“Reckoning principal and interest, to a million
pounds sterling.”
“And is that much?”
“Without allowing for exchange, about one hundred
million reales; allowing for exchange, a hundred and
thirty.”
Manuel burst out laughing.
“And all for you alone?”
“For me and my sisters. You can just imagine,
when I collect that sum, what these cheap carriages
and such things will mean to me. Nothing at all.”
“And now, in the meantime, you haven’t
a peseta.”
“Such is life. You’ve got to wait.
It can’t be helped. Now, when nobody believes
me, I enjoy the recognition of my own strength more
than I’ll enjoy my subsequent triumph. I
have reared a whole mountain; a dense mist prevents
people from seeing it; tomorrow the clouds will scatter
and the mountain will stand forth with snow-crowned
crests.”
Manuel thought it silly to be talking of all this
opulence when neither of them had enough to buy a
meal. Pretending important matters, he took leave
of Roberto.
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
Andalucia 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.
