The Crip’s stories were all like this, monotonous, dark and bloody. If he finished talking before it was time for the fair to shut up shop, The Crip would invite me to go with him:
‘Hey, Blondy, what you say we go and gather some scraps?’
‘Okay.’
With his bag over his shoulder, The Crip would go from counter to counter and stallholder to stallholder, and without needing to ask they’d shout out:
‘Hey, Crip, take this.’ He’d collect fat, greasy bones; from the vegetable sellers he’d get potatoes or onions from the ones who didn’t give him cabbage; the egg sellers would give him some butter, the tripe sellers a bit of liver, and The Crip would, with his hat over one ear and his riding crop over his shoulder, the bag in his hand, walk before the vendors like a king, and even the greediest and most disgusting of them didn’t dare refuse him anything, because they knew that he could harm them in various ways.
When he’d finished, he’d say:
‘Come and eat with me.’
‘No, they’re waiting for me at home.’
‘Come on, don’t be a sucker, we’ll have steak and fried potatoes. And then you can play the viola and there’s wine, San Juan wine that does its job real fast. I bought a demijohn, because if you don’t spend your cash then the horses always eat it.’
I knew why The Crip insisted on my having lunch with him. He needed to ask me about his inventions — yes, it’s true — for all his slackness The Crip had a yen to be an inventor; The Crip, who by his own account had grown up ‘with the horses, under their hooves’, spent the siesta hour developing mechanisms and inventions to help him separate his fellow man from his money. I remember that one day, when I explained the marvels of electroplating to him, The Crip was so impressed that for several days afterwards he tried to persuade me to go into business with him counterfeiting money. When I asked him where he’d get the money from to set the business up, he said:
‘I know a guy who’s got money. If you want I’ll introduce you and we’ll sort something out. So… we going or not?’
‘Okay.’
Suddenly The Crip would stare around him, then shout out in a disconcertingly loud voice:
‘Little Guy!’
Little Guy, who was fighting with some other kids of his type, reappeared.
He wasn’t yet ten years old, and he was less than four feet tall, but misery and all the experience of homelessness had carved indelible wrinkles into his rhomboidal Mongol face.
His nose was snub, his lips were puffy, and he had a huge amount of hair, so woolly and curly that his ears disappeared into its shaggy depths. This picture of dirty aboriginality was completed by trousers that only reached as far as his ankles, and a Basque milkman’s black blouse.
The Crip gave him a brusque order:
‘Take this.’
Little Guy threw the bag over his shoulder and headed off quickly.
He was The Crip’s houseboy, cook, servant and helper. The Crip had picked him up like one would pick up a dog in the street, and in return for his services he kept him dressed and fed; and Little Guy was the most faithful servant of his master.
‘Look,’ The Crip told me, ‘the other day, when a woman at one of the counters opened her wallet, five pesos fell out of it. Little Guy put his foot over them and then picks them up. We go home and there’s not even a lump of coal. “Go on, see if they’ll give you some on tick.” “No need,” the crazy little guy says, and he takes out the fiver.’
‘Wow, that’s not bad.’
‘Next stop: mugging. You know what else he does?’
‘Tell me.’
‘Think about it! One day I see him going out. “Where you off to?” I say. “To church,” he says. “Balls,” I say, “really, to church?” “Yup,” he says, and he starts to tell me about the box he’d seen in the wall by the entrance, for the alms and how he’d seen the end of a peso sticking out of it. So he squeezed up to the box and used a pin to get the peso out. And then he’d made a hook out of another pin to go and fish out all the pesos that were there. Can you believe it?’
The Crip laughed, and though I wasn’t sure that Little Guy had invented that trick, I was sure that he would be keen to be the fisherman, but I didn’t say anything else, and instead, patting him on the back, said:
‘Oh, Crip, Crip, Crip!’
And The Crip laughed in such a way as to twist his lips up over his teeth.
Sometimes in the night.
Mercy, have mercy upon us.
Who on this earth will have mercy on us. Wretches, we have no God to bow down before and to bemoan our miserable lives.
Whom shall I bow down before, whom shall I speak to about my spines and hard thorns, about this pain that appears during the burning afternoon, and which is still in me?
How small we are, and mother earth does not want to hold us in her arms and here we are, bitter and dismantled by our impotence.
Why do we know nothing of our God?
Oh, if He would only come one evening and hold us, with his hands cradling our temples.
What more could we ask? We would walk away with His smile still in our eyes and with tears hanging from our lashes.
One day, Thursday, at two in the afternoon, my sister told me that there was an individual at the door waiting for me.
I went out and was surprised to see The Crip, who was better dressed than normal, for he had replaced his red handkerchief with a modest cotton collar, and the florid sandals with a show-off pair of boots.
‘Hello, what are you doing here?’
‘Are you free, Blondy?’
‘Yes, why?’
‘Come on out, we need to talk.’
‘Of course, just give me a minute,’ and I went into the house and rapidly put my collar on, took my hat, and left. I should say that I was immediately suspicious, and although I couldn’t imagine what the purpose of The Crip’s visit might be, I resolved to keep on my guard.
Once we were in the street I realised by looking at his face that he had something important to tell me, because he kept on glancing at me and then looking away again, but I kept my curiosity in hand, saying only: