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An occasional dog would come running by, sniffing at the offals lying around and with a snort of disgust passing on toward the neighboring porticos, where the butchers were holding forth. The fish-women who had been playfully twitting each other an hour before in their tartanas or at the customs house now sat watching each other, whenever a marketer came along, with hostile jealousy.
The teamsters were collecting their baskets, large and small, and piling them up in the tails of their rickety tartanas. Tia Picores was putting on her checked shawl and chatting, in the middle of the portico, with a group of old women of her time who went shares with her in paying for a wagon.
It was broad day, and the light, now harsh and blue, was throwing every object into a clean-cut outline up against the leaden sky, when, with a lazy tinkle of distant bells, four tartanas hove in view, making their way toward the Sea-Bridge, drawn by wretched nags that seemed able to keep their feet only because the drivers, huddled low in their seats, their coat collars turned up over their ears, kept pulling at the reins.
The four tartanas pulled up in front of the office; and down over their steps numberless worn-out shoes, undarned stockings, dirty, protruding heels began to come, under a flutter of skirts caught up in front over yellow petticoats with black arabesques. The baskets were set down in line near the platform of the scales, each covered with a wet cloth.
When the tartanas reached the Pescadería the women porters there hurried out to meet them and help the sailors' wives unload. Servile before these latter, whom they regarded as bosses, they trooped in line through the narrow cell-like doors of the fish-portico, fetid air-holes, through which the stenches from inside poured out.
Along the roads through this mushroom city, that vanished like a fog with the first gales of autumn, street and steam cars dashed full speed, whistling to scare you before they crushed you flat; or tartanas creaked along, their red curtains flapping like banners of pure joy; or crowds of people pressed their way, with the murmur of many, many voices.
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