Bizco was a brute,--an animal deserving of
extermination. As lascivious as a monkey, he had violated several of
the little girls of the Casa del Cabrero, beating them into
submission; he used to rob his father, a poverty-stricken cane-weaver,
so that he might have money enough to visit some low brothel of Las
Penuelas or on Chopa Street, where he found rouged dowagers with
cigarette-stubs in their lips, who looked like princesses to him. His
narrow skull, his powerful jaw, his blubber-lip, his stupid glance,
lent him a look of repellant brutality and animality.
A primitive man, he kept his dagger--bought in El Rastro--sharp,
guarding it as a sacred object. If he ever happened across a cat or
dog, he would enjoy torturing it to death with oft-repeated stabs. His
speech was obscene, abounding in barbarities and blasphemies.
Whether anybody induced Bizco to tattoo his arms, or the idea was
original with him, cannot be said; probably the tattooing he had seen
on one of the bandits that he ran after had suggested a similar
adornment for himself. Vidal imitated him, and for a time the pair
gave themselves up enthusiastically to self-tattooing. They pricked
their skins with a pin until a little blood came, then moistened the
wounds with ink.
Bizco painted crosses, stars and names upon his chest; Vidal, who
didn't like to prick himself, stippled his own name on one arm and his
sweetheart's on the other; Manuel didn't care to inscribe anything
upon his person, first because he was afraid of blood, and then
because the idea had been Bizco's.
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