The Quest Part 44

"We sleep just as if we were in the open country," said one of the idlers.

"It wouldn't be at all bad," added another, "to take a walk now over to the Plaza Mayor and see whether they wouldn't give us a pound of ham."

"It has trichinae in it, anyway."

"Take care of that spring-matress," bellowed a flat-nosed gamin who was going about striking the sleepers with a stick in the shins. "Hey, there, you're rumpling the sheets!"

At Manuel's side, a rachetic urchin with thick lips and streaked eyes and one of his feet bandaged in dirty rags, was crying and groaning; Manuel, engrossed in his own thoughts, had not noticed him before.

"Some howling you're doing," came to the sufferer from a boy who was stretched out on the ground with his legs cramped close to his chest and his head pillowed against a rock.

"It hurts like anything."

"Then shut up, grin and bear it. Hang yourself."

Manuel thought that he heard El Carnicerin's voice and glanced toward the speaker. The fellow's hat was pulled down over his eyes and his face was not visible.

"Who's that?" asked Manuel of El Bizco.

"He's the captain of the cave gang: El Interprete."

"And what's he talking to the kid like that for?"

El Bizco shrugged his shoulders with a gesture of indifference.

"What's' the trouble?" Manuel inquired of the boy.

"I have a wound in my foot," replied the child, bursting again into tears.

"Shut up, I tell you," interrupted El Interprete, aiming a kick at the sufferer, who managed to escape the blow. "Go tell your troubles to your b.i.t.c.h of a mother.... d.a.m.n it all! It's impossible to sleep here."

"Then to h.e.l.l with you!" shouted Manuel.

"Who are you talking to?" demanded El Interprete, shoving his cap back on his head and revealing a brutish face with a flat nose and high cheekbones.

"To you, you thief, you coward!"

El Interprete sprang to his feet and strode over to Manuel, who, in an excess of fury seized him with both hands by the neck, kicked him in the leg with his right heel, made him lose his balance and threw him to the ground. There he thumped him violently. El Interprete, more muscular than Manuel, was able to get to his feet again; but he had lost his nerve and Manuel, gathering strength from his anger, threw him down a second time and was about to crash a rock into his face when a pair of munic.i.p.al guards happened along and kicked them apart.

El Interprete went off disgraced.

The members of the crowd calmed down and went off, one after the other, to resume their positions around the caldron.

Manuel sat down upon some paving blocks; the struggle had wiped out the memory of the blow he had received that afternoon; he felt brave and in a jesting mood, so, facing the curiosity-hunters that were watching the group, some laughing and others eyeing the urchins with pity, he addressed them.

"The session is about to close," he said. "Now we shall begin the community singing lessons. We're about to commence snoring, ladies and gentlemen. Let the public have no fear. We'll take good care of the bedsheets. Tomorrow we'll send them to the river to be washed. Now is the time. Whoever so desires," and he pointed to a rock, "may take advantage of these pillows. They're excellent pillows, such as are used by the Marquises of Archipipi. Whoever doesn't wish to sleep on them, let him be gone and not bother us. Ea! Gentlemen! If you don't pay I'll summon the servant and tell her to close...."

"It's the same with all of them," said one of the ragam.u.f.fins. "They talk nonsense when they get sleepy. They all look as if they were starved."

Manuel felt as garrulous as a mountebank. When he had wearied, he leaned against a heap of stones and with arms crossed prepared to sleep.

Shortly after this the group of curiosity-hunters had dispersed; only a guard and an old gentleman were left, and they discussed the ragam.u.f.fins in tones of pity.

The gentleman deplored the way these children were abandoned and said that in other countries they built schools and asylums and a thousand other things. The guard shook his head dubiously. At last he summed up the conversation, saying in the tranquil manner of a Galician:

"Take my word for it: there's no good left in any of them."

Manuel, hearing this, began to tremble; he arose from his place on the ground, left the Puerta del Sol and began to wander aimlessly about.

"There's no good left in any of them!" The remark had made a deep impression upon him. Why wasn't he good? Why? He examined his life. He wasn't bad, he had harmed n.o.body. He hated El Carnicerin because that fellow had robbed him of happiness, had made it impossible for him to go on living in the one corner where he had found some affection and shelter. Then contradicting himself, he imagined that perhaps he was bad after all, and in this case the most he could do was to reform and become better.

Absorbed in these reflections, he was pa.s.sing along Alcala Street when he heard his name called several times. It was La Mella and La Rabanitos, skulking in a doorway.

"What do you want?" he asked.

"Nothing, man. Just a word with you. Have you come into your money yet?"

"No. What are you doing?"

"Hiding here," answered La Mella.

"Why, what's the trouble?"

"There's a round-up, and that skunk of an inspector wants to take us to the station, even if we do pay him. Keep us company!"

Manuel accompanied them for a while; but they both picked up a couple of men on the way and he was left alone. He returned to the Puerta del Sol.

The night seemed to him endless; he walked around and walked yet again; the electric lights were extinguished, the street-cars stopped running, the square was left in darkness.

Between Montera and Alcala Streets there was a cafe before whose illuminated windows women pa.s.sed up and down dressed in bright clothes and wearing c.r.a.pe kerchiefs, singing, accosting benighted pa.s.sers-by; several loafers, lurking behind the lanterns, watched them and chatted with them, giving them orders....

Then came a procession of street-women, touts and procurers. All of parasitical, indolent, gay Madrid issued forth at these hours from the taverns, the dens, the gambling-houses, the dives and vice resorts, and amidst the poverty and misery that throbbed in the thoroughfares these night-owls strutted by with their lighted cigars, conversing, laughing, joking with the prost.i.tutes, indifferent to the agony of all these ragged, hungry, shelterless wretches who, shivering with the cold, sought refuge in the doorways.

A few old strumpets remained at the street-corners, wrapped in their cloaks, smoking....

It was long before the heavens grew bright; it was still night when the coffee stands were opened, and the coachmen and ragam.u.f.fins went up for their cup or gla.s.s. The gas lamps were extinguished.

The light from the watchmen's lanterns danced across the grey pavement, which already was dimly lighted by the pale glow of dawn, and the black silhouettes of the ragdealers stood out against the heaps of ordure as they bent over to take the rubbish. Now and then some pale benighted fellow with his coat collar raised, would glide by as sinister as an owl before the growing light and soon some workmen pa.s.sed.... Industrious, honest; Madrid was preparing for its hard daily task.

This transition from the feverish turmoil of night to the calm, serene activity of morning plunged Manuel into profound thought.

He understood that the existence of the night-owls and that of the working folk were parallel lives that never for an instant met. For the ones, pleasure, vice, the night; for the others, labour, fatigue, the sun. And it seemed to him, too, that he should belong to the second cla.s.s, to the folk who toil in the sun, not to those who dally in the shadows.

END OF "TO BUSCA,"

(THE QUEST)