The Quest Part 26

Perhaps the man intended to take harsh steps, to speak a few unvarnished words to the couple; but as he was soft and peaceful by nature, and did not wish to disturb his business, he let the time go by and grew little by little accustomed to his position. Somewhat later, Uncle Patas' wife brought from her town a sister of hers, and when she arrived, between the wife and the son she was forced upon the old man, who concluded by taking up with his sister-in-law. Since that time the four had lived in unbroken harmony. They understood one another most admirably.

Manuel was not in the least astonished by this state of affairs; he was cured of fear, for at La Corrala there was more than one matrimonial combination of the sort. What did make him indignant was the stinginess of Uncle Patas and his people.

All the scrupulousness which Uncle Patas' wife did not feel in other matters she reserved, no doubt, for the accounts. Herself accustomed to pilfer, she knew to the least detail every trick of the servants, and not a centimo escaped her; she always thought she was being robbed. Such was her spirit of economy that at home they ate stale bread, thus confirming the popular saying, "in the house of the smith, a wooden knife."

The sister-in-law, an uncouth peasant with a stubby nose, carroty cheeks, abundant b.r.e.a.s.t.s and hips, could give lessons in avarice to her sister, while in the matter of immodesty and undignified comportment she outdistanced her. She would go about the store with her bosom exposed and there wasn't a delivery-man who missed a chance to pinch her.

"What a fatty you are! Oh!" they would all exclaim.

And it was as if all this frequently fingered fat didn't belong to her, for she raised no protest. Should any one, however, try to get the best of her on the price of a roll, she would turn into a wild beast.

On Sunday afternoons Uncle Patas, his wife and his sister-in-law were in the habit of playing _mus_ on a little table in the middle of the road; they never dared to leave the store alone.

After Manuel had been here for three months, Petra carne to see Uncle Patas and asked him to give her boy a regular wage. Uncle Patas burst into laughter; the request struck him as the very height of absurdity and he answered No, that it was impossible, that the boy didn't even earn the bread he ate.

Then Petra sought out another place for Manuel and brought him to a bakery on Horno de la Mata Street where he was to learn the trade.

As the beginning of his apprenticeship he was a.s.signed to the furnace as a.s.sistant to the man who removed the loaves from the oven. The work was beyond his strength. He had to get up at eleven in the night and commence by sc.r.a.ping the iron pans in which the smaller loaves were baked; after they were cleaned he would go over them with a brush dipped in melted b.u.t.ter; this accomplished he would help his superior remove the live coals from the oven with an iron instrument; then, while the baker baked the bread he would lift very heavy boards laden with rolls and carry them to the kneading-trough at the mouth of the furnace; when the baker placed the rolls inside Manuel would take the board back to the kneading-trough. As the bread came out of the oven he would moisten it with a brush dipped in water so as to make the crust shiny. At eleven in the morning the work was over, and during the intervals of idleness Manuel and the workmen would sleep.

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 s.p.a.cious, 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 n.o.body 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 "h.e.l.lo, Barriga!" When they spoke of him they referred to him as "the ragam.u.f.fin from Madrid" or simply, "ragam.u.f.fin." 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 a.s.sistant 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 circ.u.mstances. 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 b.u.mp 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 la.s.situde 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 k.o.c.k 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.