The Quest Part 7

Mother and son had to wait until the shop was opened. The building was not the tiny, evil-boding one, but it looked as if it had an atrocious desire to cave in, for here and there it, too, showed cracks, holes and all manner of disfigurements. It had a lower and upper floor, large and wide balconies the bal.u.s.trades of which were gnawed by rust and the diminutive panes of gla.s.s held in place by leaden strips.

On the ground floor of the house, in the part that faced Aguila Street, there was a livery-stable, a carpenter's shop, a tavern and the cobbler's shop owned by Petra's relation. This establishment displayed over the entrance a sign that read:

_For The Regeneration of Footwear._

The historian of the future will surely find in this sign proof of how widespread, during several epochs, was a certain notion of national regeneration, and it will not surprise him that this idea, which was launched in the aim to reform and regenerate the Const.i.tution and the Spanish people, came to an end upon the signboard of a shop on a foresaken corner of the slums, where the only thing done was the reformation and regeneration of footwear.

We will not deny the influence of this regenerating theory upon the proprietor of the establishment _For The Regeneration of Footwear;_ but we must point out that this presumptuous legend was put up in token of his defiance of the cobbler across the way, and we must register likewise that it had been answered by another, and even more presumptuous, one.

One fine morning the workmen in the establishment for _The Regeneration of Footwear_ were dumfounded to find staring them in the face the sign of the rival shop. It was a beautiful signboard about two metres long, bearing this inscription:

_The Lion of the Shoemaker's Art_

This in itself was quite tolerable; the terrible, annihilating thing about it was the painting that sprawled over the middle of the board.

A handsome yellow lion with the face of a man and with wavy mane, standing erect; in his front paws he held a boot, apparently of patent-leather. Beneath this representation was printed the following: _You may break, but never unst.i.tch it._

This was a crushing motto: A lion (wild beast) trying to unseam the boot made by the Lion (shoemaker), and powerless before the task! What a humiliation for the lion! What a triumph for the shoemaker! The lion, in this case, was _For The Regeneration of Footwear,_ which, as the saying goes, had been compelled to bite the dust.

In addition to Senor Ignacio's sign there was, in one of the balconies of the large house, the bust of a woman, made probably of pasteboard, with lettering beneath: _Perfecta Ruiz: Ladies' Hair Dressing;_ on the side walls of the main entrance there hung several announcements unworthy of occupying the attention of the aforementioned historian, in which were offered low-priced rooms with or without bed, amanuenses and seamstresses. A single card, upon which were pasted horizontally, vertically and obliquely a number of cut-out figures, deserved to go down in history for its laconicism. It read:

_Parisian Styles. Escorihuela, Tailor._

Manuel, who had not taken the trouble to read all these signs, went into the building by a little door at the side of the livery-stable entrance, and walked through the corridor to a very filthy courtyard.

When he returned to the street the cobbler's shop had already been opened. Petra and her boy entered.

"Isn't Senor Ignacio in?" she asked.

"He'll be here in a second," answered a youngster who was piling up old shoes in the middle of the shop.

"Tell him that his cousin is here,--Petra."

Senor Ignacio appeared. He was a man of between forty and fifty, thin and wizened. Petra and he got into conversation, while the boy and a little urchin continued to heap up the old shoes. Manuel was looking on, when the boy said to him:

"Come on, you. Lend a hand!"

Manuel pitched in, and when the three had ended their labours, they waited for Petra and Senor Ignacio to finish chatting. Petra was recounting Manuel's latest exploits to her cousin and the cobbler listened smilingly. The man bore no signs of gruffness; he was blond and beardless; upon his upper lip sprouted a few saffron-hued hairs.

His complexion was leathery, wrinkled; the deep furrows of his face, and his wearied mien, gave him the appearance of a weakling. He spoke with a certain ironic vagueness.

"You're going to stay here," said Petra to Manuel.

"All right."

"He's an amiable rogue," exclaimed Senor Ignacio, laughing. "He agrees right away."

"Yes; he takes everything calmly. But, look--" she added, turning to her son, "if ever I find out that you carry on as you did yesterday, you'll hear from me!"

Manuel said good-bye to his mother.

"Were you very long in that town of Soria with my cousin?" Senor Ignacio asked.

"Two years."

"And did you work very hard there?"

"I didn't work at all."

"Well, sonny, you can't get out of it here. Come. Sit down and get busy. These are your cousins," added Senor Ignacio, indicating the youth and the little boy.

"They are a pair of warriors, too."

The youth's name was Leandro, and he was well-built; in no respect did he resemble his father. He had thick lips and a thick nose, an obstinate, manly expression; the other was a boy of about Manuel's age, frail, thin, with a rascally look, and called Vidal.

Senor Ignacio and the three boys sat down around a wooden block formed of a tree-trunk with a deep groove running through it. The labour consisted in undoing and taking apart old boots and shoes, which arrived at the shop from every direction in huge, badly tied bales and in sacks with paper designations sewed to the burlap. The boot destined to be drawn and quartered was laid upon the block; there it received a stroke or more from a knife until the heel was severed; then, with the nippers the various layers of sole were ripped off; with the scissors they cut off b.u.t.tons and laces, and everything was sorted into its corresponding basket: in one, the heels; in others, the rubbers, the latchets, the buckles.

So low had _The Regeneration of Footwear_ descended: it justified its t.i.tle in a manner quite distinct from that intended by the one who had bestowed it.

Senor Ignacio, a master workman, had been compelled through lack of business to abandon the awl and the shoemaker's stirrup for the nippers and the knife; creating for destroying; the fashioning of new boots for the disembowelling of old. The contrast was bitter; but Senor Ignacio could find consolation in looking across at his neighbour, he of the _Lion of The Shoemaker's Art_, who only at rare intervals would receive an order for some cheap pair of boots.

The first morning of work was infinitely boresome to Manuel; this protracted inactivity became unbearable. At noon a bulky old woman entered the shop with their lunch in a basket. This was Senor Ignacio's mother.

"And my wife?" the cobbler asked her.

"She's gone washing."

"And Salome Isn't she coming?"

"No. She got some work in a house for the whole week."

The old lady extracted from the basket a pot, dishes, napkins, cutlery, and a huge loaf of bread; she laid a cloth upon the floor and everybody squatted down around it. She poured the soup from the pot into the plates, into which each one crumbled a bit of bread, and they began to eat. Then the old woman doled out to each his portion of boiled meat and vegetables, and, as they ate, the cobbler discoursed briefly upon the future of Spain and the reasons for national backwardness,--a topic that appeals to most Spaniards, who consider themselves regenerators.

Senor Ignacio was a mild liberal, a man who swelled with enthusiasm over these words about the national sovereignty, and who spoke openly of the Glorious Revolution. In matters of religion he advocated freedom of worship; his ideal would be for Spain to have an equal number of priests of the Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and every other denomination, for thus, he a.s.serted, each would choose the dogma that seemed to him best. But one thing he'd certainly do if he had a say in the government. He would expel all the monks and nuns, for they're like the mange: the weaker the sufferer, the more it thrives. To this argument Leandro, the elder son, added that as far as the monks, nuns and other small fry were concerned, the best course with them was to lop off their heads like hogs, and with regard to the priests, whether Catholic, Protestant or Chinese, nothing would be lost if there were nary a one.

The old lady, too, joined the conversation, and since to her, as a huckstress of vegetables, politics was chiefly a question between marketwomen and the munic.i.p.al guards, she spoke of a row in which the amiable ladies of the Cebada market had discharged their garden produce at the heads of several redcoats who were defending a trouble-maker of the market. The huckstresses wanted to organize a union, and then lay down the law and fix prices. Now this didn't at all appeal to her.

"What the deuce!" she exclaimed. "What right have they to take away a person's stock if he wants to sell it cheaper? Suppose I take it into my head to give it all away free."

"Why no, senora," differed Leandro. "That's not right."

"And why not?"

"Because it isn't. Because tradesfolk ought to help one another, and if you, let's suppose, do as you say, you prevent somebody else from selling, and that's why Socialism was invented,--to favour man's industry."

"All right, then. Let them give two duros to man's industry and kill it."

The woman spoke very phlegmatically and sententiously. Her calm manner harmonized perfectly with her huge person, which was as thick and rigid as a tree-trunk; her face was fleshy and of stolid features, her wrinkles deep; pouches of loose flesh sagged beneath her eyes; on her head she wore a black kerchief, tightly knotted around her temples.

Senora Jacoba--that was her name--was a woman who probably felt neither heat nor cold; summer and winter she spent the dead hours seated by her vegetable stand at the Puerta de Moros; if she sold a head of lettuce between sunrise and sunset, it was a great deal.