Poor Folk in Spain Part 15

[Footnote 17: Rabbit.]

CHAPTER XVII

VERDOLAY--THE INHABITANTS

The little village of Verdolay was not a characteristic Spanish village, it was a watering-place. One came into it along the dusty road between banks on which grew the spiky aloe shrubs, behind which spread the s.p.a.ced olive groves with trees drawn up into demure lines, amongst the grey foliage of which could be seen the red painted corrugated roofs of the French Silk Company. The village scrambled up a terraced hill. The lower edge was a line of orange-vermilion one-storied houses faced with a small promenade. Then the houses scattered. To the right as one faced the hill were the baths, a collection of bulky, ramshackle buildings which hid deep, cool courtyards, and from which came the plash of water and the sound of young voices. The hill-side was covered with terraced gardens in which were set houses painted yellow, green, blue or pink.

The apex of the hill was decorated by an iron windwheel for pumping. A ridge joined the crest of the hill to the mountains, and here perched the ancient monastery of Santa Catalina; while a mile away to the right, showing white amongst a green bed of palms and firs, was the country seat of the Count of El Valle, and to the left amongst groves of oranges was the villa of an ex-Prime Minister.

One had almost a specimen of Spain in little in this one village. The vermilion houses, called the Malecon, sheltered a transitory population; visitors to the baths, who like ourselves arrived in carts with furniture, and after a few months disappeared back to town duties. These were usually of the superior artisan or small shopkeeping cla.s.s. The second row of houses contained persons such as Don Ferdinand, the little Senor or the people who kept the baths. These represented the larger tradesmen and in general lived all the year in Verdolay, travelling to Murcia by tartana or by tram via Palmar. The two roads which swept up each side of the hill were edged with small cottages where the real peasantry lived, and the houses which stood amongst gardens on the hill terraces, each owning its proper entrance, were the residences of the merchantry. The Count of El Valle represented the county aristocracy and the ex-Prime Minister the Court.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

In spite of a somewhat evil local reputation, the peasantry could be counted as a quiet, hard-working, rather unintelligent, good-natured community which leaned vaguely, on the male side, to liberalism and atheism, but lacking the courage or determination to make either effective. It cursed the Court and told dirty stories about the priesthood, but all exasperation evaporated in words. This peasantry is the foundation on which the whole of this plutocratical hill of Verdolay rests; and it labours as severely as any other peasantry, perhaps even working harder because of the lack of water, which adds a need to be satisfied before work is over. The average traveller has the idea that the Spaniard is lazy. We are not sure that this is a correct estimate of him. We English have made a G.o.d of "Work." But indeed unnecessary work is mere foolishness. The great blessing to be sought for is leisure.

Human advance comes from the reflections of leisure rather than from the activities of work. The Spaniard recognizes leisure as the benefit which it is. He has no false ideas about work. Adam bit the apple, and we pay his debts, but why load ourselves with compound interest at many hundreds per cent.? That is the Spaniard's point of view. He works when he must work. He rises with the dawn or before it, say four a.m., he works till eleven o'clock, then in the afternoon resumes toil from 3.30 till 6.30. The late-rising traveller who mouches about in his English custom during the hottest hours of the day sees the Spanish labourer at his siesta, snoozing by the roadside, or thrumming his guitar to a herd of sleepy goats. He draws a natural, though incorrect, conclusion.

The Spaniard may be dilatory. He puts off doing to-day what he can do to-morrow, but it is from an exaggerated respect for the benefits of leisure. His handicap is that he has no proper means of filling that leisure, his apparent laziness comes from lack of education. About eighty per cent. cannot read, schooling is not enforced, and children begin work at ten years of age or thereabouts. But do not lay up the Spaniard's desire for inactivity as a crime; it is a virtue ill employed.

Our particular specimen of the Spanish peasant was my female servant, named Encarnacion. She was thirteen years old, could neither read nor write, and worked like a small mule for the not extravagant wage of eleven s.h.i.+llings and sixpence a month. She only worked half the day, it is true, but we did not give her food. We indeed overpaid her, for the regular wage of her kind was about eight s.h.i.+llings and fourpence a month. She had a small, stumpy child's body, sprouting into a long neck, at the top of which was a rounded head. Her forehead was intellectual, her features flattened, and her hair, done up tight into a small ball, was usually decorated with a flower or a green leaf.

At first, like all Spanish peasants, she made up her mind that she could not understand what I said, but gradually learned that she had to do so, and in general succeeded pretty well. But it was to her a tremendous intellectual effort. She would wrinkle her n.o.ble-looking brow with the strain, and was never satisfied until she had translated my orders into her own patois for clarity. But she would not allow her fundamental ideas of what was proper to be influenced by my foreign notions.

Sometimes she would interrupt me.

"No, Senora," she would say, "I do not like it done thus. That is not the custom. It must be done so."

If one insisted upon one's own way, the work was ill done. So that, as a rule, to save trouble, one allowed her to do as she wished. Encarnacion worked all the morning, singing an interminable Spanish song, which struck our ears queerly and pleasantly at the beginning, but of which in the end we grew very tired. By eleven o'clock she would have done all the housework, the shopping and the cooking, and would leave the stone floors soaked in water, the evaporation of which did a little to counteract the intense heat. She had a habit which we did not like of scattering our household refuse all over the small square yard. It looked dirty and untidy, but we found out that she knew better than we did. The vagrant cats soon cleared up any remains of meat, while the hot sun dried up all the other refuse, which could then be thrown away conveniently.

Encarnacion was sad that she could neither read nor write, and was proudly jealous of her younger sister, who, working in the milk factory, was being taught to spell.

She of course acquired a proprietary right in us. She upheld the honour of the house, and gave a lesson in manners to a gipsy girl from the cave dwellings who had once thrown a stone at me. She also criticized our work. To the almost daily parties of strangers who walked into our house whenever the door was left unlocked, she acted as guide to our pictures drying on the walls, and she would explain to whom each house in the sketches belonged.

But she never said "Thank you."

There are considerable differences between Spanish customs and those of ordinary Europe, and these are apt to disconcert the traveller. Here are a few Spanish ones that we noted _en pa.s.sant_.

You may walk into any house or garden if moved to do so by curiosity if you, previous to entering, utter the magic formula: "Se pueda entrar?"[18]

You may stare as much as you like at anything or anybody, for staring is in reality a compliment.

Self-consciousness is a silly vanity.

If you feel friendly towards an acquaintance you may call on him at nine in the morning and you may repeat your call three or four times during the same day. (What the man does to get rid of you we have not yet discovered. We have only been the victims, not the visitors.)

You must refuse everything that is suddenly offered to you, except cigarettes or sweets offered in the fingers. Do not accept other things until the third offer. But to refuse sweets or cigarettes is almost insulting.

You must offer to give any object to anybody who admires it (especially objects of jewellery or babies).

You may ask any questions you like, even upon the most intimate of subjects; and you must expect to be asked similar questions.

If invited to a meal, you may refuse no dish that is served to you, even though indigestion is clutching at your vitals, or repletion stopping your throat.

For a specimen of the small tradesman cla.s.s of the malecon we had La Merchora. She kept the village shop, the last house on the terrace, and was in some way a relative of Antonio. Her home was planned like ours was, and one of the rooms beside the entrada had been filled with a counter, some shelves, and a large tin of paraffin oil; ginger-coloured sausages were festooned from the roof and the shop was complete. She was unmarried, and therefore, from a theoretical point of view, negligible; but it did not disturb her. Indeed, little did disturb her. She had the figure which grows out of a combination of good living, no thinking and reasonable working. In any village you will find an example of her kind.

She is good-natured but respected. Liberties are not taken with her, and in Cornwall she is called Aunt So-and-so. La Merchora was not even black-visaged, there was in fact nothing that one can count for Spanish about her.

She had two epithets--atrocidad and barbaridad--but she said them with so jovial an aspect that atrocity or barbarity faded into the gentlest of denunciations. When our first servant, Encarnacion's elder sister, deserted us without warning for a better job, La Merchora said it was an atrocidad; when the water-carrier overcharged us she said it was barbaridad. When the Count El Valle's watchman chased us off some square miles of unfenced unproductive mountain she said it was atrocidad; when the weather was hot she said it was barbaridad.

Every evening after supper there was a gathering outside La Merchora's shop. La Merchora, Uncle Pepe, her father, the niece, the gaunt woman from next door, her baby, half naked but with a flower in its hair, women coming through the night to fetch water (an interminable task), carters returning from work and others, would gather on chairs, benches, or on the stone wall of the malecon; and beneath the faint glow of the electric light would gently talk of things, while the niece was catching the foolish cicadas or crickets (attracted by the light) with which to amuse the baby and with which to awaken in the child some primary instinct of cruelty to animals.

Uncle Pepe was La Merchora's father. He was a withered brown peasant baked by the sun to the colour of a pot. Wrinkles of careful economy and of good humour were as indelibly roasted into him as the pattern on a Roman dish. In recognition of La Merchora's acc.u.mulated kindnesses I painted his portrait on a small panel for her. She pondered some while on the problem of a suitable recompense, and at last gave us an antique Sevillian basin decorated with a primitive painting of a yellow and green cat. It was an old and valuable piece of earthenware used for was.h.i.+ng the linen, and had probably been employed to wash Uncle Pepe's s.h.i.+fts and himself as well when he was a baby. These basins, two feet in diameter, are used as decorative and practical adjuncts to the huge red earthenware pots in which the villagers of the Murcian valley store the household water. We protested against the generosity of this gift, but in vain. One day, while we were out, she had it carried to our house, and would on no account receive it back.

Pepe and La Merchora ill.u.s.trate the rapid evolution of the modern Spanish gentleman. Antonio is the third stage in the development. The little Senor is the fourth. Pepe is an unlettered peasant, knowing nothing but the labour of the soil but possessing the traditional culture of Spain. By the time one has reached the little Senor and the people of the Baths, one has arrived at letters but one has lost much of the culture. Pepe's wisdom is the common sense of centuries stored up in proverbs; he has one to fit every occasion. The little Senor's learning is supplied by the newspapers. The grandparents of all these people, even of the rich merchants who lived on the apex or Verdolay hill, were peasantry--Pepes, as a rule. Then one perceives that with the acc.u.mulation of wealth, the culture gradually diminishes in a like proportion. The third generation has lost almost all culture and has nothing but a kind heart and a love of making money. The Spanish bourgeoisie is inverting the processes which are going forward in England to-day. It is trying to forget its old customs--too late we are trying to revive ours. It has learned to despise its exquisite folk music, already becoming forgotten--we are trying to fudge out a few miserable tunes from the memories of senile fiddlers.

These people have won to that leisure so sweet to the heart of man; but they don't know what to do with it. They sleep and so grow fat. Having become fat they are good-natured and laugh. The old saw should be inverted. Indeed, many an old saw is in reality the truth turned inside out. They were a good-natured kindly people, these bulky tradesmen, but they were deadly dull. The daughters of Verdolay banged untuned pianos to the strains of dances forgotten by Europe, polkas, mazurkas and pas de quatre; but their own dances--the malaguenas and baturras--were unknown to them. They were pressing in their invitations, and were angry with us because we preferred La Merchora's doorstep with its changing audience of pa.s.sers-by.

Of the Count and the ex-Prime Minister we know but little; they lie, anyway, beyond the scope of this book. The Count possessed in this district a country house set in a deep, wooded valley, in which was a medicinal spring, and a few square miles of unfenced sterile mountain land from which his watchman, armed with a gun, was instructed to drive away unauthorized pedestrians. He was not popular and was always at daggers drawn with the village; though from other sources we have learned that he is personally a charming and a generous man. At any rate he has left a fine estate to remain practically unproductive (the two farms and the house itself are in ruins). This practice seems to be normal in Spain, and we have heard of many a case where the aristocracy have deliberately hindered national development. There are rumours, however, that this estate is being bought for the government and will be afforested and developed.

The ex-Prime Minister's villa was the most amazing example of bad taste in architecture that we have ever seen.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 18: "May one enter?"]

CHAPTER XVIII

VERDOLAY--THE DANCE AT CONENI'S

We had been looking forward to the dance which Coneni had promised us.

Spanish music had become with us a hobby, and the dancing which goes with it had excited our imagination. Antonio's sister had led us to believe that wonderful dancing was to be found in the Murcian huertas, and the vague hints of gay times _al campo_ stirred us up to eager antic.i.p.ation.

On Sunday afternoon at about four o'clock we set off, Jan carrying the big white guitar in its case. The cicadas were making their accustomed strident din in the mulberry trees, men on the roadside shouted to us: "Vaya con dios, y con la guitarra."

The Conenis were furbished up for the occasion. A few girls in bright cottons and a few young men in check suits, English caps and b.u.t.toned brilliant boots were awaiting us. Others came in one by one. Coneni chopped up a huge pink-fleshed melon for us, and while we were yet revelling in its cool lusciousness the faint sound of music was heard through the saw-note of the cicadas. The sound came nearer. Presently through the trees a band of youths and girls headed by a girl playing a guitar, and a boy of fourteen playing a Spanish lute (or laud) were visible.

They marched into the garden thrumming bravely a popular two-step march.

It is the custom of the musicians thus to arrive in full cry, as it were. Amongst the group was the little Senor's nurse-maid bravely carrying through the heat the inevitable baby. Later on the baby caused a diversion by getting itself stung by a bee.

The arrival of the music drove Coneni to a pitch of excitement. He brought out a drinking flask of wine. The flask had a long slender spout, and the guests drank by pouring the wine straight into their mouths, tilting their heads backwards. I was afraid of this method, and to my disgrace had to be given a gla.s.s. Tables and chairs, made of rough planking, were brought from neighbouring huertas.

"Now," cried Coneni, "for some dancing."

The guitar and laud players sat down. They played a polka, a common polka. And the girls and English-capped youths danced a solemn polka.

Then followed a schottische, then another polka, then a murdered two-step.