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I would sooner talk of the lower class, not only of Madrid but of all Spain. The Spaniard of the lower class has much more interest for me, whether manolo, labourer, or muleteer. He is not a common being; he is an extraordinary man.
Only Amadeo who just a bit after the discovery of the body had discovered Manolo washing a blood-stained handkerchief in a water-jar was certain that his son had done this murder. Once more the sinister words of Don Adolfo recurred to his mind, bruising him, maddening him, seeming to bore into his very brain: "He does not seem to be your son, at all!"
A good many times he had told Zureda how much he wanted to find some respectable house where he could live in a decent, private way, paying perhaps four or five pesetas a day for board and room. "Suppose, now," went on Amadeo, "that Manolo should pay five pesetas a day; that's thirty duros a month thirty good dollars and the house costs us eight dollars.
The good neighbor's grief was terrible, even to the point of the grotesque. "Is it true, what people are saying?" he asked, weeping. "Is it true?" The wounded man had hardly strength enough to press his hand a very little. "Good-by, Adolfo," he stammered. "Now I know what I had to know. You told me, but I couldn't believe it. But now I know you were right. Manolo was not my son "
The engineer already had a plan laid out, that made him talk this way. Among the people who had come to see him, while he had been sick, was one Manolo Berlanga, whose friendship with him had been brotherly indeed. This Berlanga had a job at a silversmith's shop in the Paseo de San Vincente. He had no relatives, and made rather decent wages.
Threats and entreaties, as well as all kinds of wise advice, were shattered against the invincibly gypsy-like will of the young fellow. "If you don't want to support me," Manolo often used to say, "let me go. Kick me out. I'll get by, on my own hook." Often and often Manolo vanished from the little town. He stayed away for days at a time, engaged in mysterious adventures.
Don Adolfo continued with rough frankness: "Your Manolo is a pretty tough nut, and he gives his poor mother a mighty hard time. She's a saint, that woman. I think he even beats her. Well, I won't tell you any more." Pale and trembling, putting down a great desire to weep which had just come over him, Amadeo asked: "Is it possible? Can he be as bad as that?"
"I've brought you out here," said he, "to tell you you're never coming back to my house. Understand me?" Manolo nodded "Yes." "I'm throwing you out," continued the old man. "Get that, too! I'm throwing you out, because I won't deal with a dog like you. I won't have one anywhere around! I tell you this not as father to son, but as one man to another, so you can come back at me if you want to.
That run was terrible indeed, packed full of inward struggles and of battles with the rebellious locomotive an infernal run that Zureda remembered all his life. With due regard for the prudent scheme that he had mapped out, the engineer set himself to observing the way his wife and Manolo had of talking to each other.
They fell into each other's arms, weeping with that enormous joy and pain felt by all who part in youth and meet again in old age, with the whole of life behind them. After the greeting with his wife was at an end, the engineer embraced Manolo. "What a fine fellow you are!" he stammered, when the beating of his heart, growing a little more calm, let him speak. Don Adolfo said good-by.
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