The Mad Toy Read Free Page B

warning:
    ‘Careful, lad, it cothtth money,’ and turning back to his work he’d lower his head, the mouse-coloured cap pulled down over his ears, rummage in a box with his fingers all dirty from glue and, filling his mouth with nails, would carry on with his hammer, tap… tap… tap…
    These books, which I would devour in their numerous ‘batches’, were stories of José María, the Lightning Bolt ofAndalusia, or of the adventures of Don Jaime the Bearded and other rogues, more or less authentic and picturesque, as could be seen from the prints that showed them as follows:
    Horsemen on stupendously saddled colts, with extra-black side burns on their ruddy faces, their bullfighter’s ponytail covered by an extremely shiny
cordobés
hat, and a blunderbuss mounted in the saddletree. They would usually be offering, with a magnanimous gesture, a yellow bag of money to a widow standing at the foot of a little green hill with a babe in her arms.
    Back then I dreamt of being a bandit and of strangling libidinous senior magistrates; I would right wrongs and protect widows, and I would be loved by exceptional maidens.
    I needed a comrade for my youthful adventures, and this comrade was Enrique Irzubeta.
    Enrique was a layabout who was always known by the edifying nickname of ‘The Faker’.
    His story shows how one can establish a reputation; and how fame, once won, can nurture all those who wish to study the laudable art of leading the ignorant up the garden path.
    Enrique was fourteen when he cheated the owner of a sweet factory, which is clear proof that the gods had decided what the destiny of our friend Enrique would be. But because the gods are crafty at heart, I am not surprised, as I write my memoirs, to discover that Enrique is now being put up in one of those hotels that the State provides for hooligans and rascals.
    The truth is this:
    A certain factory owner, in order to stimulate the sale of his products, announced a competition, with prizes for those who could put together a complete set of the flags of South America which he had had printed on the underside of each sweet wrapper.
    The difficulty lay in finding the wrapper with the flag of Nicaragua, given its extreme scarcity.
    These absurd contests, as you know, excite young boys, who, under the banner of a common interest, add up every day the results of their searches and the development of their patient investigations.
    And so Enrique promised his neighbourhood friends, the carpenter’s apprentices and the dairyman’s sons, that he would fake the Nicaraguan flag if someone brought him a copy.
    The lads were doubtful… they vacillated, knowing Irzubeta’s reputation, even though Enrique magnanimously offered as hostage two volumes of the
History of France
, written by M. Guizot, so that his probity would not be called into question.
    And so the bargain was struck on the pavement in a cul- de-sac , with green-painted streetlights on the street corners, with few houses and tall brick walls. The blue curve of the sky sat atop the distant brushwood-topped walls, and the street was made all the more sad by the monotonous murmur of endless sawing and the cows mooing in the dairy.
    Later I found out that Enrique, using Indian ink and blood, had reproduced the Nicaraguan flag so convincingly that it was impossible to tell the original from the copy.
    A few days later Irzubeta showed off a brand new airgun that he later sold to a second-hand clothes dealer in Reconquista Street. This happened while brave Bonnot and valiant Valet were terrorising Paris. 1
    I had already read the forty-odd volumes that the Viscount of Ponson du Terrail had written about Mother Fipart’s adopted son, the admirable Rocambole, and I aspired to become a bandit in the high style.
    Well, one summer day, in the sordid neighbourhood grocery shop, I met Irzubeta.
    The hot siesta hour weighed on the streets, and there was I, sitting on a cask of
yerba
, 2 chatting to Hipólito, who took