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Updated: June 8, 2025
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.
"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?"
To Manuel, a man's superiority consisted in his talent, and, above all, in his cunning; to Bizco, courage and strength constituted the sole enviable qualities; the greatest merit of all was to be a real brute, as he would declare with enthusiasm.
"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.
"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?
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.
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.
Vidal was the link between Manuel and Bizco, Bizco hated Manuel, who in turn, not only felt enmity and repugnance for Bizco, but showed this repulsion plainly. Bizco was a brute, an animal deserving of extermination.
Some of the kids from the Paseo de las Acacias had got some sticks and formed a company with a Spanish flag at the head; then I, Bizco, and three or four others, began to throw stones at them and made them retreat. The Corretor, a fellow who lives in our house, and who saw us chasing after them, said to us: 'Say, are you pirates or what? For, if you're pirates you ought to fly the black flag.
One night in the early part of November Manuel stumbled against El Bizco at the entrance to a cafe on La Cabecera del Rastro; the cross-eyed ragamuffin was bent over, almost naked, his arms crossed against his chest, barefoot; he presented a painful picture of poverty and cold. Dolores La Escandalosa had left him for another. "Where can we go to sleep?" Manuel asked him.
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