Providence continually weaves together the loose knots of destiny, and we are mercilessly subject to its whims. I followed in that man’s footsteps down pitch-black tunnels, not particularly thrilled by the idea he was guiding me, until we finally surfaced from a metal grille leading to a small garden in the Plaza de Jacinto Benavente, right opposite the Teatro Calderón. En route I did at least feel that, despite his horrific face, Slim was fashioned from rare, out-of-fashion noble stock, more akin to the proud and needy, and to noblemen without honor straight out of the selvage of some bygone century, that had little in common with the era of protest and agitprop beginning to make its presence felt in that sprawling human agglomeration Spain’s capital was becoming.
From the very first, bastards had fancied attacking my body with sticks or stones and well-aimed kicks from the right or nasty trips from the left. It was a novelty for someone to burn my face with a lighter. There’s always a first time for everything in this world, and it’s hopeless to kick against the pricks. Generally speaking, if they are comme il faut, bastards derive huge pleasure from mistreating dwarves or upsetting the handicapped; these are mysteries unleashed on the universe by nature, enigmatic arcana that will remain a closed book to scientific knowledge and rational thought, as Gustavo Adolfo suggested in his poetic texts. Mistreating dwarves by deed, word, or sin of omission should warrant a clause or two in the penal codes of civilized countries and should be punished by sentences significantly higher than those decreed for individuals who insult heads of state or get their kicks buggering underage kids. There is no justice on this planet, and what happens is whatever Providence decides; each of us gets our lot, and nobody ever escapes their fate.
I was led by the hand of Slim, a true Virgil in the darkness of that icy-hearted Madrid I’m now describing, down the Calle de las Chinas to the so-called Old Convent of the Royal Trinitarians, a large, rambling building with a flaking façade and a roof beat up by centuries of leaks where the nuns, out of Christian charity, had established a shelter for beggars, the needy, the hapless, and everyone else manifestly on their uppers. We dwarves, as a matter of course, are greeted by an open door in such places, if only for the pity and sympathy we arouse in the great and the good, and although I’d yet to see any sign of that, Slim did a good job rubbing these facts of life in my face, and he funneled me into a métier that not only guaranteed me minimal sustenance, but also produced profit to spare, which was usually put into the kitty for the general welfare of that guild of dubious snitches, motley tramps, and tricksters that made up the raggle-taggle brotherhood under his command. Little by little, almost unawares, I transformed my unproductive circus guffaw into the tear that can barely be contained, a moist glint setting the stage for the possible slippage that pity produces at the sublime moment when alms are placed in one’s palm. Slim was the root cause of that, and I’m truly grateful for what he did for me; pity he met such a miserable end and couldn’t later marvel at my wealth.
Those years in Madrid went by with a fantastic generation of fakery, bad faith, and bet-hedging, richly seasoned, of course, by sudden surges of energy as the Spanish awoke from their lysergic sleep to discover the many-headed hydra of ideology. Unparalleled years of leap-frogging, sprinting, and greasy-pole climbing, unrepeatable years when my apprenticeship in the new, frailer, less rigid realities craved the full attention of my intellect and the concentrated deployment of certain skills I’d probably rather not admit to. One-Eyed Slim put the last traces of his bygone dignity to good use, begging on Sundays at the entrances to Madrid’s grandest churches: San Francisco el Grande, La Virgen de Atocha, La Virgen de la Paloma, Las Salesas, and Los Jerónimos Reales. He did so decked out in much-darned and mended suits that he donned on purpose, and he went about his work while wallowing in the pomp and ceremony of pauperdom. Sometimes, especially in the fair months of spring, he’d spruce himself up with a tatty darkblue shirt he’d button to the collar to evoke a vaguely military air. He’d pin a crimson yoke and arrows badge on his right pocket to simulate a rank, or as a reminder of an aura or era that was being torn to shreds willy-nilly before our eyes. He was a counterfeiter, a one-eyed Judas, a hell of a swine who nevertheless put pride before hunger and appearance before desire. He exuded the magnetic attraction of the greatest or most sinister of men, and in times of yore, his cool aplomb or fierce demeanor would have brought entire continents to heel, he was such a cocky, confident bastard. I began to accompany him to churches, happy under his tutelage, and without more ado, I followed in his footsteps and began to beg. “Look sorry for yourself and make the most of your deformity, right, dwarfy? Don’t be ashamed to stick your nose into the face of anyone who looks your way, make them pity you and feel guilty for your wretched state, let them be repelled and moved, and hold out your hand at the first opportunity, and don’t let them get inside without dropping a few coppers into your palm. Watch me, and look and learn,” and he sank his knees down on the well-worn steps up to Los Jerónimos, facing the sun, dramatically displaying his gaping eye socket to parishioners who still allayed their consciences with their Sunday prayers for the peace Franco had brought, before hiving off to a communion of tapas. “Spare a thought for a war-wounded down on his luck. Gimme your spare dimes, for the love of God.” And small change rained down into the threadbare felt of the floppy-brimmed hat he held out to receive their alms. After three morning masses, we’d walk up the Calle Atocha through the haze of leaden car fumes to La Copa de Herrera, where Slim liked to knock his drink back in style. We’d hole up there most days and most weeks; it was a kind of office made up of tables that creaked under the weight of their marble tops and glistened with the cheap oil of fry ups, where we’d parley with petty criminals, the many hangers-on, customers, and grateful hoods that One-Eyed scattered around the neighborhood’s street corners for his benefit and theirs, and the juicy sustenance of the general good. They were different, homespun times, devoid of cadaverous junkies or Chinese mafias and firmly closed to anything that might come from across the border. “There ain’t no blacks in Madrid,” One-Eyed used to say. “This city won’ change as long as blacks don’ come. Blacks is all that liberty and progress ever bring. One day, you’ll see, dwarfy, and then you’ll understand what I’m telling you now.”
His monopoly over thievery had one purpose: to relieve people of excess from their bounty by pickpocketing, nicking, bag-snatching, and other less rigorously defined larceny that was equally effective, or by the simple practice of begging. In any case, it fulfilled an undeniable social function that everyone took on board and wasn’t without a degree of rather inglorious prestige. Those guilds of the poor caused no greater ill than a brief upset for the victim of the moment, disgust soon swept away by the consolation of a random encounter with the purloined family jewel or filched Omega watch at a stall in the Rastro flea market on a Sunday morning. Those were times that were a-changing, when society at large was being hit by a disorderly avalanche of shocks to the system. After almost forty years of political freeze, the rotten, sclerotic foundations of the state were clearly beginning to shake. You only had to poke an ear out in the street to hear the cracking. People were muttering on all sides, some joyfully, others fearfully, most with high hopes. Ideas, new and old, clashed; fanfares of change trumpeted grandiosely, as troglodyte triggers were cocked and skulls bashed, longing to resonate with that patriotic music of violence Spain’s out-of-tune choristers have always rendered so well. It was a fine scenario for those of us begging outside churches, relinquishing all shame and making the most of the ignorance of others. The National Catholicism that had welded institutions together closed ranks like a clam shutting its shell to avoid being gobbled up by the anticlerical lay thinking that was becoming so trendy. Places of worship increasingly seemed like sandbagged parapets or bunkers under siege. As clear-sighted as ever, Slim immediately grasped which way the wind was blowing and ratcheted up his histrionics so as not to miss out on the patriotic, Catholic self-affirmation of those inertia still kept in church. He didn’t spare a single hallowed event that might bring forth alms; Corpus Christi, Saint Joseph the Worker, or the Epiphanies of Our Lord, and there were no special holy days, mandatory or not, when we could rest; we’d take our leisure when everyone else toiled, since there wasn’t much unemployment yet. Generally, when social groups recognize some of their own are struggling, they’ll rush to lend a helping hand, which was Slim’s case on church steps, and handouts were many and benign. As I was saying, when I joined that guild, I was a rookie performing a pauper’s duet by his side, but he soon saw that takings from the sympathy stakes would increase if I were to engage in a solo effort. Thus, within a few months of our meeting, thanks to my deformities, he sent me out to prospect the porches and atriums of other, less high falutin’ churches than the aforementioned, not that they were any less edifying as edifices. There I had to fight for a pitch against other professional beggars, who eliminated all restrictive practices the second they heard who’d sent me and gave me full scope to beg to my heart’s content, such was the respect, veneration, and fear that rabble felt toward One-Eyed. Seventy-five percent of all takings went straight into the pockets of One-Eyed; that was the price for his backing, a percentage he justified as a necessary minimum to meet the overall expenditure of the brotherhood, to keep lips sealed, buy favors, compensate for mishaps, and give every man jack exactly what he required to be happy.