“Quite possible. Very well, gentlemen, see you later.” And Ortiz got up, followed by Manuel. They walked up to the square at the Toledo Bridge, crossed over the Manzanares river and set out on the Andalucía cart-road. A few days before, Manuel had gone there for lunch with Vidal and Calatrava. There were the same gangs of thugs in the doorways of the restaurants; some knew Ortiz and invited him to a glass.
They reached a district bordering the river,—a heap of wretched hovels, without chimneys, without windows, with wattled roofs. Clouds of mosquitos hovered above the grass on the banks.
“This is El Tejar de Mata Pobre,” said Ortiz.
These miserable shacks housed some ragpickers and their families. All the denizens of the poverty-ridden settlement,—a dirty, yellowish crew they made,—were consumed by fevers, whose germs thrived in the black, muddy waters of the river. Nobody there had ever heard of El Bizco. Manuel and Ortiz went on. At a short distance from this spot appeared another, upon a rise in the ground, composed of huts and their poultry-yards.
“The Tinsmiths’ quarter,—that’s what this is called,” informed Ortiz.
It was like a village reared upon dung and straw. Each of the houses, built of all manner of débris and offal, had its yard, delimited by fences made of old, rusty cans flattened out and nailed against posts. Here, urban poverty blended with the poverty of the country; upon the ground of the yards the old baskets and the cardboard hat boxes rubbed against the notched sickle and the rake. Some of the houses gave the impression of relative comfort; these had a look of industriousness about them. Heaps of straw were piled up in their yards and hens scratched the soil.
Ortiz approached a man who was repairing a cart.
“Listen, friend. Do you happen to know a chap named El Bizco? A red, ugly....”
“Are you from the police?” asked the man.
“No. Oh, no, sir.”