Mayflower (Flor de mayo) Part 3

The Rector rounded out the plan. The most important thing he had already--his own boat, _la Garbosa_. Tonet gasped with surprise, so the Rector enlarged further on that detail. Of course he realized the tub was broken amids.h.i.+ps, the ribs strained, the deck warped and sagging in the middle--squeaking like an old guitar every time a sea went under her, ready for breaking up, about. But they hadn't fooled him, they hadn't fooled him! Thirty _duros_, he had paid, not a cent more. And the firewood in her was worth that much. But she would keep afloat under men who knew the taste of salt water. For his part, he could negotiate that pond in a shoe with the tap gone! Besides, you see,--and he gave a knowing wink--if the revenue people caught them and confiscated the boat--well, thirty _duros_! And that clinched the argument for the wily Rector. Not a thought of the chance he was taking with his life in such a sieve!

The crew?... Himself, his brother, and two men he knew and could trust.

That was all there was to that. Now all he needed to do was have a talk with _tio_ Mariano, who was on the inside track down in Algiers, as an old hand at the business. And like a man who has his mind made up and is afraid he'll change it if he waits too long, he thought he would go at once to see that influential personage whom they both could be mighty proud to call their uncle. They would probably find him--it was around noon you see--up at the _Carabina_, where he usually went to sit a while and smoke.

And the two brothers started off in that direction. On walking past the ox-barn they glanced casually at the tavern-boat, blacker and more ramshackle every day. _Adios, mare!_ They had caught sight of their mother's glossy wrinkly face peering over the counter in front of the opening into the wine store, her head swathed as usual in a white kerchief like a coif. Some dirty underfed sheep were browsing the marsh gra.s.s near the first houses of the village. From the pools of fresh water behind the dunes frogs were croaking in monotone, their _garumps_ faintly blending with the murmuring of the surf. Wine-colored nets, the warps festooned with cork toggles, were spread out on the sand, and among them some young roosters were pecking about or grooming their s.h.i.+ny feathers, all agleam with a metallic rainbow l.u.s.ter. Along the drain from the Gas House a number of women on hands and knees were scrubbing clothes or was.h.i.+ng dishes in a pestilential water that stained the stones on its edges black. Here was the frame of a new boat about which some carpenters were pounding, and from a distance the skeleton of unpainted timber looked like the remains of some prehistoric saurian.

Across the drain, some rope-walkers, hanks of hemp about their waists, were backing away from the lathe, letting the yellow strands revolve between their deft fingers. And then the Caba.n.a.l, so called from the miserable cabins there which sheltered the very poorest of all those toilers of the sea! The streets were as straight and regular as the buildings were capricious, of every shape and size. The red-brick sidewalks went joyously up and down at different levels according to the height of the door sills on the huts. The roads were sloughs of mud, with deep ruts, and puddles from rain that had fallen weeks before. Two rows of dwarf olive trees brushed the heads of pa.s.sersby with their dusty branches, and ropes were stretched from trunk to trunk to serve as clothes-lines for the wash of the water-front, which was waving like a regalia of banners in the fresh sea-breeze.

Cabins alternated with tenements of several stories. Those incorrigible tars could not forget the water-line even when they were ash.o.r.e, for all the buildings were finished off with spar-varnish, and painted in two colors, like boats. Many a front door had a figure-head carved in wood, as though that portal were the bow-sprit of the sailor's habitation, which, in all its details of architecture, of color and line, called up memories of life at sea. The village looked like a collection of grounded craft. In front of some of the cabins stout masts with pulleys had been set up, and the pulley and mast meant that there lived a skipper of a pair of _bu_-boats. At the top of the staffs, the most complicated tackle was out drying, waving in the wind like the majestic emblem of a consul. The Rector eyed those poles in envy unconcealed.

When would that Christ up at the Grao answer his prayer so that he could plant a mast like that in front of his door in honor of Dolores?

Now the drain had come to an end. They were well into the village, in the section where people from Valencia had their summer cottages. The houses here were low studded, with bulging gratings, painted green, over the windows. Everything was closed and silent. Footsteps echoed back across the broad sidewalks as in an abandoned town. Tufted plane trees were languis.h.i.+ng in the solitude, pining for the gay nights of summer when there was laughing everywhere, people running about, and a piano banging in every cottage. Now scarcely any one was in sight. An occasional villager went by, in his pointed cap, with his hands in his pockets, and his pipe in his mouth, sauntering lazily toward this tavern or that; for the cafes were the only places where anything was going on.

The _Carabina_, for instance, was crowded. Under the awning in front were any number of blue coats, black silk caps, and weather-beaten countenances. Dominoes were rattling on the tables, and though everything was open to the air, the strong smell of gin and tobacco struck you in the face.

Tonet had pleasant memories of the place--the scene of his triumphs in generosity in the first months of his marriage to Rosario.

At one of the stands sat _tio_ Mariano, pulling at his pipe and waiting, probably, for the sheriff, or some other town notable, to enjoy the usual afternoon chat. He was listening in disdainful condescension to _tio_ Gori, an old s.h.i.+p-carpenter from down the beach, who had been going to that cafe every afternoon for twenty years, to read the newspaper aloud, advertis.e.m.e.nts and all, to a greater or smaller number of sailors, according to the chance offsh.o.r.e; and the men would sit there silent and attentive till nightfall.

"So then, if you are ready, gentlemen ... _Sinor_ Segasta has something to say to us to-day...."

But _tio_ Gori held up his reading to observe to the man next to him:

"That Segasta is a humbug, you know!"

And with that comprehensive annotation, he adjusted his spectacles, and the Premier's speech in the Cortes began to unwind, syllable by syllable, from under the carpenter's white tobacco-stained mustache:

"Gen-tle-men-of-the-Cham-ber!

In-re-ply-to-what-the-Hon-o-ra-ble-De-pu-ty-said-yes-ter-day...."

But before getting to the reply, the carpenter again looked up from his paper and, with a smile of canny superiority, observed to his speechless expectant audience:

"That is a d---- d lie!"

Though the Rector had also spent whole afternoons at the feet of that man of letters, he now failed to notice _tio_ Gori at all. Respectfully and obediently, he advanced, instead, directly toward his uncle, who had gone so far as to take the pipe out of his mouth to call to his nephews with an: "Hey there, boys!" and motion to them to take the chairs he had been keeping for his influential friends. Tonet sat down with his back to his brother and uncle, so as to follow the fast game of dominoes that was rattling in a lively fas.h.i.+on at the next table. At times his eyes would wander off through the smoky atmosphere toward the bar, where the pretty daughter of _tio_ Carabina--for him the princ.i.p.al attraction of the cafe--was serving drinks under a line of marine chromos.

_Senor_ Mariano _el Callao_--though no one dared use that last epithet in his hearing--was getting on toward sixty, but was still a muscular and rather handsome man, with a weather-beaten face, blood-shot eyes, a gray mustache as stiff and long and p.r.i.c.kly as a tom-cat's whiskers, and the general bullying air of an uneducated lout who had money enough to live on without working. People had dubbed him _el Callao_ because at least a dozen times every day he told the story of that famous battle for the Peruvian seaport--the last that Spain relinquished in South America--which he had witnessed as an ordinary seaman on the _Numancia_.

In these narratives he mentioned the admiral, Mendez Nunez, in every other sentence,--"and don Casto says to me, says he"--as if the hero had had him for his most intimate friend and right-hand man. What delighted his audiences invariably, however, was his description of the actual combat, with imitations of a broadside from his glorious frigate: _boom!

boo-oo-oo-oo--m!_

In addition _tio_ Mariano was one of the big men about town. He had been a smuggler in the happy days when revenue agents, from Captain of the Port to ordinary patrolman, had hands but never eyes. And even now, when things were not so lax, he would take a pa.s.sive share in some enterprise of the sort. But his princ.i.p.al activity was doing charity--lending the fishermen, or their wives, advances on their pay at fifty per cent a month; and this had given him a grip on the throats of the poorest elements along sh.o.r.e, so that he could deliver their vote bodily in every election campaign. His nephews could hardly contain their pride when they heard him calling mayors and sheriffs by their first names, or saw him, even, going up to Valencia in his best clothes and a top hat, as member of a committee of leading citizens, to wait on the Governor.

A grasping, heartless Shylock, _tio_ Mariano had a scent for loosening his purse strings at the right moment. He knew the inside workings of every home for miles around. The Rector and Tonet, who owed him nothing but the hope they had of inheriting something when he died, thought him the most respectable and kindly man in the whole village, though very seldom had they been admitted to his pretty house on Queen street, _Calle de la Reina_, where he lived alone with a good-looking housekeeper, the only person in town who dared talk back to him, and was intimate enough with his affairs even to know where he kept his "pile."

_Tio_ Mariano listened to the Rector with eyes half closed and a vertical line knit between his eyebrows. "Be d---- d, be d---- d! Of course! Not a bad idea at all, not at all!" That's the way he liked people--with some gumption! And he seized the occasion to brag of his own biography as a fool successful in getting rich, telling how he had left the navy without a cent in his pocket, and, to get out of the rut his father and grandfather had been in as fishermen, had started off on the underground route to Gibraltar and Algiers, to do his bit toward keeping business going and to give people something else to smoke besides the stink-weed forced on the public by the government! Thanks to the Lord, who had stood by him through thick and thin, and to his own guts--don't forget that--he had made a little something--enough to keep him from worrying in his old age! But times weren't what they had been!

The revenue men were now in charge of young navy officers just off the school-s.h.i.+ps, with all sorts of stuck-up ideas in their heads and ears a yard long to catch any talk that was going around; and not a one of them would keep his eyes shut for an hour, if you paid him half his weight in gold. Why, last month they had caught three boats coming from Ma.r.s.eilles with a cargo of cloth! You had to be careful, you had to be careful! Too much blabbing going on all the time. The Q. T., that was the watchword!

The Rector had made up his mind? Well, then, straight ahead! His Uncle Mariano would not be the man to throw cold water on an idea like that.

He wanted the boys in his family to have ambition and try to get somewhere in the world. Poor old Pascualo would have turned out better if he'd stuck to that business and not gone back to fis.h.i.+ng!

Well, how much did the Rector need? Quite frank now!--as though he were talking to a father. If it had been a matter of fis.h.i.+ng, not a penny.

h.e.l.l of a trade for a fellow, that, where you killed yourself working and died poor as a rat. But for something of that other kind, all he wanted, all he wanted! Somehow or other, this business of cheating the government always appealed to _tio_ Mariano! A man's job!

The Rector timidly outlined what he thought he ought to have, stopping every other word, as though he were afraid of asking too much. But his uncle took the short cut to the conclusion. Boat? He had the boat. Very well! He, _tio_ Mariano, would see to all the rest. He would drop a line to some friends of his on the "market" at Algiers. They would give the Rector a good load on credit, and if he were spry and got it ash.o.r.e all right, a way would be found to sell it. "Thanks ever so much, uncle, _grasies, tio!_ _Que bo es voste!_ It's certainly nice of you." And the Rector's eyes were almost running over with tears. But _tio_ Mariano didn't like sentiment. What was he in the family for? He always had poor Pascualo on his mind. What a way to die! There was a man of pluck for you! Oh, by the way, the Rector would get a full third of the proceeds ... seeing he was one of the family.... You couldn't stick on your full rights with a boy of your own flesh and blood! And the Rector, still moved at his uncle's lavish kindness, nodded grateful a.s.sent.

They sat on in silence for a while. Tonet was all taken up with the game nearby, and did not try to follow the conversation which the two men were carrying on, as much with their eyes, almost, as with their lips, which hardly moved.

And when were they intending to start, _tio_ Mariano went on. Right away, he supposed; so he had better get his letter off without delay.

The Rector a.s.sured him, however, it would be out of the question to sail before Easter-Sat.u.r.day. He would be better pleased to leave earlier in the week, but there was that procession to the Sepulcher with the body of Christ on Good Friday, and he had promised to lead the mob of "Jews."

Something he couldn't really miss. Been in the family, years and years--that part in the ceremonies of Holy Week, and many people were waiting for a chance to get it. The hangman's costume he wore for that occasion had belonged to his father.

Though _tio_ Mariano pa.s.sed for an infidel in town, because the curate never got a red cent out of him on any pretext, he nodded solemn approval of his nephew's pious intention. Quite right, quite right--everything in its own time and place! The Rector and his brother rose to their feet on seeing that the august personages their uncle had been expecting were approaching. They could depend on him, then. Yes, and another talk later on to fix on the last details. Would they have a little something? What? Not been to dinner yet? Well, it would be waiting for them at home, probably! _Hasta la vista, chiquets!_ And the two boys walked slowly off down the deserted sidewalk on their way back to the cabin district.

"And what did uncle say?" Tonet asked casually.

The Rector, who never wasted any words if he could help it, moved his head up and down vertically. Tonet beamed with excited joy. A sure thing, then! Fine! Pascualo was at last on the road to money, and he, well, at least, he could see his way through the summer. The good-natured Rector kept reflecting to himself on what an unselfish fellow his brother was, and almost felt like hugging him. Yes, that boy's heart was in the right place! Fond as could be of him and of Dolores, and he loved little Pascualet as though the baby were his own child! If only their two wives could get along together a little better....

CHAPTER IV

MARY AND JESUS MEET

Though the early morning sky was bright and cloudless, the streets of the Caba.n.a.l were rumbling as in a thunderstorm. People jumped out of bed as the cras.h.i.+ng almost split their eardrums; and good women of the village, their hair still down and in wrappers hastily thrown on, went out on the sidewalk in front of their doors to see what was going on.

The bluish transparency of dawn was barely gilded with the rays of the still invisible sun. But the "Jews of Jerusalem" were on a rampage, banging their harsh cymbals together as they marched along the streets.

One would have thought the Calendar had suddenly gone mad and transported Carnival to Easter week. The most grotesque horribles were gathering in the squares. The young folks of the town were out in costume; for the procession of the _Encuentro_, in the environs of Valencia, is virtually a masquerade.

Far down the long street, what looked like an army of c.o.c.kroaches could be seen a.s.sembling, figures, called _las vestas_, in tall, black, sharp-pointed hoods, like so many astrologers, or judges of the Inquisition, their cloth masks rolled up over their foreheads, their long black trains hung over their arms, and each with a baton painted black in one hand. Some of the paraders, to add a touch of ingenuity, had slipped white petticoats on, well ironed and pleated, and from under them pairs of trousers protruded with the legs turned up, and, at the very bottom, top-shoes unutterably tormenting enormous feet accustomed to walking bare on the sands.

Then came the "Jews," fierce villains apparently s.n.a.t.c.hed from some lowly stage for dramas of the Middle Ages that could afford only a conventional costume of poor quality. Their induments were what the Valencian populace refers to as its "war trappings," short skirts or kilts, much mottled with spangles, tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs and lace fringes, like the tunic of the Apaches; helmets topped off with huge c.o.c.k plumes, arms and legs "armored" with a rude fabric of cotton tufts to give a distant suggestion of mail. To cap the climax of caricature and anachronism, following the _vestas_ and the "Jews," came--tall and handsome fellows all--the "Virgin's Grenadiers," wearing high-fronted caps like those of Frederick's Prussian guards, with black uniforms decorated with silver lace that must surely have been ripped from the caskets in an undertaker's store.

A stranger might have laughed at that naf array had he dared brook the wrath of those solemn boys whose faces all wore expressions of stern professional seriousness. It is never safe to make fun of an army ready to fight; and these "Jews" and "grenadiers" who were to guard the crucified Christ and his mother were carrying, unsheathed in their hands, all the varieties of sword known from the dawn of history to the present time, beginning with the heavy cavalry saber of the ordinary marcher, to the slender, delicate rapier of the drum-major.

Following the march, or keeping up with it along its flanks, trooped the gamins of the town, enviously studying the colorful uniforms. Mothers, sisters and sweethearts looked on admiringly from their doorways: "There he is, there! Do you see him? _Reina y sinora!_ How grand he looks!" The devout procession, like the parade that heralds the coming of a circus to town, seemed to recall to the sinful, backsliding population of the Caba.n.a.l that at seven A. M. sharp Jesus and his mother would meet--hence the name _Encuentro_--in the middle of the Calle de San Antonio, in front of the "Side of Bacon," the tavern of _tio Chulla_.

As the twilight brightened into the rosy glow of sunrise, promising a warm spring day, the martial uproar about the village grew. There were drums, cornets and bra.s.s horns sounding on every hand. An army seemed suddenly to have descended on the Caba.n.a.l. The various companies--_collas_, as they are called--had formed four abreast, and solemn, stiff, and as much admired as soldiers returning from victory, were marching to the homes of their respective captains to collect the banners displayed there--weird standards of black velvet embroidered with the horrifying symbols of the Pa.s.sion.

The Rector was hereditary captain of the "Jews," and long before dawn he had gotten up and crammed his person into the handsome costume that was kept securely locked in a chest at other times of the year and was revered by the whole family as the treasure of the house. Lord help us!

What are we coming to! Every Easter the poor Rector was getting fatter and fatter and finding it a more and more serious task to stuff his corpulency into that tight-fitting "coat-of-mail." Dolores, in her nightgown and with her hair down, was making the tour of his s.p.a.cious waist, pus.h.i.+ng in the stomach here, and stretching the cloth there, to make room for one more cubic inch of husband inside the cotton armor. On the bed sat little Pascualet gazing in amazement and alarm at that helmet with Indian plumes on the man's head and at that menacing cavalry saber which clanked against the walls and the furniture every time the Rector turned around. Could that be papa?

At last the dread toilette was over. Not exactly what you would call comfortable, but they had spent enough time over it. The Rector's underwear, at odds with the stringency encircling it, was all lumpy, and what looked like tumors could be seen standing out under the "Jew's"

stockings. And those trousers! They were so tight around the middle that the poor man could hardly breathe. His helmet, far too small for his head, kept slipping forward and b.u.mping on his nose. But this was a day for dignity, not for ease! And the Rector drew his saber, struck up a rub-a-dub-dub in his stentorian voice, and began to stride up and down the room, as though the baby there were a crown prince reviewing guard.

His wife's golden, mysterious eyes followed him as he walked back and forth from one wall of the bedroom to the other like a bear in a cage.

She was tempted to laugh at those bandy legs; but no--she liked him better in that costume than in the tarred and pitchy clothes he came home from work in at night, tired out and stupid from toil.

And now they were coming! The "Jews" could be heard, with their band, down the street. They would be wanting their banner. Dolores hastily threw a wrapper on, while the captain advanced to the frontiers of his domain to welcome his army. The lurid company drew up in front of the house. The drum-beat softened in tone, but continued to give the rhythm for the privates who stood there marking time, keeping their heads and bodies and legs moving energetically in s.p.a.ce but without moving from their positions. Tonet and two other "Jews" came gravely forward, entered the house, and started for the second story, whence the standard was hanging from a window.

Dolores met her brother-in-law on his way upstairs, and instantly, instinctively, she drew the overwhelming comparison. There was a real soldier, a general! Tonet had something about him that distinguished him from the uncouthness and clumsiness of the others--of the other. His legs were straight, and his stockings had no wrinkles--everything in his make-up was stylish, well fitting, sleek. He belonged to the Juan Tenorios, the royal don Pedros, the Henri Lagarderes, she had seen on the stage of the theater of La Marina, reciting verses and fighting duels that had thrilled her to the bottom of her soul.