CHAPTER IV
An Execution—On the Sotillo Bridge—Destiny
It was a night in August; Manuel, Vidal, La Flora and La Justa had just left El Dorado theatre, when Vidal suggested:
“They’re executing a soldier at daybreak. Shall we take it in?”
“Sure. Let’s go,” answered La Flora and La Justa.
It was a balmy, beautiful night.
They went up the Calle Alcalá and entered the Fornos. At about three they left the Café and took an open hack for the place of the execution.
They left the carriage opposite the Model Prison.
It was too early. It had not yet dawned.
They circled around the prison by a side-street that was no more than a ditch running through the sand and finally reached the clearings near the Calle de Rosales. The structure of the Model Prison, viewed from these desolate fields, assumed an imposing appearance; it looked like a fort bathing there in the blue, spectral illumination of the arc lights. From time to time the sentinels sang out a prolonged watchword that produced a terrible impression of anguish.
“What a sad house!” murmured Vidal. “And to think of all the people shut up in it!”
“Pse.... Let them all be shot,” replied La Justa, indifferently.
But Vidal could not feel this disdain, and grew indignant at La Justa’s remark.
“Then what do they rob for?” she countered.
“And you, why do you ...?”
“Because I need to eat.”
“Well, they need to eat, too.”
La Flora now recalled that as a little girl she had witnessed the execution of La Higinia. She had gone with the janitress’s daughter.
“There’s where the scaffold was,” and she pointed to the middle of a wall opposite the death-house. “The clearings were jammed with people. La Higinia came along dressed all in black, leaning against the Brethren of Peace and Charity. She must have been dead from fright already. They sat her down on the stool and a priest with a raised cross in his hand stood before her; the executioner tied her feet with rope, catching her skirts in the knot; then he blindfolded her with a black handkerchief and getting behind her gave two turns to the wheel. Right away he removed the handkerchief from her face and the woman fell stiff upon the boards.
“Then,” concluded La Flora, “the other girl and myself had to run off, for the guards charged the crowd.”
Vidal paled at this detailed recital of an execution.
“These things take the life out of me,” he said, placing one hand over his heart.
“Then why did you want to come here?” asked Manuel. “Do you want to turn back?”
“No. No.”
They proceeded to the Plaza de Moncloa. At one of the corners of the prison was a seething throng. Day was breaking. A border of gold was beginning to glow on the horizon. Through the Calle de la Princesa came trooping a company of artillery; it looked phantasmal in the hazy light of dawn. The company came to a halt before the prison.
“Now let’s see whether they’ll give us the slip and shoot him somewhere else,” muttered a little old fellow, to whom the idea of getting up so early in the morning and then being cheated out of an execution must have appeared as the height of the disagreeable.
“They’re executing him over toward San Bernardino,” announced a ragamuffin.
There was a general stampede for the scene of the execution. And indeed, just below some clearings near the Paseo de Areneros the soldiers had formed into a square. There was an audience of actors, night-owls, chorus-girls and prostitutes seated around in hacks, and a throng of loafers and beggars. The barren area was fairly vast. A grey wagon came rumbling along at top speed directly into the centre of the square; three figures stepped down, looking from the distance like dolls; the men beside the criminal removed their high hats. The soldier who was to be executed could not be seen very well.
“Down with your heads!” cried the crowd at the rear. “Let everybody have a chance to see!” Eight cavalrymen stepped forward with short rifles in their hands and took up a position in front of the condemned man. Not exactly opposite him, naturally, for, moving along sideways like an animal with many feet, they proceeded several metres. The sun shot brilliant reflections from the yellow sand of the clearing, from the helmets and the belts of the soldiers. No voice of command was heard; the rifles took aim.
“Put down your heads!” came again in angry accents from those who were in the third and fourth row of the spectators.
A detonation, not very loud, rang out. Shortly afterwards came another.
“That’s the finishing touch,” muttered Vidal.
The audience broke up and made off toward Madrid. There was the roll of drums and the blare of bugles. The sun glowed in the window panes of the houses nearby. Manuel, Vidal and the two women were walking through the Paseo de Areneros when they heard the crack of another discharge.
“He wasn’t dead yet,” added Vidal, paler than ever.
The four became moody.
“I tell you what,” spoke up Vidal. “I have an idea for wiping away the unpleasant impression this has made upon us. Let’s go for a little excursion and lunch this afternoon.”
“Where?” asked Manuel.
“Over by the river. It’ll remind us of the good old days. Eh. What do you say?”
“Right-o.”
“La Justa won’t be busy?”
“No.”
“Settled, then. At noon we’ll all meet at Señora Benita’s restaurant, near the Pier and Sotillo Bridge.”
“Agreed.”
“And now let’s be off to catch a snooze.”
Which they did. At twelve Manuel and La Justa left the house and made their way to the restaurant. The others had not yet arrived.
They sat down upon a bench; La Justa was in bad humour. She bought ten céntimos’ worth of peanuts and began to nibble at them.
“Want any?” she asked Manuel.
“No. They get into my teeth.”
“Then I don’t want any, either,” and she threw them to the ground.
“What do you buy them for, if you throw them away afterward?”
“Because I feel like it.”
“Suits me. Do as you please.”
For an appreciable period they sat there waiting, neither breaking the silence. La Justa, at last beyond her patience, got up.
“I’m going home,” she said.
“I’ll wait,” replied Manuel.
“Go ahead, then, and may they darn you with black thread, you thief.”
Manuel shrugged his shoulders.
“And give you blood pudding.”
“Thanks.”
La Justa, who was on the point of leaving, caught sight just then of Calatrava and La Aragonesa, and Vidal in company of La Flora. She paused. Calatrava had a guitar with him.
An organ-grinder happened to be passing the restaurant. The Cripple stopped him and they danced to his tunes, Vidal with La Flora, La Justa with Manuel.
Now new couples appeared, among them a fat, flat-nosed virago dressed in ridiculous fashion and accompanied by a fellow with mutton-chop whiskers and the general appearance of a gipsy. La Justa, who was in an insolent, provocative mood, began to laugh at the fat woman. The aggrieved party replied in a depreciative, sarcastic voice, scoring each word:
“These cheap fly-by-nights....”
“The dirty whore!” muttered La Justa, and began to sing this tango in a lowered voice, turning toward the fat woman as she did so:
Eres más fea que un perro de presa,
y á presumida no hay quién te gane.
You’re uglier far than a bull-dog
And for impudence no one can beat you.
“Low-life!” grunted the virago.
The man with the gipsy appearance went over to Manuel and informed him that that lady (La Justa) was insulting his own, and this was something he could not permit. Manuel was well aware that the man was in the right; yet, despite this, he made an insolent reply. Vidal intervened, and after many an explanation on both sides, it was decided that nobody had been insulted and the matter was composed. But La Justa was bent upon trouble and got into a scrape with one of the organ grinders, who was an impudent rascal by very virtue of his calling.
“Shut up, damn it all!” shouted Calatrava at La Justa. “And you, too, close your trap,” he cried to the organ grinder. “For if you don’t, you’re going to feel this stick.”
“Let’s better go inside,” suggested Vidal.
The three couples proceeded to a veranda furnished with tables and rustic chairs; a wooden balustrade ran along the side that overlooked the Manzanares river.
In the middle of the stream were two islets mantled with shining verdure, between which a number of planks served as a bridge from one bank to the other.
Lunch was brought, but La Justa had no appetite, nor would she deign a reply to any questions. Shortly afterward, for no reason whatsoever, she burst into bitter tears, amidst the cruel bantering of La Flora and La Aragonesa. Then she grew calm and was soon as happy and jovial as could be.
They ate a sumptuous meal and left for a moment to dance on the road to the tunes of the barrel organ. Several times, it seemed to Manuel, he caught sight of El Bizco in front of the restaurant.
“Can it be Bizco? What can he be looking for around here?” he asked himself.
Toward nightfall the three couples went in, turned on the light in their room and sent for whisky and coffee. For a long time they chatted. Calatrava related with evident delight a number of horrors out of the war with Cuba. In that conflict he had satisfied his natural instincts of cruelty, slicing negroes, razing mills, spreading fire and destruction in his path.
The three women, especially La Aragonesa, were filled with enthusiasm by his tales. All at once Calatrava lapsed into silence, as if some sad memory had stemmed his garrulousness.
Vidal took up the guitar and sang the Espartero tango with deep feeling. Then he hummed the tune of La Tempranica very charmingly, enunciating the phrases sharply so as to give them fuller savour, and placing his hand over the orifice at times so as to mute the sound. La Flora struck a number of merry poses while Vidal, affecting a gipsy style, sang on:
Ze coman los mengues,
mardita la araña,
que tié en la barriga
pintá una guitarra!
Bailando ze cura
tan jondo doló....
Ay! Malhaya la araña
que a mí me picó.
Then Marcos Calatrava seized the instrument. He was no player like Vidal; he could simply strum a few chords gently, monotonously. Marcos sang a Cuban song,—sad, languid, filled with a communicative longing for some tropical land. It was a lengthy narrative that evoked the negro danzón, the glorious nights of the tropics, the fatherland, the blood of slain soldiers, the flag, which brings tears to one’s eyes, the memory of the rout ... an exotic, yet intimate piece, exceedingly sorrowful,—and something beautifully plebeian and sad.
At the sound of these songs Manuel was inspired with the great, proud, gory idea of the fatherland. He pictured it as a proud woman, with glittering eyes and terrible gesture, standing beside a lion....
Then Calatrava sang, to the monotonous accompaniment of his strumming, a very languorous, doleful song of the insurgents. One of the stanzas, which Calatrava sang in the Cuban dialect, ran as follows:
Pinté a Matansa confusa,
la playa de Viyamá,
y no he podido pintá
el nido de la lechusa;
yo pinté po donde crusa
un beyo ferrocarrí,
un machete y un fusí
y una lancha cañonera,
y no pinté la bandera,
por la que voy a morí.
For some reason which Manuel could not fathom, the incongruous mixture that appeared in the song filled him with a vast sadness....
It was darkling outside. Afar, the saffron-hued soil was gleaming with the dying quivers of the sun, which was hidden by clouds that looked like fiery dragons; a tower here, a tree there, yonder a ramshackle shanty, broke the straight, monotonous line of the horizon. The western sky was a caldron of flames.
Then came darkness; the fields sank into gloom and the sun disappeared.
Over the tiny plank bridge that reached from one bank to the other passed a procession of dark women with bundles of clothes under their arms.
Manuel was overwhelmed by an all-engulfing anguish. From the distance, out of some restaurant, came the far-off droning of a guitar.
Vidal ran out of the veranda.
“I’m coming!” he cried.
A moment ... and a wail of despair rang out. They all jumped to their feet.
“Was that Vidal?” asked La Flora.
“I don’t know,” answered Calatrava, laying the guitar upon the table.
There was a din of voices in the direction of the river. All the patrons of the place dashed over to the balcony that looked out upon the Manzanares. Upon one of the green islets two men were engaged in a hand-to-hand struggle. One of them was Vidal; he could be recognized by his white Cordovan hat. La Flora, making sure it was he, uttered a shriek of terror. In an instant the two men had separated and Vidal fell headlong to the ground, without a sound. The other man placed his knee upon the fallen man’s back and must have plunged his dirk into him some ten or a dozen times. Then he ran into the river, reached the other side and disappeared.
Calatrava and Manuel let themselves down over the veranda balustrade and ran across the plank bridge to the little island.
Vidal was stretched face downward in a pool of blood. The dirk was thrust into his neck, near the nape. Calatrava pulled at the handle, but the weapon must have penetrated into the vertebrae. Then Marcos turned the body half way around and placed his hand over the man’s heart.
“He’s dead,” he pronounced, calmly.
Manuel eyed the corpse with horror. The dying light of evening was reflected in its widely opened eyes. Calatrava replaced the body in the position in which they had found it. They returned to the restaurant.
“Let’s be off at once,” said Marcos.
“And Vidal?” asked La Flora.
“He’s given up the ghost.”
La Flora broke into a wail, but Calatrava seized her violently by the arm and enforced silence.
“Come on ... clear out,” he ordered. With the utmost self-composure he paid the bill, took his guitar and they all left the restaurant.
It was now night; in the distance, Madrid, a pale coppery hue, rose against the soft, melancholy, azure sky which was streaked in the west by long purplish and greenish bands. The stars began to shine and twinkle languidly; the river shot back silvery reflections.
Silently they crossed the Toledo Bridge, each one given up to his own meditations and fears. At the end of the Paseo de los Ocho Hilos they found two carriages; Calatrava, La Aragonesa and La Flora stepped into one, and La Justa and Manuel got into the other.