The Quest by Baroja, Pío, 1872-1956, Goldberg, Isaac, 1887-1938

"And how do I get to the other house?" asked Manuel.

"All you have to do is walk along the Ronda until you reach the Aguila street stairway. You can't miss it."

Manuel followed the directions. It was fearfully hot; the air was thick with dust. A few men were playing cards in tavern doorways, and in others they were dancing in embrace to the strains of a barrel-organ.

When Manuel reached the Aguila Street stairway it was getting dark. He sat down to rest a while in the Campillo de Gil Imon. From this elevated point could be seen the yellowish country, growing darker and darker with approaching night, and the chimneys and housetops sharply outlined against the horizon. The sky, blue and green above, was flushed with red nearer the earth; it darkened and assumed sinister hues,--coppery reds, purplish reds.

Above the mudwalls jutted the turrets and the cypresses of San Isidro cemetery; a round cupola stood out clearly in the atmosphere; at its top rose an angel with wings outspread, as if about to take flight against the flaming, blood-red background of evening.

Above the embanked clouds of the twilight shone a pale star in a green border, and on the horizon, animated by the last breath of day, could be discerned the hazy silhouettes of distant mountains.

CHAPTER II

When Salome finished her sewing and went off to Aguila Street to sleep, Manuel definitively settled in the home of Uncle Rilo, of Embajadores lane. Some called this La Corrala, others, El Corralon, still others, La Piltra, and it boasted so many other names that it seemed as if the neighbours spent hours and hours thinking up new designations for it.

The Corralon (Big yard)--this was the best known name of Uncle Rilo's lair,--fronted the Paseo de las Acacias, but it was not in the direct line of this thoroughfare, as it set somewhat back. The facade of this tenement, low, narrow, kalso-mined, indicated neither the depth nor the size of the building; the front revealed a few ill-shaped windows and holes unevenly arranged, while a doorless archway gave access to a narrow passage paved with cobblestones; this, soon widening, formed a patio surrounded by high, gloomy walls.

From the sides of the narrow entrance passage rose brick stairways leading to open galleries that ran along the three stories of the house and returned to the patio. At intervals, in the back of these galleries, opened rows of doors painted blue with a black number on the lintel of each.

Between the lime and the bricks of the walls stuck out, like exposed bones, jamb-posts and crossbeams, surrounded by lean bass ropes. The gallery columns, as well as the lintels and the beams that supported them, must formerly have been painted green, but as the result of the constant action of sun and rain only a stray patch of the original colour remained.