CHAPTER IX
Night in the Paseo de la Virgen del Puerto—A Shot Rings Out—Calatrava and Vidal—A Tango by La Bella Pérez
“On nights when it isn’t very cold,” said the soldier, “I sleep in that grove near the Virgen del Puerto. Would you want to go there today?” he added.
“Sure. Come on.”
They were at the Puerta del Sol, so they went down the Calle Mayor. It was a rather misty night; the mist was bluish, luminous, and tempered the wind; the electric globes of the Royal Palace shone in this floating haze with a livid light.
Manuel and the soldier descended the Cuesta de la Vega and entered a little wood that runs between the Campo del Moro and the Calle de Segovia. Here and there an oil lantern shed its pallid glow among the trees. They reached the Paseo de los Melancólicos. Near the Segovia bridge flames were leaping from the furnaces of a grease factory that had been installed in a hut. From the Paseo de los Melancólicos they descended into the hollow, where they took refuge in a shed and prepared to go to sleep. It was cool; several mysterious couples were moving around in the vicinity; Manuel curled up, thrust his hands into his trousers pockets and was soon sound asleep.
The shrill blare of bugles awoke him.
“That’s the Palace Guard,” said the soldier.
The pale glow of dawn flushed the sky; soft and grey quivered the first light of day.... Suddenly, from very near, came the discharge of firearms; Manuel and the soldier jumped to their feet; they rushed out of the shed ready for flight. But they saw nothing.
“A young chap has just committed suicide,” cried a man in a smock as he ran by Manuel and the soldier.
They approached the place whence the sound of the shot had come and beheld a young man, well dressed, lying on the ground, his face covered with blood, a revolver clutched in his right hand. There was nobody in the vicinity. The soldier drew near to the corpse, lifted the youth’s right hand and removed two rings, one of them with a diamond. Then he opened the dead man’s coat, went through the pockets, found no money and fished out a gold watch.
“Let’s be off before anybody shows up,” said Manuel.
“No,” answered the soldier.
He returned to the shed where they had passed the night, dug a hole into the ground with his fingernails, wrapped the rings and the watch in a sheet of paper, buried them, and stamped down the earth with his foot.
“In war times, war methods,” murmured the soldier, after having executed this manœuvre with extraordinary rapidity. “Now,” he added, “lie down and pretend to be fast asleep, in case anybody should happen along.”
In a few moments came a drone of voices from the hollow, and Manuel saw two guards pass by the shed on horseback.
People were hastening toward the scene of the suicide. The civil guards, after a search of the corpse, found a letter addressed to the judge in which the deceased declared that nobody was responsible for his death.
Manuel and the soldier joined the curious onlookers.
When they picked up the body and bore it off, Manuel asked:
“Shall we go back and dig the stuff up?”
“Wait for everybody to disappear.”
The place was soon deserted. The soldier then disinterred the rings and the watch.
“I think this diamond ring is all right,” he said. “How are we to find out?”
“At a jeweller’s.”
“If you were to go to a jeweller’s in those rags of yours, with a diamond ring and a gold watch, it’s very likely that you’d be reported and taken off to prison.”
“Then what are we going to do? Could we pawn the watch?” asked Manuel.
“That’s dangerous, too. Let’s go and hunt up Marcos Calatrava, a friend of mine whom I got to know in Cuba. He’ll get us out of the fix. He lives in a boarding-house on the Calle de Embajadores.”
Thither they went. A woman came to the door and informed them that this Marcos had moved. The soldier made inquiries in a tavern on the ground floor of the house.
“Old Cripple! Sure I know him. I should say!” declared the tavern-keeper. “Do you know where he hangs around nights? In the Majo de las Cubas tavern, over on the Calle Mayor.”
To Manuel and the soldier this was one of the longest days in their lives. They were frightfully hungry and the thought that the sale of these rings and the watch could provide them with all they wanted to eat, and that fear kept them from satisfying this imperative need, drove them to distraction. They dragged themselves wearily through the streets, returning from time to time to inquire whether the cripple had yet arrived.
Toward evening they caught sight of him. The soldier walked over to him, saluted, and the three passed to the back of the tavern to talk things over in a corner.
“I’m expecting my secretary any moment,” said Marcos, “and he’ll arrange matters. In the meantime, order supper yourselves.”
“You do the ordering,” said the soldier to Manuel.
Manuel did so, and to add to the delay, the waiter said that the supper would be some time in coming.
While the soldier conversed with Calatrava, Manuel observed the latter closely.
Calatrava was a rare specimen, appearing at first sight almost ludicrous; he had a wooden leg, a very narrow face, as dry and black as a smoked fish; two or three scars graced his forehead; his moustaches were stiff and his hair kinky. He wore a bright-coloured suit with very wide trousers and reeled along on his natural leg as well as on his artificial; his jacket was short, somewhat darker than his trousers; his cravat was of red and his straw hat tiny.
In a beery voice Marcos ordered a few glasses. They drank them down, and soon a dandy came in, wearing yellow shoes, a derby and a silk handkerchief around his neck.
At sight of him, Manuel cried out:
“Vidal! Is that you?”
“Yes, my boy. What are you doing here?”
“Do you know this young man?” asked Calatrava of Vidal.
“Yes. He’s a cousin of mine.”
Marcos explained to Vidal what the soldier wished.
“This very instant,” answered Vidal. “It won’t take me ten minutes.”
And indeed, within a short time he returned with two pawn-tickets and several notes. The soldier took them and divided them; Manuel’s share was five duros.
“Listen to me,” said Calatrava to Vidal. “You and your cousin stay here and have supper; you must have plenty to talk about. We’ll go off to somewhere else, for we’ve a few things to discuss ourselves. Take your cousin to your house for the night.”
They left, and Manuel and Vidal remained alone.
“Have you had supper?” asked Vidal.
“No. But I’ve already ordered it. And your parents?”
“They must be all right.”
“Don’t you see them?”
“No.”
“And El Bizco?”
Vidal turned ashen white.
“Don’t mention El Bizco to me,” he said.
“Why?”
“No, no. I’m horribly afraid of him. Don’t you know what happened?”
“What?”
“Dolores La Escandalosa was killed.”
“I didn’t know a thing.”
“Yes. The old woman was slain in a house called The Confessional, over toward Aravaca. And do you know who murdered her?”
“El Bizco?”
“Yes. I’m sure of that. El Bizco used to go to The Confessional to meet a gang of tramps like himself.”
“That’s true. He told me so.”
“Have you spoken to him?”
“Yes. But that was a long time ago.”
“Well, the newspapers that reported the crime say that the murderer must have been of extraordinary strength, and that the woman must have gone there as if to a rendezvous. It was El Bizco, I’m certain.”
“And haven’t they caught him?”
“No.”
Vidal was immersed in thought; it could be seen that he was making every effort to control himself. The waiter brought supper. Manuel attacked the meal voraciously.
“Boy, what a small appetite you have!” commented Vidal smiling, his calm having returned.
“Lord! I was as hungry....”
“Let’s go out and have a coffee now.”
Vidal paid the bill, they left the tavern and went into the Café de Lisboa.
While they were sipping their coffee, Manuel scrutinized Vidal. The youth’s hair was very lustrous; it was parted in the middle and curly tufts fell over his ears. His movements betrayed a vast aplomb; his smile was that of a self-consciously handsome man; his neck was round, without any salient muscles. He spoke with a sympathetic ring in his voice, always smiling; but his shrewd, treacherous eyes betrayed the falsity of his speech; their expression did not harmonize with the affability of his affectionate word and his ingratiating smile. One read in them only distrust and caution.
“And you,—what are you doing?” asked Manuel, after having examined him carefully.
“Pse!... I manage to exist....”
“But on what? How?”
“There are certain deals, my boy.... Then, women....”
“But do you work?”
“That depends upon what you call work.”
“Man! I mean, do you go to a shop....”
“No.”
“Have you a sweetheart?”
“At present I have only three.”
“Christ! What luck! Where do you find them?”
“Around here. In the theatres, at dances.... I’m secretary of the Bisturi, and member of the Paloma Azul and the Billete.”
“And through them you manage to get acquainted with plenty of women?”
“Of course! And then, as far as women are concerned, it’s all a matter of gab.... Sometimes you’ve got to show them that you’re sore, and let ’em feel your fist....”
“You sure live the life!... If I could only do the same!”
“Why, it’s as easy as pie!... I’ve got a peach of a kid now,—the prettiest skirt in the world and just crazy over me. She gave me this watch chain.... But the best of all is that there’s a certain party hanging around me, pestering me, and I’ll bet you could not guess who.”
“How could I know? Some marchioness, maybe.”
“No. A marquis.”
“What for?”
“Nothing. He’s courting me.”
Manuel stared in astonishment at Vidal, who smiled mysteriously.
“Are you tired?” asked Vidal.
“No.”
“Then let’s go to the Romea.”
“What have they got over there?”
“Dancing and pretty women.”
“Sure. Let’s go.”
They left the Café and went up the Calle de Carretas.
Vidal bought two orchestra chairs. It was Sunday.
The air inside the theatre was dense, hot, saturated with smoke and with the respiration of hundreds of persons who during the entire afternoon and evening had piled into the place. There was a full house. The piece was as stupid as could be, infested with silly, coarse jests delivered in the most insipid manner imaginable, amidst the interruptions and the shouts of the public. The curtain descended and immediately there appeared a girl who sang, in a shrill voice that went horribly off key, a pornographic ditty without an atom of wit. Then out came a painted, ugly old hulk of a Frenchwoman in a huge hat. She advanced close to the footlights and intoned an almost endless ballad of which Manuel understood not half a word, with the refrain:
Pauvre petit chat, petit chat,
Poor little kitty, little kitty.
Then she executed a few turns, kicking one of her legs till it touched her hat, and disappeared. The curtain again descended; a moment later it rose, revealing La Bella Pérez, who was greeted with a round salvo of applause. She sang a popular song very badly, smiling through several errors, and retreating to the wings after the number. The piano of the orchestra then spiritedly attacked a tango, and La Bella Pérez issued from the wings in a ballet skirt, a toreador’s cape around her shoulders, a Cordovan hat thrust down over her eyes, and a cigar between her lips. After the piano had concluded these introductory measures, she threw the cigar into the pit for the orchestra patrons to snatch at, removed her cape, and remained with her skirt tightly gathered back by her hands, thus revealing in sharp outline her stomach and her thighs. At the very first notes of the tango a religious hush fell upon the assemblage; a breath of voluptuousness stirred through the auditorium. Every face was aglow, every glance fixed glitteringly upon the stage. And the belle went through her dance with a frowning face and teeth tightly clenched, stamping her heels, causing her powerful hips to stand out when she would fold her skirts about her like a victorious banner. From this beautiful feminine body issued a stream of sex that maddened every spectator. At the end of the dance she placed the hat upon her stomach and gave her hips a wiggle that brought a roar of lust from the entire audience.
“That’s the girlie!”
“There’s what you call wiggling!”
“What a shape!”
The dance came to an end upon a volley of applause.
“Tango! Tango!” shrieked the spectators as if possessed.
Manuel, his eyes moist with enthusiasm, was shouting and clapping his hands wildly.
“Hurrah for lust!” bellowed a youth at Manuel’s side.
La Bella Pérez repeated the tango. Behind Manuel and Vidal was a girl rocking a child in her arms; the tot’s face was covered with scabs. The girl, pointing to La Bella Pérez, crooned to the child:
“See. See mamma.”
“Is she the mother of this little girl?” asked Manuel.
“Yes,” answered the nurse.
Without knowing why, Manuel suddenly lost all enthusiasm for the dance, and even imagined that behind the coat of paint and the rice powder that covered the dancer’s face, lay a mass of rash and pimples.
Manuel and his cousin left the theatre. Vidal boarded at a house on the Calle del Olmo.
They walked off through the Calle de Atocha and at the corner of the Calle de la Magdalena they encountered La Chata and La Rabanitos, who recognized them and called to them.
The two girls were waiting for La Engracia, who had gone off with a man. In the meantime they were quarreling. La Rabanitos was swearing the most solemn oaths that she was no more than sixteen years old; La Chata asserted that she was going on eighteen.
“Why, I heard your own mother say so!” she shouted.
“But why should my mother say any such thing? You sow!” retorted La Rabanitos.
“But she did say so, you cheap bitch!”
“When did I go into the business? Three years ago. And how old was I then? Thirteen.”
“Bah! You were on the streets ten years ago,” interrupted Vidal.
The girl whirled about like a snake, eyed Vidal from top to bottom and then, in a rasping voice, snapped:
“As for you, you’re of the sort that takes a front seat and lets your friends go hang.”
The hearers greeted this circumlocution with applause, for it revealed La Rabanitos’s imaginative qualities. Thus calmed, she drew from her apron pocket her wrinkled, grimy certificate, and passed it around.
La Engracia came upon them while they were busied with the task of deciphering the certificate.
“What do you say? You treat,” suggested Vidal to her. “Have you got any money?”
“Money! Yes! The housekeepers ask more and more. I don’t know where they’ll stop at.”
“Come on. If only for a little nip.”
“Very well. Come along.”
The five of them trooped into a bun shop.
“This gentleman I was with,” said La Engracia, “is a painter, and he told me that he’d give me five pesetas per hour for posing as a model in the nude.”
La Rabanitos was scandalized at the news.
“What good are you going to be as a nude model when you haven’t any tits?” she shrilled, in her high voice.
“Naw! I suppose you’ve got them!”
“When it comes to that, I may not have any special reason for getting a swelled head,” sneered La Rabanitos. “But I’ve got a better figure than you.”
“Hell you have!” retorted the other, and affecting to pay no attention, she turned to chat with Vidal. La Rabanitos then took possession of Manuel and recounted her troubles with all the seriousness of an old woman.
“Boy, I’m all in,” she confessed. “Naturally weak.... And then men are so brutal.... When they find a girl like that, they do as they please, of course, and everybody steps all over you.”
Manuel heard what La Rabanitos was saying; but exhaustion and drowsiness precluded him from understanding. Two other girls entered the shop with a couple of vagabonds; one of the young men had a pudgy face, clouded eyes and an expression compounded of ferocity and cynicism. All four were drunk. The women began to insult everybody in the place.
“Who are those women?” asked Manuel.
“A couple of scandalous dames.”
“See here, let’s be going,” suggested Vidal to his cousin, with the prudence that characterized him.
They left the bun shop; the girls went off toward the heart of the city while Manuel and Vidal walked through the Calle de Ave María as far as the Calle del Olmo. Vidal opened the gate to his house.
“Here’s the place,” he said to Manuel.
They climbed to the top floor. There Vidal struck a match, thrust his hand underneath the door, drew forth a key and opened. They crossed a passageway, and Vidal said to Manuel:
“This is your room. See you tomorrow.”
Manuel took off his rags, and the bed seemed so soft to him that despite his weariness it was a long time before he fell asleep.