One of the Many Disagreeable Ways of Dying in Madrid—The
Orphan—El Cojo and His Cave—Night in the Observatory.

One day Manuel was not a little surprised to learn that his mother had not been able to get up and that she was ill. For some time she had been coughing up blood, but had considered this of no importance.

Manuel presented himself humbly at the house and the landlady, instead of greeting him with recriminations, asked him in to see his mother. The only thing Petra complained of was a terrible bruised feeling all over the body and a pain in her back.

For days and days she had gone on thus, now better, now worse, until she began to run a high fever and was compelled to call in the doctor. The landlady said that they'd have to take the sick woman to the hospital; but as she was a kind-hearted soul she did not insist.

Petra had already confessed several times to the priest of the house. Manuel's sisters came from time to time, but neither brought the money necessary to the purchase of the medicines and the food that were prescribed by the doctor.

One Sunday, toward night, Petra took a turn for the worse; during the afternoon she had been conversing spiritedly with her daughters; but this animation had subsided until she was overwhelmed by a mortal collapse.

That Sunday night DoÑa Casiana's lodgers had an unusually succulent supper, and after the supper several ronquillas for dessert, watered by the purest concoction of the Prussian distilleries.

The spree was still in progress at ten o'clock. Petra said to Manuel:

"Call Don Jacinto and tell him that I'm worse."

Manuel went to the dining-room. He could barely make out the congested faces through the thick tobacco smoke that filled the atmosphere. As Manuel entered, one of the merrymakers said:

"A little less noise; there's somebody sick."

Manuel delivered the message to the priest.

"Your mother's scared, that's all. I'll come a little later," replied
Don Jacinto.

Manuel returned to the room.

"Isn't he coming?" asked the sick woman.

"He'll be here right away. He says you're only scared."

"Yes. A fine scare," she murmured sadly. "Stay here."

Manuel sat down upon a trunk; he was so sleepy, he could hardly see.

He was just dozing off when his mother called to him.

"Listen," she said. "Go into the room and fetch the picture of the
Virgin of Sorrows."

Manuel took down the picture,—a cheap cromograph,—and brought it to the bedroom.

"Place it at the foot of the bed so that I can see it."

The boy did as he was requested and returned to his seat. From the dining-room came a din of songs, hand-clapping and castanets.

Suddenly Manuel, who was half asleep, heard a loud, rasping sound issue from his mother's chest, and at the same time he noticed that her face had become paler than ever and was twitching strangely.

"What's the matter?"

The sufferer made no reply. Then Manuel ran to notify the priest again. Grumblingly he left the dining-room, looked at the sick woman and said to the boy:

"Your mother's dying. Stay here, and I'll be back at once with the extreme unction."

The priest ordered the merrymakers in the dining-room to cease their racket and the whole house became silent.

Nothing could be heard now save cautious footfalls, the opening and closing of doors, followed by the stertorous breathing of the dying woman and the tick-tock of the corridor clock.

The priest arrived with another who wore a stole and administered all the rites of the extreme unction. After the vicar and the sacristan had gone, Manuel looked at his mother and saw her livid features, her drooping jaw. She was dead.

The youngster was left alone in the room, which was dimly lighted by the oil lamp; there he sat on the trunk, trembling with cold and fear.

He spent the whole night thus; from time to time the landlady would enter in her underclothes and ask Manuel something or offer some bit of advice which, for the most part, he did not understand.

That night Manuel thought and suffered as perhaps he never thought and suffered at any other time; he meditated upon the usefulness of life and upon death with a perspicacity that he had never possessed. However hard he might try, he could not stem the flood of thoughts that merged one with the other.

At four in the morning the whole house was in silence, when there was heard the rattle of a latchkey in the stairway door, followed by footsteps in the corridor and then the querulous tinkling of the music-box upon the vestibule-table, playing the Mandolinata.

Manuel awoke with a start, as from a dream; he could not make out where the music was coming from; he even imagined that he had lost his head. The little organ, after several hitches and asthmatic sobs, abandoned the Mandolinata and began to roll off in double time the duet between Bettina and Pippo from La Mascotte:

Will you forget me, gentle swain, Dressed in this lordly finery?

Manuel left the bedroom and asked, through the darkness:

"Who is it?"

At the same moment voices were heard from every room. The music-box cut short the duet from La Mascotte and launched spiritedly into the strains of Garibaldi's hymn. Suddenly the music stopped and a hoarse voice shouted:

"Paco! Paco!"

The landlady got up and asked who was making all that racket; one of the men who had just entered the house explained in a whisky-soaked voice that they were students who boarded on the third floor, and had just come from the ball in search of Paco, one of the salesmen. The landlady told them that some one had died in the house and one of the drunkards, who was a student of medicine, said he would like to view the corpse. He was persuaded to change his mind and everybody went back to his place. The next day Manuel's sisters were notified and Petra was buried….

On the day after the interment Manuel left the boarding-house and said farewell to DoÑa Casiana.

"What are you going to do?" she asked.

"I don't know. I'll see."

"I can't keep you here, but I don't want you to starve. Come here from time to time."

After walking about town all the morning, Manuel found himself at noon on the Ronda de Toledo, leaning against the wall of Las Americas, at a loss to know what to do with himself. To one side, likewise seated upon the turf, was a loathsome, terribly ugly, flat-nosed gamin, with a clouded eye, bare feet, and a tattered jacket through whose rents could be glimpsed his dark skin, which had been tanned by the sun and wind. Hanging from his neck was a canister into which he threw the cigarette ends that he gathered.

"Where do you live?" Manuel asked him.

"I haven't any father or mother," answered the urchin, evasively.

"What's your name?"

"The Orphan."

"And why do they call you that?"

"Why! Because I'm a foundling."

"And didn't you ever have a home?"

"No."

"And where do you sleep?"

"Well, in the summer I sleep in the caves, or in yards, and in winter, in the asphalt caldrons."

"And when they're not doing any asphalting?"

"In some shelter or other."

"All right, then. But what do you eat?"

"Whatever I'm given."

"And do you manage to do well?"

Either the foundling did not understand the question or it appeared quite silly to him, for he merely shrugged his shoulders. Manuel continued his curious interrogatory.

"Aren't your feet cold?"

"No."

"And don't you do anything?"

"Psch! … whatever turns up. I pick up stubs, I sell sand, and when I can't earn anything I go to the MarÍa Cristina barracks."

"What for?"

"What for? For a meal, of course."

"And where's this barracks?"

"Near the Atocha station. Why? Would you like to go there, too?"

"Yes, I would."

"Well, let's come along then, or we'll miss mess time."

The two got up and started on their journey. The Orphan begged at the stores on the road and was given two slices of bread and a small coin.

"Will you have some, ninchi?" he asked, offering Manuel one of the slices.

"Hand it over."

By the Ronda de Atocha they reached the EstaciÓn de MediodÍa.

"Do you know the time?" asked the Orphan.

"Yes. It's eleven."

"Well then, it's too early to go to the barracks."

Opposite the station a lady, from the seat of a coach, was making a speech proclaiming the wonders of a salve for wounds and a specific for curing the toothache.

The Orphan, biting away at his slice of bread, interrupted the speech of the lady in the coach, shouting ironically:

"Give me a slice to take away my toothache!"

"And another one to me!" added Manuel.

The husband of the speechmaker, an old fellow wearing a very long raglan and standing amidst the crowd of spectators listening with the greatest respect to what his better half was saying, grew indignant and speaking but half Spanish, cried:

"If I catch you your teeth'll ache for fair."

"This gentleman came from Archipipi," interrupted the Orphan.

The old codger tried to catch one of the urchins. Manuel and the Orphan ran off, dodging the man in the raglan and planting themselves opposite him.

"Impudent rascals," shouted the gentleman. "I'll give you a hiding and maybe your teeth won't really ache by the time I'm through with you."

"But they hurt already," chorused the ragamuffins.

The old fellow, exasperated beyond endurance, gave frantic chase to the urchins; a group of idlers and news-vendors jostled against him as if by accident, and the pursuer, perspiring freely and wiping his face with his handkerchief, went off in search of an officer.

"Fakir, froggie, beggar!" shouted the Orphan derisively at him.

Then, laughing at their prank, they returned to the barracks and took place at the end of a line composed of poverty-stricken folk and tramps who were waiting for a meal. An old woman who had already eaten lent them a tin in which to place their food.

They ate and then, in company of other tattered youngsters climbed the sandy slopes of San Blas hill to get a view from that spot of the soldiers on Atocha avenue.

Manuel stretched out lazily in the sun, filled with the joy of finding himself absolutely free of worriment, of gazing upon the azure sky which extended into the infinite. Such blissful comfort induced in him a deep sleep.

When he awoke it was already mid-afternoon and the wind was chasing dark clouds across the heavens. Manuel sat up; there was a knot of gamins close by, but the Orphan was nowhere to be seen.

A dense black cloud came up and blotted out the sun; shortly afterward it began to rain.

"Shall we go to Cojo's cave?" asked one of the boys.

"Come on."

The entire band of ragamuffins broke into a run in the direction of the Retiro, with Manuel hard after them. The thick raindrops fell in slanting, steel-hued lines; a stray sunbeam glittered from the sky through the dark violet clouds which were so long that they looked like huge, motionless fishes.

Ahead of the ragamuffins, at an appreciable distance, ran two women and two men.

"They're Rubia and Chata with a couple of hayseeds," said one of the gamins.

"They're running to the cave," added another.

The boys reached the top of the hill; before the entrance to the cave, which was nothing but a hole dug out of the sand, sat a one-legged man smoking a pipe.

"We're going in," announced one of the urchins to Cojo.

"You can't," he replied.

"And why not?"

"Because you can't."

"Man! Let's get in until the rain stops."

"Impossible."

"Why? Are Rubia and Chata inside?"

"What do you care if they are?"

"Shall we give those hayseeds a scare?" asked one of the ragamuffins, whose ears were covered by long black locks.

"Just try it and see," growled Cojo, seizing a rock.

"Come on to the Observatory," said another. "We won't get wet there."

The gang turned back, hurdled a wall that stood in their path and took refuge in the portico of the Observatory on the Atocha side. The wind was blowing from the Guadarrama range so that they were in the lee.

For the afternoon and part of the evening the rain came pouring down; they passed the time chatting about women, thefts and crimes. Two or three of these youngsters had a home to go to, but they didn't care to go. One, who was called El MarianÉ, related a number of notable tricks and swindles; others, who displayed prodigious skill and ingenuity, roused the gathering to enthusiasm. After this theme had been exhausted, a few suggested a game of canÉ, and the idler with the long black locks, whom they called El Canco, sang in a low feminine voice several flamenco songs.

At night, as it grew cold, they lay down quite close to each other upon the ground and continued their conversations. Manuel was repelled by the malevolent spirit of the gang; one of them told a story about an aged fellow of eighty, "old Rainbow," who used to sleep furtively in the Manzanares laundry in a hole formed by four mats; one night when an icy cold wind was blowing they opened two of his mats and the next day he was found frozen to death; El MarianÉ recounted how he had been with a cousin of his, a cavalry sergeant, in a public house and how the sergeant mounted upon a naked woman's back and gashed her thighs with his spurs.

"The fact is," concluded El MarianÉ, "there's nothing like making women suffer if you want to keep 'em satisfied."

Manuel listened in astonishment to this counsel; his mind reverted to that seamstress who came to the landlady's house, and then to SalomÉ, and it occurred to him that he would not care to have made them love him by inflicting pain. He fell asleep with these notions whirling in his head.

When he awoke he felt the cold penetrating to his very marrow. Day was breaking and the rain had ceased; the sky, still dim, was strewn with greyish clouds. Above a hedge of shrubs shone a star in the middle of the horizon's pale band, and against this opaline glow stood out the intertwined branches of the trees, which were still without leaves.

The whistles of the locomotives could be heard from the nearby station; toward Carabanchel the lantern lights were paling in the dark fields, which could be glimpsed by the vague luminosity of nascent day.

Madrid, level, whitish, bathed in mist, rose out of the night with its many roofs, which cut the sky in a straight line; its turrets, its lofty factory chimneys; and amidst the silence of the dawn, the city and the landscape suggested the unreality and the motionlessness of a painting.

The sky became clearer, growing gradually blue. Now the new white houses stood out more sharply; the high partition-walls, pierced symmetrically by tiny windows; the roofs, the corners, the balustrades, the red towers of recent construction, the army of chimneys, all enveloped in the cold, sad, damp, atmosphere of morning, beneath a low zinc-hued sky.

Beyond the city proper, afar, rolled the Madrilenian plain in gentle undulations, toward the mists of dawn; the Manzanares meandered along, as narrow as a band of silver; it sought the Los Angeles hill, crossing barren fields and humble districts, finally to curve and lose itself in the grey horizon. Towering above Madrid the Guadarrama loomed like a lofty blue rampart, its summits capped with snow.

In the midst of this silence a church bell began its merry pealing, but the chimes were lost in the somnolent city.

Manuel felt very cold and commenced pacing back and forth, rubbing his shoulders and his legs. Absorbed in this operation, he did not see a man in a boina, with a lantern in his hand, who approached him and asked:

"What are you doing here?"

Without replying, Manuel broke into a run down the hill; shortly afterward the rest of the gang came scurrying down, awaked by the kicks of the man in the boina.

As they reached the Velasco Museum, El MarianÉ said:

"Let's see if we can't play a dirty trick on that damned Cojo."

"Yes. Come on."

By a side path they climbed back to the spot where they had been on the previous afternoon. From the caves of San Blas hill came a few ragamuffins crawling out on all fours; frightened by the sound of voices and thinking, doubtless, that the police had come to make a raid, they set off on a mad run, naked, with their ragged clothing under their arms.

They made their way to Cojo's cave; El MarianÉ proposed that as a punishment for his not having let them go in the day before, they should pile a heap of grass before the entrance to the cave and set fire to the place.

"No, man, that's monstrous," objected El Canco. "The fellow hires out his cave to Rubia and Chata, who hang around here and have customers in the barracks. He has to respect his agreements with them."

"Well, we'll have to give him a lesson," retorted El MarianÉ. "You'll see." Whereupon he crawled into the cave and reappeared soon with El Cojo's wooden leg in one hand and a stewpot in the other.

"Cojo! Cojo!" he shouted.

At these cries the cripple stuck his head out of the entrance to the cave, dragging himself along on his hands, bellowing blasphemies in fury.

"Cojo! Cojo!" yelled El MarianÉ again, as if inciting a dog. "There goes your leg! And your dinner's following after!" As he spoke, he seized the wooden leg and the pot and sent them rolling down the slope.

Then they all broke into a run for the Ronda de Vallecas. Above the heights and valleys of the PacÍfico district the huge red disk of the sun rose from the earth and ascended slowly and majestically behind a cluster of grimy huts.