Poor Folk in Spain Part 4

We had come to Spain for the several reasons mentioned in Chapter I. We had found the freedom: it was as though some oppressing weight were lifted from off us, as though an attack of mental asthma had been relieved. But on the whole we felt that we had been defrauded in other respects. The weather, except for the afternoon at Medina, had been very cloudy and at times almost cold. We had heard no guitar during our week in Spain. One day a man with a primitive clarinet, accompanied by a man with a side drum, had wandered about the town making a queer music which had given us thrills of unexpected delight. But Jan does not play the clarinet. He had made up his mind about guitars, and guitars he would have. The last night which we were to spend in Avila, he said:

"See here, Jo, we'll go out and we'll walk up and down, through and round this town, till we hear a guitar playing. Then we will walk in and explain. I'm sure the people, whoever they may be, will not mind, but I am going to hear Spanish music."

After supper we set out again. We walked the town from the top to the bottom. Not a whisper of guitar or of any other music. We bisected the town from left to right--still silence except for the dim sounds of normal evening life. We went out into the little garden which was beyond the walls and, leaning on the parapet, stretched our ears over the small suburb beneath. The cries of a wailing child or two, of a scolding woman and the shouts of an angry man answered us; of music not a note.

We walked round the walls and were about to return in disappointment to the hotel, when Jan said "Hush!"

We listened. Barely audible, from below on the hill-side, came the faint tinkle of a guitar. We looked out across the dark country. The hill sloped steeply from our feet and rose again in planes of blue blackness to the distant mountains. Almost in the bottom of the valley we saw a square of light from an open door. The sound came from this direction.

Cautiously we crept down the hill, which was steep, pebbly and without paths. As we came down, the noise grew louder.

There was a small drinking house or venta by the roadside; near to it, drawn up on a gra.s.sy spot beneath some big trees, were gipsy caravans and booths, and as we pa.s.sed by we could see, dimly white, the blanketed shapes of the gipsies as they lay on the gra.s.s asleep under the stars.

From the venta came the sounds of music.

After a momentary hesitation we went in. The room, lit by one dim lamp, was crowded with gipsies and workmen. It was long in shape and an alcove almost opposite to the door was part.i.tioned off as a bar. At one end was a table upon which three gipsies with dark, lined Spanish faces were sitting, and the audience had formed itself into rough, concentric semicircles spreading down the length of the room. Most of the men were swarthy with the sun, clad in the roughest of clothes, some with tall hats on, others with striped blankets flung over their shoulders. The inn looked like what the average traveller would describe as a nest of brigands.

We murmured a bashful "buenos noches," bowed to the company and crept into the background. A few returned our greeting, but with delicacy of feeling the majority took no overt notice of our presence.

The man on the table who held the guitar began to thrum on the instrument. A tall gipsy, whose face was drawn into clear, almost prismatic shapes, and who might have stepped out of an etching by Goya, put his stick into a corner, slipped off his blanket and, standing in the open s.p.a.ce before the table, began a stamping dance, snapping his fingers in time with the rhythm. A workman standing near to us said:

"That man does not play the guitar very well, the other one plays better."

He went out and in a short while returned with his wife, a laughing woman whom he placed next to me. There was no drinking of wine. The alcarraza, an unglazed, bottle shaped drinking vessel, full of water, was handed about. It has a small spout, and from this the Spaniard pours a fine stream of water into his mouth. But beware, incautious traveller--ten to one you will drench yourself.

Though the audience apparently took no notice of our presence, in reality they were extremely conscious of us. One by one, as if by accident, gipsy women clad in red cottons came into the already crowded room. Soon a girl was urged to dance. She demurred, giggling. At last she was pushed into the open s.p.a.ce, and with a gesture of resignation she began to dance. We are not judges of Spanish dancing: we had been looking for atmosphere, and had plunged into the thick of it. This was no cafe in Madrid or Seville got up for the entertainment of the traveller. This was the true, natural, romantic Spain. Opportunity again had blessed her disciples. One of the women pushed her way out of the door, and in a short while returned, dragging with her a child about nine years old. The little girl's face was frowning and angered, the sleep from which she had been roused still hung heavy on her eyelids.

"Aha!" exclaimed the audience. "She dances well."

The man who was reputed the better player roused himself from the table and sat down on a chair. They put castanets into the child's hands. The man struck a few chords and slowly the music formed itself into the rhythm of a Spanish measure.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Relaxing none of her angry, sleepy expression, the child danced wonderfully. The castanets clashed and fluttered beneath her fingers, her skirts swirled this way and that, her feet beat the floor in time with the pulsation of the guitar. The audience shouted encouragement at her. With a wild series of movements, the dance at last came to an end.

"Brava! Brava!" cried the gipsies.

"One day that girl will be worth much money," said a man, with approval in his voice.

Then the best male dancer took the floor. With true artistic instinct he did not attempt to rival the active dancing of the child, but performed a stately movement, holding his arms above his head, and slowly turning himself about. When he sat down an old man of seventy or so began a series of senile caperings, thumping his stick on the floor. The audience rolled with laughter at the ancient buffoon.

For some while Jan had been wondering whether he should pay for two or three bottles of wine for the company, but we did not know the delicacies of Spanish etiquette, nor had we sufficient language in which to make an inquiry, so, pushing my way to the child who had danced so well, I pressed a few coppers into her hand. She looked up at me in astonishment.

"What do you want me to do, then?" she asked.

Our Spanish failed to shape a proper reply, so I smiled at her as answer.

"Buenos noches," and "Muchos gracias," we said to the crowd, and made our way out again into the night.

We were followed up the hill by a gipsy boy who begged cigarettes, but he had pestered us during the whole of our stay at Avila, and we did not feel kindly towards him. Nor indeed had we any cigarettes to give, because Spain was suffering from a tobacco famine, and those which we had brought with us from France had just come to an end.

The next morning we left the Hotel del Jardin, which owes its name to the fact that it possesses in the front a tiny square of earth on which grow five bushes and a small tree. We were bound for Madrid.

CHAPTER VI

MADRID

Madrid Station was the usual dark barn into which the trains ran and where they rested, as the diligences rest beneath the barn of the coaching inn. One descended the steps of the carriage into gloom; found a dim porter whom one would never recognize again; made one's way amongst the towering, sniffling black Pargantua of locomotives; was fought for by an excited mob of cabmen, amongst whom one remained pa.s.sive until a cabman dowered with more character than his fellows had managed to attract one's notice; and finally we were packed into a small, four-square omnibus, our luggage on the top, the driver and his tout on the box. A police official in a grey uniform halted us. He asked our names, our destination and warned us not to pay the driver more than five pesetas for the trip, including the luggage.

To-day was Sunday. We had, indeed, on getting up at Avila imagined it to be Sat.u.r.day. We were leaving Avila expressly on a Sat.u.r.day in order to be in Madrid for the great Sunday bullfight, for practically all bullfighting in Spain is reserved as a mild sport for Sunday afternoon, or for other days of Church festival. Unfortunately, we had learned on the train that it was not Sat.u.r.day but Sunday. Somehow, we had mislaid a day. We had presented ourselves with a Wednesday or a Thursday or a Friday too many, and now Sunday had gone bang and the bullfight with it.

But in consequence our entry into Madrid had some of the dignity of a royal procession. We plunged, a shabby omnibus, into the flood of carriages which parade the parks of Madrid on bullfight occasions. There were doubtless ladies with high combs placed in their raven hair; with l.u.s.trous eyes glowing from the deep caverns of their eye sockets; with a waxy and sensuous flower hanging from their full-blooded lips; clad in mystery-lending mantilla and gorgeous shawl, over which the Orient has burst a splendour of silken blossom. There were, no doubt, such spectacles to see; there must have been; all the artists who paint Spain cannot lie. Yet I confess that we did not see them. Though we are beginning to be suspicious of Spanish painters, we will not a.s.sert that no such ladies drove in procession, tempting the lounging Spaniard with glances from eyes of melting jet.

We did not see them because the whole flood of carriages was plunged in a strange golden haze. Dusk had fallen and overhead signs of daylight showed purplish through the fog, but lower down it was quite dark, and through this haze of orange-gold particles, which drifted in the air as golden particles drift in a chemical solution, the lamps of the carriages threw long searchlights, arresting strange silhouettes of the coach-borne crowd, so that we made our first acquaintance with the people of Madrid merely as black shadows against a radiance of gold. It was, indeed, somewhat a prophetic introduction. These black shadows against the gold may stand as a figure for Spain. We think of Spain as the land of the last romance, whereas the Spaniard's real romance is money and the gaining of it. But this is a mixing of secondary and primary impressions. Before our eyes Madrid rolled forward, gloating in an aureate solution, accompanied by the shouts of coachmen and the blaring from aristocratic and impatient motor-cars. We sat looking out of the black windows of the omnibus with much of that childish delight which a shadowgraph theatre gives. In time, however, we began to cough.

After a while longer we began to realize that this haze so exquisite in the lamplight was dust--dust.

We rolled along, manufacturing our halo as we went, until, coming out of the press of carriages into cobbled and ill-lit streets, our glory fell away from us and we rocked on, reflecting on this apt ill.u.s.tration of the old French proverb concerning beauty and suffering. Gradually we decided that we could have dispensed with this weird introduction to Madrid in order to have spared our throats.

Our friend Jesus Perez had given us an address appropriately enough in the Place of the Angel. But there were three _pensions_ in the same building and he had not discriminated. So I, leaving Jan to look after the bus, went to explore, and knocking at random was brought face to face with an old lady who had not a trace of the angelic in her const.i.tution. While she was grumpily and wilfully misunderstanding me, insisting that the Senor for whom I was looking did not live there, a crowd of well-fed persons sifted from the dining-room and stood in a circle staring at me with cold-eyed curiosity. As they stared they all picked their teeth. At last I forced understanding on her and she told me in a surly voice that her _pension_ was full. The other two _pensions_ were full also. It was explained to me that Madrid was suffering from congestion, that never had such a season been experienced.

So I retreated from the stairs and we held a council of distress in the street. The driver of the bus, who did not indeed look like a very competent judge, said that he knew of a good _pension_. By a series of manoeuvres, about as complicated as the turning of a large ship in a small river, he got his bus reversed and we set off again the way we had come. But once more we met a refusal, backed by wide-eyed staring and public tooth-picking.

We had the address of an hotel, as a last resource indeed, for it was somewhat beyond our means, costing seventeen pesetas a day _en pension_.

So in despair we made our way to it, wondering whether the congestion had spread from the eight peseta boarding-houses to the seventeen-peseta hotels, and whether our first night in Madrid was to be spent in the bus. We came back into the garishly lit main streets of Madrid and at last the bus halted. There was no hotel front, and we plunged between two shops along a pa.s.sage from which photographs of the beauties of Madrid showed exquisite sets of teeth from the showcases of a society photographer. A narrow, twisting staircase--the lift was out of order--spiralled us up to a sumptuous hotel decorated with mirrors and white paint arranged with a Permanic taste. Rooms were to be had, and so we resigned ourselves to luxury for a few days.

Luxury indeed it was. For our eight pesetas a day in Avila we had had as much as we wanted. Here it was in proportion. We were expected to eat our seventeen pesetas' worth a day. Course followed course until, more than replete, we had to wave away almost the whole of the second half of this truly Roman repast. The waiters were aghast. What? Not eat seventeen pesetas worth when one had paid for it? Incredible! We gazed about at our fellow diners and saw that we were unique. But then as a rule our fellow diners surpa.s.sed us as much in girth as in appet.i.te; they had "excellent accommodations." Your true Spaniard adores his dinner. There is a general superst.i.tion that love is the Spaniard's prime pa.s.sion. But I doubt it. For the once that we have been asked what we think of Spanish beauty, we have been twenty times questioned about our judgment of Spanish cooking.

Madrid at night. How much has one not dreamed of southern romance beneath skies of ultramarine? But Madrid seems just like any other large European city. It is Paris without the wit, Munich without the music. We talk, of course, of first impressions. The first impressions of a town are rarely national. Collective humanity is collective humanity everywhere; has the same needs and devises the same methods of satisfying them. Some needs Madrid supplies more blatantly than is done in other places. The Latin is indifferent to noise and the Spaniard is the most hardened of the Latin races. There seems to be no curb on the cries of the street vendors. The consequence is that each shouts out his wares in compet.i.tion with his fellows; the louder the yell the more the custom. The peculiar qualities of Spanish singing further stimulate to a point of mordant acidity the Iberian voice. For a person of sensitive hearing Madrid is intolerable: newspaper men, flower-merchants, toothpick-sellers, and above all the lottery ticket vendors, scream their wares with nerve-racking persistency; added to which, to make pandemonium complete, the cab-drivers and their touts bellow and shout, while the horns of the motor-cars are the most discordant that we have ever heard.

As the night progressed from a stifling heat to a comparative coolness the noise seemed to increase. At two o'clock in the morning we thought, surely, it had reached its limit. And to some extent it had. One thanks Heaven sometimes that the human machine runs down; and we, when the "sweet sister of death" laid her hands upon newspaper and lottery ticket sellers, sent a thanksgiving up towards the stars, a thanksgiving the more sincere at the moment because it was silent. The diminution of noise went on steadily until about three, and we imagined that Madrid was going to sleep. It was, however, but a ruse of the subtle city. As is well known, one can become used to a persistent or regularly repeated noise, for Jan used to sleep sweetly close to the stamp battery of a mine, the din of which was so deafening that the voice was inaudible, even at the loudest shout; and dwellers near a railway line are but little disturbed by the nightly trains. Madrid knew that in time we would become accustomed to the human babel, in spite of its strident note; so she subst.i.tuted a fict.i.tious silence torn into strips by the sudden pa.s.sage of motors which had taken advantage of the clearness of the streets to put on full speed and also to cut off the silencer.

Irregularly these motors went by about one every five minutes. Each silence was about long enough to let us reach the edge over which one tumbles into sleep, and each roaring pa.s.sage of a car jerked us back into disgusted wakefulness. We arose to a very early breakfast, wishing we had Mr. G. K. Chesterton at hand so that we could enter into an argument with him about the beauties of liberty.

To retrace our steps for a moment, it was just about at the hither side of the noise climax, that is, about 2.20 in the morning, that we got back to our hotel. We found the street door shut and locked, and no bell could we find to pull. We thumped on the door, but only a hollow, drum-like echoing answered us. We were dismayed. We had got up early at Avila, a train journey and discoverings in Madrid had worn us out, and on the other side of this locked door our bed tempted us; for we were not then aware that sleep was forbidden to us whether we got in or stayed in the street. It seemed strange in Madrid, wide awake and noisy, that our hotel should have locked up so early and should have shut us out. Despairingly again we drummed on the door. We awakened sympathy in a pa.s.ser-by. A few words explained our plight. He whistled, and we presently saw a man with a lantern in his hand and with an official cap on his head coming towards us. Our helper explained and the official unlocked the door, let us in, and locked the door behind us.

This wandering latchkey is the equivalent to our old night-watchman.

Amongst his duties is that of chanting out the hours of the night as they pa.s.s--for the benefit of the sleepless--to which he adds the condition of the weather. Since fully ninety-five per cent. of the Spanish nocturnes are Whistlerian blue, he has earned the t.i.tle of El Sereno, or the serene. There is an advantage in this custom--one cannot forget one's latchkey. The worst evil which can happen to one is that one's latchkey may forget itself: but Spain is on the whole a sober country.

A big town reveals its flavour but by degrees. Madrid, whatever its real character may be, had hidden herself behind a veil--a veil of dust. That golden aura which had enveloped our first vision was not a permanent characteristic of the town. The dust hung in the air, rising higher than the houses. From the outskirts, maybe one would have seen Madrid as it were enclosed in a dome of dust. We marvelled that people could live in such at atmosphere.

We had noticed that, in addition to its dustiness, Madrid was suffering from a dreadful shortage of water. It was, of course, July, and one might expect some famine on the high and arid tableland of Spain, but we wondered that so great a city could have arisen with so meagre a water supply. At street corners queues of tired women and children waited for hot hours with buckets, pails, jugs and amphoras. Soldiers with a hose pipe from which trickled a paltry stream of water filled the vessels one by one. There was gaiety and bad temper, giggling and quarrelling amongst the women.

"This," said we, "is a primitive city."

In the public gardens water-carts were standing, and crowds of men were baling water up from the decorative ponds.

"A real famine," said we, "could not be worse than this."

This was in fact the case. Madrid is supplied from the mountains by an ancient aqueduct. The Spaniard has a principle of interfering with nothing until the last moment; the ideals of liberty are carried so far in Spain that they apply to inanimate objects as well as human beings.