“I don’t have to put up with bad treatment, because if I don’t like it, I can go away.”
“Oh no, you can’t. Don’t think it is so easy to get away.”
“Don’t you think so? Wait and see.”
His superior was angered by this impertinence, but after that he did not scold him so often.
Ricardo took up printing at the orphanage. Jacinto did not study anything. His main occupation was to observe, but seemingly without paying much attention. One could only judge all he knew by his remarks. Although the younger, he was the leader of the two and his brother did anything that he told him.
One day Jacinto said to his brother: “I don’t like this place. I don’t like any place where they tell you what to do as if one did not know what one likes to do, where there is no time to loaf, and where they even tell you the time when you can play. I miss the times we used to have at the portería. I am going away. If you want to come, we can leave together.”
Ricardo hesitated: “After all, we learn something here and they take care of us. I have learned printing.”
“You have learned it already, haven’t you? Why do you want to stay any longer then? At least you know a trade now, which is more than I know. I am going away tonight. If you want to go, all right.”
And Ricardo, although afraid, followed his brother.
They found things a little harder than they thought, as is usually the case. They learned that eating was something extraordinary, and they slept on the rope. This is a special device to accommodate the least exacting of sleepers. It consists of a hall with a rope stretched from one end to the other. The men lay their coats on this rope and then their heads on the coats and thus go to sleep. In the morning the keeper loosens the rope and the sleepers are rudely but efficiently awakened by the consequent fall.
Jacinto did not mind this kind of life and even thrived on it. He had discovered all kinds of methods to obtain money without working. He learned to imitate cripples and beg for alms. He found a café where they kept a mechanical piano. Jacinto sat at the door and listened to the jingling music with avidity. The piano constantly played old selections from operas, musical reviews and zarzuelas. It played things from La Gran Via, among them, the “Jota de los Ratas” which was Jacinto’s favorite. He liked the impudence of that piece; he had known it for a long time and it reminded him of his brother whom he had not seen now for some time. He remembered singing it with Ricardo. He would step out and recite:
“Soy el rata primero.”
Then Ricardo echoed: “. y yo el segundo,” but as they never had another boy with enough memory to take the part of the third pickpocket, Jacinto always had to take it and add: “. y yo el tercero,” and that always made them laugh and they always stopped there.
That music reminded him of his brother and it reminded him of himself. He felt a grossly obvious affinity between that and his own and his brother’s life, and then he did not hear the music anymore and thought of his childhood and felt something surging within him, very much like pride, pride in things for which inferior people felt shame, and he felt that he was very much like those three ratas who jingled and made merry inside the mechanical piano, because they did not dare cry as he dared smile now, to assert his contempt for the sadness that was eating his heart away.
In that café there was also a machine where one inserted five centimes and by pressing a lever one might or might not get one peseta. He studied this machine and discovered that the peseta always came out after forty five-centime coins had been inserted.
He waited and observed the people come in and out of the café and insert coins in the machine. He counted carefully and when the count reached high enough, he stepped up, inserted up to forty and pocketed the peseta.
Then one day, a man who had missed repeatedly and then seen Jacinto win the coveted silver coin approached him:
“Listen, boy, how did you do it?” The man spoke in a melodious voice, used very high heels and licked his lips when he spoke.
Jacinto looked at him impudently: “Brains, my dear sir, brains.”
“You seem quite fresh, my lad.”
“I am quite young yet, am I not?”
“You certainly are, but I’ll bet you know a great deal already. I wish you would tell me some of the tricks you know.”
“It is a pleasure, sir, to enlighten those who seek knowledge.”
The man laughed and took Jacinto by the arm: “Let’s have some vermouth together and then you can tell me everything. I wouldn’t ask a boy of your age to drink but I feel differently about you.”
“I know you don’t, but your generosity overwhelms me just the same,” and Jacinto bowed and headed for the bar.
“We had better sit at that table. They can serve us there and we can talk more easily.”
Not so long after this incident, Jacinto could be seen very well-dressed— in fact, overdressed — and to all lights having solved the problem of living.
As to Ricardo, he had not been able to endure the life Jacinto led after they left the orphanage. He went back to the portería, but the woman was no longer there and he returned the same way he had come. He went from one place to another. He worked in some printing plants but the air he inhaled there only served to weaken his lungs further. He sold newspapers and did odd jobs, his health failing him.
One afternoon when he was at Recoletos, hungry, bewildered, not knowing where to turn, he met his brother strolling arm in arm with an elderly man.
“Lo and behold!” exclaimed Jacinto, opening his arms. “If it isn’t my dear brother who has become visible once more.”
Ricardo opened his arms also and advanced, but then stopped short. He looked at his brother slowly from head to foot. He noticed that his eyes and face were made up, that he wore a shirt very open at the neck and a pink scarf, that his coat fitted him tightly about the waist, and he wore pumps with large bows. Ricardo turned his face and regarded his brother sideways:
“Maricon,” he whispered.
Jacinto still held his arms open dramatically. Some people were looking on. He also regarded Ricardo carefully and noticed his haggard expression and shabby clothes:
“What holds you there, my dear brother? Does this unexpected meeting stupefy you? Did you not expect to find me still in the flesh after the days and nights we passed together?”
Ricardo was turning away. Jacinto walked over to him and held him by the hand. His companion was standing a few feet away and looked on annoyed.
“Never mind. I can understand. You feel slightly embarrassed because you think you don’t look quite your part. I think you are in need of a good meal. Come on, let us celebrate this happy encounter.”
Ricardo shook his hand free violently. He looked squarely at his brother and said with rage: “I don’t need your dirty food, do you hear?”
“But, my dear brother, one has to live.” He pronounced this so as to lend it a double meaning. “I can understand you are proud and all that, but one has to live.”
Ricardo had been seized by a paroxysm of coughing. He held his chest and said brokenly: “I don’t want anything from you — and don’t call me brother — do you understand? Don’t call me brother,” and he went away, his weak frame racked with coughing.
The elderly man placed a consoling arm about Jacinto’s waist: “Don’t mind him. He has no gratitude — and besides, he is very ugly.”
When the Count of X. died, Paco Serrano reappeared on the scene for the litigation of the will. He produced papers which he claimed entitled him to part of the inheritance and on their strength he managed to appease some of his creditors. However, the matter was soon hushed up, and to the surprise of many, he gave way easily. It was officially stated that he was an imposter and entitled to nothing. The fortune of the Count passed to his only daughter, Laura, and Paco Serrano disappeared once more. People said that he held papers which compromised the Count’s daughter, that she helped him because she feared he would make public certain embarrassing facts.