Poor Folk in Spain Part 24

For I will warrant that there are few better guitars than this in Spain.

Unluckily, it was sold before it was completed, or I would scarcely have let it go. It was ordered by a colonel in the Army. Play on it, Senor, but do not play Flamenco, for you must not tap upon the soundboard, or you will injure the varnish. This is built for Cla.s.sical."

Jan played, and it gave out a sonorous arid clear melody.

"From whom did I learn, Senor? I learned from n.o.body. My father was a guitar-maker, but a poor one. He taught me nothing. Indeed, I was married before the desire came to me to make fine instruments. Then how I worked, Senor! I had an idea of the perfect guitar in my head; but between idea and accomplishment what a gap! I could not cross it. Of two guitars, made equally alike, one would be good, the other useless. When this happened I would take them to pieces to search for the reason. For years I have lived in poverty, spoiling good wood which cost me all my earnings. I have not studied the guitars of others. Always in my head I carried the idea of the perfect instrument. Slowly I have struggled towards it. Now I know. But at what a cost have I acquired knowledge!"

Jan touched a chord on the instrument in his hands, and as it throbbed out its deep responsive note he remembered the saying of Chopin: "Nothing is more beautiful than a good guitar; save perhaps two."

Emilio promised to send Professor Feliz to us as soon as he came in; and we walked back to the house through the Murcian mud, which, soaking through our shoes, made us modify our previous eulogy of the alpagata.

On barrows in the street they were selling the first culled cl.u.s.ters of dates of the season; we bought both pale and dark varieties, but they were hard and tasteless. With the dates on the barrows were the orange fruit of the persimon.

While we had been away at Jijona a cat had taken possession of our house for the purpose of kittening. How she had got in was a mystery, for the windows and doors all had been tightly sealed up, but we had discovered her with her family at the bottom of the packing-cases which had formed our bed at Verdolay. We had heard strange faint sounds as though of mice on the evening of our return. The noises, however, did not cease for all our presence. We had gone to explore; suddenly, a noise like a boxful of exploding matches had burst up from under our noses, and something black dashed across the dimly lit room and out through the window. There were two kittens at the bottom of the narrowest of the packing-cases. We had moved them to a large box near to the window. That night there had been a fearful noise of yowling and squeaking. In the morning we found the kittens back in the box from which we had moved them. The cat was quite unapproachable. She burst out into a fury of spitting whenever we came near. Then with one final explosion hurried from the room. These wild cats were the pest of Murcia. One could leave no window open but they poured into the house. All food had to be securely shut up, the marks of their dusty paws were everywhere.

When we returned from Emilio's we found that our presence in the house had been too much for the cat's nerves. She had disappeared from her box and the kittens were gone with her.

Don Feliz, the half-blind guitar teacher, came in the evening. He again said he was an honest man, and that his terms were five pesetas a month.

He was delighted to hear that we both were to be his pupils. Part of his delight came from the money he would earn; but some of his delight was due to the fact that he had ousted Blas as Jan's teacher. I do not think we have met anybody more inappropriately named than Don Feliz. If Mr.

Shandy's theories have any foundation he was cursed from his christening. He was not a Murciano, but a Castilian, and, in consequence, depreciated the people he lived amongst and was in turn not appreciated by them. He lived constantly torn by jealousy of the other guitar-players in the town.

"Tell me," he exclaimed, "what do you think of the playing of Don Ambrosio?"

Don Ambrosio was the pompous man we had met in Emilio's shop.

"Technically, excellent, but rather frigid," we said.

"Yes," exclaimed Don Feliz, "that is it. Frigid, yes, frigid! Nor is Don Timoteo a good player, and as for that Blasito, that gipsy--pah! You see, he has never learned music. So that, if he does get a good melody from somebody else, he cannot harmonize it. And his Flamenco is of the taverns. It is low, common music. Now I play Cla.s.sical. Have you heard my piece which represents a battle? How I imitate the mitrailleuse on the base string? Now that is quite different from anything which that fellow Blas can play. Of course I regret that you wish to learn Flamenco. But that which I will teach you will be a cla.s.sicized Flamenco. I have made it into music. You see, I have been in a conservatoire in my youth. That puts me on a different level from all these other players. So I have made of my Flamenco something more refined. It is no longer your tavern monstrosity that Blas plays."

Personally we preferred Blas as a player, and the music of Blas as music. But Don Feliz was somewhat better as a teacher. His conservatoire had taught him at least the names of the notes. But he was very irritable. Poor fellow, at twopence a lesson, he had to give a round of thirty lessons per day to make a bare subsistence. Sometimes he said that his pupils were so dense that he could teach them but three or four consecutive notes per day. Once we heard him debating with a possible client whether it was worth while or no to walk two miles in order to get three lessons in the same house. Our consciences--concerning sweating--p.r.i.c.ked us and we paid him double fees. In consequence of his grat.i.tude he came to our house last of all and gave us lessons of four times the duration of any one else.

After he had gone, we were still playing, when Marciana came in with some parcels.

"Aha!" she cried. "That is a jota. It is the music of mi pueblo. La jota, La jota."

She put down the parcels; spread out her arms and with a balance and elegance extraordinary in one so bulky began to dance. After twenty bars, however, she stopped.

"Ei," she sighed, "how sad it is that one grows old. How sad that youth pa.s.ses all too quickly!"

That night a terrific thunderstorm broke over the valley. The thunder crashed, the lightning flared and the rain came down as though pouring from a gigantic hose. In the middle of all the noise we heard a strange sound.

"Wah! wah! wah! Squeak! Squeak!"

The cat had come back; but with only one kitten. The next morning we stayed in the house. From the windows we could mark the change which autumn had brought over the Paseo de Corveras. The dust was no longer blown along the road, which was now a still river of liquid mud. The town dust-cart, a donkey with panniers, no longer promenaded the street; no longer did we hear the cheerful blasphemy of the dust-boy who, stooping to gather up some refuse, found that his dust-cart had impatiently trotted on. In its place were the exhortations of the pig-drivers, who urged hordes of monstrous black pigs through the mud.

Some of the porkers were, however, so heavy on their feet that they had to be brought in carts. The squealing of them filled the morning air.

The fruit merchants, also with panniered donkeys, no longer called out "Melacotones, peras!" but "Uvas! Uvas!"[27] and a man wandered about with a huge basket of snails. The maize fields in front of the house were cut and stacked, and in the fields queens of Sheba were dragging the primitive ploughs, while men behind them beat to powder the lumps of baked earth which were turned up. Instead of the almost dead silence which greeted the strengthening sun, people moved about all day; parasols had given place to flirting fans. The country girls wore bunches of flowers in their hair, some even put one tall blossom sticking upright from the _coiffure_, where it nodded and bowed with the movements of the wearer. In the fruit garden the lemons had quite fallen, but the oranges were beginning to become a livid yellow on one side of the bush, while the dates had pa.s.sed from a pale to a deep golden hue.

I went about with Luis exploring balconies for views, and finally decided upon a view of Murcia from the tall campanile of the Cathedral.

When I got back I found that the cat once more had decamped, taking the kitten with her. The second kitten had been lost. In the afternoon Luis came in. He brought an invitation from some friends for me to play the piano at their house on Sat.u.r.day evening. That evening Don Feliz exclaimed:

"I have an old guitar. It is a unique instrument, none other like it has ever been seen in Spain. I bought it, at a bargain, for thirty pesetas; but I would sell it to a friend for the same money. Now you, Senor, have no guitar of your own. This is a veritable instrument for a museum. Come and see it on Sunday morning. I will show you the way."

We dined at Elias', as was our custom, and trudged back through the mud.

On the darkened stairs of our house we heard a wailing and almost tumbled over the spitting cat, which had brought back the kitten once more. We gathered up the kitten and, followed at some distance by the suspicious cat, put it back into the packing-case.

All this while we were rather short of electric lights in our house.

Antonio had borrowed most of the light-bulbs to decorate a shrine which he had erected in one of the churches. The candle which the righteous once offered up to G.o.d is going out of fashion. Nowadays, instead of burning so many feet of bees-wax, one turns on so many volts. Lamb has drawn a picture of two priests disputing as to which should offer up a blessing, with a final compromise that neither should do so; and the disappointment of the defrauded G.o.d. To-day he could go further, he could depict the deity being forced to go to the factory chimney for the scent of his burnt sacrifice. A Spanish writer, Pio Baroja, in a novel proposes a society called the "Extra-Rapid to Heaven a.s.surance Society." The insurer pays in a sum, and on his death hundreds of gramophones are turned on chanting prayers for his speedy deliverance from purgatory. "G.o.d," says the author, "is so far away, that he will not notice the subst.i.tution." This is, of course, a satire on the modern habit of replacing candles by electric lights, but the satire is no more absurd than the actuality.

Alongside of the bridge was a tall shrine built into the side of the house and lit up thus at night with electric light. The image was covered with a large sheet of plate gla.s.s, and I said that it was a sculptured figure. Jan, on the other hand, insisted that it was a painting. We had an argument about it and on the next day returned to verify together. It was, in fact, a painting. But at night, returning from Elias', we looked up at the shrine by chance, and stopped, astonished. If it was a painting it was most realistic. We looked more closely. The more we examined it, the more did it seem sculptured. Then the explanation dawned on us. It was sculptured, but during the daytime a painted curtain was drawn down in front of it.

At luncheon next day we were disturbed by a hullabaloo from the attic.

The wretched cat had taken her kitten up there, to look for peace from those meddlesome humans. That night we were awakened again by terrible noises from under our bed. The cat was still wandering like a lost soul looking for peace. Daily the kitten appeared and disappeared with exasperating irregularity. At last, however, we managed to tame the cat so that we were able to stroke her. Then the animal burst out into the strangest of noises, like a small badly oiled circular saw. It was purring. From that moment it took possession of the house. All its shyness vanished. It tucked up its sleeves and turned out of the house any other feline intruder.

One afternoon we were awakened from our siesta by a furious cat fight underneath the bed. The black cat and a ginger-coloured female were locked in combat, and making a noise like a hundred siphons. The battle continued across the sitting-room, the ginger cat giving ground. Finally she retreated to the balcony, where there was for a while armed neutrality, both singing war songs quite Spanish in their intervals.

Then the black cat sprang. Ginger backed to avoid the rush, but backed too far. She toppled over into the street, fell with a thud on to the mud pavement, gathered herself together and with a scream of disappointed fury dashed through the nearest open door. To our amazement all the occupants of the house, a young man, an old woman, a girl of seventeen and one of six hurried into the street, their eyes wide open with terror.

"What is the matter?" we shouted to them.

"A cat with rabies has just rushed into our house," they cried in answer.

The fear of rabies is very prevalent, and with reason. One does not pat stray dogs in Spain, nor does one make advances to unknown cats. Any animal which can bite is under suspicion. It is lucky, indeed, that fleas can't get rabies.

One Sat.u.r.day I began sketching in the Cathedral campanile. The ascent of the tower was not by means of steps but by sloping lanes which travelled all round the inner walls. I had chosen my view from the belfry. On each side of me were small bells, and as each in turn clanged out the half or quarter hour according to size I stopped my ears. Suddenly there was a deafening crash. Before I realized what had happened I had fallen from my seat, the easel had gone spinning ... almost fainting from the shock, I looked about me. Over my head an enormous clapper was swinging.

Unconsciously, I had seated myself almost inside one of the biggest bells in the south of Spain, and it had rung. The clapper again swung itself with force against the side of the bell, and in spite of my protecting hands the sound burst through my head. For ten minutes afterwards my hand was shaking too violently to allow me to paint.

The view from the tower was exquisite. Immediately below me were the blue glazed cupolas and the arabesques of the cathedral facade on which little stone saints gazed out over the town. Then came a large square centred on a circular garden of flowers--edged on one side by the pink front of the Archbishop's palace, many windowed. From the end of the square narrow sunless streets led into the town, which gradually became a patchwork of flat roofs on which smaller buildings were erected. The huge square block of red brick of the Reina Victoria Hotel stood out over the sinuous river, on the banks of which stood the red pepper mills and beyond which showed the huertas stretching out to the mountains.

Red, ochre, yellow and green were the chief colour notes, while blue and purple shadows gave relief and solidity to the whole.

In the evening I played the piano at the house of Luis' friends. Here was a typical Spanish bourgeois interior. Every resting-place was crowded with cheap bric-a-brac. The chairs were draped with velvet and silk hangings and antimaca.s.sars; the walls hung with enormous photographic enlargements, from the decorating of which Flores made some of his living. Card-racks covering the inters.p.a.ces of the walls were filled with coloured picture postcards.

"We have brought you here," said Flores, "because it is just opposite to the Circulo des Varios Artes.[28] The pianist of the Arts Club is very conceited. We want to take him down, by showing him that a Senora can play better than he does."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

I was rather annoyed; but could not draw back. So I put my best into the music. Grieg (p.r.o.nounced by them Hriech) seems to suit the Spanish temperament: so I played The Wedding March, Papillion and the Carnival.

There was a pause. Then faintly as a retort, from the Circulo des Varios Artes, came the easiest of Grieg's "lyrical pieces" played carefully by the maestro. As if he would say, "I too can play Grieg."

On Sunday morning we set off with Don Feliz to see the old guitar.

"It is in the house of my novia,[29] whom I shall be delighted to introduce to you."

We were amazed. Until that moment we had imagined Don Feliz to be quite an old man, but looking closely at him one could see that he might be within the limit of thirty to forty years. On this second visit to Murcia the people were not so strongly affected by my appearance in the streets. For my part I no longer wore a hat, but carried a parasol; I had exchanged my ordinary dress for an ex-munition overall, which people said was _muy elegante_. But we penetrated into a new part of the town, then was some staring and some pointing. I mentioned this casually to Don Feliz.

"Do not fear," he exclaimed, "you are safe with me. I have a terrible reputation in these parts. I am known as a bad man. If I get into a rage, my anger is terrible to see ... terrible. The children slink away in the street at my coming."

This was not the estimate we had formed of him, from his encounter with Blas in Emilio's shop. Poor Don Feliz, like so many others he had formed a dream self which contained most of the qualities in which he was lacking. I fear that only his illusive self was terrible, and that none but dream children ever shrank at his pa.s.sing. The house of his novia bore on its weather-beaten front the arms of some bygone hidalgo; now it was an apartment house. We clambered up staircases of black wood, into one of the few dark-coloured interiors we have seen in Spain. The guitar was of a strange form and with a scrolled head, the curve of its shape having some of the beauty to be found in negro sculpture. Jan seized the bargain, and carried it home.

No sooner had he the guitar in the house than he tuned it, and crashing his finger-nails across it, struck out a rasped chord. He quickly followed it with a shout of dismay. From out of one of the big holes had crept a startled bug.

After my experience with the church bell I could sympathize with the insect, weeping perhaps "walrus tears" upon its death-bed. But the problem of how one could disinfect a guitar was worrying. The case had no cracks for vermin-harbouring, so we shut up the instrument; and after some indecision Jan decided to trust to luck and leave it alone.