The bakery was entered by a door that opened upon an ample patio, in which was a shed of pierced zinc; this protected from the rain, or tried to protect, at least, the loads of furze branch and the piles of wood that were heaped up there.
From this patio a low door gave access to a long, but narrow and damp, corridor that was everywhere black; only at the extreme end there was a square of light that entered through a high window with a few cracked, filthy panes,—a gloomy illumination.
When the eyes grew accustomed to the surrounding gloom they could make out on the wall some delivery-baskets, bakers' peels, smocks, caps and shoes hanging from nails, and on the ceiling thick, silvery cobwebs covered with dust.
Half way along the corridor were a couple of doors opposite each other; one led to the furnace, the other to the kneading room.
The furnace room was spacious, and the walls filmed with soot, so that the place was as black as a camera obscura; a gas-jet burned in that cavern, illuminating almost nothing. Before the mouth of the furnace, against an iron shed, were placed the shovels; above, on the ceiling, could be made out some large pipes that crossed each other.
The kneading room, less dark than the furnace room, was even more somber. A pallid light shone in through the two windows that looked into the patio, their panes encrusted with flour dust. There were always some ten or twelve men in shirt-sleeves, brandishing their arms desperately over the troughs, and in the back of the room a she-mule slowly turned the kneading machine.
Life in the bakery was disagreeable and hard; the work was enervating and the pay small: seven reales per day. Manuel, unaccustomed to the heat of the furnace, turned dizzy; besides, when he moistened the loaves fresh from the oven he would burn his fingers and it disgusted him to see his hands begrimed with grease and soot.
He was also unlucky enough to have his bed placed in the kneaders' room, beside that of an old workman of the shop who suffered from chronic catarrh, as a result of having breathed so much flour into his lungs; this fellow kept hawking away at all hours.
From sheer disgust Manuel found it impossible to sleep here, so he went to the furnace kitchen and threw himself down upon the floor. He was forever weary; but despite this, he worked automatically.
Then nobody paid any attention to him; the other bakers, a gang of pretty rough Galicians, treated him as if he were a mule; none of them even took the trouble to learn his name, and some addressed him, "Hey, you, Choto!" while others cried "Hello, Barriga!" When they spoke of him they referred to him as "the ragamuffin from Madrid" or simply, "ragamuffin." He answered to whatever names and sobriquets they gave him.