The Quest by Pio Baroja

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This life was horribly hard.

The bakery occupied a dark cellar, as gloomy as it was dirty. It was
below the level of the street and had two windows the panes of which
were so covered with dust and spiders' webs that only a murky,
yellowish light filtered through. They worked at all hours by gas.

The bakery was entered by a door that opened upon an ample patio, in
which was a shed of pierced zinc; this protected from the rain, or
tried to protect, at least, the loads of furze branch and the piles of
wood that were heaped up there.

From this patio a low door gave access to a long, but narrow and damp,
corridor that was everywhere black; only at the extreme end there was
a square of light that entered through a high window with a few
cracked, filthy panes,--a gloomy illumination.

When the eyes grew accustomed to the surrounding gloom they could make
out on the wall some delivery-baskets, bakers' peels, smocks, caps and
shoes hanging from nails, and on the ceiling thick, silvery cobwebs
covered with dust.

Half way along the corridor were a couple of doors opposite each
other; one led to the furnace, the other to the kneading room.

The furnace room was spacious, and the walls filmed with soot, so that
the place was as black as a camera obscura; a gas-jet burned in that
cavern, illuminating almost nothing. Before the mouth of the furnace,
against an iron shed, were placed the shovels; above, on the ceiling,
could be made out some large pipes that crossed each other.

The kneading room, less dark than the furnace room, was even more
somber. A pallid light shone in through the two windows that looked
into the patio, their panes encrusted with flour dust. There were
always some ten or twelve men in shirt-sleeves, brandishing their arms
desperately over the troughs, and in the back of the room a she-mule
slowly turned the kneading machine.

Life in the bakery was disagreeable and hard; the work was enervating
and the pay small: seven reales per day. Manuel, unaccustomed to the
heat of the furnace, turned dizzy; besides, when he moistened the
loaves fresh from the oven he would burn his fingers and it disgusted
him to see his hands begrimed with grease and soot.

He was also unlucky enough to have his bed placed in the kneaders'
room, beside that of an old workman of the shop who suffered from
chronic catarrh, as a result of having breathed so much flour into his
lungs; this fellow kept hawking away at all hours.

From sheer disgust Manuel found it impossible to sleep here, so he
went to the furnace kitchen and threw himself down upon the floor. He
was forever weary; but despite this, he worked automatically.

Then nobody paid any attention to him; the other bakers, a gang of
pretty rough Galicians, treated him as if he were a mule; none of them
even took the trouble to learn his name, and some addressed him, "Hey,
you, Choto!" while others cried "Hello, Barriga!" When they spoke of
him they referred to him as "the ragamuffin from Madrid" or simply,
"ragamuffin." He answered to whatever names and sobriquets they gave
him.

At first the most hateful of all these men, to Manuel, was the head
baker, who ordered him about in a despotic manner and grew angry if
things weren't done in a trice. This baker was a German named Karl
Schneider who had come to Spain as a vagrant, in evasion of military
service. He was about twenty-four or twenty-five, with limpid eyes,
and hair and moustache that were so fair as almost to be white.

A timid, phlegmatic fellow, he was frightened by everything and found
all things difficult. His strong impressions were manifested neither
in his motions nor his words, but in a sudden flush, which coloured
his cheeks and his forehead, and which would soon disappear and leave
an intense pallor.

Karl expressed himself very well in Spanish, but in a rare manner; he
knew a string of proverbs and phrases which he entangled inextricably;
this lent a quaint character to his conversation.

Manuel soon discovered that the German, despite his abruptness, was a
fine fellow, very innocent, very sentimental and of paradisiacal
simplicity.

After a month's work in the bakery Manuel had come to consider Karl as
his only friend; they treated each other as boon companions and
addressed each other in familiar terms; and if the baker often helped
his assistant in any task that required strength, he would in his
turn, on occasion, ask the boy's opinion and consult him regarding
sentimental complications and punctilios, which fascinated the German
and which Manuel settled with his natural perspicacity and the
instincts of a wandering child who has been convinced that all life's
motives are egotistical and base. This equality between master and
apprentice disappeared the moment Karl took up his position at the
mouth of the furnace. At such times Manuel had to obey the German
without cavil or delay.

Karl's one vice was drunkenness; he was forever thirsty; whenever he
slaked this thirst with wine and beer everything went well; he led a
methodical life and would spend his free hours on the Pinza, de
Oriente or in the Moncloa, reading the two volumes that comprised his
library: one, _Lost Illusions_, by Balzac and the other, a
collection of German poems.

These two books, constantly read, commented upon and annotated by him,
filled his head with fancies and dreams. Between the bitter,
despairing, yet fundamentally romantic ratiocinations of Balzac, and
the idealities of Goethe and Heine, the poor baker dwelt in the most
unreal of worlds. Often Karl would explain to Manuel the conflicts
between the persons of his favourite novel, and would ask how he would
act under similar circumstances. Manuel would usually hit upon so
logical, so natural, so little romantic a solution that the German
would stand perplexed and fascinated before the boy's clearness of
judgment; but soon, considering the selfsame theme anew, he would see
that such a solution would prove valueless to his sublimated
personages, for the very conflict of the novel would never have come
about amidst folk of common thoughts.

There came stretches of ten or twelve days when the German needed more
powerful stimulants than wine and literature, and he would get drunk
on whisky, drinking down half a flask as if it were so much water.

According to what he told Manuel, he was overwhelmed by an avalanche
of sadness; everything looked black and repulsive to his eyes, he felt
feverish and the one remedy for this melancholy was alcohol.

When he entered the tavern his heart was heavy and his head dull with
a surfeit of ugly notions, but as he drank he felt his heart grow
lighter and his breath come easier, while his head began to dance with
merry thoughts. When he left the tavern, however hard he tried, it was
impossible for him to preserve his dignity; laughter would flicker
upon his lips. Then songs of his native land would throng to his
memory and he would sing them aloud, beating time to them as he walked
on. As long as he went through the central thoroughfares he would walk
straight; no sooner did he reach the back streets, the deserted
avenues, than he would abandon himself to the pleasure of stumbling
along and staggering, with a bump here and a thump there. During these
moods everything seemed great and beautiful and superb to the German;
the sentimentalism of his race would overflow and he would begin to
recite verses and weep, and of whatever acquaintances he met on the
street he would beg forgiveness for his imaginary offence, asking
anxiously whether he still continued to enjoy their estimation and
offering his friendship.

However drunk he might be, he never forgot his duty and when the hour
for starting the night's baking arrived he would stagger off to the
bakery; the moment he took up his position before the mouth of the
furnace his intoxication evaporated and he set to work as soberly as
ever, himself laughing at his extravagances.

The German possessed remarkable organic powers and unheard-of
resistance; Manuel had to sleep during all his free time, and even at
that never rose from his bed completely rested. For the two months
that he spent in the bakery Manuel lived like an automaton. Work at
the furnace had so shifted about his hours of sleep that the days
seemed to him nights and the nights, days.

One day Manuel fell ill and all the strength that had been sustaining
him abandoned him suddenly; he gave up his job, took his two-week's
pay and without knowing how, fairly dragging himself thither, made his
way to the lodging-house.

Petra, finding him in this condition, made him go to bed, and Manuel
lay for nearly two weeks in the delirium of a very high fever. On
getting out it seemed that he had grown; he was much emaciated, and
felt in his whole body a great lassitude and languor and such a keen
sensitivity that any word the least mite too harsh would affect him to
the point of tears.

When he was able to go out into the street again, he bought, at
Petra's suggestion, a gold-plated brooch which he presented to Dona
Casiana; she was so pleased with the gift that she told her servant
the boy might remain in the house until he was completely recovered.

Those days were among the most pleasant that Manuel ever spent in his
whole life; the one thing that bothered him was hunger.

The weather was superb and in the mornings Manuel would go strolling
along the Retiro. The journalist whom they called Superman employed
Manuel in copying his notes and articles, and as compensation, no
doubt, let him take novels by Paul de Kock and Pigault-Lebrun, some of
them highly spiced, as for example _Nuns and Corsairs_ and
_That Rascal Gustave_.

The love theories of these two writers convinced Manuel so well that
he tried to put them into practise with the landlady's niece. During
the previous two years she had developed so fully that she was already
a woman.

One night, during the early hour after supper, either through the
influence of the spring season or in obedience to the theories of the
author of _Nuns and Corsairs_, Manuel persuaded the landlady's
girl of the advantages of a very private consultation, and a neighbour
saw the two of them depart together upstairs and enter the garret.

As they were about to shut themselves in, the neighbour surprised them
and brought them, deeply contrite, into the presence of Dona Casiana.
The thrashing that the landlady administered to her niece deprived the
girl of all desire for new adventures and the aunt of any strength to
administer another to Manuel.

"Out into the street with you!" she bawled at him, seizing him by the
arm and sinking her nails into his flesh. "And make sure that I never
see you here again, for I'll brain you!"

Manuel, stricken with shame and confusion, wished nothing better at
that moment than a chance to escape, and he dashed into the street as
fast as he could get there, like a beaten cur. The night was cool and
inviting. As he didn't have a centimo, he soon wearied of sauntering
about; he called at the bakery, asked for Karl the baker, they opened
the place to him and he stretched himself out on one of the beds. At
dawn he was awakened by the voice of one of the bakers, who was
shouting:

"Hey, you! Loafer! Clear out!"

Manuel got up and went out into the street. He strolled along toward
the Viaduct, to his favourite spot, to survey the landscape and
Segovia street.

It was a glorious spring morning. In the grove near the Campo del Moro
some soldiers were drilling to the sound of bugle and drums; from a
stone chimney on the Ronda de Segovia puffs of dark smoke issued forth
to stain the clear, diaphanous sky; in the laundries on the banks of
the Manzanares the clothes hung out to dry shone with a white
refulgence.

Manuel slowly crossed the Viaduct, reached Las Vistillas and watched
some rag-dealers sorting out their materials after emptying the
contents of their sacks upon the ground. He sat down for a while in
the sun. With his eyes narrowed to a slit he could make out the arches
of the Almudena church just above a wall; beyond rose the Royal
Palace, a glittering white, the sandy clearings of the Principe Pio
with its long red barracks, and the row of houses on the Paseo de
Rosales, their panes aglow with the sunlight.

Toward the Casa de Campo several brown, bare knolls stood out, topped
by two or three pines that looked as if they had been cut out and
pasted upon the blue atmosphere.

From Las Vistillas Manuel walked down to the Ronda de Segovia. As he
sauntered along Aguila Street he noticed that Senor Ignacio's place
was still closed. Manuel went into the house and asked in the patio
for Salome.

"She must be at work in the house," they told him.

He climbed up the stairway and knocked at the door; from within came
the hum of a sewing-machine.

Salome opened the door and Manuel entered. The seamstress was as
pretty as ever, and, as ever, working. Her two boys had not yet
entered colegio. Salome told Manuel that Senor Ignacio had been in
hospital and that he was now looking around for some money with which
to pay off his debts and continue his business. Leandra at that moment
was down by the river, Senor Jacoba at her post, and Vidal loafing
around with no desire to work. He simply couldn't be kept away from
the company of a certain cross-eyed wretch who was worse than disease
itself, and had become a tramp. The two of them were always seen with
bad women in the stands and lunch-rooms of the Andalucia road.

Manuel told her of his experiences as a baker and how he had fallen
ill; what he did not relate however, was the tale of his dismissal
from the house where his mother was employed.

"That's no kind of job for you. You ought to learn some trade that
requires less strength," was Salome's advice.

Manuel spent the whole morning chatting with the seamstress; she
invited him to a bite and he accepted with pleasure.

In the afternoon Manuel left Salome's house with the thought that if
he were a few years older and had a decent, paying position, he would
marry her, even if he found himself compelled to get the tough who
went with her out of the way with a knife.

Once again upon the Ronda, the first thought that came to Manuel was
that he ought not to go to the Toledo Bridge, nor be in any greater
hurry to reach the Andalucia road, for it was very easy to happen upon
Vidal or Bizco there. He pondered the thought deeply, and yet, despite
this, he took the direction of the bridge, glanced into the sands, and
failing to find his friends there continued along the Canal, crossed
the Manzanares by one of the laundry bridges and came out on Andalucia
road. In a lunch-room that sheltered a few tables beneath its roof
were Vidal and Bizco in company of a group of idlers playing cane.

"Hey, you, Vidal!" shouted Manuel.

"The deuce! Is it you?" exclaimed his cousin.

"As you see...."

"And what are you doing?"

"Nothing. And you?"

"Whatever comes our way."

Manuel watched them play cane. After they had finished a hand, Vidal
said:

"What do you say to a walk?"

"Come on."

"Are you coming, Bizco?"

"Yes."

The three set out along the Andalucia road.

Vidal and Bizco led a thieves' existence, stealing here a horse
blanket, there the electric bulbs of a staircase or telephone wires;
whatever turned up. They did not venture to operate in the heart of
Madrid as they were not yet, in their opinion, sufficiently expert.

Only a few days before, told Vidal, they had, between them, robbed a
fellow of a she-goat, on the banks of the Manzanares near the Toledo
bridge. Vidal had entertained the chap at the game of tossing coins
while Bizco had seized the goat and pulled her up the slope of the
pines to Las Yeserias, afterward taking her to Las Injurias. Then
Vidal, indicating the opposite direction to their dupe, had shouted:
"Run, run, there goes your goat." And as the youth trotted off in the
direction indicated, Vidal escaped to Las Injurias, joining Bizco and
his sweetheart. They were still dining on the goat's meat.

"That's what you ought to do," suggested Vidal. "Come with us. This is
the life of a lord! Why, listen here. The other day Juan el Burra and
El Arenero came upon a dead hog on the road to Las Yeserias. A
swineherd was on his way with a herd of them to the slaughter-house,
when they found out that the animal had died; the fellow left it
there, and Juan el Burra and El Arenero dragged it to their house,
quartered it, and we friends of his have been eating hog for more than
a week. I tell you, it's a lord's life!"

According to what Vidal said, all the thieves knew each other, even to
the most distant sections of the city. Their life was outside the pale
of society and an admirable one, indeed; today they were to meet at
the Four Roads, in three or four days at the Vallecas Bridge or at La
Guindelara; they helped each other.

Their radius of activities was a zone bounded by the extreme of the
Casa del Campo, where the inn of Agapito and the Alcorcon restaurants
were, as far as Los Carabancheles; from here, the banks of the
Abronigal, La Elipa, El Este, Las Ventas and La Conception as far as
La Prosperidad; then Tetuan as far as the Puerta de Hierro. In summer
they slept in yards and sheds of the suburbs.

The thieves of the city's centre were a better-dressed, more
aristocratic lot; each of these had his woman, whose earnings he
managed and who took good care of him. The outcasts of the heart of
the city were a distinct class with other gradations.

There were times when Bizco and Vidal had gone through intense want,
existing upon cats and rats and seeking shelter in the caves upon San
Blas hill, of Madrid Moderno, and in the Eastern Cemetery. But by this
time the pair knew their business.

"And work? Nothing?" asked Manuel.

"Work! ... Let the cat work," scoffed Vidal.

They didn't work, stuttered Bizco; who was going to get fresh with him
while he had his trusty steel in his hand?

Into the brain of this wild beast there had not penetrated, even
vaguely, any idea of rights or duties. No duties, no rights or
anything at all. To him, might was right; the world was a hunting
wood. Only humble wretches could obey the law of labour. That's what
he said: Let fools work, if they hadn't the nerve to live like men.

As the three thus conversed a man and a woman with a child in her arms
passed by. They looked dejected, like famished, persecuted folk, their
glance timid and awed.

"There's the workers for you," exclaimed Vidal. "That's how they are."

"The devil take them," muttered Bizco.

"Where are they bound for?" asked Manuel, eyeing them sympathetically.

"To the tile-works," answered Vidal. "To sell saffron, as we say
around here."

"And why do they say that?"

"Because saffron is so dear...."

The three came to a halt and lay down upon the sod. For more than an
hour they remained there, discussing women and ways and means of
procuring money.

"Got any money about you?" asked Vidal of Manuel and Bizco.

"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: "Corone, corone!"

"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 Andalucia 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 Dona 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:

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