CHAPTER VIII
On The Track of El Bizco—The Outskirts—The Ideal of Jesús
After spending the day at work in the printing shop, Manuel reported at nine in the night at Ortiz’s home.
“That’s the way I like it,” said the chief to him. “With military punctuality.”
Ortiz armed himself with a revolver, which he placed in his belt; a stick, which he secured to his wrist with a thong; a rope. To Manuel he gave a cudgel, and they left together.
“Let’s make a round of these chop-houses,” said the guard to Manuel. “And you keep your eye peeled for El Bizco.”
As they walked up the Calle de Arganzuela they struck up a conversation.
Ortiz was a member of the police who was genuinely enamoured of his profession. His father had belonged to the force before him, and the instinct of pursuit flowed as strong in their veins as in the veins of a hunter dog.
According to the tale he told, Ortiz had been a carbineer on the Málaga coast, eternally at war with the smugglers, until he came to Madrid and joined the police department.
“I’ve done more than any one else of them,” he declared, “but they don’t promote me because I haven’t any pull. It was the same way with my father. He caught more thieves than the whole police department of Madrid put together, but nothing doing. He never advanced beyond the grade of captain. Then they transferred him to the sewer district and he saw to every squabble they had down there.... Yet he never carried a revolver or a stick, like me. Only his blunderbuss. He was a soldier, he was.”
They happened to be passing a tavern, so they went in, had a glass of wine, and in the meantime Manuel scrutinized the men who were gathered about the tables.
“There’s nobody here that you’re looking for,” said the tavern-keeper to the policeman.
“I see that there isn’t, Tío Pepe,” answered Ortiz, extracting some coins from his pocket to pay for the drinks.
“My treat,” said the man behind the counter.
“Thanks. Good-bye!”
They left the tavern and reached the Plaza de la Cebada.
“Let’s go over to the Café de Naranjeros,” suggested the captain. “Though it’s not likely that our bird is flying thereabouts. Still, often where you least expect....”
They entered the café; there were only a few men chatting with the singers. From the doorway Ortiz shouted in:
“Hey, Tripulante, can I see you for a second?”
A young man who looked as if he came from good family arose and came over to Ortiz.
“Do you know a thug called El Bizco?”
“Yes, I believe I do.”
“Does he hang around this district?”
“No, not hereabouts.”
“Really?”
“He really doesn’t. He must be down below. You can take my word for that.”
“I do, man. Why not? Listen, Tripulante,” added Ortiz, seizing the youth by the arm. “Watch out, eh? You’ll slip, if you don’t.”
Tripulante burst into laughter, and placing the index finger of his right hand upon his lower eyelash, he whispered:
“On the track!... And mum’s the word, comrade!”
“Very well. Keep your eyes open just the same, in case he shows up. Remember we know you.”
“Leave that to me, señor Ortiz,” replied the youth. “I’ll keep a sharp watch.”
The officer and Manuel left the café.
“He’s a slippery article, as clever as any crook. Let’s go further down. Perhaps El Tripulante is right.”
They reached the Ronda de Toledo. The night was beautiful, atwinkle with stars. Afar, some bonfires lighted the sky. Out of the chimney of the Gas House belched a huge black swirl of smoke, like the powerful exhalation of some monster. They sauntered along the Calle del Gas, which, as if to provide a contrast to its name, was illuminated by oil-lamps; skirting the Casa Blanca they descended to Las Injurias. They crossed a narrow street and fairly stumbled against the night watchman.
Ortiz told him what mission brought them there; he gave him a description of El Bizco. The sereno, however, informed them that nobody answering to that description was to be found in that vicinity.
“We can make inquiries, if you gentlemen wish.”
The three penetrated a narrow passageway that led to a mud-strewn patio.
There was a light in the window of one of the houses, and they drew near to reconnoitre. By the illumination of a candle stub that was placed upon a kitchen shelf they made out a tattered old woman squatting on the floor. At her side, blanketed with rags, slept two boys and a little girl.
They left the patio and walked down an alley.
“There’s a family here that I don’t know,” said the sereno, and he knocked at the door with the tip of his pike. There was a delay in opening.
“Who is it?” asked a woman’s voice from within.
“The law,” answered Ortiz.
The door was opened by a woman in tatters, with nothing underneath. The watchman walked straight in, followed by Manuel and Ortiz; the place was filled with an atrocious, overpowering stench. Upon a wretched bed improvised out of shreds and paper refuse lay a blind woman. The sereno thrust his pike under the bed.
“You can see for yourselves. He isn’t here.”
Ortiz and Manuel left the Las Injurias district.
“El Bizco lived over in Las Cambroneras for a time,” suggested Manuel.
“Then there isn’t much use in looking for him there,” replied Ortiz. “But no matter. Heave, ho, my lads! Let’s try it, anyway.”
They strolled along the Paseo de Yeserías. On both sides of the Toledo Bridge gleamed the gas-lamps; here and there a narrow ribbon of the river sent back reflections from its dark waters. From the direction of Madrid, out of the Gas House chimneys issued red flames like dragons of fire. From the distance came the whistle of a locomotive; along the banks of the Canal the silhouettes of the trees writhed upward into the gloom of the night.
They found the sereno of Las Cambroneras and asked after El Bizco.
“I’ll talk tomorrow with Paco el Cañí and find out. Where shall we meet tomorrow?”
“In La Blasa’s tavern.”
“Fine. I’ll be there at three.”
They crossed the bridge once more and went into Casa Blanca.
“We’ll see the administrator,” said Ortiz. They entered a causeway; to one side, they knocked at a place the half-opened door of which showed a chink of light. A man in shirt-sleeves came out.
“Who is it?” he shouted.
Ortiz gave his credentials.
“No such chap is around here,” answered the caretaker. “I’m positive as to that; I have every one of my tenants listed in this notebook, and I know them.”
Leaving Casa Blanca, Ortiz and Manuel made for Las Peñuelas, where Ortiz had a long conversation with the sereno. Then they visited a number of the taverns in the neighbourhood; the places were filled with customers, though the doors were closed.
As they went through the Calle del Ferrocarril, the sereno pointed out the spot where they had discovered the quartered body of the woman in a sack. Ortiz and the watchman discussed this and other crimes that had been committed in the vicinity, then they separated.
“That watchman is a corker,” said Ortiz. “He’s cudgelled every bully and thug out of Las Peñuelas.”
It was already late when they had left the taverns, and Ortiz thought that they might postpone their hunt to the next day. He remained in the Campillo del Mundo Nuevo and Manuel, tramping across half of Madrid, returned to his house.
Early the next morning he went to work at the printery, but when he told them that he could not come that afternoon, he was discharged.
Manuel went to La Fea’s for a bite.
“They’ve fired me from the printing shop,” he announced, upon entering.
“You must have come in late,” snapped La Salvadora.
“No. Ortiz told me yesterday that I’d have to go along with him this afternoon; I told them so at the printery and they fired me on the spot.”
La Salvadora smiled with sarcastic incredulousness, and Manuel felt his cheeks turning red.
“You needn’t believe it if you don’t want to, but that’s the truth.”
“I haven’t said a word, have I, man?” retorted La Salvadora, mockingly.
“I know you didn’t, but you were laughing at me.”
Manuel left La Fea’s in a huff, sought out Ortiz, and together they made their way to Las Injurias.
It was a mild afternoon and the sun was glorious. They took chairs just outside La Blasa’s tavern. In a lane opposite to them the men were sprawling in the doorways of their houses; the women, with their ragged skirts gathered about them, were skipping from one side to the other, their feet splashing in the stinking sewage that ran like a black stream through the middle of the street. Here and there a woman had a cigarette in her mouth. Big grey rats darted about over the mud, pursued by a number of gamins with sticks and stones.
Ortiz exchanged a few words with the proprietress of the resort and shortly afterward the sereno of the Cambroneras district appeared. He saluted Ortiz, they drained a few glasses, and then the sereno said:
“I had a talk with Paco el Cañí. He knows El Bizco. He says the fellow’s not hereabouts. He believes he must be in La Manigua, or California, or some place of the sort.”
“Quite possible. Very well, gentlemen, see you later.” And Ortiz got up, followed by Manuel. They walked up to the square at the Toledo Bridge, crossed over the Manzanares river and set out on the Andalucía cart-road. A few days before, Manuel had gone there for lunch with Vidal and Calatrava. There were the same gangs of thugs in the doorways of the restaurants; some knew Ortiz and invited him to a glass.
They reached a district bordering the river,—a heap of wretched hovels, without chimneys, without windows, with wattled roofs. Clouds of mosquitos hovered above the grass on the banks.
“This is El Tejar de Mata Pobre,” said Ortiz.
These miserable shacks housed some ragpickers and their families. All the denizens of the poverty-ridden settlement,—a dirty, yellowish crew they made,—were consumed by fevers, whose germs thrived in the black, muddy waters of the river. Nobody there had ever heard of El Bizco. Manuel and Ortiz went on. At a short distance from this spot appeared another, upon a rise in the ground, composed of huts and their poultry-yards.
“The Tinsmiths’ quarter,—that’s what this is called,” informed Ortiz.
It was like a village reared upon dung and straw. Each of the houses, built of all manner of débris and offal, had its yard, delimited by fences made of old, rusty cans flattened out and nailed against posts. Here, urban poverty blended with the poverty of the country; upon the ground of the yards the old baskets and the cardboard hat boxes rubbed against the notched sickle and the rake. Some of the houses gave the impression of relative comfort; these had a look of industriousness about them. Heaps of straw were piled up in their yards and hens scratched the soil.
Ortiz approached a man who was repairing a cart.
“Listen, friend. Do you happen to know a chap named El Bizco? A red, ugly....”
“Are you from the police?” asked the man.
“No. Oh, no, sir.”
“Well, you look as if you were. But that’s your affair. I don’t know this Bizco,” and the man turned his back upon them.
“We’ve got to have a care around here,” whispered Ortiz. “If they ever find out what we’ve come for, we’ll get a drubbing that we’ll remember.”
They left the Tinsmiths’ quarter, crossed the river by a bridge over which the railroad ran, and continued along the banks of the Manzanares.
On the meadows by the stream, which were dazzling with verdure, the cows were at pasture. Some ragged figures were walking slowly, cautiously along, hunting crickets.
Manuel and Ortiz reached some country houses called La China; the officer made inquiries of a gardener. The man did not know El Bizco.
Leaving this place, they sat down upon the grass to rest. It was growing dark; Madrid, a reddish yellow, with its spires and domes, aglow with the last quivering rays of the setting sun, rose out of the distance. The glass panes of the Observatory flashed flame. A huge ball of copper, on the top of some edifice, beamed like a sun over the grimy roofs; here and there a star was already shining in the Prussian blue arch of heaven; the Guadarrama range, dark violet in the dusk, broke the distant horizon with its whitish peaks.
Ortiz and Manuel hastened back to the city. By the time they had reached the Paseo de Embajadores, it was night; they had a glass at the Manigua restaurant and kept their eyes open in the meantime.
“Have supper with me,” suggested Ortiz. “Tonight we’ll resume the hunt. We’ve got to ransack all Madrid.”
Manuel had supper with the officer and his family in the house at El Campillo del Mundo Nuevo. Thereupon they visited nearly every tavern on the Calle del Mesón de Paredes and the Calle de Embajadores, afterward going into the little café on the Calle de la Esgrima. The whole place was thronged with vagabonds; as the officer and Manuel took their seats, the news was quickly spread from one customer to the other. A boy who sat at a nearby table showing a ring and a comb made haste to conceal them as soon as he caught sight of Ortiz. The officer noticed this move and called to the boy.
“What do you want?” asked the youngster, suspiciously.
“I want to ask you something.”
“Speak up, then.”
“Do you know a chap called El Bizco?”
“No, sir.”
Ortiz then asked the youth a number of other questions; he must have been convinced that the boy did not know El Bizco, for he muttered:
“Nobody knows where he is.”
They went into one tavern after the other. As they were walking through the Calle del Amparo, Ortiz made up his mind to search a lodging house that had a red lantern hanging from one of its balconies.
They went in and climbed a plank stairway with wobbly steps, lit by a lantern embedded in a wall. On the first floor were rooms for assignations; on the second was the public dormitory. Ortiz pulled the bell wire and a repulsive hag answered the summons with a candle in her hand, a white kerchief on her head and in battered shoes; this was the woman in charge.
“We belong to the police and we want to look this place over. With your kind permission, we’ll step in.”
The woman shrugged her shoulders and made way for them to enter.
They passed through a short corridor which ended in a long, narrow room, with low wooden platforms on either side and two rows of beds. Over the centre hung an oil-lamp that hardly illuminated the spacious hall. The floor, which was of brick, twisted to one side.
Ortiz asked for the candle and went along the row of beds, shedding its light upon each successive face.
Some were snoring outrageously; others, still awake, permitted themselves to be peered at. The bedsheets revealed bare shoulders, herculean chests, the sunken thorax of sickly folk....
“Is there anybody downstairs?” asked Ortiz of the matron.
“Not on the first floor. There must be somebody in the rooms off the vestibule.”
They went down to the entrance. A door led to a damp cellar. In a corner lay a beggar asleep in his shreds and patches.
On the day following this expedition, Manuel, returning in the afternoon to La Fea’s, found Jesús sitting down and chatting with his sister and La Salvadora.
At sight of him Manuel was overcome by a certain emotion. The lad was still very weak and pale. The two youths examined each other closely, and chatted about the life they had led since their last meeting. Then they passed to present affairs, and Manuel explained his situation and the duties that bound him to Ortiz.
“Yes, I know. They’ve told me all about it already,” said Jesús. “But I refused to believe it. So they let you go free on condition that you’d help capture El Bizco? And you agreed?”
“Yes. If I hadn’t they’d have kept me locked up. What was I to do?”
“Refuse.”
“And rot in prison?”
“And rot in prison, rather than play a friend such a scurvy trick.”
“El Bizco is no friend of mine.”
“But he was, from what you say....”
“Friend? No....”
“Then a comrade in your loafing days.”
“Yes.”
“So you’ve become a member of the police?”
“Man!... Besides, the victim was my cousin, remember.”
“A fine man you are for anybody to rely on!” added the compositor sarcastically.
Manuel was silent. He believed that he had done ill to purchase his freedom at such a price. El Bizco was a bandit; but the fellow had never done him any harm. That was true.
“The worst of it is, I can’t turn back,” said Manuel. “Nor can I escape, for that Ortiz would come here and it would be just like him to take off your sister and La Salvadora to prison.”
“Why?”
“Because they told him they’d be responsible for me.”
“Bah, that’s easy to get around! They tell him that you were here; that they warned you not to forget to do the same as on other days, and that that’s all they know. That’s all.”
“What do you think of the plan?” asked Manuel of La Fea, vacillating.
“Do as you please. I think Jesús must know what he’s talking about, and I don’t think they can do anything to us.”
“There’s another thing,” added Manuel. “I can’t live for a very long time in hiding. I’ll have to work so as to get food, and they’ll catch me.”
“I’ll take you to a printing shop I know,” answered Jesús.
“But they might suspect. No, no.”
“Then you prefer to be an informer?”
“There’s one thing I’m going to do right away: I’m going this very moment to see somebody who can fix the whole business.”
“Wait a minute.”
“No, no. Let me alone.”
Manuel left with the resolution to speak with the Cripple and the Master. He hurried over to the Círculo. He was admitted, ran to the first flight, and said to the man who was stationed at the door to the gambling room:
“The Master? Is he in his office?”
“No, Don Marcos is there.”
Manuel knocked at the door and walked in. Calatrava was at a desk together with an employee, counting white and red chips. At sight of Manuel, Marcos turned an icy stare upon him.
“What have you come here for? Squealer!” he cried. “You’re not wanted here.”
“I know that.”
“You’re fired. And you needn’t expect any back pay, either.”
“No. I don’t.”
“Then what do you want?”
“I’ll tell you. El Garro, your police friend, let me go free on condition that I’d help in the capture of the man who killed Vidal, and they keep me going and coming at all hours of the day and night. I’m sick and tired of it all, and I don’t want to become a stool-pigeon.”
“Well, what has all this got to do with me?”
“What’s more, if I don’t show up at the house of the captain under whose order El Garro placed me, they’ll arrest me and take me off to jail.”
“Good enough. You’ll learn there not to wag your tongue so freely.”
“Not a bit of it. What I’ll do there is tell them just how folks are cheated in this establishment....”
“You’re crazy. You’re sucking around for a couple of drubbings.”
“No. I want you to tell El Garro that I don’t care to be chasing El Bizco around. What’s more, I want you to tell him to quit hounding me. Now you know just what to do.”
“What I’m going to do is give you a couple of kicks this very minute, you informer!”
“We’ll see about that.”
The Cripple lurched over to Manuel with his closed fist and aimed a blow at him; but Manuel was agile enough to seize him by the arm, shove him backwards, make him lose his balance and send him falling across the table, which was overturned with a formidable crash. Calatrava regained his feet; he was in a fury and made for Manuel once more; but the noise had brought some men, who separated them. It was at this juncture that the Master appeared in the doorway of the office.
“What’s the trouble?” he asked, eyeing Calatrava and Manuel severely. “You fellows get out of here,” he ordered, turning to the spectators.
The three were left alone, and Manuel explained the reason of the squabble.
The Master, after hearing the story, turned to Calatrava.
“Is all this he’s been telling you true?”
“Yes. But he came here with demands and threats....”
“Very well. We won’t discuss that.” Then addressing himself to Manuel. “So you don’t want to help the police? You’re right. You may go. I’ll tell El Garro not to bother you.”
An hour later, Manuel and Jesús had left the house for a walk. It was a stifling hot night; they went towards the Ronda.
They chatted. Manuel was filled with a gnawing irritation against the whole world,—a hatred that up to then had lain dormant was now awaking in his soul against society, against mankind....
“Let me tell you,” he concluded, “and I mean it. I wish it would rain dynamite for a whole week and that then the Eternal Father himself would fall from heaven, a heap of ashes.”
In his fury he invoked every destructive power, that this miserable society of ours might be reduced to a mound of smouldering ruins.
Jesús listened attentively to his diatribe.
“You’re an anarchist,” he said.
“I?”
“Yes. I’m one, too.”
“You?”
“Yes.”
“Since when?”
“Ever since I’ve seen the infamies committed in the world; ever since I’ve seen how coldly a piece of humanity is given over to death; ever since I’ve seen how men die friendless on the streets and in the hospital,” answered Jesús with a certain solemnity.
Manuel was silent. Mutely the two friends sauntered along the Ronda de Segovia, selecting a bench in the gardens of La Virgen del Puerto.
The heavens over them were studded with stars; the milky way lay white across the immense blue vault. The geometric figure of the Great Bear shone high up in the sky. Arcturus and Vega glowed softly in that ocean of planets.
Far off, the dark fields, furrowed by lines of lights, looked like the water of a harbour; the rows of lights seemed like the piers of a wharf.
The damp, warm air was saturated with the scents of wild plants—odours set free by the heat.
“How many stars!” exclaimed Manuel. “What can they be?”
“They’re worlds and worlds without end.”
“I don’t know why it soothes me so to see the sky so beautiful. Listen, Jesús. Do you believe that there are people in those worlds yonder?” asked Manuel.
“Perhaps. Why not?”
“And prisons, too, judges, gambling houses and police?... Hey? Do you?”
Jesús did not answer the question. Then, in a calm voice he spoke of a vision of an idyllic humanity,—a sweet, pious, noble and childishly simple vision.
In this dream, Man, guided by a new idea, attained to a superior state.
No more hatred, no more rancour. No more judges, nor policemen, nor soldiers, nor authority, nor fatherland. In the vast prairies of the world, free men laboured in the sunlight. The law of love has supplanted the law of duty, and the horizon of humanity becomes ever wider, ever a softer blue....
And Jesús continued speaking of a vague ideal of love and justice, of industry and piety. These words of his, chaotic, incoherent as they were, fell like a solacing balm upon Manuel’s lacerated heart.... Then the two lapsed into a long silence, immersed in their own thoughts, contemplating the night.
The heavens were aglow with an august beatitude, and the vague sensation of the immensity of space, the infinitude of these imponderable worlds, spread a delicious tranquillity over their hearts....
THE END