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Updated: June 8, 2025
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.
There were times when Bizco and Vidal had gone through intense want, existing upon cats and rats and seeking shelter in the caves upon San Blas hill, of Madrid Moderno, and in the Eastern Cemetery. But by this time the pair knew their business. "And work? Nothing?" asked Manuel. "Work! ... Let the cat work," scoffed Vidal.
The white illumination of the arc-lights had not yet been turned on; the silhouettes of a number of men who were stirring with long shovels the mass of asphalt in the caldrons danced diabolically up and down before the flaming mouths of the furnaces. Manuel approached one of the caldrons when suddenly he heard his name called. It was El Bizco; he was seated upon some paving blocks.
He knew almost everybody in the district. Manuel did not care for Bizco's company; Bizco sought only to hobnob with thieves. He was forever taking Manuel and Vidal to haunts frequented by bandits and low types, but since Vidal seemed to think it all right, Manuel never objected.
A few lasses of ten to fourteen were chatting in a group. Bizco, Vidal and the rest of the gang gave chase to them around the patio. The girls, half naked, dashed off, shrieking and shouting insults. Bizco boasted that he had violated some of the girls. "They're all puchereras like the ones on Ceres Street," said one of the Pirates. "So they make pots, do they?" inquired Manuel. "Yes.
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.
"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."
Vidal came to be the cadet for four girls who lived together in Cuatro Caminos and were named, respectively, La Mella, La Goya, La Rabanitos and Engracia; they had come to form, together with Vidal, El Bizco and Manuel another Society, though this one was anonymous.
Manuel now made the acquaintance of El Bizco, a cross-eyed species of chimpanzee, square-shaped, husky, long-armed, with misshapen legs and huge red hands. "This is my cousin," added Vidal, introducing Manuel to the gang; and then, to make him seem interesting, he told how Manuel had come to the house with two immense lumps that he had received in a Homeric struggle with a man.
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...."
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