Mayflower (Flor de mayo) Part 4

And now all the _collas_ were off toward the church, their bands and banners in front of them, looking, from a distance, like troops of glossy insects moving up and down in the rhythm of the march. The _Encuentro_ was at hand! Two processions were coming-down different streets. In one was the Virgin, weeping, sorrowful, escorted by her guard of funereal grenadiers; in the other, Jesus, in a showy purple mantle spangled with gold, his hair awry, his face stained with blood, collapsing under the burden of the Cross. The image had fallen on the rocks of painted cork that covered its pedestal. Around the Christ, to prevent his escape, crowded the ruthless "Jews," who, in line with their parts, had marshaled ferocious scowls; and with the "Jews" came the _vestas_, their masks lowered now and their trains dropped and dragging through the puddles. The whole scene was so dreadful, so awe-inspiring, that children along the road began to scream and to hide in fright behind their mothers' skirts.

_Sinor!... Ay, sinor, Deu meu!..._ the old fisherwomen murmured sympathetically at sight of the bleeding Christ in the clutches of that mob of infidels.

The low-pitched cymbals were clanging meanwhile, and the cornets were shrieking long-sustained, ear-splitting blasts like the bellowing of calves in a slaughter-house. In the midst of the throng of cruel guards marched some tall, well-built girls, with painted cheeks, and in costumes copied from the Turkish maidens of comic opera. They carried water jugs to show they were the Biblical women from Samaria. From their mothers they had borrowed earrings and breast-pins. Their plump legs were ostentatiously exposed in open-work stockings under short Polish peasant skirts. But this was not the occasion for mocking raillery from the men in the crowds.

Among the spectators, to be sure, were a few pale faces and blue-ringed eyes--revelers who had been up all night and, to finish their carousals, had come down from Valencia to witness the famous popular festival. But if such people ventured a smile at any incongruity in the costumes, a soldier of Pilate would step up and raise his saber menacingly, calling them to order in righteous indignation:

"_Morrals! Morrals!_ Hey, there, you pig! This is not a joke! The idea!

The most religious ceremony of the coast, and as old as the Caba.n.a.l itself! You're no gentleman! You must come from Valencia. But I'll teach you manners, if you don't behave yourself!"

The "meeting" place, on a crossing of the Calle de San Antonio, along which, every now and then, some tiles of curious design had been placed to mark the stations of the march to Calvary, was drawing the bulk of the crowd. Rough, aggressive sh.o.r.e-women, in checkered shawls and with kerchiefs on their heads for hats, were competing restlessly for places in the front line.

Among a group of older ones Rosario was stoutly defending her excellent position on the sidewalk with her elbows and her knees. Had they seen her Tonet? Not a "Jew" in the whole lot to compare with him! And in all this enthusiasm for her handsome husband, the poor woman was still rubbing the bruises he had inflicted on her that morning in the course of getting his costume out and on. But suddenly Rosario felt a rude shove which brushed her aside, while a compact, muscular female body crowded into the place she had been occupying. She looked around. Did any one ever hear of such brazen impudence! It was Dolores, leading Pascualet by the hand! They had at last forced their way through the crus.h.i.+ng throng. The comely girl still had her usual pout of disdain as she looked at people and carried herself with her habitual queenly pride. The harlot! Yet how everybody made way for her and fawned upon her in spite of her conceit!

To the exceeding alarm of _tia_ Picores, the two women stood there frowning at each other angrily. Their reconciliation some days before in the ice-cream place had been nothing but a truce. They had promised to be good friends, but without much warmth, and one could see from the looks in their eyes at the time that there would be trouble again soon.

Rosario, taken aback by the violence of the push that had displaced her, rested content with a grimace. What nice manners some people had! Some people wanted the earth with a fence around it! Gangway for Her Majesty the Queen! Well, there are people and people in this world! And the wrong sort reveal themselves--you don't have to bother to point them out.

As the pale, sickly woman muttered on, her face grew redder and redder with the intoxication of her own words. Her friends near by kept nudging her, egging her on to stand her ground. Dolores, meanwhile, began to toss her gorgeous head like a lioness preparing to cuff at a hornet buzzing behind her back. However, the processions were debouching into the square, and a wave of expectancy swept over the mult.i.tude.

Slowly the two lines of celebrants approached each other, measuring their steps so as to reach the designated spot at exactly the same moment. The sun was darting its first golden rays upon the purple robe of Jesus, the maze of plumes, helmets and upraised swords of the guards--one bright, sparkling brilliancy. From the other direction came the Virgin, bobbing up and down on her throne in rhythm with the footsteps of her bearers, dressed in a black velvet gown with widow's weeds, some big wax tears glistening on her face, and--to catch them, supposedly--a black-bordered mourning handkerchief in her stiff, lifeless hands. She it was who riveted the attention of all the mothers present. Many of them began to weep. _Ay reina y soberana!_ How she must be suffering! A mother finding her boy in a fix like that! Suppose I should meet my boy--do you see him over there, and isn't he handsome?--handcuffed, and on the way to the penitentiary! And I'm only an ordinary mother! The fisherwomen were now groaning and weeping all around the square, not forgetting, meanwhile, to study the Virgin's costume for any improvement or shortcoming as compared with the year before.

The exciting moment was now at hand. The drums ceased beating, the cornets interrupted their dolorous bleating, and the bands were hushed.

The images of Jesus and Mary were face to face. A plaintive, tremulous voice began to recite in monotone some stanzas which told how very sad and mournful the whole scene was. _Tio_ Grancha, an aged velvet-spinner, came down from Valencia every year to declaim those couplets, and his art was one of the attractions of the festival! What a voice! How it went to your heart! And that is why a riot almost started when some gamblers in the "Side-of-Bacon" began to laugh at a turn in their game, and people rushed to the doors exclaiming angrily:

"Shut up ... shut up ... you vermin!"

The images tilted back and forth, in symbolic pantomime of desperate and sorrowful farewell!

Meanwhile, Dolores could not take her eyes off the arrogant, elegant "Jew" who contrasted so favorably with his bandy-legged captain. She was standing with her back toward Rosario, but that did not prevent the latter from divining the object of her gaze. And did you see that? A married woman making eyes at a married man, and right in the presence of her husband! And all this in public! And what went on in private, when that Tonet went to her house on the pretext of playing with the baby, and found her alone?

The two processions had now joined and were going back toward the church. The jealous, infuriated woman continued, in a half-audible voice, to hurl her insulting tirade over those broad, exuberant shoulders in front of her--a splendid pedestal for a beautiful head with luxuriant hair. Dolores turned around with a smirk of biting ridicule on her face. Beg pardon! Had all that been for her? When would that dirty scullion stop annoying a lady? Couldn't a person look at a parade without being insulted? And a glitter of gold sparkled with a wicked gleam in the pupils of her sea-green eyes.

Yes, came the reply. It had all been for her, every word! An immoral, impudent wench, who was always eyeing other women's husbands! Dolores laughed contemptuously. Thanks! Rosario could keep her husband, for all she cared. What a jewel he was, besides! She had her own man and that was enough for her. Tonet might do for other women, if they were fool enough to take him on. But for the thief there's n.o.body in the world but thieves! No, madam, her job in life was not stealing husbands, but slapping the faces of lying gossips who talked too much!

"_Mare, Mare!_" screamed Pascualet, clinging to the skirts of his beautiful mother, who, her dark skin pale as death, had drawn herself up to her full height preparing to throw herself upon her enemy.

Rosario, meanwhile, was struggling to shake off a number of women who were holding her pinioned by her weak, flaccid arms.

"What's going on here? At it again, eh?" It was the harsh, scolding voice of _tia_ Picores, who had interposed her towering form between the combatants. She would settle the row! She knew how to handle those hot-heads. "You, Dolores, home with you! And you, you groveling, lying slanderer, get out of my sight and hearing." And with a shove and a threat, first in one direction and then the other, she put them both to rout.

Lord, Lord, what people! And on Good Friday! On Good Friday! And right in front of Mary and Jesus! G.o.d might forgive them, but she wouldn't!

The thousandth time! And that's the way they bring up girls nowadays.

And when the stern old woman saw that the younger ones were still shouting insults at each other from a distance, she went at them again, shaking her fists and calling them names, till they were dragged away by their partisans.

The quarrel was soon the talk of all the Caba.n.a.l. After the services were over there was another disturbance in the household of Tonet, who, without waiting to take his costume off, thrashed his wife within an inch of her life for making a fool of him in public. And the Rector also brought the subject up while Dolores was prying him out of his uniform, and his flesh was gradually resuming its normal rotundity. He was sorry to say so, but that poor Rosario was crazy. Tonet might be all he might be--and it was true that brandy didn't do him any good! Just the same, it was a pity to see him tied to a woman about as easy to handle as a porcupine. But a brother was a brother in his eyes! He wasn't going to break with the son of his own father just to please that fool of a woman! Much less at that particular moment, when there would be a chance to make a real man of Tonet. Dolores, though hardly yet recovered from the excitement of the brawl, nodded approval to all he said.

And the Rector thought no more about it. He had that little matter on his mind. And, in fact, the following day, just as the bells were ringing for the service of Holy Sat.u.r.day, while revolvers were being fired in festive celebration about town, and gamins were going from house to house beating upon front doors with sticks, _la Garbosa_, that leaky death-trap hardly able to keep afloat, with a complete outfit for fis.h.i.+ng aboard to make her look like a seiner, raised her huge lateen sail, new and strong and white, and slipped away from the beach of the Caba.n.a.l, taking the first sea swells like a time-worn beauty, frilled and painted up to make one last conquest.

CHAPTER V

TWO WOMEN QUARREL

It had stopped raining about daybreak. At five o'clock the street lamps of Valencia were still burning, their flickering lights mirrored red as blood in the puddles of the uneven pavement. The irregular line of housetops was just beginning to stand out against an ashen background of sky brightening with the first glow of morning. The night watch-men were unhooking their lanterns from their stations at the street-crossings and walking off, stamping their chilled feet after wis.h.i.+ng a listless _bon dia_ to the pairs of hooded policemen who would not be relieved until seven o'clock. Faint from the distance through the stillness came the whistling of the morning trains leaving the suburbs. The church towers were beginning to clang with the first calls to the ma.s.s of sunrise, some of the bells droning and indistinct like the voices of old women, others shrill and high pitched like the chirping of children. From roof to roof--their city quarters--c.o.c.ks were exchanging strident challenges to battle.

And now the deserted, rain-soaked streets were slowly awakening with the strangely resonant sounds of footsteps, as the earliest risers stepped out upon the sidewalks, though the closed doors and the grated windows still transmitted the subdued murmur of a city in the last heavy breathings of tranquil slumber. The sky was growing gradually brighter as if numberless thin veils were being torn asunder one by one from across the pathway of the invisible sun. A gray, cold pallor was stealing over the darker alleys and side streets, while, like a fade-in on the cinema screen, the contours of the town began to come into clearer view: the fronts of the houses s.h.i.+ning from their recent drenching; the eaves dripping with the last few drops of rain; the roofs gleaming like polished silver; the trees along the broader avenues, naked and shorn as brooms, shaking their leafless branches, while water seemed to ooze from their fungus-covered trunks.

The Gas House of Valencia, weary from its sustained labors of a night, was snorting with the last puffs of steam. The huge gasometers were sinking low between their steel girders; and the tall brick chimney was throwing out its final belches of thick black smoke, which spread curling over the field of s.p.a.ce in an ever-widening blotch. In the neighborhood of the Sea Bridge, the customs agents, burying their faces in their m.u.f.flers, were walking up and down to shake off the damp chill of the morning. Through the windows of the revenue office the clerks who had just arrived could be seen moving their sleepy heads to and fro.

They had been waiting there for the vendors to come into town--a quarrelsome crew trained to haggling and embittered by poverty, ready, for the difference of a centime, to spend a limitless capital of swear-words and insults, and never successful in reaching market without a string of brawls with the guards who laid the duties on their goods.

The produce wagons and the milch cows with their rattling bells had gone through before daybreak. Only the fisherwomen were still to come, a noisy flock of witches, dirty, slimy, in rags, making the air ring with their shrieks and wrangling, stinking to heaven with dead fish and all the odors of sh.o.r.e life which clung to their uncouth petticoats.

It was broad day, and the light, now harsh and blue, was throwing every object into a clean-cut outline up against the leaden sky, when, with a lazy tinkle of distant bells, four _tartanas_ hove in view, making their way toward the Sea-Bridge, drawn by wretched nags that seemed able to keep their feet only because the drivers, huddled low in their seats, their coat collars turned up over their ears, kept pulling at the reins.

The black bodies of the two-wheeled wagons pitched about over the ruts in the road like old belly-cracked boats tossing at the mercy of the waves. The wagon-hoods showed their reed framework here and there through the rents in their tarred canvas. Plasters of red paste covered some of the smaller holes. The ironwork was squeaky and broken, the breaks repaired with strings. The wheels were splashed and scaly with the winter's mud. Outfits, decidedly, that had seen better days!

The front openings of the wagon-coverings were protected by flaps, painted, for one trace of ornament, at least, in a red, now faded.

Looking into the vehicles from behind, where everything was open, the _senoras_ of the Fishmarket, sitting in rows with their baskets, might have been seen, each woman wearing a checkered shawl, with a colored kerchief covering breast and shoulders. So the rickety carts came on, leaving behind them as they pa.s.sed a sickening stench of rotting sea-life. They tilted alarmingly as one wheel would sink into a deep hole, till the wheel on the other side would find a chasm just as deep, and the hood careened in that direction.

The four _tartanas_ pulled up in front of the office; and down over their steps numberless worn-out shoes, undarned stockings, dirty, protruding heels began to come, under a flutter of skirts caught up in front over yellow petticoats with black arabesques. The baskets were set down in line near the platform of the scales, each covered with a wet cloth. From underneath the strip of canvas shone the silver of a herring or the vermilion of a salmon, or the greenish blue of a lobster's claw, quivering with the tremor of agony. Alongside the baskets lay the bigger fish, broad-tailed sea-ba.s.s, their circular jaws wide open, showing the white, round tongues and the dark throats, while their bodies were stretched backward, taut in the contraction of death; and flat, enormously wide skates, their fins spread out on the ground like kites of brown cloth, slimy and viscous to the touch.

The scales happened to be occupied by some out-of-town bakers, good-looking fellows with square leather ap.r.o.ns, their sleeves rolled up, and flour in their hair and eyebrows. They were weighing out bags of fresh, nutty bread, which seemed to bring a fragrance of life into that nauseating ambient of sea-carrion. Waiting for their turn, the fish-women were blarneying with customs men or idlers who stood about looking at the big fish with the curiosity of landlubbers. Meanwhile, other women were coming in on foot from down the coast, carrying their baskets on their heads or by the handles. The group was growing in numbers every minute, and the line of baskets now reached clear from the scales to the bridge.

The officials were getting bad-tempered with that snarling, loud-talking mob of harpies who wore them out every morning with their quarrelsomeness and unreasonable haggling. Every one of them shouted at you as if you had no ears, reenforcing every other word with an interjection from that inexhaustible store of epithet native to the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean. Rivals, on meeting here again after a set-to on the beach the day before, would revive the pa.s.sions of the unsettled argument, annotating insults with obscene gestures, emphasizing accusations with cadenced slapping of hands on thighs, or lifting clenched fists above their heads as if they were about to strike. And then, when you would think of calling the police, if not the undertaker, laughter, suddenly everywhere, as though the hens in a big hen coop had started cackling all at once! Some one of the combatants had scored with an unusually cutting or scurrilous phrase!

The bakers were slow in getting off the scales; so gibes began to rain on them; and they, for their part, were not the men to accept such taunts in silence. Indecencies, blasphemies, slanderous genealogies began to fly back and forth, though the deadliest thrusts seemed to rouse only friendly grins and guffaws.

Outstanding in the thickest of the riot, and the center of most attention, stood Dolores, _la del Retor_, as comely as usual and better dressed than any of the others, carelessly leaning against a corner of the office shanty, her arms folded behind her back, her magnificent bust thrown forward, smiling with satisfied complacency at the interested glances that reached her tan shoes and the red stockings so blatantly advertising her well-shaped ankles. At the sharpest jokes she heard she opened her luscious lips and her man-eating jaws wide enough to show two rows of strong, even, pearl-white teeth that gave a suggestion of marble luminousness to her darkish features.

A girl of "prestige," obviously--and why not? A solid cuff in that plump right hand of hers, and a tongue in her head, I can tell you, when she had a mind to use it! The wife of Pascualo _el Retor_, besides, a good-natured fat-head who ate out of her hand and never dared peep inside his own house; but all there, when it came to making a living out of the sea--a pot of money, earned, every cent of it, by good, honest, straightforward fis.h.i.+ng.

All this Dolores knew. And that, doubtless, was why she stood there with the self-possession of a Grand d.u.c.h.ess, surveying that dirty-mouthed, dirty-clothed rabble of the Fishmarket, and perking her lips disparagingly when some one noticed her real pearl earrings, or the Algerian scarf, or the red-flannel petticoat from Gibraltar the Rector had given her! In fact, the only woman she thought quite her cla.s.s was "Granny" Picores, _aguela Picores_, a veteran of the Fishmarket, a whale of a woman, mastodontic, who cowed every policeman in the market with one glare from her incinerating eyes, or one bellow from that cavernous mouth of hers, the center upon which all the wrinkles in her face converged.

"_Cristo_, when will you fools be through!" Dolores finally shouted at the bakers, her seductive arms akimbo. And the husky young men, moving a little slower than usual, if anything, answered in kind, but tossing their salacious repartees in the direction of the fish-hags who lined up around the scales with hands folded over protruding abdomens and adding a grotesque enlargement to those already conspicuous bulges. But at last the weighing of the fish could begin: "Hey there, me first, you----!"

"No, my turn, you----!" "You were first yesterday!" The usual morning fight for precedence was on, waiting for arbitration by _tia_ Picores, with her cannonading voice and formidable obscenities. But Dolores had not joined the squabble--she even missed the place her basket held, by rights, in the line. Something on the bridge had caught her eye; and, in fact, over the side rails of that structure the head and shoulders of a straggler could be seen advancing slowly, staggering along under the weight of a heavy load.

An expression of diabolical cruelty overspread the handsome countenance of Dolores; and when the laggart fish-woman had reached the nearer end of the bridge, near the customs office, the girl burst into an insolent, ridiculing laugh. She touched _aguela_ Picores on the arm:

"Look, granny, late as usual. And what can you expect from a mess of lazy-bones like that!"

Rosario grew pale as death, and it was with a sigh of faintness and fatigue that she set her basket on the ground. She looked at Dolores, with what hatred her exhaustion could let gather in her eyes. Then she sat down on the burden she had been carrying. For a second the two enemies surveyed each other from head to foot, their year-long resentment boiling up within them.

Dolores wiped her nose with an arm, snorting, as at a pinch of snuff.

"Yes, I'd sit down, if I were you, mud-puppy. G.o.d, when Tonet was taking a wife, why didn't he get a woman!" Rosario did her best to parry the flood of insults: Sit down? Why not sit down--since G.o.d had given her something to sit on and she had a place to put it! Besides, an honest woman need not be afraid to be seen walking. She couldn't hire a coach-in-four--by playing fast and loose with her husband! "And it's me you're talking to!" exclaimed Dolores, stepping forward with blood in her eyes. But she did not go far. For her "Granny's" clawed talons were upon her shoulder, pulling her back. "Into the cart with you! Your fish is weighed! No public scenes to-day! It's late, and they want their orders up in the Market! Of all the loving pairs of sisters!..." And the old Tartar was now in front of Dolores, thrusting the girl back toward the _tartana_ with b.u.mps from her huge stomach. But the beauty's lips were trembling white with emotion, though she obeyed; but with one foot on the step of the cart, she hurled back one parting shot:

"_Tu, ya se vorem, Rosario!_"