Here and there on the books lay a grimy comb, a broken toothbrush reddened with blood from gums, a collar edged with dirt, a rice-powder box full of dents with the puff black and hardened.
After Sandoval had dressed he became transformed in Manuel’s eyes; he took on an air of distinction and elegance. He wrote the letter that was asked of him, whereupon Roberto and Manuel left the house.
“He’s in there cursing away at us,” commented Roberto.
“Why?”
“Because he’s as lazy as a Turk. He’ll forgive anything except being made to work.”
Again they found themselves on the Calle de San Bernardo, and entered a lane that cut across. They paused before a tiny structure that jutted out from the line of the other buildings.
“This is the printing-shop,” said Roberto.
Manuel looked about him. Not a sign, no lettering, no indication whatsoever that this was a printery. Roberto thrust aside a little gate and they walked into a gloomy cellar that received its scanty light through the doorway leading to a dank, dirty patio. A recently whitewashed partition that bore the imprints of fingers and entire hands divided this basement into two compartments. In the first were packed a heap of dustladen objects; the other, the inner one, seemed to have been varnished black; a window gave it light; nearby rose a narrow, slippery stairway that disappeared into the ceiling. In the middle of this second compartment a bearded fellow, dark and thin, was mounted beside a large press, placing the paper, which there appeared as white as snow, over the bed of the machine; another man was receiving it. In a corner the oil motor that supplied the power to the press was toiling painfully on.
Manuel and Roberto climbed the stairway to a long, narrow room which received light through two windows that looked into the patio.
Against the wall of the room, and in the middle as well, stood the printer’s cases, over which hung several electric lights wrapped in newspaper cones that served as shades.