The gas lights shone at intervals in the dusty air; lines of carts rumbled slowly by, and across the road, in little groups, tramped the workmen from the neighbouring factories.
And always, coming and going, the conversation between Manuel and
Vidal would turn upon the same topics: women and money.
Neither had a romantic notion, or anything like it, of women. To Manuel, a woman was a magnificent animal with firm flesh and swelling breast.
Vidal did not share this sexual enthusiasm; he experienced, with all women, a confused feeling of scorn, curiosity and preoccupation.
As far as concerned money, they were both agreed that it was the choicest, most admirable of all things; they spoke of money—especially Vidal—with a fierce enthusiasm. To him, the thought that there might be anything—good or evil—that could not be obtained with hard cash, was the climax of absurdity. Manuel would like to have money to travel all over the world and see cities and more cities and sail in vessels. Vidal's dream was to live a life of ease in Madrid.
After two or three months in the Corralón, Manuel had become so accustomed to the work and the life there that he wondered how he could do anything else. Those wretched quarters no longer produced upon him the impression of dark, sinister sadness that they cause in one unaccustomed to live in them; on the contrary, they seemed to him filled with attractions. He knew almost everybody in the district. Vidal and he would escape from the house on any pretext at all, and on Sundays they would meet Bizco at the Casa del Cabrero and go off into the environs: to Las Injurias, Las Cambroneras, the restaurants of Alarcón, the Campamento, and the inns on the Andalucía road, where they would consort with thieves and rogues and play with them at cané and rayuela.
Manuel did not care for Bizco's company; Bizco sought only to hobnob with thieves. He was forever taking Manuel and Vidal to haunts frequented by bandits and low types, but since Vidal seemed to think it all right, Manuel never objected.
Vidal was the link between Manuel and Bizco, Bizco hated Manuel, who in turn, not only felt enmity and repugnance for Bizco, but showed this repulsion plainly. Bizco was a brute,—an animal deserving of extermination. As lascivious as a monkey, he had violated several of the little girls of the Casa del Cabrero, beating them into submission; he used to rob his father, a poverty-stricken cane-weaver, so that he might have money enough to visit some low brothel of Las Penuelas or on Chopa Street, where he found rouged dowagers with cigarette-stubs in their lips, who looked like princesses to him. His narrow skull, his powerful jaw, his blubber-lip, his stupid glance, lent him a look of repellant brutality and animality.
A primitive man, he kept his dagger—bought in El Rastro—sharp, guarding it as a sacred object. If he ever happened across a cat or dog, he would enjoy torturing it to death with oft-repeated stabs. His speech was obscene, abounding in barbarities and blasphemies.
Whether anybody induced Bizco to tattoo his arms, or the idea was original with him, cannot be said; probably the tattooing he had seen on one of the bandits that he ran after had suggested a similar adornment for himself. Vidal imitated him, and for a time the pair gave themselves up enthusiastically to self-tattooing. They pricked their skins with a pin until a little blood came, then moistened the wounds with ink.