The Quest Part 39

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 s.p.a.ce 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 subst.i.tuted by strips of tin with heavy rocks holding them in place and the interstices c.h.i.n.ked 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 sh.e.l.l 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.

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 c.r.a.pe cloaks. On the shelves and on the floor, separated according to cla.s.s and size, were flasks, bottles, jars, canisters, a veritable army of gla.s.s 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; b.u.t.tons 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 b.u.mped 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 c.h.i.n.k 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 sh.e.l.ls, 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 c.o.ke 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 cla.s.sify the day's collection. The rag-dealer and his wife were amazingly skilful and quick at this work.

On rainy days the a.s.sorting 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, gla.s.s and bones.

In the afternoon Senor Custodio would go to certain stables in the Arguelles 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 quant.i.ty 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.