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Updated: July 4, 2025
To add to this deafening roar of cries and shouts, two organs pierced the air with the merry wheeze of their blending, interweaving tones. Manuel, El Bizco and Vidal strolled to the head of El Rastro and turned down again. At the door of Las Americas they met Pastiri sniffing around the place.
According to popular rumour, El Zurro knew what he was about; he had a place at the lower end of the Rastro, a dark, pestilent hovel cluttered with odds and ends, second-hand coats, remnants of old cloth, tapestries, parts of chasubles, and in addition, empty bottles, flasks full of brandy and cognac, seltzer water siphons, shattered clocks, rusty muskets, keys, pistols, buttons, medals and other frippery.
Senor Custodio took out his finest apparel: the new fedora, new although it was more than thirty years old; his coat of doubled cloth, excellent for the boreal regions, and a cane with a horn handle, bought in El Rastro; the ragdealer's wife wore a flowered kerchief, while Manuel made a most ridiculous appearance in a hat that was taken from the shop and protruded about a palm's length before his eyes, a winter suit that suffocated him and a pair of tight shoes.
"Oh, I'm prepared," said the lady, with a slight foreign accent, showing a revolver of small calibre. Roberto paid, despite Leandro's protests, and they left the cafe. Coming out on the Plaza del Rastro, they walked down the Ribera de Curtidores as far as the Ronda de Toledo. "If the lady wishes to see the house we live in, this is the one," said Leandro.
Some drank till they were intoxicated; others swallowed the steaming blood of the cattle slaughtered for their suppers, and then, being sick from drunkenness, they cast it up again, and were besmeared with filth and gore. In the morning they started for the scene of the murder, with orders to follow the rastro, or track, even if it led them to Chile.
His narrow skull, his powerful jaw, his blubber-lip, his stupid glance, lent him a look of repellant brutality and animality. A primitive man, he kept his dagger bought in El Rastro sharp, guarding it as a sacred object. If he ever happened across a cat or dog, he would enjoy torturing it to death with oft-repeated stabs. His speech was obscene, abounding in barbarities and blasphemies.
Almost every morning the ragdealers would forgather at the head of El Rastro, to exchange impressions and used articles. El Conejo would learn beforehand just what was needed by the stand merchants, and he would buy the articles of the rag men, selling them in turn to the merchants; between this bartering and selling he always came out the gainer....
In the morning they started for the scene of the murder, with orders to follow the "rastro," or track, even if it led them to Chile. We subsequently heard that the wild Indians had escaped into the great Pampas, and from some cause the track had been missed. One glance at the rastro tells these people a whole history.
On every island there were tracks; and as on the former excursion "el rastro de los Indios" had been the subject of conversation, so in this was "el rastro del tigre." The wooded banks of the great rivers appear to be the favourite haunts of the jaguar; but south of the Plata, I was told that they frequented the reeds bordering lakes: wherever they are, they seem to require water.
"I don't know a thing; I've seen nothing," he would answer, laughing. "I don't know anything." And that was all anybody could get out of him. As Manuel got to know El Conejo better he felt for him, if not esteem, at least a certain respect because of his intelligence. This ragman jester was so cunning that often he deceived his colleagues of El Rastro, who were far from being a set of fools.
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