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 AndalucÍa 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 furnishings 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, wishing 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."

El Bizco bolted the door. Dolores pushed the table to the middle of the room, went over to the wall, pulled away a scrap of kalsomined canvas about a yard square, and revealed a gap crammed with ribbons, cords, lace edging and other objects of passementerie.

"How's that?" said El Bizco. "And it's all of her own collecting."

"You must have quite a bit of money there."

"Yes. It's worth quite a bit," agreed Dolores. Then she let the strip of canvas fall into place against the excavation in the wall, fastened it and drew up the bed before it. El Bizco unbolted the door. In a few moments there was a knock.

"That must be Vidal," said El Bizco, adding in a low voice, as he turned to Manuel, "See here, not a word to him."

Vidal strutted in with his carefree air, expressed his pleasure at
Manuel's coming, and the three left for the street.

"Are you going to be around here?" asked the old woman.

"Yes."

"Don't come late, then, eh?" added Dolores, addressing Bizco.

The cross-eyed bully did not deign to make any reply.

The three chums went to the square that faces Toledo bridge; near by, at a stand owned by Garatusa, a penitentiary graduate who ran a "fence" for thieves and didn't lose any money at it, they had a drink and then, walking along Ocho Hilos Avenue they came to the Ronda de Toledo.

The vicinity of El Rastro was thronged with Sunday crowds.

Along the wall of Las Grandiosas AmÉricas, in the space between the Slaughter-house and the Veterninary School, a long row of itinerant hawkers had set up their stands.

Some, garbed like beggars, stood dozing motionless against the wall, indifferently contemplating their wares: old pictures, new chromographs, books; useless, damaged, filthy articles which they felt sure none of the public would purchase. Others were gesticulating and arguing with their customers; several repulsive, grimy old women with huge straw hats on their heads, dirty hands, arms akimbo and indecencies quivering upon their lips, were chattering away like magpies.

The gipsy women in their motley garments were combing their little brunettes and their black-skinned, large-eyed churumbeles in the sun; a knot of vagrants was carrying on a serious discussion; mendicants wrapped in rags, maimed, crippled, were shouting, singing, wailing, and the Sunday throng, in search of bargains, scurried back and forth, stopping now and then to question, to pry, while folks passed by with faces congested by the heat of the sun,—a spring sun that blinded one with the chalky reflection of the dusty soil, glittering and sparkling with a thousand glints in the broken mirrors and the metal utensils displayed in heaps upon the ground. To add to this deafening roar of cries and shouts, two organs pierced the air with the merry wheeze of their blending, interweaving tones.

Manuel, El Bizco and Vidal strolled to the head of El Rastro and turned down again. At the door of Las AmÉricas they met Pastiri sniffing around the place.

Catching sight of Manuel and the other two, the fellow of the three cards approached and said:

"Shall we have some wine?"

"Sure."

They entered one of the taverns of the Ronda. Pastiri was alone that day, as his companion had gone off to the Escorial; since he had no one to act as his confederate in the game he hadn't made a cÉntimo. Now, if they would consent to act as bait to induce the inquisitive onlookers to play, he'd give them a share of the profits.

"Ask him how much?" said El Bizco to Vidal.

"Don't be an idiot."

Pastiri explained the matter for El Bizco's benefit; the confederates were to place bets and then proclaim in a loud voice that they had won. Then he'd see to making the spectators eager to play.

"All right. We know what to do," said Vidal.

"You agree to the scheme?"

"Yes, man."

Pastiri gave them three pesetas apiece and the four left the tavern, crossed the Ronda and made their way in the crowds of El Rastro.

Every once in a while Pastiri would stop, thinking he had caught sight of a prospective dupe; El Bizco or Manuel would place a bet; but the fellow who looked like an easy victim would smile as he saw them lay the snare or else pass on indifferently, quite accustomed to this type of trickery.

Soon Pastiri noticed a group of rustics with their broad hats and short trousers.

"Aluspiar, here come a few birds and we may work them for something," he said, and he planted himself and his card table directly in the path of the country-folk and began his game.

El Bizco bet two pesetas and won; Manuel followed suit with the same results.

"This fellow is a cinch," said Vidal in a loud voice, turning to the group of hayseeds. "Have you seen all the money he's losing? That soldier there just won six duros."

Hearing this, one of the rustics drew near, and seeing that Manuel and El Bizco were winning, he wagered a peseta and won. The fellow's companions advised him to retire with his winnings; but his greed got the best of him and he returned to bet two pesetas, losing them.

Then Vidal bet a duro.

"Here's a five-peseta piece," he declared, ringing the coin upon the ground, He picked out the right card and won.

Pastiri made a gesture of anoyance.

The rustic wagered another duro and lost; he glanced anxiously at his fellow countrymen, extracted another duro and lost that, too.

At this moment a guard happened along and the group broke up; noting Pastiri's movement of flight, the hayseed tried to seize him, grabbing at his coat, but the trickster gave a rude tug and escaped in the crowd.

Manuel, Vidal and El Bizco made their way across the Plaza del Rastro to Embajadores Street.

El Bizco had four pesetas, Manuel six and Vidal fourteen.

"And what are we going to return to that guy?" asked El Bizco.

"Return? Nothing," answered Vidal.

"Why, that would be robbing him of his whole year's profits," objected
Manuel.

"What of it? Deuce take him," retorted Vidal. "We came darn near getting caught ourselves, with nothing for our trouble."

It was lunch hour and they wondered where to go; Vidal settled it, saying that as long as they were on Embajadores Street, the Society of the Three, in plenary session, might as well continue on the way down till they got to La Manigua restaurant.

The suggestion was accepted and the associates spent that Sunday afternoon in royal fashion; Vidal was splendid, spending Pastiri's money right and left, inviting several girls to their table and dancing all the chulo steps.

To Manuel this beginning of his free life seemed not at all bad. At night the three comrades, somewhat the worse for wine, ambled up Embajadores Street, turning into the surrounding road.

"Where am I going to sleep?" asked Manuel.

"Come over to my house," answered Vidal.

When they came in sight of Casa Blanca, El Bizco left them.

"Thank the Lord that tramp has gone," muttered Vidal.

"Have you had a scrap with him?"

"He's a beastly fellow. He lives with La Escandalosa, who's an old fox in truth, sixty years at the very least, and spends everything she robs with her lovers. But she feeds him and he ought to have some consideration for her. Nothing doing, though; he's always kicking her and punching her and pricking her with his dirk, and one time he even heated an iron and wanted to burn her. If he takes her money, well and good; but what's the sense of his burning her?"

They reached Casa Blanca, a squalid section consisting of a single street; Vidal opened a door with his key; he lighted a match and the pair climbed up to a tiny room with a mattress placed on the bricks.

"You'll have to sleep on the floor," said Vidal. "This bed belongs to my girl."

"All right."

"Take this for your head," and he threw him a woman's rolled-up skirt.

Manuel pillowed his head against the skirt and fell asleep. He awoke at dawn. He opened his eyes and sat down upon the floor without a thought as to where he might be. Through a tiny window came a pale glow. Vidal, stretched out on the mattress, was snoring; beside him slept a girl, breathing with her mouth wide open; long streaks of rouge stained her cheeks.

Manuel felt nauseated by the excess of the previous day's drink; he was deeply dejected. He gave serious thought to his life-problems.

"I'm not made for this," he told himself. "I'm neither a savage like Bizco nor a brazen, carefree lout like Vidal. What am I going to do, then?"

A thousand things occurred to him, for the most part impossible of attainment; he imagined all manner of involved projects. Within him, vaguely, his maternal inheritance, with its respect for all established custom, struggled against his anti-social, vagrant instincts that were fed by his mode of living.

"Vidal and Bizco," he said to himself, "are luckier chaps than myself. They don't hesitate; they have no scruples. They've got a start on their careers…."

In the end, he considered, they would come to the gallows or to the penitentiary; but in the meantime the one experienced no suffering because he was too beastly to know what it meant, and the other because he was too lazy, and both of them let themselves float tranquilly with the stream.

Despite his scruples and his remorse, Manuel spent the summer under the protection of El Bizco and Vidal, living in Casa Blanca with his cousin and his cousin's mistress, a girl who sold newspapers and practised thievery at the same time.

The Society of the Three carried on its operations in the suburbs and Las Ventas, La Prosperidad and the DoÑa Carlota section, the Vallecas bridge and the Four Roads; and if the existence of this society never came to be suspected and never figured in the annals of crime, it is because its misdemeanours were limited to modest burglaries of the sort facilitated by the carelessness of property owners.

The three associates were not content to operate in the suburbs of Madrid; they extended the radius of their activities to the nearby towns and to all places in general where crowds came together.

The market and the small squares were test localities, for the booty might be of a larger quantity but on the other hand the police were especially vigilant.

In general, they exploited the laundries more than any other place.

Vidal, like the clever fellow he was, managed to Convince El Bizco that he was the most gifted of the three for the work. The cross-eyed thug, out of sheer vanity, always undertook the most difficult part of the task, seizing the booty, while Vidal and Manuel kept a sharp lookout.

Vidal would say to Manuel, at the very moment of the robbery, when El
Bizco already had the stolen sheet or chemise under his coat:

"If anyone happens along, don't say a word; nothing. Let them arrest him; we'll shut up tight as clams, absolutely motionless; if they ask anything, we know nothing. Right-o?"

"Agreed."

Sheets, chemises, cloaks and all the other articles they robbed they would sell at the second-hand shop on La Ribera de Curtidores, which Don Telmo used to visit. The owner, employÉ or whatever he was of the shop, would purchase everything the thieves brought, at a very low price.

This "fence," which profited by the oversight of some base officer (for the police lists did not bother with these things), was presided over by a fellow called Uncle PÉrquique. He spent his whole life passing to and fro in front of his establishment. To deceive the municipal guard he sold shoe-laces and bargains that came from the old-clothes shop he conducted.

In the spring this fellow would don a cook's white cap and cry out his tarts with a word that he scarcely pronounced and which he liked to alter constantly. Sometimes the word seemed to be PÉrquique! PÉrquique! but at once it would change sound and be transformed into PÉrqueque or PÁrquique, and these phonetic modifications were extended to infinity.

The origin of this word PÉrquique, which cannot be found in the dictionary, was as follows: The cream tarts sold by the man in the white cap brought five cÉntimos apiece and he would cry "A perra chica! A perra Chica! Only five pesetas apiece! A five-peseta piece!" As a result of his lazy enunciation he suppressed the first A and converted the other two into E, thus transforming his cry into "Perre chique! Perre chique!" Later, Perre chique turned into PÉrquique.

The "fence" guard, a jolly soul, was a specialist in crying wares; he shaded his cries most artistically; he would go from the highest notes to the lowest or vice versa. He would begin, for example, on a very high note, shouting:

"Look here! A real! Only one real! Ladies' and gents' hosiery at a real a pair! Look-a-here now! A real a pair!" Then, lowering his register, he would continue, gravely: "A nice Bayonne waistcoat. A splendid bargain!" And as a finale, he would add in a basso profundo: "Only twenty pesetas!"

Uncle PÉrquique knew the Society of the Three, and he would favour El
Bizco and Vidal with his advice.

Safer and more profitable than dealing with the stolen-goods purchasers of the second-hand shop was the plan followed by Dolores la Escandalosa, who sold the ribbons and the lace that she pilfered to itinerant hawkers who paid very well. But the members of the Society of the Three were eager to get their dividends quickly.

The sale completed, the three would repair to a tavern at the end of
Embajadores avenue, corner of Las Delicias, which they called the
Handkerchief Corner.

The associates were especially careful not to rob twice in the same place and never to appear together in those vicinities where unfavourable surveillance was suspected.

Some days, which did not come often, when theft brought no plunder, the three companions were compelled to work in the Campillo del Mundo Nuevo, scattering heaps of wood and gathering it together with rakes after it had been properly aired and dried.

Another of the Society's means of subsistence was cat-hunting. El Bizco, who was endowed with no talent (his head, as Vidal said, was a salted melon) had a really great gift for catching cats. All he needed was a sack and a stick and he did famously. Every living cat in sight was soon in his game-bag.

The members made no distinction between slender or consumptive cats, or pregnant tabbies. Every puss that came along was devoured with the same ravenous appetite. They would sell the skins in El Rastro; when there were no ready funds, the innkeeper of the Handkerchief Corner would let them have wine and bread on tick, and the Society would indulge in a Sardanapalesque banquet….

One afternoon in August Vidal, who had dined in Las Ventas the previous day with his girl, proposed to his comrades a scheme to rob an abandoned house on the East Road.

The project was discussed in all seriousness, and on the afternoon of the following day the three went out to look the territory over.

It was Sunday, there was a bull-fight; omnibuses and street cars, packed with people, rolled along AlcalÁ Street beside open hacks occupied by harlots in Manila mantles and men of knavish mien.

Outside the bull-ring the throng was denser than ever; from the street cars came pouring streams of people who ran for the entrance; the ticket-speculators rushed upon them with a shout; amidst the black multitude shone the white helmets of the mounted guards. From the inside of the ring came a muffled roar like the tide.

Vidal, El Bizco and Manuel, chagrined that they could not go in, continued on their way, passed Las Ventas and took the road to VicÁlvaro. The south wind, warm and sultry, laid a white sheet of dust over the fields; along the road from different directions drove black and white hearses, for adults and children respectively, followed by gigs containing mourners.

Vidal indicated the house: it stood back from the road and seemed abandoned. It was fronted by a garden with its gate; behind extended an orchard planted with leafless saplings, with a water-mill. The orchard-wall was low and could be scaled with relative facility; no danger threatened; there were neither prying neighbours nor dogs; the nearest house, a marbler's workshop, was more than three hundred metres distant.

From the neighbourhood of the house could be made out the East cemetery, girded by arid yellow fields and barren hillocks; in the opposite direction rose the Bull Ring with its bright banner and the outlying houses of Madrid. The dusty road to the burial-ground ran between ravines and green slopes, among abandoned tile-kilns and excavations that showed the reddish ochre bowels of the earth.

After a minute examination of the house and its surroundings, the three returned to Las Ventas. At night they felt like going back to Madrid, but Vidal suggested that they had better remain where they were, so that they could commit the robbery at dawn of the next day. This was decided upon and they lay down in a tile-kiln, in the passageway formed by two walls of heaped-up bricks.

A cold wind blew violently throughout the night. Manuel was the first to awake and he roused the other two. They left the passageway formed by the walls of bricks. It was still night; from time to time a segment of the moon peered through the dark clouds; now it hid, now it seemed to rest upon the bosom of one of those dense clouds which it silvered so delicately.

In the distance, above Madrid a bright glow began to appear, irradiated by the lights of the city; a few tombstones in the cemetery cast a pallid shimmer.

Dawn was already tinting the heavens with its melancholy flush when the three robbers approached the house.

Manuel's heart was pounding with agitation.

"Ah, by the way," said Vidal. "If by any accident we should be surprised, we mustn't run; we've got to stick right in the house."

El Bizco burst into laughter; Manuel, who knew that his cousin wasn't talking just for the sake of hearing his voice, asked:

"Why?"

"Because if they catch us in the house it's only a balked attempt at robbery, and the punishment isn't severe; on the other hand, if they catch us in flight, that would be a successful robbery and the penalty would be great. So I was told yesterday."

"Well, I'll escape if I can."

"Do as you please."

They scaled the wall; Vidal remained astride of it, leaning forward and watching for signs of any one. Manuel and El Bizco, making their way astraddle along the wall, approached the house and, entrusting their feet to the roof of a shed, jumped down to a terrace with a bower slightly higher than the orchard.

The rear door and the balconies of the ground floor led to this gallery; but both the door and the balconies were so well fastened that it was impossible to open them.

"Can't you make it?" whispered Vidal from his perch.

"No."

"Here, take my knife." And Vidal threw it dawn to the gallery.

Manuel tried to pry the balconies open with the knife but met with no success; El Bizco attempted to force the door with his shoulder and it yielded enough to leave a chink, whereupon Manuel introduced the blade of the knife and worked the catch of the lock back until he could open the door. El Bizco and Manuel then went in.

The lower floor of the house consisted of a vestibule, which formed the bottom of a staircase leading to a corridor, and two rooms whose balconies overlooked the orchard.

The first thing that came to Manuel's head was to open the lock of the door that led to the road.

"Now," said El Bizco to him, after admiring this prudent precaution, "let's see what there is in the place."

They set about calmly and deliberately to take an inventory of the house; there wasn't three ochavos' worth of material in the entire establishment. They were forcing the dining-room closet when of a sudden they heard the bark of a dog close by and they ran in fright to the gallery.

"What's the matter?" they asked Vidal.

"A damned dog's begun to bark and he'll certainly attract somebody's attention."

"Throw a stone at him."

"Where'll I get it?"

"Scare him."

"He'll bark all the more."

"Jump down here, or they'll surely see you."

Vidal jumped down into the orchard. The dog, who must have been a moral animal and a defender of private property, continued his loud barking.

"But the deuce!" growled Vidal at his friends. "Haven't you finished yet?"

"There's nothing!"

The three returned to the rooms trembling; they seized a napkin and stuffed into it whatever they laid hands upon: a copper clock, a white metal candlestick, a broken electric bell, a mercury barometer, a magnet and a toy cannon.

Vidal climbed up the wall with the bundle.

"Here he is," he whispered in fright.

"Who?"

"The dog."

"I'll go down first," mumbled Manuel, and placing the knife between his teeth he let himself drop. The dog, instead of setting upon him, withdrew a short distance, but he continued his barking.

Vidal did not dare to jump down with the bundle in his hands; so he threw it carefully upon some bushes; as it fell, only the barometer broke; the rest was already broken. El Bizco and Vidal then jumped down and the three associates set out on a cross-country run, pursued by the canine defender of private property, who barked at their heels.

"What damned fools we are!" exclaimed Vidal, stopping. "If a guard should see us running like this he'd certainly arrest us."

"And if we pass the city gate they'll recognize what we're carrying in this bundle and we'll be stopped," added Manuel.

The Society halted to deliberate and choose a course of action. The booty was left at the foot of a wall. They lay down on the ground.

"A great many rag-dealers and dustmen pass this way," said Vidal, "on the road to La Elipa. Let's offer this to the first one that comes along."

"For three duros," corrected El Bizco.

"Why, of course."

They waited a while and soon a ragpicker hove into view, bearing an empty sack and headed for Madrid. Vidal called him over and offered to sell their bundle.

"What'll you give us for these things?"

The ragdealer looked over the contents of the bundle, made a second inventory, and then in a jesting tone, with a rough voice, asked:

"Where did you steal this?"

The three associates chorused their protestation, but the ragpicker paid no heed.

"I can't give you more than three pesetas for the whole business."

"No," answered Vidal. "Rather than accept that we'll take the bundle with us."

"All right. The first guard I meet I'll inform against you and tell him that you're carrying stolen goods on your person."

"Come across with the three pesetas," said Vidal. "Take the bundle."

Vidal took the money and the ragdealer, laughing, took the package.

"The first guard we see we'll tell that you've got stolen goods in your sack," shouted Vidal to the ragdealer. The man with the sack got angry and gave chase to the trio.

"Hey there! Come back! Come back!" he bellowed.

"What do you want?"

"Give me my three pesetas and take your bundle."

"Nix. Give us a duro and we won't say a word."

"Like hell."

"Give us only two pesetas more."

"Here's one, you rascal."

Vidal seized the coin that the ragdealer threw at him, and, as none was sure of himself, they made off hurriedly. When they reached Dolores' house in Las Cambroneras, they were bathed in perspiration, exhausted.

They ordered a flask of wine from the tavern, "A rotten bungle we made of it, hang it all," grumbled Vidal.

After the wine was paid for there remained ten reales; this they divided among the three, receiving eighty cÉntimos apiece. Vidal summed up the day's work with the remark that this committing robberies in out-of-the-way spots was all disadvantages and no advantages, for besides exposing oneself to the danger of being sent to the penitentiary almost for life and getting a beating and being chewed up by a moral dog, a fellow ran the risk of being wretchedly fooled.