Poor Folk in Spain Part 19

They are tossed right and left, others come to the rescue. Magnificent!

Eh?" Fourthly: the old drama of the Moors and Christians was to be performed.

Jijona lies in territory once captured by the Moors. They say that the original name was Saracena, and to-day locally it is p.r.o.nounced "Shishona." It owes its considerable wealth to the extensive terrace cultivation of almonds, by means of which the hard-working Moors converted the mountains from barrenness to fertility.

"There is a castle of boards erected in the plaza," said the Vinegars; "this will be stormed first by the Moors, then by the Christians. It is very luxurious. Not so luxurious as last year, perhaps, because the captains of the fiesta are not so wealthy as those of last year, and owing to the tobacco famine, the Contrabandistas will omit their drama of tobacco smuggling. Yet it will exhibit much lujo."[21]

At supper we tasted for the first time the famous turron of Jijona.

This was manufactured by our hosts. It is a crisp, dry, almond sweetmeat, probably Moorish in origin, for it is not unlike Halva de Smyrne and carries behind its almond flavour a queer but not unpleasant taste resembling the smell of an over-heated chair. Supper over, we went out to the plaza. The first need of Spanish amus.e.m.e.nt had been fulfilled. The streets were crowded. A few of the more sophisticated visitors were even wearing hats.

At the far end of the plaza, dimly, could be seen the wooden castle, in shape not unlike one of those quaint wood cuts from an old edition of Froissart; some distance in front of it, high in the air, was the sheet on which the free "pictures" were to be thrown from the topmost pinnacle of the castle. As the time of the performance drew near, the people came bringing chairs with them until both before and behind the screen the plaza was crammed. The performance was not a success. The illumination was dim; the sheet stretched high above the people's heads. In addition, a young moon in its first quarter intruded from above the mountain-tops.

This intrusive crescent, shining almost through the centre of the sheet, sometimes took the place of the heroine's head, sometimes of the hero's waistcoat. After straining our eyes for a while, having reflected on gift-horses and teeth we went back to the Vinegars' and to bed. As we went we wondered what those spectators who were on the wrong side of the sheet and who in consequence could not read the legends--if they were able to read--would construe out of those dim dramas.

We awoke on the morrow eager to see what the "Studio" of our friend was like. Father Vinegar had gone before us, but Mother Vinegar took the road and showed us up through tortuous and romantic staircases of streets, up--up--until we reached the highest level of the town. But our friend's house was yet higher. We clambered up a zigzag path over a widening hill-side to the crest of the ridge. There on the top, fronting the ruins of the old Saracen fortress, was our friend's house "El Torre de Blay." It was a long house of one story, backed by a round tower of three stories. The tower was claimed to be Saracen in origin: it overlooked a walled yard, which was filled with chickens, rabbits and turkeys, for the Vinegars were using the house during the absence of our friend. A pile of almond sh.e.l.ls was in the entrada and a back door led out into a terraced garden full of pomegranate, pear, fig, almond and olive trees and grape vines. Old Vinegar, called locally "Pere Chicot,"

led us round, discoursing on the beauty of the house, which was indeed cool, large and airy. But the _clou_ of the house Pere Chicot kept till the last. With a gesture of profound pride he swung open a small door.

"Senor and Senora," he exclaimed, "I will warrant that there is not a W.C. to compare with this in the whole province of Alicante."

Mother Vinegar, talking in a high-pitched, querulous voice, was complaining of the rise in prices, of the hardness of the season. The garden of the Torre, she said, was not worth looking after, there were no grapes, and as for the almonds, she went on, pointing to a small heap, that was the whole crop for the year. She added that only a little while ago somebody had broken into the yard and had stolen two hundred and fifty pesetas' worth of poultry and rabbits.

It occurred to us that some of her cordiality to us came from the fact that she looked on us to make up some of that lost money. So I gently led her on to the question of ways and means. She said:

"Oh, El Senor used this place as a working place only. He lived and slept at our house, and for that he paid ten pesetas a day."

Now El Senor (our English friend) had told us that he paid seven pesetas. Our suspicions were correct. I am afraid that in the end Mrs.

Vinegar, like the undertaker in Tcheckov's story, counted us amongst her losses. Her manner changed gradually from cordial to chilly: she had promised to help me to shop, but she put obstacles in my way and also, I believe, tried to prevent us from finding a servant. Finally we made an arrangement that Mrs. Vinegar should supply us with meals at two pesetas fifty each. Remembering that Elias had fed us in Murcia for one peseta fifty I struggled to reduce the price to two pesetas for less food, but Mrs. Vinegar said that Jijona was far more expensive than Murcia (as a matter of fact it was, if anything, cheaper), and that the reputation of her house would not stand a lower price. Finally, to her disgust, I announced that we could not afford more than three meals a week at that rate, and we were accordingly scrawled down, heavily underlined, with red ink, amongst the stolen chickens and rabbits.

But the idea of the cow chase through the streets excited us. As in the well-known story, the cow turned out to be a bull; nor was the chase to be in the narrow winding streets, but in the plaza, the entrances of which had been blocked up with extempore barricades of wooden beams. The women and the less courageous of the men were to fill the balconies, and places in a balcony had been found for us by the Vinegar girls, who were quite different in manners from their parents. The bulls were stabled at the back of the town; and, like a wasp in a spider's web, plunging at the ends of long ropes tied to its horns, the bull was dragged to the plaza, when it was insinuated into a rough bull-pen erected near the castle. There were three bulls, and a second was thus dragged up and penned in. The third, however, was tied to a tree, and pads, like boxing-gloves, were fixed solidly to its murderous horns. Then with some precautions the bull was loosened. The game was a sort of ticky-touchwood. Home in this case was anywhere out of reach of the bull's tossing capacity: open doors, the ironwork of windows, water pipes, trees, the barricades of the streets, lamp posts, a fountain--around which one could dodge--and a wall topped by a rickety pailing, and the woodwork of some swing-boats near the castle.

Jan had gone down into the plaza to get some photos. From the balcony the game was exciting, though not furious. Some of the boys showed considerable pluck; and it was amusing to watch the strange concavities shown in the back of one running away who thought that the bull was close behind and who could feel in imagination those horns prodding his spine.

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But the fun was not furious enough to bear long watching from the balcony. So I went down into the square and joined Jan. I had several reasons for this action. I was bored, and thought it would be more exciting below. But the chief idea I had was that by this manoeuvre I would be able to introduce myself to Jijona _en bloc_. I should be universally known, and would thus escape the continual shrieks and giggles with which strangers greeted my appearance. So I went down into the plaza.

A loud gasp went up from the crowds.

Some youths ran up to me.

"Senora, Senora," they cried, "you mustn't stay here. It is dangerous!"

"Why?" asked I.

"But don't you understand? The bull! He might get you."

"But," I answered, "he might get you too."

"Oh, but we can run."

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"Well, I can run also."

At this moment theory turned hurriedly into practice. The bull came charging down upon us. Jan and I with a number of youths made a run for the wall, clambered on to it, and clung there, hanging on its rickety pailings, while the bull smelt our toes.

"Curse you! Curse you!" screamed out an old man who was dancing with rage on the other side of the pailings. "Get down. Can't you see that in a minute you'll bring the whole place down? Get off at once."

But the boys merely gave him retort for curse. The bull turned on to another baiter and dashed away. This boy sprang into the branches of a young tree. The bull, going full speed, hit the stern of the sapling with his forehead, and the youth was shot off, describing a graceful parabola, and landing with a thump on to the ground. Gradually the game drifted to the other end of the plaza and we came down from the fence.

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"Senora," said an anxious voice, "I have here a balcony. It is quite respectable, for my wife is there. Pray do not risk your life any longer."

The speaker was the husband of one of the Vinegar girls, one of the nicest men we met in Jijona. He was short and plump, and even as he spoke to me he gazed anxiously towards the end of the plaza. While he was still urging me, the bull made a movement in our direction, and he bolted. This time we sought shelter in an open doorway, accompanied by two priests. One lad tripped and the bull rolled him over with its padded horns, but other lads ran up, one flapped a handkerchief before the animal's nose, another hung on to its tail. Somehow we could not help wondering what would have happened to the bull had twenty public schoolboys been loosed in that plaza!

At last the light faded. First the bull, then the boys grew tired. The animal, captured with ropes, was led away to become meat for future Jijona dinners--eating a playmate, it seemed to me.

Further north in Spain they have a variant of this game. A young bull is put into a wide circle formed of carts. The bull's horns are not padded, and this game is quite dangerous. A Polish painter, a friend of ours, once entered such a ring. He was chased by the bull and to escape sprang for a cart. He was not quite quick enough. With the upward toss the bull thrust a horn through the seat of his trousers, as the painter was in mid-air. Luckily the trousers were an old pair, the seat came out wholesale and the painter tumbled head first into the cart. He says that for the rest of the day he went about with his hat clapped behind him.

The bull-baiting over, we called upon the doctor to whom we carried an introduction from Luis. Then we scrambled up to our Torre, taking with us provisions and candles. We made up our mattress on the floor and slept the more soundly for our hard bed.

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We had one joy at Jijona--there were no mosquitoes, and the nights were deliciously cool. Our windows were far enough from the ground to allow the most timid of Spanish women to sleep secure from robbers. The sun streaming in at our windows awoke us before six--we dressed and breakfasted, looking down on the town, which still lay in the shadow.

Immediately beneath our windows were two hundred yards of stony hillside; then began the houses, small and closely crowded as though they feared the rough arid expanse of the towering hills of rock. We looked down upon an almost Moorish succession of flat roofs, plunging downhill into the valley. The surrounding country was like a rough sea suddenly frozen, in front of us the mountains seemed almost to curl over. A violet smoke was rising from Jijona chimneys, a smoke which drifted a sweet scent to our nostrils, a scent of sage and of fir. From the middle of the village the church tower covered with blue and white tiles suddenly chimed the hour with discordant bells.

Mrs. Vinegar was to take me the round of the shops. She had previously tried to impress me with the dreadful price of provisions in Jijona, and this time she prevented me from buying eggs. The greengrocer's shop, kept by a gay woman named Concha, was only an entrada filled with baskets. Mrs. Vinegar had refused to change a note of 100 pesetas for me, and we discovered later that notes of any magnitude greater than twenty-five pesetas are difficult to change in villages. But Concha changed the money cheerfully and earned my grat.i.tude. Opposite Concha's shop, frowning on the main street with grated windows, was the prison, of which somebody said:

"Heavens! The Jijona men are so good that there hasn't been a soul in the prison for the last five years. It is full of chickens and rabbits."

We bought a frying-pan, having to choose between one very small and one very large. The latter was thick in rust, and must have been I don't know how many years on the shelves of the shop. We chose it on condition that the shop man could get it clean, and he at once put the whole of his family to work on it, including a prospective daughter-in-law, a French-African girl just arrived from Morocco. The customers were whispering one to another, and at last one more bold than the others addressed me:

"I saw you yesterday go down amongst the bulls. Were you not terribly frightened? I thought that my heart was going to stop."

We went to buy drinking gla.s.ses. The china shop was deserted and we had to shout loudly before we could get anybody to serve us. The woman did not know the price of the gla.s.ses.

"But no matter," she said, "you can pay any time you like. And weren't you terribly frightened yesterday, going down into the bulls? I couldn't draw my breath when I saw you jump on to the wall."

There were children crowded at the shop door. As we came out I heard murmurs, which gradually we made out as:

"La Valiente, La Valiente, La Valiente!"

I was known by this name during the whole of my stay in Jijona.

On Sunday we dined at the Vinegars' and in the afternoon the doctor took us to the Casino. I believe there is gambling at these Casinos, but this takes place upstairs, and on the ground floor they perform the function of the local club. On Sunday afternoons and in the evenings the aristocracy of the place collect here to sip ices while the local pianist rattles off the latest music which has reached the town.

After supper we walked through the streets, feeling our way up and down hill, for lights were few and the streets full of rocks and unexpected steps. We heard the sound of guitars and at once climbed towards it. At the top of a staircase we came to a shop in front of which a family was sitting. A woman with a rough voice began to chaff us.

"Ah, yes," she exclaimed, "you are the English of the Torre de Blay. And the lady is the valiant one who is not afraid of bulls. Ha ha! What? You are going to see the dancing--well, let's all go."