Poor Folk in Spain Part 16

Disappointment rushed upon us.

But where then was the Spanish dancing? Had this infernal European mechanical civilization quite driven all feeling from the land? Where were the jotas, the malaguenas, the baturras?

"But," said Jan at last to Coneni, "can you not dance a Spanish dance?"

"Why, of course," cried Coneni. "Here, let us dance a malaguena. It is my favourite dance. Come, who will dance with me?"

But there was n.o.body amongst the girls who could dance it. Mrs. Coneni said that she was too old and too fat. Nor was there amongst the laud players one who could play a malaguena, nor could the guitar player beat the _tempo_.

So in the end it was Jan who played the malaguena as best he could, while Coneni, using his lank limbs with the flexibility of a youth, danced in marvellous fashion. But he soon tired of dancing solos.

We went home, headed by the band, seconded by Coneni's son carrying for us a large green melon, followed by Coneni's daughter loaded with a basket of figs.

We parted from the band at El Angel, we going up to Verdolay, they going across to Alverca, but with the good-byes the guitar playing girl said:

"Aha, but since you are so 'affectionate' to music we will come and play to you this evening at your house."

When Encarnacion heard this, she said:

"Oh, beautiful! And I will ask all my friends and we will dance. And I will bring all Mother's chairs."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

We arranged all Encarnacion's mother's chairs in a neat circle in our entrada and waited. Nine o'clock went by--no music--ten pa.s.sed and 10.30. At eleven o'clock we heard the band far away on the Alverca road.

It came musically through the night. We had contrived an especial illumination of candles, but our guests repudiated houses. They were too hot. So in spite of any possible traffic the chairs were dragged out into the middle of the road, and we had our concert there.

It was not a very inspiring concert. At the opening of it the young laud player handed his instrument to Jan, demanding that it should be tuned.

We discovered later that quite a number of the minor village executants cannot tune their own instruments. Jan, however, at this time knew nothing about lauds. So the boy had to do the best he could with it. He managed to worry the instrument more or less into tune with itself, but the task of getting his laud accorded with his sister's guitar was beyond his power. However, a concert could not be disturbed for so trifling a matter; and to the perfect satisfaction of the players, and, as far as we could see, of the audience, the two instruments played until about three o'clock in the morning, each one a semi-tone different in pitch from the other.

We had provided bottles of wine for the occasion at the cost of sixpence a bottle. This wine was the ordinary drinking wine of the district. It speaks well of the abstemiousness of the Spaniard that though we had at least thirty guests about half a bottle of wine only was drunk. The major part of the audience contented itself with cool water from the algazarra.

Some time later on in the evening the players confided to us that they were the pupils of a maestro who lived in Alverca, and that they had only been studying for two months. The fact that there was a teacher in Alverca fired me. I had wanted to learn the laud for some while, but the opportunity had not offered itself. I inquired his terms. The band said that they were twopence-halfpenny a lesson. So I at once told it to send the maestro along. At 3.30--after we had been wondering for some time how much longer our eyes would remain open--the band took its leave, saying that it would come again one evening. It then marched, playing loudly, back to Alverca.

The maestro sent word that he would come on Tuesday evening. He was of that type of southern European that the American terms "Dago." He was typically Dago. He was a plumber by trade, and in the evening augmented his income by odd twopence-halfpennies picked up from the would-be "affectionates" of the guitar or laud. He loved wine with a sincere though timid reverence. When she heard that he was coming to give me a lesson, Encarnacion said:

"Oh, beautiful! And we will all come and listen to your lesson, and afterwards we will dance."

But even Spain could not make me unselfconscious enough to support that test. With grim harshness we locked the door on our lessons.

The maestro, like Blas, considered two airs his daily portion. At the end of the first air he would empty his tumbler of wine, and would gently repudiate the idea that it should be refilled. The third gla.s.s he accepted with quite vehement protestations. His course homeward was, I fear, usually more discursive than that of his coming. Like all Spanish musicians he sang upon the slightest excuse. He corrected my melody by singing: "Lo, La, Lo, La, Lo, La," as I played.

Having played the violin, the mandolin and the piano, I did not find the laud very difficult. It has a queer tuning in fourths and is played with the plectrum. But when La Merchora discovered that I had learned a piece in two days she was quite eloquent in her astonishment.

CHAPTER XIX

MURCIA--THE LAUD

During our month in Verdolay we had not quite cut off communication with Murcia. Luis and his friend Flores had come out to lunch with us, bringing with them a slab of odoriferous dried fish which _they said_ was excellent in salads. On this occasion many families in Verdolay had offered to cook our dinner for us, Encarnacion's mother, the shopping woman, the woman who brought the water and La Merchora were the princ.i.p.al compet.i.tors; and the dinner was finally cooked out in the open in La Merchora's back-yard in a huge frying-pan. We had also travelled the five dusty miles into Murcia, walking, to the grave astonishment of Verdolay plutocracy. On the first occasion Antonio told us with a face of joy that his wife _was out of danger_.

"Out of danger," cried we; "but she was only suffering from a small digestive attack!"

"Oh, no," replied Antonio; "didn't I tell you that she had smallpox?

Why, a man died of it three doors down the street."

Before we had quitted Verdolay, Rosa (Antonio's wife) was well enough to be moved, and Antonio had brought her into the country to the Count's country house. She was spotted like a pard with large brown marks which Antonio a.s.sured us would disappear with time, leaving no pits.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

On another visit Jan had gone into the shop of Emilio Peralta to buy some guitar strings. The shop of Emilio was not like that of Ramirez in Paris. It was set in a canyon of a street so deep that the midday sun for one short hour or so shines on the cobbles, so narrow that the carts which pa.s.s through it are permitted to go in one sole direction marked at the entrance by a pointing arrow. Ramirez had a workshop only, but Emilio had as well onhis working bench three brave showcases painted apple green, one of which was filled with instruments--guitars, lauds and bandurrias--with a drawer for strings, capo-d'astros and other instrumental appurtenances. Of the two other showcases, one housed the guitar-maker's tools, the third having degenerated to a pantry, and while one was buying strings from Emilio, his wife would be surrept.i.tiously taking dishes of boiled garbanzos or of dried sardines out of the garishly painted frand. The place was indeed workshop, pantry and reception room. A counter cut the place in two. To the left as you entered Emilio made his instruments. To the right was a rough semicircle of chairs, and here the _aficionados_[19] of the guitar came in the evening, to play on Emilio's latest creation. To our dismay, however, we found that the intensely interesting music of Spain, the Flamenco, as it is called, was somewhat despised in Emilio's shop. In Spain, music is divided to-day into the major divisions, Cla.s.sical and Flamenco. Cla.s.sical includes anything from Beethoven to Darewski, from Sonata or Symphony to Fox-trot or Polka. The guitar-maker to-day says proudly: "I do not make instruments for 'Flamenco,' mine are made for 'Cla.s.sical'": and he but echoes the bad taste of the educated Spaniard.

The Flamenco, the native music, having perhaps a stronger character than any other Folk music in Europe, is considered very vulgar; it is called "Tavern Music," as "still lives" in painting are called "Tavern pictures."

Nevertheless, we were not to be seduced from our desire to study the Flamenco, and for the purpose of continuing that study I had been looking out for a laud which is peculiarly adapted to the music, much of which was composed originally upon this instrument. Hitherto I had been unable to find an instrument which I had liked, for the ordinary lute is queer in shape and rather harsh in quality. But the plumber-maestro in Alverca had lent me an instrument--a laud of simpler form and sweeter tone, called a sonora--which pleased me.

Jan going into Emilio's shop had found there a newly completed sonora, very like that of the little maestro's, but better in quality. He engaged Emilio to keep it till we returned, and Emilio said he would bring the Professor down to play it for us to show off its qualities. On the evening of the day on which we came back to Murcia we went to Emilio's shop. The chairs were all set in their prim semicircle and Emilio, round-shouldered and heavy-faced, sat us down while he expatiated on the excellence of the workmanship and the beauty of the tone of his instrument. He demanded sixty pesetas for the instrument, but said that we might possibly come to some friendly arrangement over the price, as he was trying to popularize this form of laud. The little Professor came in. He was a strange man. He was extremely emaciated, with one eye destroyed and almost blind in the other, dressed in _outre_ style as though he were acting as jockey in an impromptu charade. His flexible hands seemed almost translucent in their delicacy. He at once addressed us with such rapidity of speech that we were unable to understand what he said (though our understanding of Spanish had made great progress), and he was extremely irritable with us for seeming so stupid. This frail, delicate, peering thing was a queer contrast to the burly, almost clumsy form of Emilio.

The little Professor picked up the sonora, and pa.s.sed it backwards and forwards slowly beneath his short-sighted eye. He sat down and played.

His nimble fingers ran up and down the strings. We had almost decided to begin the delicate matter of bargaining when a fat form, white-waist-coated, straw hat perched jauntily over an Egyptian face, showed itself in the doorway. It was Blas. And Blas was drunk. He bowed in an heroic manner to me, shook hands in simulated affection with Jan; and, his soul obviously consumed with jealousy, greeted the little Professor, who returned his salutation with coldness.

"Go on," ordered Blas to the little Professor, "play." The little man put the sonora again on his thigh. One could almost hear his teeth grit.

Then he began to show off. He possessed a very effective trick of playing intricate runs by the mere beat of the fingers of his left hand, that is without plucking the strings with his right. This he now exhibited to its full. He was on his mettle, Greek and Trojan were face to face. Blas, seated on his chair, his fat hands on his knees, smiled a drunken and somewhat patronizing approval of his rival's exhibition.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

The little Professor finished his exhibition, which the gipsy did not attempt to rival, for he played only the guitar. For a moment there was an embarra.s.sing silence. The gentle art of bargaining was about to displace the art of music. But we had reckoned without the half-drunken Blas.

Suddenly rising to his feet he faced Jan, and rubbing his finger and thumb together he exclaimed:

"Now comes the main point. The bra.s.s. Now is the question of cashing up for it."

Doubtless this was a frank statement of fact. But three-quarters of life continues bearable enough because one does not put things frankly.

Emilio changed colour and put on a sullen face, Emilio's wife looked alarmed, Jan was embarra.s.sed, the little Professor seemed to wither into a crouching shape of half his normal smallness.

But Blas went on in a breezy voice to Jan:

"Come on, come on. What's the matter? You suggest a price to him and he will tell you if it fits."

Emilio's delicacy was quite revolted by this crude exhibition of gipsy bad taste. He seized the laud from the little Professor, thrust it on one side and said loudly that he did not want to sell it at all.

Unfortunately, Jan was afraid of offending Emilio's susceptibility. Not knowing how to behave in the unfortunate circ.u.mstances, he blurted out:

"Look here, Emilio, you said sixty pesetas. Will you not come down a little, and then we could settle the matter?"

Emilio was, however, extremely bad-tempered by the turn things had taken. The Spanish sense of decency was outraged. At last, with an evil look at Blas, he muttered: