"Come over to my house," answered Vidal.
When they came in sight of Casa Blanca, El Bizco left them.
"Thank the Lord that tramp has gone," muttered Vidal.
"Have you had a scrap with him?"
"He's a beastly fellow. He lives with La Escandalosa, who's an old fox
in truth, sixty years at the very least, and spends everything she
robs with her lovers. But she feeds him and he ought to have some
consideration for her. Nothing doing, though; he's always kicking her
and punching her and pricking her with his dirk, and one time he even
heated an iron and wanted to burn her. If he takes her money, well and
good; but what's the sense of his burning her?"
They reached Casa Blanca, a squalid section consisting of a single
street; Vidal opened a door with his key; he lighted a match and the
pair climbed up to a tiny room with a mattress placed on the bricks.
"You'll have to sleep on the floor," said Vidal. "This bed belongs to
my girl."
"All right."
"Take this for your head," and he threw him a woman's rolled-up skirt.
Manuel pillowed his head against the skirt and fell asleep. He awoke
at dawn. He opened his eyes and sat down upon the floor without a
thought as to where he might be. Through a tiny window came a pale
glow. Vidal, stretched out on the mattress, was snoring; beside him
slept a girl, breathing with her mouth wide open; long streaks of
rouge stained her cheeks.
Manuel felt nauseated by the excess of the previous day's drink; he
was deeply dejected. He gave serious thought to his life-problems.
"I'm not made for this," he told himself. "I'm neither a savage like
Bizco nor a brazen, carefree lout like Vidal. What am I going to do,
then?"
A thousand things occurred to him, for the most part impossible of
attainment; he imagined all manner of involved projects. Within him,
vaguely, his maternal inheritance, with its respect for all
established custom, struggled against his anti-social, vagrant
instincts that were fed by his mode of living.
"Vidal and Bizco," he said to himself, "are luckier chaps than myself.
They don't hesitate; they have no scruples. They've got a start on
their careers...."
In the end, he considered, they would come to the gallows or to the
penitentiary; but in the meantime the one experienced no suffering
because he was too beastly to know what it meant, and the other
because he was too lazy, and both of them let themselves float
tranquilly with the stream.
Despite his scruples and his remorse, Manuel spent the summer under
the protection of El Bizco and Vidal, living in Casa Blanca with his
cousin and his cousin's mistress, a girl who sold newspapers and
practised thievery at the same time.
The Society of the Three carried on its operations in the suburbs and
Las Ventas, La Prosperidad and the Doña Carlota section, the Vallecas
bridge and the Four Roads; and if the existence of this society never
came to be suspected and never figured in the annals of crime, it is
because its misdemeanours were limited to modest burglaries of the
sort facilitated by the carelessness of property owners.
The three associates were not content to operate in the suburbs of
Madrid; they extended the radius of their activities to the nearby
towns and to all places in general where crowds came together.
The market and the small squares were test localities, for the booty
might be of a larger quantity but on the other hand the police were
especially vigilant.
In general, they exploited the laundries more than any other place.
Vidal, like the clever fellow he was, managed to Convince El Bizco
that he was the most gifted of the three for the work. The cross-eyed
thug, out of sheer vanity, always undertook the most difficult part of
the task, seizing the booty, while Vidal and Manuel kept a sharp
lookout.
Vidal would say to Manuel, at the very moment of the robbery, when El
Bizco already had the stolen sheet or chemise under his coat:
"If anyone happens along, don't say a word; nothing. Let them arrest
him; we'll shut up tight as clams, absolutely motionless; if they ask
anything, we know nothing. Right-o?"
"Agreed."
Sheets, chemises, cloaks and all the other articles they robbed they
would sell at the second-hand shop on La Ribera de Curtidores, which
Don Telmo used to visit. The owner, employé or whatever he was of the
shop, would purchase everything the thieves brought, at a very low
price.
This "fence," which profited by the oversight of some base officer
(for the police lists did not bother with these things), was presided
over by a fellow called Uncle Pérquique. He spent his whole life
passing to and fro in front of his establishment. To deceive the
municipal guard he sold shoe-laces and bargains that came from the
old-clothes shop he conducted.
In the spring this fellow would don a cook's white cap and cry out his
tarts with a word that he scarcely pronounced and which he liked to
alter constantly. Sometimes the word seemed to be Pérquique!
Pérquique! but at once it would change sound and be transformed into
Pérqueque or Párquique, and these phonetic modifications were extended
to infinity.
The origin of this word Pérquique, which cannot be found in the
dictionary, was as follows: The cream tarts sold by the man in the
white cap brought five céntimos apiece and he would cry "_A perra
chica! A perra Chica!_ Only five pesetas apiece! A five-peseta
piece!" As a result of his lazy enunciation he suppressed the first A
and converted the other two into E, thus transforming his cry into
"_Perre chique! Perre chique!_" Later, _Perre chique_ turned
into _Pérquique._
The "fence" guard, a jolly soul, was a specialist in crying wares; he
shaded his cries most artistically; he would go from the highest notes
to the lowest or vice versa. He would begin, for example, on a very
high note, shouting:
"Look here! A real! Only one real! Ladies' and gents' hosiery at a
real a pair! Look-a-here now! A real a pair!" Then, lowering his
register, he would continue, gravely: "A nice Bayonne waistcoat. A
splendid bargain!" And as a finale, he would add in a basso profundo:
"Only twenty pesetas!"
Uncle Pérquique knew the Society of the Three, and he would favour El
Bizco and Vidal with his advice.
Safer and more profitable than dealing with the stolen-goods
purchasers of the second-hand shop was the plan followed by Dolores la
Escandalosa, who sold the ribbons and the lace that she pilfered to
itinerant hawkers who paid very well. But the members of the Society
of the Three were eager to get their dividends quickly.
The sale completed, the three would repair to a tavern at the end of
Embajadores avenue, corner of Las Delicias, which they called the
Handkerchief Corner.
The associates were especially careful not to rob twice in the same
place and never to appear together in those vicinities where
unfavourable surveillance was suspected.
Some days, which did not come often, when theft brought no plunder,
the three companions were compelled to work in the Campillo del Mundo
Nuevo, scattering heaps of wood and gathering it together with rakes
after it had been properly aired and dried.
Another of the Society's means of subsistence was cat-hunting. El
Bizco, who was endowed with no talent (his head, as Vidal said, was a
salted melon) had a really great gift for catching cats. All he needed
was a sack and a stick and he did famously. Every living cat in sight
was soon in his game-bag.
The members made no distinction between slender or consumptive cats,
or pregnant tabbies. Every puss that came along was devoured with the
same ravenous appetite. They would sell the skins in El Rastro; when
there were no ready funds, the innkeeper of the Handkerchief Corner
would let them have wine and bread on tick, and the Society would
indulge in a Sardanapalesque banquet....
One afternoon in August Vidal, who had dined in Las Ventas the
previous day with his girl, proposed to his comrades a scheme to rob
an abandoned house on the East Road.
The project was discussed in all seriousness, and on the afternoon of
the following day the three went out to look the territory over.
It was Sunday, there was a bull-fight; omnibuses and street cars,
packed with people, rolled along Alcalá Street beside open hacks
occupied by harlots in Manila mantles and men of knavish mien.
Outside the bull-ring the throng was denser than ever; from the street
cars came pouring streams of people who ran for the entrance; the
ticket-speculators rushed upon them with a shout; amidst the black
multitude shone the white helmets of the mounted guards. From the
inside of the ring came a muffled roar like the tide.
Vidal, El Bizco and Manuel, chagrined that they could not go in,
continued on their way, passed Las Ventas and took the road to
Vicálvaro. The south wind, warm and sultry, laid a white sheet of dust
over the fields; along the road from different directions drove black
and white hearses, for adults and children respectively, followed by
gigs containing mourners.
Vidal indicated the house: it stood back from the road and seemed
abandoned. It was fronted by a garden with its gate; behind extended
an orchard planted with leafless saplings, with a water-mill. The
orchard-wall was low and could be scaled with relative facility; no
danger threatened; there were neither prying neighbours nor dogs; the
nearest house, a marbler's workshop, was more than three hundred
metres distant.
From the neighbourhood of the house could be made out the East
cemetery, girded by arid yellow fields and barren hillocks; in the
opposite direction rose the Bull Ring with its bright banner and the
outlying houses of Madrid. The dusty road to the burial-ground ran
between ravines and green slopes, among abandoned tile-kilns and
excavations that showed the reddish ochre bowels of the earth.
After a minute examination of the house and its surroundings, the
three returned to Las Ventas. At night they felt like going back to
Madrid, but Vidal suggested that they had better remain where they
were, so that they could commit the robbery at dawn of the next day.
This was decided upon and they lay down in a tile-kiln, in the
passageway formed by two walls of heaped-up bricks.
A cold wind blew violently throughout the night. Manuel was the first
to awake and he roused the other two. They left the passageway formed
by the walls of bricks. It was still night; from time to time a
segment of the moon peered through the dark clouds; now it hid, now it
seemed to rest upon the bosom of one of those dense clouds which it
silvered so delicately.
In the distance, above Madrid a bright glow began to appear,
irradiated by the lights of the city; a few tombstones in the cemetery
cast a pallid shimmer.
Dawn was already tinting the heavens with its melancholy flush when
the three robbers approached the house.
Manuel's heart was pounding with agitation.
"Ah, by the way," said Vidal. "If by any accident we should be
surprised, we mustn't run; we've got to stick right in the house."
El Bizco burst into laughter; Manuel, who knew that his cousin wasn't
talking just for the sake of hearing his voice, asked:
"Why?"
"Because if they catch us in the house it's only a balked attempt at
robbery, and the punishment isn't severe; on the other hand, if they
catch us in flight, that would be a successful robbery and the penalty
would be great. So I was told yesterday."
"Well, I'll escape if I can."
"Do as you please."
They scaled the wall; Vidal remained astride of it, leaning forward
and watching for signs of any one. Manuel and El Bizco, making their
way astraddle along the wall, approached the house and, entrusting
their feet to the roof of a shed, jumped down to a terrace with a
bower slightly higher than the orchard.
The rear door and the balconies of the ground floor led to this
gallery; but both the door and the balconies were so well fastened
that it was impossible to open them.
"Can't you make it?" whispered Vidal from his perch.
"No."
"Here, take my knife." And Vidal threw it dawn to the gallery.
Manuel tried to pry the balconies open with the knife but met with no
success; El Bizco attempted to force the door with his shoulder and it
yielded enough to leave a chink, whereupon Manuel introduced the blade
of the knife and worked the catch of the lock back until he could open
the door. El Bizco and Manuel then went in.
The lower floor of the house consisted of a vestibule, which formed
the bottom of a staircase leading to a corridor, and two rooms whose
balconies overlooked the orchard.
The first thing that came to Manuel's head was to open the lock of the
door that led to the road.
"Now," said El Bizco to him, after admiring this prudent precaution,
"let's see what there is in the place."
They set about calmly and deliberately to take an inventory of the
house; there wasn't three ochavos' worth of material in the entire
establishment. They were forcing the dining-room closet when of a
sudden they heard the bark of a dog close by and they ran in fright to
the gallery.
"What's the matter?" they asked Vidal.
"A damned dog's begun to bark and he'll certainly attract somebody's
attention."
"Throw a stone at him."
"Where'll I get it?"
"Scare him."
"He'll bark all the more."
"Jump down here, or they'll surely see you."
Vidal jumped down into the orchard. The dog, who must have been a
moral animal and a defender of private property, continued his loud
barking.
"But the deuce!" growled Vidal at his friends. "Haven't you finished
yet?"
"There's nothing!"
The three returned to the rooms trembling; they seized a napkin and
stuffed into it whatever they laid hands upon: a copper clock, a white
metal candlestick, a broken electric bell, a mercury barometer, a
magnet and a toy cannon.
Vidal climbed up the wall with the bundle.
"Here he is," he whispered in fright.
"Who?"
"The dog."
"I'll go down first," mumbled Manuel, and placing the knife between
his teeth he let himself drop. The dog, instead of setting upon him,
withdrew a short distance, but he continued his barking.
Vidal did not dare to jump down with the bundle in his hands; so he
threw it carefully upon some bushes; as it fell, only the barometer
broke; the rest was already broken. El Bizco and Vidal then jumped
down and the three associates set out on a cross-country run, pursued
by the canine defender of private property, who barked at their heels.
"What damned fools we are!" exclaimed Vidal, stopping. "If a guard
should see us running like this he'd certainly arrest us."
"And if we pass the city gate they'll recognize what we're carrying in
this bundle and we'll be stopped," added Manuel.
The Society halted to deliberate and choose a course of action. The
booty was left at the foot of a wall. They lay down on the ground.
"A great many rag-dealers and dustmen pass this way," said Vidal, "on
the road to La Elipa. Let's offer this to the first one that comes
along."
"For three duros," corrected El Bizco.
"Why, of course."
They waited a while and soon a ragpicker hove into view, bearing an
empty sack and headed for Madrid. Vidal called him over and offered to
sell their bundle.
"What'll you give us for these things?"
The ragdealer looked over the contents of the bundle, made a second
inventory, and then in a jesting tone, with a rough voice, asked:
"Where did you steal this?"
The three associates chorused their protestation, but the ragpicker
paid no heed.
"I can't give you more than three pesetas for the whole business."
"No," answered Vidal. "Rather than accept that we'll take the bundle
with us."
"All right. The first guard I meet I'll inform against you and tell
him that you're carrying stolen goods on your person."
"Come across with the three pesetas," said Vidal. "Take the bundle."
Vidal took the money and the ragdealer, laughing, took the package.
"The first guard we see we'll tell that you've got stolen goods in
your sack," shouted Vidal to the ragdealer. The man with the sack got
angry and gave chase to the trio.
"Hey there! Come back! Come back!" he bellowed.
"What do you want?"
"Give me my three pesetas and take your bundle."
"Nix. Give us a duro and we won't say a word."
"Like hell."
"Give us only two pesetas more."
"Here's one, you rascal."
Vidal seized the coin that the ragdealer threw at him, and, as none
was sure of himself, they made off hurriedly. When they reached
Dolores' house in Las Cambroneras, they were bathed in perspiration,
exhausted.
They ordered a flask of wine from the tavern, "A rotten bungle we made
of it, hang it all," grumbled Vidal.
After the wine was paid for there remained ten reales; this they
divided among the three, receiving eighty céntimos apiece. Vidal
summed up the day's work with the remark that this committing
robberies in out-of-the-way spots was all disadvantages and no
advantages, for besides exposing oneself to the danger of being sent
to the penitentiary almost for life and getting a beating and being
chewed up by a moral dog, a fellow ran the risk of being wretchedly
fooled.
CHAPTER V
Gutter Vestals--The Troglodytes.
"No use. We've got to get rid of that beastly Bizco. Every time I see
him hate him more and he disgusts me more."
"Why?"
"Because he's a brute. Let him go off to his old fox, Dolores. You and
I can go to the theatre every night."
"How?"
"With the claque. We don't have to pay. All we have to do is applaud
when we get the signal."
This condition seemed to Manuel so easy to fulfil that he asked his
cousin:
"But listen. How is it, then, that everybody doesn't go to the theatre
like that?"
"Because they don't all know the head of the claque as I do."
And as a matter of fact they went to the Apollo. For the first few
days all Manuel could do was think of the plays and the actresses.
Vidal, with his superior manner in all things, learned the songs right
away; Manuel secretly envied him.
Between the acts the members of the claque would adjourn to a tavern
on Barquillo Street, varying this occasionally with a visit to another
place on the Plaza, del Rey. This latter resort was the rendezvous of
the claquers that worked in Price's Circus.
Almost all the legion of applauders were youngsters; a few of them
worked in shops here and there; for the most part they were loafers
and organgrinders who wound up by becoming supernumeraries, chorus men
or ticket-speculators.
There were among them effeminate, clean-shaven types with a woman's
face and a shrill voice.
At the entrance to the theatre Vidal and Manuel made the acquaintance
of a group of girls, from thirteen to eighteen years of age, who
wandered about Alcalá Street approaching well-to-do pillars of the
middle class; they pretended to be news-vendors and always had a copy
of the _Heraldo_ with them.
Vidal cultivated the intimacy of the girls; they were almost all
homely, but this did not interfere with his plans, which consisted of
extending the radius of his activities and his knowledge.
"We must leave the suburbs and work our way toward the centre," said
Vidal.
Vidal wished Manuel to help him, but Manuel had no gift for it. Vidal
came to be the cadet for four girls who lived together in Cuatro
Caminos and were named, respectively, La Mella, La Goya, La Rabanitos
and Engracia; they had come to form, together with Vidal, El Bizco and
Manuel another Society, though this one was anonymous.
The poor girls needed protection; they were pursued more than the
other loose women by the police because they paid no graft to the
inspectors. They would be forever fleeing from the guards and agents,
who, whenever there was a round-up, would take them to the station and
thence to the Convento de las Trinitarias.
The thought of being immured in the convent struck genuine terror into
their hearts.
"To think of never seeing the street," they moaned, as if this were a
most horrible punishment.
And the abandonment at night in the unprotected thoroughfares, which
inspired horror in others; the cold, the rain, the snow,--were to them
liberty and life.
They all spoke in a rough manner; their grammar and word-forms were
incorrect; language in them leaped backwards into a curious atavic
regression.
They spiced their talk with a long string of theatrical lines and
"gags."
The four led a terrible life; they spent the morning and the afternoon
in bed sleeping and didn't go to sleep again till dawn.
"We're like cats," La Mellá would say. "We hunt at night and sleep by
day."
La Mellá, La Goya, La Rabanitos and Engracia would go at night to the
centre of Madrid, accompanied by a white-bearded beggar with a smiling
face and a striped cap.
The old man came to beg alms; he was a neighbour of the girls and they
called him Uncle Tarrillo, bantering him upon his frequent sprees. He
was utterly daft and loved to talk upon the corruption of popular
manners.
La Mellá said that Uncle Tarrillo had tried, one night after they had
returned alone from the Jardinillos del Deposito de Agua, to violate
her and that he had made her laugh so much that it was impossible.
The mendicant would wax indignant at the tale and would pursue the
indiscreet maid with all the ardour of an old faun.
Of the four girls the ugliest was La Mellá; with her big, deformed
head, her black eyes, her wide mouth and broken teeth, her dumpy
figure, she looked like the lady-jester of some ancient princess. She
had been on the point of becoming a chorus-girl; she was balked,
however, for despite her good voice and excellent ear for music, she
could not pronounce the words clearly because of her missing teeth.
La Mellá was always in high spirits, singing and laughing at all hours
of the day and night. She carried in her apron-pocket a tiny
powder-puff with a mirror on the inside of the cover; she would stop
at every other step to gaze at herself by the light of a
street-lantern and powder her face.
She was affectionate and kind-hearted. Her excessive ugliness made
Manuel gag. The lass was eager to win him but Vidal advised his cousin
not to take up with her; La Goya suited him better, for she made more
money.
La Mellá was not at all to Manuel's taste, despite her affectionate
caresses; but La Goya was compromised with El Soldadito, a man with a
position, as she said, for when he went to work he turned the crank of
an handorgan.
This organ-grinder took all the receipts of La Goya, who, as the
prettiest of the quartet, enjoyed the most numerous patronage; El
Soldadito watched her and when she went off with anybody, followed,
waiting for her to come out of the house of assignation so that he
could collect her earnings.
Vidal, of the four, condescended to choose La Rabanitos and Engracia
as the objects of his protection; the two girls were forever disputing
over him. La Rabanitos looked like a pocket-edition of a woman; a
white little face with blue streaks about her nose and her mouth; a
rachetic, wizened body; thin lips and large eyes of schlerotic blue;
she dressed like an old woman, with her sombre little cloak and her
black dress; such was La Rabanitos. She was bothered with frequent
hemorrhages; she spoke with all the mannerisms of a granny, making
queer twists and turns, and she spent all her spare change on dry salt
tunny fish, caramels and other dainties.
Engracia, Vidal's other favourite, was the typical brothel inmate: her
face was white with rice powder; her dark, flashing eyes had an
expression of purely animal melancholy; as she spoke she showed her
blue teeth, which contrasted with the whiteness of her powdered
countenance. She leaped from joy to dejection without transition. She
could not smile. Her face was as soon darkened by stupidity as it was
illuminated by a ribald merriment, insulting and cynical.
Engracia had little to say and when she spoke it was to utter
something particularly bestial and filthy, of involved cynicism and
pornography. Her imagination was of monstrous fertility.
A macabrous sculptor might have hit upon a work of genius by cutting
the thoughts of this girl into the stone representing some infernal
Dance of Death.
Engracia could not read. She wore loud waists, blue and pink; a white
kerchief on her head and a coloured apron; she trotted along with a
swaying movement, so that the coins in her purse kept jingling. She
had been eight years in this brothel life, and was only sixteen in
all. She was sorry to have grown up, for she said that she had earned
far more as a little girl.
The friendship of Manuel and Vidal with these girls lasted a couple of
months; Manuel could not make up his mind to take up with La Mella;
she was too repulsive; Vidal widened the horizons of his activity,
tippled with a gang of _chulos_ and devoted himself to the
conquest of a flower-girl who sold carnations.
Engracia and La Rabanitos conceived a violent hatred for the lass.
"That strumpet?" La Rabanitos would say. "Why, she's already as
disreputable as us...."
One night Vidal did not put in his usual appearance at Casa Blanca,
and two or three days later he showed up at the Puerta del Sol with a
tall, buxom woman garbed in grey.
"Who's that?" asked Manuel of his cousin.
"Her name's Violeta; I've taken up with her."
"And the other one, at Casa Blanca?"
Vidal shrugged his shoulders.
"You can have her if you wish," he said.
Vidal's former sweetheart likewise disappeared from Casa Blanca and,
after he had been unable to collect the two weeks' rent, the
administrator put Manuel out into the street and sold the furnishings:
a few empty bottles, a stew-pot and a bed.
For several days Manuel slept upon the benches of the Plaza de Oriente
and on the chairs of La Castellana and Recoletos. It was getting
toward the end of summer and he could still sleep in the open. A few
céntimos that he earned by carrying valises from the stations helped
him to exist, though badly, until October.
There were days when the only thing he ate was the cabbage stalks that
he picked up in the marketplaces; other days, on the contrary, he
treated himself to seventy-eight céntimo banquets in the chop-houses.
October came around and Manuel began to feel cold at night; his eldest
sister gave him a frayed overcoat and a muffler; but despite these,
whenever he could find no roof to shelter him he almost froze to death
in the street.
One night in the early part of November Manuel stumbled against El
Bizco at the entrance to a café on La Cabecera del Rastro; the
cross-eyed ragamuffin was bent over, almost naked, his arms crossed
against his chest, barefoot; he presented a painful picture of poverty
and cold.
Dolores La Escandalosa had left him for another.
"Where can we go to sleep?" Manuel asked him.
"Let's try the caves of La Montaña," answered El Bizco.
"But can we get in there?"
"Yes, if there aren't too many."
"Come on, then."
The two crossed through the Puerta de Moros and Mancebos Street to the
Viaduct; they traversed the Plaza de Oriente, following along Bailen
and Ferraz Streets, and, as they reached the Montaña del Príncipe Pío,
ascended a narrow path bordered by recently planted pines.
El Bizco and Manuel went along in the dark from one side to the other,
exploring the hollows of the mountain, until a ray of light issuing
from a crevice in the earth betrayed one of the caves.
They approached the hole; from within came the interrupted hum of
hoarse voices.
By the flickering light of a candle which was held in position on the
ground by two rocks, more than a dozen outcasts, some seated and some
on their knees, formed a knot of card-players. In the corners might be
discerned the hazy outlines of men stretched out on the sand.
A fetid vapour was exhaled by the cave.
The flame flickered, illuminating now a corner of the den, now the
pale face of one of the players, and as the light blinked, the shadows
of the men grew long or short on the sandy walls. From time to time
was heard a curse or a blasphemy.
Manuel thought that he had beheld something like this before in one of
his feverish nightmares.
"I'm not going in," he said to El Bizco.
"Why?" asked his companion.
"I'd rather freeze."
"As you please, then. I know one of these fellows. He's El
Interprete."
"And who is this Interprete?"
"The captain of all the mountain vagabonds."
Despite these assurances Manuel hesitated.
"Who's there?" came a voice from inside.
"I," answered El Bizco.
Manuel dashed off at full speed. Near the cave stood a group of two or
three huts, with a yard in the middle, surrounded by a rough stone
wall.
This, according to the ironic name given to it by the ragamuffins, was
the Crystal Palace, the nest of some low-flying turtledoves who
frequented the Montaña barracks and who, at night, were joined by
friendly hawks and gerfalcons.
The entrance to the yard was closed by a double-panelled door.
Manuel examined it to see if it yielded, but it was strong, and was
armoured with tins that were stretched out and nailed down upon mats.
He thought that nobody could be there and tried to climb the wall; he
scaled the low rubble inclosure and as he advanced, got caught in a
wire; a stone fell noisily from the wall, a dog began to bark
furiously, and a curse echoed from inside.
Manuel, convinced that the nest was not empty, took to flight. He
sought shelter in a doorway that was somewhat protected from the rain
and huddled down to sleep.
It was still night when he awoke shivering with the cold, trembling
from head to foot. He started to run so as to warm himself; he reached
the Paseo de Rosales and strode up and down several times.
It seemed that the night would never end.
The rain ceased; the sun came out in the morning; Manuel took refuge
in a hollow on the slope of the embankment. The sun began to warm him
most deliciously. Manuel dreamed of a very white, exceedingly
beautiful woman with golden tresses. Frozen almost to death, he drew
near the lady, and she wrapped him in her golden strands and he
nestled tenderly, ever so tenderly in her lap....
CHAPTER VI
Señor Custodio and His Establishment--The Free Life.
... And he was in the midst of the most ravishing dreams when a harsh
voice recalled him to the bitter, impure realities of existence.
"What are you doing there, loafer?" some one was asking him.
"I!" mumbled Manuel, opening his eyes and staring at his questioner.
"I'm not doing anything."
"Yes, I can see that. I can see that."
Manuel got up; before him he beheld an old man with greyish hair and
gloomy mien, with a sack across his shoulder and a hook in his hand.
The fellow wore a fur cap, a sort of yellowish overcoat and a reddish
muffler rolled around his neck.
"Have you a home?" asked the man.
"No, sir."
"And you sleep in the open?"
"Well, as I haven't any home...."
The ragpicker began to rake over the ground, fished up some objects
and various papers, shoved them into the sack and turning his gaze
again upon Manuel, added:
"You'd be better off if you went to work."
"If I had work, I'd work; but I haven't, so ..."--and Manuel, wearied
of these useless words, huddled into his corner to continue his
slumbers.
"See here," said the ragdealer, "you come along with me. I need a boy
... I'll feed you."
Manuel looked at the man without replying.
"Well, do you want to or not? Hurry up and decide."
Manuel lazily arose. The rag man, sack slung across his shoulder,
climbed the slope of the embankment until he reached Rosales Street,
where he had a cart drawn by two donkeys. The man told them to move on
and they ambled down toward the Paseo de la Florida, thence through
Virgen del Puerto Avenue to the Ronda de Segovia. The cart, with its
license plate and number, was a tumbledown affair, held together by
strips of brass, and was laden with two or three sacks, buckets and
baskets.
The ragman, Señor Custodio,--that was what he gave as his
name,--looked like a good-natured soul.
From time to time he would bend over, pick up something from the
street and throw it into the cart.
Underneath the cart, attached to it by a chain, jogged along in
leisurely fashion a dog with yellowish locks, long and lustrous,--an
amiable creature who appeared to Manuel as good a canine as his master
was a human being.
* * * * *
Between the Segovia and Toledo bridges, not far from the head of
Imperial Avenue, there opens a dark depression with a cluster of two
or three squalid, wretched huts. It is a quadrangular ditch, blackened
by smoke and coal dust, hemmed in by crumbling walls and heaps of
rubbish.
As he reached the edge of this depression, the rag-dealer stopped and
pointed out to Manuel a hovel standing next to a broken-down
merry-go-round and some swings, saying:
"That's my house; take the cart down there and unload it. Can you do
that?"
"Yes, I think so."
"Are you hungry?"
"Yes, sir."
"Very well. Then tell my wife to give you a bite."
Manuel accompanied the cart into the hollow over an embankment of
rubbish. The ragdealer's house was the largest in the vicinity and had
a yard as well as an adjoining shed.
Manuel stopped before the door of the hut; an old woman came out to
meet him.
"What do you want, kid?" she asked. "Who sent you here?"
"Señor Custodio. He told me to ask you where to put the stuff that's
in the cart."
The woman pointed out the shed.
"He told me also," added the boy, "to say that you should give me
something to eat."
"I know you, you foxy creature," mumbled the old woman. And after
grumbling for a long time and waiting for Manuel to dump out the
contents of the cart, she gave him a slice of bread and a piece of
cheese.
The woman unharnessed the two mules and released the dog, who began to
bark and play with contentment; he snapped playfully at the mules, one
black and the other a silvery grey, who turned their eyes upon him and
showed their teeth; desperately he gave chase to a white cat with a
tail that bristled like a feather-duster, then approached Manuel, who,
seated in the sun, was nibbling at his bit of cheese and his slice of
bread, waiting for something. They both had lunch.
Manuel walked around the dwelling and looked it over. One of its
narrow sides was composed of two bathing-houses.
These two bathing-houses were not joined, but left between them a
space filled in by a rusty iron door such as is used to fasten shops.
The two longer walls of the ragdealer's hovel were formed of stakes
paid with pitch, and the wall opposite to that built of the
bathing-houses was constructed of thick, irregular rocks and curved
outward with a swelling like that of a church presbytery. Within, this
curve corresponded to a hollow in the manner of a wide vaulted niche
occupied by the hearth.
The house, despite its tiny size, had no uniform system of roofing; in
some spots tiles were substituted by strips of tin with heavy rocks
holding them in place and the interstices chinked with straw; in
others, the slate was mortared together with mud; in still others,
sheets of zinc provided protection.
The construction of the house betrayed each phase of its growth. As
the shell of the tortoise augments with the development of the
reptile, so did the rag-dealer's hovel little by little increase. At
first it must have been a place for only one person, something like a
shepherd's hut; then it widened, grew longer, divided into rooms,
afterwards adding its annexes, its shed and its yard.
Before the door to the dwelling, on a flat stretch of tamped earth,
stood a carrousel surrounded by a low, octagonal impalement; the
stakes, decayed by the action of moisture and heat, still showed a
vestige of their original blue paint.
Those poor merry-go-round steeds, painted red, offered to the gaze of
the indifferent spectator the most comical, and at the same time the
most pathetic sight. One of the coursers was of indeterminate hue; the
other must have forgotten his paws in his mad race; one of them, in a
most elegantly uncomfortable pose, symbolized humble sadness and
honest, refined modesty.
At the side of the merry-go-round rose a frame formed of two tripods
upon which rested a beam, whose hooks served as the support of swings.
The black ditch harboured three other hovels, all three constructed of
tins, rubbish, planks, ruins and other similar building materials. One
of the shacks, owing either to old age or deficient architecture,
threatened to collapse, and the owner, no doubt, had sought to prevent
its fall by sinking a row of stakes along one of the walls, against
which it leaned like a lame man upon his crutch; another house
flaunted like a flagstaff a long stick on its roof with a pot stuck on
the top....
After eating Manuel informed the old woman that Señor Custodio had
told him he might remain there.
"Tell me whether there's anything else for me to do," he concluded.
"All right. Stay here. Take care of the fire. If the pot boils, let
it; if it doesn't, throw a bit of coal into the flames. Reverte!
Reverte!" shouted the woman to the dog. "Let him remain here."
She went off and Manuel was left alone with the dog. The stew boiled
merrily. Manuel, followed by Reverte, made an inspection tour of the
house. It was divided into three compartments: a tiny kitchen and a
large room into which the light entered through two high, small
windows.
In this room or store-room, on all sides, from the walls and from the
ceiling, hung old wares of various hue, white clothes, red boinas and
Catalonian caps, strips of crape cloaks. On the shelves and on the
floor, separated according to class and size, were flasks, bottles,
jars, canisters, a veritable army of glass and porcelain pots; the
ranks were broken by those huge, green, dropsical pharmacy bottles,
and several heavy-paunched demi-johns; then came half-gallon bottles,
tall and dark; straw-covered vases; this was followed by the section
devoted to medicinal waters, the most varied and numerous of all, for
it included Seltzer-water siphons, oxygenized-water siphons, bottles
of gaseous water, Vichy, Mondariz, Carabana; after this came the small
fry, the perfume phials, the pots, the cold-cream jars, the cosmetic
receptacles.
In addition to this department of bottles there were others:
canned-goods tins and pans ranged on shelves; buttons and keys kept in
chests; remnants, ribbons and laces rolled around spools or cardboard.
All this struck Manuel as quite pleasant. Everything was in its proper
place, relatively spick and span; the hand of a methodical, neat
person was in evidence.
In the kitchen, which was kalsomined, shone the few scullery utensils.
On the hearth, above the white ashes, an earthenware stew-pot was
boiling away with a gentle purring.
From outside there scarcely came the distant noises of the city, which
filtered in like a pale sound; it was as quiet as in a remote hamlet;
now and then a dog would bark, some cart would creak as it bumped
along the road, then silence would be restored and in the kitchen
nothing would be heard save the _glu glu_ of the pot, like a
soft, confidential murmur....
Manuel cast a look of satisfaction through the chink of the door to
the dark ditch outside. In the corral the hens were scratching the
earth; a hog was rooting about, running in fright from one side to the
other, grunting and quivering with nervous tremours; Reverte was
yawning, blinking gravely, and one of the donkeys was wallowing
delightedly amidst broken pots, decayed baskets and heaps of refuse,
while the other, as if scandalized by such unrefined comportment,
contemplated him with the utmost surprise.
All this black earth filled Manuel with an impression of ugliness, yet
at the same time with a sense of tranquillity and shelter; it seemed a
proper setting for him. This soil formed the daily deposits of the
dumping-place; this earth, whose sole products were old sardine-cans,
oyster shells, broken combs and shattered pots; this earth, black and
barren, composed of the detritus of civilization, of bits of lime and
mortar and factory refuse, of all that the city had cast off as
useless, seemed to Manuel a place made especially for him, for he
himself was a bit of the flotsam and jetsam likewise cast adrift by
the life of the city.
Manuel had seen no other fields than the sad, rocky meadows of Soria
and the still sadder ones of the Madrilenian suburbs. He did not
suspect that in spots uncultivated by man there were green meadows,
leafy woods, beds of flowers; he thought that trees and flowers were
born only in the gardens of the rich....
Manuel's first days in Señor Custodio's house seemed too burdened; but
as there is plenty of free roaming in the ragdealer's life, he soon
grew accustomed to it.
Señor Custodio arose when it was still night, woke Manuel, and they
both harnessed the two donkeys to the cart and took the direction to
Madrid, on their daily hunt for the old boot and the discarded tatter.
Sometimes they went by way of Melancólicos Avenue; others, by the
Rondas or through Segovia Street.
Winter was coming on; at the hour when they sallied forth Madrid was
in complete darkness. The ragdealer had his fixed itinerary and his
schedule of call stations. When he went by way of the Rondas and drove
up Toledo Street, which was his most frequent route, he would halt at
the Plaza de la Cebada and the Puerta de Moros, fill his hamper with
vegetables and continue toward the heart of the city.
On other days he travelled through Melancólicos Avenue to the Virgen
del Puerto, from here to La Florida, then to Rosales Street, where he
rummaged in the rubbish deposited by the tip-carts, continuing to the
Plaza de San Marcial and arriving at the Plaza de los Mostenses.
On the way Señor Custodio let nothing escape his eye; he would examine
it and keep it if it were worth the trouble. The leaves of vegetables
went into the hampers; rags, paper and bones went into the sacks; the
half-burned coke and coal found a place in a bucket and dung was
thrown into the back of the cart.
Manuel and the ragdealer returned early in the morning; they unloaded
the cart on the flat earth before the door, and husband, wife and the
boy would separate and classify the day's collection. The rag-dealer
and his wife were amazingly skilful and quick at this work.
On rainy days the assorting was done in the shed. During such weather
the depression became a dismal, repellant swamp, and in order to cross
it one had to sink into the mud, in places half way up to the knee.
Everything would drip water; the hog in the yard would wallow in mire;
the hens would appear with their wings all black and the dog scampered
about coated with mud to the ears.
After the sorting of the collection, Señor Custodio and Manuel, each
with a basket, would wait for the dump-carts to arrive, and as the
refuse was tipped out, they would set about sorting it on the very
dumping-grounds: pasteboard, rags, glass and bones.
In the afternoon Señor Custodio would go to certain stables in the
Argüelles district to clean out the manure and take it to the orchards
on the Manzanares.
Between one thing and another Señor Custodio made enough to live in a
certain comfort; he had a firm grasp upon his business and as he was
under no compulsion to sell his wares promptly, he would wait for the
most opportune occasion so that he could sell with advantage.
The paper that he thus stored up was purchased by the pasteboard
factories; they gave him from thirty or forty céntimos per arroba. The
manufacturers required the paper to be perfectly dry, and Señor
Custodio dried it in the sun. As they tried at times to get the best
of him in weight, he used to place in each sack two or three full
arrobas, weighed with a steelyard; on the cloth of the sack he would
inscribe a number in ink, indicating the amount of arrobas it
contained, and these sacks he held in a sort of cellar or ship's hold
that he had dug into the ground of the shed.
When there was a great quantity of paper he sold it to a pasteboard
factory on Acacias Avenue. Señor Custodio's journey was not in vain,
for in addition to selling the goods at a fancy price, he would, on
the way back, drive his cart in the direction of a pitch factory of
the vicinity, and there he picked up from the ground a very fine coal
that burned excellently and gave as much heat as slag.
He sold the bottles to wine houses, to liquor and beer distilleries;
the medicine flasks he disposed of to pharmacists; the bones went to
the refineries and the rags to the paper factories.
The bread leavings, vegetable leaves and fruit cores were reserved for
the feed of the pigs and hens, and what was of no use at all was cast
into the rotting-place, converted into manure and sold to the orchards
near the river.
On the first Sunday that Manuel spent there, Señor Custodio and his
wife took the afternoon off. For many a day they had never gone out
together because they were afraid to leave the house alone; this day
they dressed up in their best and went on a visit to their daughter,
who worked as a modiste in a relative's shop.
Manuel was glad to be left by himself with Reverte, contemplating the
house, the yard, the ditch; he turned the carrousel round and it
creaked ill-humouredly; he climbed up the swing frame, looked down at
the hens, teased the pig a little and then ran up and down with the
dog chasing after him barking merrily in feigned fury.
This dark depression attracted Manuel somehow or other, with its
rubbish heaps, its gloomy hovels, its comical, dismantled
merry-go-round, its swings, and its ground that held so many
surprises, for a rough, ordinary pot burgeoned from its depths as
easily as a lady's elegant perfume phial; the rubber bulb of a prosaic
syringe grew side by side with the satin, scented sheet of a love
letter.
This rough, humble life, sustained by the detritus of a refined,
vicious existence; this almost savage career in the suburbs of a
metropolis, filled Manuel with enthusiasm. It seemed to him that all
the stuff cast aside in scorn by the capital,--the ordure and broken
tubs, the old flower-pots and toothless combs, buttons and sardine
tins,--all the rubbish thrown aside and spurned by the city, was
dignified and purified by contact with the soil.
Manuel thought that if in time he should become the owner of a little
house like Señor Custodio's, and of a cart and donkeys, and hens and a
dog, and find in addition a woman to love him, he would be one of the
almost happy men in this world.
CHAPTER VII
Señor Custodio's Ideas--La Justa, El Carnicerín, and El Conejo.
Señor Custodio was an intelligent fellow of natural gifts, very
observant and quick to take advantage of a situation. He could
neither read nor write, yet made notes and kept accounts; with
crosses and scratches of his own invention he devised a substitute
for writing, at least for the purposes of his own business.
Señor Custodio was exceedingly eager for knowledge, and if it
weren't that the notion struck him as ridiculous, he would have set
about learning how to read and write. In the afternoon, work done,
he would ask Manuel to read the newspapers and the illustrated
reviews that he picked up on the streets, and the ragdealer and his
wife listened with the utmost attention.
Señor Custodio had, too, several volumes of novels in serial form
that had been left behind by his daughter, and Manuel began to read
them aloud.
The comment of the ragdealer, who took this fiction for historic
truth, was always perspicacious and just, revelatory of an instinct
for reasoning and common sense. The man's realistic criticism was
not always to Manuel's taste, and at times the boy would make bold
to defend a romantic, immoral thesis. Señor Custodio, however, would
at once cut him short, refusing to let him continue.
For professional reasons the ragdealer was much preoccupied with
thought of the manure that went to waste in Madrid. He would say to
Manuel:
"Can you imagine how much money all the refuse that comes from
Madrid is worth?"
"No."
"Then figure it out. At seventy céntimos per arroba, the millions of
arrobas that it must amount to in a year.... Spread this over the
suburbs and have the waters of the Manzanares and the Lozoya
irrigating all these lands, and you'd see a world of gardens and
orchards everywhere."
Another of the fellow's fixed ideas was that of reclaiming used
material. It seemed to him that lime and sand could be extracted
from mortar refuse, live plaster from old, dead plaster, and he
imagined that this reclamation would yield a huge sum of money.
Señor Custodio, who had been born near the very depression in which
his house was situated, felt for his particular district, and for
Madrid in general, a deep enthusiasm; the Manzanares, to him, was as
considerable a river as the Amazon.
Señor Custodio had two children, of whom Manuel knew only Juan, a
tall, swarthy sport who was married to the daughter of a laundry
proprietress in La Bombilla. The ragdealer's daughter, Justa by
name, was a modiste in a shop.
During the first few weeks neither of the children came to their
parents' home. Juan lived in the laundry and Justa with a relative
of hers who owned a workshop.
Manuel, who spent many hours in conversation with Señor Custodio,
noted very soon that the rag-dealer, though fully aware of his very
humble condition, was a man of extraordinary pride and that as
regarded honour and virtue he had the ideas of a mediaeval nobleman.
One Sunday, after he had been living there a month Manuel had
finished his meal and was standing at the door when he saw a girl
with her skirts gathered come running down the slope of the
dumping-ground. As she approached and he got a close look at her,
Manuel went red and then blanched. It was the lass that had come two
or three times to the lodging-house to fit the Baroness's dresses;
but she had since then grown to womanhood.
She drew near, raising her skirt and her starched petticoats,
careful not to soil her patent-leather slippers.
"What can she be coming here for?" Manuel asked himself.
"Is father in?" she inquired.
Señor Custodio came out and embraced her. She was the ragdealer's
daughter of whom Manuel was forever hearing and whom, without
knowing just why, he had imagined as a very thin, emaciated,
disagreeable creature.
Justa walked into the kitchen and after looking over the chairs, to
see whether there was anything on them that might soil her clothes,
she sat down upon one of them. She began to pour forth a flood of
unceasing chatter and roared at her own jokes.
Manuel listened without a word; to tell the truth she wasn't quite
so good-looking as he had imagined, but she didn't please him any
the less for that. She might be about eighteen, was brunette, rather
short, with very dark, flashing eyes, a tilted, pert nose, a sensual
mouth and thick lips. She was, too, a bit full behind and in the
breasts and the hips; she was neat, fresh, with a very high top-knot
and a pair of brand-new, polished slippers.
As Justa gabbled on, to the ecstasy of her parents, there came into
the kitchen a hump-backed fellow from one of the neighbouring
hovels; he was called El Conejo (the rabbit) and his face really
showed a great resemblance to the amiable rodent whose name he bore.
El Conejo was a member of Señor Custodio's fraternity and knew Justa
since she had been a child; Manuel used to see him every day, but
never paid any attention to him.
The Rabbit walked into Señor Custodio's and began to talk nonsense,
laughing in violent outbursts, but in so mechanical a manner that it
provoked his hearers, for it seemed that behind this continuous
laughter lay a very deep bitterness. Justa touched his hump, for, as
is known, this brings good luck, whereupon El Conejo exploded with
merriment.
"Have you been lugged up again before the chief?" she asked.
"Oh, yes. Often ... hee-hee ..."
"What for?"
"Because the other day I started to shout in the street: 'Bargains!
Who'll buy Sagasta's umbrella, Kruger's hat, the Pope's urinal, a
syringe lost by a nun while she was talking with the sacristan! ..."
El Conejo trumpeted this at the top of his lungs and Justa held her
sides with laughter.
"And don't you sing mass any more the way you used to?"
"Oh, sure."
"Let's hear it, then."
The humpback had taken for his scandalous parody, the Preface of the
Mass, and for the sacred words he substituted others with which he
announced his business. He began to bellow:
"Who will sell me any ... slippers ... pants ... hempen sandals ...
old shoes ... secondhand clothes ... syringes ... urinals and even
chemises."
The hunchback's cries made Justa laugh nervously. El Conejo, after
repeating the Preface several times took up the melody of the
rogations and sang some strains in a high soprano, others in a basso
profundo:
"The high silk-hat" ... and instead of saying _Libéranos
domine_, he went on: "I'll buy for spot cash.... Your old vest
... will fetch a five-peseta piece...."
Then he had to stop to let Justa laugh.
She was not slow in perceiving that she had attracted Manuel, and
despite the fact that he seemed no great conquest to her, she became
serious, egged him on and glanced at him furtively with looks that
sent the boy's blood pounding faster.
After the ragdealer's daughter had left, Manuel felt as if he had
been abandoned to darkness. He thought that he could live for two or
three weeks on her incendiary glances alone.
The next day, when Manuel met El Conejo he listened to the nonsense
that the hunchback spoke, with his eternal harping on the Bishop of
Madrid-Alcalá, and then tried to shift the conversation toward the
topic of Señor Custodio and his family.
"Justa's a pretty girl, isn't she?"
"Psch ... yes," and El Conejo looked at Manuel with the reserved
mien of a person concealing a mystery.
"You've known her since she was a kid, haven't you?"
"Yes. But I've known plenty of other girls, too."
"Has she a sweetheart?"
"She must have. Every woman has a sweetheart unless she's mighty
ugly."
"And who is Justa's fellow?"
"Anyone; I shouldn't be surprised if it were the Bishop of
Madrid-Alcalá."
El Conejo was a very intelligent looking person; he had a long face,
a curved nose, a broad forehead, tiny, sparkling eyes and a reddish
beard that tapered to a point, like a goat's.
A peculiar tic, a convulsive twitch of the nose, would agitate his
face from time to time, and it was this that completed his
resemblance to a rabbit. His merriment was just as likely to find
issue in a nervous, metallic, sonorous outburst as in a muffled,
clownish guffaw. He would stare at people from top to bottom and
from bottom to top in a manner all the more insolent for its jesting
character, and to add to the mockery he would detain his gaze upon
his interlocutor's buttons, and his eyes would dance from the cravat
to the trousers and from the boots to the hat. He took special care
to dress in the most ridiculous fashion and he liked to adorn his
cap with bright cock feathers, strut about in riding boots and
commit similar follies.
He was fond, too, of confusing folks with his lies, and so firmly
did he state the tales of his own invention that it was hard to tell
whether he was fooling or speaking in all seriousness.
"Haven't you heard what happened this afternoon to the Bishop of
Madrid-Alcalá over at Las Cambroneras?" he would say to some
acquaintance.
"Why, no."
"Sure. He was on a visit bringing alms to Garibaldi and Garibaldi
gave the Bishop a cup of chocolate. The Bishop sat down, took a sip,
when zip! ... Nobody knows just what happened; he dropped dead."
"Why, man! ..."
"It's the Republicans that are behind it all," affirmed El Conejo in
his most serious manner, and he would be off to another place to
spread the news or perpetrate another hoax. He would join a group.
"Have you heard what happened to Weyler?"
"No. What was it?"
"Oh, nothing. On his return from camp some flies attacked his face
and ate up a whole ear. He went across Segovia bridge bleeding
terribly."
This was how the buffoon managed to enjoy himself.
Mornings he would sling his sack over his shoulder and proceed to
the centre of Madrid where he shouted his business through the
thoroughfares, mingling his cries with the names of political
leaders and famous men,--a habit that had won him more than once the
honour of appearing before the police-chief's desk.
El Conejo was as perverse and malevolent as a demon; any maiden in
the vicinity that was going around with a secret bundle might well
tremble lest he surprise her. He knew everything, he scented it out;
apparently, however, he took no mean advantage of his discoveries.
He was content to scare folks out of their wits.
"El Conejo must know," was the regular response when anything was
suspected.
"I don't know a thing; I've seen nothing," he would answer,
laughing. "I don't know anything." And that was all anybody could
get out of him.
As Manuel got to know El Conejo better he felt for him, if not
esteem, at least a certain respect because of his intelligence.
This ragman jester was so cunning that often he deceived his
colleagues of El Rastro, who were far from being a set of fools.
Almost every morning the ragdealers would forgather at the head of
El Rastro, to exchange impressions and used articles. El Conejo
would learn beforehand just what was needed by the stand merchants,
and he would buy the articles of the rag men, selling them in turn
to the merchants; between this bartering and selling he always came
out the gainer....
During the Sundays that followed, Justa amused herself by working
upon Manuel's feelings. The girl was absolutely free in her talk and
had a thorough, finished knowledge of all the Madrilenian phrases
and wiles.
At first Manuel acted very respectfully; but seeing that she took no
offence he grew gradually more daring and ventured so far as to
steal embraces. Justa easily freed herself and would laugh at sight
of the fellow's serious countenance and his glance ablaze with
desire.
With the licentious manner that characterized her, Justa would carry
on scabrous conversations, telling Manuel what men said to her on
the street and the proposals that they whispered into her ears; she
spoke with especial delight of shopmates who had lost their virginal
bloom in La Bombilla or Las Ventas with some Don Juan of the counter
who spent his days twirling his mustache before the mirror of a
perfumery or silk shop.
Justa's words were always freighted with a double meaning and were,
at times, burning allusions. Her mischievous manner, her flaunting,
unbridled coquetry, scattered about her an atmosphere of lust.
Manuel felt a painful eagerness to possess her, mingled with a great
sadness and even hatred, when he saw that Justa was making sport of
him. Many a time when he saw her come Manuel vowed to himself not to
speak a word to her, not to look at her or say anything; then she
would hunt him out and tease him by beckoning to him and touching
his foot.
Justa's temper was disconcertingly uneven. Sometimes when Manuel
clasped her about the waist and sat her down on his knees, she would
let him squeeze her and kiss her all he pleased; at others, however,
simply because he had drawn near and taken her by the hand, she
would give him such a hard slap that his senses whirled.
"And come back for more," she would add, seemingly indignant.
Manuel would feel like crying with anger and rage, and would have to
contain himself lest he blurt out, with childish logic: "Why did you
let me kiss you the other afternoon?" But at once he saw how
ridiculous such a question would seem.
Justa got to feel a certain liking for Manuel, but it was a
sisterly, a friendly affection; he never appealed to her seriously
as a sweetheart or a suitor.
This flirtation, which to Justa was a mere sham of love, constituted
for Manuel a painful awakening from puberty. He had dizzy attacks of
passionate desire which left him mortally weak and crushed. Then he
would stride along hurriedly with the irregular gait of one
suffering from locomotor ataxia; many a time, crossing the pine
grove of the Canal, he was seized with an impulse to jump into the
river and drown himself. The filthy black water, however, hardly
invited to immersion.
It was during these libidinous spells that dark, sinister thoughts
assailed him,--the notion of how useless his life was, the certainty
of an adverse fate,--and as he considered the vagabond, abandoned
existence that awaited him, his soul walked with bitterness and sobs
rose in his throat....
One winter Sunday Justa, who had got into the habit of visiting her
parents on every holiday, did not appear. Manuel wondered whether
the inclement weather might be the cause and he spent the whole week
restless and nervous, counting the days that would intervene before
their next meeting.
On the following Sunday Manuel went to the corner of the Paseo de
los Pontones to wait for the girl to come along; as he espied her at
a distance his heart gave a jump. She was accompanied by a young
dandy, half bull-fighter and half gentleman, wearing a Cordovan hat
and a blue cloak covered with embroidery. At the end of the avenue
Justa took leave of her escort.
The next Sunday Justa carne to her parents' home with a girl friend
and the young man of the embroidered cloak; she introduced the young
man to Señor Custodio. Afterward she said that he was the son of a
butcher from La Corredera Alta, and to her mother Justa confessed
bashfully that the gentleman had asked permission to pay her
attentions. This phrase pay attentions, which is spoken by the
haughtiest princess and the humblest janitress with equally
lingering pleasure, enchanted the ragdealer's wife, particularly as
the gentleman in question came of a wealthy family.
In Señor Custodio's home the butcher's son was considered as the
paragon of all perfections and beauties; Manuel alone protested and
El Carnicerin (the little butcher),--as he had named him derisively
from the very first moment,--was the object of his murderous
glances.
When Manuel understood that Justa considered the butcher's son as an
ideal suitor, his sufferings were cruel. It was no longer melancholy
that moved his soul, which was now agitated by the most raging
despair.
The fellow had too many advantages over him: he was tall, graceful,
slender, flaunted a fair, budding moustache, was well-dressed, his
fingers covered with rings, an expert dancer and skilful player on
the guitar; he almost had a right to be as, content with himself as
he was.
"How can that woman fail to see," thought Manuel, "that the fellow
loves only himself? While I...."
On Sundays there used to be dancing on a lawn near the Ronda de
Segovia, and Señor Custodio, with his wife, Justa and her
sweetheart, would go there. They would leave Manuel behind to watch
the house, but at times he would run off to see the dance.
When he caught sight of Justa dancing with El Carnicerin he was
overwhelmed with a desire to drown them both.
The suitor, moreover, was a terrible show-off; he would affect a
feminine grace as he danced, and it seemed as if he were applauding
and complimenting himself. He kept so finically true to the rhythm
of the dance that a spontaneous motion might ruin everything. He
wouldn't have officiated at mass with greater ceremony.
As was natural, such a complete knowledge of the science of dancing,
united to his consciousness of superiority, endowed El Carnicerín
with admirable self-possession. It was he who was permitting himself
indolently to be won by Justa, who was frantically fond of him. As
they danced she threw herself upon him, her eyes sparkled and her
nostrils dilated; it seemed as if she wished to dominate him,
swallow him, devour him. She did not take her eyes off him, and if
she saw him with another woman her face at once turned colour.
One afternoon El Carnicerín was speaking to a friend. Manuel drew
near so as to overhear the conversation.
"Is that the girl?" his friend inquired.
"She's the one."
"Boy, maybe she isn't daffy over you."
And El Carnicerín, with a conceited smile, added:
"I've turned her head, all right."
Manuel could have torn out the fop's heart at that moment.
His disappointment in love made him think of leaving Señor
Custodio's house.
One day he met, near the Segovia bridge, El Bizco and another
ragamuffin that was with him.
They were both in tatters; El Bizco looked grimmer and more brutish
than ever. He wore an old jacket through the rents of which peered
his dark skin; according to what they said, they were both on their
way to the intersection of Aravaca road and the Extremadura
cart-road, to a spot they called the Confessionary. They expected to
meet El Cura and El Hospiciano there and rob a house.
"What do you say? Will you join us?" asked El Bizco sarcastically.
"No, I won't."
"Where are you now?"
"In a house ... working."
"There's a brave fool for you! Come on, join us."
"No. I can't.... Listen, how about Vidal? Didn't you ever see him
again?"
El Bizco's face turned grimmer than ever.
"I'll get even with that scoundrel. He won't escape before I carve a
nice scar on his face.... But are you coming along with us or not?"
"No."
Señor Custodio's ideas had worked a strong influence upon Manuel;
but since, despite this, his adventurous instincts persisted, he
thought of going off to America, or becoming a sailor, or something
of that sort.
CHAPTER VIII
The Square--A Wedding in La Bombilla--The Asphalt Caldrons.
The betrothal of El Carnicerín and Justa was formally arranged, Señor
Custodio and his wife bathed in rose water, and only Manuel believed
that in the end the wedding would never take place.
El Carnicerín was all together too haughty and too much of a fine
fellow to marry the daughter of a ragdealer; Manuel imagined that now
the butcher's son would try to take advantage of his opportunity. But
for the present nothing authorized such malevolent suppositions.
El Carnicerín was generosity itself and showed delicate attentions to
his sweetheart's parents.
One summer day he invited the whole family and Manuel to a bull fight.
Justa dressed up very fetchingly in her best to make a worthy
companion to her lover. Señor Custodio took out his finest apparel:
the new fedora, new although it was more than thirty years old; his
coat of doubled cloth, excellent for the boreal regions, and a cane
with a horn handle, bought in El Rastro; the ragdealer's wife wore a
flowered kerchief, while Manuel made a most ridiculous appearance in a
hat that was taken from the shop and protruded about a palm's length
before his eyes, a winter suit that suffocated him and a pair of tight
shoes.
Behind Justa and El Carnicerín, Señor Custodio, his wife and Manuel
attracted everybody's attention and left a wake of laughter.
Justa turned back to look at them and could not help smiling. Manuel
walked along in a rage, stifling, his hat pressing tightly against his
forehead and his feet aching.
They got into a street car at Toledo Street and rode to the Puerta del
Sol; there they boarded art omnibus, which took them to the bull ring.
They entered and, guided by El Carnicerín, sat themselves down in
their respective places. The spectacle had begun and the amphitheatre
was packed. Tier upon tier was crammed with a black mass of humanity.
Manuel glared into the arena; they were about to kill the bull near
the stone wall that bounded the ring, at a short distance from where
they were. The poor beast, half dead already, was dragging himself
slowly along, followed by three or four toreros and the matador, who,
curved forward, with his red flag in one hand and his sword in the
other, came behind. The matador was scared out of his wits; he stood
before the bull, considered carefully just where he was to strike him,
and at the beast's slightest movement he prepared to escape. Then, if
the bull remained quiet a while, he struck him once, again, and the
animal lowered his head; with his tongue hanging out, dripping blood,
he gazed out of the sad eyes of a dying creature. After much effort
the matador gave him the final stroke and killed him.
The crowd applauded and the band blared forth. The whole business
struck Manuel as pretty disagreeable, but he waited eagerly. The mules
came out and dragged off the dead bull.
Soon the music ceased and another bull appeared. The picadores
remained close to the walls while the toreros ventured a bit nearer to
the beast and waved their red flags, at once rushing back.
This was hardly anything like the picture Manuel had conjured up for
himself, or like what he had seen in the coloured illustrations of
_La Lidia_. He had always imagined that the toreros, in the sheer
skill of their art, would play around with the bull, and there wasn't
any of this; they entrusted their salvation to their legs, just like
the rest of the world.
After the inciting tactics of the toreros, two _monosabios_ began
to beat a picador's horse with several sticks, until they got him to
advance as far as the middle of the arena. Manuel had a close view of
the horse; he was a large, white, bony creature with the saddest look
on his face. The _>monosabios_ goaded him on toward the bull.
Soon the beast drew near, the picador pricked him with the point of
his lance, the bull lowered his head for the attack and threw the
horse into the air. The rider fell to the ground and was picked up in
a trice; the horse tried to raise himself, with his intestines
sprawling on the sand in a pool of blood; he trampled on them with his
hoofs, his legs wavered and he fell convulsively to the ground.
Manuel arose deathly pale.
A _monosabio_ approached the horse, who was still quivering; the
animal raised his head as if to ask help, whereupon the man stabbed
him to death with a poniard.
"I'm going. This is too nasty for anything," said Manuel to Señor
Custodio. But it was no easy matter to leave the ring at that moment.
"The boy," said the ragdealer to his wife, "doesn't like it."
Justa, who had learned what was the matter, burst into laughter.
Manuel waited for the bull to be put to death; he kept his eyes fixed
downward; the mules came out again, and as they dragged off the
horse's body the intestines were left on the ground until a monosabio
came along and dragged them off with a rake.
"Look at that tripe!" cried Justa, laughing.
Manuel, without a word, and unmindful of the eyes that were turned his
way, left the tier. He went down to a series of long galleries, ranged
with vile-smelling urinals, and tried unsuccessfully to locate the
exit.
He was filled with rage against the whole world, against the others
and against himself. The spectacle seemed to him a most repugnant,
cowardly atrocity.
He had imagined bull-fighting to be something utterly distinct from
what he had just witnessed; he had thought that always it would
display the mastery of man over beast, and that the sword-thrusts
would flash like lightning; that every moment of the struggle would
bring forth something interesting and suggestive; and instead of a
spectacle such as he had visioned, instead of a gory apotheosis of
valour and strength, he beheld a petty, filthy thing, a medley of
cowardice and intestines, a celebration in which one saw nothing but
the torero's fear and the cowardly cruelty of the public taking
pleasure in the throb of that fear.
"'This," thought Manuel, "could please only folks like El Carnicerin,
effeminate loafers and indecent women."
Reaching home Manuel ragingly threw down his hat, pulled off his shoes
and got out of the suit in which he had so ridiculously gone to the
bull fight....
Manuel's indignation elicited plenty of comment from Señor Custodio
and his wife, and he himself was somewhat intimidated by it; he
understood that the spectacle hadn't been to his taste; what struck
him as strange was that it should rouse so much anger, such rage in
him.
Summer went by; Justa began to make preparations for her wedding, and
in the meantime Manuel thought of leaving Señor Custodio's house and
getting out of Madrid altogether. Whither? He didn't know; the farther
away, the better, he thought.
In November one of Justa's shopmates got married, in La Bombilla,
Señor Custodio and his wife found it impossible to attend, so that
Manuel accompanied Justa.
The bride lived in the Ronda de Toledo, and her house was the
meeting-place for all the guests.
At the door a large omnibus was waiting; it could hold any number of
persons.
All the guests piled in; Justa and Manuel found a place on the top and
waited a while. The bride and bridegroom appeared amidst a throng of
gamins who were shouting at the top of their lungs; the groom looked
like a dry goods clerk; she, emaciated and ugly, looked like a monkey;
the best man and the bridesmaids followed after, and in this group a
fat old lady, flat-nosed, cross-eyed, white-haired, with a red rose in
her hair and a guitar in her hand, advanced with a _flamenco_
air.
"Hurrah for the bride and groom! Hurrah for the best man and the
maid-of-honour!" shouted the cross-eyed fright; there was a chorus of
unenthusiastic responses and the coach departed amidst a hubbub and a
shouting. On the way everybody shrieked and sang.
Manuel did not dare to rejoice at his failure to see El Carnicerín in
the crowd; he felt positive that the fellow would show up at Los
Viveros.
It was a beautiful, humid morning; the trees, copper-hued, were losing
their yellow leaves in the gentle gusts; white clouds furrowed the
pale sky, the road glittered with the moisture; afar in the fields
burned heaps of dead leaves and thick curls of smoke rolled along
close to the soil.
The coach halted before one of the inns of Los Viveros; everybody
rolled out of the omnibus and the shouts and clamouring were heard
anew. El Carnicerín was not there, but he soon appeared and sat down
at table right beside Justa.
The day seemed hateful to Manuel; there were moments in which he felt
like crying. He spent the whole afternoon despairing in a corner,
watching Justa dance with her sweetheart in time to the tunes of a
barrel-organ.
At night Manuel went over to Justa and with comic gravity, said to her
abruptly:
"Come along, you--" and seeing that she paid no attention to him, he
added, "Listen, Justa, let's be going home."
"Get away. Leave me in peace!" she retorted rudely.
"Your father told you to be back home by night. Come along, now."
"See here, my child," interposed El Carnicerín with calm deliberation.
"Who gave you a taper to bear at this funeral?"
"I was entrusted to...."
"All right. Shut up. Understand?"
"I don't feel like it."
"Well, I'll make you with a good ear-warming."
"You make me? ... Why, you're nothing but a low-down lout, a thief--"
and Manuel was advancing against El Carnicerín, when one of the
fellow's friends gave him a punch in the head that stunned him. The
boy made another attempt to rush upon the butcher's son; two or three
guests pushed him out of the way and shoved him out on to the road at
the door of the inn.
"Starveling! ... Loafer!" shouted Manuel.
"You're one yourself," cried one of Justa's friends tauntingly after
him. "Rabble! Guttersnipe!"
Manuel, filled with shame and thirsting for vengeance, still half
dazed by the blow, thrust his cap down over his face and stamped along
the road weeping with rage. Soon after he left he heard somebody
running toward him from behind.
"Manuel, Manolillo," said Justa to him in an affectionate, jesting
voice. "What's the matter?"
Manuel breathed heavily and a long sigh of grief escaped him.
"What's the matter? Come, let's return. We'll go together."
"No, no; go away from me."
He was at a loss; without another word he set off on a run toward
Madrid.
The wild flight dried his tears and rekindled his fury. He meant not
to return to Señor Custodio's even if he died of hunger.
His rage rose in waves up his throat; he felt a blind madness, hazy
notions of attacking, of destroying everything, of razing the world to
the ground and disemboweling every living creature.
Mentally he promised El Carnicerín that if ever he met him alone, he
would sink his claws into his neck and strangle him; he would split
the fellow's head in two as they do to hogs, and would hang him up
head downwards with a stick between his ribs and another in his
intestines, and moreover, he'd place a tin box at his mouth into which
his cursed pig's blood could drip.
Then he generalized his hatred and considered that society itself was
against him, intent only upon plaguing him and denying him everything.
Very well, then; he would go against society, he would join El Bizco
and assassinate right and left, and when, wearied of committing so
many crimes, he would be led to the scaffold, he would look scornfully
down from the platform upon the people below and die with a supreme
gesture of hatred and disdain.
While all these thoughts of wholesale extermination thronged in his
brain, night was falling. Manuel walked up to the Plaza de Oriente and
followed thence along Arenal Street.
A strip of the Puerta del Sol was being asphalted; ten or twelve
furnaces ranged in a row were belching thick acrid smoke through their
chimneys. The white illumination of the arc-lights had not yet been
turned on; the silhouettes of a number of men who were stirring with
long shovels the mass of asphalt in the caldrons danced diabolically
up and down before the flaming mouths of the furnaces.
Manuel approached one of the caldrons when suddenly he heard his name
called. It was El Bizco; he was seated upon some paving blocks.
"What are you doing here?" Manuel asked him.
"We've been thrown out of the caves," answered El Bizco, "and it's
cold. What about you? Have you left the house?"
"Yes."
"Have a seat."
Manuel sat down and rested his back against a keg of asphalt.
Lights began to sparkle in the balconies of the residences and in the
shop windows; the street cars arrived gently, as if they were vessels
floating in, with their yellow, green and red lanterns; their bells
rang and they traced graceful circles around the Puerta del Sol.
Carriages, horses, carts came rattling by; the itinerant hawkers cried
their wares from their sidewalk stands; there was a deafening din....
At the end of one street, against the coppery splendour of the dusk
stood out the tapering outlines of a belfry.
"And don't you ever see Vidal?" asked Manuel.
"No. See here, Have you got any money?" blurted El Bizco.
"Twenty or thirty céntimos at most."
"Fine."
Manuel bought a loaf of bread, which he gave to El Bizco, and the two
drank a glass of brandy in a tavern. Then they went wandering about
the streets and, at about eleven, returned to the Puerta del Sol.
Around the asphalt caldrons had gathered knots of men and tattered
gamins; some were sleeping with their heads bent against the furnace
as if they were about to attack it in bull fashion. The ragamuffins
were talking and shouting, and they laughed at the passers-by who came
over out of curiosity for a closer look.
"We sleep just as if we were in the open country," said one of the
idlers.
"It wouldn't be at all bad," added another, "to take a walk now over
to the Plaza Mayor and see whether they wouldn't give us a pound of
ham."
"It has trichinae in it, anyway."
"Take care of that spring-matress," bellowed a flat-nosed gamin who
was going about striking the sleepers with a stick in the shins. "Hey,
there, you're rumpling the sheets!"
At Manuel's side, a rachetic urchin with thick lips and streaked eyes
and one of his feet bandaged in dirty rags, was crying and groaning;
Manuel, engrossed in his own thoughts, had not noticed him before.
"Some howling you're doing," came to the sufferer from a boy who was
stretched out on the ground with his legs cramped close to his chest
and his head pillowed against a rock.
"It hurts like anything."
"Then shut up, grin and bear it. Hang yourself."
Manuel thought that he heard El Carnicerín's voice and glanced toward
the speaker. The fellow's hat was pulled down over his eyes and his
face was not visible.
"Who's that?" asked Manuel of El Bizco.
"He's the captain of the cave gang: El Interprete."
"And what's he talking to the kid like that for?"
El Bizco shrugged his shoulders with a gesture of indifference.
"What's' the trouble?" Manuel inquired of the boy.
"I have a wound in my foot," replied the child, bursting again into
tears.
"Shut up, I tell you," interrupted El Interprete, aiming a kick at the
sufferer, who managed to escape the blow. "Go tell your troubles to
your bitch of a mother.... Damn it all! It's impossible to sleep
here."
"Then to hell with you!" shouted Manuel.
"Who are you talking to?" demanded El Interprete, shoving his cap back
on his head and revealing a brutish face with a flat nose and high
cheekbones.
"To you, you thief, you coward!"
El Interprete sprang to his feet and strode over to Manuel, who, in an
excess of fury seized him with both hands by the neck, kicked him in
the leg with his right heel, made him lose his balance and threw him
to the ground. There he thumped him violently. El Interprete, more
muscular than Manuel, was able to get to his feet again; but he had
lost his nerve and Manuel, gathering strength from his anger, threw
him down a second time and was about to crash a rock into his face
when a pair of municipal guards happened along and kicked them apart.
El Interprete went off disgraced.
The members of the crowd calmed down and went off, one after the
other, to resume their positions around the caldron.
Manuel sat down upon some paving blocks; the struggle had wiped out
the memory of the blow he had received that afternoon; he felt brave
and in a jesting mood, so, facing the curiosity-hunters that were
watching the group, some laughing and others eyeing the urchins with
pity, he addressed them.
"The session is about to close," he said. "Now we shall begin the
community singing lessons. We're about to commence snoring, ladies and
gentlemen. Let the public have no fear. We'll take good care of the
bedsheets. Tomorrow we'll send them to the river to be washed. Now is
the time. Whoever so desires," and he pointed to a rock, "may take
advantage of these pillows. They're excellent pillows, such as are
used by the Marquises of Archipipi. Whoever doesn't wish to sleep on
them, let him be gone and not bother us. Ea! Gentlemen! If you don't
pay I'll summon the servant and tell her to close...."
"It's the same with all of them," said one of the ragamuffins. "They
talk nonsense when they get sleepy. They all look as if they were
starved."
Manuel felt as garrulous as a mountebank. When he had wearied, he
leaned against a heap of stones and with arms crossed prepared to
sleep.
Shortly after this the group of curiosity-hunters had dispersed; only
a guard and an old gentleman were left, and they discussed the
ragamuffins in tones of pity.
The gentleman deplored the way these children were abandoned and said
that in other countries they built schools and asylums and a thousand
other things. The guard shook his head dubiously. At last he summed up
the conversation, saying in the tranquil manner of a Galician:
"Take my word for it: there's no good left in any of them."
Manuel, hearing this, began to tremble; he arose from his place on the
ground, left the Puerta del Sol and began to wander aimlessly about.
"There's no good left in any of them!" The remark had made a deep
impression upon him. Why wasn't he good? Why? He examined his life. He
wasn't bad, he had harmed nobody. He hated El Carnicerín because that
fellow had robbed him of happiness, had made it impossible for him to
go on living in the one corner where he had found some affection and
shelter. Then contradicting himself, he imagined that perhaps he was
bad after all, and in this case the most he could do was to reform and
become better.
Absorbed in these reflections, he was passing along Alcalá Street when
he heard his name called several times. It was La Mellá and La
Rabanitos, skulking in a doorway.
"What do you want?" he asked.
"Nothing, man. Just a word with you. Have you come into your money
yet?"
"No. What are you doing?"
"Hiding here," answered La Mellá.
"Why, what's the trouble?"
"There's a round-up, and that skunk of an inspector wants to take us
to the station, even if we do pay him. Keep us company!"
Manuel accompanied them for a while; but they both picked up a couple
of men on the way and he was left alone. He returned to the Puerta del
Sol.
The night seemed to him endless; he walked around and walked yet
again; the electric lights were extinguished, the street-cars stopped
running, the square was left in darkness.
Between Montera and Alcalá Streets there was a café before whose
illuminated windows women passed up and down dressed in bright clothes
and wearing crape kerchiefs, singing, accosting benighted passers-by;
several loafers, lurking behind the lanterns, watched them and chatted
with them, giving them orders....
Then came a procession of street-women, touts and procurers. All of
parasitical, indolent, gay Madrid issued forth at these hours from the
taverns, the dens, the gambling-houses, the dives and vice resorts,
and amidst the poverty and misery that throbbed in the thoroughfares
these night-owls strutted by with their lighted cigars, conversing,
laughing, joking with the prostitutes, indifferent to the agony of all
these ragged, hungry, shelterless wretches who, shivering with the
cold, sought refuge in the doorways.
A few old strumpets remained at the street-corners, wrapped in their
cloaks, smoking....
It was long before the heavens grew bright; it was still night when
the coffee stands were opened, and the coachmen and ragamuffins went
up for their cup or glass. The gas lamps were extinguished.
The light from the watchmen's lanterns danced across the grey
pavement, which already was dimly lighted by the pale glow of dawn,
and the black silhouettes of the ragdealers stood out against the
heaps of ordure as they bent over to take the rubbish. Now and then
some pale benighted fellow with his coat collar raised, would glide by
as sinister as an owl before the growing light and soon some workmen
passed.... Industrious, honest; Madrid was preparing for its hard
daily task.
This transition from the feverish turmoil of night to the calm, serene
activity of morning plunged Manuel into profound thought.
He understood that the existence of the night-owls and that of the
working folk were parallel lives that never for an instant met. For
the ones, pleasure, vice, the night; for the others, labour, fatigue,
the sun. And it seemed to him, too, that he should belong to the
second class, to the folk who toil in the sun, not to those who dally
in the shadows.
END OF "TO BUSCA,"
(THE QUEST)
The second volume of the trilogy is called "Mala Hierba" (Weeds); the
third, "Aurora Roja" (Red Dawn).