The Black House—Conflagration—Flight
Near the station stretched a line of carriages; the cabmen had lighted a
fire. Here Jesús and Manuel warmed themselves for a moment.
“We’ll have to go to that town,” muttered Jesús.
“Which?”
“That uninhabited place the fellow was telling us about. Vaciamadrid.”
“I’m ready.”
A train had just pulled into the station, so Manuel and Jesús took up
a position at the entrance, where the passengers were coming out; they
hoped to earn a few coins by carrying some valise.
Manuel was lucky enough to lug a gentleman’s bundle to a carriage, for
which service he received a modest fee.
Manuel and Jesús proceeded now to the Prado. They were passing the Museo
when they beheld a hackman whipping up his horses, and, behind the
carriage, running with all his might, Don Alonso, dressed in a suit that
seemed nothing but rents and tatters.
“Hey, there!” shouted Manuel to him.
Don Alonso turned around, came to a stop and walked back to Jesús and
Manuel.
“Where were you bound in such a hurry?” they asked him.
“I was after that carriage, to carry up the gentleman’s trunk for him.
But I’m exhausted. My legs are caving in.”
“And what are you doing?” asked Manuel.
“Pse!... Starving to death.”
“Better times haven’t come yet?”
“Will they ever come? Napoleon met his finish at Waterloo, didn’t he?
Well, my life is one continuous Waterloo.”
“What are you doing now?”
“I’ve been selling smutty books. I ought to have one here,” he added,
showing Manuel a pamphlet, the title of which read: “The Wiles of Women
on The First Night.”
“Is that a good one?” asked Manuel.
“Oh, so so. Let me warn you beforehand that you’re supposed to read only
every other line. To think of me, fallen to such things! I, who have been
director of a circus in _Niu Yoc_!”
“Better times are coming.”
“A few nights ago I went out staggering, famished, and made my way to
an Emergency Hospital. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ I was asked by an
attendant. ‘Hunger.’ ‘That’s not a disease,’ he replied. Then I went
begging and now I go every night to the Salamanca quarter, and I tell
passing women that a little boy of mine has just died and that I need
a few reales with which to purchase candles. They are horrified and
usually come across with something. I’ve also found a place to sleep.
It’s over yonder by the river.”
The trio ate their next meal at the María Cristina barracks, and in
the afternoon the Snake-Man left for his centre of operations in the
Salamanca quarter.
“I’ve made a peseta and a half today,” he said to Manuel and Jesús.
“Let’s go for supper.”
They supped at the Barcelona hostelry, on the Calle del Caballero de
Gracia, and spent whatever was left on whisky.
Thereupon they repaired to the spot that had been discovered by Don
Alonso,—a tumbledown dwelling near the Toledo bridge. They christened it
the Black House. Nothing was left of it save the four walls, which had
been levelled to the height of the first story.
It stood in the centre of an orchard; for roof it had a wattle over which
projected a number of beams as black and straight as smokestacks.
The three entered the ruin. They crossed the patio, leaping over débris,
tiles, rotten wood and mounds of ordure. They made their way through a
corridor. Don Alonso struck a match, holding it lighted in the hollow of
his palms. Some gipsy families and several beggars dwelt here in secret.
Some had made their beds of rags and straw; others were asleep, leaning
against matweed ropes that were fastened to the wall.
Don Alonso had his special corner, to which he took Manuel and Jesús.
The floor was damp, earthen; a few of the house walls were still
standing; the holes in the roof were plugged with bunches of cane that
had been gathered by the river, and with pieces of matting.
“Deuce take it all!” exclaimed Don Alonso as he stretched himself out. “A
fellow has always got to be on the lookout for a place. If I could only
be a snail!”
“Why a snail?” queried Jesús.
“If only to get out of paying bills for lodgings.”
“Better times are coming,” promised Manuel, ironically.
“That’s the only hope,” replied the Snake-Man. “By tomorrow our luck may
have shifted. You don’t know life. Fate is to man what the wind is to the
weathervane.”
“The trouble is,” grumbled Jesús, “that our weathervane, when it isn’t
pointing to hunger, is pointing to cold and always to poverty and
wretchedness.”
“Things may change tomorrow.”
The trio fell asleep in the lap of these flattering illusions. Manuel
awoke at daybreak; the light of the dawn filtered in through the spaces
of the wattle that served as roof, and with this pale glow the interior
of the Black House assumed a sinister aspect.
They slept in a bunch, rolled up in a ball of rags and newspaper sheets.
Some of the men sought out the women in the semi-gloom, and their grunts
of pleasure could be heard.
Near Manuel a woman whose features betrayed idiocy as well as physical
degeneration, begrimed and garbed in patches, was cradling a child in
her arms. She was a beggar, still young,—one of those poor wandering
creatures who roam over the road without direction or goal, at the mercy
of fate.
The opening of her dirty waist revealed a flat, blackish bosom. One of
the gipsy youths glided over to her and seized her by the breast. She
laid the infant to one side and stretched herself out on the floor....
* * * * *
Just before the dawn of one April day the cold was so terrible inside the
Black House that they made a fire. The flames leaped high, and at the
moment least expected the wattle roof blazed up. At once the fire spread.
As the canes burned they burst with an explosion. Soon a vast flame had
risen into the air.
The denizens escaped in terror. Manuel, Jesús and Don Alonso made their
way quickly through the Paseo de los Pontones to the Ronda.
The blazing roof shone through the dark night like a gigantic torch.
Soon, however, it was extinguished, and only sparks were left, leaping
and flying through the air.
The three walked along the Ronda. Yonder they could see the long lines
of gas lanterns, and at intervals, luminous points like shining islands
dotting the obscurity. On the solitary Ronda could be heard, very rarely,
the hastening footsteps of some passerby and the distant barking of the
dogs.
It occurred to Manuel to go to La Blasa’s tavern. Instead of taking the
Paseo Imperial, they entered Las Injurias through a lane lit up by oil
lamps and skirting the Gas House.
Black and red smoke rose from the lofty chimneys. The round paunches of
the tanks were down near the ground, and around them rose the girders,
which, in the darkness, produced an eerie effect.
La Blasa’s tavern was not open. Shivering with the cold they proceeded
along the Ronda. They passed a factory whose windows filled the gloom of
the night with the violent brilliance of arc lights.
In the midst of this silence the factory seemed to roar, belching clouds
of smoke through the chimney.
“There shouldn’t be any factories,” burst out Jesús with sudden
indignation.
“And why not?” asked Don Alonso.
“Because there shouldn’t.”
“And how are people going to live? What’s going to become of business if
there aren’t any factories?”
“Let it suffer, as we’re suffering. The earth ought to provide enough for
all of us to live on,” added Jesús.
“And how about civilization?”
“Civilization! Much good civilization does us. Civilization is all very
good for the rich. But what does it mean to the poor?...”
“And electric light? And steamships? And the telegraph?”
“Yes, what about them? Do you use them?”
“No. But I _have_ used them.”
“When you had money. Civilization is made for the fellow with money, and
whoever hasn’t the hard cash,—let him starve. Formerly, the rich man and
the poor got their light alike from the same sort of lamp; today the poor
man continues with his humble lamp and the rich man lights his house with
electricity; before, if the poor man went on foot, the rich man went on
horseback; today the poor man continues to go on foot, and the rich man
rides in an automobile; before, the rich man had to dwell among the poor;
today, he lives apart; he’s raised a wall of cotton and can hear nothing.
Let the poor howl; he can’t hear. Let them die of hunger; he’ll never
learn of it....
“You’re wrong,” protested Don Alonso.
“Hardly....”
The distant barking of the dogs could still be heard. It was getting
colder with every moment. They walked through the Rondas of Valencia and
Atocha.
The solemn mass of a General Hospital, its windows illumined by pallid
lights, rose before them.
“Inside there, at least, a fellow isn’t cold,” murmured the Snake-Man in
a jovial tone that echoed like a painful plaint.
It was beginning to grow light; the grey mists of morning were
scattering. Over the road some ox-carts came creaking. Far off the hens
were cackling....