Poor Folk in Spain Part 27

He grinned, chucked the waitress under the chin, and ordered a complex meal. As soon as the staff perceived our acquaintance with the agency boy, their manners changed. They became charming, inquiring after our need with a lively solicitude. We asked the diners about a posada. A bluff man, with a walrus moustache, seated at the same table, said the posada at which he was staying was comfortable.

"When you have finished your meal," he said, "I will lead you there and introduce you to the proprietor, an excellent fellow. But you come unluckily. To-day is market day. There are many farmers in from the country, and it is possible that you will find difficulties."

As we went out the waitress came running after us. "You have left your bread behind," she cried.

With our new friend we went off. But the posada was full for the night.

"There is another one, we will look at that," said our guide. "If the other is full also, you shall have my room, and I will find a bed somewhere until a room is free. Tomorrow the place will be emptier."

On the way to the second posada, we fell in once more with the cord porter.

"You are looking for rooms," he cried. "Why didn't you tell me before? I know of a splendid place. I will lead you there."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"Perhaps that will be better," said the man. "I do not think the other posada would really suit you. They say it is the meeting-place of loose women. You understand?"

The cord porter took us to a house outside of which were about ten hen-coops. In the midst of the coops an old woman was sitting on a low chair. She was an extraordinary shape; like a Chinese lucky image, Hotei. Her knees were perched on the rung of the chair, and so large was her stomach that it rose in front of her like a balloon, coming in its highest part well to the level of her chin. She looked dingy and unwashed, but we could not well draw back, for the cord porter had told her our needs. The obese woman stood up, balancing her fantastic stomach by a backward bend of the spine.

She had two rooms, one with a single bed, one with a couple. The single bed was small, the ceiling looked as if it were not innocent of vermin.

We chose the double-bedded room after the conventional bargaining.

"You will indeed be better there," said our friend. "Two beds are better than one."

The cord porter was commissioned to fetch our luggage and we went off with the other man. We had invited him to take coffee with us. He preceded us to a small _buvette_, and the waiter showed us into a room part.i.tioned into private boxes by means of canvas screens.

"Here one is at one's ease," said our acquaintance. We told him that we were painters.

"I am a zapatero,"[30] he said. "I have been here some weeks looking for work. My proper town is Aguilas, though I was born here. But Aguilas is not large. There was another zapatero in the town. The people all took their work to him. They said, 'He is a fool, but you are clever.

Therefore he can make a living only where he is known, and where folks sympathize with him; while you can easily make good elsewhere.' So I had to come away. But times are bad. They say that there are too many zapateros in Lorca already.

"Times are so bad in Lorca," he went on, "that I don't expect you will do the business here that you hope. Now, if you are the painters you ought to be, I have a proposal to make. You come with me to some towns I know of down the coast. You will put up your easel in the main street, and will paint, and I will sell lottery tickets at three goes for the real. We will do a splendid business. I can a.s.sure you that."

Had the offer come at another moment we would have jumped at the chance of the fun. But we had a London Exhibition hanging over our heads. We dared not waste the time. This we explained to the zapatero, adding also our regrets and how well the idea would have gone in the book we were projecting. His expression altered at once.

"Books?" said he. "You are book people?"

"Yes."

"But," he persisted, "you don't mean to say that you are that kind of persons? Not with _those_ books that Englishmen come selling. You are book people"--his voice rose with indignation--"you have to do with those Bibles!"

Shades of Borrow! we roared with laughter. Somewhat rea.s.sured the zapatero resumed his seat. We explained.

"Ah," he said, "I did not think that you could be that sort of persons and yet ... You are English. I," he added proudly, "am an Atheist! Of course I let my little boy read _that_ book, one has to learn to read somehow. But I say to him, 'Don't believe it. Use it if you like, but don't be taken in by it.'"

We went back to the house to find that our luggage had arrived. A b.u.t.ton was coming loose from my boot, so the zapatero borrowed needle and cotton and sewed it on professionally. Then, as he said he liked the guitar, we took out our instruments and began to play. The female Hotei ran into the entrada waving her hands.

"Oh, oh," she cried, "you mustn't play here! You mustn't play here! The owner of this house died three days ago, so we cannot allow any music here. It would show the greatest disrespect."

We said au revoir to the zapatero, and went out to examine Lorca. The houses on one side of the long street had swelled up the hill towards the Saracen castle. Through this we went clambering upwards. In appearance it was the oldest town we had seen. The houses were of all shapes, but of a uniform colour, like yellow rust, and the earth was of the same tint. The houses piled themselves up in fine shapes, but Lorca suffered from the same drawback as Murcia, a drawback we had feared: it was too big. Had we attempted to sketch in the streets we should have been swamped by people as I had been in the market-place. The streets were full of men sitting in groups making alpagatas. They called out after us as we pa.s.sed. The songs were different from those of Murcia or Jijona. Here is one, a guajiras which a woman was singing:

"Love is an insect Which enters the body, And no rest is left there When it takes possession.

It gnaws like a wood-louse The tree where it burrows; And in time it devours Volition and strength, Leaving only desires For the one who is worshipped."

We scrambled up to the castle and from thence found a view of the surrounding country. On the south there was a pa.s.sage not unlike that of Murcia, a flat cultivated valley; but to the north it looked as though giants had been at mining operations. The hills looked not like the result of nature but of artifice, they appeared to be huge mine dumps and slag heaps. It was fantastic and unpaintable. The town itself was too much like the conventionally picturesque mud coloured compositions of Southern Europe that every painter brings back from his travels, and we decided that Lorca was not a painting ground for us; and that we would go back to Murcia on the following day, looking for some suitable spot at which to paint on the homeward route to Barcelona.

We came down by a different path, pa.s.sing a cl.u.s.ter of seven white hermitages built on a square plateau. They were small box-like structures, and once, we believe, hermits did live in them, but now they are deserted. We reached Mrs. Hotei's house both tired and hungry. A crowd of women in black had just returned from the landlord's funeral.

They consented to boil us some eggs for supper, which we ate under Mrs.

Hotei's piercing eyes. From the ceiling of the supper-room hung cl.u.s.ters of quinces, and on the mantelpieces were some interesting specimens of antique Spanish pottery.

We went to bed early, and to our dismay found that one of the beds had been taken away. There was no washing apparatus in the room, and the window looking on to the road was curtained by an old dirty sack.

"Well," said we, "we are in for it. Pray Heaven that there are no bugs."

As we were about to undress we heard scuffling and giggling which drew our attention to another drawback, one to which we would not submit.

There was a second door to our room, half glazed, and the gla.s.s was covered by a hanging drapery. But this drapery, which was outside the gla.s.s, had been pulled aside, and a row of faces of curious children were staring in on us. We rang the bell. The daughter of Mrs. Hotei was half surprised at our objection to publicity and that we were so squeamish about undressing as a popular spectacle. But we persuaded her to pin up a pink shawl on our side of the door, and we then went to bed.

To bed, but not to sleep.

The bed was distressingly narrow. We could remain in it by clinging together, but if we loosened our grip, one or the other began to roll out. After some while Jan had ideas of getting out and of sleeping on the floor, but the floor was of stone and the only mat in the room was small and circular. Our determination to leave Lorca strengthened as the night wore on. At last we found a partial solution, we lashed ourselves together with the blankets. When sheer weariness was making us doze off, a man upstairs began to take off his boots. The floors were thin, and he seemed to be a centipede. Boot after boot he hurled into a corner, but even his feet were not inexhaustible, and at last we slept fitfully.

We awoke very early, grateful at least that no bugs had disturbed us. In spite of the many warnings we had had of the verminous condition of Spain, it has not been our experience to encounter in the provinces of Murcia and Alicante even as much insect life as one might easily find in Chelsea. Fleas, of course, there are, but in a hot dusty country fleas are to be expected.

Washing things were brought on demand, though I think they had expected us to wash at the public sink in the outhouse. Then we breakfasted on bread, coffee and grapes, while Mrs. Hotei sat by resting her stomach on the edge of the table and chanting in a hollow voice a paean of her own virtues. It ran somewhat thus:

"I am la gorda, The fat one of Lorca.

My stomach is ill.

Of an illness which makes it Swell up like a football.

But my heart has no illness; It is sound, it is loving, And makes no distinctions Between different peoples.

"I am la gorda, The fat one of Lorca.

My home is well known Because of its cheapness And the love of a mother, Which I shed o'er my lodgers.

Nowhere else will you Find meals of such richness Or cooking so luscious For people whose purses Are small in dimensions.

"I am la gorda, The fat one of Lorca.

My house is so loved by The folk of the district That _my_ bedrooms never One moment are empty.

I'll give you an instance: Last night, for example, Each bed carried double And would have contained more Could one but compress folks To smaller dimensions.

"I am la gorda, The fat one of Lorca.

Those who once come here Come back again, always.

My card I will give you That you may remember That Lorca possesses A kind-hearted mother, Or, anyhow, one who Will fill that position As long as you settle The bill she presents you."

In this plain song she explained both the disappearance of our second bed and the centipedal man upstairs. When she had finished we broke to her the news of our imminent departure. We lunched once again at the eating-house, which this day was full of peasants. Three women in black who might have stepped out of the pages of the Bible faced us. They were not friendly in manner. A small soldier, half tipsy, came in and, soon after him, the agency youth. The latter began to tease the tipsy soldier, and in a short while both had pulled out knives and were threatening each other in mock earnestness. But one could see that it needed little--an accidental word, a sentence misunderstood--to swing the drunken soldier over from joking to earnest. We took coffee at a cafe in the central street. La gorda rolled up the street, came to our table, and accepted a gla.s.s of anis dulce for the illness of her stomach.

We set off to the station followed by a small boy wheeling our luggage on a barrow. As I went people shouted after me: "Sombrero, Sombrero."

The train was, of necessity, late. We sat down in the station hall, and the gipsy woman who had come from Totana joined us. A blind woman led by a child took up her position at the booking-office exit, cunningly begging from the folk as they were handling their small change. The small child had one bad eye and was wiping both eyes with the same handkerchief. One could see that she, too, was threatened with blindness. The zapatero came, having dined at a friend's house.

A good deal of farm produce was being prepared for the train. There were crates of chickens, which were thrown about from hand to hand; but some unfortunate turkeys were not even as lucky as the hens. About twenty of them were packed loosely into a large net bag. The porter picked up each bag and, the turkeys squeaking loudly, pitched it up to a man who was standing in the truck. The bags were packed one on the top of another with a total lack of consideration for the turkeys' feelings. There is no S.P.C.A. in Spain.