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For several days Manuel slept upon the benches of the Plaza de Oriente and on the chairs of La Castellana and Recoletos. It was getting toward the end of summer and he could still sleep in the open. A few centimos that he earned by carrying valises from the stations helped him to exist, though badly, until October.
"There's no difficulty. You know that the natural tendency of the market is to rise." "To rise and to fall," interrupted Alzugaray. "No, only to rise." "I don't see it." "The general tendency of the market is to rise, because having to fall eighty centimos, the value of the coupon, every quarter, if the market didn't rise to offset that loss, shares would reach zero...."
Perquique! but at once it would change sound and be transformed into Perqueque or Parquique, and these phonetic modifications were extended to infinity. The origin of this word Perquique, which cannot be found in the dictionary, was as follows: The cream tarts sold by the man in the white cap brought five centimos apiece and he would cry "A perra chica! A perra Chica! Only five pesetas apiece!
Carriages, horses, carts came rattling by; the itinerant hawkers cried their wares from their sidewalk stands; there was a deafening din.... At the end of one street, against the coppery splendour of the dusk stood out the tapering outlines of a belfry. "And don't you ever see Vidal?" asked Manuel. "No. See here, Have you got any money?" blurted El Bizco. "Twenty or thirty centimos at most."
After a short stay he would be off; the following week arrived a dealer in cloth bargains, crying at the top of his lungs his silk handkerchiefs at ten and fifteen centimos; another day came an itinerant hawker, his cases laden with pins, combs and brooches, or some purchaser of gold and silver braid.
After the wine was paid for there remained ten reales; this they divided among the three, receiving eighty centimos apiece.
The woman brought the glasses in a filthy tray, and set them upon the table. Leandro pulled out sixty centimos. "They're ten apiece," corrected the woman in ill-humoured tones. "How's that?" "Because this is outside the limits." "All right; take whatever it comes to." The woman left twenty centimos on the table and returned to the counter.
He would say to Manuel: "Can you imagine how much money all the refuse that comes from Madrid is worth?" "No." "Then figure it out. At seventy centimos per arroba, the millions of arrobas that it must amount to in a year.... Spread this over the suburbs and have the waters of the Manzanares and the Lozoya irrigating all these lands, and you'd see a world of gardens and orchards everywhere."
The paper that he thus stored up was purchased by the pasteboard factories; they gave him from thirty or forty centimos per arroba. The manufacturers required the paper to be perfectly dry, and Senor Custodio dried it in the sun.
Dona Violante, whenever she pilfered a few centimos from her daughter would dispatch Manuel to the store for a package of cigarettes, and give him a cigar for the errand. "Smoke it here," she would say. "Nobody'll see you." Manuel would sit down upon a trunk and the old lady, a cigarette in her mouth and blowing smoke through her nostrils, would recount adventures from the days of her glory.
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