CHAPTER I
Sandoval—Sánchez Gómez’s “Toads”—Jacob and Jesús.
Manuel and Roberto left the station together.
“Are you going to begin your old life all over again?” asked Roberto. “Why don’t you make up your mind once and for all to go to work?”
“Where? I’m no good at hunting for a job. Do you know anything I could get? Some printing shop....”
“Would you be willing to go in as an apprentice, without any pay?”
“Yes. What will it be?”
“If you’ve no objections, I’ll take you this instant to the head of a certain newspaper. Come along.”
They ascended to the Plaza de San Marcial, then went on through the Calle de los Reyes to the Calle de San Bernardo; reaching the Calle del Pez they entered a house. They knocked at a door on the main floor; a scrawny woman appeared, informing them that the gentleman whom Roberto had called for was asleep and had left word not to be disturbed.
“I’m a friend of his,” answered Roberto. “I’ll wake him up.”
The two made their way through a corridor to a dark room that reeked foully with iodoform. Roberto knocked.
“Sandoval!”
“What’s the trouble? What’s the matter?” shouted a powerful voice.
“It’s I; Roberto.”
There came the sounds of a man in his underclothes stepping out of bed and opening the shutters of the balcony; then they could see him return to his spacious bed.
He was a man of about forty, chubby-cheeked, corpulent, with a black beard.
“What’s the time?” he asked, stretching his limbs.
“Ten.”
“The devil, you say! As early as that? I’m glad you woke me; I’ve so many things to do. Shout down the corridor for me, will you.”
Roberto yelled a sonorous “Eh!” whereupon a painted girl walked into the room in evident ill-humor.
“Go fetch my clothes,” ordered Sandoval, and with an effort he sat up in bed, yawned stupidly and began to scratch his arms.
“What brings you here?” he queried.
“Well, you remember you told me the other day that you needed a boy in the office. I’ve brought you this one.”
“Why, man, I’ve already hired another.”
“Then there’s nothing to be done.”
“But I believe they need one at the printing shop.”
“Sánchez Gómez doesn’t think much of me.”
“I’ll talk to him. He can’t refuse me this.”
“Will you forget?”
“No, no I’ll not.”
“Bah! Write him; that would be better.”
“Very well. I’ll write him.”
“No. This very moment. Just a few words.”
As they spoke, Manuel observed the room with intense curiosity; it was unbelievably upset and filthy. The furniture comprised—the bed, a commode, an iron washstand, a shelf and two broken chairs. The commode and the shelf were heaped with papers and books whose binding was falling away. On the chairs lay petticoats and dresses. The floor was littered with cigar stubs, scraps of newspaper and pieces of absorbent cotton that had been used in some cure or other. Under the table reposed an iron wash bowl that had been converted into a brasier and was full of ashes and cinders.
When the servant-girl returned with Sandoval’s shirt and outer garments he got up in his drawers and began a search amidst his papers for a cake of soap, finally locating it. He washed himself in the basin of the washstand, which was brimming with dirty water wherein swam wisps of woman’s hair.
“Would you mind throwing out the water?” asked the journalist humbly of the maid.
“Throw it out yourself,” she snarled, leaving the room.
Sandoval went out into the corridor in his drawers, basin in hand, then returned, washed, and began to dress.
Here and there on the books lay a grimy comb, a broken toothbrush reddened with blood from gums, a collar edged with dirt, a rice-powder box full of dents with the puff black and hardened.
After Sandoval had dressed he became transformed in Manuel’s eyes; he took on an air of distinction and elegance. He wrote the letter that was asked of him, whereupon Roberto and Manuel left the house.
“He’s in there cursing away at us,” commented Roberto.
“Why?”
“Because he’s as lazy as a Turk. He’ll forgive anything except being made to work.”
Again they found themselves on the Calle de San Bernardo, and entered a lane that cut across. They paused before a tiny structure that jutted out from the line of the other buildings.
“This is the printing-shop,” said Roberto.
Manuel looked about him. Not a sign, no lettering, no indication whatsoever that this was a printery. Roberto thrust aside a little gate and they walked into a gloomy cellar that received its scanty light through the doorway leading to a dank, dirty patio. A recently whitewashed partition that bore the imprints of fingers and entire hands divided this basement into two compartments. In the first were packed a heap of dustladen objects; the other, the inner one, seemed to have been varnished black; a window gave it light; nearby rose a narrow, slippery stairway that disappeared into the ceiling. In the middle of this second compartment a bearded fellow, dark and thin, was mounted beside a large press, placing the paper, which there appeared as white as snow, over the bed of the machine; another man was receiving it. In a corner the oil motor that supplied the power to the press was toiling painfully on.
Manuel and Roberto climbed the stairway to a long, narrow room which received light through two windows that looked into the patio.
Against the wall of the room, and in the middle as well, stood the printer’s cases, over which hung several electric lights wrapped in newspaper cones that served as shades.
Three men and a boy were at work before the cases; one of the men, a lame fellow in a long blue smock, a derby, with a sour face and spectacles on his nose, was pacing up and down the room.
Roberto greeted the lame fellow and handed him Sandoval’s letter. The man took the letter and growled ill-naturedly:
“I don’t know why they come to me with matters of this kind. Damn it all!...”
“This is the youngster who is to learn the trade,” interrupted Roberto, coldly.
“Learn hell ...” and the cripple spat out ten or a dozen curses and a string of blasphemies.
“Are you in bad humor today?”
“I’m as I darn please.... This cursed daily grind.... It drives me to desperation.... Understand?”
“Indeed, I do,” replied Roberto, adding, in a stage “aside” such as is heard by the entire auditorium, “What patience one requires with this animal!”
“This is certainly a joke,” continued the cripple, unheedful of the “aside.” “Suppose the kid does want to learn the trade. What’s that got to do with me? And suppose he has nothing to eat? How does that concern me? Let him go to the deuce out of here ... and good riddance.”
“Are you going to teach him or not, Señor Sánchez? I’m a busy man and have no time to waste.”
“Ah! No time to waste! Then clear out, my fine fellow. I don’t need you here at all. Let the kid remain. You’re in the way here.”
“Thanks. You stay here,” said Roberto to Manuel. “They’ll tell you what you have to do.”
Manuel stood perplexed; he saw his friend disappear, looked around him in every direction, and seeing that nobody paid any attention to him, he walked over to the stairway and descended two steps.
“Eh! Where are you going?” shouted the lame man after him. “Do you want to learn the trade or not? What do you call this?”
Manuel was more confused than ever.
“Hey, you, Yaco,” shouted the cripple, turning to one of the men at the cases. “Teach this kid the case.”
The man he had called,—a puny fellow, very swarthy, with a black beard,—was working away with astonishing rapidity. He cast an indifferent glance in Manuel’s direction and resumed his work.
The youngster stood there motionless. Seeing him thus, the other typesetter, a blond young fellow with a sickly look, turned to his bearded companion jestingly and said to him in a queer sing-song:
“Ah, Yaco! Why don’t you teach the boy the position of the letters?”
“Teach him yourself,” retorted he whom they called Yaco.
“Ah, Yaco, I see that the law of Moses makes you people very selfish, Yaco. You don’t want to waste any time, do you, Yaco?”
The bearded compositor glared at his companion with a sinister look; the blond fellow burst into laughter and then showed Manuel where the various letters of the alphabet were to be found; then he brought over a column of used type which he had drawn quickly from an iron form, and said:
“Now you’re to distribute every letter back into its proper box.”
Manuel began the task at an exceedingly slow pace.
The blond compositor wore a long blue smock and a derby perched on one side of his head. Bent over the case, his eyes very close to his copy, with his composing-stick in his left hand, he set up one line after the other with astonishing speed; his right hand leaped dizzyingly from box to box.
Often he would pause to light a cigarette, look at his bearded companion and in a very jovial tone ask him a question,—either a very silly one or such as admits of no possible reply,—to which the other man answered only with a sinister glance from his black eyes.
It struck twelve; everybody ceased working and went out. Manuel was left alone in the shop. At first he had harbored the hope that he would be given something to eat; then he came to the realization that nobody had given himself any concern as to his food. He reconnoitred the place; nothing in the premises, unfortunately, was edible; he wondered whether, if he were to remove the ink from the surface of the rollers, they would be palatable, but he arrived at no decision.
Yaco returned at two; shortly after came the blond young man, whose name was Jesús, and the work was resumed. Manuel continued distributing the type, and Jesús and Yaco, setting.
The cripple corrected galleys, inked them, drew proof by placing paper on them and striking it with a mallet, after which, with a pair of tweezers, he would extract certain letters and replace them with others.
At midafternoon Jesús quit setting type and changed work. He took the galleys, which were tied around with twine, loosened them, shaped them into columns, placed them in an iron chase and locked them with quoins.
The form was carried off by one of the pressmen of the basement who returned with it inside of an hour. Jesús replaced some of the columns with others and the form was again removed. Shortly afterward the same operation was repeated.
After working away until seven the men were about to leave, when Manuel went over to Jesús and asked:
“Won’t the boss give me anything to eat?”
“Ho! The idea!”
“I haven’t any money; I didn’t even have any breakfast.”
“You didn’t? See here. Come along with me.”
They left the printing-shop together and entered a hovel on the Calle de Silva, where Jesús ate. The blond young man engaged in conversation with the proprietor and then came over to Manuel, saying:
“You’ll get your meals here on tick. I’ve told him I’ll be responsible for you. Now see to it that you don’t be up to any knavish tricks.”
“Don’t worry.”
“Very good. Let’s go inside. It’s my treat today.”
They walked into the dining-room of the shack and sat down before a table.
The waiter brought them a platter of bread, stew and wine. As they ate, Jesús recounted in humorous fashion a number of anecdotes relating to the proprietor of the printing-shop, to the journalists, and, above all, to Yaco, the fellow with the beard, who was a Jew, a very good fellow, but as stingy and sordid as they come.
Jesús would banter him and provoke him just for the sake of listening to his rejoinders.
When they had finished their supper, Jesús asked Manuel:
“Have you a place to sleep?”
“No.”
“There must be some corner in the printing-shop.”
They returned to the shop and the compositor asked the cripple to let Manuel sleep in some corner.
“Damn it all!” exclaimed the cripple, “this is going to become a regular Mountain Shelter. Such a band of ragamuffins! The lame fellow may be an ill-humoured cuss but everybody comes here just the same. You bet.”
Grumbling, as was his wont, the cripple opened a dingy sty that was reached by ascending several stairways; it was cluttered with engravings wrapped in sheets. He pointed to a corner where some excelsior and a few old cloaks were heaped.
Manuel slept like a prince in this hole.
On the next day the owner sent him down to the basement.
“Just watch what this fellow is doing, and you do the same,” he instructed, pointing to the thin, bearded man who stood on the platform of the press.
The man was taking a sheet of paper from a pile and placing it upon the feed board; at once the grippers reached forward and seized the sheet with the certainty of fingers; at a movement of the wheel the machine would swallow the paper and within a moment the sheet would issue, printed on one side, and some small sticks, like the ribs of a fan, would deposit it upon the fly table. Manuel very soon acquired the necessary skill.
The proprietor arranged that Manuel should work mornings at the cases, and afternoons and part of the night at the press, paying him for this a daily wage of six reales. During the afternoons it was fairly possible to stand the toil in the cellar; at night it was beyond endurance. Between the gasoline motor and the oil lamps the air was asphyxiating.
After a week in the place, Manuel had become intimate with Jesús and Yaco.
Jesús advised Manuel to apply himself to the cases and learn as soon as possible how to set type.
“At least you’ll be sure of making a living.”
“But it’s very hard,” said Manuel.
“Bah, man. Once you get used to it, it’s far easier than rolling off a log.”
Manuel worked away at the cases whenever he could, trying his best to acquire speed; some nights he actually set up lines, and how proud it made him afterward to see them in print!
Jesús amused himself by teasing the Jew, mimicking his manner of speech. They had both been living for some months in the same tenement, Yaco (his real name was Jacob) with his family and Jesús with his two sisters.
Jesús delighted to drive Jacob out of all patience and hear him utter picturesque maledictions in his soft, mellifluous language with its long-drawn s’s.
According to Jesús, at Jacob’s home his wife, his father-in-law and he himself spoke the weirdest jargon imaginable,—a mixture of Arabic and archaic Spanish that sounded exceedingly rare.
“Do you remember, Yaco,” Jesús would ask, imitating the Jew’s pronunciation, “when you brought your wife, Mesoda, that canary? And she asked you: ‘Ah, Yaco, what sort of bird is this with yellow wings?’ And you answered her: ‘Ah, Mesoda! This bird is a canary and I have brought it for you.’”
Jacob, seeing everybody laugh at him, would cast a terrible glance at Jesús and cry out:
“Wretch that you are! May you be struck by a dart that blots out your name from the book of the living!”
“And when Mesoda said to you,” continued Jesús, “‘Stay here, Yaco, stay with me. Ah, Yaco, how ill I am! I have a dove in my heart, a hammer on each breast and a fish on my neck. Call my baba; have her bring me a twig of letuario, Yaco!’”
These domestic intimacies, thus treated in jest, exasperated Jacob; hearing them, he lost his temper completely and his imprecations outdistanced those of Camilla.
“You have no respect for the family, you dog,” he would conclude.
“The family!” Jesús would retort. “The first thing a fellow should do is forget it. Parents, brothers and sisters, uncles, aunts and cousins,—what are they all but a botheration? The first thing a man should learn is to disobey his parents and have no belief in God.”
“Silence, you infidel, silence! May your sides fill up with watery vapor and your heart be consumed with fire. May the black broom sweep you off if you continue such blasphemies.”
Jesús would greet these curses with laughter, and after having allowed Jacob to vent his wrath, would add:
“A couple of thousand years ago, this animal who’s nothing but a printer today would have been a prophet, and would be in the Bible together with Matthew, Zabulon and all that small fry.”
“Don’t talk nonsense,” snarled Jacob.
When the discussion was over, Jesús would say to him:
“You know very well, Yaco, that a chasm yawns between your ideas and mine; but despite all that, if you’ll accept the invitation of a Christian, I invite you to a glass.”
Jacob would nod acceptance.