Mayflower (Flor de mayo) Part 5

Have it out later? Of course they would. You say when, Dolores! And Rosario, her arms really so weak and flaccid, laid hold on a heavy basket in an impulse of rage and tossed it like a pebble on to the scales.

The clouds from the night's storm were burning off with the advent of the sun, which was making a triumphant entrance upon the day, rolling its molten gold horizontally over the streets, gilding the puddles, and painting the house fronts and window-panes with the reddening brilliancy of a conflagration. The town was now quite awake. The street-cars were crowded with people, and the sidewalks on either hand were lined with still drowsy laborers on their way to work, their lunch baskets hung over their shoulders and cigar b.u.t.ts in their mouths. Pairs of relief horses for the police were being driven through the street by boys riding bareback on one of their two steeds.

Servant girls were tripping along toward market. Street sweepers were busy at work on the mud the rain had washed into the gutters, where cows at intervals were being milked. The sheet-iron coverings of store windows were being raised, letting the light in upon the colorful displays inside. Through open doors the scratching of brooms on floors could be heard, while clouds of dust came driving out, making Jacob's-ladders of the sunbeams.

When the _tartanas_ reached the _Pescaderia_ the women porters there hurried out to meet them and help the sailors' wives unload. Servile before these latter, whom they regarded as bosses, they trooped in line through the narrow cell-like doors of the fish-portico, fetid air-holes, through which the stenches from inside poured out. The baskets were dumped on the marble flooring and the fish arranged in line on beds of seaweed. On every hand were trundles of big fish and barrels where the "produce" of the day before was packed in ice.

Across the market was another line of vendors, dressed in costumes like those from the Caba.n.a.l, but more miserable in appearance, if anything, and with more repulsive faces still. They were the women of Albufera, a strange concentration of poverty and degradation, housing in wretched shanties a people that lives among the reeds and mud of the lake marshes, fis.h.i.+ng in the murky, shallow waters from black, bluff-bowed boats that look like coffins. On these ashen, weather-beaten features indigence was drawn in its most ghastly outlines. Every eye was aglow with the wild gleam of fever; and the odors that came from clothes, here, had not the vigorous pungency of the open seash.o.r.e, but the subtle nausea of swamp land and the infectious muck of stagnant pools. The bags these women were emptying on the tables were squirming ma.s.ses of life.

As the eels came out they twisted into rings of black slime, or wriggled on their white bellies, or lifted their pointed heads like snakes.

Nearby, whitening, dead, lay the fresh-water fry, tench, for the most part, insufferably noisome, glittering with the subdued metallic l.u.s.ter of poisonous tropical fruit. Here, too, was a higher and lower caste in misery, for the least fortunate vendors of this section had seats, not at the tables, but on the floors, whence they were offering frogs strung on sticks with their four legs distended.

Business was just beginning in the Fishmarket. The customers were coming in, and mysterious signals were flying back and forth among the stalls mixed with strange words from the jargon of the fish-mongers. The inspectors were outside! As fast as possible false scales vanished under ap.r.o.ns or petticoats. Meanwhile, old and grimy knives were slitting the silvery bellies of the fish, the guts falling hap-hazard under tables or counters. An occasional dog would come running by, sniffing at the offals lying around and with a snort of disgust pa.s.sing on toward the neighboring porticos, where the butchers were holding forth. The fish-women who had been playfully twitting each other an hour before in their _tartanas_ or at the customs house now sat watching each other, whenever a marketer came along, with hostile jealousy. An atmosphere of struggle, of relentless compet.i.tion pervaded the ill-smelling, reeking environment. The women kept calling off their fish in shrill, piercing tones, or beating on their dirty scales to attract the attention of some possible purchaser. Smiles and quaint greetings of endearment would welcome the housewife as she came up; but if she found prices too high and pa.s.sed on, a deluge of filthy epithet would follow after her, and the insolent ridicule would be taken up by the whole crew of vendors, instinctively standing together against the buyer.

_Tia_ Picores, towering with the majesty of a battle-scarred whale in her tall armchair, sat twitching her wrinkly mustached lips and frequently changing position to get the full warmth of the brazier she kept daily burning at her feet till full summer-time. As a veteran of the market, she had her regular trade and did not try overmuch to attract new customers. Her delight it was to take the lead in spitting curses upon the grumbling townswomen who went in person to do their shopping with their maids; and her drawling voice always had the last word in the disputes that went on. Her hair-raising obscenity and the apothegms from her philosophy of shame, which she got off with the solemnity of an oracle, were the princ.i.p.al sources of mirth throughout the portico. The stall across the aisle in front of her belonged to Dolores, who worked with her sleeves rolled up, playing with the bright, gilded scales she owned or showing her beautiful teeth in coquettish smiles when men came by. For many gentlemen in town went marketing by themselves, filling their neat, red-edged baskets at her counter for the pleasure of a chat with the charming girl. Rosario, two tables beyond _tia_ Picores, was busy putting the freshest of her wares to the fore.

The two girls were thus face to face, though they avoided each other's eyes disdainfully, each turning her back when the other one looked her way, though immediately afterwards they would be staring impudently and angrily at each other again.

It was not long before a pretext for their daily quarrel was available.

A man had stopped at Rosario's counter and was bargaining, when Dolores, with a vigorous rapping on her scales and one of her prettiest smiles, enticed him in her direction. "Thief! Thief! He was my customer--one of my best! And you've taken him away! I sell fish, I do; but you sell ...!" And the pale, bony cheeks of the frail, overworked Rosario flamed red with spite and her gleaming eyes flashed fire. Dolores, drawing herself up to her most crus.h.i.+ng height of haughtiness, seemed to sniff with her chubby but handsome nose: "Huh! Thief! Never mind about thieves, darling! People here know who I am; and they know who you are; and if they come to me ..."

The outlook for an interesting morning in the market suddenly improved.

The fish-women brightened on every hand, even neglecting their custom to crane their necks and take in everything that was going on. With smiles of amus.e.m.e.nt, the customers began to crowd around, while the inspector, foreseeing what was coming, prudently slipped out, though he had scarcely begun his rounds. _Tia_ Picores, in despair at such everlasting quarrelsomeness, contented herself with a resigned invocation to heaven.

"Thief is what I said," Rosario resumed. "And everybody knows it. You want everything I've got, and I can prove it. Here you steal my customers and down at the Caba.n.a.l you steal ... well, you steal ...

something else ... something else.... She's not fooling me, I can tell you, even if she is pulling the wool over her husband's eyes ... dolt that he is, fool of a Rector, who don't know his chin from his elbow."

But Dolores was not moved from her patronizing self-possession. She could see from the faces of the onlookers that every one was wondering how she would take those allusions to herself and her good-natured husband; and she was not going to let the Fishmarket have a day's fun at her expense. "Close your mouth, deary, before you slip and fall into it! Don't be bitter! You can't have all the men there are. You're envious!" "Me, envious!" Rosario retorted. "Envious of your reputation, I suppose,--the best in the Caba.n.a.l, as even the lamp-post knows!

Thanks! I'm a decent woman, I am, I never tried to get another girl's husband!" "And whose husband could you get with that sculpin-face? No, dearest, no one is jealous of you!" And Rosario, growing paler than ever, sunk her nails into her clenched hands, while Dolores, her fists on her hips, wreathed her delicious countenance in a smile, which seemed to serve for volumes of insults.

The joy of combat had taken possession of the whole portico. Idlers had gathered in throngs at the doors. The fish-women were leaning far forward over their counters with the eager appet.i.tes of furies, clacking their tongues as though they were sicking two dogs upon each other and banging on their scales to applaud each cutting thrust. It was time for Dolores to fall back on the _ultima ratio_ of a fish-woman's contempt.

"Look, Rosario! Don't talk to me! Talk to this!"

And she turned squarely around and, bending slightly, registered a resonant slap on the pair of s.p.a.cious hips that trembled under her calico skirt with all the elasticity of her firm flesh.

This _trovata_ had immense success with the audience. Women fell from their chairs in the contortions of laughter. The tunny-men in the near section doubled up in the gripes of joy, while the hilarity found its outer boundaries in the meat-market, stalls and stalls away. Staid gentlemen from town set their baskets down to do full justice with their clapping hands to the beauty and the wit of the inimitable Dolores.

But the triumph of the Rector's wife was of short duration. As she looked around to see the effect her blow had had, a handful of sardines struck her full in the face. Rosario was blind with fury. "Come out of that stall! Show your face out here where I can get at you, you low-lived street-walker!" And Dolores did show her face. Rolling her sleeves up still higher, as though clearing for action, she strode forth from her stall, her eyes aglow with the enthusiasm of combat. Toward her Rosario came running, brus.h.i.+ng aside the arms that tried to restrain her, aquiver with rage from head to foot and shrieking curse on curse.

They met in the wet, slippery pa.s.sageway between the two lines of counters. Head down, the smaller woman rushed full tilt into her taller and st.u.r.dier antagonist. It was a shock of nerve on muscle. Dolores was scarcely stirred, and the blows Rosario rained on her did not seem even to ruffle her temper. Answering in kind, she began to deliver the most merciless slaps upon the pale, bony cheeks of her a.s.sailant, which grew red under the punishment.

But suddenly Dolores shrieked in agony and raised both hands to one ear.

"The dog! The dog!" she cried.

Rosario's fingers had closed over one of those pearl earrings that had been the admiration of the Fishmarket. She had torn it out. The pretty girl began to sob, pressing her torn ear under both her hands, while blood streamed through her fingers. "Was that the way to fight fairly?"

she moaned. That showed the kind of woman she had to deal with. People had gone to jail for life for less than that! Then, whipped to a violent rage by the pain she felt, she started once more for her enemy. But the fish-women had gathered round her, petting and consoling her, and they held her back. _Tia_ Picores, meanwhile, was spitting oaths and insults into the face of Rosario, who stood there pale, fainting, in fright and horror at what she had done.

Above the crowd outside the portico the top-knots of several policemen had appeared. The forces of law and order were trying to elbow their way into the throng. Sh ... h ... h! _Tia_ Picores a.s.sumed command. "Back to your stalls, everybody! And mum's the word! Those pretty boys will be in here with their summonses and their papers! Nothing's the matter, remember, everybody, nothing happened at all!" Some one threw a big handkerchief over the bleeding ear of the wounded girl. The women were all in their places looking straight ahead as solemnly as in church, and calling off their prices with laughable mechanicalness. As the officers pa.s.sed from counter to counter the market was again in turmoil, but of a different kind. "What are those dudes doing in here? Some people never know where they belong. What's the idea? Just b.u.t.ting in, eh, lolly-pop!" And the police marched out as wise as they had entered, chased away by the drawling voice of _tia_ Picores--who could never understand how people allowed such a government of thugs and grafters to exist among honest people--and marking time to the banging of metal scales, which all began to clatter as a parting salutation.

The market returned to its usual routine. The vendors were busy with their custom. Rosario, like a sphinx in dudgeon, stood upright and stiff behind her counter, indifferent to the pa.s.sing trade, spots on her cheeks and temples turning black-and-blue from the buffets they had received. Dolores kept her back turned toward her enemy, but she was doing her best to stifle the cries that her pain was almost tearing from her. _Tia_ Picores seemed to be in a thoughtful mood, as she talked aloud and in monologue to the fish lying about in front of her. And those spit-fires would keep at it for the rest of their lives, eh! I kill you or you kill me! Fine! And all over a man! Men! Men! As though there weren't enough hogs in the world to go round! But she would put a stop to it, she would. Any more of their nonsense and she would thrash them, thrash them both, by G.o.d! And perhaps they didn't think she could!

Well, she would see!

Distractedly she seized the lunch that the char-woman brought at eleven o'clock--a roll of black bread with two dripping chops--and she swallowed it in a few hurried mouthfuls. Then, wiping her furrowed face with her dirty, greasy ap.r.o.n, she walked over to her niece's stall, planted herself with arms folded in front of it, and began her lecture.

That business had got to stop, if you please! The family of _tia_ Picores could not be the talk of the Fishmarket all the time. It had got to stop! She had made up her mind, and when _tia_ Picores made up her mind to a thing, she got what she wanted, even if G.o.d himself got in the way, even if she had to lick half of Spain to get it. _Tia_ Picores had a bit of a temper herself when she got really mad. What had just happened would be nothing, nothing, compared to the fuss there'd be when she set out on the warpath. Those girls would have to make up!

"No, no!" Dolores groaned, clenching her fists and shaking her head decisively.

"No, no! No, no!" mimicked _tia_ Picores. "What's the meaning of that?

No, no! No, no! Like it or lump it, but you make up, you make up! The idea, such a scandal in the family! And lucky you are in the family, both of you. That gives you a chance to make up. She tore your ear? Now, now, Dolores, think of those blows you gave her on the face. t.i.t for tat, with t.i.t having a little the best of it. There's a good girl now!

No, no--no use arguing ... you just mind your auntie!"

And thence the fish-woman pa.s.sed to the table of Rosario, where her language was stronger still. And Rosario called that being a lady? A mad dog, rather, a mad dog, yes--not to use the real word! "Don't you look at me like that, you jackanape, or I'll give you this pair of scales over your head, I will! That's what I get for being nice to you two brats. That's the way you treat an old friend of your mother! Well, now, Your Highness, this nonsense is going to stop, and stop here--just because I say so, I! Look at that poor Dolores over there, crying because her ear hurts so. Is that the way decent people fight, pulling each other's ears off? Only sneaks fight like that--sneaks, do you hear?

When you fight, you fight straightforward and honest. Strike as hard as you want, but where it won't do any harm. Man alive! In my time I've pulled the hair of every wench in the market. You get their skirts up, and you take your shoe, and there, where it's all soft and tender, whack, whack, whack, till they have to sit on one side for a week. But after that ... a cup of chocolate in the cafe, and then ... better friends than ever. Yes, sir, that's the way respectable people fight.

And that's what you are going to do, if I have to lick you every inch of the way. You won't, eh! Well, we'll see! Dolores is stealing your man, eh! Ten thousand fleas on the good-for-nothing, anyhow! Excuse me, the girls don't chase the men. It's the men that chase the girls. Listen to me, dearie. If you want that man of yours to mind his business, you just keep things going at home right and proper. Keep him busy! Keep him busy! Then he won't go browsing around where he don't belong. _Dios!_ such girls as are growing up nowadays. As much brains as so many geese.

I'd like to see a man of mine with enough to him to have anything to spare for other women! Anyhow ... this mess is all over. You're going to make up ... because I say so, if not for a better reason.... Otherwise _tia_ Picores will take a hand...."

And with a mixture of threats and words of endearment the st.u.r.dy dean of the fish-women went muttering back to her place, to sell the rest of her stock.

Work was over early that day. There was quite a demand for fish in town, and the counters were emptying by noontime. The vendors began to sweep their leavings into kegs of cracked ice and to cover them with damp cloths. The teamsters were collecting their baskets, large and small, and piling them up in the tails of their rickety _tartanas_. _Tia_ Picores was putting on her checked shawl and chatting, in the middle of the portico, with a group of old women of her time who went shares with her in paying for a wagon. She still had that matter of the two girls on her mind; and as soon as everything was ready for the drive home she made for their stalls, and pushed and pinched till she had brought the rivals together.

Dolores and Rosario, unable to resist the brow-beating of the terrible woman, stood with lowered heads, as though deeply humiliated at what was going on, but not daring to say a word. "We're going to stop a minute at the chocolate place," _tia_ Picores directed to her teamster; and the company of mottled shawls and dirty skirts went out of the _Pescaderia_, the flagstones echoing to the clatter of heavy shoes. In Indian file the women crossed the crowded market, where the last bargainings were in progress, _tia_ Picores opening her way through the throngs with her vigorous elbows, behind her the bevy of wrinkly-faced, yellow-eyed veterans, then Rosario with her load of baskets,--for she always went to and fro on foot--and finally Dolores, her ear still smarting cruelly, but able, nevertheless, to raise a smile of pleasure when her pretty brown face, no less winsome under the rude bandage around her head, attracted remarks of appreciation from the men around.

They invaded and occupied the chocolate shop, where they were regular customers. Rosario set her reeking, smelly baskets on one of the marble tables, and the odor of stale fish mingled through the room with the fragrance of cheap cocoa that drifted out from the adjoining kitchen.

_Tia_ Picores gave a grunt of satisfaction as she settled into a chair.

Chocolate after the day's work was her greatest comfort in life. How well she knew that little cafe, with its striped matting on the floor, its white tiled walls, its frosted gla.s.s windows with red curtains; in front of the doors, ice-cream freezers in cork casings with metal covers; the counter, then, with its jars for cookies and sweets, and behind it the proprietor of the place sleepily brus.h.i.+ng at the flies with a bundle of long paper streamers fastened to a stick.

And what would they have? Same as usual, of course; a half-pint cup all around, and a gla.s.s of lemon water apiece. This would make the fourth chocolate that _tia_ Picores had downed that fore-noon; but the stomachs of those tough daughters of the sea were poison proof, and they could sip gallons of that imitation "Venezuela" with the gusto of sybarites.

Nothing to beat chocolate! Drink a lot of it if you wanted to last beyond your apportioned three-score and ten! And eagerly the aged cronies sniffed at the bluish steam that was rising from the plain white cups before dipping pieces of bread into the muddy paste and raising them, dripping brown, to the toothless caverns of their mouths. The two girls sat there, however, barely touching the good things in front of them, their chins on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s and avoiding each other's eyes. But when _tia_ Picores's cup was almost empty her thundering voice came out to change the situation. "Did you ever see such a pair of sillies! Still mad, still mad! Well, well, the girls in the Market these days are not what they used to be! Once their faces are out of joint, there's no ironing them out again! Mad once, mad for always, eh! Couldn't be worse if they were tony folks up town! No, there's something wrong with the hearts of girls nowadays. And if you don't believe it just see here. Is there one of you at this table that at some time or other hasn't had her hair pulled or her face slapped by me? No! Not a one. What's more, I'll bet that if any one of you were to show the place you sit on, you'd find the scars of where I beat you with a hob-nailed shoe. No? Well, there you are! And we've never been better friends, and we're ready to stand by when any one of us gets into trouble. And that's the way for people to be. Quick-tempered? Very well. But ready to make up afterwards, like honest Christians. Leave your grumps at the door and have a cup of chocolate, say I. And that's what my old ma said, in her day. And that's what the Fishmarket people always said. 'Don't swallow hard feelings!

Throats are made for chocolate, white bread and _quinset_,' as the old song runs:

_'Pesar, d'asi no has de pasar._ _Chocolat, bollet, y got de quinset!_'"

And although the gla.s.ses they had before them were not of "quinset,"

since the season for ices had not yet come, all the old women, to show their approval of the philosophy expounded, drank their lemon-water instead with gulps and gapes of satisfaction. _Tia_ Picores, meanwhile, was getting angry at the steadfast balkiness of the two rivals. "Well, now, speak up, numskulls! Haven't you tongues in your heads? You're going to stick to it, I suppose. You think I am talking just to hear myself talk. Well, you're wrong. See here, Rosario, what have you got to say? You're the most to blame. Come now."

The poor little woman sat there with her head still lowered, playing in her embarra.s.sment with the ends of her shawl. She muttered something or other about her husband, and then said slowly: "If she promises ... to keep him away!"

Dolores started like a shot.

"Keep him away! What do you take me for? A scarecrow, to keep people away from the house? That fine husband of yours, I'll have you know, is my husband's brother. You expect me to shut the door in his face and spit fire at him when he comes around? But, after all, what do I care?... I don't want to be quarreling all the time, and be made the talk of half Spain. All those stories about me and Tonet are lies of people who don't know how else to make trouble in a good family....

Tonet went with me before Pascualo and I were married. Well, was it wrong to marry his brother? Bos.h.!.+ Was I the first to do a thing like that? Well, why else should people talk? No ... all I want is to be let alone, and not be plagued all the time. Keep Tonet away, no. I won't be mean to him. However, if I have seemed to be too intimate, I'll be more careful in the future, even though he's one of the family ... just so people will have no reason to say anything ...!"

_Tia_ Picores beamed. "Now, that's the way to talk! Some heart in that girl after all, come now! Well, Rosario! Are you satisfied at last?

There's a good girl! One smack, and bygones are bygones!"

Reluctantly, the women actually pus.h.i.+ng the two heads toward each other, the girls kissed, but without rising from their chairs. _Tia_ Picores, in the full flush of triumph, could not work her tongue fast enough.

"The idea of two women fighting over a man, as if there were only one in the world! And that's just what the rascals want you to do, sillies.

Every time you quarrel over a man his stock goes up, and he thinks he's got so much more hold on you. No, indeed, women have got to stand their ground, good and hard, the way I did. My husband? Why, if he ever went on a rampage, I brought him to order mighty quick, I did; and the first thing he knew he was for asking my pardon. Was there ever a man in the world worth getting jealous over? Not much! Why worry then? Do you ever know where your man is when he is away from home? Of course, you don't.

Just take it for granted he is up to mischief, and then forget about it.

The less you fret about them, the better they like you. I led my man a song and dance, I can tell you. 'What are you doing in my bed! No, sir, where you spent the summer you can spend the winter!' And out he'd go, in a hurry. No 'dear this,' and 'dear that,' with my man! And he followed me around like a dog. That's the way to keep them tamed!"