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The Quest

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On his very first night in La Corrala Manuel verified, not without a
certain astonishment, the truth of what Vidal had told him. That
youngster, and almost all the gamins of his age, had sweethearts among
the little girls of the tenement, and it was not a rare occurrence, as
he passed by some nook, to come upon a couple that jumped up and ran
away.

The little children amused themselves playing bull-fight, and among
the most-applauded feats was that of Don Tancredo. One tot would get
down on all fours, and another, not very heavy, would mount him and
fold his arms, thrust back his chest and place a three-cornered hat of
paper upon his erect, haughty head.

He who was playing the bull would approach, roar loudly, sniff Don
Tancredo and pass by without throwing him over; a couple of times he
would repeat this, and then dash off. Whereupon Don Tancredo would
dismount from his living pedestal to receive the plaudits of the
public. There were wily, waggish bulls who took it into their heads to
pull both statue and pedestal to the ground, and this would be
received amidst shouts and huzzahs of the spectators.

In the meantime the girls would be playing in a ring, the women would
shout from gallery to gallery and the men would chat in their
shirtsleeves; some fellow, squatting on the floor, would scrape away
monotonously at the strings of a guitar.

La Muerte, the old beggar, would also cheer the evening gatherings
with her long discourse.

La Corrala was a seething, feverish world in little, as busy as an
anthill. There people toiled, idled, guzzled, ate and died of hunger;
there furniture was made, antiques were counterfeited, old
embroideries were fashioned, buns cooked, broken porcelain mended,
robberies planned and women's favours traded.

La Corrala was a microcosm; it was said that if all the denizens were
placed in line they would reach from Embajadores lane to the Plaza del
Progreso; it harboured men who were everything and yet nothing: half
scholars, half smiths, half carpenters, half masons, half business
men, half thieves.

In general, everybody who lived here was disoriented, dwelling in that
unending abjection produced by everlasting, irremediable poverty; many
sloughed their occupations as a reptile its skin; others had none;
some carpenters' or masons' helpers, because of their lack of
initiative, understanding and skill, could never graduate from their
apprenticeship. There were also gypsies, mule and dog clippers, nor
was there a dearth of porters, itinerant barbers and mountebanks.
Almost all of them, if opportunity offered, stole what they could;
they all presented the same pauperized, emaciated look. And all
harboured a constant rage that vented itself in furious imprecations
and blasphemies.

They lived as if sunk in the shades of a deep slumber, unable to form
any clear notion of their lives, without aspirations, aims, projects
or anything.

There were some whom a couple of glasses of wine made drunk for half a
week; others seemed already besotted, without having had a sip, and
their countenances constantly mirrored the most absolute debasement,
whence they escaped only in a fleeting moment of anger or indignation.

Money was to them, more often than not, a misfortune. Possessing an
instinctive understanding of their weakness and their frail wills,
they would resort to the tavern in quest of courage; there they would
cast off all restraint, shout, argue, forget the sorrows of the
moment, feel generous, and when, after having bragged to the top of
their bent they believed themselves ready for anything, they
discovered that they hadn't a céntimo and that the illusory strength
imbibed with the alcohol was evaporating.

The women of the house, as a rule, worked harder than the men, and
were almost always disputing. For thirty years past they had all
shared the same character and represented almost the same type: foul,
unkempt, termagacious, they--shrieked and grew desperate upon the
slightest provocation.

From time to time, like a gentle sunbeam amidst the gloom, the souls
of these stultified, bestial men,--of these women embittered by harsh
lives that held neither solace nor illusion,--would be penetrated by a
romantic, disinterested feeling of tenderness that made them live like
human beings for a while; but when the gust of sentimentalism had
blown over, they would return to their moral inertia, as resigned and
passive as ever. The permanent neighbours of La Corrala were situated
in the floors surrounding the large courtyard. In the other courtyard
the majority were transients, and spent, at most, a couple of weeks in
the house. Then, as the saying was among them, they spread wing.

One day a mender would appear with his huge bag, his brace and his
pliers, shouting through the streets in a husky voice: "Jars and tubs
to mend ... pans, dishes and plates!" After a short stay he would be
off; the following week arrived a dealer in cloth bargains, crying at
the top of his lungs his silk handkerchiefs at ten and fifteen
céntimos; another day came an itinerant hawker, his cases laden with
pins, combs and brooches, or some purchaser of gold and silver braid.
Certain seasons of the year brought a contingent of special types;
spring announced itself through the appearance of mule dealers,
tinkers, gypsies and bohemians; in autumn swarmed bands of rustics
with cheese from La Mancha and pots of honey, while winter brought the
walnut and chestnut vendors.

Of the permanent tenants in the first courtyard, those who were
intimate with Señor Ignacio included: a proof-corrector, nick-named El
Corretor; a certain Rebolledo, both barber and inventor, and four
blind men, who were known by the sobriquets El Calabazas, El Sapistas,
El Erigido and El Cuco and dwelt in harmony with their respective
wives playing the latest tangos, _tientos_ and _zarzuela_
ditties on the streets.

The proof-reader had a numerous family: his wife, his mother-in-law, a
daughter of twenty and a litter of tots; the pay he earned correcting
proof at a newspaper office was not enough for his needs and he used
to suffer dire straits. He was in the habit of wearing a threadbare
macfarland,--frayed at the edges,--a large, dirty handkerchief tied
around his throat, and a soft, yellow, grimy slouch hat.

His daughter, Milagros by name, a slender lass as sleek as a bird, had
relations with Leandro, Manual's cousin.

The sweethearts had plenty of love quarrels, now because of her
flirtations, now because of the evil life he led.

They could not get along, for Milagros was a bit haughty and a
climber, considering herself a social superior fallen upon evil days,
while Leandro, on the other hand, was abrupt and irascible.

The cobbler's other neighbour, Señor Zurro, a quaint, picturesque
type, had nothing to do with Señor Ignacio and felt for the
proof-reader a most cordial hatred. El Zurro went about forever
concealed behind a pair of blue spectacles, wearing a fur cap and
ample cassock.

"His name is Zurro (fox)," the proof-reader would say, "but he's a fox
in his actions as well; one of those country foxes that are masters of
malice and trickery."

According to popular rumour, El Zurro knew what he was about; he had a
place at the lower end of the Rastro, a dark, pestilent hovel
cluttered with odds and ends, second-hand coats, remnants of old
cloth, tapestries, parts of chasubles, and in addition, empty bottles,
flasks full of brandy and cognac, seltzer water siphons, shattered
clocks, rusty muskets, keys, pistols, buttons, medals and other
frippery.

Despite the fact that surely no more than a couple of persons entered
Señor Zurro's shop throughout the livelong day and spent no more than
a couple of reales, the second-hand dealer thrived.

He lived with his daughter Encarna, a coarse specimen of some
twenty-five years, exceedingly vulgar and the personification of
insolence, who went walking with her father on Sundays, bedecked with
jewelry. Encarna's bosom was consumed with the fires of passion for
Leandro; but that ingrate, enamoured of Milagros, was unscathed by the
soul-flames of the second-hand dealer's daughter.

Wherefore Encarna mortally hated Milagros and the members of her
family; every hour of the day she branded them as vulgarians,
starvelings, and insulted them with such scoffing sobriquets as
Mendrugo, "Beggar's Crumb," which was applied by her to the
proof-reader, and "The Madwoman of the Vatican," which meant his
daughter.

It was not at all rare for such hatreds, between persons forced almost
into living in common, to grow to violent rancour and malevolence;
thus, the members of one and the other family never looked at each
other without exchanging curses and wishes for the most disastrous
misfortunes.




CHAPTER III

Roberto Hastings at the Shoemaker's--Procession of Beggars--Court
of Miracles.


One morning toward the end of September Roberto appeared in the
doorway of _The Regeneration of Footwear_, and thrusting his head
into the shop exclaimed:

"Hello, Manuel!"

"Hello, Don Roberto!"

"Working, eh?"

Manuel shrugged his shoulders, indicating that the job was not exactly
to his taste.

Roberto hesitated for a moment, but at last made up his mind and
entered the shop.

"Have a seat," invited Señor Ignacio, offering him a chair.

"Are you Manuel's uncle?"

"At your service."

Roberto sat down, offered a cigar to Señor Ignacio and another to
Leandro, and the three began to smoke.

"I know your nephew," said Roberto to the proprietor, "for I live in
the house where Petra works."

"You do?"

"And I wish you'd let him off today for a couple of hours."

"All right, señor. All afternoon, if you wish."

"Fine. Then I'll call for him after lunch."

"Very well."

Roberto watched them work for a while, then suddenly jumped up and
left.

Manuel could not understand what Roberto wanted, and in the afternoon
waited for him with genuine impatience. Roberto carne, and the pair
turned out of Aguila Street down toward the Ronda de Segovia.

"Do you know where La Doctrina is?" Roberto asked Manuel.

"What Doctrina?"

"A place where herds of beggars meet every Friday."

"I don't know."

"Do you know where the San Isidro highway is?"

"Yes."

"Good. For that's where we're going. That's where La Doctrina is."

Manuel and Roberto walked down the Paseo de los Pontones and continued
in the direction of Toledo Bridge. The student was silent and Manuel
did not care to ask any questions.

It was a dry, dusty day. The stifling south wind whirled puffs of heat
and sand; a stray bolt of lightning illuminated the clouds; from the
distance came the rumble of thunder; the landscape lay yellow under a
blanket of dust.

Over the Toledo Bridge trudged a procession of beggars, both men and
women, each dirtier and more tattered than the next. Out of las
Cambroneras and las Injurias streamed recruits for this ragged army;
they came, too, from the Paseo Imperial and from Ocho Hilos, and by
this time forming solid ranks, they trooped on to the Toledo Bridge
and tramped up the San Isidro highway until they reached a red
edifice, before which they came to a halt.

"This must be La Doctrina," said Roberto to Manuel, pointing to a
building that had a patio with a statue of Christ in the centre.

The two friends drew near to the gate. This was a beggars' conclave, a
Court of Miracles assembly. The women took up almost the entire
courtyard; at one end, near a chapel, the men were huddled together;
one could see nothing but swollen, stupid faces, inflamed nostrils,
and twisted mouths; old women as fat and clumsy as melancholy whales;
little wizened, cadaverous hags with sunken mouths and noses like the
beak of a bird of prey; shamefaced female mendicants, their wrinkled
chins bristling with hair, their gaze half ironical and half shy;
young women, thin and emaciated, slatternly and filthy; and all, young
and old alike, clad in threadbare garments that had been mended,
patched and turned inside out until there wasn't a square inch that
had been left untouched. The green, olive-coloured cloaks and the drab
city garb jostled against the red and yellow short skirts of the
countrywomen.

Roberto sauntered about, peering eagerly info the courtyard. Manuel
trailed after him indifferently.

A large number of the beggars was blind; there were cripples, minus
hand or foot, some hieratic, taciturn, solemn, others restless. Brown
long-sleeved loose coats mingled with frayed sack-coats and begrimed
smocks. Some of the men in tatters carried, slung over their
shoulders, black sacks and game-bags; others huge cudgels in their
hands; one burly negro, his face tattooed with deep stripes,--
doubtless a slave in former days,--leaned against the wall in
dignified indifference, clothed in rags; barefoot urchins and mangy
dogs scampered about amongst the men and women; the swarming,
agitated, palpitating throng of beggars seethed like an anthill.

"Let's go," said Roberto. "Neither of the women I'm looking for is
here.... Did you notice," he added, "how few human faces there are
among men! All you can read in the features of these wretches is
mistrust, abjection, malice, just as among the rich you find only
solemnity, gravity, pedantry. It's curious, isn't it? All cats have
the face of cats; all oxen look like oxen; while the majority of human
beings haven't a human semblance."

Roberto and Manuel left the patio. They sat down opposite La Doctrina,
on the other side of the road, amid some sandy clearings.

"These doings of mine," began Roberto, "may strike you as queer. But
they won't seem so strange when I tell you that I'm looking for two
women here; one of them a poor beggar who can make me rich; the other,
a rich lady, who perhaps would make me poor."

Manuel stared at Roberto in amazement. He had always harboured a
certain suspicion that there was something wrong with the student's
head.

"No. Don't imagine this is silly talk. I'm on the trail of a
fortune,--a huge fortune. If you help me, I'll remember you."

"Sure. What do you want me to do?"

"I'll tell you when the right moment comes."

Manuel could not conceal an ironic smile.

"You don't believe it," muttered Roberto.

"That doesn't matter. When you'll see, you'll believe."


"Naturally."

"If I should happen to need you, promise you'll help me."

"I'll help you as far as I am able," replied Manuel, with feigned
earnestness.

Several ragamuffins sprawled themselves out on the clearing near
Manuel and Roberto, and the student did not care to go on with his
tale.

"They've already begun to split up into divisions," said one of the
loafers who wore a coachman's hat, pointing with a stick to the women
inside the courtyard of La Doctrina.

And so it was; groups were clustering about the trees of the patio, on
each of which was hung a poster with a picture and a number in the
middle.

"There go the marchionesses," added he of the coachman's hat,
indicating several women garbed in black who had just appeared in the
courtyard.

The white faces stood out amidst the mourning clothes.

"They're all marchionesses," said one.

"Well, they're not all beauties," retorted Manuel, joining the
conversation. "What have they come here for?"

"They're the ones who teach religion," answered the fellow with the
hat. "From time to time they hand out sheets and underwear to the
women and the men. Now they're going to call the roll."

A bell began to clang; the gate closed; groups were formed, and a lady
entered the midst of each.

"Do you see that one there?" asked Roberto. "She's Don Telmo's niece."

"That blonde?"

"Yes. Wait for me here."

Roberto walked down the road toward the gate.

The reading of the religious lesson began; from the patio came the
slow, monotonous drone of prayer.

Manuel lay back on the ground. Yonder, flat beneath the grey horizon,
loomed Madrid out of the mist of the dust-laden atmosphere. The wide
bed of the Manzanares river, ochre-hued, seemed furrowed here and
there by a thread of dark water. The ridges of the Guadarrama range
rose hazily into the murky air.

Roberto passed by the patio. The humming of the praying mendicants
continued. An old lady, her head swathed in a red kerchief and her
shoulders covered with a black cloak that was fading to green, sat
down in the clearing.

"What's the matter, old lady? Wouldn't they open the gate for you?"
shouted the fellow with the coachman's hat.

"No.... The foul old witches!"

"Don't you care. They're not giving away anything today. The
distribution takes place this coming Friday. They'll give you at least
a sheet," added he of the hat mischievously.

"If they don't give me anything more than a sheet," shrilled the hag,
twisting her blobber-lip, "I'll tell them to keep it for themselves.
The foxy creatures! ..."

"Oh, they've found you out, granny!" exclaimed one of the loafers
lying on the ground. "You're a greedy one, you are."

The bystanders applauded these words, which came from a
_zarzuela_, and the chap in the coachman's hat continued
explaining to Manuel the workings of La Doctrina.

"There are some men and women who enrol in two and even three
divisions so as to get all the charity they can," he went on. "Why,
we--my father and I--once enrolled in four divisions under four
different names.... And what a rumpus was raised! What a row we had
with the marchionesses!"

"And what did you want with all those sheets," Manuel asked him.

"Why! Sell 'em, of course. They re sold here at the very gate at two
_chulés_ apiece."

"I'm going to buy one," said a coachman from a nearby hackstand,
approaching the group. "I'll give it a coating of linseed oil, then
varnish it and make me a cowled waterproof."

"But the marchionesses,--don't they see that these people sell their
gifts right away?"

"Much they see!"

To these idlers the whole business was nothing more than a pious
recreation of the religious ladies, of whom they spoke with
patronizing irony.

The reading of the religious lesson did not last quite an hour.

A bell rang; the gate was swung open; the various groups dissolved and
merged; everybody arose and the women began to walk off, balancing
their chairs upon their heads, shouting, shoving one another
violently; two or three huckstresses peddled their wares as the
tattered crowd issued through the gate in a jam, shrieking as if in
escape from some imminent danger. A few old women ran clumsily down
the road; others huddled into a corner to urinate, and all of them
were howling at the top of their lungs, overcome by the necessity of
insulting the women of La Doctrina, as if instinctively they divined
the uselessness of a sham charity that remedied nothing. One heard
only protests and manifestation of scorn.

"Damn it all! These women of God...."

"And they want a body to have faith in 'em."

"The old drunkards."

"Let them have faith, and the mother that bore 'em."

"Let 'em give blood-pudding to everybody."

After the women came the men,--blind, maimed, crippled,--in leisurely
fashion, and conversing solemnly.

"Huh! They don't want me to marry!" grumbled a blind fellow,
sarcastically, turning to a cripple.

"And what do you say," asked the latter.

"I? What the deuce! Let them get married if they have any one to marry
'em. They came here and bore us stiff with their prayers and sermons.
What we need isn't sermons, but hard cash and plenty of it."

"That's what, man ... the dough,--that's what we want."

"And all the rest is nothing but ... chatter and chin music....
Anybody can give advice. When it comes to bread, though, not a sign of
it."

"So say I!"

The ladies came out, prayer-books in hand; the old beggar-women set
off in pursuit and harassed them with entreaties.

Manuel looked everywhere for the student; at last he caught sight of
him with Don Telmo's niece. The blonde turned around to look at him,
and then stepped into a coach. Roberto saluted her and the coach
rolled off.

Manuel and Roberto returned by the San Isidro highway.

The sky was still overcast; the air dry; the procession of beggars was
advancing in the direction of Madrid. Before they reached the Toledo
Bridge, at the intersection of the San Isidro highway and the
Extremadura cartroad, Roberto and Manuel entered a very large tavern.
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
Corralón."

"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 scraps 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 Imón the wash hung out to dry gleamed in
the sun.

There came a medley of crowing cocks, far-off shouts of vendors, the
shrieking of locomotive whistles muffled 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. Señor
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 sexual 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 Corralón, 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
Alarcón, the Campamento, and the inns on the Andalucía road, where
they would consort with thieves and rogues and play with them at
_cané_ and _rayuela_.

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