Part 33 (1/2)
CHAPTER IV,
Dolores the Scandalous--Pastiri's Tricks--Tender Savagery--A Modest Out-of-the-way Robbery.
After a week spent in sleeping in the open Manuel decided one day to rejoin Vidal and Bizco and to take up their evil ways.
He inquired after his friends in the taverns on the Andalucia cart-road, at La Llorosa, Las Injurias, and a chum of El Bizco, who was named El Chingui, told him that El Bizco was staying at Las Cambroneras, at the home of a well-known thieving strumpet called Dolores the Scandalous.
Manuel went off to Las Cambroneras, asked for Dolores and was shown a door in a patio inhabited by gipsies.
Manuel knocked, but Dolores refused to open the door; finally, after hearing the boy's explanations, she allowed him to come in.
Dolores' home consisted of a room about three metres square; in the rear could be made out a bed where El Bizco was sleeping in his clothes, beside a sort of vaulted niche with a chimney and a tiny fireplace. The furnis.h.i.+ngs of the room consisted of a table, a trunk, a white shelf containing plates and earthenware pots, and a pine wall-bracket that supported an oil-lamp.
Dolores was a woman of about fifty; she wore black clothes, a red kerchief knotted around her forehead like a bandage and another of some indistinct colour over her head.
Manuel called to El Bizco and, when the cross-eyed fellow awoke, asked after Vidal.
”He'll be here right away,” said El Bizco, and then, turning upon the old lady, he growled: ”Hey, you, fetch my boots.”
Dolores was slow in executing his orders, whereupon El Bizco, wis.h.i.+ng to show off his domination over the woman, struck her.
The woman did not even mumble; Manuel looked coldly at El Bizco, in disgust; the other averted his gaze.
”Want a bite?” asked El Bizco of Manuel when he had got out of bed.
”If you have anything good....”
Dolores drew from the fire a pan filled with meat and potatoes.
”You take good care of yourselves,” murmured Manuel, whom hunger had made profoundly cynical.
”They trust us at the butcher's,” said Dolores, to explain the abundance of meat.
”If you and I didn't work hard hereabouts,” interjected El Bizco, ”much we'd be eating.”
The woman smiled modestly. They finished their lunch and Dolores produced a bottle of wine.
”This woman,” declared El Bizco, ”just as you behold her there, beats them all. Show him what we have in the corner.”
”Not now, man.”
”And why not?”
”Suppose some one should come?”
”I'll bolt the door.”
”All right.”