The Heart Has Its Reasons by María Dueñas Read Free Book Online

knowledge. The rest of the allowances would be duly given to him by Señora Antonia, the caretaker in whose house he would reside. Howthe money from Doña Manolita would get to that woman was not his place to know.
    Following the brisk pace of the pedestrians, he finally managed to leave the station and penetrate the immense unknown city. There was plenty of sun, but it was bitterly cold. He pulled down his cap, raised his coat lapels, and took off without the slightest idea of where he was headed. Driven by his young legs and an equal measure of anxiety and euphoria, he soon found his way.
    It took him three hours to reach his destination, not out of necessity, but rather because he kept stopping, amazed by the wonders displayed before his eyes: the grandeur of the buildings, the speed of automobiles, the opulence of storefronts, the elegance of women trotting along in their high heels on the brand-new sidewalks of the Gran Via. Finally, following the directions given to him by some passersby, he managed to reach number 47 Calle Princesa, located near a statue of Don Agustin de Argüelles, a nineteenth-century politician.
    Señora Antonia turned out to be a smallish woman with a lilting voice, much younger than he had imagined, married to a militant construction worker of the then-illegal CNT (National Confederation of Labor) by the name of Marcelino. Their entire family consisted of two boys, Joaquin and Angelito, both under ten years old. The room that Andres was to share with them in the caretaker’s place was dark and rickety, with a twenty-five-watt bare bulb hanging from the ceiling and a few furnishings cowering near the flaking walls: a nickel-plated bed, a dilapidated closet, and a butcher block table that would serve as a desk. Its small window opened onto an interior patio, where Señora Antonia washed and hung the clothes, and which contained a few potted geraniums, a couple of canaries in their cages, and the primitive toilet that the family shared with a cabinetmaker neighbor. Daily personal washup took place at the kitchen sink; for hygiene of greater scope there was a zinc washtub.
    In the following days Marcelino, who at the time was unemployed, devoted himself to showing Andres around the neighborhood to familiarize him with his new surroundings. In less than a week he had already introduced Andres to most of the neighbors; moreover, beinga staunch anarchist and an indefatigable speaker, he readily updated Andres on recent historical events. Andres, however, fascinated by his immediate reality, didn’t much care. In fact, it would barely register on him toward the end of that month of January 1930 that when King Alfonso XIII accepted Prime Minister Primo de Rivera’s resignation, General Berenguer was put in charge of forming a new government, and the people of Madrid—poor, ignorant, and more agitated than ever—demanded a radical change from their leaders.
    Marcelino also accompanied Andres on his first visit to the Cardinal Cisneros Institute, where, according to Doña Manolita’s instructions, he would obtain the high school diploma that would in turn open the door to the university. His shortcomings in matters of education were still overwhelming at the time. Whatever he had stored in his head came from a few short years of rudimentary schooling, from reading books that his godmother had furnished capriciously, and from the Treasure of Youth encyclopedia that he’d passionately devoured in the previous few months. Thanks to the latter, he had amassed a little knowledge in a diverse and somewhat picturesque number of fields: world geography, applied technology, a little international folklore. He lacked, however, a systematic education in basic subjects such as mathematics, grammar, Latin, or French; he was ignorant of the most fundamental ethical and social concepts, and didn’t have the slightest notion about good study habits. Nonetheless, his situation was