The Quest by Pio Baroja
P >>
Pio Baroja >> The Quest
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 | 12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16
"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 Fermin Nunez 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 Fermin 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 Fermin 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 Fermin decides to return to Spain and
orders his fortune to be remitted to the San Fernando Bank, but before
the money is transferred Don Fermin 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 Fermin'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 Nunez 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 Nunez 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 centimo. 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 Fermin Nunez de Latona
are my sisters and I, because Margarita's daughter Rosa Nunez 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, Fermin's brother. But why doesn't
Fermin Nunez 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 Fermin'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 Andalucia
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 Americas, 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 Americas 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 centimo.
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 Dona 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, employe 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 Perquique. 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 Perquique!
Perquique! but at once it would change sound and be transformed into
Perqueque or Parquique, and these phonetic modifications were extended
to infinity.
The origin of this word Perquique, which cannot be found in the
dictionary, was as follows: The cream tarts sold by the man in the
white cap brought five centimos 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 _Perquique._
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 Perquique 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 Alcala 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
Vicalvaro. 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.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 | 12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16