Poor Folk in Spain Part 28

Jan told the zapatero that if he were coming to Murcia he could give him an address which might be useful. He then wrote Antonio's name and direction, which the zapatero accepted almost with reverence. Jan went off to the ticket-office, while I, aided by the zapatero, found a carriage in the train, which had just arrived. The gipsy woman came with us; and an old man also got into the carriage. Up and down the platform a hawker was walking with a broad basket over his arm. He was selling thin circular cakes. I bought five, one for each person in the carriage.

The old man accepted the cake which I offered him, took a large bite, ruminated for a moment over it and remarked:

"These cakes value nothing."

The zapatero and the gipsy woman each took a bite. Opinion seemed unanimous. I then bit in my turn. The cake had a queer taste: it was something like a thin cold m.u.f.fin flavoured with cayenne pepper. The gipsy woman collected the cakes, each with a bite out of it (like the mad hatter's saucer), and put them into her basket, saying, "Oh, the children won't grumble at them." But I was determined that Jan should have the experience.

As he came out of the ticket-office he was intercepted by the cake-sellers, who said to him:

"Senor, you have a wife, who is a remarkable woman." The old man turned to the zapatero.

"Who are these people?" he demanded.

The zapatero began to give an account of us.

"They are painters," he said; "they travel about the country making pictures with paint and brushes, not with a machine. Not content with that they are amateur musicians, and can play. There are their instruments. But better than all this they can read and write; and what is more I can prove it."

With an air of pride he drew from his bosom the card on which Jan had written Antonio's address.

The old man took it. He perched a pair of horn spectacles on his nose and read the address through from end to end.

Then he handed the treasure back solemnly to the zapatero.

"And very well done too," he said.

We said good-bye to the zapatero, and the train drew out of the station some two hours late. Gradually the night darkened. There was a long wait at Alcantarilla, and we arrived at Murcia within the four hours' limit which one must place on the Spanish time-table. We left our van luggage to be collected in the morning, and carrying our instruments in our hands walked back to the Paseo de Corveras.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 30: Bootmaker.]

CHAPTER XXVII

MURCIA--LAST DAYS

Next morning we sent Marciana to tell Jesus, the water-carrier, to bring our registered luggage from the station. After a long delay she came back saying that no luggage with a number corresponding to that of the receipt was to be found. We set off through the mud to the station, and after having suffered from some lack of courtesy on the part of one or two of the clerks we were able to convince ourselves that Jesus had spoken the truth. Our luggage, consisting of a suit-case, a rucksack and a hold-all, containing all our warm clothes, our painting materials, all our drawings of the past five months, was missing. We were a.s.sured that we had nothing to be anxious about. The next train from Lorca would arrive about six-thirty, and the things which _must_ have been left behind at Lorca would come on by it. But the Spanish rea.s.surances had no foundation, the baggage did not come, and the baggage officials confessed themselves astounded. "Such a thing," they said, "has never happened before." The station-master, a short, portly, grumpy fellow, at first refused to listen to our complaints. When at last we compelled him to do so, he shrugged his shoulders and said, "It is a fatality." After some pressing, however, he consented to telegraph to Lorca, and to telephone to Alcantarilla, the junction.

The next day no news was forthcoming of our luggage, and the station-master was hostile. He saw in us persons who were troubling the peaceful round of his easy duties. The other station officials said plainly the baggage had gone to Madrid by mistake, or perhaps to Carthagena. But neither Lorca, Alcantarilla, Madrid nor Carthagena would confess knowledge of our errant luggage. We were indeed in rather an awkward situation. We had reserved just enough money with which to travel homewards, but were now faced with the prospect of a long stay in Murcia waiting till our luggage was found and, if it continued missing, with the purchase of many necessary articles which we now lacked. For instance, we had no boots, having made the journey in alpagatas.

By this time, of course, Antonio, and indeed, through the agency of Marciana and of Jesus, the whole quarter had learned of our misfortune.

Antonio arranged for a meeting with a clerk of some commercial firm.

This clerk's chief occupation seemed to be the pestering of the Spanish railways for lost objects, and he entered with gusto into our affair. He made us work out a list of our losses and added on a thousand pesetas to our total, which he said was ridiculously underestimated. Then we went, backed by Antonio, to the railway station.

"What do you want?" snarled the station-master, as he saw us appear once more.

"These Senores have come to make a claim," said Antonio.

"Ha ha!" said the station-master, grinning. "They won't be able to do so. They are foreigners, and will not be able to write it out properly."

"Pardon me," answered the clerk. "I am here to write it properly in their names, and they will sign it. This will be sufficient."

After a short argument the station-master gave way. He took us into an office and spread out before us a large book. It seemed that the railway companies had made ample provision for recording losses.

The clerk opened it, tucked up his sleeves, squared his elbows, and in careful orthography began to shape on the page a complex doc.u.ment, full of Spanish equivalents for "whereas" and "wherefore." When the signing was completed we went home.

"I have given them a week in which to find the luggage," said the clerk.

"After that delay is over, they will have to pay you. Even if the luggage is recovered the day after the week is up, you may refuse it, and demand the cash in its place."

We went home to count up our diminishing resources: "Here is a week,"

said we, "here are two pairs of boots." We had heard rumours of boats which travelled round the coast, and understanding these to be cheaper than the railways we made inquiries; but Murcia was just too far from the sea to be interested in shipping, and we had to give up the idea of reaching France by this means.

Murcia was bitterly cold during those days of waiting. Our warmer underclothes were lost with the luggage, and our friend's house, wonderfully cool on the hottest day of summer, was frigid in the damp, rainy autumn. We had nothing to do, for all our materials were missing, and one could not make excursions on foot, because the roads were deep in mud. So we waited, shivering, until we could escape from a country which had no suitable appliances for warming its chilled inhabitants.

We at last came to the end of the week's grace, and the luggage had not appeared. So, finding that the process of extracting payment from the railways was going to be a long one, we decided to give Antonio a power of attorney to manage the affair for us. We were a.s.sured that payment would certainly be made eventually, though with a little delay. Antonio took charge of arrangements to draw up the necessary papers, while we set to packing what remained to us of luggage, including the large Sevillian basin given to us by La Merchora. At last everything was ready; on the following day we were to sign the papers in the presence of a lawyer, and the next day we were to set out for Alicante by the morning train.

On the morning of the last day, while we were sewing La Merchora's Sevillian basin into a huge rush basket which was to protect it from damage on the journey, we looked out of the window and saw, somewhat to our dismay, a fat, familiar figure strolling along the pavement. The bootmaker had arrived from Lorca hunting for work.

In spite of a feeling of grat.i.tude which we entertained towards him for the help he had given us at Lorca, we could not but wish that he had come at some other time. Our day would be as full as we could well manage. The complications which might be added by having to dance attendance on the zapatero filled us with dismay. To our relief the bootmaker sauntered on towards the town. Selfishly we hoped that he would leave us alone. We had told Antonio about him, and both Luis and Flores had promised to help him to find work when he arrived.

Commissions called us into the town, and we slunk along the streets, spying for a portly form. But upon our return we met it, coming out of Antonio's house. Our Fate could not be avoided, so we asked him in to a simple lunch, at which we put before him, amongst other things, a large dish of especially selected olives which we had bought to take back with us to England. The zapatero approved so much of our taste in olives that, to our dismay, he almost finished up our store; and in consequence we had to waste more of our precious time in buying a new supply. We might indeed have saved ourselves the trouble: we were fated to reach England without olives, for the bottle holding them was afterwards forgotten and left in a railway waiting-room. After lunch we dismissed the zapatero, hinting to him as broadly as we could that we now had a lot to do, but that we would be delighted to see him at about seven o'clock, by which time our business would be over.

However, when at three o'clock we called at Antonio's house to bring him to the lawyer's office at which the power of attorney was to be signed, the zapatero was sitting comfortably in one of the rocking-chairs awaiting our arrival. We suggested to him that we had business to attend to. He replied that he would accompany us into the town.

So Antonio, the clerk, the zapatero, Jan and I set out for the lawyer's office. We had expected the bootmaker to leave us on the threshold, but he stalked gravely in our rear, and introduced himself to the lawyer's clerks as a friend of the family. The lawyer's office was a large apartment with a black and white tiled floor, at one end of which was the clerk's table and at the other that of the lawyer. He was a thick-set man covered with a huge golfing cap in loud checks. Over his head was suspended from the ceiling, with outstretched wings, a stuffed and dilapidated eagle from which generations of moth had stolen all hint of beauty. We discovered that this eagle, in some form or another, is the recognized trademark of the lawyer. One is tempted to wonder if this bird of prey hovers thus emblematically over the head of the man of law as a sort of symbolic warning to the simple-minded peasants.

The legal preliminaries were brought to a stop by the discovery that Jan had forgotten the pa.s.sports; so, while he set off in a hurry to get them, we sat around in an uncomfortable circle. Meanwhile the chill from the tiled floor crept upwards through my feet. To break the silence the lawyer began to pay me the usual compliments on my Castilian.

Immediately in came the zapatero.

"She is a talented lady," he exclaimed. "Not only does she speak English in addition to our language, but she can paint pictures, and play on musical instruments. These I have seen and heard myself. Furthermore, she has other talents: she can read and write, and so can her husband.

In case you do not believe this latter statement I can prove it."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Whereupon he pulled from his pocket the address which Jan had written for him at Lorca and, unfolding it with some solemnity, placed it on the lawyer's desk. The latter, perceiving nothing humorous in the zapatero's action, read the writing gravely and handed it back with expressions of approval.

But the arrival of Jan with the pa.s.sports by no means seemed to satisfy the lawyer. He turned the papers over and over and said that with these nothing could be done. After much difficulty we discovered that no justice could be claimed in Spain unless one were registered at the munic.i.p.al offices. The tax for registration depended upon one's station and possessions. There was just time, with luck, to get ourselves registered before the offices were shut; so, fearful that we should miss another day, we hurried through the narrow Murcian streets, led by Antonio and followed by the bootmaker. On the way a sudden doubt attacked Jan. His pa.s.sport name is G.o.dfrey Jervis, but he generally signs himself by his pen-name of "Jan." Thoughtlessly he had signed the claim in the station book "Jan" and was afraid that if this name was not entered in the other papers a legal flaw might be entailed. The munic.i.p.al registry office was a long, dark pa.s.sage pierced with small, square, deep-set pigeon-holes and about large enough to admit the pa.s.sage of a head. Through one of these holes we made our claim, asking for tramps' certificates--the cheapest of all. My munic.i.p.al paper was filled in easily enough, but we had a tough struggle to induce the official to alter "G.o.dfrey Jervis" to "Jan."

At first, as is official habit, he was hidebound, but in Spain by persistence one can achieve anything. In turn Jan, myself, Antonio and the zapatero, thrust a head through the hole adding urging to expostulation. Luckily the pa.s.sport name was not very clearly written, and at last the official admitted a compromise: he put "G.o.dfrey Jan,"

and our spirits rose once more.

Back we went to the lawyer's office, where, with some delays, and the expenditure of eighteen pesetas, we turned Antonio into our representative against the railway companies. We may add that one year and six months have pa.s.sed since then; we have since paid twenty-two pesetas more for another doc.u.ment; and a few months ago we were informed that possibly our case would come up for settlement next year.[31]

Before the night was over we also learned to our satisfaction that Luis had found a job for the zapatero, and that Antonio had got him a bedroom at the small confectioner's in a street close by.

FOOTNOTES: