Poor Folk in Spain Part 6

The day broke, and we pounded along through a dusty arid country. There was green in the bottom of the valley, but from the roads rose high columns of dust, while the plastered villages of box-like houses near the railroad were dried up and dust-coated. Dust blew in through the carriage windows and settled thick upon the curls which, still swinging and bobbing from the netting of the rack, were fast leaving their mistress behind. At first her companions had been anxious; now they were laughing.

"But," they said, "we wonder if she knows where to come for her things when she does arrive?"

The train became more crowded. Soon people were running up and down, looking angrily for places. Third-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers began to fill the corridor of our second-cla.s.s carriage. A boy of about nineteen, with the half-angry intense face characteristic of some Latins, came into the carriage and demanded a seat from the dark girl who was still stretched at full length. This seat "Darkey," with her habitual selfishness, refused to give up. Suddenly, we were in the middle of a full-fledged Spanish row.

To us it had a comic side. It was not what we would have called a row, as much as a furious debate. Of course with our slight acquaintance with Spanish we missed the finer points of the varied arguments.

"Darkey" began by saying that she was keeping the seat for a friend who was somewhere else. This was to some extent true; the French girl was somewhere else, though there was little likelihood of her claiming the seat.

The boy retorted that if she was somewhere else she probably had another seat.

This argument went to and fro, increasing in acerbity. Each of the quarrellers listened in silence to what the other had to say, making no attempt to interrupt, though the voices grew hoa.r.s.e with anger.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Presently "Darkey" was telling the boy that he was a wretched third-cla.s.s pa.s.senger anyhow, and that he had no right in a second-cla.s.s carriage, and even if the seat were free he wasn't going to have it.

The boy retorted by saying that anybody could see what she was, and that her mother was probably sorry that she had ever been born, etc., etc.

No English quarrel could have gone to half the length that this proceeded. We were waiting to see either the boy jump into the carriage and shake the life out of "Darkey," or to see "Darkey" spring, like the young tiger-cat she was, at the boy and scratch his face. But nothing happened. The crowded corridor listened with delight to the progress of the quarrel.

The train stopped at a station. "Darkey" had sat up to pulverize the impertinent youth with some evil retort. The carriage door on the opposite side opened, and a placid, middle-aged peasant woman, followed by an ancient peasant man, stepped into the carriage, and before "Darkey" had well discovered what was happening had squashed down in the disputed seat, left vacant by the removal of "Darkey's" feet. The woman grinned at us all and sat nursing a large basket on her lap.

Then the quarrel slowly died down. After a while the boy went away.

However, he came back again whenever he had thought of something good, and barked it round the corner of the door at "Darkey," who, usually taken by surprise, could find nothing to retort before he had lost himself again in the crowd.

The peasant woman smiled at us all, and, opening her basket, handed to each of us a large peach. She selected one especially big for "Darkey,"

presumably as refreshment after the tiring argument.

The day became hotter and hotter. The dust gathered more thickly on to the French girl's poor little curls. When the train stopped, children ran up and down beside the carriages, selling water at the price of "one little b.i.t.c.h" the gla.s.s. We were now in the province of Murcia, and the scenery put on the characteristic appearance of that province, tall bare hills of an ochreous mauve, sloping down into a flat, irrigated, fertile valley. The division between mountain and valley, between the "desert and the strown" was as sharp as though drawn with the full brush of a j.a.panese. On the mountains were dead remnants of Saracen castles, of dismantled Spanish robber fortresses, and the white or coloured buildings of monasteries which still lived sparkling in the sun.

CHAPTER VIII

MURCIA--FIRST IMPRESSIONS

One has a right to expect that the station which is the finish of a long and tiring journey should be both a terminus and have a quality all of its own. Our egoism makes it seem at that moment the most important place in the world. But Murcia (p.r.o.nounced locally Mouthia) had only a big ugly barn of a station like many through which we had already pa.s.sed, and even lacked a Precia Fijo jewellery shop. All we could see of the town, on emerging, was a few houses and a line of small trees which appeared as though they had been in a blizzard of whole-meal flour, so thick was the dust. Over this buff landscape quivered the blue sky.

In front of us were one or two cranky omnibuses and many green-hooded two-wheeled carts. These carts were Oriental in appearance and had the most distinctive appearance we had yet noted in Spain. They were gaily painted, and the hoods bulged with the generous curves of a Russian cupola. Inside they were lined with soiled red velvet, and the driver sat outside of this magnificence on a seat hanging over one of the tall wheels. Into one of these we were squeezed in company with two grinning travellers, and started off, soon plunging into the shadow of an avenue of lime trees, behind the grey trunks of which cowered insignificant little houses painted in colours which once had been bright.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CARTERS IN THE POSADA]

The more communicative of our fellow travellers said it was indeed the hottest day of the year. It was hot, but we were not oppressed by it, and found out in time that the Spaniard always seemed to suffer from the heat more than we did. Our endeavours to be agreeable in imperfect Spanish worked up the traveller to a discussion on languages, and to a eulogy on ourselves for taking the trouble to learn. We said that we were artists. He answered:

"Ah, yes, that explains it. Poor people, of course, are forced to learn languages."

We drove across a stone bridge, almost in collision with a bright blue tram-car. A momentary glimpse was given to us of a muddy river running between deep embankments; and we drew up before a square barrack of red brick pierced by a regiment of balconied windows. The proprietor, oily like a cheerful slug, waved his fingers close to us, and drew back his hand in delicate jerks as though we were rare and brittle china. He preceded us into an Alhambra-like central hall, led us carefully up a stone staircase to a wide balcony, opened a door into a palatial bedroom with a flourish; and demanded fifteen pesetas "sin extraordinario."

Intuition told us that this was not a case of "Precio Fijo," and we reduced him gently to eleven pesetas before we accepted the bargain.

Then, to take off the raw edge left by the chaffering, Jan said:

"I don't suppose you get many foreigners here, Senor?"

"Si, si!" returned the hotelkeeper, anxious for the reputation of his caravanserai. "We get quite a lot. Oh, yes, quite a lot. Why, only last year we had two French people, un matrimonio; and this year you have come."

The maid was in appearance and behaviour like an india-rubber ball, and the conviction was firmly fixed in her mind either that we couldn't speak Spanish or that she could not understand if we did. So she grunted, bounced at us and smiled with her mouth wide open like a dog, hoping that by this means she was translating a Spanish welcome into an English one. With difficulty we dissuaded her from these antics and persuaded her to speak, but she turned her words--which were already dialect--into baby talk; and the less we understood the louder she shouted.

However, she was a kindly creature and succeeded in cheering our spirits, which were flagging, for we were very tired and almost ill, having barely recovered from a severe attack of influenza before leaving London. We washed off the thick dust and went downstairs into the large cool hall. The central quadrangle had once probably been open to the sky, but now was covered, five stories up, by a gla.s.s roof, beneath which sackcloth curtains stretched on wires shut out the sun. There were comfortable wicker chairs all about, and the hall was decorated with four solemn plaster busts, one in each corner. We were curious to find out who were thus honoured in a southern Spanish hotel. One was of Sorolla, a popular Valencian painter, one was of a woman, a poetess. The other two we did not know, but think they represented contemporary literature and architecture. Imagine finding in an English hotel hall busts of Brangwyn, Mrs. Meynell, Conan Doyle and Lutyens.

The hall was cool. We ordered coffee and b.u.t.tered toast. But the b.u.t.ter was rancid, for we had crossed the geographical line, almost as important as the equator, below which b.u.t.ter is not, and oil must take its place.

Four children, making a lot of noise over it, were in the hall, playing a game peculiarly Spanish. The smallest boy, who always had the dirty work to do, carried flat in front of him a board, to the end of which were fixed a pair of bull's horns. He dashed these at his comrades in short straight rushes. Two of the other boys carried pieces of red cloth which they waved in front of the bull. The fourth boy carried a pair of toy banderillas, straight sticks, covered with tinted paper and pointed with a nail. As the bull rushed the "banarillero" dabbed his sticks into a piece of cork. Then they decided that the bull was to die. One of the cloak-wavers took a toy sword which he triumphantly stuck into the cork. With a moan the small boy sank on to the floor. His companions seized his heels and dragged him round the tiled floor of the hall. The game seemed to us a little tedious; later on we were to learn how like to actual bullfighting it was.

The hotel interpreter, for whom we had inquired, now came in. He spoke in French:

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"What can I do for you?"

We wished to find a gipsy guitar-player named Blas, and we had been told that the interpreter knew his house. We feared that he might be in Madrid, where he sometimes played in the Flamenco cafes; but the interpreter said that he was in Murcia, and that we could look for him at once.

From the cool hall we stepped into the blazing sun of midday Spain, crossed an open s.p.a.ce so dazzling that it hurt the eyes, and entered a maze of narrow, tall streets. Jan and I moved along in single file, clinging to the narrow margins of shadow which edged the houses, while the interpreter with a mere uniform cap on his head stalked imperturbably in the sunlight. Across squares we hurried as rapidly as possible to the shadow on the opposite side. The houses were orange, pink, blue or a neutral grey which set off the hue of the tinted buildings. The squares were planted with feathery trees of a green so vivid that it appeared due to paint rather than to nature.

It was a clear and windless day, and soon we remarked a characteristic which Murcia exhibited more strongly than any other Spanish town we have visited. Each house had exuded its own smell across the pavement, so as one went along one sampled a variety of Spanish household odours. Some people find an intimate connection between colour and smell. We might say that we pa.s.sed successfully through a pink smell, a purple smell, a citron green smell, a terra verte smell (very nasty), a cobalt smell, a raw sienna smell, and so on. This characteristic clung to Murcia during the greater part of our stay.

About fifteen minutes' walk through these variegated odoriferous layers brought us into a street of mean appearance. The interpreter stopped before a large gateway door, pushed it open and ushered us into a courtyard in the corner of which was a black earthenware pot astew over an open fire. A brown-faced crone, withered with dirt and age, her clothes ragged, her feet shod in burst alpagatas, asked us what had brought us there.

"Where is Blas?" said the interpreter.

With an unctuous gesture the old gipsy crone spread out her hands, and turning to a doorway shouted out some words. Gipsy women young and old came from the house. They were dark, dirty and tousled, clad in draggled greys or vermilions, many carrying brown babies astraddle on the hip.

With gestures, almost Indian in subservience, they crowded about us, looking at us with ill-disguised curiosity. The interpreter repeated his question.

"Blas," said a young, beautiful, though depressed-looking woman, "is not in the house."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"The English Senor will speak to him," commanded the interpreter. "Send him to the hotel when he comes home."

Then our friend the interpreter determined to earn a large tip, and calculating on our ignorance brought us back by the longest route, past all the princ.i.p.al buildings of the town; thereby quadrupling the journey through the baking streets. Our desires, however, were fixed on home.

We were staggering beneath the heat. Had the interpreter but known it, his tip would have been increased by celerity; but, stung by our apathy over public monuments, he took us into a courtyard to look at some gigantic tomatoes gleaming in the shade, and ran us across the street to examine a skein of fine white catgut, dyed orange at the tips, which a workman was carrying. He explained that this was for medical operations and for fishing lines, which was a local industry.

Lunch was ready when we got back, a prolonged and delicious lunch for those in health, but we could eat little of it. Black olives were in a dish on the table; and the fruit included large ripe figs, peaches, pears and apricots. A curious fact we had noted was that much of the fruit did not ripen properly. Either it was unripe or else had begun to rot in the centre. The sun was too strong to allow it to reach the stage of exquisite ripeness which the more temperate climate of England encourages. The waiter was dismayed by our lack of appet.i.te. He urged us repeatedly to further gastronomic efforts, and holding dishes beneath our noses stirred up the contents with a fork. At last he made us a special salad which was not on the menu. The other occupants of the long white restaurant were all fat men who swallowed course after course in spite of the heat. We looked at them and thought: "No wonder there are so many plump people in Spain."

After coffee in the large hall, we went to our bedroom for a rest. The windows of our room looked southwards, over the muddy river. Immediately beneath was a road on which was a wayside stall of bottles and old ironwork, an ice-cream vendor, a boy roasting coffee on a stove, turning a handle round and round while the coffee beans rustled in the heated iron globe, sending up a delicious smell to our windows. A row of covered carriages, tartanas, waited beneath the shadows of the riverside trees. All along the opposite bank were two-storied mills, and beyond them the town stretched out in a wedge of flat roofs bursting up into church towers. Green market gardens came up to the edge of the town, and covered the valley to the base of the hills with a dense growth of flat and flourishing green which one had not expected thus far south in Spain.

We were awakened from our siesta by the spherical maid who mouthed and pantomimed that a Senor was waiting for us in the hall. Luis Garay, a young painter and lithographer to whom our friend had written about us, had come at the earliest opportunity. He was slim, sallow, almost dapper, with dark frank eyes, and we took a liking to him at once.