Poor Folk in Spain Part 23

When I am dead a hundred years."

The song began with a long-drawn-out aie-e-e, which ran a gamut of strange, almost creepy modulations, the guitars slowed down their tempo, but when the last echo of the song had died amongst the hills, the instruments took up once more the remorseless beat of the malaguena.

Again she sang:

"New pain drives out old pain, New grief drives out old grief, One nail drives out another nail, But love to love gives no relief.

New pain drives out old pain, Aie-e-e...."

Once more she sang:

"Your eyes like double evils are, Black as is the dark of Hades, And you have to cover them The ebon thickets of your lashes.

Your eyes like double evils are."

The guitars beat up the rhythm once more and then a man began to sing:

"In your eyes there is a sky, Your mouth with heaven itself can vie, A garden blooms whene'er you smile, But in your breast's a crocodile.[25]

In your eyes there is a sky."

Again he sang:

"The only love which I discovered, Like black gunpowder reacted; Fire, explosion, light; then after ...

Followed ashes, silence, darkness.

The only love which I discovered."

By this time a large number of men and of girls had gathered.

"Vamos!" they cried. "Let's have a jota. Come on, Perico, play something that we can dance to."

The guitar-players changed their tempo, the little guitarron beat out with a more insistent though more flexible rhythm. The jota has a beat which is partly the beat of the bar, partly that of the phrase. This is common in Spanish music and has points of resemblance with early European music generally.

Three girls and three of the youths lined up face to face, and soon the dancers were swinging to and fro over the uneven roadway. There is an agile grace in the jota. We watched it with delighted eyes. But the old rheumatic woman did not look pleased.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE VALENCIAN JOTA DANCED BY THREE COUPLES]

"That girl," she muttered to me, nodding her head at one of the dancers, "she has no right to dance. She is apunto. You know," she went on, noting my perplexed expression, "she is expecting a baby soon. It is very wrong of her to dance."

The dancers moved with flexible rhythm, snapping their fingers with the music, and their shadows, flung on the wall by the dim electric light, caricatured their movements. The guitars beat on, creating an atmosphere of careless joy which seemed to bring us into more sensitive contact with the Spaniards than ever we had been before. We wonder if civilization has anything to give to these people. They live simple, straightforward and pleasant lives, tempered, it is true, by sickness and pain and sometimes by privation; but it would be a rash man who would promise to give them greater store of valuable things than they already have. The fact that most cannot read does not hamper them very much. They have wisdom stored up in a thousand witty proverbs, and for their leisure they have the guitar and their songs.

What a wonderful instrument the guitar is! The simplest of all instruments for the learner, a few days' practice makes him so that he can play as do the generality of these herdsmen. Then one can hypnotize oneself with the sonorous rhythm of repeated chords. But if one wishes to go further, the range and variety of the guitar is inexhaustible. It has as many moods as nature and is as difficult to conquer. Sarasate, they say, gave up the guitar because it was so difficult. But the guitar in the hands of the master is the finest of all instruments. Of single portable instruments it alone is complete; it alone is fully satisfying.

We English do not know the guitar. Outside of Spain it has never been played. And the Spanish music made for the guitar ... like life itself with its interwoven themes of sadness and of joy; with mournful melody accompanied by strange gay accompaniment, the words often in strange contrast with the melodic theme. There is no native music in Europe which has the range, the variety, and the depth of feeling possessed by that of Spain.

We tore ourselves away while yet they were dancing; for we remembered that 5.30 was our rising time. The thin goatherd, who wore the enormous hat in the daytime, took us into his house and gave us a drink. The baby was in its cradle, its face carefully tucked under the sheet. The aguadiente which he poured out for us was strong and harsh to the taste; and one was grateful for the gla.s.s of water which it is customary to drink afterwards.

As we were getting ready for bed, we could still hear the sounds of the guitars and the cries of the dancers on the calm air of the night.

The goatherds used to come almost every afternoon to the foot of our castle, and we gave up the siesta habit in their favour.

I made the acquaintance of one other goatherd in Jijona. I was painting in a street near the Garcias' shop. When the picture was nearly complete, I wished for a figure and asked an old man to pose for me. He was nearing eighty, and his face was a map of wrinkles, with a mountain of nose and chin and a valley of toothless mouth. His clothes were a patchwork of different materials. The study which I made of him delighted him so much that he begged for it. He would pay me, he said.

"The price does not matter," he exclaimed, "if only La Dona will put in a goat also." For he owned the flock which he led every day into the mountains.

I made him a copy of it, and all the other goatherds trooped up to the castle to see Tio Pepe's portrait.

"Ay, there's Pepe," they cried, slapping their thighs; "there he is with his patches, and his crook'd stick, and his sandals and his old nose and all. Tod', Tod'."

It was near the time of our departure from Jijona. Tio Pepe in vain tried to press on me a few pesetas for the portrait. He searched his old mind for a means of showing his grat.i.tude; and just as we were leaving he found a solution. At five o'clock in the morning, as our trunk was leaving the house on the shoulders of Tia Roger's strong young son, up ran Uncle Pepe with a large can of goat's milk, all of which we had to drink on the spot; or he would never have forgiven us.

The night before our departure we had packed, for we had to start early to catch the motor-bus. Then we had gone to bed. We had just snuggled down beneath the blankets, for the nights were getting quite fresh, when I heard the sounds of a guitar. The sounds drew closer. They were coming up the hill. A suspicion grew to a certainty.

"Jan," I cried, "those goatherds are giving us a farewell serenade."

We hurried into our clothes. The goatherds had sat themselves down on the stone bench at the front door and were singing l.u.s.tily at the moon.

I don't know what the Spanish etiquette in such matters is, but we went out and took part in our own serenade. It was a lengthy affair. The time crept on, and we, s.h.i.+vering somewhat, for the night grew quite cold, sat ungratefully thinking of the sleep we were missing, and wondering how we were to awaken ourselves at four o'clock. At two o'clock they went away, and we rushed back to bed to seize the two hours of sleep which remained for us.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 25: Crocodile is Spanish slang for a false lover.]

CHAPTER XXV

MURCIA--AUTUMN IN THE PASEO DE CORVERAS

We came back to Murcia, to our headquarters in the Paseo de Corveras, at the beginning of October. Though the town was so far south, the cold weather had well begun. In the daytime the sun seemed as fierce as ever, but the dust that had lain inches deep during the summer was now an equal depth of semi-liquid mud, and the house, without fireplaces or any means of creating artificial warmth, had in it a faint though insidious chill. Save in the hottest weather, stone or cement floors are comfortless to live with. Marciana, the woman whose services we had shared with Antonio during Rosa's smallpox, returned to us. She was a woman of sixty years, bulky in figure, dressed in black of an eternal mourning, and was mother of the most talented sculptor of Murcia. She was an ill.u.s.tration of the inter-provincial jealousy of the Spaniard.

She came from Don Quixote's country, La Mancha, and was never weary of chanting its praises.

"Ah, Senora," she exclaimed, "that is a wonderful land. Corn, oil and wine in abundance. Dancing and singing in the villages all night long.

And what a wonderful people are those of mi pueblo.[26] My two sisters, they each weigh at least twice as much as do I. And then we are a civilized folk there, I can a.s.sure you. You saw how they treated it here when Rosa had the smallpox. No precautions, even though one died of it a few doors down the street. Now in mi pueblo they stretch sheets in front of the doors of warning; the necessaries of life are put on to the doorstep, and the money to pay for them is dropped by the hands of those who are in the house, and who are not allowed beyond the sheet, into pans of vinegar, so that they may be purified of the disease. Now that is real cleanliness."

"But, thanks to G.o.d, Senora, Rosa is much better. The spots are disappearing, she will not be marked, and she has given birth to a son.

It was a most divine birth. Of course it was fear for the son that made everybody so anxious."

Marciana was a dilatory servant. Nothing was ever ready up to date, and she invariably drowned all my commissions for the market with a flood of words. She would wait all the morning in the queue which gathered at the Government Olive Oil depot, to buy olive oil for me at a few centimos cheaper than she could buy it from the grocers; and no explanation that she wasted more of our pay than she gained in cheapness convinced her.

Antonio greeted us with delight, as did Emilio, the guitar maker, whom we went to visit on the first day of our return. Each, however, was in a different mood. Antonio, in spite of the joy caused by his new son, who he said had been born "most preciously," was in a rage. He was in trouble with the local authorities about his taxes. It appears that there is a factory tax which does not depend upon the size of the business, but the mere fact that there is a business. Thus Antonio, with his three or four girl helpers, was condemned to pay the same sum as a factory employing a thousand hands.

"It is impossible!" shouted Antonio. "We are thus crushed out of existence. I may be able to arrange it, but, if I cannot, then it is no use my going on. All the profits are swallowed up in one gulp. I shall shut down, and sell up everything."

Emilio, on the other hand, was flushed with unsullied delight. A pompous man was sitting in his shop with a guitar across his knees. Now and then he drew from it a flourish of arpeggios, very technical, but rather meaningless. Emilio stood over him, his eyes sparkling at the guitar, which appeared to be exquisite in tone and strong in volume.

"Aha! my friends, congratulate me," cried he. "I have surpa.s.sed myself.

Permit me, Senor." He took the guitar from the pompous man, and handed it reverently to Jan. "Try it, only touch it and see what a quality it has. See how the ba.s.s note rings out, and how well-balanced to it is the treble. I had no more than set the strings out on to it when Don Feliz, the little maestro whom you know, came in. He played upon it, and so full was my heart with the perfect tone of it, and with the thought that I, Emilio Peralta, had made it, that the tears came running down my face. I wept, Senor, to hear it. All night long I could not sleep for fear that the tone might alter, as sometimes it does. Sometimes, indeed, a guitar newly made sounds of no value, but in a few days or weeks even it may become first rate. But this was good from the beginning, and it has remained so."

The pompous man took a stately leave of us. Emilio was so excited by his new achievement that he went on talking:

"One does not come to make guitars like this easily. How many are there alive in Spain to-day who could do it? Only one, and I am he. Arias is dead, Raminez also, though I have not seen a Raminez to equal this one.