The Quest | Page 3

Somebody had just opened the door and footsteps were heard in
the entry.

"That's Doña Violante and her daughters," mumbled Petra. "It must be
pretty late."
The three women were probably returning from los Jardines, after
having supped in search of the pesetas necessary to existence. Luck
must have withheld its favour, for they were in bad humour and the two
young women were quarrelling, each blaming the other for having
wasted the night.
There were a number of venomous, ironic phrases, then the dispute
ceased and silence was restored. Petra, thus kept awake, sank into her
own thoughts; again footfalls were heard in the corridor, this time light
and rapid. Then came the rasping of the shutter-bolt of a balcony that
was being opened cautiously.
"One of them has got up," thought Petra. "What can the fuss be now?"
In a few minutes the voice of the landlady was heard shouting
imperiously from her room:
"Irene! ... Irene!"
"Well?"
"Come in from the balcony."
"And why do I got to come in?" replied a harsh voice in rough,
ill-pronounced accents.
"Because you must ... That's why."
"Why, what am I doing in the balcony?"
"That's something you know better than I."
"Well, I don't know."
"Well, I do."

"I was taking the fresh air."
"I guess you're fresh enough."
"You mean you are, señora."
"Close the balcony. You imagine that this house is something else."
"I? What have I done?"
"I don't have to tell you. For that sort of thing there's the house across
the way, across the way."
"She means Isabel's," thought Petra.
The balcony was heard to shut suddenly; steps echoed in the entry,
followed by the slamming of a door. For a long time the landlady
continued her grumbling; soon came the murmuring of a conversation
carried on in low tones. Then nothing more was heard save the
persistent shrilling of the neighbouring cricket, who continued to scrape
away at his disagreeable instrument with the determination of a
beginner on the violin.

CHAPTER II
Doña Casiana's House--A Morning Ceremony--Conspiracy--Wherein
Is Discussed the Nutritive Value of Bones--Petra and her
Family--Manuel; his arrival in Madrid.
... And the cricket, now like an obstinate virtuoso, persisted in his
musical exercises, which were truly somewhat monotonous, until the
sky was brightened by the placid smile of dawn. At the very first rays
of the sun the performer relented, doubtless content with the perfection
of his artistic efforts, and a quail took up his solo, giving the three
regulation strokes. The watchman knocked with his pike at the stores,
one or two bakers passed with their bread, a shop was opened, then
another, then a vestibule; a servant threw some refuse out on the

sidewalk, a newsboy's calling was heard.
The author would be too bold if he tried to demonstrate the
mathematical necessity imposed upon Doña Casiana's house of being
situated on Mesonero Romanos Street rather than upon Olivo, for,
undoubtedly, with the same reason it might have been placed upon
Desengaño, Tudescos or any other thoroughfare. But the duties of the
author, his obligation as an impartial and veracious chronicler compel
him to speak the truth, and the truth is that the house was on Mesonero
Romanos Street rather than on Olivo.
At this early hour not a sound could be heard inside; the janitor had
opened the vestibule-entrance and was regarding the street with a
certain melancholy.
The vestibule,--long, dingy, and ill-smelling,--was really a narrow
corridor, at one side of which was the janitor's lodge.
On passing this lodge, if you glanced inside, where it was encumbered
with furniture till no room was left, you could always make out a fat
woman, motionless, very swarthy, in whose arms reposed a pale
weakling of a child, long and thin, like a white earthworm. It seemed
that above the window, instead of "Janitor" the legend should have read:
"The Woman-Cannon and her Child," or some similar sign from the
circus tents.
If any question were addressed to this voluminous female she would
answer in a shrill voice accompanied by a rather disagreeable gesture of
disdain. Leaving the den of this woman-cannon to one side, you would
proceed; at the left of the entrance began the staircase, always in
darkness, with no air except what filtered in through a few high, grated
windows that opened upon a diminutive courtyard with filthy walls
punctured by round ventilators. For a broad, roomy nose endowed with
a keen pituitary membrane, it would have been a curious sport to
discover and investigate the provenience and the species of all the vile
odours comprising that fetid stench, which was an inalienable
characteristic of the establishment.

The author never succeeded in making the acquaintance of the persons
living upon the upper floors. He has a vague notion that there