The officials were getting bad-tempered with that snarling, loud-talking mob of harpies who wore them out every morning with their quarrelsomeness and unreasonable haggling. Every one of them shouted at you as if you had no ears, reënforcing every other word with an interjection from that inexhaustible store of epithet native to the shores of the Mediterranean. Rivals, on meeting here again after a set-to on the beach the day before, would revive the passions of the unsettled argument, annotating insults with obscene gestures, emphasizing accusations with cadenced slapping of hands on thighs, or lifting clenched fists above their heads as if they were about to strike. And then, when you would think of calling the police, if not the undertaker, laughter, suddenly everywhere, as though the hens in a big hen coop had started cackling all at once! Some one of the combatants had scored with an unusually cutting or scurrilous phrase!
The bakers were slow in getting off the scales; so gibes began to rain on them; and they, for their part, were not the men to accept such taunts in silence. Indecencies, blasphemies, slanderous genealogies began to fly back and forth, though the deadliest thrusts seemed to rouse only friendly grins and guffaws.
Outstanding in the thickest of the riot, and the center of most attention, stood Dolores, la del Retor, as comely as usual and better dressed than any of the others, carelessly leaning against a corner of the office shanty, her arms folded behind her back, her magnificent bust thrown forward, smiling with satisfied complacency at the interested glances that reached her tan shoes and the red stockings so blatantly advertising her well-shaped ankles. At the sharpest jokes she heard she opened her luscious lips and her man-eating jaws wide enough to show two rows of strong, even, pearl-white teeth that gave a suggestion of marble luminousness to her darkish features.
A girl of "prestige," obviously—and why not? A solid cuff in that plump right hand of hers, and a tongue in her head, I can tell you, when she had a mind to use it! The wife of Pascualo el Retor, besides, a good-natured fat-head who ate out of her hand and never dared peep inside his own house; but all there, when it came to making a living out of the sea—a pot of money, earned, every cent of it, by good, honest, straightforward fishing.
All this Dolores knew. And that, doubtless, was why she stood there with the self-possession of a Grand Duchess, surveying that dirty-mouthed, dirty-clothed rabble of the Fishmarket, and perking her lips disparagingly when some one noticed her real pearl earrings, or the Algerian scarf, or the red-flannel petticoat from Gibraltar the Rector had given her! In fact, the only woman she thought quite her class was "Granny" Picores, agüela Picores, a veteran of the Fishmarket, a whale of a woman, mastodontic, who cowed every policeman in the market with one glare from her incinerating eyes, or one bellow from that cavernous mouth of hers, the center upon which all the wrinkles in her face converged.
"Cristo, when will you fools be through!" Dolores finally shouted at the bakers, her seductive arms akimbo. And the husky young men, moving a little slower than usual, if anything, answered in kind, but tossing their salacious repartees in the direction of the fish-hags who lined up around the scales with hands folded over protruding abdomens and adding a grotesque enlargement to those already conspicuous bulges. But at last the weighing of the fish could begin: "Hey there, me first, you——!" "No, my turn, you——!" "You were first yesterday!" The usual morning fight for precedence was on, waiting for arbitration by tia Picores, with her cannonading voice and formidable obscenities. But Dolores had not joined the squabble—she even missed the place her basket held, by rights, in the line. Something on the bridge had caught her eye; and, in fact, over the side rails of that structure the head and shoulders of a straggler could be seen advancing slowly, staggering along under the weight of a heavy load.
An expression of diabolical cruelty overspread the handsome countenance of Dolores; and when the laggart fish-woman had reached the nearer end of the bridge, near the customs office, the girl burst into an insolent, ridiculing laugh. She touched agüela Picores on the arm:
"Look, granny, late as usual. And what can you expect from a mess of lazy-bones like that!"
Rosario grew pale as death, and it was with a sigh of faintness and fatigue that she set her basket on the ground. She looked at Dolores, with what hatred her exhaustion could let gather in her eyes. Then she sat down on the burden she had been carrying. For a second the two enemies surveyed each other from head to foot, their year-long resentment boiling up within them.
Dolores wiped her nose with an arm, snorting, as at a pinch of snuff. "Yes, I'd sit down, if I were you, mud-puppy. God, when Tonet was taking a wife, why didn't he get a woman!" Rosario did her best to parry the flood of insults: Sit down? Why not sit down—since God had given her something to sit on and she had a place to put it! Besides, an honest woman need not be afraid to be seen walking. She couldn't hire a coach-in-four—by playing fast and loose with her husband! "And it's me you're talking to!" exclaimed Dolores, stepping forward with blood in her eyes. But she did not go far. For her "Granny's" clawed talons were upon her shoulder, pulling her back. "Into the cart with you! Your fish is weighed! No public scenes to-day! It's late, and they want their orders up in the Market! Of all the loving pairs of sisters!..." And the old Tartar was now in front of Dolores, thrusting the girl back toward the tartana with bumps from her huge stomach. But the beauty's lips were trembling white with emotion, though she obeyed; but with one foot on the step of the cart, she hurled back one parting shot: