Part 37 (2/2)

Engracia had little to say and when she spoke it was to utter something particularly b.e.s.t.i.a.l and filthy, of involved cynicism and p.o.r.nography. Her imagination was of monstrous fertility.

A macabrous sculptor might have hit upon a work of genius by cutting the thoughts of this girl into the stone representing some infernal Dance of Death.

Engracia could not read. She wore loud waists, blue and pink; a white kerchief on her head and a coloured ap.r.o.n; she trotted along with a swaying movement, so that the coins in her purse kept jingling. She had been eight years in this brothel life, and was only sixteen in all. She was sorry to have grown up, for she said that she had earned far more as a little girl.

The friends.h.i.+p of Manuel and Vidal with these girls lasted a couple of months; Manuel could not make up his mind to take up with La Mella; she was too repulsive; Vidal widened the horizons of his activity, tippled with a gang of _chulos_ and devoted himself to the conquest of a flower-girl who sold carnations.

Engracia and La Rabanitos conceived a violent hatred for the la.s.s.

”That strumpet?” La Rabanitos would say. ”Why, she's already as disreputable as us....”

One night Vidal did not put in his usual appearance at Casa Blanca, and two or three days later he showed up at the Puerta del Sol with a tall, buxom woman garbed in grey.

”Who's that?” asked Manuel of his cousin.

”Her name's Violeta; I've taken up with her.”

”And the other one, at Casa Blanca?”

Vidal shrugged his shoulders.

”You can have her if you wish,” he said.

Vidal's former sweetheart likewise disappeared from Casa Blanca and, after he had been unable to collect the two weeks' rent, the administrator put Manuel out into the street and sold the furnis.h.i.+ngs: a few empty bottles, a stew-pot and a bed.

For several days Manuel slept upon the benches of the Plaza de Oriente and on the chairs of La Castellana and Recoletos. It was getting toward the end of summer and he could still sleep in the open. A few centimos that he earned by carrying valises from the stations helped him to exist, though badly, until October.

There were days when the only thing he ate was the cabbage stalks that he picked up in the marketplaces; other days, on the contrary, he treated himself to seventy-eight centimo banquets in the chop-houses.

October came around and Manuel began to feel cold at night; his eldest sister gave him a frayed overcoat and a m.u.f.fler; but despite these, whenever he could find no roof to shelter him he almost froze to death in the street.

One night in the early part of November Manuel stumbled against El Bizco at the entrance to a cafe on La Cabecera del Rastro; the cross-eyed ragam.u.f.fin was bent over, almost naked, his arms crossed against his chest, barefoot; he presented a painful picture of poverty and cold.

Dolores La Escandalosa had left him for another.

”Where can we go to sleep?” Manuel asked him.

”Let's try the caves of La Montana,” answered El Bizco.

”But can we get in there?”

”Yes, if there aren't too many.”

”Come on, then.”

The two crossed through the Puerta de Moros and Mancebos Street to the Viaduct; they traversed the Plaza de Oriente, following along Bailen and Ferraz Streets, and, as they reached the Montana del Principe Pio, ascended a narrow path bordered by recently planted pines.

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