvadora, that little kid, will raise holy hell,” said
Manuel. “Such a temper she has!”
“Well, what do they want? To have us saving up money all our lives? I’m
glad that the kid is in the house, for she can take care of La Fea, who
is the unhappier of the two.... And you,—how much have you got left from
your pay?” asked the compositor of Manuel.
“Me? Not even a button.”
At this reply Jesús was so deeply moved that he seized his companion by
the arm and assured him in the most ardent outbursts that he esteemed him
and loved him as a brother.
“And may I be damned!” he concluded, “if I’m not willing to do anything
under the sun for you. For this telling me that you haven’t even a button
is worth more to me than all the deeds of the hero of Cascorro.”[4]
Manuel, affected by these words, asseverated in a husky voice that though
he was a vagabond and a good-for-nothing, he was ready to perform any
sacrifice for so staunch a friend.
In order to celebrate such tender protestations of amity, they both
lurched into a tavern on the Calle de Barrionuevo and gulped down a few
more glasses of whisky.
They reached the Santa Casilda hostelry dead drunk. The house janitor
came out to meet them, demanding of each the rent for his room. Jesús
answered jestingly that they gave him no money because they had none
to give. He rejoined that either they paid or they could take to the
street, whereupon the compositor dared him to throw them out.
The man’s wife, who might have been a soldier, took them both by the
shoulder and shoved them into the street.
“Lord, oh Lord! The weaker sex!” mumbled Jesús. “That’s what they call
the weaker sex!... And they can throw a fellow out of the house.... And
where’s a guy going to get two duros?... Well, what do you say to that,
Manuel? Hey? The weaker sex.... How do you like such a figurative manner
of speech?... It’s we who are the weaker, and they simply abuse their
strength.”
They began to stagger along the street; neither felt the cold.
From time to time Jesús would pause and deliver a diatribe; a man would
laugh as they passed by, or a youngster, from some doorway, would call
after them and send a snowball in their direction.
“I wonder whom they’re laughing at?” thought Manuel.
The Ronda was silent, white, cut by a dark stream of water left by the
carts. The large flakes came falling down, interweaving in their descent;
they danced in the gusts of wind like white butterflies. During the
intervals of calm they would glide slowly, softly through the greyish
atmosphere, like the gentle down from the neck of a swan.
Afar, in the mist, lay the white landscape of the suburbs, the gently
curving slopes, the houses and the cemeteries of the Campo de San
Isidro. Against this background everything stood out more distinct than
ordinarily: the roofs, the mudwalls, the trees, the lanterns thickly
hooded in snow.
In this whitish ambient the black smoke belched forth by the chimneys
spread through the air like a threat.
“The weaker sex. Hey, Manuel?” continued Jesús, harping upon his fixed
idea. “And yet they can show a fellow to the door.... It’s as if they
said the weak snow.... Because you tread upon it.... Isn’t that so?...
But the snow makes you cold.... And then who’s the weaker, you or the
snow?... You, because you catch cold. That’s all a fellow does in this
world,—catch cold.... Everything is cold, understand?... Everything....
Like the snow.... Do you see how white it is, eh? It looks so good, so
affectionate ... the weaker sex.... Well, touch it, and you freeze.”
They squandered their last céntimos on another glass of whisky, and from
that moment they were no longer conscious of their doings.
* * * * *
The following morning they awoke frozen through and through, in a shed of
the Cattle Market situated near the Paseo de los Pontones.
Jesús was coughing horribly.
“You stay here,” said Manuel to him. “I’m going to see whether I can pick
up something to eat.”
He went out to the Ronda. The snow had ceased. Several gamins were
amusing themselves by throwing snowballs at one another. He went up the
Calle del Águila; the cobbler’s was closed. It then occurred to Manuel
to hunt out Jacob; he turned toward the Viaduct and was walking along
absent-mindedly when he felt some one grab him by the shoulders and cry:
“Stay thy hand, Abraham. Where are you bound?”
It was the Snake-Man, the illustrious Don Alonso.
Manuel told him what straits he and Jesús were in.
“Don’t give up; better times are coming,” mumbled the Snake-Man. “Have
you any place to go to?”
“A shed.”
“Good. Let’s go there. I’ve got a peseta. That’s enough to get the three
of us a bite.”
They went into a chop house on the Calle del Águila where, for two
reales, they received a pot of stew; they bought bread and then the pair
made quickly for the shed. They ate, laid aside something for the night,
and after their meal Don Alonso tore loose several pickets from a fence
and succeeded in starting a fire inside the shed.
That afternoon it began to rain in torrents; the Snake-Man considered it
his duty to enliven the company, so he told one tale after the other,
always commencing with his eternal refrain of “Once in America....”
“Once in America”—(and this is the least unlikely tale of all he
told)—“we were sailing down the Mississippi on a steamer. And let me tell
you, those steamboats rock so little that you can play billiards on
them. Well, we were sailing along and we reach a certain town. The boat
stops and we see a mob of people on the wharf of that village. We draw
nearer and we behold that they’re all Indians, with the exception of a
few guards and Yankee soldiers.
“I” (and Don Alonso added this information proudly) “who was the
director, said to my musicians, ‘We must start a lively tune,’ and right
away, Boom! Boom! Tra, la, la!... You can’t imagine the shouts and the
shrieks and the croaking of that crowd.
“When the band had stopped playing, a big fat Indian squaw with her
head full of cock feathers steps up to me and begins to make ceremonial
greetings. I asked one of the Yankees, ‘Who is this lady?’ ‘She’s
the queen,’ he said, ‘and she wants a little more music.’ I saluted
the queen. Most excellent lady! (And I made an elegant series of
Versaillesque bows, setting one foot back.) I said to the members of the
band, ‘Boys, a little more music for her Majesty.’ They started up again,
and the queen, highly pleased, saluted me with her hand on her heart. I
did the same. Most excellent lady!
“We put up our portable circus in a few hours and I withdrew to ponder
over the programme. I was the director. ‘We’ll have to give The Mounted
Indian,’ I said to myself. Even though it’s a discredited number in the
cities, they can’t know it here. Then I’ll exhibit my ecuyères, acrobats,
equilibrists, pantomimists and, as a finale, the clowns, who will be
the climax of the show. The fellow who was to play The Mounted Indian I
tipped off and said, ‘See here, make yourself up to look as much like our
audience as possible.’ ‘Don’t worry about that, director,’ he answered.
Boys! It was a sensational success. When the ‘Indian’ appeared, what a
racket of applause!”
Don Alonso mimed the number; he crouched, imitating the movements of one
about to mount a horse; he sank his head in his chest, staring at a fixed
point and imitated the whirling of a lasso above his head.
“The Mounted Indian,” continued Don Alonso, “won the applause of the
other Indians. I’m positive that not one of them knew how to ride
a horse. Then there was an acrobatic number, followed by a variety
of others, until the time for the clowns came around. ‘Here’s where
there’s pandemonium,’ I thought to myself. And surely enough, all they
had to do was appear when a wild tumult broke loose. ‘They’re having
a wonderful time,’ I said to myself, when in comes a boy. ‘Director,
Señor Director!’ ‘What’s the trouble?’ ‘The whole audience is leaving.’
‘Leaving?’ And indeed, they were. The Indians had become scared at sight
of the clowns, and imagined that they were evil spirits come there to
spoil the performance for them. I jump into the ring, and send the clowns
stumbling off. Then, to efface the bad impression, I performed several
sleight-of-hand tricks. When I began to belch ribbons of flame from my
mouth, Lord, what a triumph! The whole house was astounded. But when I
palmed a couple of rings and then drew out of my coat pocket a fish-bowl
filled with live fishes, I received the greatest ovation of my career.”
Don Alonso was silent. Jesús and Manuel prepared to go to sleep,
stretched out on the ground, huddled into a corner. The rain came down in
bucketfuls; the water drummed loudly upon the roof of the shed; the wind
whistled and moaned from afar.
It began to thunder, and it was for all the world as if some train were
crashing headlong down a metal slope, so continuous, so violent was the
thundering.
“A fine tempest!” grunted Jesús.
“Bah! Tempests on land!” sniffed Don Alonso. “Cheap stuff! Tempests on
land are mere imitations. At sea,—that’s where you want to witness a
tempest, at sea! when the waves come sweeping over the masts.... Even on
the lakes. On Lake Erie and Lake Michigan I’ve been through tremendous
storms, with waves as high as houses. But I must admit that the wind goes
down almost at once and in a little while the water is as smooth as the
pond of the Retiro. Why, once yonder in America....”
But Manuel and Jesús, weary of American tales, pretended to be fast
asleep and the former Snake-Man sank into disconsolate silence, thinking
of the days when he palmed the Indians’ rings and drew forth fish-bowls.
They could not sleep; several times they had to get up and change their
places, for the water leaked through the roof.
On the following morning, when they left their hole, it was no longer
raining. The snow had been melted completely. The Cattle Market was
transformed into a swamp; the pavement of the Ronda, into a sea of mud;
the houses and the trees dripped water; everything was black, miry,
abandoned; only a few wandering, famished, mud-stained dogs were sniffing
about in the heaps of refuse.
Manuel pawned his cape and on the advice of Jesús protected his chest
with several layers of newspaper. For his cape he was allowed ten reales
at a pawnbroker’s, and the three went off to eat at the Shelter of the
Montaña del Príncipe Pío.
Manuel and Jesús, accompanied by Don Alonso, went into two printing shops
and inquired after work, but there was none. At night they went back to
the shelter for supper. Don Alonso suggested that they go to the beggars’
Depósito. Thither the three wended their way; it was dusk; before the
doors of the Depósito there was a long row of tattered ragamuffins,
waiting for them to open; Jesús and Manuel were opposed to going in.
They walked through the little wood near the Montaña barracks; some
soldiers and prostitutes were chatting and smoking in a group. They went
along the Calle de Ferraz, then along Bailén; they crossed the Viaduct,
and going through the Calle de Toledo, reached the Paseo de los Pontones.
The corner of the shed where they had spent the previous night was now
occupied by a crew of young vagabonds.
They resumed their trudging through the mud; it began to rain anew.
Manuel proposed that they go to La Blasa’s tavern, and by the staircase
of the Paseo Imperial they descended to the quarters of Las Injurias.
The tavern was closed. They walked down a lane. Their feet sank into mud
and pools of water. They noticed a hovel with an open door; they went
inside. The Snake-Man struck a match. The place had two rooms, each a
couple of metres square. The walls of the dingy dens oozed dampness and
slime; the floor, of tamped earth, was riddled with the constant dripping
and covered with puddles. The kitchen was a cess-pool of pestilence; in
the centre rose a mound of refuse and excrement; in the corners, dead,
desiccated cockroaches.
The next morning they left the house. It was a damp, dreary day; afar,
the fields lay wrapped in mist. Las Injurias district was depopulated;
its denizens were on their way through the muddy lanes to Madrid, on the
hunt. Some ascended to the Paseo Imperial, others trooped down though the
Arroyo de Embajadores.
They were a repulsive rout; some, ragpickers; others, mendicants;
still others, starvelings; almost all of them of nauseating mien.
Worse in appearance than the men were the women,—filthy, dishevelled,
tattered. This was human refuse, enfolded in rags, swollen with cold and
dankness, vomited up by this pest-ridden quarter. Here was a medley
of skin-diseases, marks left by all the ailments to which the flesh is
heir, the jaundiced hue of tertian fever, the contracted eyelash,—all the
various stigmata of illness and poverty.
“If the rich could only see this, eh?” asked Don Alonso.
“Bah! They’d do nothing,” muttered Jesús.
“Why not?”
“Because they wouldn’t. If you were to deprive the rich man of the
satisfaction of knowing that while he sleeps another is freezing, and
that while he eats another is dying of hunger, you would deprive him of
half his pleasure and good fortune.”
“Do you really believe that?” asked Don Alonso, staring in astonishment
at Jesús.
“I certainly do. What’s more,—why should we bother with what they may
think? They don’t give themselves any concern over us. At this hour they
must be sleeping in their clean, soft beds, so peacefully, while we....”
The Snake-Man made a gesture of displeasure; he was vexed that any one
should speak ill of the rich.
The sun came out: a disk of red over the black earth. Then carts began to
arrive at the Gas Work’s dumping grounds and to dump rubbish and refuse.
Here and there in the doorways of the hovels that filled the hollow
appeared a woman with a cigar in her mouth.
One night the watchman of Las Injurias discovered the three men in the
abandoned shanty and ejected them.
The following days, Manuel and Jesús—the showman had disappeared—decided
to go to the Asilo de las Delicias for the night. Neither was at all bent
upon finding work. It was already almost a month since they had taken to
this tramp’s existence, and between one day at a barracks and the next in
a monastery or a shelter, they managed to keep going.
The first time that Jesús and Manuel slept in the Asilo de las Delicias
was a March day.
When they reached the Asilo it had not yet opened. They passed their
wait strolling along the old Yeseros road. They wandered into the fields
nearby, where they saw wretched shacks in the doorways of which some men
were playing at _chito_ or _tejo_, while bands of ragged children swarmed
about.
These by-roads were gloomy, bleak, desolate spots,—the abode of ruins, as
if a city had been reared there and been annihilated by a cataclysm. On
all sides were heaps of refuse and débris, gullies filled with rubbish;
here and there a broken stone chimney, a shattered lime-kiln. Only at
rare intervals might one catch a glimpse of a garden with its draw-well;
in the distance, on the hills that bounded the horizon, rose the dim
suburbs and scattered houses. It was a disquieting vicinity; behind the
hillock one came suddenly upon evil-looking vagabonds in groups of three
or four.
Through a little gorge nearby flowed the Abroñigal, a rivulet; Manuel and
Jesús followed it until they reached a stone bridge called Tres Ojos.
They returned at night. The shelter was already open. It was on the right
hand side of the Yeseros road, in the vicinity of a number of abandoned
cemeteries. Its pointed roof, its galleries and wooden staircases, lent
it the appearance of a Swiss châlet. On the balcony was a signboard
attached to the balustrade, reading: “Asilo Municipal del Sur.” A lantern
with a red glass shed its gory light upon the deserted fields.
Manuel and Jesús went down several steps; at a counter a clerk who was
scribbling away in a big book asked them their names; they replied and
then entered the institution. The section for men consisted of two large
rooms lit by gas-burners, separated by a partition wall; each had wooden
pillars and high, tiny windows. Jesús and Manuel crossed the first room
and went into the second, where there were several men stretched out here
and there upon the beds. They, too, lay down and chatted for a while....
As they spoke, a number of beggars kept coming in, taking possession of
the beds that were placed in the middle of the room and near the pillars.
These new arrivals dropped on to the floor their coats, their patched
capes, their filthy undershirts,—a heap of tatters,—at the same time
depositing tin cans filled with cigarette ends, pots and baskets.
Almost all the patrons of the place went into the second room.
“There isn’t such a draught in this room,” said an old beggar who was
preparing to lie down near Manuel.
Several ragamuffins between fifteen and twenty years of age burst into
the place, took possession of a corner and settled down to a game of
_cané_.
“You bunch of rascals!” cried the old beggar near Manuel. “You had to
choose this place to come and gamble in. Damn it!”
“Wow! Listen to what old Wrinkle-face is bawling about now!” retorted one
of the gamins.
“Shut your mouth, Old Bore! You’re as bad as Don Nicanor pounding his
drum,” jeered another.
“Tramps! Vagabonds!” growled the old fellow angrily.
Manuel turned toward the fuming old man. He was a diminutive creature,
with a sparse, greyish beard; he had a pair of eyes that looked like
scars and black spectacles that reached to the middle of his forehead.
He wore a patched, grimy coat; a flat, woolen cap, on top of which sat a
derby with a greasy brim. As he had entered, he had disburdened himself
of a canvas bag which he dropped to the floor.
“It’s these whippersnappers that get us in wrong,” explained the old man.
“Last year they robbed the shelter telephone and stole a piece of lead
from a water-pipe.”
Manuel swept the room with his glance. Near him, a tall old fellow with a
white beard and the features of an apostle, leaned his shoulder against
one of the pillars, immersed in his thoughts; he wore a smock, a muffler
and a cap. In the corner occupied by the impudent, blustering ragamuffins
rose the silhouette of a man garbed in black,—the type of a retired
official. On his knees reposed the head of a slumbering boy of five or
six.
All the rest were of bestial appearance; beggars that looked like
highwaymen; maimed and crippled who roamed the streets exhibiting their
deformities; unemployed labourers, now inured to idleness, amongst whom
was an occasional specimen of a ruined gentleman, with straggling beard
and greasy locks, whose bearing and apparel,—collar, cravat and cuffs,
filthy as they might be,—still recalled a certain distinction,—a pallid
reflection of the splendour that once had been.
The air in the room very soon grew hot, and the atmosphere, saturated
with the odour of tobacco and poverty, became nauseating.
Manuel lay back in his cot and listened to the conversation that had
sprung up between Jesús and the old man with the black spectacles.
The fellow was an inveterate beggar, a connoisseur in all the arts of
exploiting official charity.
Despite his continuous wanderings hither and thither, he had never been
more than five or six leagues away from Madrid.
“Once upon a time this shelter was a good place,” he explained to Jesús.
“There was a stove; each cot had its woollen blanket, and in the morning
everybody got a good plate of soup.”
“Yes, water soup,” sneered another beggar, a young, thin, long-haired lad
whose cheeks were browned by the sun.
“Even so. It warmed a fellow’s innards.”
The man of refinement, doubtless disgusted to find himself amid this
rout of ragamuffins, took the sleeping child in his arms and drew near to
the place occupied by Manuel and Jesús. He joined the conversation and
began to relate his tribulations. Sad as his story was, there was yet
something comical about it.
He came from a provincial capital, having left a modest position and
believed in the words of the district deputy, who promised him a
situation in the offices of the Ministry. For two months he tagged at the
heels of the deputy; at the end of this time he found himself face to
face with the direst poverty, absolutely without influence or recourse.
In the meantime he was writing to his wife, inspiring her with hope.
The previous day he had been thrown out of his boarding-house and after
having tramped over half of Madrid without finding a way to earn a
peseta, had gone to the authorities and asked for an officer to conduct
him and his child to some shelter. “I take only beggars to the shelter,”
was the guard’s reply. “I’m going out begging,” answered the man humbly,
“so you can take me.” “No,” was the officer’s answer. “First you must
actually beg, then I’ll arrest you.”
The officer was intractable. At this moment a man happened to be going
by. The father approached him with his child, brought his hand to his
hat, but the request could not issue from his lips. It was then that the
guard advised him to go to the Asilo de las Delicias.
“If they’d arrested you, you’d have gained nothing by it,” said the
fellow with the black spectacles. “They’d have taken you off to the Cerro
del Pimiento, and you’d have spent the livelong day there without so much
as a crumb.”
“And then what would they have done with me?” asked the gentleman of
refinement.
“Expel you from Madrid.”
“But aren’t there places here where a person can spend the night?” asked
Jesús.
“A raft of them,” replied the old man. “Everywhere you go. Especially
now, when it’s so cold in the winter.”
“I’ve lived,” chimed in the young beggar, “for more than half a year in
Vaciamadrid,—an almost depopulated town. A comrade of mine and myself
found a house that was closed, and we installed ourselves in it. For a
few weeks we lived swimmingly. At night we’d go to the Arganda station;
we’d bore a hole with an auger in a cask of wine, fill up our wine-bag
and then stuff the hole with pitch.”
“And why did you leave the place?” queried Manuel.
“The civil guard laid siege to us and we were forced to escape through
the windows. I’ll be damned if I wasn’t already tired of the joint. I
like to roam along the road, one day here, another there. That’s the
way a fellow meets people who know a thing or two, and picks up an
education....”
“Have you done much tramping hereabouts?”
“All my life. I can’t use up more than one pair of sandals per town. If
I stay very long in the same place I grow so uneasy that I just have to
get a move on. Ah! The country! There’s nothing like it. You eat where
you can. In winter it’s tough. But summer time! You make your thyme bed
underneath a tree and have a magnificent sleep, better than the king
himself. When the cold comes around, then, like the swallows, off you fly
to wherever it’s nice and warm.”
The old man with the black spectacles, scornful of what the young
vagabond had said, informed Jesús as to the nooks to be found in the
outlying districts.
“Now let me tell you where I go when it’s fine weather. There’s a
cemetery near the third Depósito. There are some houses there that we’ll
go to this spring.”
The conclusion of the conversation reached Manuel in but a confused form,
as he had fallen asleep. At midnight he was awakened by some voices. In
the corner to which the ragamuffins had repaired two boys were rolling
over the floor in a hand to hand struggle.
“I’ll pay you,” muttered one between his teeth.
“Let go. You’re choking me.”
The old mendicant, who had been awakened, got up in a fury and, seizing
his stick, let it fall hard upon the shoulder of one of the boys. The
youth who was struck down rose up, roaring with anger.
“Come on, now, you pig! You son of a dirty bitch!” he shrieked.
They rushed for each other, exchanged several blows and then both fell
headlong to the floor.
“These young tramps are getting us in wrong,” exclaimed the old man.
A guard re-established order and expelled the trouble-makers. The
denizens of the shelter were again calm and nothing more was heard save
the muffled or sibilant snoring of the sleepers....
The next morning, even before daybreak, when the doors of the Asilo were
opened, every one who had spent the night there left the place and had in
a moment disappeared into the outskirts.
Manuel and Jesús chose the Calle de Mendez Alvaro. On the platforms of
the Estación del Mediodía the electric arcs shone like globes of light in
the gloomy atmosphere of the night.
From the chimneys of the roundhouse rose dense pillars of white smoke;
the red and green pupils of the signal lamps winked confidentially from
their lofty poles; the straining boilers of the locomotives sent forth
most horrible roars.
On both sides along the perspective of the thoroughfare quivered the
pale lights of the distant street lamps. Yonder in the country, through
the air that was as murky and yellowish as ground glass, could be made
out upon the colourless fields, low cottages, black picket fences, high
gnarled telegraph poles, distant, obscure embankments that formed the
railroad bed. A few ramshackle taverns, lighted by a languidly burning
oil lamp, were open.... With the opaque glow of dawn appeared, to the
right, the wide, leaden roof of the Estación del Mediodía, glistening
with dew; opposite, the pile of the General Hospital, jaundice-hued;
to the left, the barren fields, the indistinct brown vegetable patches
that rose until they blended, with the undulating hills of the horizon
under the grey, humid sky, into the vast desolation of the Madrilenian
suburbs....