The Quest by Pio Baroja

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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.

"But the deuce!" growled Vidal at his friends. "Haven't you finished
yet?"

"There's nothing!"

The three returned to the rooms trembling; they seized a napkin and
stuffed into it whatever they laid hands upon: a copper clock, a white
metal candlestick, a broken electric bell, a mercury barometer, a
magnet and a toy cannon.

Vidal climbed up the wall with the bundle.

"Here he is," he whispered in fright.

"Who?"

"The dog."

"I'll go down first," mumbled Manuel, and placing the knife between
his teeth he let himself drop. The dog, instead of setting upon him,
withdrew a short distance, but he continued his barking.

Vidal did not dare to jump down with the bundle in his hands; so he
threw it carefully upon some bushes; as it fell, only the barometer
broke; the rest was already broken. El Bizco and Vidal then jumped
down and the three associates set out on a cross-country run, pursued
by the canine defender of private property, who barked at their heels.

"What damned fools we are!" exclaimed Vidal, stopping. "If a guard
should see us running like this he'd certainly arrest us."

"And if we pass the city gate they'll recognize what we're carrying in
this bundle and we'll be stopped," added Manuel.

The Society halted to deliberate and choose a course of action. The
booty was left at the foot of a wall. They lay down on the ground.

"A great many rag-dealers and dustmen pass this way," said Vidal, "on
the road to La Elipa. Let's offer this to the first one that comes
along."

"For three duros," corrected El Bizco.

"Why, of course."

They waited a while and soon a ragpicker hove into view, bearing an
empty sack and headed for Madrid. Vidal called him over and offered to
sell their bundle.

"What'll you give us for these things?"

The ragdealer looked over the contents of the bundle, made a second
inventory, and then in a jesting tone, with a rough voice, asked:

"Where did you steal this?"

The three associates chorused their protestation, but the ragpicker
paid no heed.

"I can't give you more than three pesetas for the whole business."

"No," answered Vidal. "Rather than accept that we'll take the bundle
with us."

"All right. The first guard I meet I'll inform against you and tell
him that you're carrying stolen goods on your person."

"Come across with the three pesetas," said Vidal. "Take the bundle."

Vidal took the money and the ragdealer, laughing, took the package.

"The first guard we see we'll tell that you've got stolen goods in
your sack," shouted Vidal to the ragdealer. The man with the sack got
angry and gave chase to the trio.

"Hey there! Come back! Come back!" he bellowed.

"What do you want?"

"Give me my three pesetas and take your bundle."

"Nix. Give us a duro and we won't say a word."

"Like hell."

"Give us only two pesetas more."

"Here's one, you rascal."

Vidal seized the coin that the ragdealer threw at him, and, as none
was sure of himself, they made off hurriedly. When they reached
Dolores' house in Las Cambroneras, they were bathed in perspiration,
exhausted.

They ordered a flask of wine from the tavern, "A rotten bungle we made
of it, hang it all," grumbled Vidal.

After the wine was paid for there remained ten reales; this they
divided among the three, receiving eighty centimos apiece. Vidal
summed up the day's work with the remark that this committing
robberies in out-of-the-way spots was all disadvantages and no
advantages, for besides exposing oneself to the danger of being sent
to the penitentiary almost for life and getting a beating and being
chewed up by a moral dog, a fellow ran the risk of being wretchedly
fooled.

CHAPTER V

Gutter Vestals--The Troglodytes.

"No use. We've got to get rid of that beastly Bizco. Every time I see
him hate him more and he disgusts me more."

"Why?"

"Because he's a brute. Let him go off to his old fox, Dolores. You and
I can go to the theatre every night."

"How?"

"With the claque. We don't have to pay. All we have to do is applaud
when we get the signal."

This condition seemed to Manuel so easy to fulfil that he asked his
cousin:

"But listen. How is it, then, that everybody doesn't go to the theatre
like that?"

"Because they don't all know the head of the claque as I do."

And as a matter of fact they went to the Apollo. For the first few
days all Manuel could do was think of the plays and the actresses.
Vidal, with his superior manner in all things, learned the songs right
away; Manuel secretly envied him.

Between the acts the members of the claque would adjourn to a tavern
on Barquillo Street, varying this occasionally with a visit to another
place on the Plaza, del Rey. This latter resort was the rendezvous of
the claquers that worked in Price's Circus.

Almost all the legion of applauders were youngsters; a few of them
worked in shops here and there; for the most part they were loafers
and organgrinders who wound up by becoming supernumeraries, chorus men
or ticket-speculators.

There were among them effeminate, clean-shaven types with a woman's
face and a shrill voice.

At the entrance to the theatre Vidal and Manuel made the acquaintance
of a group of girls, from thirteen to eighteen years of age, who
wandered about Alcala Street approaching well-to-do pillars of the
middle class; they pretended to be news-vendors and always had a copy
of the _Heraldo_ with them.

Vidal cultivated the intimacy of the girls; they were almost all
homely, but this did not interfere with his plans, which consisted of
extending the radius of his activities and his knowledge.

"We must leave the suburbs and work our way toward the centre," said
Vidal.

Vidal wished Manuel to help him, but Manuel had no gift for it. Vidal
came to be the cadet for four girls who lived together in Cuatro
Caminos and were named, respectively, La Mella, La Goya, La Rabanitos
and Engracia; they had come to form, together with Vidal, El Bizco and
Manuel another Society, though this one was anonymous.

The poor girls needed protection; they were pursued more than the
other loose women by the police because they paid no graft to the
inspectors. They would be forever fleeing from the guards and agents,
who, whenever there was a round-up, would take them to the station and
thence to the Convento de las Trinitarias.

The thought of being immured in the convent struck genuine terror into
their hearts.

"To think of never seeing the street," they moaned, as if this were a
most horrible punishment.

And the abandonment at night in the unprotected thoroughfares, which
inspired horror in others; the cold, the rain, the snow,--were to them
liberty and life.

They all spoke in a rough manner; their grammar and word-forms were
incorrect; language in them leaped backwards into a curious atavic
regression.

They spiced their talk with a long string of theatrical lines and
"gags."

The four led a terrible life; they spent the morning and the afternoon
in bed sleeping and didn't go to sleep again till dawn.

"We're like cats," La Mella would say. "We hunt at night and sleep by
day."

La Mella, La Goya, La Rabanitos and Engracia would go at night to the
centre of Madrid, accompanied by a white-bearded beggar with a smiling
face and a striped cap.

The old man came to beg alms; he was a neighbour of the girls and they
called him Uncle Tarrillo, bantering him upon his frequent sprees. He
was utterly daft and loved to talk upon the corruption of popular
manners.

La Mella said that Uncle Tarrillo had tried, one night after they had
returned alone from the Jardinillos del Deposito de Agua, to violate
her and that he had made her laugh so much that it was impossible.

The mendicant would wax indignant at the tale and would pursue the
indiscreet maid with all the ardour of an old faun.

Of the four girls the ugliest was La Mella; with her big, deformed
head, her black eyes, her wide mouth and broken teeth, her dumpy
figure, she looked like the lady-jester of some ancient princess. She
had been on the point of becoming a chorus-girl; she was balked,
however, for despite her good voice and excellent ear for music, she
could not pronounce the words clearly because of her missing teeth.

La Mella was always in high spirits, singing and laughing at all hours
of the day and night. She carried in her apron-pocket a tiny
powder-puff with a mirror on the inside of the cover; she would stop
at every other step to gaze at herself by the light of a
street-lantern and powder her face.

She was affectionate and kind-hearted. Her excessive ugliness made
Manuel gag. The lass was eager to win him but Vidal advised his cousin
not to take up with her; La Goya suited him better, for she made more
money.

La Mella was not at all to Manuel's taste, despite her affectionate
caresses; but La Goya was compromised with El Soldadito, a man with a
position, as she said, for when he went to work he turned the crank of
an handorgan.

This organ-grinder took all the receipts of La Goya, who, as the
prettiest of the quartet, enjoyed the most numerous patronage; El
Soldadito watched her and when she went off with anybody, followed,
waiting for her to come out of the house of assignation so that he
could collect her earnings.

Vidal, of the four, condescended to choose La Rabanitos and Engracia
as the objects of his protection; the two girls were forever disputing
over him. La Rabanitos looked like a pocket-edition of a woman; a
white little face with blue streaks about her nose and her mouth; a
rachetic, wizened body; thin lips and large eyes of schlerotic blue;
she dressed like an old woman, with her sombre little cloak and her
black dress; such was La Rabanitos. She was bothered with frequent
hemorrhages; she spoke with all the mannerisms of a granny, making
queer twists and turns, and she spent all her spare change on dry salt
tunny fish, caramels and other dainties.

Engracia, Vidal's other favourite, was the typical brothel inmate: her
face was white with rice powder; her dark, flashing eyes had an
expression of purely animal melancholy; as she spoke she showed her
blue teeth, which contrasted with the whiteness of her powdered
countenance. She leaped from joy to dejection without transition. She
could not smile. Her face was as soon darkened by stupidity as it was
illuminated by a ribald merriment, insulting and cynical.

Engracia had little to say and when she spoke it was to utter
something particularly bestial and filthy, of involved cynicism and
pornography. Her imagination was of monstrous fertility.

A macabrous sculptor might have hit upon a work of genius by cutting
the thoughts of this girl into the stone representing some infernal
Dance of Death.

Engracia could not read. She wore loud waists, blue and pink; a white
kerchief on her head and a coloured apron; she trotted along with a
swaying movement, so that the coins in her purse kept jingling. She
had been eight years in this brothel life, and was only sixteen in
all. She was sorry to have grown up, for she said that she had earned
far more as a little girl.

The friendship of Manuel and Vidal with these girls lasted a couple of
months; Manuel could not make up his mind to take up with La Mella;
she was too repulsive; Vidal widened the horizons of his activity,
tippled with a gang of _chulos_ and devoted himself to the
conquest of a flower-girl who sold carnations.

Engracia and La Rabanitos conceived a violent hatred for the lass.

"That strumpet?" La Rabanitos would say. "Why, she's already as
disreputable as us...."

One night Vidal did not put in his usual appearance at Casa Blanca,
and two or three days later he showed up at the Puerta del Sol with a
tall, buxom woman garbed in grey.

"Who's that?" asked Manuel of his cousin.

"Her name's Violeta; I've taken up with her."

"And the other one, at Casa Blanca?"

Vidal shrugged his shoulders.

"You can have her if you wish," he said.

Vidal's former sweetheart likewise disappeared from Casa Blanca and,
after he had been unable to collect the two weeks' rent, the
administrator put Manuel out into the street and sold the furnishings:
a few empty bottles, a stew-pot and a bed.

For several days Manuel slept upon the benches of the Plaza de Oriente
and on the chairs of La Castellana and Recoletos. It was getting
toward the end of summer and he could still sleep in the open. A few
centimos that he earned by carrying valises from the stations helped
him to exist, though badly, until October.

There were days when the only thing he ate was the cabbage stalks that
he picked up in the marketplaces; other days, on the contrary, he
treated himself to seventy-eight centimo banquets in the chop-houses.

October came around and Manuel began to feel cold at night; his eldest
sister gave him a frayed overcoat and a muffler; but despite these,
whenever he could find no roof to shelter him he almost froze to death
in the street.

One night in the early part of November Manuel stumbled against El
Bizco at the entrance to a cafe on La Cabecera del Rastro; the
cross-eyed ragamuffin was bent over, almost naked, his arms crossed
against his chest, barefoot; he presented a painful picture of poverty
and cold.

Dolores La Escandalosa had left him for another.

"Where can we go to sleep?" Manuel asked him.

"Let's try the caves of La Montana," answered El Bizco.

"But can we get in there?"

"Yes, if there aren't too many."

"Come on, then."

The two crossed through the Puerta de Moros and Mancebos Street to the
Viaduct; they traversed the Plaza de Oriente, following along Bailen
and Ferraz Streets, and, as they reached the Montana del Principe Pio,
ascended a narrow path bordered by recently planted pines.

El Bizco and Manuel went along in the dark from one side to the other,
exploring the hollows of the mountain, until a ray of light issuing
from a crevice in the earth betrayed one of the caves.

They approached the hole; from within came the interrupted hum of
hoarse voices.

By the flickering light of a candle which was held in position on the
ground by two rocks, more than a dozen outcasts, some seated and some
on their knees, formed a knot of card-players. In the corners might be
discerned the hazy outlines of men stretched out on the sand.

A fetid vapour was exhaled by the cave.

The flame flickered, illuminating now a corner of the den, now the
pale face of one of the players, and as the light blinked, the shadows
of the men grew long or short on the sandy walls. From time to time
was heard a curse or a blasphemy.

Manuel thought that he had beheld something like this before in one of
his feverish nightmares.

"I'm not going in," he said to El Bizco.

"Why?" asked his companion.

"I'd rather freeze."

"As you please, then. I know one of these fellows. He's El
Interprete."

"And who is this Interprete?"

"The captain of all the mountain vagabonds."

Despite these assurances Manuel hesitated.

"Who's there?" came a voice from inside.

"I," answered El Bizco.

Manuel dashed off at full speed. Near the cave stood a group of two or
three huts, with a yard in the middle, surrounded by a rough stone
wall.

This, according to the ironic name given to it by the ragamuffins, was
the Crystal Palace, the nest of some low-flying turtledoves who
frequented the Montana barracks and who, at night, were joined by
friendly hawks and gerfalcons.

The entrance to the yard was closed by a double-panelled door.

Manuel examined it to see if it yielded, but it was strong, and was
armoured with tins that were stretched out and nailed down upon mats.

He thought that nobody could be there and tried to climb the wall; he
scaled the low rubble inclosure and as he advanced, got caught in a
wire; a stone fell noisily from the wall, a dog began to bark
furiously, and a curse echoed from inside.

Manuel, convinced that the nest was not empty, took to flight. He
sought shelter in a doorway that was somewhat protected from the rain
and huddled down to sleep.

It was still night when he awoke shivering with the cold, trembling
from head to foot. He started to run so as to warm himself; he reached
the Paseo de Rosales and strode up and down several times.

It seemed that the night would never end.

The rain ceased; the sun came out in the morning; Manuel took refuge
in a hollow on the slope of the embankment. The sun began to warm him
most deliciously. Manuel dreamed of a very white, exceedingly
beautiful woman with golden tresses. Frozen almost to death, he drew
near the lady, and she wrapped him in her golden strands and he
nestled tenderly, ever so tenderly in her lap....

CHAPTER VI

Senor Custodio and His Establishment--The Free Life.

... And he was in the midst of the most ravishing dreams when a harsh
voice recalled him to the bitter, impure realities of existence.

"What are you doing there, loafer?" some one was asking him.

"I!" mumbled Manuel, opening his eyes and staring at his questioner.
"I'm not doing anything."

"Yes, I can see that. I can see that."

Manuel got up; before him he beheld an old man with greyish hair and
gloomy mien, with a sack across his shoulder and a hook in his hand.
The fellow wore a fur cap, a sort of yellowish overcoat and a reddish
muffler rolled around his neck.

"Have you a home?" asked the man.

"No, sir."

"And you sleep in the open?"

"Well, as I haven't any home...."

The ragpicker began to rake over the ground, fished up some objects
and various papers, shoved them into the sack and turning his gaze
again upon Manuel, added:

"You'd be better off if you went to work."

"If I had work, I'd work; but I haven't, so ..."--and Manuel, wearied
of these useless words, huddled into his corner to continue his
slumbers.

"See here," said the ragdealer, "you come along with me. I need a boy
... I'll feed you."

Manuel looked at the man without replying.

"Well, do you want to or not? Hurry up and decide."

Manuel lazily arose. The rag man, sack slung across his shoulder,
climbed the slope of the embankment until he reached Rosales Street,
where he had a cart drawn by two donkeys. The man told them to move on
and they ambled down toward the Paseo de la Florida, thence through
Virgen del Puerto Avenue to the Ronda de Segovia. The cart, with its
license plate and number, was a tumbledown affair, held together by
strips of brass, and was laden with two or three sacks, buckets and
baskets.

The ragman, Senor Custodio,--that was what he gave as his
name,--looked like a good-natured soul.

From time to time he would bend over, pick up something from the
street and throw it into the cart.

Underneath the cart, attached to it by a chain, jogged along in
leisurely fashion a dog with yellowish locks, long and lustrous,--an
amiable creature who appeared to Manuel as good a canine as his master
was a human being.

* * * * *

Between the Segovia and Toledo bridges, not far from the head of
Imperial Avenue, there opens a dark depression with a cluster of two
or three squalid, wretched huts. It is a quadrangular ditch, blackened
by smoke and coal dust, hemmed in by crumbling walls and heaps of
rubbish.

As he reached the edge of this depression, the rag-dealer stopped and
pointed out to Manuel a hovel standing next to a broken-down
merry-go-round and some swings, saying:

"That's my house; take the cart down there and unload it. Can you do
that?"

"Yes, I think so."

"Are you hungry?"

"Yes, sir."

"Very well. Then tell my wife to give you a bite."

Manuel accompanied the cart into the hollow over an embankment of
rubbish. The ragdealer's house was the largest in the vicinity and had
a yard as well as an adjoining shed.

Manuel stopped before the door of the hut; an old woman came out to
meet him.

"What do you want, kid?" she asked. "Who sent you here?"

"Senor Custodio. He told me to ask you where to put the stuff that's
in the cart."

The woman pointed out the shed.

"He told me also," added the boy, "to say that you should give me
something to eat."

"I know you, you foxy creature," mumbled the old woman. And after
grumbling for a long time and waiting for Manuel to dump out the
contents of the cart, she gave him a slice of bread and a piece of
cheese.

The woman unharnessed the two mules and released the dog, who began to
bark and play with contentment; he snapped playfully at the mules, one
black and the other a silvery grey, who turned their eyes upon him and
showed their teeth; desperately he gave chase to a white cat with a
tail that bristled like a feather-duster, then approached Manuel, who,
seated in the sun, was nibbling at his bit of cheese and his slice of
bread, waiting for something. They both had lunch.

Manuel walked around the dwelling and looked it over. One of its
narrow sides was composed of two bathing-houses.

These two bathing-houses were not joined, but left between them a
space filled in by a rusty iron door such as is used to fasten shops.

The two longer walls of the ragdealer's hovel were formed of stakes
paid with pitch, and the wall opposite to that built of the
bathing-houses was constructed of thick, irregular rocks and curved
outward with a swelling like that of a church presbytery. Within, this
curve corresponded to a hollow in the manner of a wide vaulted niche
occupied by the hearth.

The house, despite its tiny size, had no uniform system of roofing; in
some spots tiles were substituted by strips of tin with heavy rocks
holding them in place and the interstices chinked with straw; in
others, the slate was mortared together with mud; in still others,
sheets of zinc provided protection.

The construction of the house betrayed each phase of its growth. As
the shell of the tortoise augments with the development of the
reptile, so did the rag-dealer's hovel little by little increase. At
first it must have been a place for only one person, something like a
shepherd's hut; then it widened, grew longer, divided into rooms,
afterwards adding its annexes, its shed and its yard.

Before the door to the dwelling, on a flat stretch of tamped earth,
stood a carrousel surrounded by a low, octagonal impalement; the
stakes, decayed by the action of moisture and heat, still showed a
vestige of their original blue paint.

Those poor merry-go-round steeds, painted red, offered to the gaze of
the indifferent spectator the most comical, and at the same time the
most pathetic sight. One of the coursers was of indeterminate hue; the
other must have forgotten his paws in his mad race; one of them, in a
most elegantly uncomfortable pose, symbolized humble sadness and
honest, refined modesty.

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