Uncle Patas' Domestic Drama—The Bakery—Karl the Baker—The
Society of the Three.

The death of his son made such a deep impression upon SeÑor Ignacio that he fell ill. He gave up working in the shop and as he showed no improvement after two or three weeks, Leandra said to Manuel:

"See here: better be off to your mother's place, for I can't keep you here."

Manuel returned to the lodging-house and Petra, through the intercession of the landlady, procured her son a job as errand-boy at a bread and vegetable stand situated upon the Plaza del Carmen.

Manuel was here more oppressed than at SeÑor Ignacio's. Uncle Patas, the proprietor, a heavy, burly Galician, instructed the youth in his duties.

He was to get up at daybreak, open the store, untie the bundles of greens that were brought by a boy from the Plaza de la Cebada and receive the bread that was left by the delivery-men. Then he was to sweep the place and wait for Uncle Patas, his wife or sister-in-law to awake. As soon as one of these came in Manuel would leave his place behind the counter and, balancing a little basket upon his head, would start off on his route delivering bread to the customers of the vicinity. This going and returning would take all the morning. In the afternoon the work was harder: Manuel would have to stand quietly behind the counter in utter boredom, under the surveillance of the proprietor's wife and his sister-in-law.

Accustomed to his daily strolls through the Rondas, Manuel was rendered desperate by this immobility.

Uncle Patas' store, a tiny, ill-smelling hole, was papered in yellow with green borders; the paper was coming off from sheer old age. A wooden counter, a few dirty shelves, an oil lamp hanging from the ceiling and two benches comprised the fixtures.

The back room, which was reached by a door at the rear, was a compartment with no more light than could filter in through a transom that opened upon the vestibule. This was the dining-room and led to the kitchen, which in turn gave access to a narrow, very filthy patio with a fountain. At the other side of the patio were the bedrooms of Uncle Patas, his wife and his sister-in-law.

Manuel's sleeping quarters were a straw-bed and a couple of old cloaks behind the counter. Here, especially at night, it reeked of rotten cabbage: but what bothered Manuel even more was the getting up at dawn, when the watchman struck two or three blows with his pike upon the door of the store.

They sold something in the shop,—enough to live on and no more. In this hovel Uncle Patas had saved up a fortune cÉntimo by cÉntimo.

Uncle Patas' history was really interesting. Manuel had learned it from the gossip of the men who delivered the bread and from the boys in the other stores.

Uncle Patas had come to Madrid from a hamlet of Lugo, at the age of fifteen, in search of a living. Within twenty years, by dint of unbelievable economies, he had hoarded up from his wages in a bakery some three or four thousand pesetas, and with this capital he established a little grocery. His wife stood behind the counter while he continued to work in the bakery and hoard his earnings. When his son grew up he assigned to the boy the running of a tavern and then of a pawnbroker-shop. It was during this prosperous epoch that Uncle Patas' wife died, and the man, now a widower, wishing to taste the sweets of life, which had thus far proved so fruitless, married again despite his fifty-odd years; the bride, a lass that came from his own province, was only twenty and her sole object in marrying was to change from servant to mistress. All of Uncle Patas' friends tried to convince him that it was a monstrosity for a man of his years to wed, and such a young girl at that; but he persisted in his notions and married.

Within two months after the marriage the son had come to an understanding with his step-mother, and shortly after this the elderly husband made the discovery. One day he played the spy and saw his son and his wife leave an assignation house in Santa Margarita Street. Perhaps the man intended to take harsh steps, to speak a few unvarnished words to the couple; but as he was soft and peaceful by nature, and did not wish to disturb his business, he let the time go by and grew little by little accustomed to his position. Somewhat later, Uncle Patas' wife brought from her town a sister of hers, and when she arrived, between the wife and the son she was forced upon the old man, who concluded by taking up with his sister-in-law. Since that time the four had lived in unbroken harmony. They understood one another most admirably.

Manuel was not in the least astonished by this state of affairs; he was cured of fear, for at La Corrala there was more than one matrimonial combination of the sort. What did make him indignant was the stinginess of Uncle Patas and his people.

All the scrupulousness which Uncle Patas' wife did not feel in other matters she reserved, no doubt, for the accounts. Herself accustomed to pilfer, she knew to the least detail every trick of the servants, and not a cÉntimo escaped her; she always thought she was being robbed. Such was her spirit of economy that at home they ate stale bread, thus confirming the popular saying, "in the house of the smith, a wooden knife."

The sister-in-law, an uncouth peasant with a stubby nose, carroty cheeks, abundant breasts and hips, could give lessons in avarice to her sister, while in the matter of immodesty and undignified comportment she outdistanced her. She would go about the store with her bosom exposed and there wasn't a delivery-man who missed a chance to pinch her.

"What a fatty you are! Oh!" they would all exclaim.

And it was as if all this frequently fingered fat didn't belong to her, for she raised no protest. Should any one, however, try to get the best of her on the price of a roll, she would turn into a wild beast.

On Sunday afternoons Uncle Patas, his wife and his sister-in-law were in the habit of playing mus on a little table in the middle of the road; they never dared to leave the store alone.

After Manuel had been here for three months, Petra carne to see Uncle Patas and asked him to give her boy a regular wage. Uncle Patas burst into laughter; the request struck him as the very height of absurdity and he answered No, that it was impossible, that the boy didn't even earn the bread he ate.

Then Petra sought out another place for Manuel and brought him to a bakery on Horno de la Mata Street where he was to learn the trade.

As the beginning of his apprenticeship he was assigned to the furnace as assistant to the man who removed the loaves from the oven. The work was beyond his strength. He had to get up at eleven in the night and commence by scraping the iron pans in which the smaller loaves were baked; after they were cleaned he would go over them with a brush dipped in melted butter; this accomplished he would help his superior remove the live coals from the oven with an iron instrument; then, while the baker baked the bread he would lift very heavy boards laden with rolls and carry them to the kneading-trough at the mouth of the furnace; when the baker placed the rolls inside Manuel would take the board back to the kneading-trough. As the bread came out of the oven he would moisten it with a brush dipped in water so as to make the crust shiny. At eleven in the morning the work was over, and during the intervals of idleness Manuel and the workmen would sleep.

This life was horribly hard.

The bakery occupied a dark cellar, as gloomy as it was dirty. It was below the level of the street and had two windows the panes of which were so covered with dust and spiders' webs that only a murky, yellowish light filtered through. They worked at all hours by gas.

The bakery was entered by a door that opened upon an ample patio, in which was a shed of pierced zinc; this protected from the rain, or tried to protect, at least, the loads of furze branch and the piles of wood that were heaped up there.

From this patio a low door gave access to a long, but narrow and damp, corridor that was everywhere black; only at the extreme end there was a square of light that entered through a high window with a few cracked, filthy panes,—a gloomy illumination.

When the eyes grew accustomed to the surrounding gloom they could make out on the wall some delivery-baskets, bakers' peels, smocks, caps and shoes hanging from nails, and on the ceiling thick, silvery cobwebs covered with dust.

Half way along the corridor were a couple of doors opposite each other; one led to the furnace, the other to the kneading room.

The furnace room was spacious, and the walls filmed with soot, so that the place was as black as a camera obscura; a gas-jet burned in that cavern, illuminating almost nothing. Before the mouth of the furnace, against an iron shed, were placed the shovels; above, on the ceiling, could be made out some large pipes that crossed each other.

The kneading room, less dark than the furnace room, was even more somber. A pallid light shone in through the two windows that looked into the patio, their panes encrusted with flour dust. There were always some ten or twelve men in shirt-sleeves, brandishing their arms desperately over the troughs, and in the back of the room a she-mule slowly turned the kneading machine.

Life in the bakery was disagreeable and hard; the work was enervating and the pay small: seven reales per day. Manuel, unaccustomed to the heat of the furnace, turned dizzy; besides, when he moistened the loaves fresh from the oven he would burn his fingers and it disgusted him to see his hands begrimed with grease and soot.

He was also unlucky enough to have his bed placed in the kneaders' room, beside that of an old workman of the shop who suffered from chronic catarrh, as a result of having breathed so much flour into his lungs; this fellow kept hawking away at all hours.

From sheer disgust Manuel found it impossible to sleep here, so he went to the furnace kitchen and threw himself down upon the floor. He was forever weary; but despite this, he worked automatically.

Then nobody paid any attention to him; the other bakers, a gang of pretty rough Galicians, treated him as if he were a mule; none of them even took the trouble to learn his name, and some addressed him, "Hey, you, Choto!" while others cried "Hello, Barriga!" When they spoke of him they referred to him as "the ragamuffin from Madrid" or simply, "ragamuffin." He answered to whatever names and sobriquets they gave him.

At first the most hateful of all these men, to Manuel, was the head baker, who ordered him about in a despotic manner and grew angry if things weren't done in a trice. This baker was a German named Karl Schneider who had come to Spain as a vagrant, in evasion of military service. He was about twenty-four or twenty-five, with limpid eyes, and hair and moustache that were so fair as almost to be white.

A timid, phlegmatic fellow, he was frightened by everything and found all things difficult. His strong impressions were manifested neither in his motions nor his words, but in a sudden flush, which coloured his cheeks and his forehead, and which would soon disappear and leave an intense pallor.

Karl expressed himself very well in Spanish, but in a rare manner; he knew a string of proverbs and phrases which he entangled inextricably; this lent a quaint character to his conversation.

Manuel soon discovered that the German, despite his abruptness, was a fine fellow, very innocent, very sentimental and of paradisiacal simplicity.

After a month's work in the bakery Manuel had come to consider Karl as his only friend; they treated each other as boon companions and addressed each other in familiar terms; and if the baker often helped his assistant in any task that required strength, he would in his turn, on occasion, ask the boy's opinion and consult him regarding sentimental complications and punctilios, which fascinated the German and which Manuel settled with his natural perspicacity and the instincts of a wandering child who has been convinced that all life's motives are egotistical and base. This equality between master and apprentice disappeared the moment Karl took up his position at the mouth of the furnace. At such times Manuel had to obey the German without cavil or delay.

Karl's one vice was drunkenness; he was forever thirsty; whenever he slaked this thirst with wine and beer everything went well; he led a methodical life and would spend his free hours on the Pinza, de Oriente or in the Moncloa, reading the two volumes that comprised his library: one, Lost Illusions, by Balzac and the other, a collection of German poems.

These two books, constantly read, commented upon and annotated by him, filled his head with fancies and dreams. Between the bitter, despairing, yet fundamentally romantic ratiocinations of Balzac, and the idealities of Goethe and Heine, the poor baker dwelt in the most unreal of worlds. Often Karl would explain to Manuel the conflicts between the persons of his favourite novel, and would ask how he would act under similar circumstances. Manuel would usually hit upon so logical, so natural, so little romantic a solution that the German would stand perplexed and fascinated before the boy's clearness of judgment; but soon, considering the selfsame theme anew, he would see that such a solution would prove valueless to his sublimated personages, for the very conflict of the novel would never have come about amidst folk of common thoughts.

There came stretches of ten or twelve days when the German needed more powerful stimulants than wine and literature, and he would get drunk on whisky, drinking down half a flask as if it were so much water.

According to what he told Manuel, he was overwhelmed by an avalanche of sadness; everything looked black and repulsive to his eyes, he felt feverish and the one remedy for this melancholy was alcohol.

When he entered the tavern his heart was heavy and his head dull with a surfeit of ugly notions, but as he drank he felt his heart grow lighter and his breath come easier, while his head began to dance with merry thoughts. When he left the tavern, however hard he tried, it was impossible for him to preserve his dignity; laughter would flicker upon his lips. Then songs of his native land would throng to his memory and he would sing them aloud, beating time to them as he walked on. As long as he went through the central thoroughfares he would walk straight; no sooner did he reach the back streets, the deserted avenues, than he would abandon himself to the pleasure of stumbling along and staggering, with a bump here and a thump there. During these moods everything seemed great and beautiful and superb to the German; the sentimentalism of his race would overflow and he would begin to recite verses and weep, and of whatever acquaintances he met on the street he would beg forgiveness for his imaginary offence, asking anxiously whether he still continued to enjoy their estimation and offering his friendship.

However drunk he might be, he never forgot his duty and when the hour for starting the night's baking arrived he would stagger off to the bakery; the moment he took up his position before the mouth of the furnace his intoxication evaporated and he set to work as soberly as ever, himself laughing at his extravagances.

The German possessed remarkable organic powers and unheard-of resistance; Manuel had to sleep during all his free time, and even at that never rose from his bed completely rested. For the two months that he spent in the bakery Manuel lived like an automaton. Work at the furnace had so shifted about his hours of sleep that the days seemed to him nights and the nights, days.

One day Manuel fell ill and all the strength that had been sustaining him abandoned him suddenly; he gave up his job, took his two-week's pay and without knowing how, fairly dragging himself thither, made his way to the lodging-house.

Petra, finding him in this condition, made him go to bed, and Manuel lay for nearly two weeks in the delirium of a very high fever. On getting out it seemed that he had grown; he was much emaciated, and felt in his whole body a great lassitude and languor and such a keen sensitivity that any word the least mite too harsh would affect him to the point of tears.

When he was able to go out into the street again, he bought, at
Petra's suggestion, a gold-plated brooch which he presented to DoÑa
Casiana; she was so pleased with the gift that she told her servant
the boy might remain in the house until he was completely recovered.

Those days were among the most pleasant that Manuel ever spent in his whole life; the one thing that bothered him was hunger.

The weather was superb and in the mornings Manuel would go strolling along the Retiro. The journalist whom they called Superman employed Manuel in copying his notes and articles, and as compensation, no doubt, let him take novels by Paul de Kock and Pigault-Lebrun, some of them highly spiced, as for example Nuns and Corsairs and That Rascal Gustave.

The love theories of these two writers convinced Manuel so well that he tried to put them into practise with the landlady's niece. During the previous two years she had developed so fully that she was already a woman.

One night, during the early hour after supper, either through the influence of the spring season or in obedience to the theories of the author of Nuns and Corsairs, Manuel persuaded the landlady's girl of the advantages of a very private consultation, and a neighbour saw the two of them depart together upstairs and enter the garret.

As they were about to shut themselves in, the neighbour surprised them and brought them, deeply contrite, into the presence of DoÑa Casiana. The thrashing that the landlady administered to her niece deprived the girl of all desire for new adventures and the aunt of any strength to administer another to Manuel.

"Out into the street with you!" she bawled at him, seizing him by the arm and sinking her nails into his flesh. "And make sure that I never see you here again, for I'll brain you!"

Manuel, stricken with shame and confusion, wished nothing better at that moment than a chance to escape, and he dashed into the street as fast as he could get there, like a beaten cur. The night was cool and inviting. As he didn't have a cÉntimo, he soon wearied of sauntering about; he called at the bakery, asked for Karl the baker, they opened the place to him and he stretched himself out on one of the beds. At dawn he was awakened by the voice of one of the bakers, who was shouting:

"Hey, you! Loafer! Clear out!"

Manuel got up and went out into the street. He strolled along toward the Viaduct, to his favourite spot, to survey the landscape and Segovia street.

It was a glorious spring morning. In the grove near the Campo del Moro some soldiers were drilling to the sound of bugle and drums; from a stone chimney on the Ronda de Segovia puffs of dark smoke issued forth to stain the clear, diaphanous sky; in the laundries on the banks of the Manzanares the clothes hung out to dry shone with a white refulgence.

Manuel slowly crossed the Viaduct, reached Las Vistillas and watched some rag-dealers sorting out their materials after emptying the contents of their sacks upon the ground. He sat down for a while in the sun. With his eyes narrowed to a slit he could make out the arches of the Almudena church just above a wall; beyond rose the Royal Palace, a glittering white, the sandy clearings of the Principe PÍo with its long red barracks, and the row of houses on the Paseo de Rosales, their panes aglow with the sunlight.

Toward the Casa de Campo several brown, bare knolls stood out, topped by two or three pines that looked as if they had been cut out and pasted upon the blue atmosphere.

From Las Vistillas Manuel walked down to the Ronda de Segovia. As he sauntered along Aguila Street he noticed that SeÑor Ignacio's place was still closed. Manuel went into the house and asked in the patio for SalomÉ.

"She must be at work in the house," they told him.

He climbed up the stairway and knocked at the door; from within came the hum of a sewing-machine.

SalomÉ opened the door and Manuel entered. The seamstress was as pretty as ever, and, as ever, working. Her two boys had not yet entered colegio. SalomÉ told Manuel that SeÑor Ignacio had been in hospital and that he was now looking around for some money with which to pay off his debts and continue his business. Leandra at that moment was down by the river, SeÑor Jacoba at her post, and Vidal loafing around with no desire to work. He simply couldn't be kept away from the company of a certain cross-eyed wretch who was worse than disease itself, and had become a tramp. The two of them were always seen with bad women in the stands and lunch-rooms of the AndalucÍa road.

Manuel told her of his experiences as a baker and how he had fallen ill; what he did not relate however, was the tale of his dismissal from the house where his mother was employed.

"That's no kind of job for you. You ought to learn some trade that requires less strength," was SalomÉ's advice.

Manuel spent the whole morning chatting with the seamstress; she invited him to a bite and he accepted with pleasure.

In the afternoon Manuel left SalomÉ's house with the thought that if he were a few years older and had a decent, paying position, he would marry her, even if he found himself compelled to get the tough who went with her out of the way with a knife.

Once again upon the Ronda, the first thought that came to Manuel was that he ought not to go to the Toledo Bridge, nor be in any greater hurry to reach the AndalucÍa road, for it was very easy to happen upon Vidal or Bizco there. He pondered the thought deeply, and yet, despite this, he took the direction of the bridge, glanced into the sands, and failing to find his friends there continued along the Canal, crossed the Manzanares by one of the laundry bridges and came out on AndalucÍa road. In a lunch-room that sheltered a few tables beneath its roof were Vidal and Bizco in company of a group of idlers playing canÉ.

"Hey, you, Vidal!" shouted Manuel.

"The deuce! Is it you?" exclaimed his cousin.

"As you see…."

"And what are you doing?"

"Nothing. And you?"

"Whatever comes our way."

Manuel watched them play canÉ. After they had finished a hand, Vidal said:

"What do you say to a walk?"

"Come on."

"Are you coming, Bizco?"

"Yes."

The three set out along the AndalucÍa road.

Vidal and Bizco led a thieves' existence, stealing here a horse blanket, there the electric bulbs of a staircase or telephone wires; whatever turned up. They did not venture to operate in the heart of Madrid as they were not yet, in their opinion, sufficiently expert.

Only a few days before, told Vidal, they had, between them, robbed a fellow of a she-goat, on the banks of the Manzanares near the Toledo bridge. Vidal had entertained the chap at the game of tossing coins while Bizco had seized the goat and pulled her up the slope of the pines to Las YeserÍas, afterward taking her to Las Injurias. Then Vidal, indicating the opposite direction to their dupe, had shouted: "Run, run, there goes your goat." And as the youth trotted off in the direction indicated, Vidal escaped to Las Injurias, joining Bizco and his sweetheart. They were still dining on the goat's meat.

"That's what you ought to do," suggested Vidal. "Come with us. This is the life of a lord! Why, listen here. The other day Juan el Burra and El Arenero came upon a dead hog on the road to Las YeserÍas. A swineherd was on his way with a herd of them to the slaughter-house, when they found out that the animal had died; the fellow left it there, and Juan el Burra and El Arenero dragged it to their house, quartered it, and we friends of his have been eating hog for more than a week. I tell you, it's a lord's life!"

According to what Vidal said, all the thieves knew each other, even to the most distant sections of the city. Their life was outside the pale of society and an admirable one, indeed; today they were to meet at the Four Roads, in three or four days at the Vallecas Bridge or at La Guindelara; they helped each other.

Their radius of activities was a zone bounded by the extreme of the Casa del Campo, where the inn of Agapito and the AlcorcÓn restaurants were, as far as Los Carabancheles; from here, the banks of the Abronigal, La Elipa, El Este, Las Ventas and La ConceptiÓn as far as La Prosperidad; then TetuÁn as far as the Puerta de Hierro. In summer they slept in yards and sheds of the suburbs.

The thieves of the city's centre were a better-dressed, more aristocratic lot; each of these had his woman, whose earnings he managed and who took good care of him. The outcasts of the heart of the city were a distinct class with other gradations.

There were times when Bizco and Vidal had gone through intense want, existing upon cats and rats and seeking shelter in the caves upon San Blas hill, of Madrid Moderno, and in the Eastern Cemetery. But by this time the pair knew their business.

"And work? Nothing?" asked Manuel.

"Work! … Let the cat work," scoffed Vidal.

They didn't work, stuttered Bizco; who was going to get fresh with him while he had his trusty steel in his hand?

Into the brain of this wild beast there had not penetrated, even vaguely, any idea of rights or duties. No duties, no rights or anything at all. To him, might was right; the world was a hunting wood. Only humble wretches could obey the law of labour. That's what he said: Let fools work, if they hadn't the nerve to live like men.

As the three thus conversed a man and a woman with a child in her arms passed by. They looked dejected, like famished, persecuted folk, their glance timid and awed.

"There's the workers for you," exclaimed Vidal. "That's how they are."

"The devil take them," muttered Bizco.

"Where are they bound for?" asked Manuel, eyeing them sympathetically.

"To the tile-works," answered Vidal. "To sell saffron, as we say around here."

"And why do they say that?"

"Because saffron is so dear…."

The three came to a halt and lay down upon the sod. For more than an hour they remained there, discussing women and ways and means of procuring money.

"Got any money about you?" asked Vidal of Manuel and Bizco.

"Two reales," replied the latter.

"Well, then, invite us to something," suggested Vidal. "Let's have a bottle."

Bizco assented, grumblingly, so they arose and took their way toward Madrid. A procession of whitish mules filed past them; a young, swarthy gipsy, with a long stick under his arm, mounted upon the last mule of the procession, kept shouting at every step: "CoronÉ, coronÉ!"

"So long, swell!" shouted Vidal to him.

"God be with all good folk," answered the gipsy in a hoarse voice.
They reached a road tavern beside a ragpicker's hut, stopped, and
Vidal ordered the bottle of wine.

"What's this factory?" asked Manuel, pointing to a structure at the left of the AndalucÍa road on the way back to Madrid.

"They make money out of blood," answered Vidal solemnly.

Manuel stared at him in fright.

"Yes. They make glue out of the blood that's left over in the slaughter-house," added his cousin, laughing.

Vidal poured the wine into the glasses and the three gulped it down.

Yonder, above the avenue of trees on the Canal, could be made out Madrid, with its long, level cluster of houses. The windows, lit up by the flush of the setting sun, glowed like live coals; in the foreground, just below San Francisco el Grande, bulked the red tanks of the gas factory with their high steel beams, amidst the obscure rubbish-heaps; from the centre of the city rose tiny towers and low chimneys which belched forth black puffs of smoke that seemed to rest motionless in the tranquil atmosphere. At one side, upon a hill, towered the Observatory, whose windows sparkled with the sun; at the other, the Guadarama range, blue with crests of white, was outlined against the clear, transparent heavens furrowed by red clouds.

"Bah," added Vidal, after a moment's silence, turning to Manuel.
"You've got to come with us; we'll make a gang."

"That's the talk," stammered Bizco.

"All right. I'll see," responded Manuel unwillingly.

"What do you mean, you'll see? The gang's already formed. We'll call it the gang of The Three."

"Fine!" shouted Bizco.

"And we'll help each other?" inquired Manuel.

"Of course we will," assured his cousin. "And if any one of us should prove a traitor…."

"If any one proves a traitor," interrupted Bizco, "his guts'll be ripped out." And to lend force to his declaration he drew out his dirk and plunged it viciously into the table.

At nightfall the three returned by the road to the Toledo bridge and separated at that point, after arranging to meet on the morrow.

Manuel wondered just what he was committed to by the promise made to be a member of The Three. The life led by Bizco and Vidal frightened him. He must resolve to turn over a new leaf; but what was he to do? That was what puzzled him.

For some time Manuel did not dare to put in an appearance at the lodging-house; he would meet his mother in the street and he slept in the entry of the house where one of his sisters was employed. Later it came to pass that the landlady's niece was found in the bedroom of a neighbouring student, and this served to rehabilitate Manuel somewhat in the boarding-house.