The Quest by Pio Baroja

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At the side of the merry-go-round rose a frame formed of two tripods
upon which rested a beam, whose hooks served as the support of swings.

The black ditch harboured three other hovels, all three constructed of
tins, rubbish, planks, ruins and other similar building materials. One
of the shacks, owing either to old age or deficient architecture,
threatened to collapse, and the owner, no doubt, had sought to prevent
its fall by sinking a row of stakes along one of the walls, against
which it leaned like a lame man upon his crutch; another house
flaunted like a flagstaff a long stick on its roof with a pot stuck on
the top....

After eating Manuel informed the old woman that Senor Custodio had
told him he might remain there.

"Tell me whether there's anything else for me to do," he concluded.

"All right. Stay here. Take care of the fire. If the pot boils, let
it; if it doesn't, throw a bit of coal into the flames. Reverte!
Reverte!" shouted the woman to the dog. "Let him remain here."

She went off and Manuel was left alone with the dog. The stew boiled
merrily. Manuel, followed by Reverte, made an inspection tour of the
house. It was divided into three compartments: a tiny kitchen and a
large room into which the light entered through two high, small
windows.

In this room or store-room, on all sides, from the walls and from the
ceiling, hung old wares of various hue, white clothes, red boinas and
Catalonian caps, strips of crape cloaks. On the shelves and on the
floor, separated according to class and size, were flasks, bottles,
jars, canisters, a veritable army of glass and porcelain pots; the
ranks were broken by those huge, green, dropsical pharmacy bottles,
and several heavy-paunched demi-johns; then came half-gallon bottles,
tall and dark; straw-covered vases; this was followed by the section
devoted to medicinal waters, the most varied and numerous of all, for
it included Seltzer-water siphons, oxygenized-water siphons, bottles
of gaseous water, Vichy, Mondariz, Carabana; after this came the small
fry, the perfume phials, the pots, the cold-cream jars, the cosmetic
receptacles.

In addition to this department of bottles there were others:
canned-goods tins and pans ranged on shelves; buttons and keys kept in
chests; remnants, ribbons and laces rolled around spools or cardboard.

All this struck Manuel as quite pleasant. Everything was in its proper
place, relatively spick and span; the hand of a methodical, neat
person was in evidence.

In the kitchen, which was kalsomined, shone the few scullery utensils.
On the hearth, above the white ashes, an earthenware stew-pot was
boiling away with a gentle purring.

From outside there scarcely came the distant noises of the city, which
filtered in like a pale sound; it was as quiet as in a remote hamlet;
now and then a dog would bark, some cart would creak as it bumped
along the road, then silence would be restored and in the kitchen
nothing would be heard save the _glu glu_ of the pot, like a
soft, confidential murmur....

Manuel cast a look of satisfaction through the chink of the door to
the dark ditch outside. In the corral the hens were scratching the
earth; a hog was rooting about, running in fright from one side to the
other, grunting and quivering with nervous tremours; Reverte was
yawning, blinking gravely, and one of the donkeys was wallowing
delightedly amidst broken pots, decayed baskets and heaps of refuse,
while the other, as if scandalized by such unrefined comportment,
contemplated him with the utmost surprise.

All this black earth filled Manuel with an impression of ugliness, yet
at the same time with a sense of tranquillity and shelter; it seemed a
proper setting for him. This soil formed the daily deposits of the
dumping-place; this earth, whose sole products were old sardine-cans,
oyster shells, broken combs and shattered pots; this earth, black and
barren, composed of the detritus of civilization, of bits of lime and
mortar and factory refuse, of all that the city had cast off as
useless, seemed to Manuel a place made especially for him, for he
himself was a bit of the flotsam and jetsam likewise cast adrift by
the life of the city.

Manuel had seen no other fields than the sad, rocky meadows of Soria
and the still sadder ones of the Madrilenian suburbs. He did not
suspect that in spots uncultivated by man there were green meadows,
leafy woods, beds of flowers; he thought that trees and flowers were
born only in the gardens of the rich....

Manuel's first days in Senor Custodio's house seemed too burdened; but
as there is plenty of free roaming in the ragdealer's life, he soon
grew accustomed to it.

Senor Custodio arose when it was still night, woke Manuel, and they
both harnessed the two donkeys to the cart and took the direction to
Madrid, on their daily hunt for the old boot and the discarded tatter.
Sometimes they went by way of Melancolicos Avenue; others, by the
Rondas or through Segovia Street.

Winter was coming on; at the hour when they sallied forth Madrid was
in complete darkness. The ragdealer had his fixed itinerary and his
schedule of call stations. When he went by way of the Rondas and drove
up Toledo Street, which was his most frequent route, he would halt at
the Plaza de la Cebada and the Puerta de Moros, fill his hamper with
vegetables and continue toward the heart of the city.

On other days he travelled through Melancolicos Avenue to the Virgen
del Puerto, from here to La Florida, then to Rosales Street, where he
rummaged in the rubbish deposited by the tip-carts, continuing to the
Plaza de San Marcial and arriving at the Plaza de los Mostenses.

On the way Senor Custodio let nothing escape his eye; he would examine
it and keep it if it were worth the trouble. The leaves of vegetables
went into the hampers; rags, paper and bones went into the sacks; the
half-burned coke and coal found a place in a bucket and dung was
thrown into the back of the cart.

Manuel and the ragdealer returned early in the morning; they unloaded
the cart on the flat earth before the door, and husband, wife and the
boy would separate and classify the day's collection. The rag-dealer
and his wife were amazingly skilful and quick at this work.

On rainy days the assorting was done in the shed. During such weather
the depression became a dismal, repellant swamp, and in order to cross
it one had to sink into the mud, in places half way up to the knee.
Everything would drip water; the hog in the yard would wallow in mire;
the hens would appear with their wings all black and the dog scampered
about coated with mud to the ears.

After the sorting of the collection, Senor Custodio and Manuel, each
with a basket, would wait for the dump-carts to arrive, and as the
refuse was tipped out, they would set about sorting it on the very
dumping-grounds: pasteboard, rags, glass and bones.

In the afternoon Senor Custodio would go to certain stables in the
Argueelles district to clean out the manure and take it to the orchards
on the Manzanares.

Between one thing and another Senor Custodio made enough to live in a
certain comfort; he had a firm grasp upon his business and as he was
under no compulsion to sell his wares promptly, he would wait for the
most opportune occasion so that he could sell with advantage.

The paper that he thus stored up was purchased by the pasteboard
factories; they gave him from thirty or forty centimos per arroba. The
manufacturers required the paper to be perfectly dry, and Senor
Custodio dried it in the sun. As they tried at times to get the best
of him in weight, he used to place in each sack two or three full
arrobas, weighed with a steelyard; on the cloth of the sack he would
inscribe a number in ink, indicating the amount of arrobas it
contained, and these sacks he held in a sort of cellar or ship's hold
that he had dug into the ground of the shed.

When there was a great quantity of paper he sold it to a pasteboard
factory on Acacias Avenue. Senor Custodio's journey was not in vain,
for in addition to selling the goods at a fancy price, he would, on
the way back, drive his cart in the direction of a pitch factory of
the vicinity, and there he picked up from the ground a very fine coal
that burned excellently and gave as much heat as slag.

He sold the bottles to wine houses, to liquor and beer distilleries;
the medicine flasks he disposed of to pharmacists; the bones went to
the refineries and the rags to the paper factories.

The bread leavings, vegetable leaves and fruit cores were reserved for
the feed of the pigs and hens, and what was of no use at all was cast
into the rotting-place, converted into manure and sold to the orchards
near the river.

On the first Sunday that Manuel spent there, Senor Custodio and his
wife took the afternoon off. For many a day they had never gone out
together because they were afraid to leave the house alone; this day
they dressed up in their best and went on a visit to their daughter,
who worked as a modiste in a relative's shop.

Manuel was glad to be left by himself with Reverte, contemplating the
house, the yard, the ditch; he turned the carrousel round and it
creaked ill-humouredly; he climbed up the swing frame, looked down at
the hens, teased the pig a little and then ran up and down with the
dog chasing after him barking merrily in feigned fury.

This dark depression attracted Manuel somehow or other, with its
rubbish heaps, its gloomy hovels, its comical, dismantled
merry-go-round, its swings, and its ground that held so many
surprises, for a rough, ordinary pot burgeoned from its depths as
easily as a lady's elegant perfume phial; the rubber bulb of a prosaic
syringe grew side by side with the satin, scented sheet of a love
letter.

This rough, humble life, sustained by the detritus of a refined,
vicious existence; this almost savage career in the suburbs of a
metropolis, filled Manuel with enthusiasm. It seemed to him that all
the stuff cast aside in scorn by the capital,--the ordure and broken
tubs, the old flower-pots and toothless combs, buttons and sardine
tins,--all the rubbish thrown aside and spurned by the city, was
dignified and purified by contact with the soil.

Manuel thought that if in time he should become the owner of a little
house like Senor Custodio's, and of a cart and donkeys, and hens and a
dog, and find in addition a woman to love him, he would be one of the
almost happy men in this world.

CHAPTER VII

Senor Custodio's Ideas--La Justa, El Carnicerin, and El Conejo.

Senor Custodio was an intelligent fellow of natural gifts, very
observant and quick to take advantage of a situation. He could
neither read nor write, yet made notes and kept accounts; with
crosses and scratches of his own invention he devised a substitute
for writing, at least for the purposes of his own business.

Senor Custodio was exceedingly eager for knowledge, and if it
weren't that the notion struck him as ridiculous, he would have set
about learning how to read and write. In the afternoon, work done,
he would ask Manuel to read the newspapers and the illustrated
reviews that he picked up on the streets, and the ragdealer and his
wife listened with the utmost attention.

Senor Custodio had, too, several volumes of novels in serial form
that had been left behind by his daughter, and Manuel began to read
them aloud.

The comment of the ragdealer, who took this fiction for historic
truth, was always perspicacious and just, revelatory of an instinct
for reasoning and common sense. The man's realistic criticism was
not always to Manuel's taste, and at times the boy would make bold
to defend a romantic, immoral thesis. Senor Custodio, however, would
at once cut him short, refusing to let him continue.

For professional reasons the ragdealer was much preoccupied with
thought of the manure that went to waste in Madrid. He would say to
Manuel:

"Can you imagine how much money all the refuse that comes from
Madrid is worth?"

"No."

"Then figure it out. At seventy centimos per arroba, the millions of
arrobas that it must amount to in a year.... Spread this over the
suburbs and have the waters of the Manzanares and the Lozoya
irrigating all these lands, and you'd see a world of gardens and
orchards everywhere."

Another of the fellow's fixed ideas was that of reclaiming used
material. It seemed to him that lime and sand could be extracted
from mortar refuse, live plaster from old, dead plaster, and he
imagined that this reclamation would yield a huge sum of money.

Senor Custodio, who had been born near the very depression in which
his house was situated, felt for his particular district, and for
Madrid in general, a deep enthusiasm; the Manzanares, to him, was as
considerable a river as the Amazon.

Senor Custodio had two children, of whom Manuel knew only Juan, a
tall, swarthy sport who was married to the daughter of a laundry
proprietress in La Bombilla. The ragdealer's daughter, Justa by
name, was a modiste in a shop.

During the first few weeks neither of the children came to their
parents' home. Juan lived in the laundry and Justa with a relative
of hers who owned a workshop.

Manuel, who spent many hours in conversation with Senor Custodio,
noted very soon that the rag-dealer, though fully aware of his very
humble condition, was a man of extraordinary pride and that as
regarded honour and virtue he had the ideas of a mediaeval nobleman.

One Sunday, after he had been living there a month Manuel had
finished his meal and was standing at the door when he saw a girl
with her skirts gathered come running down the slope of the
dumping-ground. As she approached and he got a close look at her,
Manuel went red and then blanched. It was the lass that had come two
or three times to the lodging-house to fit the Baroness's dresses;
but she had since then grown to womanhood.

She drew near, raising her skirt and her starched petticoats,
careful not to soil her patent-leather slippers.

"What can she be coming here for?" Manuel asked himself.

"Is father in?" she inquired.

Senor Custodio came out and embraced her. She was the ragdealer's
daughter of whom Manuel was forever hearing and whom, without
knowing just why, he had imagined as a very thin, emaciated,
disagreeable creature.

Justa walked into the kitchen and after looking over the chairs, to
see whether there was anything on them that might soil her clothes,
she sat down upon one of them. She began to pour forth a flood of
unceasing chatter and roared at her own jokes.

Manuel listened without a word; to tell the truth she wasn't quite
so good-looking as he had imagined, but she didn't please him any
the less for that. She might be about eighteen, was brunette, rather
short, with very dark, flashing eyes, a tilted, pert nose, a sensual
mouth and thick lips. She was, too, a bit full behind and in the
breasts and the hips; she was neat, fresh, with a very high top-knot
and a pair of brand-new, polished slippers.

As Justa gabbled on, to the ecstasy of her parents, there came into
the kitchen a hump-backed fellow from one of the neighbouring
hovels; he was called El Conejo (the rabbit) and his face really
showed a great resemblance to the amiable rodent whose name he bore.

El Conejo was a member of Senor Custodio's fraternity and knew Justa
since she had been a child; Manuel used to see him every day, but
never paid any attention to him.

The Rabbit walked into Senor Custodio's and began to talk nonsense,
laughing in violent outbursts, but in so mechanical a manner that it
provoked his hearers, for it seemed that behind this continuous
laughter lay a very deep bitterness. Justa touched his hump, for, as
is known, this brings good luck, whereupon El Conejo exploded with
merriment.

"Have you been lugged up again before the chief?" she asked.

"Oh, yes. Often ... hee-hee ..."

"What for?"

"Because the other day I started to shout in the street: 'Bargains!
Who'll buy Sagasta's umbrella, Kruger's hat, the Pope's urinal, a
syringe lost by a nun while she was talking with the sacristan! ..."

El Conejo trumpeted this at the top of his lungs and Justa held her
sides with laughter.

"And don't you sing mass any more the way you used to?"

"Oh, sure."

"Let's hear it, then."

The humpback had taken for his scandalous parody, the Preface of the
Mass, and for the sacred words he substituted others with which he
announced his business. He began to bellow:

"Who will sell me any ... slippers ... pants ... hempen sandals ...
old shoes ... secondhand clothes ... syringes ... urinals and even
chemises."

The hunchback's cries made Justa laugh nervously. El Conejo, after
repeating the Preface several times took up the melody of the
rogations and sang some strains in a high soprano, others in a basso
profundo:

"The high silk-hat" ... and instead of saying _Liberanos
domine_, he went on: "I'll buy for spot cash.... Your old vest
... will fetch a five-peseta piece...."

Then he had to stop to let Justa laugh.

She was not slow in perceiving that she had attracted Manuel, and
despite the fact that he seemed no great conquest to her, she became
serious, egged him on and glanced at him furtively with looks that
sent the boy's blood pounding faster.

After the ragdealer's daughter had left, Manuel felt as if he had
been abandoned to darkness. He thought that he could live for two or
three weeks on her incendiary glances alone.

The next day, when Manuel met El Conejo he listened to the nonsense
that the hunchback spoke, with his eternal harping on the Bishop of
Madrid-Alcala, and then tried to shift the conversation toward the
topic of Senor Custodio and his family.

"Justa's a pretty girl, isn't she?"

"Psch ... yes," and El Conejo looked at Manuel with the reserved
mien of a person concealing a mystery.

"You've known her since she was a kid, haven't you?"

"Yes. But I've known plenty of other girls, too."

"Has she a sweetheart?"

"She must have. Every woman has a sweetheart unless she's mighty
ugly."

"And who is Justa's fellow?"

"Anyone; I shouldn't be surprised if it were the Bishop of
Madrid-Alcala."

El Conejo was a very intelligent looking person; he had a long face,
a curved nose, a broad forehead, tiny, sparkling eyes and a reddish
beard that tapered to a point, like a goat's.

A peculiar tic, a convulsive twitch of the nose, would agitate his
face from time to time, and it was this that completed his
resemblance to a rabbit. His merriment was just as likely to find
issue in a nervous, metallic, sonorous outburst as in a muffled,
clownish guffaw. He would stare at people from top to bottom and
from bottom to top in a manner all the more insolent for its jesting
character, and to add to the mockery he would detain his gaze upon
his interlocutor's buttons, and his eyes would dance from the cravat
to the trousers and from the boots to the hat. He took special care
to dress in the most ridiculous fashion and he liked to adorn his
cap with bright cock feathers, strut about in riding boots and
commit similar follies.

He was fond, too, of confusing folks with his lies, and so firmly
did he state the tales of his own invention that it was hard to tell
whether he was fooling or speaking in all seriousness.

"Haven't you heard what happened this afternoon to the Bishop of
Madrid-Alcala over at Las Cambroneras?" he would say to some
acquaintance.

"Why, no."

"Sure. He was on a visit bringing alms to Garibaldi and Garibaldi
gave the Bishop a cup of chocolate. The Bishop sat down, took a sip,
when zip! ... Nobody knows just what happened; he dropped dead."

"Why, man! ..."

"It's the Republicans that are behind it all," affirmed El Conejo in
his most serious manner, and he would be off to another place to
spread the news or perpetrate another hoax. He would join a group.

"Have you heard what happened to Weyler?"

"No. What was it?"

"Oh, nothing. On his return from camp some flies attacked his face
and ate up a whole ear. He went across Segovia bridge bleeding
terribly."

This was how the buffoon managed to enjoy himself.

Mornings he would sling his sack over his shoulder and proceed to
the centre of Madrid where he shouted his business through the
thoroughfares, mingling his cries with the names of political
leaders and famous men,--a habit that had won him more than once the
honour of appearing before the police-chief's desk.

El Conejo was as perverse and malevolent as a demon; any maiden in
the vicinity that was going around with a secret bundle might well
tremble lest he surprise her. He knew everything, he scented it out;
apparently, however, he took no mean advantage of his discoveries.
He was content to scare folks out of their wits.

"El Conejo must know," was the regular response when anything was
suspected.

"I don't know a thing; I've seen nothing," he would answer,
laughing. "I don't know anything." And that was all anybody could
get out of him.

As Manuel got to know El Conejo better he felt for him, if not
esteem, at least a certain respect because of his intelligence.

This ragman jester was so cunning that often he deceived his
colleagues of El Rastro, who were far from being a set of fools.

Almost every morning the ragdealers would forgather at the head of
El Rastro, to exchange impressions and used articles. El Conejo
would learn beforehand just what was needed by the stand merchants,
and he would buy the articles of the rag men, selling them in turn
to the merchants; between this bartering and selling he always came
out the gainer....

During the Sundays that followed, Justa amused herself by working
upon Manuel's feelings. The girl was absolutely free in her talk and
had a thorough, finished knowledge of all the Madrilenian phrases
and wiles.

At first Manuel acted very respectfully; but seeing that she took no
offence he grew gradually more daring and ventured so far as to
steal embraces. Justa easily freed herself and would laugh at sight
of the fellow's serious countenance and his glance ablaze with
desire.

With the licentious manner that characterized her, Justa would carry
on scabrous conversations, telling Manuel what men said to her on
the street and the proposals that they whispered into her ears; she
spoke with especial delight of shopmates who had lost their virginal
bloom in La Bombilla or Las Ventas with some Don Juan of the counter
who spent his days twirling his mustache before the mirror of a
perfumery or silk shop.

Justa's words were always freighted with a double meaning and were,
at times, burning allusions. Her mischievous manner, her flaunting,
unbridled coquetry, scattered about her an atmosphere of lust.

Manuel felt a painful eagerness to possess her, mingled with a great
sadness and even hatred, when he saw that Justa was making sport of
him. Many a time when he saw her come Manuel vowed to himself not to
speak a word to her, not to look at her or say anything; then she
would hunt him out and tease him by beckoning to him and touching
his foot.

Justa's temper was disconcertingly uneven. Sometimes when Manuel
clasped her about the waist and sat her down on his knees, she would
let him squeeze her and kiss her all he pleased; at others, however,
simply because he had drawn near and taken her by the hand, she
would give him such a hard slap that his senses whirled.

"And come back for more," she would add, seemingly indignant.

Manuel would feel like crying with anger and rage, and would have to
contain himself lest he blurt out, with childish logic: "Why did you
let me kiss you the other afternoon?" But at once he saw how
ridiculous such a question would seem.

Justa got to feel a certain liking for Manuel, but it was a
sisterly, a friendly affection; he never appealed to her seriously
as a sweetheart or a suitor.

This flirtation, which to Justa was a mere sham of love, constituted
for Manuel a painful awakening from puberty. He had dizzy attacks of
passionate desire which left him mortally weak and crushed. Then he
would stride along hurriedly with the irregular gait of one
suffering from locomotor ataxia; many a time, crossing the pine
grove of the Canal, he was seized with an impulse to jump into the
river and drown himself. The filthy black water, however, hardly
invited to immersion.

It was during these libidinous spells that dark, sinister thoughts
assailed him,--the notion of how useless his life was, the certainty
of an adverse fate,--and as he considered the vagabond, abandoned
existence that awaited him, his soul walked with bitterness and sobs
rose in his throat....

One winter Sunday Justa, who had got into the habit of visiting her
parents on every holiday, did not appear. Manuel wondered whether
the inclement weather might be the cause and he spent the whole week
restless and nervous, counting the days that would intervene before
their next meeting.

On the following Sunday Manuel went to the corner of the Paseo de
los Pontones to wait for the girl to come along; as he espied her at
a distance his heart gave a jump. She was accompanied by a young
dandy, half bull-fighter and half gentleman, wearing a Cordovan hat
and a blue cloak covered with embroidery. At the end of the avenue
Justa took leave of her escort.

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