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La Corrala was a seething, feverish world in little, as busy as an anthill. There people toiled, idled, guzzled, ate and died of hunger; there furniture was made, antiques were counterfeited, old embroideries were fashioned, buns cooked, broken porcelain mended, robberies planned and women's favours traded.
You've had a quarrel; that's all." "I'll wind up by doing something desperate. Take my word for it," muttered Leandro. Neither spoke. They entered La Corrala, climbed up the stairways and walked into Leandro's house. They brought out supper, but Leandro didn't eat; he drank three glasses of water in succession and went out to the gallery.
The permanent neighbours of La Corrala were situated in the floors surrounding the large courtyard. In the other courtyard the majority were transients, and spent, at most, a couple of weeks in the house. Then, as the saying was among them, they spread wing.
La Corrala was a microcosm; it was said that if all the denizens were placed in line they would reach from Embajadores lane to the Plaza del Progreso; it harboured men who were everything and yet nothing: half scholars, half smiths, half carpenters, half masons, half business men, half thieves.
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.
Perico's masterpiece was the Don Tancredo triptych, done in coal on the walls of the narrow entrance lane to La Corrala. This work overwhelmed the neighbours with admiration and astonishment. The first part of the triptych showed the valiant hypnotizer of bulls on his way to the bull-ring, in the midst of a great troop of horsemen; the legend read: "Don Tancredo on his weigh to the bulls."
Despite his triumphs, Perico Rebolledo did not grow vain, nor did he consider himself superior to the men of his generation; his greatest pleasure was to sit down at his father's side in the patio of La Corrala, amidst the works of old clocks, bunches of keys and other grimy, damaged articles, and ponder over the possible utilization of an eye-glass crystal, for example, or a truss, or the rubber bulb of a syringe, or some similar broken, out-of-order contrivance.
Some called this La Corrala, others, El Corralon, still others, La Piltra, and it boasted so many other names that it seemed as if the neighbours spent hours and hours thinking up new designations for it.
And while Ariston kept thinking of nothing but funereal scenes, his brother dreamed of circuses, trapezes and acrobats, hoping that some day fate would send him the means to cultivate his gymnastic talents. La Blasa's Tavern. The frequent quarrels between Leandro and his sweetheart, the Corrector's daughter, very often gave the neighbours of the Corrala food for gossip.
Through certain superstitious considerations none dared to throw her into the street. On his very first night in La Corrala Manuel verified, not without a certain astonishment, the truth of what Vidal had told him.
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