An Unlikely Tale—Manuel's Sisters—Life's Baffling Problems.

It was already the beginning of autumn; Leandro, on the advice of
SeÑor Ignacio, was living with his aunt on Aguila street; Milagros
continued keeping company with Lechuguino. Manuel gave up going with
Vidal and Bizco on their skirmishes and joined the company of
Rebolledo and the two Aristas.

The elder, AristÓn, entertained him and frightened him out of his wits with lugubrious tales of cemeteries and ghosts; the little Aristas continued his gymnastic exercises; he had constructed a springboard by placing a plank upon a heap of sand and there he practised his death-defying leaps.

One day Alonso, Tabuenca's aid, appeared in the CorralÓn accompanied by a woman and a little girl.

The woman seemed old and weary; the tot was long and thin and pale.
Don Alonso found them a place in a dingy corner of the small patio.

They brought with them a small bundle of clothes, a dirty poodle with a very intelligent look, and a monkey tied to a chain; in a short while they had to sell the monkey to some gipsies that lived in the Quinta de Goya.

Don Alonso called Manuel and said to him:

"Run off and hunt up Don Roberto, and tell him that there's a woman here named Rosa, and that she is or has been a circus acrobat; she must be the one he's looking for."

At once Manuel went off to the house; Roberto had left the place and
Manuel did not know his whereabouts.

Don Alonso carne frequently to the CorralÓn and conversed with the mother and the girl. On the window-sill of their tiny home the mother and the daughter had a little box with a sprig of mint planted in it; although they watered it every morning, it scarcely grew, for there was no sun. One day the woman and child disappeared together with their pretty poodle; they left nothing in their quarters except a worn-out, broken tambourine.

Don Alonso got into the habit of visiting the CorralÓn; he would exchange a few words with Rebolledo, he of the modernist barber-shop who chattered away, and would witness the gymnastic prowess of Aristas. One afternoon the boy's mother asked the former Snake-Man whether the child showed any real aptitude.

Don Alonso grew serious and subjected the boy's performance to a searching examination, so that he could form an estimate of the youngster's abilities and give him a little useful advice.

It was really curious to see the former circus-player give his orders; he went through them with august seriousness.

"One, two, three…. Hop-la!… Once more, now. At position. The knees near the head … nails down … One, two … one, two…. Hop-la!"

Don Alonso was not at all displeased with little Aristas' showing, but he emphasized the unavoidable necessity of continual hard practise.

"Whoever wants something has to pay the price, my little fellow," he said. "And the profession of gymnast isn't within everybody's reach."

To the mother he confided that her son might some day be a fine circus artist.

Then Don Alonso, finding himself before a numerous public, would begin to talk volubly of the United States, of Mexico, and the South American republics.

"Why don't you tell us stories of the countries you've been to?" asked
Perico Rebolledo.

"No, not now; I have to go out with the Infiel Tower."

"Ah! Go on, tell us," they would all implore.

Don Alonso pretended to be importuned by the request; but when he got going, he spun one yarn after the other in such numbers that they almost had to beg him to stop.

"And didn't you ever see in those countries men who had been killed by lions?" asked AristÓn.

"No."

"Then there aren't any lions?"

"Lions in cages … yes, a lot."

"But I mean at liberty, in the fields."

"In the fields? No."

Don Alonso seemed rather provoked to make these confessions.

"No other wild beasts, either?"

"There are no longer any wild beasts in the civilized countries," said the barber.

"Why, see here, there certainly are wild beasts over there," and Don Alonso, wrinkling his features into a jesting grimace, winked slily at Rebolledo. "Once a terrible thing happened to me; we were sailing by an island when we heard cannon shots. It was the garrison firing off a salvo."

"But what are you laughing at?" asked AristÓn.

"Nervousness…. Well, as I was saying, I went up to the captain of the ship and asked his permission to let me land on the island. 'Very well,' he said to me, 'take the Golondrina, if you wish,'—Golondrina was the name of the canoe; 'but you must be back within a couple of hours.'

"I set off in my boat and hala! hala! … I reached the island, which was thickly planted with plane-trees and cocoanut-trees, and I disembarked on the beach into which the Golondrina had thrust its prow."

Here Don Alonso's features were convulsed with the impossibility of restraining his laughter; he shot a glance at the barber, accompanied by a confidential wink.

"I land," he continued, "then I start running, and soon, paf! … in the face; a huge mosquito, and then, paf! … another mosquito, until I was surrounded by a swarm of the animals, each one as large as a bat. With a scarred face I begin to run for the beach so as to escape in my canoe, when I catch sight of a lobster right next to the Golondrina; but what a lobster I He must have been as big as a bear; he was black, and shiny, and went chug, chug, chug, like an automobile. No sooner did the creature set eyes on me than he began to rush upon me with loud outcries; I ran for a cocoanut tree, and one, two, three, I shinnied right up the trunk to the top. The lobster approaches the tree, stops meditatively, and decides to shinny up after me,—which he did."

"An awful situation," commented the barber.

"Just imagine," replied Don Alonso, blinking. "I only had a little stick in my hands, and I defended myself against the lobster by hitting him in the knuckles; but he, roaring with rage, and eyes shining, continued climbing. I couldn't get any farther, and I was thinking of coming down; but as I made a movement, biff!… The son of a sea-cook grabs me with one of his many legs by the coat and remains there hanging from me. The cussed critter was as heavy as lead; he was already reaching up after me with another claw when I remembered that I had in my vest pocket a toothpick that I had bought in Chicago, and that it had a knife attachment; I opened this, and in a moment slashed off the tail of my coat, and cataplun! … down from a height of at least forty metres the lobster fell to the ground. I can't understand how he wasn't killed. There he began to cry and howl, and go round and round the cocoanut tree in which I was, glaring at me with his terrible eyes. Whereupon I—for being a gymnast had to come in handy to a fellow,—began to leap from one cocoanut tree to the next and from one plane-tree to the other, while the lobster kept following me, howling away with the tail of my coat in his teeth.

"Reaching near the beach I find that the tide has gone out and that the Golondrina is more than fifty metres above the waves. 'I'll wait,' I said to myself. But at this moment I see, thrusting its head out from the tree-top that I was then on, a serpent; I seize a branch, swing up and back for a while so that I can land as far as possible from the lobster, when the damned branch breaks on me and I lose my support."

"And what did you do then?" asked the barber.

"I took two somersaults in the air at a hazard."

"That was a useful precaution."

"Certainly I thought I was lost. On the contrary, I was saved."

"But how?" asked El AristÓn.

"Very simple. For as I fell, with the branch in my hand, I landed plump on the lobster, and as I came down with such a high velocity, I pierced him right through with the branch and left him nailed to the beach. The animal roared like a bull; I jumped into the Golondrina and made my escape. But my vessel had sailed away. I began to row, but there wasn't a sail in sight. 'I'm lost,' says I to myself. But thanks to the lobster, I was rescued…."

"The lobster?" asked everybody in amazement.

"Yes sirree; a steamboat that was on its course many miles off, on hearing the lobster's wails thought that this might be the signal of some shipwrecked crew; it drew near the island, picked me up, and in a few days I was back with my company."

As he finished his tale Don Alonso made a most expressive grimace, and left with his Infiel Tower for the street. Aristas, Rebolledo and Manuel applauded the old circus man's stories, and the apprentice gymnast felt more determined than ever to continue practicing upon the trapeze and the springboard, so that some day he might behold those distant lands of which Don Alonso spoke.

A few weeks later there occurred one of the events that left upon Manuel the deepest impression of his entire career. It was Sunday; the boy went to his mother's place, and helped her, as usual, to wash the dishes. Then came Petra's daughters, and they spent the whole afternoon quarrelling over a skirt or a petticoat that the younger had bought with the elder sister's money.

Manuel, bored by the chatter, invented some excuse and left the house.

The rain was coming down in bucketfuls; Manuel reached the Puerta del Sol, entered the cafÉ de Levante and sat down near the window. The people outside, dressed in their Sunday clothes, scampered by to places of refuge in the wide doorways of the big square; the coaches rumbled hurriedly on amidst the downpour; umbrellas came and went and their black tops, glistening with rain, collided and intertwined like a shoal of tortoises. Presently it cleared up and Manuel left the cafÉ; it was still too early to return to the house; he crossed the Plaza de Oriente and stopped on the Viaduct, watching from that point the people strolling along Segovia street.

In the sky, which was becoming serene, floated a few dark clouds with silver linings, resembling mountains capped with snow; blown by the wind, they scurried along with outspread wings; the bright sun illumined the fields with its golden rays; resplendent in the clouds, it reddened them like live coals; a few cloudlets scudded through space, white flakes of foam. The hillocks and dales of the Madrilenian suburbs were not yet mottled with green grass; the trees of the Campo del Moro stood out reddish, skeleton-like, amidst the foliage of the evergreens; dark rolls of vapour rose along the ground, soon to be swept away by the wind. As the clouds passed by overhead, the plain changed hue; successively it graded from purple into leaden-grey, yellow, copper; the Extremadura cart-road, with the rows of grey, dirty houses on each side, traced a broken line. This severe, melancholy landscape of the Madrilenian suburbs, with their bleak, cold gloominess, penetrated into Manuel's soul.

He left the Viaduct balcony, sauntered through several narrow lanes, until he reached Toledo Street, walked down the Ronda and turned in toward his house. He was getting near the Paseo de las Acacias when he overheard two old women talking about a crime that had just been committed at the corner of Amparo Street.

"And just as they were about to catch him, he killed himself," one of them was saying.

Out of curiosity Manuel hastened his step, and approached a group that was discussing the event at the entrance to the CorralÓn.

"Where did this fellow come from that killed himself?" asked Manuel of
Aristas.

"Why! It was Leandro!"

"Leandro!"

"Yes, Leandro, who killed Milagros and then killed himself."

"But … is this really so?"

"Yes, man. Just a moment ago,"

"Here? In the house?"

"On this very spot."

Manuel, quaking with fear, ran up the stairs to the gallery. The floor was still stained with the pool of blood. SeÑor Zurro, the only witness to the drama, was telling the story to a group of neighbours.

"I was here, reading the paper," said the old-clothes man, "and Milagros and her mother were talking to Lechuguino. The engaged couple were enjoying themselves, when up comes Leandro to the gallery; he was about to open the door to his rooms when, before he went in, he suddenly turned to Milagros. 'Is that your sweetheart?' he said to her. It seemed to me that he was as pale as a corpse. 'Yes,' she answered. 'All right. Then I've come here to end things once and for all,' he shouted. 'Which of the two do you prefer, him or me?' 'Him,' shrieks Milagros. 'Then it's all up,' cried Leandro in a hoarse voice. 'I'm going to kill you.' After that I can't recall anything clearly; it was all as swift as a thunderbolt; when I ran over to them, the girl was gushing blood from her mouth; the proof-reader's wife was screaming and Leandro was chasing Lechuguino with his knife opened."

"I saw him leave the house," added an old woman. "He was waving his blood-stained knife in the air; my husband tried to stop him; but he backed like a bull, lunged for him and came near killing him."

"And where are my uncle and aunt?" asked Manuel.

"Over at the Emergency Hospital. They followed the stretcher."

Manuel went down into the patio.

"Where are you going?" asked AristÓn.

"To the Emergency Hospital."

"I'll go along with you."

The two boys were joined by a machine shop apprentice who lived in the
Corrala.

"I saw him kill himself," said the apprentice. "We were all running after him, hollering, 'Catch him! Stop him!' when two guards appeared on Amparo Street, drew their swords and blocked his way. Then Leandro bounded back, made his way through the people and landed here again; he was going to escape through the Paseo de las Acacias when he stumbled against La Muerte, who began to call him names. Leandro stopped, looked in every direction; nobody dared to get near him; his eyes were blazing. Suddenly he jabbed the knife into his left side I don't know how many times. When one of the guards seized him by the arm he collapsed like an empty sack."

The commentary of AristÓn and the apprentice proved endless; the boys arrived at the Emergency Hospital and were told that the corpses, those of Milagros and Leandro, had been taken to the Morgue. The three gamins walked down to the Canal, to the little house near the river's edge, which Manuel and the urchins of his gang had so often visited, trying to peep into the windows. A knot of people had gathered about the door.

"Let's have a look," said AristÓn.

There was a window, wide open, and they peered in. Stretched upon a marble slab lay Leandro; his face was the color of wax, and his features bore an expression of proud defiance. At his side SeÑora Leandro stood wailing and vociferating; SeÑor Ignacio, with his son's hand clasped in his own, was weeping silently. At another table a group surrounded Milagros' corpse. The man in charge of the morgue ordered them all out. As the proofreader and SeÑor Ignacio met at the entrance they exchanged looks and then averted their glance; the two mothers, on the other hand, glared at each other in terrible hatred.

SeÑor Ignacio arranged that they should not sleep at the CorralÓn but in Aguila Street. In that place, at the home of SeÑora Jacoba, there was a horrible confusion of weeping and cursing. The three women blamed Milagros for everything; she was a common strumpet, an evil woman, a selfish, wretched ingrate.

One of the neighbours of the Corrala indicated a strange detail: when the public doctor came to examine Milagros and remove her corset so that he might determine the wound, he found a tiny medallion containing a portrait of Leandro.

"Whose picture is this?" he is reported to have asked.

"The fellow who killed her," they answered. This was exceedingly strange, and it fascinated Manuel; many a time he had thought that Milagros really loved Leandro; this fairly confirmed his conjectures.

During all that night SeÑor Ignacio, seated on a chair, wept without cease; Vidal was scared through and through, as was Manuel. The presence of death, seen so near, had terrorized the two boys.

And while inside the house everybody was crying, in the streets the little girls were dancing around in a ring. And this contrast of anguish and serenity, of grief and calm, imparted to Manuel a confused sense of life. It must, he thought, be something exceedingly sad, and something weirdly inscrutable.