"Two reales," replied the latter.
"Well, then, invite us to something," suggested Vidal. "Let's have a bottle."
Bizco assented, grumblingly, so they arose and took their way toward Madrid. A procession of whitish mules filed past them; a young, swarthy gipsy, with a long stick under his arm, mounted upon the last mule of the procession, kept shouting at every step: "Coroné, coroné!"
"So long, swell!" shouted Vidal to him.
"God be with all good folk," answered the gipsy in a hoarse voice.
They reached a road tavern beside a ragpicker's hut, stopped, and
Vidal ordered the bottle of wine.
"What's this factory?" asked Manuel, pointing to a structure at the left of the Andalucía road on the way back to Madrid.
"They make money out of blood," answered Vidal solemnly.
Manuel stared at him in fright.
"Yes. They make glue out of the blood that's left over in the slaughter-house," added his cousin, laughing.
Vidal poured the wine into the glasses and the three gulped it down.
Yonder, above the avenue of trees on the Canal, could be made out Madrid, with its long, level cluster of houses. The windows, lit up by the flush of the setting sun, glowed like live coals; in the foreground, just below San Francisco el Grande, bulked the red tanks of the gas factory with their high steel beams, amidst the obscure rubbish-heaps; from the centre of the city rose tiny towers and low chimneys which belched forth black puffs of smoke that seemed to rest motionless in the tranquil atmosphere. At one side, upon a hill, towered the Observatory, whose windows sparkled with the sun; at the other, the Guadarama range, blue with crests of white, was outlined against the clear, transparent heavens furrowed by red clouds.
"Bah," added Vidal, after a moment's silence, turning to Manuel.
"You've got to come with us; we'll make a gang."
"That's the talk," stammered Bizco.
"All right. I'll see," responded Manuel unwillingly.
"What do you mean, you'll see? The gang's already formed. We'll call it the gang of The Three."
"Fine!" shouted Bizco.
"And we'll help each other?" inquired Manuel.
"Of course we will," assured his cousin. "And if any one of us should prove a traitor…."
"If any one proves a traitor," interrupted Bizco, "his guts'll be ripped out." And to lend force to his declaration he drew out his dirk and plunged it viciously into the table.
At nightfall the three returned by the road to the Toledo bridge and separated at that point, after arranging to meet on the morrow.
Manuel wondered just what he was committed to by the promise made to be a member of The Three. The life led by Bizco and Vidal frightened him. He must resolve to turn over a new leaf; but what was he to do? That was what puzzled him.
For some time Manuel did not dare to put in an appearance at the lodging-house; he would meet his mother in the street and he slept in the entry of the house where one of his sisters was employed. Later it came to pass that the landlady's niece was found in the bedroom of a neighbouring student, and this served to rehabilitate Manuel somewhat in the boarding-house.
CHAPTER II
One of the Many Disagreeable Ways of Dying in Madrid—The
Orphan—El Cojo and His Cave—Night in the Observatory.
One day Manuel was not a little surprised to learn that his mother had not been able to get up and that she was ill. For some time she had been coughing up blood, but had considered this of no importance.
Manuel presented himself humbly at the house and the landlady, instead of greeting him with recriminations, asked him in to see his mother. The only thing Petra complained of was a terrible bruised feeling all over the body and a pain in her back.
For days and days she had gone on thus, now better, now worse, until she began to run a high fever and was compelled to call in the doctor. The landlady said that they'd have to take the sick woman to the hospital; but as she was a kind-hearted soul she did not insist.
Petra had already confessed several times to the priest of the house. Manuel's sisters came from time to time, but neither brought the money necessary to the purchase of the medicines and the food that were prescribed by the doctor.
One Sunday, toward night, Petra took a turn for the worse; during the afternoon she had been conversing spiritedly with her daughters; but this animation had subsided until she was overwhelmed by a mortal collapse.
That Sunday night Doña Casiana's lodgers had an unusually succulent supper, and after the supper several ronquillas for dessert, watered by the purest concoction of the Prussian distilleries.
The spree was still in progress at ten o'clock. Petra said to Manuel:
"Call Don Jacinto and tell him that I'm worse."
Manuel went to the dining-room. He could barely make out the congested faces through the thick tobacco smoke that filled the atmosphere. As Manuel entered, one of the merrymakers said:
"A little less noise; there's somebody sick."
Manuel delivered the message to the priest.
"Your mother's scared, that's all. I'll come a little later," replied
Don Jacinto.
Manuel returned to the room.
"Isn't he coming?" asked the sick woman.
"He'll be here right away. He says you're only scared."
"Yes. A fine scare," she murmured sadly. "Stay here."
Manuel sat down upon a trunk; he was so sleepy, he could hardly see.
He was just dozing off when his mother called to him.
"Listen," she said. "Go into the room and fetch the picture of the
Virgin of Sorrows."
Manuel took down the picture,—a cheap cromograph,—and brought it to the bedroom.
"Place it at the foot of the bed so that I can see it."
The boy did as he was requested and returned to his seat. From the dining-room came a din of songs, hand-clapping and castanets.
Suddenly Manuel, who was half asleep, heard a loud, rasping sound issue from his mother's chest, and at the same time he noticed that her face had become paler than ever and was twitching strangely.
"What's the matter?"
The sufferer made no reply. Then Manuel ran to notify the priest again. Grumblingly he left the dining-room, looked at the sick woman and said to the boy:
"Your mother's dying. Stay here, and I'll be back at once with the extreme unction."
The priest ordered the merrymakers in the dining-room to cease their racket and the whole house became silent.
Nothing could be heard now save cautious footfalls, the opening and closing of doors, followed by the stertorous breathing of the dying woman and the tick-tock of the corridor clock.
The priest arrived with another who wore a stole and administered all the rites of the extreme unction. After the vicar and the sacristan had gone, Manuel looked at his mother and saw her livid features, her drooping jaw. She was dead.
The youngster was left alone in the room, which was dimly lighted by the oil lamp; there he sat on the trunk, trembling with cold and fear.
He spent the whole night thus; from time to time the landlady would enter in her underclothes and ask Manuel something or offer some bit of advice which, for the most part, he did not understand.
That night Manuel thought and suffered as perhaps he never thought and suffered at any other time; he meditated upon the usefulness of life and upon death with a perspicacity that he had never possessed. However hard he might try, he could not stem the flood of thoughts that merged one with the other.
At four in the morning the whole house was in silence, when there was heard the rattle of a latchkey in the stairway door, followed by footsteps in the corridor and then the querulous tinkling of the music-box upon the vestibule-table, playing the Mandolinata.
Manuel awoke with a start, as from a dream; he could not make out where the music was coming from; he even imagined that he had lost his head. The little organ, after several hitches and asthmatic sobs, abandoned the Mandolinata and began to roll off in double time the duet between Bettina and Pippo from La Mascotte:
Will you forget me, gentle swain, Dressed in this lordly finery?
Manuel left the bedroom and asked, through the darkness:
"Who is it?"
At the same moment voices were heard from every room. The music-box cut short the duet from La Mascotte and launched spiritedly into the strains of Garibaldi's hymn. Suddenly the music stopped and a hoarse voice shouted:
"Paco! Paco!"
The landlady got up and asked who was making all that racket; one of the men who had just entered the house explained in a whisky-soaked voice that they were students who boarded on the third floor, and had just come from the ball in search of Paco, one of the salesmen. The landlady told them that some one had died in the house and one of the drunkards, who was a student of medicine, said he would like to view the corpse. He was persuaded to change his mind and everybody went back to his place. The next day Manuel's sisters were notified and Petra was buried….
On the day after the interment Manuel left the boarding-house and said farewell to Doña Casiana.
"What are you going to do?" she asked.
"I don't know. I'll see."
"I can't keep you here, but I don't want you to starve. Come here from time to time."
After walking about town all the morning, Manuel found himself at noon on the Ronda de Toledo, leaning against the wall of Las Americas, at a loss to know what to do with himself. To one side, likewise seated upon the turf, was a loathsome, terribly ugly, flat-nosed gamin, with a clouded eye, bare feet, and a tattered jacket through whose rents could be glimpsed his dark skin, which had been tanned by the sun and wind. Hanging from his neck was a canister into which he threw the cigarette ends that he gathered.
"Where do you live?" Manuel asked him.
"I haven't any father or mother," answered the urchin, evasively.
"What's your name?"
"The Orphan."
"And why do they call you that?"
"Why! Because I'm a foundling."
"And didn't you ever have a home?"
"No."
"And where do you sleep?"
"Well, in the summer I sleep in the caves, or in yards, and in winter, in the asphalt caldrons."
"And when they're not doing any asphalting?"
"In some shelter or other."
"All right, then. But what do you eat?"
"Whatever I'm given."
"And do you manage to do well?"
Either the foundling did not understand the question or it appeared quite silly to him, for he merely shrugged his shoulders. Manuel continued his curious interrogatory.
"Aren't your feet cold?"
"No."
"And don't you do anything?"
"Psch! … whatever turns up. I pick up stubs, I sell sand, and when I can't earn anything I go to the María Cristina barracks."
"What for?"
"What for? For a meal, of course."
"And where's this barracks?"
"Near the Atocha station. Why? Would you like to go there, too?"
"Yes, I would."
"Well, let's come along then, or we'll miss mess time."
The two got up and started on their journey. The Orphan begged at the stores on the road and was given two slices of bread and a small coin.
"Will you have some, ninchi?" he asked, offering Manuel one of the slices.
"Hand it over."
By the Ronda de Atocha they reached the Estación de Mediodía.
"Do you know the time?" asked the Orphan.
"Yes. It's eleven."
"Well then, it's too early to go to the barracks."
Opposite the station a lady, from the seat of a coach, was making a speech proclaiming the wonders of a salve for wounds and a specific for curing the toothache.
The Orphan, biting away at his slice of bread, interrupted the speech of the lady in the coach, shouting ironically:
"Give me a slice to take away my toothache!"
"And another one to me!" added Manuel.
The husband of the speechmaker, an old fellow wearing a very long raglan and standing amidst the crowd of spectators listening with the greatest respect to what his better half was saying, grew indignant and speaking but half Spanish, cried:
"If I catch you your teeth'll ache for fair."
"This gentleman came from Archipipi," interrupted the Orphan.
The old codger tried to catch one of the urchins. Manuel and the Orphan ran off, dodging the man in the raglan and planting themselves opposite him.
"Impudent rascals," shouted the gentleman. "I'll give you a hiding and maybe your teeth won't really ache by the time I'm through with you."
"But they hurt already," chorused the ragamuffins.
The old fellow, exasperated beyond endurance, gave frantic chase to the urchins; a group of idlers and news-vendors jostled against him as if by accident, and the pursuer, perspiring freely and wiping his face with his handkerchief, went off in search of an officer.
"Fakir, froggie, beggar!" shouted the Orphan derisively at him.
Then, laughing at their prank, they returned to the barracks and took place at the end of a line composed of poverty-stricken folk and tramps who were waiting for a meal. An old woman who had already eaten lent them a tin in which to place their food.
They ate and then, in company of other tattered youngsters climbed the sandy slopes of San Blas hill to get a view from that spot of the soldiers on Atocha avenue.
Manuel stretched out lazily in the sun, filled with the joy of finding himself absolutely free of worriment, of gazing upon the azure sky which extended into the infinite. Such blissful comfort induced in him a deep sleep.
When he awoke it was already mid-afternoon and the wind was chasing dark clouds across the heavens. Manuel sat up; there was a knot of gamins close by, but the Orphan was nowhere to be seen.
A dense black cloud came up and blotted out the sun; shortly afterward it began to rain.
"Shall we go to Cojo's cave?" asked one of the boys.
"Come on."
The entire band of ragamuffins broke into a run in the direction of the Retiro, with Manuel hard after them. The thick raindrops fell in slanting, steel-hued lines; a stray sunbeam glittered from the sky through the dark violet clouds which were so long that they looked like huge, motionless fishes.
Ahead of the ragamuffins, at an appreciable distance, ran two women and two men.
"They're Rubia and Chata with a couple of hayseeds," said one of the gamins.
"They're running to the cave," added another.
The boys reached the top of the hill; before the entrance to the cave, which was nothing but a hole dug out of the sand, sat a one-legged man smoking a pipe.
"We're going in," announced one of the urchins to Cojo.
"You can't," he replied.
"And why not?"
"Because you can't."
"Man! Let's get in until the rain stops."
"Impossible."
"Why? Are Rubia and Chata inside?"
"What do you care if they are?"
"Shall we give those hayseeds a scare?" asked one of the ragamuffins, whose ears were covered by long black locks.
"Just try it and see," growled Cojo, seizing a rock.
"Come on to the Observatory," said another. "We won't get wet there."
The gang turned back, hurdled a wall that stood in their path and took refuge in the portico of the Observatory on the Atocha side. The wind was blowing from the Guadarrama range so that they were in the lee.
For the afternoon and part of the evening the rain came pouring down; they passed the time chatting about women, thefts and crimes. Two or three of these youngsters had a home to go to, but they didn't care to go. One, who was called El Mariané, related a number of notable tricks and swindles; others, who displayed prodigious skill and ingenuity, roused the gathering to enthusiasm. After this theme had been exhausted, a few suggested a game of cané, and the idler with the long black locks, whom they called El Canco, sang in a low feminine voice several flamenco songs.
At night, as it grew cold, they lay down quite close to each other upon the ground and continued their conversations. Manuel was repelled by the malevolent spirit of the gang; one of them told a story about an aged fellow of eighty, "old Rainbow," who used to sleep furtively in the Manzanares laundry in a hole formed by four mats; one night when an icy cold wind was blowing they opened two of his mats and the next day he was found frozen to death; El Mariané recounted how he had been with a cousin of his, a cavalry sergeant, in a public house and how the sergeant mounted upon a naked woman's back and gashed her thighs with his spurs.
"The fact is," concluded El Mariané, "there's nothing like making women suffer if you want to keep 'em satisfied."
Manuel listened in astonishment to this counsel; his mind reverted to that seamstress who came to the landlady's house, and then to Salomé, and it occurred to him that he would not care to have made them love him by inflicting pain. He fell asleep with these notions whirling in his head.
When he awoke he felt the cold penetrating to his very marrow. Day was breaking and the rain had ceased; the sky, still dim, was strewn with greyish clouds. Above a hedge of shrubs shone a star in the middle of the horizon's pale band, and against this opaline glow stood out the intertwined branches of the trees, which were still without leaves.
The whistles of the locomotives could be heard from the nearby station; toward Carabanchel the lantern lights were paling in the dark fields, which could be glimpsed by the vague luminosity of nascent day.
Madrid, level, whitish, bathed in mist, rose out of the night with its many roofs, which cut the sky in a straight line; its turrets, its lofty factory chimneys; and amidst the silence of the dawn, the city and the landscape suggested the unreality and the motionlessness of a painting.
The sky became clearer, growing gradually blue. Now the new white houses stood out more sharply; the high partition-walls, pierced symmetrically by tiny windows; the roofs, the corners, the balustrades, the red towers of recent construction, the army of chimneys, all enveloped in the cold, sad, damp, atmosphere of morning, beneath a low zinc-hued sky.
Beyond the city proper, afar, rolled the Madrilenian plain in gentle undulations, toward the mists of dawn; the Manzanares meandered along, as narrow as a band of silver; it sought the Los Angeles hill, crossing barren fields and humble districts, finally to curve and lose itself in the grey horizon. Towering above Madrid the Guadarrama loomed like a lofty blue rampart, its summits capped with snow.
In the midst of this silence a church bell began its merry pealing, but the chimes were lost in the somnolent city.
Manuel felt very cold and commenced pacing back and forth, rubbing his shoulders and his legs. Absorbed in this operation, he did not see a man in a boina, with a lantern in his hand, who approached him and asked:
"What are you doing here?"
Without replying, Manuel broke into a run down the hill; shortly afterward the rest of the gang came scurrying down, awaked by the kicks of the man in the boina.
As they reached the Velasco Museum, El Mariané said:
"Let's see if we can't play a dirty trick on that damned Cojo."
"Yes. Come on."
By a side path they climbed back to the spot where they had been on the previous afternoon. From the caves of San Blas hill came a few ragamuffins crawling out on all fours; frightened by the sound of voices and thinking, doubtless, that the police had come to make a raid, they set off on a mad run, naked, with their ragged clothing under their arms.
They made their way to Cojo's cave; El Mariané proposed that as a punishment for his not having let them go in the day before, they should pile a heap of grass before the entrance to the cave and set fire to the place.
"No, man, that's monstrous," objected El Canco. "The fellow hires out his cave to Rubia and Chata, who hang around here and have customers in the barracks. He has to respect his agreements with them."
"Well, we'll have to give him a lesson," retorted El Mariané. "You'll see." Whereupon he crawled into the cave and reappeared soon with El Cojo's wooden leg in one hand and a stewpot in the other.
"Cojo! Cojo!" he shouted.
At these cries the cripple stuck his head out of the entrance to the cave, dragging himself along on his hands, bellowing blasphemies in fury.
"Cojo! Cojo!" yelled El Mariané again, as if inciting a dog. "There goes your leg! And your dinner's following after!" As he spoke, he seized the wooden leg and the pot and sent them rolling down the slope.
Then they all broke into a run for the Ronda de Vallecas. Above the heights and valleys of the Pacífico district the huge red disk of the sun rose from the earth and ascended slowly and majestically behind a cluster of grimy huts.
CHAPTER III
Meeting with Roberto—Roberto Narrates the Origin of a Fantastic
Fortune.
Manuel was compelled to return to the bakery in quest of work, and there, thanks to Karl's intercession with the proprietor, the boy spent a while as a substitute for a delivery-man.
Manuel understood that this was hardly a suitable thing for him as a regular position, and that it would get him nowhere; but he was at a loss what to do, what road to take.
When he was left without a job, he managed to exist as long as he had enough to pay for a chop-house meal. There came a day when he was stranded without a céntimo and he resorted to the María Cristina barracks.
For two or three days he had been taking up his position among the beggars of the breadline, when once he caught sight of Roberto entering the barracks. He did not go over to him, as he feared to lose his place, but after eating he waited until Roberto came out.
"Don Roberto!" hailed Manuel.
The student turned deathly pale; at sight of Manuel he regained his composure.
"What are you doing here?" he asked.
"You can see for yourself. I come here to eat. I can't find work."
"Ah! You come here to eat?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, I come for the same reason," murmured Roberto, laughing.
"You?"
"Yes. I have been cheated out of my rightful fortune."
"And what are you doing now?"
"I'm working on a newspaper, waiting until there's a vacancy. At the barracks I made friends with a sculptor who comes here for his meals, too, and we both live in a garret. I laugh at such things, for I am convinced that some day I'm going to be wealthy, and when I am, I'll recall these hard times with pleasure."
"He's beginning to rave already," thought Manuel.
"Then you don't believe that I'm going to be a rich man some day?"
"Certainly. Of course I do!"
"Where are you going?" asked Roberto.
"Nowhere in particular."
"Let's take a stroll."
"Come on."
They walked down to Alfonso XII Street and went into the Retiro; when they had gone as far as the end of the carriage drive they sat down on a bench.
"We'll drive along here in a carriage when I become a millionaire," said Roberto.
"You mean you…. As for me…." replied Manuel.
"You, too. Do you imagine that I'm going to let you stand in the barrack's bread line when I have my millions?"
"He's truly a bit off his base," thought Manuel, "but he has a kind heart." Then he added. "Have your affairs been making much progress?"
"No, not much. The question is still pretty well tangled. But it will be straightened out, mark my word."
"Do you know that that circus chap with the phonograph showed up one day with a woman named Rosa?" said Manuel. "I went hunting for you to see whether she was the one you were talking about."
"No. The one I was looking for is dead."
"Then your case is all cleared up?"
"Yes. But I need money. Don Telmo was ready to lend me ten thousand duros on condition that I'd give him half of the fortune as soon as I entered into possession of it, if I won. But I refused."
"How foolish."
"What's more, he wants me to marry his niece."
"And you didn't want to?"
"No."
"But she's pretty."
"Yes. But she's not to my taste."
"What? Are you still thinking of the Baroness's daughter?"
"How could I forget her! I've seen her. She is exquisite."
"Yes. She's certainly good-looking."
"Only good-looking! Don't blaspheme. The moment I saw her, my mind was made up. It's sink or swim for me."
"You run the risk of being left with nothing."
"I know that. I don't care. All or nothing. The Hastings have always been men of will and resolution. And I'm inspired by the example of one of my relatives. It's an invigorating case of pertinacity. You'll see."
"My uncle, the brother of my grandfather, was employed in a London business house and learned, through a sailor, that a chest filled with silver had been dug up on one of the islands in the Pacific; it was supposed that it came from a vessel that had left Peru for the Philippines. My uncle succeeded in finding out the exact spot where the ship had been wrecked, and at once he gave up his position and went off to the Philippines. He chartered a brig, reached the spot indicated,—a reef of the Magellan archipelago,—they sounded at several points and after hard work dredged up only a few shattered chests that contained not a trace of anything. When their food supply gave out they were forced to return, and my uncle reached Manila without a farthing. He got a position in a business house. After a year of this a fellow from the United States proposed that they should go out together in quest of the treasure, and my uncle accepted, on the condition that they'd share the profits equally. On this second voyage they brought up two huge, very heavy chests, one filled with silver ingots, the other with Mexican gold pieces. The Yankee and my uncle divided the money and each one's share amounted to more than one hundred thousand duros. But my uncle, who was an obstinate fellow, returned to the site of the shipwreck and this time he must have located the treasure, for he came back to England with a colossal fortune. Today the Hastings, who still live in England, are millionaires. Do you remember that Fanny who came to the tavern in Las Injurias with us?"
"Yes."
"Well, she's one of the wealthy Hastings of England."
"Then why didn't you ask them for some money?" queried Manuel.
"No, never. Not even if I were dying of hunger, and this despite the fact that they've often offered to help me. Before coming to Madrid I sailed almost around the world in a yacht belonging to Fanny's brother."
"And this fortune that you expect to own, is it also on some island?" asked Manuel.
"It seems to me that you're of the kind that have no faith," answered Roberto. "Before the crowing of the cock you would deny me three times."
"No. I know nothing of your affairs; but if you should ever need me,
I'll be ready to serve you, and gladly."
"But you doubt my destiny, and are wrong to do so. You imagine that
I'm a bit daft."
"No, no, sir."
"Bah! You think that this fortune that I'm to inherit is all a hoax."
"I don't know."
"Well, it isn't. The fortune exists. Do you remember I was once talking with Don Telmo, in your presence, about a conversation I had with a certain book-binder in his house?"
"Yes, sir. I remember."
"Well, that conversation furnished me with the clew to all the investigations I afterward conducted; I won't tell you how I went about collecting data and more data, little by little, for that would bore you. I'll put the thing for you in a nutshell."
As he finished his sentence Roberto arose from the bench upon which they were seated and said to Manuel:
"Let's be going; that fellow yonder is hanging around trying to hear what we're talking about."
Manuel got up, surer than ever that Roberto was crazy on that point; they walked by El Angel Caído, reached the Meteorological Observatory and from there left for the hills that lie opposite the Pacífico and the Doña Carlota districts.
"We can talk here," murmured Roberto. "If any one comes along, let me know."
"Don't worry on that score," assured Manuel.
"Well, as I was telling you, that conversation provided the foundation of a fortune that will soon be mine; but see how clumsy a fellow can be and how ill things look when they're too near. Until a full year after I had had that conversation I made no attempt to start my case. The first efforts I made about two years ago. The idea came to me on one Carnival day. I was giving lessons in English and studying at the University; of the little money I earned I had to send some to my mother and the rest went toward my upkeep and my tuition fees. This Carnival day,—a Tuesday, I remember,—I had no more than three pesetas to my name; I had been working so hard and so steadily, without a moment's let-up, that I said to myself: 'Yes, sir. Today I'm going to do something foolish. I'm going to disguise myself. And surely enough, on San Marcos Street I hired a domino and a mask for three pesetas, and I went out on to the street with not a céntimo in my pocket. I began to walk down toward La Castellana and as I reached the Cibeles fountain I stopped and asked myself in astonishment: 'Why did I have to spend the little money I had on me for a disguise, when I know nobody anyway?'
"I was about to return and get rid of my disguise, but there were so many people in the crowd that I had to float with the tide. I don't know whether you've ever noticed how lonesome one feels on these Carnival days amidst the throngs of people. This solitude in the crowd is far more intense than solitude in a forest. It brought to my mind the thousand absurdities one commits; the sterility of my own life. 'I'm going to waste my life in some grubbing profession,' I said to myself. 'I'll wind up by becoming a teacher, a sort of English instructress. No; never that. I must seek an opportunity and the means to emancipate myself from this petty existence, or else plunge into tragic life.' It also occurred to me that it was very possible that the opportunity had come to me without my knowing how to take advantage of it, and at once I recalled my conversation with that book-binder. I decided to go into the matter until I saw it more clearly. Without any hope, you'll understand, but simply as an exercise of the will. 'I need more will-power,' I said to myself, 'with which to conquer the details that come up every moment rather than to perform some great sacrifice or be capable of an instant of abnegation. Sublime moments, heroic acts, are rather the deeds of an exalted intelligence than of the will; I have always felt it in me to perform some great deed such as taking a trench or defending a barricade or going to the North Pole; but, would I be capable of finishing a daily stint, composed of petty provocations and dull routine? Yes,' said I to myself, and with this resolution I mingled with the masked merrymakers and returned to Madrid while the rest were at the height of their fun."
"And have you been working ever since?"
"Ever since, and with rapid persistency. The book-binder didn't care to give me any details, so I installed myself in the Casa de Canónigos, asked for the Libro de Turnos and there from day to day I'd look over list after list until I found the date of the lawsuit; from there I went to Las Salesas, located the archive and I spent an entire month in a garret opening dockets until I found the documents. Then I had to get baptismal certificates, seek recommendations from a bishop, run hither and thither, intrigue, scurry to this place and that, until the question began to clear up, and with all my documents properly arranged I presented my claim at London. During these two years I laid the foundations for the tower to the top of which I'll climb yet."
"And are you sure that the foundations are solid?"
"Certainly. They're all facts. Here they are," and Roberto drew from his pocket a folded paper. "This is the genealogical tree of my family. This red circle is Don Fermín Núñez de Latona, priest of Labraz, who goes to Venezuela at the end of the seventeenth century, and returns to Spain during the Trafalgar epoch. On his journey home an English vessel captures the Spanish ship on which the priest is sailing and takes him and the other passengers prisoner, transporting them to England. Don Fermín reclaims his fortune of the English government, it is returned to him and he deposits it in the Bank of England, and sails back to Spain during the War of Independence. As money was none too safe in Spain at that time, Don Fermín leaves his fortune in the Bank of England, and on one occasion, desiring to withdraw a large sum for the purchase of certain estates, he goes to England with a cousin's niece;—the cousin was his only relation and was named Juan Antonio. This niece—" and Roberto pointed to a circle upon the sheet, "marries an Irish gentleman, Bandon, and dies after three years. The priest Don Fermín decides to return to Spain and orders his fortune to be remitted to the San Fernando Bank, but before the money is transferred Don Fermín dies. Bandon, the Irishman, presents a will in which the priest names his niece as sole heir, and proves, moreover, that he had a son by his wife, who died directly after baptism. Don Fermín's cousin, Juan Antonio, of Labraz, brings suit against Bandon, and the suit lasts for nearly twenty years. Juan Antonio dies and the Irishman is thus enabled to collect part of the inheritance.
"Juan Antonio's other daughter marries a cousin of hers, a merchant of Haro, and has three children, two boys and a girl. The girl enters a nunnery, one of the boys dies in the Carlist war and the other goes into business and leaves for America.
"This fellow, Juan Manuel Núnez makes a regular fortune and marries a native and has two daughters: Augusta and Margarita. Augusta, the younger, marries my father, Ricardo Hasting, who was a madcap and ran away from his home; Margarita weds a soldier, colonel Buenavida. They all come to Spain with plenty of money; my father plunges into disastrous business schemes, and after he has been utterly ruined he learns, I don't know how, that the fortune of the priest Núñez de Latona is at the disposition of the heirs. He goes to England, enters his claim; they demand his documents, he brings forth the baptismal records of his wife's ancestors and it is found that the priest Don Fermin's birth registration is missing. Soon my father gives up writing and years and years go by; at the end of more than ten we receive a letter telling us that he has died in Australia.
"Margarita, my mother's sister, is left a widow with a daughter, marries a second time, and her husband turns out a rascal of the worst brand who leaves her without a céntimo. Rosa, the daughter of the first marriage, unable to put up with her step-father, elopes with an actor and nothing more is heard of her.
"If," added Roberto, "you have followed my explanations, you will have seen that the only remaining relatives of Don Fermín Núñez de Latona are my sisters and I, because Margarita's daughter Rosa Núñez has died.
"Now, the point is to prove this relationship, and this relationship is proved, for I have the baptismal documents that show our descent in a direct line from Juan Antonio, Fermín's brother. But why doesn't Fermín Núñez de Latona's name appear in the parish register of Labraz? That's what's been bothering me, and I've settled it. That Irishman Bandon, when his rival Juan Antonio died, sent to Spain an agent named Shaphter, who caused the disappearance of Don Fermín's baptismal certificate. How? I don't know as yet. In the meantime, I'm continuing the claim in London, just to keep the case in the courts, and the Hastings are the ones who are pushing the suit."
"And how much does this fortune amount to?" asked Manuel.
"Reckoning principal and interest, to a million pounds sterling."
"And is that much?"
"Without allowing for exchange, about one hundred million reales; allowing for exchange, a hundred and thirty."
Manuel burst out laughing.
"And all for you alone?"
"For me and my sisters. You can just imagine, when I collect that sum, what these cheap carriages and such things will mean to me. Nothing at all."
"And now, in the meantime, you haven't a peseta."
"Such is life. You've got to wait. It can't be helped. Now, when nobody believes me, I enjoy the recognition of my own strength more than I'll enjoy my subsequent triumph. I have reared a whole mountain; a dense mist prevents people from seeing it; tomorrow the clouds will scatter and the mountain will stand forth with snow-crowned crests."
Manuel thought it silly to be talking of all this opulence when neither of them had enough to buy a meal. Pretending important matters, he took leave of Roberto.
CHAPTER IV,
Dolores the Scandalous—Pastiri's Tricks—Tender Savagery—A
Modest Out-of-the-way Robbery.
After a week spent in sleeping in the open Manuel decided one day to rejoin Vidal and Bizco and to take up their evil ways.
He inquired after his friends in the taverns on the Andalucía cart-road, at La Llorosa, Las Injurias, and a chum of El Bizco, who was named El Chingui, told him that El Bizco was staying at Las Cambroneras, at the home of a well-known thieving strumpet called Dolores the Scandalous.
Manuel went off to Las Cambroneras, asked for Dolores and was shown a door in a patio inhabited by gipsies.
Manuel knocked, but Dolores refused to open the door; finally, after hearing the boy's explanations, she allowed him to come in.
Dolores' home consisted of a room about three metres square; in the rear could be made out a bed where El Bizco was sleeping in his clothes, beside a sort of vaulted niche with a chimney and a tiny fireplace. The furnishings of the room consisted of a table, a trunk, a white shelf containing plates and earthenware pots, and a pine wall-bracket that supported an oil-lamp.
Dolores was a woman of about fifty; she wore black clothes, a red kerchief knotted around her forehead like a bandage and another of some indistinct colour over her head.
Manuel called to El Bizco and, when the cross-eyed fellow awoke, asked after Vidal.
"He'll be here right away," said El Bizco, and then, turning upon the old lady, he growled: "Hey, you, fetch my boots."
Dolores was slow in executing his orders, whereupon El Bizco, wishing to show off his domination over the woman, struck her.
The woman did not even mumble; Manuel looked coldly at El Bizco, in disgust; the other averted his gaze.
"Want a bite?" asked El Bizco of Manuel when he had got out of bed.
"If you have anything good…."
Dolores drew from the fire a pan filled with meat and potatoes.
"You take good care of yourselves," murmured Manuel, whom hunger had made profoundly cynical.
"They trust us at the butcher's," said Dolores, to explain the abundance of meat.
"If you and I didn't work hard hereabouts," interjected El Bizco, "much we'd be eating."
The woman smiled modestly. They finished their lunch and Dolores produced a bottle of wine.
"This woman," declared El Bizco, "just as you behold her there, beats them all. Show him what we have in the corner."
"Not now, man."
"And why not?"
"Suppose some one should come?"
"I'll bolt the door."
"All right."
El Bizco bolted the door. Dolores pushed the table to the middle of the room, went over to the wall, pulled away a scrap of kalsomined canvas about a yard square, and revealed a gap crammed with ribbons, cords, lace edging and other objects of passementerie.
"How's that?" said El Bizco. "And it's all of her own collecting."
"You must have quite a bit of money there."
"Yes. It's worth quite a bit," agreed Dolores. Then she let the strip of canvas fall into place against the excavation in the wall, fastened it and drew up the bed before it. El Bizco unbolted the door. In a few moments there was a knock.
"That must be Vidal," said El Bizco, adding in a low voice, as he turned to Manuel, "See here, not a word to him."
Vidal strutted in with his carefree air, expressed his pleasure at
Manuel's coming, and the three left for the street.
"Are you going to be around here?" asked the old woman.
"Yes."
"Don't come late, then, eh?" added Dolores, addressing Bizco.
The cross-eyed bully did not deign to make any reply.
The three chums went to the square that faces Toledo bridge; near by, at a stand owned by Garatusa, a penitentiary graduate who ran a "fence" for thieves and didn't lose any money at it, they had a drink and then, walking along Ocho Hilos Avenue they came to the Ronda de Toledo.
The vicinity of El Rastro was thronged with Sunday crowds.
Along the wall of Las Grandiosas Américas, in the space between the Slaughter-house and the Veterninary School, a long row of itinerant hawkers had set up their stands.
Some, garbed like beggars, stood dozing motionless against the wall, indifferently contemplating their wares: old pictures, new chromographs, books; useless, damaged, filthy articles which they felt sure none of the public would purchase. Others were gesticulating and arguing with their customers; several repulsive, grimy old women with huge straw hats on their heads, dirty hands, arms akimbo and indecencies quivering upon their lips, were chattering away like magpies.
The gipsy women in their motley garments were combing their little brunettes and their black-skinned, large-eyed churumbeles in the sun; a knot of vagrants was carrying on a serious discussion; mendicants wrapped in rags, maimed, crippled, were shouting, singing, wailing, and the Sunday throng, in search of bargains, scurried back and forth, stopping now and then to question, to pry, while folks passed by with faces congested by the heat of the sun,—a spring sun that blinded one with the chalky reflection of the dusty soil, glittering and sparkling with a thousand glints in the broken mirrors and the metal utensils displayed in heaps upon the ground. To add to this deafening roar of cries and shouts, two organs pierced the air with the merry wheeze of their blending, interweaving tones.
Manuel, El Bizco and Vidal strolled to the head of El Rastro and turned down again. At the door of Las Américas they met Pastiri sniffing around the place.
Catching sight of Manuel and the other two, the fellow of the three cards approached and said:
"Shall we have some wine?"
"Sure."
They entered one of the taverns of the Ronda. Pastiri was alone that day, as his companion had gone off to the Escorial; since he had no one to act as his confederate in the game he hadn't made a céntimo. Now, if they would consent to act as bait to induce the inquisitive onlookers to play, he'd give them a share of the profits.
"Ask him how much?" said El Bizco to Vidal.
"Don't be an idiot."
Pastiri explained the matter for El Bizco's benefit; the confederates were to place bets and then proclaim in a loud voice that they had won. Then he'd see to making the spectators eager to play.
"All right. We know what to do," said Vidal.
"You agree to the scheme?"
"Yes, man."
Pastiri gave them three pesetas apiece and the four left the tavern, crossed the Ronda and made their way in the crowds of El Rastro.
Every once in a while Pastiri would stop, thinking he had caught sight of a prospective dupe; El Bizco or Manuel would place a bet; but the fellow who looked like an easy victim would smile as he saw them lay the snare or else pass on indifferently, quite accustomed to this type of trickery.
Soon Pastiri noticed a group of rustics with their broad hats and short trousers.
"Aluspiar, here come a few birds and we may work them for something," he said, and he planted himself and his card table directly in the path of the country-folk and began his game.
El Bizco bet two pesetas and won; Manuel followed suit with the same results.
"This fellow is a cinch," said Vidal in a loud voice, turning to the group of hayseeds. "Have you seen all the money he's losing? That soldier there just won six duros."
Hearing this, one of the rustics drew near, and seeing that Manuel and El Bizco were winning, he wagered a peseta and won. The fellow's companions advised him to retire with his winnings; but his greed got the best of him and he returned to bet two pesetas, losing them.
Then Vidal bet a duro.
"Here's a five-peseta piece," he declared, ringing the coin upon the ground, He picked out the right card and won.
Pastiri made a gesture of anoyance.
The rustic wagered another duro and lost; he glanced anxiously at his fellow countrymen, extracted another duro and lost that, too.
At this moment a guard happened along and the group broke up; noting Pastiri's movement of flight, the hayseed tried to seize him, grabbing at his coat, but the trickster gave a rude tug and escaped in the crowd.
Manuel, Vidal and El Bizco made their way across the Plaza del Rastro to Embajadores Street.
El Bizco had four pesetas, Manuel six and Vidal fourteen.
"And what are we going to return to that guy?" asked El Bizco.
"Return? Nothing," answered Vidal.
"Why, that would be robbing him of his whole year's profits," objected
Manuel.
"What of it? Deuce take him," retorted Vidal. "We came darn near getting caught ourselves, with nothing for our trouble."
It was lunch hour and they wondered where to go; Vidal settled it, saying that as long as they were on Embajadores Street, the Society of the Three, in plenary session, might as well continue on the way down till they got to La Manigua restaurant.
The suggestion was accepted and the associates spent that Sunday afternoon in royal fashion; Vidal was splendid, spending Pastiri's money right and left, inviting several girls to their table and dancing all the chulo steps.
To Manuel this beginning of his free life seemed not at all bad. At night the three comrades, somewhat the worse for wine, ambled up Embajadores Street, turning into the surrounding road.
"Where am I going to sleep?" asked Manuel.
"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.