Poor Folk in Spain Part 3

Our Venus was represented by a pale young priest, his long wrists projecting far from the sleeves of his ca.s.sock. Mercury looked appropriately enough like one who was always travelling; Saturn was covered with rings--he must have been one of the customers of the "precio fijo" booths--the other planets were lost amongst c.u.mulus of fruit and cirrus of palm.

The waiter became active. Balancing a large soup tureen, he ladled a thin, greenish soup into the upper plate. We then understood that we would have to eat our way down through the pile of plates, each plate a course. Mars rushed at his soup in such a wild manner that we felt it was a good thing indeed that the soup-plate was thus raised so near to his mouth or fully the half of the soup would have drenched his waistcoat.

Alice again was recalled to my mind. I remembered her dismay during her regal banquet when the dishes once introduced to her were whisked away from under her nose, for every time I laid down my knife and fork to speak to Jan my plate was seized and carried off by the cadaverous waiter. No sooner was I introduced to a new Spanish dish than it was wrested from me. Twice this had occurred. On the third occasion I lay in wait: as the waiter swooped for my plate I seized it. There was a momentary struggle, but I had two hands to his one; he retired with a look of astonishment on his face. Gradually I became aware of the fact that Mars never loosed his knife and fork until he had cleared his plate. He held both firmly in his two red hands. If he drank--which he did with gusto, throwing his head back, was.h.i.+ng the wine, which had a queer tarry taste, about the inside of his mouth, almost cleaning his teeth with it--he held his fork sceptre-wise as if to say to the waiter, "Touch that last corner of beefsteak at your peril." When he had quite finished the course, when he had mopped up all the remnants with a piece of bread, then and then only did he lay down both knife and fork.

Unconsciously I had been giving a signal to the waiter.

After the beefsteak we had a surprise. One has been so long accustomed to the French custom in gastronomy, that one almost forgets that courses are not arranged in an immutable order. Once indeed I did make a bet in Paris that I would eat a meal in the inverse direction, beginning with the coffee and sweets and ending with the soup--which, by the way, proved very hard to swallow--but the mere fact that one could bet about it proves how fixed one imagines the laws of food progression to be. At Medina del Campo, after the beefsteak, which was about the third item on the menu, the waiter brought us fried fish, thereby proving that gastronomic progression is not so unalterable as is usually imagined.

The fish looked like very small plaice, but they had a strange flavour which we had never before tasted. That the fish had been packed for several days in rotting hay seemed the nearest description and explanation, and we would have clung to this idea if the salad had not also had a perceptible tang of this unpleasant taste. We asked the waiter what the flavour was, but our Spanish broke down under the strain, and the waiter said "Claro"[3] and went away.

For some weeks afterwards the word "Claro" became our bugbear. The Spaniard gets little amus.e.m.e.nt from hearing his language spoken by foreigners. If the unfortunate foreigner does not get p.r.o.nunciation, accent and intonation perfect the Spaniard says "Claro," in reality meaning "I can't make head or tail of what you are talking about." Both laziness and courtesy make the Spaniard say "Claro," and often the poor foreigner is quite delighted with his progress in the language--the people tell him that everything he says is perfectly clear, hooray; he thinks that he must have an unsuspected gift for languages--until one day he asks the way to somewhere and receives the usual answer, "Claro."

The Redonda Mesa,[4] which would I think be the Spanish for a "square meal," cost us again four pesetas, and it was an even better three and eightpenn'orth than we had been given on the train. The meal finished, the planets held a public tooth-picking compet.i.tion for a while, then one by one they resumed their normal orbits and pa.s.sed from our sight.

We, with the processes of digestion heavy upon us, went back to the seat in the ill-lit station. Three more hours we had to wait for the train to Avila, so we sat in the mild night watching the only engine at Medina--an engine which looked like an immediate descendant of Stevenson's Rocket--push trucks very slowly to and fro. This engine, though it made a lot of spasmodic noise, did not destroy, it only interrupted, the intense silence which lay over the country-side. The platform was quite deserted. Presently two small boys came along. One had a red tin of tobacco which he offered to Jan; Jan shook his head but did not answer. They then tried to talk to us, but we knew better than to expose our imperfect Castilian to two small boys--so we kept silence.

At last they said we were "misteriosos" and went away.

A luggage train steamed in. At the tail end of the train were three third-cla.s.s carriages, and from these carriages, as well as from the waggons, poured out a mob of wild-looking men. They were dark brown, unshaven, covered with broad tattered straw hats, clothed in rough and ragged fustian and carried blankets of many coloured stripes. Huge bundles, sacks and strange implements were slung upon their backs. As they crowded in beneath the dim lamp at the station exit one could almost have sworn that all the figures from Millet's pictures had come to life. A smell of the soil and of labour and of sweat went up from them. These men were peasants from Galicia; they had come in third-cla.s.s carriages, in goods waggons, travelling probably for two or three days, attached to luggage trains, across the country to the harvesting. One by one they pa.s.sed out, their voices trailed away into the night towards Medina, and once more the silence came back.

Time wears itself out in the end. The train to Avila, when it came, was fairly empty, so we could lay ourselves out at full length and rest, disturbed, however, by the continual fear that we might overshoot our destination.

It was pitchy night when we clambered down from the train at Avila. The large barn of a station was lit by but three minute lamps and the glow from the fonda door. In the semi-darkness the pa.s.sengers moved about like ghosts, each intent on his own business. It was two o'clock in the morning, so before exploring we again put our baggage in a corner of the fonda; where also we found the one waiter presiding over a banquet laid for fifty non-existent guests. Speaking as little of the language as we did, it seemed impossible to go exploring a foreign town in the dead of night for a hotel which would probably be shut when we found it. So, feeling somewhat like Leon Berthelini and his wife in Stevenson's story, we sat down on a seat in the station to await the dawn.

The temperature of the night was almost perfect; there was a hint of chill in our faces which, however, did not penetrate through the clothing. For awhile porters moved about arranging luggage, then one by one the three lights were extinguished and the station was left to darkness. One porter clambered into a carriage which was standing on a siding; as he did not come out again nor pa.s.s down on the other side we imagine he went to bed in it. We were tempted to follow his example, but feared the train might move off unexpectedly and carry us to some remote part of Spain before we could wake up. One can tempt opportunity too far.

But the seat was hard. If, like Berthelini, we had had a guitar we might have performed miracles with it similar to his, but we had left our guitars in England. So Jan went exploring. Outside the station he found a small omnibus, its horses eating hay out of nose-bags. Hearing faint voices he discovered a sort of dimly lit underground bar annexed to the fonda, in which the driver of the omnibus and a friend were drinking spirits, while the tired waiter lounged yawning behind the counter. Our ignorance of Spanish prevented us from thrusting ourselves into their company: but we waited for the driver to attend to his horses and in halting Hugo we asked him at what hour the omnibus went to the hotel. He replied "In the morning" and went back to his drinking.

The eau-de-nil of dawn found us on the edge of s.h.i.+vering, but the day warmed rapidly. A train thundered into the station pouring out its cascade of pa.s.sengers. Gathering up our packages and tipping the waiter fifty centimes, we found a new omnibus which was labelled "Hotel Jardin"

and took our seats inside. Dawn was over by the time we reached the hotel, though it was but four o'clock. We had a confused impression of great buff battlements overhanging the buildings, of a few stunted bushes, of one or two girls in black, of a huge room which was to be our bedroom and then--bed--sleep.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 2: Fixed prices.]

[Footnote 3: "That is clear."]

[Footnote 4: Round table.]

CHAPTER V

AVILA

Borrow has a description of an inn in Galicia in which a whole family occupies but one bedroom while the servant sleeps across the door. Our bedroom in the Hotel del Jardin was quite large enough for any family other than, perhaps, a French Canadian, which sometimes runs, we have heard, into twenties and thirties. The walls were painted a pinky-mauve stucco, decorated with a broad olive-green ribbon of colour making a complete oblong or frame on each wall about eighteen inches within the edges of the wall, top, bottom and sides.

This method of making, as it were, a separate frame of each wall, was novel and rather pleasant. It is a common practice in Spanish wall decoration and is probably Moorish in origin. The hotel was full of dark corridors leading to huge bedrooms: it had a broad veranda upstairs full of large wicker chairs, bottoms up, while downstairs was a dining room with square tables and a small entrance hall in which sat the three old ladies.

With one of the old ladies we had bargained in a sleepy way upon our arrival. She had conceded us the room with full _pension_ (no extraordinarios) for eight pesetas a day, but in general the three old ladies sat in the entrada together, giving a sense of black-frocked repose and of quiet dignity to the place. One was thin-faced, dried-up but energetically capable; one was large and motherly, while the third had no characteristics whatever and was ignored by every one.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

I do not think we realized that these three old ladies were the proprietresses until the second or third day at lunch-time. We had been given our seats at a table by the waiter; suddenly we found the three old ladies had surrounded us and were glowering down at us. We were rising to our feet but they peremptorily commanded us to stay where we were, breaking the rising tide of their wrath upon the waiter. Then, for the first time, we realized how completely we were married in Spain.

In France, for instance, married people are "les epoux," plural, separate; in England they are a "married couple," which still recognizes a duality though perhaps less definitely than does France; but in Spain we were "un matrimonio," indissolubly wedded into one in the language, and into a masculine one at that. Somehow I always felt that we ought to be wheeled in on casters: it was improper that so stately a thing as a matrimonio like the Queen of Spain should use legs.

From the old ladies' annoyance we understood that the matrimonio had done something which was not correct, but they talked so fast, and they all talked together, so that the matrimonio could not make head or tail of what they were saying. Nor indeed did we ever discover our misdemeanour.

For our six and eightpence a day we had breakfast in a little side room.

This meal was of _cafe au lait_ in a huge bowl, rolls and b.u.t.ter.

Sometimes we had companions for this meal. On the second day I was some minutes earlier than Jan. At the table was a young peasant priest. He ignored my tentative bow but began muttering to himself protective prayers in Latin. However, once I looked up suddenly and surprised him in the act of staring at me. He quickly crossed himself and redoubled the urgency of his protestations to G.o.d.

The other meals were excellently cooked and with four or five courses to each, but the diningroom bore on its walls a placard saying that owing to the rise of prices the management regretted that it was unable to provide wine at the _pension_. So there was an extraordinario after all--and a very good extraordinario it was too--red Rioja wine with the faint, strange exotic taste in it of the tar with which the wine barrels are caulked.

You know the queer old drawings one finds in ancient books: towns like bandboxes with the walls round a perfect circle, and peaked houses all comfortably packed inside, and soldiers' heads sticking out of the battlemented towers? Well, Avila is like that. You may stand on the opposite hillside and see the full circle of her walls with never a breach in it, with towers at every two hundred yards or so, and you can gaze down into her houses, fitted neatly within the bandbox, and wonder if the old ma.n.u.scripts were quite as exaggerated as one often supposed.

From this hillside one might imagine that Avila has never changed from the days when the monks drew their primitive pictures. The walls top the hill-side and one sees nothing of the modern Avila which has spread beyond those great frowning gateways facing the plaza, but even the modern part of Avila which has oozed out beyond the walls is not overwhelmingly modern. There are none of the exquisite specimens of Spanish bad taste like that we found in Irun. The plaza is surrounded by coloured houses and arcades much as is that of Medina; the sun-blinds of the two large cafes are tattered and weather-beaten; the peasants stare at strangers with an unspoilt curiosity.

The habit of rus.h.i.+ng about towns, of penetrating into every gloomy interior, ecclesiastical or otherwise, which seems to be decently penetrable, is a modern convention to which we do not subscribe. There are two aspects to every place, the living and the dead, and we prefer the former. There is this advantage in our att.i.tude, that one does not have to seek out the living, it flows quite easily and naturally by, and one does not remain an open-mouthed spectator with a jackdaw brain, but incorporates oneself with it. We did not go into the cathedral, nor into any convent, nor did we climb up the towers or into the walls: we sat at the cafe drinking in both coffee and Spain.

Of costume, as Spain is so often painted, there was little; the peasant men wore tall, flat-brimmed hats and broad, blue sashes about their stomachs; the women shawls and woven leggings; the mules and donkeys had trappings of bright-coloured woolwork and often saddlebags with fine woven coloured patterns on them. String-soled sandals were the footwear of the men and of the soldiers: string-soled shoes, alpagatas, were worn by the women and children. The town was moderately alive until eleven o'clock. Very early in the morning the peasants came into the market with their mules or donkeys, then gradually a quiet settled down, a quiet which lasted till the evening. After six o'clock Avila awoke, the business men left their shops, the officers their cantonments. The cadets and youths gathered in the plaza to flirt with the girls who, dressed in gay cottons, paraded to and fro in small giggling and swaying groups. Booths selling cool drinks and ices opened at the corners of the plaza, while wandering sweetmeat merchants sold fried almonds and sugared nuts. There was no woman with a lace mantilla and a high comb, nor any one with a flat hat, embroidered shawl and cigarette; so the cigar boxes are liars.

As one sits at the cafe table in Spain, life is, perhaps, presented to one in an aspect almost too crude. Lazarus lay at the rich man's gates exhibiting his sores, and the Spanish beggar follows his example. Spain needs no Charles Lamb to write of the decay of beggars. Decayed indeed they are, but not in that sense of which Lamb wrote: in tattered and unspeakable rags they pursue their trade from the Asturias to Cadiz. No dishonour attaches to beggary in Spain. A Spaniard was horrified when Jan told him that begging was not permitted in England.

"What, then, can those do who are unable or unwilling to work?" he asked.

A humble though probably verminous official refuge is provided for the beggar in each town, and, as he tells his clients, "G.o.d repays" his small extortions. The Spaniard is accustomed to his beggars, he does not nag at his conscience about them, but it harrows the unaccustomed heart of the Englishman who, taking his modest coffee or Blanco y negro after supper, finds a procession of misery thrusting importunate hands into his moment of quiet luxury. The Spanish beggar has no tenderness for one's sensibility. Each has the motto, "If you have tears prepare to shed them now." Naturally we were their quarry. They presented us with a series of specimens worthy of a hospital museum. We hardened our hearts, as we were afraid of consequences, but after two days, when the beggars, disappointed with us, relaxed their exertions, we gave or withheld alms with the outward serenity of a Spaniard, but feeling inwardly brutal whenever we refused to give a dole.

Dirty, half-naked children dodged about the cafe pillars, hiding from the waiter's eyes. They stared wistfully at the small, square packets of beet sugar which the waiter brought with the coffee, and if a lump were left over they would creep up and in a cringing whine ask for it. Boys slightly older usually begged for a perra chica or for a cigarette.

Their voices would be pathetic enough almost to break one's heart--they would say they had not eaten for three days--but if the refusal was decisive they would suddenly change their tones and shout out gaily to a comrade or run away whistling, or turn a few cartwheels down the gutter.

In Avila, too, we encountered the money problem. We had been told that the Spaniard calculates his cash in pesetas and centimos, the peseta being worth normally tenpence in English money and the ten-centimo piece about one penny. So far this had worked fairly well, we had been on the travellers' route and the peculiarity of travellers had been catered for; but here we found a new system of coinage.

"How much is that?" I asked a woman in the market, pointing to some object.

"That," she replied, "is worth six 'little b.i.t.c.hes.'"

"Six what?" I exclaimed.

"Well, three 'fat dogs,' if you prefer."

"Three 'fat dogs'?"

"Yes, or one 'royal' and one 'little b.i.t.c.h.'"

"But I cannot understand. What is a 'royal'?"

"Oh, don't you know? Why, twenty 'royals' make a 'hard one.'"

At last we worried it out. The little b.i.t.c.h (perra chica) is five centimos, or one halfpenny. The fat dog (perro gordo) is the ten-centimo piece; these are both so called because of the lion on the back, though why the s.e.x should be changed we do not know. The royal (real) is twenty-five centimos or twopence-halfpenny, the "hard one" (duro) is a five-peseta piece. The peseta is ignored. n.o.body except an ignorant foreigner calculates in pesetas. The Spaniard, who often cannot write, does staggering sums in mental arithmetic, reducing thirty-two "little b.i.t.c.hes" or seventeen "royals" almost instantly into the equivalent in minted coin.