Poor Folk in Spain

CHAPTER X

MURCIA—BLAS

Spain is the true home of the guitar. Only in Spain is the guitar—the most complete of solo instruments—heard in its true perfection. But even in Spain the cult of the guitar is dying out. Nowadays, at marriages, births or christenings the guitar is no longer inevitable, for the cheap German piano and the gramophone are ousting the national instrument. Jan had become enamoured of the guitar in Paris, some small progress he had made with the help of a friend; but one cannot get the true spirit of Spanish music at second hand. So Blas, the gipsy, was called in to given him instruction.

We had been told not to give Blas more than twenty pesetas a month, these to be full payment for a daily lesson. However, Blas proved to be more adept at bargaining than we were. He looked very Egyptian in the face, was very smart in a grey check suit, patent leather boots and straw hat, a strange contrast to the poverty of his home and the slatterns of women who were his family and relations. He came in rubbing his hands together, grinning with an expanse of strong, white teeth, and showing a sly expression in his curious eyes. He cringed to us.

He demanded two pesetas a lesson, or sixty pesetas a month. We held out that we had been told to offer him twenty. This, he answered, was impossible, quite impossible, out of the question. Some of his subserviency was immediately put into his pocket. Jan said that as he would be painting a good deal he would not want more than three lessons a week. Blas hummed and hawed and chewed the idea for a while. Then, with the air of one who is making a great concession, he said that since it was the Señor and since he appeared "muy sympatico" he would consent to take twenty-five pesetas, and that was his final offer. Jan agreed. Blas then added that he was reducing his terms solely because of the sympathetic nature of the Señor, and that he was by no means satisfied with the bargain, and that it was "muy poco." He then asked Jan if he had a guitar. Jan said that he was using the big white instrument made by Ramirez which our friend had left in his house. Blas answered that he possessed the brother of that instrument himself, and that it was a good one.

Only after he had gone did we realize that three lessons a week meant twelve lessons a month, and, at his original price, this would have amounted to twenty-four pesetas, and that Bias had wheedled out a peseta more than his original offer.

We do not like the bargaining system which is prevalent all over Spain, a habit from which, in spite of their stern notices, the "precio fijo" shops are not quite exempt. We are not registering this objection because Blas cozened us of a peseta; but it seems to us that the whole habit of chaffering inculcates a lack of generosity and lays a foundation of unfriendly relationships between people. No matter upon what friendly terms the bargaining is carried out, too much of an element of positive personal competition is brought in; but much bargaining is not carried on in a friendly way. It also necessitates a wholesale campaign of lying—appreciative and depreciative—on the part of both buyer and seller, and a certain amount of personal feeling on the side of the loser. Nor does the constant simulation of anger tend to make a person more pacific by habit. Curiously enough the most generous man is often the worst treated by the bargaining system. He offers a sum in excess of the real value in order to shorten the ordeal, and by doing so only excites the seller to greater cupidity. We have noted that the successful bargainer is treated with respect, while the other who cuts short the bargain by paying too much earns contempt.

Blas came to our house at about twelve o'clock. He was a true musician and lived—as far as we could discover—for but two things, music and drink. He had seemed to understand our Spanish well enough to get the better of the bargain, but he had forgotten this. He, like the maid, had a fixed idea that Jan could not speak Spanish. He grinned, and made strange noises, but never tried to explain anything by means of words. One cannot say that he was a good teacher. All that he could do was to play a piece over and over again, and trust you to get it by ear. Now and again he would grasp Jan's fingers and try to force them into the necessary positions. He was even incapable of playing his tunes slowly. If Jan wished to analyse a movement which came in the middle of a melody Blas had to begin at the beginning. Sometimes Jan was almost in despair, but he worked hard and in the end drew a profit out of Blas's inadequate instruction.

Spanish guitar music is unlike the music of Europe. It has a strange primitive character depending for its marvellous rhythmic properties upon a rhythm of phrase more than upon the rhythm of the bar division. The form is simple, a passage played with the back of the nails across the strings, called the "Rasgueado," a passage like a refrain or chorus, "the Paseo," in reality the introduction of the dance or melody, and the melodies proper called "Falsetas." The rhythmic structure which does not correspond to the bar division of the music is usually emphasized by drum taps made upon the sound board of the guitar with the nail of the second finger.

Blas considered it his duty to teach Jan two falsetas on each visit.

But if he was a bad teacher, he was a fine player. Resting his chin on the great guitar as if the passage of the vibrations through his body were a source of pleasure, he crouched, looking like something between a bullfrog and a Cheshire cat.

Then with supple fingers he played, drawing delicious melodies; or rasping with his nails he beat out complex harmonies that seemed to vie with an orchestra in richness of sound.

When he came to a falseta, he would throw up his negroid eyes like a Greco saint, he would kiss his hand, and, as likely as not, spit on the floor to emphasize his delight.

Before he left the house he always tried to get an advance upon his salary. After all, to him we were only Busné to be fleeced if possible. But when his indebtedness amounted to the whole of his month's pay we fended him off by saying that we had no change.

I do not think we realized how much we were overpaying Blas until we decided to leave Murcia. We found a house, as you will hear, at Verdolay about five miles away. When he heard that we were leaving, Blas volunteered to come out as usual for the same pay. He said that he would cheerfully walk the distance—ten miles—for that money. But we were getting rather shy of Blas. He was too persistent a borrower for our slender means and we had heard of other teachers who were cheaper. So we took this opportunity and dropped him as a pilot to the guitar

CHAPTER XI

MURCIA—THE ALPAGATA SHOP

Save upon feast days, and with the exception of the nobility, who are few, and of the merchants, who have to be worldly commonplace, alpagatas, or string-soled shoes, are the footwear of the Spanish nation. If you dodge the big towns you may go for days and never see a boot. The agricultural labourer, the artisan, the beggar, the soldier, the engine-driver, the porters all wear either the alpagata or, in the summer, its cooler brother, the string-soled sandal. In Spain boots are not meant for real wear, you swagger around the town in boots, and have them cleaned four or five times a day. At a café a horde of bootblacks precipitate themselves towards you to renew the lustre—possibly dimmed by the all-prevalent dust—of those foot ornaments. The young man who goes to meet his novía removes his alpagatas, and puts on boots highly polished and with check tops; the young maiden who is sitting out with her novio has placed her alpagatas in the corner and stretches high-heeled shoes across the pavement. But for all-day-up-and-down use the alpagata wins every time; the baby wears alpagatas, and its grandmother wears a larger variant; there are white alpagatas, brown alpagatas, grey alpagatas, black alpagatas for those in mourning—a very important ceremony in Spain—and there are the elaborate, almost Eastern, alpagatas, entirely of esparto grass, the making of which occupies the time when the goatherd is not yelling at his goats. Even the horsemen, the caballeros, often wear alpagatas. It is true that one cannot strap a spur on to an alpagata, but on the whole spurs are little used in Spain. If the rider wishes his horse or donkey to mend his pace, he thumps the animal with a thick cudgel at about the place where St. Dunstan kicked the devil.

The alpagata is also a cheap form of footwear. Those which we were wearing cost three pesetas, say 2s. 9d. They should last two months. We were therefore spending 1s. 4-1/2d. a month each on shoes. A little arithmetic will show this as 16s. 6d. a year. To-day boots alone cost more than this in repairs, not counting the first cost. For children, of course, they are unrivalled, as the life of the alpagata almost fits the growth of the infant, which is spared the torture one remembers in childhood of boots which were too good to throw away and yet too small to wear with ease. But to taste the full romantic flavour of the alpagata, it should have been bought in the true alpagata shop. If you are in Spain don't go to the boot-shop. It does sell alpagatas, but it ought not to do so. In Spain the boot-seller should be classed with the jeweller. He sells ornaments. The boot merchant who sells alpagatas in Spain is as bad as the jeweller here who sells umbrellas. Go to the shop which sells things for the road, for that picturesque, coloured, moving life of Spain. The doorway of this fascinating shop is piled up with bales of a rough cloth of an exquisite hyacinthine blue, or of a strange yellow, which is seen to perfection only in the alpagata shop or in El Greco's pictures. This cloth is used for lining horse-collars and saddles. Above these beautiful bales are collars of white leather, heavy with small cone-shaped bells of copper, for the goats, larger collars of brown leather, either with small bells in rows, like a lady's pearl collar, or with one large bell pendant, for the oxen. Within are large coronet-shaped semicircles of leather and coloured woolwork, red, yellow, black, white, for the oxen's foreheads, long ribbons of coloured woolwork for the donkeys' harness, and fringes of brightly coloured wool netting, ending in tassels, like that which decorated the under edge of our grandmothers' sofas, to hang across the donkey's chest or down his nose. Muzzles for goats and for donkeys are here too. There is harness also in the shop, Gargantuan-looking harness studded with nails, so broad in its facets of leather that when the horse has his face inside it he looks not unlike an ancient knight in his armour. Only his eyes and his mouth are visible, and often indeed not the latter, for it may be guarded by a piece of leather work not unlike the tongue of a brogue shoe.

Talking of shoes brings us back to the alpagata. A man will be working at a table like a butcher's block. Deftly he cuts the rope, bending it around an iron peg into the shape of the sole, then with a long awl he pierces it through and through, sewing it with great rapidity, and almost hey presto! as it were, a pair of soles are finished. Women who sit almost on the edge of the street, chattering and gossiping—often with the passers-by—are making the uppers of stout canvas. They spring from work to serve you with a gracious kindliness, and seeing that you are English they probably with the same gracious kindliness clap an extra fifty centimos on to the price. If only we had such an alpagata shop in London what a rush there would be to purchase.

Your old alpagatas you leave behind you. What happens to them is to us a mystery. Old boots are the nuisance of the London dust heaps, the terror of the errant mongrel. Yorick, who, Sam Weller assures us, is the only person who has ever seen a dead donkey, may also in his travels have seen an extinct alpagata, but his "Sentimental Journey" is unfinished and we shall never know

CHAPTER XII

MURCIA—BRAVO TORO

Along cool colonnades of raw-coloured brick, up a staircase arched with concrete, and out through a sort of concrete culvert which spouted humanity, we came into the huge round amphitheatre of the bullring. Owing to Spanish dilatoriness, we were later than we had intended, and in consequence were unable to get seats within the coveted shadow which lay over half the great enclosure; but, thank goodness, the sky was mottled with clouds which tempered both the heat and the glare of the Spanish afternoon. We were in the cheapest seats, having disdained to go skywards into the boxes, for we had come to taste the full flavour of an average bullfight as a popular spectacle, and we wished it as pure as possible. So we had bought purple tickets for two pesetas and a white one for me at half price; at the same time repelling the persistence of a feminine hawker, who pressed upon us large flabby looking paper bags of mysterious content which we imagined to be some form of refreshment. The seats of the bullring were of flat stone rising tier upon tier, and we chose our places low down to get a good view, yet as near as possible to the slowly creeping shadow; only one row of stone seats and two rows of chairs of iron lattice separated us from the arena itself. The chairs were empty, so I asked Luis if they were reserved for some special purpose. "No," he answered, "but the bull may leap out of the ring." Those chairs would entangle him, but it is uncomfortable if you happen to be sitting there, so they are not very popular." As the edge of the arena was guarded by a palisade of stout planking about five feet high, through which were cut narrow gaps—bolt-holes—for the toreadors, and the seats were separated from this palisade by a passage some six feet wide, the lowest seats being set some ten feet above the floor, I felt that the risk of finding an enraged bull in one's lap was rather remote.

The culverts spouted Spanish humanity: soldiers in greenish khaki; women in black, white or colours dominated by a very popular pink; peasants in blue blouses and sandals; bourgeoisie in straw hats and drill; youths in caps of exaggerated English cut. Immediately below us two small children, mothered by a third aged about eleven, all three exceedingly unkempt, rather dirty, and possibly verminous, took their seats, and, recognizing that I was a stranger, advised me in hoarse whispers all through the progress of the spectacle. In spite of her obvious poverty the eldest girl wore a large tortoise-shell comb of elaborate pattern in a carefully arranged coiffure. Numberless children seemed to have attended the spectacle thus, as the small Londoners go to the cinema. At this moment the ring itself was full of them, some playing football, a game very popular—there is even a Spanish periodical called Free-Kick—others giving imitation exhibitions of bullfighting, more or less like that played by the children in the hotel. When the imitation bull, stabbed to death, was dragged around the ring, the real spectators cheered loudly. We wondered what the bull's mother would say about the state of his pants.

This was no Mantilla day, nor day of fiesta. It was just an ordinary Sunday afternoon diversion in this provincial town. We took our first dose of bullfight in this place for a reason. Essentially a popular sport should be judged as a sport of the people: not by its highest exponents, but by its average. An intelligent foreigner would not get the truest impression of what cricket means to England at Lord's or at the Oval; but on some village green at an inter-parochial contest.

The horrors of bullfighting began with a band, the age of the bandsmen varying between fourteen and seventy years. The band marched around the ring playing music as out of tune as the new age is with the old. The ring emptied of children, and two horsemen superbly mounted dashed across the arena to demand from the President the key of the bull-pen. This was followed by a general parade of the toreros. Alas, for romance! Their gilt was somewhat tarnished, most of their cloaks worn and faded; usually the only part of the costume which seemed to have retained its original brilliance was the coloured seat of the tight trousers, which I suppose comes in for very little wear and tear. The picadors with their nail-headed lances seemed veritable Don Quixotes on their more than Rosinante steeds: poor beasts doomed to the knackers anyhow. The procession ended with two cart-horses and a yoke destined to drag the slaughtered bulls from the ring.

There was a pause. Luis said in a low murmur:

"Doesn't your heart beat? Isn't this moment exciting?"

He spoke truly. Around the huge oval all eyes were concentrated on the red door of the bull-pen: the very air seemed rarefied and electric. For me, I think this was the most tense moment of the day: that moment before anything had happened. A bugle call cut the silence. The red door swung open and with a peculiar rolling gallop the bull dashed into the arena.

"Now," I thought, "this terrible bullfight, about which so much has been written, so much discussed, has indeed begun."

The bullfights of our imagination are spectacles of sun and colour—of madness stained with cruelty; the cruelty perhaps partly condoned by the fierceness of the bull, by a sort of wild frenzy of sport which seems in some part to excuse the murderous instinct of man.

The bull, a coloured rosette nailed to its shoulder, reached the centre of the ring, and then, for me, half the anticipated interest of the fight vanished. We had expected a wild and furious gallop around the arena; a bull lusting to kill or be killed; mad charges at the toreros, who would elude it with quick baffling passes of the cloaks, wild dashes at the unfortunate horses, the riders of which would at least make some pretence of manœuvering before the furious bull was allowed to fling horse and rider into the air. But no! The bull slowed up, halted and looked to this side and that. It was obviously perplexed. One could almost imagine a crease of puzzlement between its eyes. What was all this; where the sierras of its youth; into what strange place had it come? And now began a taunting of the unwilling bull. The toreros flapped their faded cloaks at it, but whenever the bull was tempted to charge the man ran for safety and crammed himself through one of the bolt-holes in the palisade—once a torero scampering for life reached an opening at the same instant as a companion. For a moment there was a flurry, but both men contrived to push through before the bull was able to reach them. The first impression of the fight was of a certain power and some magnificence on the part of the bull, and of degradation on the part of the toreros—one thought of the shorn Sampson taunted by the Philistines. In this contest the men seemed somehow ignoble in comparison with the animals. The next act of the drama made this feeling no better. The picador was led out on his blindfolded and skeleton-like steed by a little man in a red shirt, who from behind the horse's head held out, like a policeman regulating the traffic, a protesting hand at the bull, as if to imply that the animal was not to charge till he was ready to bolt. For some while the bull did not take the invitation, though whenever he appeared likely to do so the small man dropped the reins and ran for the paling, from which, however, he took care never to be very far away. The picador himself is not in great danger, for his trousers are armour plated.

By this time the audience was shouting out: "No quiere!"[9] but at last the bull charged, the picador thrust his lance, and the bull with a great thrust of its head overturned both horse and man. Immediately the bull was surrounded by the toreros who with flapping cloaks distracted its attention. Man and horse were lifted up again.

Large numbers of Spaniards do not like bullfighting, but a great many Spaniards who do not in principle object to bullfighting do object to the horse-slaughter. One, cutting to the roots of the truth, said it was "not æsthetic." He was right. There should be a strong sense of the æsthetic in sport—it is a thing more subtle than mere "fair play," and when this sense of the æsthetic is ignored the sport becomes brutality. This horse-slaughter more than oversteps the line of the æsthetic, so for us did the bolt-holes provided for the toreros. For us bullfighting would begin to be a serious sport if the men and the bull stood on the same conditions.

One picador, who by means of his lance kept the bull off from his horse, received a round of well-earned applause. The bugle sounded once more and the picadors were led out of the ring. There followed another rather dull interval of cloak-flapping. One of the matadors, however, gave an exhibition of passes which made the bull charge repeatedly within a foot or so of the man's body, during which the torero did not move his feet. When the bull, baffled and panting with exhaustion at his fruitless tosses, paused, the torero went upon one knee before the animal. The spectators shrieked applause and flung their hats into the ring. But this exhibition was very different from the usual cloak-flapping followed by a scamper for the bolt-hole: nor, indeed, was it shown often.

A torero who had carried an exceedingly faded violet cloak, and who had been perhaps most hasty in his dashes for the safety gaps, now discarded his cloak, and waving a pair of pink banderillas stepped into the centre of the ring. Like a foreigner at cricket we naturally missed much of the subtlety, but it was obvious that there were certain conditions under which the banderillero would meet the bull and others under which he would not. When the toreador seemed to think the bull in a good position, he waved his banderillas and stamped his feet as though about to fence. But the bull did not want banderillas stuck into him. Again and again he declined the invitation while the populace howled "No quiere, no quiere!" Personally I should have sent the bull home and ordered another with more ginger in it. At last, exasperated, the bull charged, the banderillero ran towards it in a slightly circular path, planted his two sticks, each some thirty inches long, into the bull's neck, and, curving out more widely, avoided by a few inches the upward thrust of the bull's horns. This piece of work looked dangerous, and the pay of a banderillero amounts to between £3 and £4 an afternoon. I think that he earns his money. What surprised us was to see the torero who had appeared such a scamperer with the faded purple cloak performing most pluckily with the paper-covered sticks. I suppose it is the case of a good batsman and good bowler—the arts are not interchangeable.

The six banderillas having been placed, another interval of harrying the unfortunate animal with minor exasperations of cloak-flapping followed: but at last the espatero, the swordsman, and the matador prepared to give the death stroke. Here again in first-class bullfighting probably the whole exhibition is one of supreme skill. We expected a certain number of showy passes with the scarlet flag, the matador keeping the bull circling about him—"wearing the bull as a waist-belt," as the saying is in Spain. Then a pause, a sudden thrust with the sword—and, with a groan, the bull is dead. It was not so. The espatero walked about flapping the cloak, at which sometimes the bull did charge, but more often did not. Several times the espatero had to run into a bolt-hole. The bull showed strong desires to go home: it went to the side of the ring and looked at the door from whence it had emerged, while more venturesome members of the audience leaned over the palisade and tried to snatch out a banderilla as a souvenir. The toreador chivied the bull round the ring, trying to get it face foremost. However, when he succeeded in this he did not seem satisfied, for though the people yelled: "Ahora! Ahora!"[10] the matador only flapped his cloak.

"He is rather a nervous espatero," said Luis, "so, when he does prepare to kill, look out. Sometimes the sword flies. Not very long ago it landed in the audience and killed a spectator." At last, however, the bull, tongue hanging out, foam dripping from its mouth, blood streaming from the lance and banderilla wounds in the shoulders, faced the matador with half lowered and sullen head. The matador, taking up the position of a man about to throw a javelin, aimed his sword, which was curiously curved in the blade,

and with quick steps ran in, thrust, and side-stepped. The bull, taken by surprise, could not bring its weight into action rapidly enough, the upward tossing horns missed the man by inches: the bull rushed forward at another torero who had taken position in line to attract the animal's attention. The matador had made no master stroke, the sword stood eighteen inches out of the bull's shoulder. The bull showed no signs of death, so the matador went away to procure another sword. Finally the bull, stabbed by four swords, was worried to death rather than killed, after which the corpse was dragged triumphantly around the ring at the tail of the team of horses, while the spectators stood on the stone seats and cheered.

It may be that we English take our pleasures sadly, but at that moment it struck me that at an ordinary bullfight the Spaniard seems to take rather dull pleasures with ecstasy.

The second bull proved more lively, the second matador more expert, or more lucky than his confrère; but here also the show seemed to partake rather of the nature of what should properly be termed bull-baiting than bullfighting. This second bull provided the thrill of the day to the three small dirty children. With one thrust of its horn it killed a horse. The small boy (aged six or seven) turned to me with eyes sparkling with pleasure.

"Did you see that?" he exclaimed. "One thrust only."

After the death of this bull came the Interval.

"Look up the numbers printed on your tickets," said Luis.

Having found the papers, I raised my head and to my amazement saw, in the centre of the arena, a donkey, two young calves and a sewing-machine.

"Good heavens!" I exclaimed. "What are those?"

"They are the prizes of the tombola," explained Luis; "you or the Señor may win one."

The lots were drawn out of a large hat-box, and the numbers displayed on a blackboard. The donkey fell to a small boy, the calves to a peasant. But for some while the sewing-machine, forlorn and incongruous, stood in the centre of the bloodthirsty arena awaiting a claimant. Attention was finally concentrated upon a point high up amongst the cheap seats, to the right of the President's box. Shouting, persuasion, hand-clapping and arm-waving ensued, and at last the crowd squeezed out a small, dark woman, blushing and giggling behind her fan, accompanied by husband, husband's friend and six-year-old son. The sewing-machine was escorted out of the same door through which the dead bulls had been dragged.

Then the bullfight began again. The third bull, a lusty black, was the most willing of all. He did charge, he leapt high in his endeavours to kill those phantom cloaks. After all the necessary banderillas had been placed, there followed an incident. A boy of about sixteen years leapt the barrier and ran across the ring, hastily as he ran unwrapping something from a covering of newspaper. There was a sudden hum of excited voices from the spectators.

"Ei!" cried Luis. "An amateur!"

The boy reached the President's box, the unwrapped objects being a pair of dirty banderillas. Bowing to the President he craved permission to plant his banderillas in the bull. But, alas for youthful aspirations, permission was not given. The boy clambered sadly over the palisade to hide himself in the audience.

Unfortunately this bull, the bravest of the four, fell to the lot of the nervous matador. Death was a very lengthy operation, during the progress of which the bull knocked down the bullfighter. For a moment we wondered if the bull were going to take its revenge, but flapping cloaks instantly distracted it. Meanwhile, between the forelegs of the bull the matador lay very still, shielding his head with his arms. The nervous matador, however, went on with his task, using three swords before it was completed.

The matador of the fourth bull made an exceedingly bad thrust. The populace howled insults at him, flinging at the same time those paper bags which we had seen on sale near the ticket-office. They contained no refreshment, nor material for bombarding unsuccessful matadors, but were stuffed with horsehair to soften the stone seats. By this time we wished we had inquired more about them, for the stone had proved anything but soft. The fourth bull dead, the bullfight was over.

"Come and see the toreros," said Luis.

So with the outflowing press we repassed into the culvert, down the stairs and along the corridors of brick, till we reached a window or grille, by staring through which we could see the "heroes of Spain" clambering into an ordinary station bus, in which they sat, stiff, cramped, dignified and unsmiling, conscious of their importance.

We returned with the returning crowds along the roads deep in dust, back to the centre of the town where there were cooling drinks and seats softer than those stone benches. While we were sitting thus, revelling in varied positions and summing up our first impressions, a large box cart of lattice work passed by. Within the cart were hung great joints of meat which swung to and fro as the cart bumped over the uneven road.

"There," said Luis, "go the bulls. They will be sold to-morrow in the market. The meat is cheap because it is rather tough."

This incident, because it seemed to contain a note of irony, because it had in it something sardonic and something callous, seemed to us a fitting termination to the spectacle which we had witnessed

CHAPTER XIII

AN EXCURSION

Murcia was very hot, very dusty and very sultry. We did not mind mere heat—though Spanish midsummer heat was not the best of pick-me-ups for the influenza—dust we could outlive, but the sultriness of the Murcian valley was beyond our physique. This flat valley, which is ten miles wide between abrupt mountains, is irrigated over the whole of its breadth and is one of the richest agricultural parts of Spain. The evaporation of the water makes the heat of Murcia damp; the summer in addition was cloudy, and the sun shining on to the clouds seemed to cook the air enclosed in the valley until the atmosphere resembled that of a glass-house for orchids. We wished to leave Murcia in spite of an affection which was growing in us for the town.

Luis met us at one o'clock on the terrace of the Reina Victoria. We had café au lait while waiting for the tartana. Luis said that the milk in the coffee was not good: he deduced preservatives. But the lean waiter stood loyally by his hotel.

"The milk is excellent, I assure you, Señor," he said. "My stomach is excessively delicate; the slightest thing and it is ... I assure you that I drink pints of this milk in this hotel. In fact my stomach is so delicado that I am a connoisseur in milk, es vero.[11] If the milk were bad this fatality would happen to me."

He gave a dumb-crambo exhibition of the results of bad milk on his delicate digestion; it needed no words.

With deference he then proposed a new café au lait, which Luis sipped with a judicial but unconvinced manner.

The tartana was a tight fit. It is about as large as a governess-cart inside, and we were six. Luis, Jan and myself, a monk in brown, a thin pale Señor who had long eyelashes and many rings, and another passenger, a world type, the result of overwork and underpay, neither smart nor slovenly, with a rough manner covering a kindly nature.

The Drive

We discovered why tartanas have bulging hoods. The vehicles roll and rock so much over the bad roads that it is necessary to make room for the passengers' heads to jerk backwards. Otherwise cerebral concussion would be the invariable result.

Luis (to the little monk): "Excuse me, but are not your clothes very hot?"

The Monk (spreading out his hands): "They are hot, but nevertheless they keep out the sun."

We come out of the town into the gardens. There are flat fields of cultivation spotted with mulberry trees, the trunks of which seem vivid purple in the afternoon light.

I make a remark in Spanish. (Jan was still at the stage of appreciative listener).

The Clerkly Man: "Señora, your Spanish is good for a stranger—you can pronounce the Spanish J, which is difficult for foreigners."

I: "I have learned that from speaking German; it is rather like the German ch."

A discussion on idioms at once begins. The Spaniard, though he speaks foreign languages badly, has an inextinguishable interest in the subject of tongues. If ever you are bored in Spanish company start an argument about languages. After the discussion has been going on for some while the pale Señor says:

"Nevertheless it is sad that the Catalans wish to root Castilian out of their country."

Luis (with some heat): "Well! why should they not? They are the hardest working and the most valuable people of Spain. Why should not they do as they like? Why should everybody not do as he likes if he hurts nobody else?"

The pale Señor (with frigidity): "But that is Bolshevism."

Luis (with increasing heat): "If that is Bolshevism then I do not mind being a Bolshevik."

Conversation is at an impasse. The carriage flings us to and fro for a while.

A motor-car passes us. The dust which is about six inches deep on the road is whirled up in a cloud so thick that we have to halt for a few minutes to allow it to settle, or we might have driven into the deep water-channels which edge each side of the road.

Luis (to the Clerkly Man): "My friends want to live for a while out in the mountains. Do you by any chance know of a house?"

The Clerkly Man: "I am living with my family in the monastery of Fuen Santa. There is a guest house there and habitations are to let. I will find out all about them if you wish."

The pale little Señor (who has apparently forgotten all about Bolshevism): There are one or two houses in my village of Verdolay. The proprietor is a friend of mine. I will inquire for you about it."

The tartana stops.

In front of a solitary house is a small wooden frame on which a few strips of dusty meat are hung. The driver buys some of this from the woman who comes out of the house.

The Driver (confidentially to the passengers): "Better get a bit of meat while you have the chance."

Nobody follows his example. The carriage bumps on.

The sun is now shining through the thin dust-laden trees which edge the road: they appear as flames of pale gold.

We mount over a bridge. A broad deep but waterless canal stretches away to right and left.

The little Señor: "We are now nearing Verdolay. It is still too hot for you to go hunting for a house. I shall be delighted if you will take possession of my house until the sun is cooler."

Luis: "Señor, I thank you very much, but we cannot do it."

The little Señor: "I insist—you will come?"

Luis: "Thank you very much."

This is Spanish courtesy. A single invitation is for politeness only, like the last piece of bread and butter left for Miss Manners. A second invitation means that it is really offered.

We pass a group of houses the colour of baked bread; the most arid-looking spot we have seen as yet. The gardens come to an abrupt end. The road rises slightly, and grey-green olive foliage over gnarled trunks throw a thin lacework of shadow on the dry earth.

The tartana stops.

We all get out.

The clerkly man goes east; the priest south; we, led by the pale Señor, west.

We were at the entrance of a village. It spread over a mound at the foot of the higher hills. It was like a pyramid with toy houses coloured yellow, orange, green and grey upon the ledges, and all around trees like those from a child's play box. The village was fronted by a line of houses painted a deep crimson-vermilion. An iron windmill for pumping water was placed on the extreme point of the mound.

The little Señor showed us through the village to his house and left us in the entrada, while he went to get beer. The room was decorated with wooden "art-nouveau" chairs, oleographs and an extremely bad oil painting of a bull with banderillas shedding much blood. On a cane table was a gramophone.

The little Señor had shut a door made on the system of a Venetian blind to keep out the sun, and presently the lattice-work was crowded with children trying to peer in at us.

The Señor returned preceded by a large English setter. He drew the corks of the beer and asked us to make ourselves at home.

"The house and all that is in it is at your service," he said in the phrase of Spanish courtesy.

I was patting the dog.

"That dog," said the little Señor, "is a very valuable dog. It is unique in the province and possibly is unique in the south of Spain. It has a romantic history. It is bred by the monks in high Switzerland, and when the snow is deep on the mountains it goes out to hunt for lost travellers. It is the only specimen of a San Bernar' in the south of Spain."

We looked at the setter; and drank some more beer.

"That bull," went on the Señor, pointing to the picture, "was painted by one of the best bull painters in Spain."

We looked at the picture and again took refuge in beer. Luis, who did not know about setters, but did know about pictures, drank in sympathy.

The Señor wound up his gramophone.

"Do you know 'Frou-Frou'?" he inquired.

"'Frou-Frou'?" we said.

"Yes, the French Comic Opera."

"But," said Luis, "have you not by chance a disc of Spanish music? You see," he added as excuse, "the Señors are foreign. It interests them to hear the national music, the Flamenco."

The little Señor pursed his lips.

"But," he said, "it is so vulgar. Nobody wants to hear that."

He possessed, however, a disc or two which he turned on, to our delight. But before we left him he insisted that we should sit through his favourite "Frou-Frou."

We went away. The strains of "Frou-Frou" which the little Señor had turned on once more followed us on the still air. The setter-St. Bernard walked with us to the beginning of the hill, from whence he turned sedately homewards.

We strode upwards—past cottages of all colours, past a large rambling monastery, which, perched on the far side of the Verdolay hill, very cubic in shape, is as romantic as it is possible for a building to be; past a watercourse, above which were dwellings hollowed out of the soft rock of the mountain-side, cave dwellings, and out on to the side of the mountains lying between Murcia and Carthagena. From here we could appreciate the width, flatness and verdure of the Murcian valley in the midst of which was the town, the campanile of the cathedral soaring into the air.

Here we had our first experience of a Spanish country walk. We were all wearing alpagatas, the canvas sides of which are not exceedingly thick. The dried herbage of the hills was intermingled with all manner of prickly weeds. The vegetation protects itself in this way from being eaten by anything less leather-tongued than a goat. The results are uncomfortable for the walker. The little hairlike spines pierce the shoes and break off, remaining as a continual irritant until the shoe is removed. Even then the spines, almost microscopic in size and almost flesh colour, are often difficult to find. The same uncomfortable fate is in wait for the unwary stranger who sits down without having carefully explored the place where he is going to seat himself. Indeed the fate is worse, because the thorns thus encountered cannot with decency be extracted in a public place and the victim is condemned to a lot similar to that of the naughty schoolboy.

The sun poured the full of its summer power on to the hill-side, which reflected both heat and light with overpowering intensity. Though it was almost four o'clock in the afternoon we felt that our salamandrine limits were being put to a test. A broad white road, mounting up the hill, crossed our path and we turned into it.

"We are going to the monastery of La Luz," said Luis. "I have heard that they sometimes take visitors for short periods. It would be interesting for you to spend a fortnight in a monastery."