The Quest Part 13

Roberto ordered a bottle of beer.

"Do you live in the same house where the shoe shop is?" asked Roberto.

"No. I live over in the Paseo de las Acacias, in a house called El Corralon."

"Good. I'll come to visit you there, and you already understand that whenever you happen to go to any place where poor folk or criminals gather, you're to let me know."

"I'll let you know. I was watching that blonde eye you. She's pretty."

"Yes."

"And she has a swell coach."

"I should say so."

"Well? Are you going to marry her?"

"What do I know? We'll see. Come, we can't stay here," said Roberto, stepping up to the counter to pay.

In the tavern a large number of beggars, seated at the tables, were gulping down slices of cod and sc.r.a.ps of meat; a piquant odour of fried bird-tripe and oil came from the kitchen.

They left. The wind still blew in eddies of sand; dry leaves and stray bits of newspaper danced madly through the air; the high houses near the Segovia Bridge, their narrow windows and galleries hung with tatters, seemed greyer and more sordid than ever when glimpsed through an atmosphere murky with dust.

Suddenly Roberto halted, and placing his hand upon Manuel's shoulder said:

"Listen to what I say, for it is the truth. If you ever want to accomplish anything in life, place no belief in the word 'impossible.'

There's nothing impossible to an energetic will. If you try to shoot an arrow, aim very high,--as high as you can; the higher you aim, the farther you'll go."

Manuel stared at Roberto with a puzzled look, and shrugged his shoulders.

CHAPTER IV

Life In the Cobbler's Shop--Manuel's Friends.

The months of September and October were very hot; it was impossible to breathe in the shoe shop.

Every morning Manuel and Vidal, on their way to the shoemaker's, would talk of a thousand different things and exchange impressions; money, women, plans for the future formed everlasting themes of their chats.

To both it seemed a great sacrifice, something in the nature of a crowning misfortune in their bad luck, to have to spend day after day cooped up in a corner ripping off outworn soles.

The languorous afternoons invited to slumber. After lunch especially, Manuel would be overcome by stupor and deep depression. Through the doorway of the shop could be seen the fields of San Isidro bathed in light; in the Campillo de Gil Imon the wash hung out to dry gleamed in the sun.

There came a medley of crowing c.o.c.ks, far-off shouts of vendors, the shrieking of locomotive whistles m.u.f.fled by the distance. The dry, burning, atmosphere vibrated. A few women of the neighbourhood came out to comb their hair in the open, and the mattress-makers beat their wool in the shade of the Campillo, while the hens scampered about and scratched the soil.

Later, as evening fell, the air and the earth changed to a dusty grey.

In the distance, cutting the horizon, waved the outline of the arid field,--a simple line, formed by the gentle undulation of the hillocks,--a line like that of the landscapes drawn by children, with isolated houses and smoking chimneys. Here and there a lone patch of green grove splotched against the yellow field, which lay parched by the sun beneath a pallid sky, whitish and murky in the hot vapours rising from the earth. Not a cry, not the slightest sound rent the air.

At dusk the mist grew transparent and the horizon receded until, far in the distance, loomed the vague silhouettes of mountains not to be glimpsed by day, against the red background of the twilight.

When they left off working in the shop it was usually night. Senor Ignacio, Leandro, Manuel and Vidal would turn down the road toward home.

The gas lights shone at intervals in the dusty air; lines of carts rumbled slowly by, and across the road, in little groups, tramped the workmen from the neighbouring factories.

And always, coming and going, the conversation between Manuel and Vidal would turn upon the same topics: women and money.

Neither had a romantic notion, or anything like it, of women. To Manuel, a woman was a magnificent animal with firm flesh and swelling breast.

Vidal did not share this s.e.xual enthusiasm; he experienced, with all women, a confused feeling of scorn, curiosity and preoccupation.

As far as concerned money, they were both agreed that it was the choicest, most admirable of all things; they spoke of money--especially Vidal--with a fierce enthusiasm. To him, the thought that there might be anything--good or evil--that could not be obtained with hard cash, was the climax of absurdity. Manuel would like to have money to travel all over the world and see cities and more cities and sail in vessels. Vidal's dream was to live a life of ease in Madrid.

After two or three months in the Corralon, Manuel had become so accustomed to the work and the life there that he wondered how he could do anything else. Those wretched quarters no longer produced upon him the impression of dark, sinister sadness that they cause in one unaccustomed to live in them; on the contrary, they seemed to him filled with attractions. He knew almost everybody in the district.

Vidal and he would escape from the house on any pretext at all, and on Sundays they would meet Bizco at the Casa del Cabrero and go off into the environs: to Las Injurias, Las Cambroneras, the restaurants of Alarcon, the Campamento, and the inns on the Andalucia road, where they would consort with thieves and rogues and play with them at _cane_ and _rayuela_.

Manuel did not care for Bizco's company; Bizco sought only to hobn.o.b with thieves. He was forever taking Manuel and Vidal to haunts frequented by bandits and low types, but since Vidal seemed to think it all right, Manuel never objected.

Vidal was the link between Manuel and Bizco, Bizco hated Manuel, who in turn, not only felt enmity and repugnance for Bizco, but showed this repulsion plainly. Bizco was a brute,--an animal deserving of extermination. As lascivious as a monkey, he had violated several of the little girls of the Casa del Cabrero, beating them into submission; he used to rob his father, a poverty-stricken cane-weaver, so that he might have money enough to visit some low brothel of Las Penuelas or on Chopa Street, where he found rouged dowagers with cigarette-stubs in their lips, who looked like princesses to him. His narrow skull, his powerful jaw, his blubber-lip, his stupid glance, lent him a look of repellant brutality and animality.

A primitive man, he kept his dagger--bought in El Rastro--sharp, guarding it as a sacred object. If he ever happened across a cat or dog, he would enjoy torturing it to death with oft-repeated stabs. His speech was obscene, abounding in barbarities and blasphemies.

Whether anybody induced Bizco to tattoo his arms, or the idea was original with him, cannot be said; probably the tattooing he had seen on one of the bandits that he ran after had suggested a similar adornment for himself. Vidal imitated him, and for a time the pair gave themselves up enthusiastically to self-tattooing. They p.r.i.c.ked their skins with a pin until a little blood came, then moistened the wounds with ink.

Bizco painted crosses, stars and names upon his chest; Vidal, who didn't like to p.r.i.c.k himself, stippled his own name on one arm and his sweetheart's on the other; Manuel didn't care to inscribe anything upon his person, first because he was afraid of blood, and then because the idea had been Bizco's.

Each harboured a mute hostility against the other.

Manuel, always with a chip on his shoulder, was disposed to show his enemy challenge; Bizco, doubtless, noticed this scornful hatred in Manuel's eyes, and this confused him.

To Manuel, a man's superiority consisted in his talent, and, above all, in his cunning; to Bizco, courage and strength const.i.tuted the sole enviable qualities; the greatest merit of all was to be a real brute, as he would declare with enthusiasm.

Because of the great esteem in which he held craft and cunning, Manuel felt deep admiration for the Rebolledos, father and son, who also lived in the Corralon. The father, a dwarfed hunchback, a barber by trade, used to shave his customers in the sunlight of the open, near the Rastro. This dwarf had a very intelligent face, with deep eyes; he wore moustache and side-whiskers, and long, bluish, unwashed hair. He dressed always in mourning; in winter and summer alike he went around in an overcoat, and, by some unsolved mystery of chemistry his overcoat kept turning green while his trousers, which were also black, kept quite as plainly turning red.

Every morning Rebolledo would leave the Corralon carrying a little bench and a wooden wall-bracket, from which hung a bra.s.s basin and a poster. Reaching a certain spot along the Americas fence he would attach the bracket and put up, beside it, a humorous sign the point of which, probably, he was the only one to see. It ran thus:

MODERNIST TONSORIAL PARLOUR Antiseptic Barber Walk in Gents. Shaving by Rebolledo.

Money Lent

The Rebolledos were very skilful; they made toys of wire and of pasteboard, which they afterward sold to the street-vendors; their home, a dingy little room of the front patio, had been converted into a workshop, and they had there a vise, a carpenter's bench and an array of broken gew-gaws that were apparently of no further use.

The neighbours of the Corralon had a saying that indicated their conception of Rebolledo's acute genius.

"That dwarf," they said, "has a regular Noah's ark in his head."

The father had made for his own use a set of false teeth. He had taken a bone napkin-ring, cut it into two unequal parts, and, by filing it on either side, had fitted the larger to his mouth. Then with a tiny saw he made the teeth, and to simulate the gums he covered a part of the former napkin-ring with sealing-wax. Rebolledo could remove and insert the false set with remarkable ease, and he could eat with them perfectly, provided, as he said, there was anything to eat.

Perico, the son of the dwarf, promised even to outstrip his father in cleverness. Between the hunger that he often suffered, and the persistent tertian fevers, he was very thin and his complexion was citreous. He was not, like his father, deformed, but slender, delicate, with sparkling eyes and rapid, jerky motions. He looked, as the saying is, like a rat under a bowl.