The Municipal Dungeons—The Returned Soldier—The Convent Soup Several times Manuel, Jesús and Don Alonso slept in churches. One night, after the trio had retired in a chapel of San Sebastian, crowded with benches, the sexton threw them out and handed them over to a couple of officers. Don Alonso tried to show the guards that he was not only a respectable person, but an important one as well. While he was thus engaged in argument, Jesús escaped by the Plaza de Santa Ana.
“You can tell all that to the court,” answered the guard to the Snake-Man’s protestations.
They made their way through a nearby street and entered by a gate before which burned a red lamp. They climbed a narrow stairway into a room where two clerks sat scribbling. The clerks ordered Don Alonso and Manuel to be seated upon a bench, which both made haste to do most humbly.
“You, the older, what’s your name?” asked one of the clerks.
“I?” said the Snake-Man.
“Yes, you. Are you deaf, or an idiot?”
“No. No, sir.”
“Well, you look it. What’s your name?”
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“Alonso de Guzmán Calderón y Téllez.”
“Age?”
“Fifty-six.”
“Married or single?”
“Bachelor.”
“Profession?”
“Circus artist.”
“Where do you live?”
“Up to a few days ago....”
“Where do you live now, I’m asking you, you imbecile.”
“Why, at present....”
“Write ‘without fixed residence,’” suggested the other clerk.
They then registered Manuel, whereupon he and the older man returned to their benches without a word, deeply speculative upon the fate that awaited them.
Officials of the department strolled around the room, chatting; now and then would be heard the tinkling of a bell.
Soon the door opened and a young woman came in with a mantilla over her shoulders. Her eyes were filled with great agitation.
She went over to the two clerks.
“Can you send somebody over ... to my house.... A physician ...? My mother just fell and broke her head.”
The clerk blew out a puff from his cigar and made no reply. Then, turning about so as to face the woman, and staring at her from crown to toe, he answered with an epical coarseness and bestiality:
[220]
“That belongs to the Emergency Hospital. We’ve got nothing to do with such cases.” He turned away and continued to smoke. The woman’s eyes roved in fright through the room; she finally decided to leave, mumbled good night in a breathless voice to which nobody replied, and disappeared.
“The ink-spilling pettifoggers! The beasts!” muttered Don Alonso in a low voice. “How much would it have cost them to send some guard to accompany that woman to the Emergency Hospital!”
Manuel and the Snake-Man spent more than two hours on the bench. At the end of this time the guards escorted them to another room in which was a tall man with a black beard combed in chulo fashion; he looked like a gambler or a croupier.
“Who are these persons?” asked the man, in an Andalusian accent.... As he twirled his moustaches, a diamond ring on his finger shot dazzling gleams.
“They’re the fellows who’ve been sleeping in the San Sebastian church,” said the guard. “They haven’t any home.”
“Begging your pardon,” interrupted Don Alonso. “By sheer accident....”
“Well, we’ll give them a home for a fortnight,” said the tall man.
Before Don Alonso could utter a word one of the guards shoved him rudely out of the room. Manuel followed him.
The two guards made them descend the stairways and put them into a dark room where, after some groping, they located a bench.
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“Well, better times are coming,” said Don Alonso, sitting down and heaving a deep sigh.
Manuel, despite the fact that the situation was by no means a comical one, was seized with such an impulse to laugh that he could not contain it.
“What are you laughing at, sonny?” asked Don Alonso.
Manuel could not explain the reason for his laughter; but after a long siege of this hilarity he was left in a funereal mood.
“What would Jesús say if he were here!” muttered Manuel. “In the house of God, where all are equal, it is a crime to enter and rest. The sexton hands a fellow over to the guards; the guards thrust a fellow into a dark cell. And who’s to know what they’re going to do to us! I’m afraid they’ll take us off to prison, if, for that matter, they don’t hang us altogether.”
“Don’t talk nonsense. If they’d only give us a bite to eat!” moaned Don Alonso.
“They must be considering that.”
It must have been about one or two in the morning when the door to this pig-pen was opened. The Snake-Man and Manuel were led by two guards into the street.
“Say, where are you taking us?” inquired Don Alonso, a little scared.
“Keep on moving ahead,” replied the guard.
“This is an outrage,” muttered Don Alonso.
“You walk ahead, unless you want to march tied elbow to elbow,” snarled the guard.
They crossed the Puerta del Sol, continued[222] through the Calle Mayor and stopped before the Municipal Police Headquarters. To the left of the causeway, by a narrow stairway, they had to descend to a room with a low ceiling which was lighted by an oil lamp. There were a number of high cots where ten or a dozen guards were asleep in a row, with their clothes and shoes on.
From this room they descended another tiny stairway to a very narrow corridor, one of the sides of which was divided into two cages with huge gratings. Into one of these they thrust Don Alonso and Manuel, locking the gate after them.
A man and a knot of gamins surrounded them curiously.
“This is an outrage,” shouted Don Alonso. “We’ve done nothing that gives them a right to imprison us.”
“Neither did I,” grumbled a young beggar who, according to report, had been caught asking an alms. “Besides, it’s impossible to stay here.”
“What’s the trouble?” asked Manuel.
“One of these fellows has made a mess. He’s sick and naked. They ought to take him to the hospital. He says they’ve robbed him of his clothes. The kids, though, say he gambled them away in the cell.”
“And so he did,” declared one of the ragamuffins. “We were sent up for two weeks. When we left prison, just as we had reached the gate, they grabbed us all again and brought us here.”
By the light from the corridor could be made out, in the rear of that cage, several men on the floor.
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Thrown upon a bench near the wall, naked, his legs curled up to his belly, the sick man was huddled into a threadbare cape; every move of his laid bare some part of his person.
“Water!” he begged, in a thin voice.
“We’ve already asked the sergeant for some,” said the beggar. “But he doesn’t bring it.”
“This is savagery!” roared the Snake-Man. “This is barbaric.”
As no one paid any attention to Don Alonso, he decided to subside into silence.
“That guy over there,” added the ragamuffin with a laugh, “has syphilis and the mange.”
Don Alonso sank deeper than ever into his melancholy and uttered not a word.
“And what are they going to do with us?” asked Manuel.
“They’ll shoot us off to prison for a couple of weeks,” answered the beggar.
“Do they eat there?” asked the Snake............