The following day, very early in the morning, Alzugaray went to a
livery-stable which they had directed him to at the hotel, and asked to
hire a horse. They brought him a large, old one; he mounted, and crossed
the town more slowly than if he had been on foot, and set out for
Cidones.
On reaching that town, he left the horse at a blacksmith’s and went up
through the narrow lanes of Cidones, which are horribly long, dark, and
steep.
Then he ascended to la Peña, the rock on which the Franciscan monastery
stands; but was unable to obtain any fresh information about Father
Martin and his friars. The people with whom he talked were not disposed
to unbosom themselves, and he preferred not to insist, so as not to be
suspected.
Afterwards he went down to Cidones again and returned to Castro Duro.
Cæsar was still in bed. Alzugaray went into his room.
“Don’t you intend to get up?” he asked him.
“No.”
“Don’t you intend to eat, either?”
“Neither.”
“Are you sick?”
“No.”
“What is the matter with you? Laziness?”
“Something like that.”
Alzugaray ate alone, and after he had had coffee, he directed his steps
to the bookstore of the Republican councilman, of whom Cæsar had spoken
to him. He found it in a corner of the Square; and it was at the same
time a stationer’s shop and a newsdealer’s. Behind the counter were an
old man and a lad.
Alzugaray went in. He bought various Madrid periodicals from the lad,
and then addressing the old man, asked him:
“Haven’t you some sort of a map of the province, or of the neighbourhood
of Castro Duro?”
“No, sir, there isn’t one.”
“Nor a guidebook, perhaps?”
“Nor that either. At the townhall we have a map of the town....”
“Only of the part built up?”
“Yes.”
“Then it would do me no good.”
“You want a map for making excursions, eh?”
“That’s it. Yes.”
“Well, there is none. We are very much behind the times.”
“Yes, that’s true. It wouldn’t cost very much, and it would be useful
for ever, both to the people here and to strangers.”
“Just tell that to our town government!” exclaimed the old bookseller.
“Whatever is not for the advantage of the rich and the clerical element,
there is no hope of.”
“Those gentlemen have a great deal of influence here?” asked Alzugaray.
“Uf! Enormous. More every day.”
“But there don’t appear to be many convents.”
“No, there are not many convents; but there is one that counts for a
hundred, and that is the one at Cidones.”
“Why is that?”
“Because it has a wild beast for a prior. Father Martín Lafuerza. He is
famous all through this region. And he is a man of talent, there’s no
denying it, but despotic and exigent. He is into everything, catechizes
the women, dominates the men. There is no way to fight against him. Here
am I with this bookshop, and I have my pension as a lieutenant, which
gives me enough to live very meanly, and with what little I get out of
the periodicals I scrape along. Besides, I am a Republican and very
liberal, and I like propaganda. If I didn’t, I should have left all this
long ago, because they have waged war to the death on me, an infamous
sort of war which a person that lives in Madrid cannot understand;
calumnies that come from no one knows where, atrocious accusations,
everything....”
Alzugaray stared at the bookseller’s grey eyes, which were
extraordinarily bright. The old man was tall, stooped, grizzled, with a
prominent nose and a beard trimmed to a point.
“But you have stuck firmly to your post,” said Alzugaray.
“Having been a soldier must do something for a man,” replied the
bookseller. “He learns not to draw back in the face of danger. And this
is my life. Now I am a councillor and I work at the town hall as much as
I can, even though I know I shall accomplish nothing. Grafting goes on
before my face, I know it exists, and yet it is impossible to find it.
Six months ago I informed the judge of irregularities committed in a
Sisters’ Asylum, things I had proof of.... The judge laid my information
on the table, and things went on as if nothing had happened.”
“Spain is in a bad way. It is a pity!” exclaimed Alzugaray.
“You people in Madrid, and I don’t say this to irritate you, do not
understand what goes on in the small towns.”
“My dear man, I have never taken any part in political affairs.”
“Well, I think that everybody ought to take part in politics, because it
is for the general interest.”
At this moment two persons entered the bookshop. Alzugaray was going to
leave, but the bookseller said to him:
“If you have nothing to do, sit down for a while.”
Alzugaray sat down and examined the new arrivals. One of them was a
skinny man, with bushy hair and whiskers; the other was a smooth-shaven
party, short, cross-eyed, dressed in copper-coloured cloth edged with
broad black braid.
“_The Rebel_ hasn’t come?” asked the whiskered one.
“No,” replied the bookseller. “It didn’t come out this week.”
“They must have reported it,” said the whiskered one. “Yes, probably.”
“Has the doctor been in?” the shaven, little man with the black braid
asked in his turn.
“No.”
“All right. Let’s go see if we can find him in the club. Salutations!”
“Good-bye.”
“Who are those rascals?” asked Alzugaray, when they had gone out.
“They are two anarchists that we have here, who accuse me of being a
bourgeois... ha... ha.... The shaven one is the son of the landlady of
an inn who is called Furibis, and they call him that too. He used to be
a Federalist. They call the other one ‘Whiskers,’ and he came here from
Linares, not long ago.”
“What do they do?”
“Nothing. They sit in the club chatting, and nowadays the doctor we have
here runs with them, Dr. Ortigosa, who is half mad. He will be in soon.
Then you will see a type. He is a very bad-tempered man, and is always
looking for an excuse to quarrel. But above all, he is an enemy of
religion. He never says Good-bye, but Salutations or Farewell. In
the same way, he doesn’t say Holy Week, but Clerical Week. His great
pleasure is to find a temperament of a fibre like his own; then his eyes
flash and he begins to swear. And if he is hit, he stands for it.”
“He is an anarchist, too?”
“How do I know? He doesn’t know himself. Formerly, for four or five
months, he got out a weekly paper named _The Protest_, and sometimes
he wrote about the canalization of the river, and again about the
inhabitants of Mars.”
The bookseller and Alzugaray chatted about many other things, and after
some while the bookseller said:
“Here is Dr. Ortigosa. He is coming in.”
The door opened and a slim individual appeared, worn and sickly, with a
black beard and spectacles. His necktie was crooked, his suit dirty, and
he had his hat in his hand. He stared impertinently at Alzugaray, cast
a glance at a newspaper, and set to shouting and talking ill of
everything.
“This is a town full of dumb beasts,” he said from time to time, with
the energy of exasperation.
Then, supposing Alzugaray to come from Madrid, he started to speak ill
of the Madrileños.
“They are a collection of fools,” he said roundly, various times.
“They know nothing, they understand nothing, and still they talk
authoritatively about everything.”
Alzugaray put up with the downpour as if it had no reference to him,
looking over a newspaper; and when the doctor was in the thick of his
discourse, Alzugaray got up, shook hands with the bookseller, thanked
him, and left the shop.
The doctor looked at him over his glasses with fury, and began to walk
up and down in the bookstore.
Alzugaray went to the hotel, arranging in his memory the data collected.
Cæsar was feeling well, and the two of them talked of the bookseller
and his friends and of Father Martin Lafuerza.
“I am going to jot down all these points,” said Cæsar. “It wouldn’t be
a bad idea for you to go on cultivating the bookseller.”
“I am going to.”
“Tomorrow, you know,” said Cæsar. “Grand dinner at Don Calixto’s. The
practical manoeuvres begin.”
“Very good.”