Caesar or Nothing Part 50

The town was an old important city, and has, from afar, a seigniorial air; from nearby, on the contrary, it presents that aspect of caked dust which all the Castilian cities in ruin have; it is wide, spread out, formed for the most part of lanes and little squares, with low crooked houses that have blackish, warped roofs.

From the promenade beside the church, which is called the Miradero, one can see the great valley that surrounds Castro, a plain without an end, flat and empty. At the foot of the hill that supports the city, a broad river, which formerly kissed the old walls, marks a huge S with a sand border.

The water of the river covers the beach in winter, and leaves it half uncovered in summer. At intervals on the river banks grow little groves of poplar, which are mirrored on the tranquil surface of the water. A very long bridge of more than twenty arches crosses from one sh.o.r.e to the other.

The hill that serves as pedestal for the historic city has very different aspects; from one side it is seen terraced into steps, formed of small parcels of land held up by rough stone walls. On these landings there are thickets of vines and a few almond-trees, which grow even out of the s.p.a.ces between the stones.

On another part of the hill, called the Trenches, the whole ground is broken by great cuttings, which in other days were no doubt used for the defence of the city. Near the trenches are to be seen the remains of battlemented walls, tiles, and ruins of an ancient settlement, perhaps destroyed by the waters of the river which in time undermined its foundations.

From the Miradero one sees the bridge below, as from a balloon, with men, riding horses, and carts going over it, all diminished by the distance. Women are washing clothes and spreading them in the sun, and in the evening horses and herds of goats are drinking at the river brink.

The great plain, the immense flat land, contains cultivated fields, square, oblong, varying in colour with the seasons, from the light green of barley to the gold of wheat and the dirty yellow of stubble. Near the river are truck-gardens and orchards of almonds and other fruit trees.

In the afternoon, looking from the Miradero, from the height where Castro stands, one feels overcome by this sea of earth, by the vast horizon, and the profound silence. The c.o.c.ks toss their metallic crowing into the air; the clock-bells mark the hours with a sad, slow clang; and at evening the river, brilliant in its two or three fiery curves, grows pale and turns to blue. On clear days the sunset has extraordinary magic. The entire town floats in a sea of gold. The Collegiate church changes from yellow to lemon colour, and at times to orange; and there are old walls which take on, in the evening light, the colour of bread well browned in the oven. And the sun disappears into the plain, and the Angelus bell sounds through the immense s.p.a.ce.

THE TOWN

Castro Duro has a great many streets, as many as an important capital.

By only circling the Square one can count the Main Street, Laurel Street, Christ Street, Merchants' Street, Forge Street, Shoemakers'

Street, Loafing Street, Penitence Wall, and Chain Street.

These streets are built with large brick houses and small adobe houses.

Pointed cobbles form the pavement, and leave a dirty open sewer in the middle.

The large houses have two granite columns on their facades, on either side of the door, and these columns as well as the stones of the threshold take on a violet tinge from the lees of wine the inhabitants have the custom of putting on the sidewalks to dry.

Many of the big houses in Castro boast a large 'scutcheon over the door, little crazy towers with iron weather-c.o.c.ks on the roof; and some of them a huge stork's nest.

The streets remote from the centre of town have no paving, and their houses are low, built of adobe, and continued by yards, over whose mud-walls appear the branches of fig-trees.

These houses lean forward or backward, and they have worn-out balconies, staircases which hold up through some prodigy of stability, and old grills, crowned with a cross and embellished with big flowers of wrought iron.

The two princ.i.p.al monuments of Castro Duro are the Great Church and the palace.

The Great Church is Romanesque, of a colour between yellow and brown, gilded by the sun. It stands high, at one extremity of the hill, like a sentinel watching the valley. The solid old fabric has rows of crenels under the roof, which shows its warlike character.

The princ.i.p.al dome and the smaller ones are ribbed, like almost all the Romanesque churches of Spain.

The round apse exhibits ornamental half columns, divers rosettes, and a number of raised figures, and masonic symbols. In the interior of the church the most notable thing to be seen is the Renaissance altar-piece and a Romanesque arch that gives entrance to the baptistery.

The second archeological monument of the town is the ancient palace of the Dukes of Castro Duro.

The palace, a great structure of stone and now blackened brick, rises at the side of the town-hall, and has, like it, an arcade on the Square. In the central balcony there are monumental columns, and on top of them two giants of corroded stone, with large clubs, who appear to guard the 'scutcheon; one end of the building is made longer by a square tower.

The palace wears the n.o.ble air given to old edifices by the large spread of wall containing windows very far apart, very small, and very much ornamented.

From the inscriptions on its various escutcheons one can gather that it was erected by the Duke of Castro Duro and his wife, Dona Guiomar.

In the rear of the palace, like a high belvedere built on the rampart, there appears a gallery formed of ten round arches, supported on slender pilasters. Below the gallery are the remains of a garden, with ramps and terraces and a few old statues. The river comes almost to the foot of the gardens.

Today the palace belongs to Don Calixto Garcia Guerrero, Count de la Sauceda.

Don Calixto and his family have no necessity for the whole of this big palace to live in, and have been content to renovate the part fronting on the Calle Mayor. They have had new belvederes built in, and have given over the apartments looking on the Square and the Calle del Cristo to the Courts and the school.

Another great building, which astonishes every one that stops over at Castro Duro, by its size, is the Convent of la Merced. It has been half destroyed by a fire. In the groins there remain some large Renaissance brackets, and in one wing of the edifice, inhabited by the nuns, there are windows with jalousies and a rather lofty tower terminating in a weather-c.o.c.k and a cross.

LIFE AT CASTRO

Castro Duro is princ.i.p.ally a town of farmers and carriers. Its munic.i.p.al limits are very extensive; the plain surrounding it is fertile enough.

In winter there are many foggy days, and then the flat land looks like a sea, in which hillocks and groves float like islands. Wine and cultivated fruits const.i.tute the princ.i.p.al riches of Castro. The wine is sharp, badly made; there is one thick dark variety which always tastes of tar, and one light variety which they reinforce with alcohol and which they call aloque.

Autumn is the period of greatest animation in the town; the harvest gets stowed away, the vintage made, the sweet almonds are gathered and sh.e.l.led in the porticoes.

Formerly in all the houses of rich and poor, the murk of the grapes was boiled in a still and a somewhat bitter brandy thus manufactured.

Whether in consequence of the brandy, or of the unusual amount of money about, or of both, the fact is that at that period a great pa.s.sion for gambling developed in Castro and more crimes were committed then than during all the rest of the year.

The industrial processes in Castro are primitive; everything is made by hand, and the Castrian people imagine that this establishes a superiority. In the environs of the town there are an electrical plant, a brickyard, various mills, and lime and plaster kilns.

The town's commerce is more extended than its industries, although no more prosperous. In the Square and in the Calle Mayor, under the arcades white goods are sold and woollens, and there are hat-shops and silversmiths, one alongside the other. The shopkeepers hang their merchandise in the arches, the saddlers and harness-makers decorate their entrances with head-stalls and straps, and those that have no archway put up awnings. In the Square there are continually stalls set up for earthenware jars and pitchers and for articles in tin.

In the outlying streets there are inns, at whose doors five or six mules with their heads together are almost constantly to be seen; there are crockery stores containing brooms and every kind of jug and glazed pan; there are little shops in doorways holding big baskets full of grain; there are dark taverns, which are also eating-houses, to which the peasants go to eat on market days, and whose signs are strings of dried pimentoes and cayenne peppers or an elm branch. In the written signs there is a truly Castilian charm, chaste and serene. At the Riojano oven one reads: "'Bred' baked for all 'commers.'" And at the Campico inn it says: "Wine served by Furibis herself." The shops and the inns have picturesque names too. There is the Sign of the Moor, and the Sign of the Jew, and the Sign of the Lion, and one of the Robbers.

The streets of Castro, especially those near the centre, where the crowd is greater, are dirty and ill-smelling in summer. Clouds of flies hover about and settle on the pairs of blissfully sleeping oxen; the sun pours down his blinding brilliance; not a soul pa.s.ses, and only a few greyhounds, white and black, elegant and sad, rove about the streets...

In all seasons, at twilight, a few young gentlemen promenade in the Square. At nine at night in the winter, and at ten in summer, begins the reign of the watchmen with their dramatic and lamentable cry.

Alzugaray gave Caesar these details by degrees, while they were both seated in the hotel getting ready to dine.

"And the type? The ethnic type? What is it, according to you?" asked Caesar.

"A type rather thin than fat, supple, with an aquiline nose, black eyes..."

"Yes, the Iberian type," said Caesar, "that is how it struck me too.

Tall, supple, dolichocephalic... It seems to me one can try to put something through in this town..."

III. CaeSAR'S LABOURS

FIRST STEPS