Poor Folk in Spain Part 29

[Footnote 31: At the time of going to press we have just received a message from Spain. The Spanish authorities announce a _happy_ ending to the trouble. Our luggage has been discovered at Alcantarilla, four miles from Murcia, where it has been all the while.]

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE ROAD HOME

We set out on our journey home next morning. The bootmaker, who arrived at the house almost before we were dressed, came with us to the station, where he presented us with a large packet of angels-hair cakes as sustenance for the journey. This favourite Murcian delicacy, made from the inside of a gourd, has a stringy consistency and a sickly flavour.

The zapatero had secured them "on tick" from the confectioner's where he was lodging. As we take leave of him, we may summarize his subsequent history as we drew it by hints and half-made revelations from Antonio and his companions. I am afraid that the zapatero's account of his departure from his village may have been invention. In Murcia he revealed himself as a man who was work-shy. He borrowed money to get his tools, he got advances on his wages, he arrived late to work, he ran up a large bill at the confectioner's; and then, one fine morning, decamped. This much we gathered. Antonio would never tell us, but I believe that he himself paid the confectioner's bill after the zapatero's disappearance; but to what extent our friends had suffered we could never learn.

As we had just finished breakfast we put the angels-hair cakes into our haversack. But under the strain of travel the flimsy paper bag in which they were packed went to pieces, the angels-hair spread itself in fibrous stickiness all over the contents of the haversack. We felt no grat.i.tude to the zapatero for his parting gift.

Our resources, despite an extra hundred pesetas borrowed from Antonio, were at a low ebb, and, after some tedious searching of a Spanish railway guide, we had decided to make our way home up the east coast of Spain to Barcelona and thence to Paris. This route was cheaper than that through Madrid. In addition, we could travel by night, spending our days in the towns, and thus dodge the expenses of hotels. We travelled, of course, third cla.s.s because of cheapness, and because of the interest which was always to be found amongst one's fellow pa.s.sengers. The journey was cold on account of our thin clothes, and in spite of our hopes the carriages were so full and the interchanges of pa.s.sengers so frequent that we could get no sleep. After two days and nights we reached Barcelona worn out, having pa.s.sed through Alicante, Valencia and Tarragona, but too weary to get interest or amus.e.m.e.nt from any of these towns.

We arrived at Barcelona on a chill morning and set out from the station to look for the British Consul, whom we wished to consult about our lost luggage. Barcelona is large, and we waited for a tram. A pa.s.ser-by told us that our waiting was vain. There was a traffic strike in progress and neither tram, omnibus nor cab was to be had. We would have to walk. Bad luck seemed to have reserved her efforts for the last few days.

We do not think that England realized the great interest excited all over the world by the sufferings of the late Mayor of Cork. While his fate hung in the balance people would stop us in the streets of Murcia, or even in the outlying villages, to ask us if we believed that there was a chance of his recovery. He had died shortly before our homeward journey began. The Northern parts of Spain see a parallel between their position and that of Ireland. Indeed, the parallel is not exact; rather one might compare them to the position to which Ulster fears to be relegated. The fact remains that Catalonia and the Basque countries, the hard-working, commercial parts of Spain, object to the domination, laxity and misrule of the Government of Madrid. I believe that the party which wishes independence, the Spanish Sinn Fein, is very small; but it has become mixed with socialistic propaganda, communism, and so forth.

At any rate, Barcelona, combining as it does the excitable nature of the Spaniard with the organization of a working community, provides the field for a series of extremely unpleasant strikes, riots and demonstrations. The transport strike was an ill.u.s.tration of this. During the two days we were in Barcelona, three employers were shot in the streets by employes.

To return to the Mayor of Cork. His death was the signal for a typical demonstration in Barcelona, in favour of the Sinn Fein and of the Irish Republic. England was far enough away to remain undisturbed. The English Consul was at hand. When we reached his house we found that all his window-gla.s.s had been smashed in sympathy for Irish freedom.

At a first glance Barcelona does not seem to be a Spanish town. There is something Germanic about it. Sitting in the main square and watching the people pa.s.s by, one could well imagine oneself in some town on the German border of Alsace.

We remained in Barcelona two days, recovering from the fatigues of the journey. On our last afternoon, as we were strolling through a narrow back street, our attention was caught by a window full of small figures, baked in clay, highly coloured and gilt. The figures were all those of saints and biblical characters, not depicted in the formal manner of religious moments, but in a familiar and homelike way. We went into the small shop and asked their purpose, and were told that these figures were for Christmas decorations. We bought two--one of the Blessed Virgin hanging on a line a chemise which she had just washed, the other an incognita lady saint with a distaff and a cat.

We had taken up our quarters at a small, disreputable lodging-house opposite the station, where they charged us the exorbitant fee of two pesetas a night each. (We suspect that the real price was one peseta).

The night-watchman got us out of bed at three o'clock, as our train left at half-past four in the morning, and the preliminaries to Spanish travelling are complicated.

To our surprise we found but a small queue of people waiting at the ticket-office. Our immediate neighbour was a shabby man in a bowler hat from beneath which showed the curly black hair of an Italian. He was accompanied by a middle-aged bustling bourgeois. The bourgeois took a ticket, which he handed to the Italian. We then demanded tickets to the French frontier at Cerbere.

"We cannot book you to Cerbere," said the clerk; "the railway bridge between Figueras and Port Bou has been damaged. It will not be pa.s.sable for three days."

We thought drearily of having to return to the lodging-house, of three days more in this large, transportless town of Barcelona, of again getting up at three a.m.

At this moment the Italian came to our aid.

"From Figueras," he said, "there are motor-cars which will carry the pa.s.sengers over the frontier. You can get along that way easily."

So we booked to Figueras.

The Italian accompanied us and revealed his history. He was wandering about, looking for work. He had crossed the frontier on foot from France. His papers were in a queer condition, and some of them he had had to leave in the custody of the frontier officials as a guarantee.

But there was no work in Barcelona, so he was going back once more. The bourgeois was an employe of the Italian Consulate, who had come to the station to pay his fare and to see that he really left the town.

The train rolled along through that rich Catalan scenery depicted in the landscapes of Jose Pujo, and at about ten o'clock we reached Figueras.

With some difficulty we found a boy and a hand-cart, by means of which we could transport our luggage to the diligence office. The road was uphill and deep in a clayey mud. The poor boy tugged and pushed, and Jan had to go into the slime to help him. Through a long, narrow, old-fashioned street, Figueras opened out into a plaza planted with tall lime trees, the fallen leaves of which made a sodden carpet on the ground. The dead leaves seemed to give the dominant note of Figueras, a note of exhausted melancholy.

Misfortune, as has so often been said, is sometimes good luck in disguise. More "get on or get out" pa.s.sengers had forestalled us with the car, notably a fussy man who, dragging with him two or three musical instrument cases, was loudly informing everybody that he had a concert engagement somewhere in France and that his career would be blasted if he did not fulfil it. There was no seat left for us. We turned to the boy and asked him to find us some sleeping place for the night.

"There is the Grand Hotel," he said.

"Do not talk to us of grand hotels," we answered. "Grand hotels are inst.i.tutions which level humanity to a dead datum of boredom and mulct it of expensive fees in the process."

"Claro," responded the boy.

"Take us to some local pub," we continued, "where the stranger rarely intrudes."

The boy, forcing his cart uphill, led us down a side street to a small wine-shop, the woodwork of whose windows had recently been painted a gay violet hue. We pushed our way inside. A man with beady eyes, who might well be called "black-complexioned," curtly demanded our business. On our request for a bed he scanned us from head to foot. We were indeed somewhat respectable, having travelled in our best clothes for fear of another accident to our luggage, wishing, if such occurred, to save the best we had. The dark man turned to a woman who had a kind of hard, crystalline beauty, and consulted with her. At last the woman said in a coa.r.s.e voice:

"They can have a room if they will take their meals here."

To which we consented.

The Italian had been following us, vainly begging us to walk over the frontier with him, but as we had still a trunk, two rucksacks, and the large Sevillian dish in its basket, his suggestion did not seem feasible. So we finally said good-bye to one another, he setting off again on foot for France.

We were sitting over our coffee after lunch, when the black-eyed host came near, drew a chair close up to us, stared at us with perplexed brows for a moment, then said, suddenly:

"I know why you have come here."

"We have come because the bridge is broken," we said.

He waved this aside.

"You need not mince matters with me," he answered. "I can see, I have two eyes. I have plenty of opium upstairs."

"Opium?"

"Yes, you can smuggle it over to France quite easily from here."

"But we are not smugglers."

"I'll let you have it cheap," answered the host, closing one eye.

We again protested the entire innocence of our trafficking, but obviously did not convince him. He knew that people in our condition did not come to his shanty for nothing. He renewed his attack after supper.

"Why have you come to my dram shop?" he asked.

"Because big hotels are dull," we answered.

He shook his head.

"You have some reason for wanting to get to France secretly," he persisted. "Your papers, for instance, are not in order."

We protested that they were.

"You need not be afraid of me," went on our host. "I am quite trustworthy."

We replied that in spite of the high opinion he had of us we had done nothing to deserve it.