Part 44 (2/2)
Manuel felt as garrulous as a mountebank. When he had wearied, he leaned against a heap of stones and with arms crossed prepared to sleep.
Shortly after this the group of curiosity-hunters had dispersed; only a guard and an old gentleman were left, and they discussed the ragam.u.f.fins in tones of pity.
The gentleman deplored the way these children were abandoned and said that in other countries they built schools and asylums and a thousand other things. The guard shook his head dubiously. At last he summed up the conversation, saying in the tranquil manner of a Galician:
”Take my word for it: there's no good left in any of them.”
Manuel, hearing this, began to tremble; he arose from his place on the ground, left the Puerta del Sol and began to wander aimlessly about.
”There's no good left in any of them!” The remark had made a deep impression upon him. Why wasn't he good? Why? He examined his life. He wasn't bad, he had harmed n.o.body. He hated El Carnicerin because that fellow had robbed him of happiness, had made it impossible for him to go on living in the one corner where he had found some affection and shelter. Then contradicting himself, he imagined that perhaps he was bad after all, and in this case the most he could do was to reform and become better.
Absorbed in these reflections, he was pa.s.sing along Alcala Street when he heard his name called several times. It was La Mella and La Rabanitos, skulking in a doorway.
”What do you want?” he asked.
”Nothing, man. Just a word with you. Have you come into your money yet?”
”No. What are you doing?”
”Hiding here,” answered La Mella.
”Why, what's the trouble?”
”There's a round-up, and that skunk of an inspector wants to take us to the station, even if we do pay him. Keep us company!”
Manuel accompanied them for a while; but they both picked up a couple of men on the way and he was left alone. He returned to the Puerta del Sol.
The night seemed to him endless; he walked around and walked yet again; the electric lights were extinguished, the street-cars stopped running, the square was left in darkness.
Between Montera and Alcala Streets there was a cafe before whose illuminated windows women pa.s.sed up and down dressed in bright clothes and wearing c.r.a.pe kerchiefs, singing, accosting benighted pa.s.sers-by; several loafers, lurking behind the lanterns, watched them and chatted with them, giving them orders....
Then came a procession of street-women, touts and procurers. All of parasitical, indolent, gay Madrid issued forth at these hours from the taverns, the dens, the gambling-houses, the dives and vice resorts, and amidst the poverty and misery that throbbed in the thoroughfares these night-owls strutted by with their lighted cigars, conversing, laughing, joking with the prost.i.tutes, indifferent to the agony of all these ragged, hungry, shelterless wretches who, s.h.i.+vering with the cold, sought refuge in the doorways.
A few old strumpets remained at the street-corners, wrapped in their cloaks, smoking....
It was long before the heavens grew bright; it was still night when the coffee stands were opened, and the coachmen and ragam.u.f.fins went up for their cup or gla.s.s. The gas lamps were extinguished.
The light from the watchmen's lanterns danced across the grey pavement, which already was dimly lighted by the pale glow of dawn, and the black silhouettes of the ragdealers stood out against the heaps of ordure as they bent over to take the rubbish. Now and then some pale benighted fellow with his coat collar raised, would glide by as sinister as an owl before the growing light and soon some workmen pa.s.sed.... Industrious, honest; Madrid was preparing for its hard daily task.
This transition from the feverish turmoil of night to the calm, serene activity of morning plunged Manuel into profound thought.
He understood that the existence of the night-owls and that of the working folk were parallel lives that never for an instant met. For the ones, pleasure, vice, the night; for the others, labour, fatigue, the sun. And it seemed to him, too, that he should belong to the second cla.s.s, to the folk who toil in the sun, not to those who dally in the shadows.
END OF ”TO BUSCA,”
(THE QUEST)
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