"To the Emergency Hospital."
"I'll go along with you."
The two boys were joined by a machine shop apprentice who lived in the
Corrala.
"I saw him kill himself," said the apprentice. "We were all running after him, hollering, 'Catch him! Stop him!' when two guards appeared on Amparo Street, drew their swords and blocked his way. Then Leandro bounded back, made his way through the people and landed here again; he was going to escape through the Paseo de las Acacias when he stumbled against La Muerte, who began to call him names. Leandro stopped, looked in every direction; nobody dared to get near him; his eyes were blazing. Suddenly he jabbed the knife into his left side I don't know how many times. When one of the guards seized him by the arm he collapsed like an empty sack."
The commentary of Aristón and the apprentice proved endless; the boys arrived at the Emergency Hospital and were told that the corpses, those of Milagros and Leandro, had been taken to the Morgue. The three gamins walked down to the Canal, to the little house near the river's edge, which Manuel and the urchins of his gang had so often visited, trying to peep into the windows. A knot of people had gathered about the door.
"Let's have a look," said Aristón.
There was a window, wide open, and they peered in. Stretched upon a marble slab lay Leandro; his face was the color of wax, and his features bore an expression of proud defiance. At his side Señora Leandro stood wailing and vociferating; Señor Ignacio, with his son's hand clasped in his own, was weeping silently. At another table a group surrounded Milagros' corpse. The man in charge of the morgue ordered them all out. As the proofreader and Señor Ignacio met at the entrance they exchanged looks and then averted their glance; the two mothers, on the other hand, glared at each other in terrible hatred.
Señor Ignacio arranged that they should not sleep at the Corralón but in Aguila Street. In that place, at the home of Señora Jacoba, there was a horrible confusion of weeping and cursing. The three women blamed Milagros for everything; she was a common strumpet, an evil woman, a selfish, wretched ingrate.
One of the neighbours of the Corrala indicated a strange detail: when the public doctor came to examine Milagros and remove her corset so that he might determine the wound, he found a tiny medallion containing a portrait of Leandro.
"Whose picture is this?" he is reported to have asked.