“Very well. Let’s be going,” said Calatrava.
They left the parlour, and walked down the stairs; Vidal helped La Flora into the carriage that was waiting for them; Manuel entered with La Justa; in another carriage sat Calatrava and the tall, black-eyed woman. They rode toward the Puerta del Sol, and afterward, through the Plaza de Oriente to La Bombilla.
In their carriage, Vidal and Flora were talking away without pause for breath; La Justa and Manuel were silent as the tomb.
The lunch was a sad affair for this couple; when it was finished, Vidal and Calatrava disappeared. La Justa and Manuel remained seated before the table, at a loss for words. Manuel was penetrated by a grievous sadness, the complete annihilation of existence.
Toward nightfall the three couples returned to Madrid and had supper in a room of the Café Habanero.
They all exchanged confidences; each recounted his life and miracles, with the exception of La Justa, who did not open her mouth.
“I entered the business,” said La Flora, “because it was all I had ever seen in my own house. I never knew what a father or mother meant; until I was fifteen I lived with some aunts of mine who were as bad as myself. Only they were a happier sort. The elder of them had a boy, and she’d leave him in the drawer of a bureau, which she had turned into a bed. They hadn’t any clothes, and if one went out the other would have to stay home; they wore the same pair of shoes and the same skirts. Whenever they found themselves without funds they would write to a woman who ran a house, would answer her call, and come back happily with their money. They wanted to place me in a shop, but says I, ‘Nothing doing; if I must go to work, me for the gay life,’ and I went into the business.”
The other woman, she who was tall and beautiful, spoke with a certain bitterness. They called her Petra la Aragonesa.
“As for me,” she began, “I was dishonoured by a young gentleman; I lived in Zaragoza, and went right into the business. As my father lives there, and is a carpenter, and my brothers as well, I thought of coming to Madrid so as to spare them the shame. So a chum of mine and myself planned to make the journey together. We each had about ten duros or more when we reached Madrid. At the station we take a carriage, stop at a café, eat, and then start out doing the streets. At a certain corner, I believe it was on the Plaza de los Mostenses, in a lane that I couldn’t place or name for the life of me, we see a house with the windows all lit up, and hear the sound of a barrel-organ. In we go; two fellows started to dance with us and took us off to a house in the Calle de San Marcos.