![The Cabin [La barraca] cover](/books/content/38165/OEBPS/8309042946712465770_38165-cover.png)
V
EVERY morning, at dawn, Roseta, Batiste's daughter, leaped out of bed, her eyes heavy with sleep, and after stretching out her arms in graceful writhings which shook all her body of blonde slenderness, opened the farm-house door.
The pulley of the well creaked, the ugly little dog, which passed the night outside the house, leaped close to her skirts, barking with joy, and Roseta, in the light of the last stars, cast over her face and hands a pail of cold water drawn from that round and murky hole, crowned at the top by thick clumps of ivy.
Afterward, in the light of the candle, she moved about the house preparing for her journey to Valencia.
The mother followed her without seeing her from the bed with all kinds of suggestions. She could take away what was left from the supper: that with three sardines which she would find on the shelf would be sufficient. And take care not to break the dish as she did the other day. Ah! And she should not forget to buy thread, needles and some sandals for the little one. Destructive child!... She would find the money in the drawer of the little table.
And while the mother turned over in bed, sweetly caressed by the warmth of the bedroom, planning to sleep a half-hour more close to the enormous Batiste, who snored noisily, Roseta continued her evolutions. She placed her poor meal in a basket, passed a comb through her light-blond hair, which looked as though the sun had absorbed its colour, and tied the handkerchief under her chin. Before going out, she looked with the tender solicitousness of an elder sister, to see if the little ones who slept on the floor, all in the same room, were well covered. They lay there in a row from the eldest to the youngest, from the overgrown Batistet to the little tot who as yet could hardly talk, like a row of organ pipes.
"Good-bye, until tonight!" shouted the brave girl, and passing her arm through the handle of the basket, she closed the door of the farm-house, placing the key underneath.
It was already daylight. In the bluish light of dawn the procession of workers could be seen passing over the paths and roads, all walking in the same direction, drawn by the life of the city.
Groups of graceful spinning-mill girls passed by, marching with an even step, swinging with jaunty grace their right arms which cut the air like a strong oar, and all screaming in chorus every time that any strapping young fellow saluted them from the neighbouring fields with coarse jests.
Roseta walked to the city alone. Well did the poor child know her companions, daughters and sisters of those who hated her family so bitterly.
Several of them were working in the factory, and the poor little yellow-haired girl, making a show of courage more than once, had to defend herself by sheer scratching. Taking advantage of her carelessness, they threw dirty things into her lunch-basket; made her break the earthenware dish of which she was reminded so many times, and never passed near her in the mill without trying to push her over the smoking kettle where the cocoon was being soaked while they called her a pauper, and applied similar eulogies to her and her family.
On the way she fled from them as from a throng of furies, and felt safe only when she was inside the factory, an ugly old building close to the market, whose façades, painted in water-colours the century before, still preserved between peeling paint and cracks certain groups of rose-coloured legs, and profiles of bronzed colour, remnants of medallions, and mythological paintings.
Of all the family, Roseta was the most like her father: a fury for work, as Batiste said of himself. The fiery vapour of the caldron where the cocoon is soaked mounted about her head, burning her eyes; but, in spite of this, she was always in her place, fishing in the depths of the boiling water for the loosened ends of those capsules of soft silk of the mellow colour of caramel, in whose interior the laborious worm, the larva of precious exudation, had just perished for the offence of creating a rich dungeon for its transformation into the butterfly.
Throughout the large building reigned the din of work, deafening and tiresome for the daughters of the huerta, who were used to the calm of the immense plain, where the voice carries a great distance. Below roared the steam-engine, giving forth frightful roaring sounds which were transmitted through the multiple tubing: pulleys and wheels revolved with an infernal din, and as though there were not noise enough, the spinning-mill girls, according to traditional custom, sang in chorus with a nasal voice, the Padre nuestro, the Ave Maria, and the Gloria Patri, with the same musical interludes as the chorus which roamed about the huerta Sunday mornings at dawn.
This did not prevent them from laughing as they sang, nor from insulting each other in an undertone between prayers, and threatening each other with four long scratches on coming out, for these dark-complexioned girls, enslaved by the rigid tyranny which rules in the farmer's family, and obliged by hereditary conventions to lower their eyes in the presence of men, when gathered together without restraint were regular demons, and took delight in uttering everything they had heard from the cart-drivers and labourers on the roads.
Roseta was the most silent and industrious of them all. In order not to distract her attention from her work, she did not sing; she never provoked quarrels and she learned everything with such facility, that in a few weeks she was earning three reals, almost the maximum for the day's work, to the great envy of the others.
At the lunch-hour these bands of dishevelled girls sallied forth from the factory to gobble up the contents of their earthen-ware dishes. As they formed a loafing group on the side-walk or in the immediate porches, and challenged the men with insolent glances to speak to them, only falsely scandalized, to fire back shameless remarks in return, Roseta remained in a corner of the mill, seated on the floor with two or three good girls who were from another huerta, from the right side of the river, and who did not care a rap for the story of old Barret and the hatred of their companions.
During the first weeks, Roseta saw with a certain terror the arrival of dusk, and with it, the hour for departure.
Fearing her companions, who took the same road as herself, she stayed in the factory for a time, letting them set out ahead like a cyclone, with scandalous bursts of laughter, flauntings of skirts, daring vulgarisms, and the odour of health, of hard and rugged limbs.
She walked lazily through the streets of the city in the cold twilight of winter, making purchases for her mother, stood open-mouthed before the shop windows which began to be illumined, and at last, passing over the bridge, she entered the dark narrow alleys of the suburbs to set forth upon the road of Alboraya.
So far, all was well. But after she came to the dark huerta with its mysterious noises, its dark and alarming forms which passed close to her saluting with a deep "Good night," fear set in, and her teeth chattered.
And it was not that the silence and the darkness intimidated her. Like a true daughter of the country, she was accustomed to these. If she had been certain that she would encounter no one on the road, it would have given her confidence. In her terror, she never thought, as did her companions, of death, nor of witches and phantasms; it was the living who disturbed her.
She recalled with growing fear certain stories of the huerta that she had heard in the factory; the fear that the little girls had of Pimentó, and other bullies who congregated in the tavern of Copa: heartless fellows who pinched the girls wherever they could, and pushed them into the canals, or made them fall behind the haylofts. And Roseta, who was no longer innocent after entering the factory, gave free rein to her imagination, till it reached the utmost limits of the horrible; and she saw herself assassinated by some one of these monsters, her stomach ripped up and soaked in blood, like those children of the legends of the huerta whose fat sinister and mysterious murderers extracted and used in making wonderful salves and potions for the rich.
In the twilight of winter, dark and oftentimes rainy, Roseta passed over more than half of the road all a tremble. But the most cruel crisis, the most terrible obstacle was almost at the end, and close to the farm—the famous tavern of Copa.
Here was the den of the wild beast. This was the most frequented and the brightest bit of road. The sound of voices, the outbursts of laughter, the thrumming of a guitar, and couplets of songs with loud shouting came forth from the door which, like the mouth of a furnace, cast forth a square of reddish light over the black road, in which grotesque shadows moved about. And nevertheless, the poor mill girl, on arriving near this place, stopped undecided, trembling like the heroines of the fairy-tales before the den of the ogre, ready to set out through the fields in order to make a détour around the rear of the building, to sink into the canal which bordered the road, and to slip away hidden behind the sloping banks; anything rather than to pass in front of this red gullet which gave forth the din of drunkenness and brutality.
Finally she decided; made an effort of will like one who is going to throw himself over a high cliff, and passed swiftly before the tavern, along the edge of the canal, with a very light step, and the marvellous poise which fear lends.
She was a breath, a white shadow which did not give the turbid eyes of the customers of Copa time to fix themselves upon it.
And the tavern passed, the child ran and ran, believing that some one was just behind her, expecting to feel the tug of his powerful paw at her skirt.
She was not calm until she heard the barking of the dog at the farm-house, that ugly animal, who by way of antithesis no doubt, was called The Morning Star, and who came bounding up to her in the middle of the road with bounds and licked her hands.
Roseta never told those at home of the terrors encountered on the road. The poor child composed herself on entering the house, and answered the questions of her anxious mother quietly, meeting the situation valorously by stating that she had come home with some companions.
The spinning-mill girl did not want her father to come out nights to accompany her on the road. She knew the hatred of the neighbourhood: the tavern of Copa with its quarrelsome people inspired her with fear.
And on the following day she returned to the factory to suffer the same fears upon returning, enlivened only by the hope that the spring would soon come with its longer days and its luminous twilights, which would permit her to return to the house before it grew dark.
One night, Roseta experienced a certain relief. While she was still close to the city, a man came out upon the road and began to walk at the same pace as herself.
"Good evening!"
And while the mill-girl was walking over the high bank which bordered the road, the man walked below, among the deep cuts opened by the wheels of the carts, stumbling over the red bricks, chipped dishes, and even pieces of glass with which farsighted hands wished to fill up the holes of remote origin.
Roseta showed no disquietude. She had recognized her companion even before he saluted her. It was Tonet, the nephew of old Tomba, the shepherd: a good boy, who served as an apprentice to a butcher of Alboraya, and at whom the mill-girls laughed when they met him upon the road, taking delight in seeing how he blushed, and turned his head away at the least word.
Such a timid boy! He was alone in the world without any other relatives than his grandfather, worked even on Sundays, and not only went to Valencia to collect manure for the fields of his master, but also helped him in the slaughter of cattle and tilled the earth, and carried meat to the rich farmers. All in order that he and his grandfather might eat, and that he might go dressed in the old ragged clothes of his master. He did not smoke; he had entered the tavern of Copa only two or three times in his life, and on Sundays, if he had some hours free, instead of squatting on the Plaza of Alboraya, like the others to watch the bullies playing hand-ball, he went out into the fields and roamed aimlessly through the tangled net-work of paths. If he happened to meet a tree filled with birds, he would stop there fascinated by the fluttering and the cries of these vagrants of the air.
The people saw in him something of the mysterious eccentricities of his grandfather, the shepherd: all regarded him as a poor fool, timid and docile.
The mill-girl became enlivened with company. She was safer if a man walked with her, and more so if it were Tonet, who inspired confidence.
She spoke to him, asking him whence he came, and the youth answered vaguely, with his habitual timidity: "From there ... from there...." and then became silent as if those words cost him a great effort.
They followed the road in silence, parting close to the barraca.
"Good night and thanks!" said the girl.
"Good night," and Tonet disappeared, walking toward the village.
It was an incident of no importance, an agreeable encounter which had banished her fear, nothing more. And nevertheless, Roseta ate supper that night and went to bed thinking of old Tomba's nephew.
Now she recalled the times that she had met him mornings on the road, and it seemed to her that Tonet always tried to keep the same pace as herself, although somewhat apart so as not to attract the attention of the sarcastic mill-girls. It even seemed to her that at times, on turning her head suddenly, she had surprised him with his eyes fixed upon her.
And the girl, as if she were spinning a cocoon, grasped these loose ends of her memory, and drew and drew them out, recalling everything in her existence which related to Tonet: the first time that she saw him, and her impulse of sympathetic compassion on account of the mockery of the mill-girls which he suffered crestfallen and timid, as though these harpies in a troop inspired him with fear; then the frequent encounters on the road, and the fixed glances of the boy, who seemed to wish to say something to her.
The following day, when she went to Valencia, she did not see him, but at night, upon starting to return to the barraca, the girl was not afraid in spite of the twilight being dark and rainy. She foresaw that the companion who gave her such courage would put in an appearance, and true enough he came out to meet her at almost the same spot as on the preceding day.
He was as expressive as usual: "Good night!" and went on walking at her side.
Roseta was more loquacious. Where did he come from? What a chance to meet on two succeeding days! And he, trembling, as though the words cost him a great effort, answered as usual: "From there ... from there ..."
The girl, just as timid, felt nevertheless a temptation to laugh at his agitation. She spoke of her fear, and the scares which she had met with on the road during the winter, and Tonet, comforted by the service which he was lending to her, unglued his lips at last, in order to tell her that he would accompany her frequently. He always had business for his master in the huerta.
They took leave of each other with the brevity of the preceding day; but that night the girl went to her bed restless and nervous, and dreamed a thousand wild things; she saw herself on a black road, very black, accompanied by an enormous dog which licked her hands and had the same face as Tonet; and afterward there came a wolf to bite her, with a snout which vaguely reminded her of the hateful Pimentó; and the two fought with their teeth, and her father came out with a club, and she was weeping as if the blows which her faithful dog received were falling on her own shoulders; and thus her imagination went on wandering. But in all the confused scenes of her dream she saw the grandson of old Tomba, with his blue eyes, and his boyish face covered with light down, first indication of his manhood.
She arose weak and broken as if she were coming out of a delirium. This was Sunday, and she was not going to the factory. The sun came in through the little window of her bedroom, and all the people of the farm-house were already out of their beds. Roseta began to get ready to go with her mother to church.
The diabolical dream still upset her. She felt differently, with different thoughts, as though the preceding night were a wall which divided her existence into two parts.
She sang gaily like a bird while she took her clothes out of the chest, and arranged them upon the bed, which, still warm, held the impress of her body.
She liked these Sundays with her freedom to arise late, with her hours of leisure, and her little trip to Alboraya to hear mass; but this Sunday was better than the others; the sun shone more brightly, the birds were singing with more passion, through the little window the air entered gloriously balsamic; how should one express it! in short, this morning had something new and extraordinary about it.
She reproached herself now for having up to that time paid no attention to her personal appearance. It is time, at sixteen, to think about fixing oneself up. How stupid she had been, always laughing at her mother who called her a dowdy! And as though it were new attire which she looked on for the first time, she drew over her head as carefully as if it were thin lace, the calico petticoat which she wore every Sunday; and laced her corset tightly, as though that armour of high whalebones, a real farmer-girl's corset, which crushed the budding breasts cruelly, were not already tight enough. For in the huerta it is considered immodest for unmarried girls not to hide the alluring charms of nature, so that no one might sinfully behold in the virgin the symbols of her future maternity.
For the first time in her life, the mill-girl passed more than a quarter of an hour before the four inches of looking-glass, in its frame of varnished pine, which her father had presented to her, a mirror in which she had to look at her face by sections.
She was not beautiful, and she knew it; but uglier ones she had met by the dozen in the huerta. And without knowing why, she took pleasure in contemplating her eyes, of a clear green; the cheeks spotted with delicate freckles which the sun had raised upon the tanned skin; the whitish blond hair, which had the wan delicacy of silk; the little nose with its palpitating nostrils, projecting over the mouth; the mouth itself, shadowed by soft down, tender as that on a ripe peach, her strong and even teeth, of the flashing whiteness of milk, and a gleam which seemed to light up the whole face: the teeth of a poor girl!
The mother had to wait; the poor woman was in a hurry, moving about the house impatiently as though spurred on by the bell which sounded from a distance. They were going to miss mass: and meanwhile Roseta was calmly combing her hair, constantly undoing her work, which did not satisfy her; she went on arranging the mantle with tugs of vexation, never finding it to her liking.
In the plaza of Alboraya, upon entering and leaving the church, Roseta, hardly raising her eyes, scanned the door of the meat-market, where the people were crowding in, coming from mass.
There he was, assisting his master, giving him the flayed pieces of meat, and driving away the swarms of flies which were covering it.
How the big simpleton flushed on seeing her.
As she passed the second time, he remained like one who has been charmed, with a leg of mutton in his hand, while his stout employer, waiting in vain for him to pass it to him, poured forth a round volley of oaths, threatening the youth with a cleaver.
She was sad that afternoon. Seated at the door of the farm-house, she believed she saw him several times prowling about the distant paths, and hiding in the cane-brake to watch her. The mill-girl wished that Monday might arrive soon, so she might go back to the factory, and come home over the horrible road accompanied by Tonet.
The boy did not fail her at dusk on the following day.
Even nearer to the city than upon the other nights, he came forth to meet her.
"Good evening!"
But after the customary salutation, he was not silent. The rogue had made progress on the day of rest.
And slowly, accompanying his expressions with grimaces, and scratches upon his trousers legs, he tried to explain himself, although at times a full two minutes passed between his words. He was happy at seeing her well. (A smile from Roseta and a "thanks," murmured faintly.) "Had she enjoyed herself Sunday?" ... (Silence.) "He had had quite a dull time. It had bored him. Doubtless, the custom ... then ... it seemed that something had been lacking ... naturally he had taken a fancy for the road ... no, not the road: what he liked was to accompany her...."
And here he stopped high and dry: it even seemed to him that he bit his tongue nervously to punish it for its boldness and pinched himself for having gone so far.
They walked some distance in silence. The girl did not answer; she went along her way with the gracefully affected air of the mill-girls, the basket at the left hip, and the right arm cutting the air with the swinging motion of a pendulum.
She was thinking of her dream; she imagined herself again to be in the midst of that delirium, seeing wild phantasies; several times she turned her head, believing that she saw in the twilight the dog which had licked her hands, and which had the face of Tonet, a remembrance which even made her laugh. But no; he who was at her side was a good fellow capable of defending her; somewhat timid and bashful, yes, with his head drooping, as though it hurt him to bring forth the words which he had just spoken.
Roseta even confused him the more. Come now; why did he go out to meet her on the way? What would the people say? If her father should be informed, how annoyed he would be!
"Why? Why?" asked the girl.
And the youth, sadder and sadder, and more and more timid, like a convicted culprit who hears his accusation, answered nothing. He walked along at the same pace as the girl, but apart from her, stumbling along the edge of the road. Roseta almost believed that he was going to cry.
But when they were near the barraca, and as they were about to separate, Tonet had an impulse: as he had been intensely silent, so now he was intensely eloquent, and as though many minutes had not elapsed, he answered the question of the girl:
"Why?... because I love you."
As he said it he approached her so closely that she even felt his breath on her face and his eyes glowed as if through them all the truth must go out to her; and after this, repenting again, afraid, terrified by his words, he began to run like a child.
So then he loved her!... For two days the girl had been expecting the word, and nevertheless, it gave her the effect of a sudden, unexpected revelation. She also loved him, and all that night, even in dreams, she heard him murmuring a thousand times, close to her ears, the same words:
"Because I love you."
Tonet did not await her the following night. At dawn Roseta saw him on the road, almost hidden behind the trunk of a mulberry-tree, watching her with anxiety, like a child who fears a reprimand and has repented, ready to flee at the first gesture of displeasure.
But the mill-girl smiled blushingly, and there was need of nothing more.
All was said: they did not tell each other again that they loved each other, but this matter decided their betrothal, and Tonet no longer failed a single time to accompany her on the road.
The stout butcher of Alboraya blustered with anger at the sudden change in his servant, so far so diligent, and now ever inventing pretexts to pass hours and ever more hours in the huerta, especially at night.
But with the selfishness of happiness, Tonet cared no more for the oaths and threats of his master than the mill-girl did for her father, for whom she felt more fear than respect.
Roseta always had some nest or other in her bedroom, which she claimed to have found upon the road. This boy did not know how to present himself with empty hands, and explored all the cane-brake and the trees of the huerta in order to present her, his betrothed, with round mats of straw and twigs, in whose depths were some little rogues of fledgelings whose rosy skin was covered with the finest down, peeping desperately as they opened their monstrous beaks, always hungry for more crumbs of bread.
Roseta guarded the gift in her room, as though it were the very person of her betrothed, and wept when her brothers, the little people who had the farm-house for a nest, showed their admiration for the birds so strenuously that they ended by stifling them.
At other times, Tonet appeared with his clothes bulging, his sash filled with lupines and peanuts bought in the tavern of Copa, and as they walked along the road, they would eat and eat, gazing into each other's eyes, smiling like fools, without knowing why, often seating themselves upon a bank, without realizing it.
She was the more sensible and scolded him. Always spending money! There were two reals or a little less, which, in a week's time, he had left at the tavern for such treats. And he showed himself to be generous. For whom did he want the money if not for her? When they would be married—which had to happen some day—he would then take care of his money. That, however, would not be for ten or twelve years; there was no need of haste; all the betrothals of the huerta lasted for some time.
The matter of the wedding brought Roseta back to reality. The day her father would learn of it.... Most holy Virgin! he would break her back with a club. And she spoke of the future thrashing with serenity, smiling like a strong girl accustomed to this parental authority, rigid, imposing, and respected, which manifested itself in cuffs and cudgels.
Their relations were innocent. Never did there arise between them the poignant and rebellious desire of the flesh. They walked along the almost deserted road in the dusk of the evening-fall, and solitude seemed to drive all impure thoughts from their minds.
Once when Tonet involuntarily and lightly touched Roseta's waist, he blushed as if he, not she, were the girl in question.
They were both very far from thinking that their daily meeting might result in something more than words and glances. It was the first love, the budding of scarcely awakened youth, content with seeing, speaking, laughing, without a trace of sensual desire.
The mill-girl, who on the nights of fear, had longed so for the coming of spring, saw with anxiety the arrival of the long and luminous twilights.
Now she met her betrothed in full daylight, and there were never lacking companions of the factory or some neighbour along the road, who on seeing them together smiled maliciously, guessing the truth.
In the factory, jokes were started by all her enemies, who asked her with sarcasm when the wedding was to take place and nicknamed her The Shepherdess, for being in love with the grandson of old Tomba.
Poor Roseta trembled with anxiety. What a thrashing she was going to bring upon herself! Any day the news might reach her father's ears. And then it was that Batiste, on the day of his sentence in the Tribunal of the Waters, saw her on the road, accompanied by Tonet.
But nothing happened. The happy incident of the irrigation saved her. Her father, contented at having saved the crops, limited himself to looking at her several times, with his eyebrows puckered, and to notifying her in a slow voice, forefinger raised in air, and with an imperative accent, that henceforth she should take care to return alone from the factory, or otherwise she would learn who he was.
And she came back alone during all the week. Tonet had a certain respect for Señor Batiste, and contented himself with hiding in the cane-brake, near the road, to watch the mill-girl pass by, or to follow her from a distance.
As the days now were longer, there were more people on the road.
But this separation could not be prolonged for the impatient lovers, and one Sunday afternoon, Roseta, inactive, tired of walking in front of the door of her house, and believing she saw Tonet in all who were passing over the neighbouring paths, seized a green-varnished pitcher, and told her mother that she was going to bring water from the fountain of the Queen.
The mother allowed her to go. She ought to divert herself; poor girl! she did not have any friends and you must let youth claim its own.
The fountain of the Queen was the pride of all that part of the huerta, condemned to the water of the wells and the red and muddy liquid which ran through the canals.
It was in front of an abandoned farm-house, and was old and of great merit, according to the wisest of the huerta; the work of the Moors, according to Pimentó; a monument of the epoch when the apostles were baptizing sinners as they went about the world, so that oracle, old Tomba, declared with majesty.
In the afternoons, passing along the road, bordered by poplars with their restless foliage of silver, one might see groups of girls with their pitchers held motionless and erect upon their heads, reminding one with their rhythmical step and their slender figures of the Greek basket-bearers.
This defile gave to the Valencian huerta something of a Biblical flavour; it recalled Arabic poetry, which sings of the woman beside the fountain with the pitcher on her head, uniting in the same picture the two most vehement passions of the Oriental: beauty and water.
The fountain of the Queen was a four-sided pool, with walls of red stone, and the water below at the level of the ground. One descended by a half-dozen steps, always slippery and green with humidity. On the surface of the rectangle of stone facing the stairs a bas-relief projected, but the figures were indistinct; it was impossible to make them out beneath the coat of whitewash.
It was probably the Virgin surrounded by angels; a work of the rough and simple art of the Middle Ages; some votive offering of the time of the conquest: but with some generations picking at the stones, in order to mark better the figures obliterated by the years, and others white-washing them with the sudden impulse of barbaric curiosity, had left the slab in such condition that nothing except the shapeless form of a woman could be distinguished, the queen who gave her name to the fountain: the queen of the Moors, as all queens necessarily must be in all country-tales.
Nor was the shouting and the confusion a small matter here on Sunday afternoons. More than thirty girls would crowd together with their pitchers, desiring to be the first to fill them, but then in no hurry to go away. They pushed each other on the narrow stairway, with their skirts tucked in between their limbs, in order to bend over and sink the pitcher into the pool, whose surface trembled with the bubbles of water which incessantly surged up from the bottom of the sand, where clumps of gelatinous plants were growing, green tufts of hair-like fibres, waving in the prison of crystal liquid, trembling with the impulse of the current. The restless water-skippers streaked across the clear surface with their delicate legs.
Those who had already filled their pitchers sat down on the edge of the pool, hanging their legs over the water and drawing them in with scandalized screams whenever a boy came down to drink and looked up at them.
It was a reunion of turbulent gamin. All were talking at the same time; they insulted each other, they flayed those who were absent, revealing all the scandal of the huerta, and the young people, free from parental severity, cast off the hypocritical expression assumed for the house, revealing an aggressiveness characteristic of the uncultured who lack expansion. These angelic brunettes, who sang songs to the Virgin and litanies in the church of Alboraya so softly when the festival of the unmarried women was celebrated, now on being alone, became bold and enlivened their conversation with the curses of a teamster, speaking of secret things with the calmness of old women.
Roseta arrived here with her pitcher, without having met her betrothed upon the road, in spite of the fact that she had walked slowly and had turned her head frequently, hoping at every moment to see him come forth from a path.
The noisy party at the fountain became silent on seeing her. The presence of Roseta at first caused stupefaction: somewhat like the apparition of a Moor in the church of Alboraya in the midst of high mass. Why did this pauper come here?
Roseta greeted two or three who were from the factory, but they pinched their lips with an expression of scorn and hardly answered her.
The others, recovered from their surprise, and not wishing to concede to the intruder even the honour of silence, went on talking as though nothing had happened.
Roseta descended to the fountain, filled the pitcher and stood up, casting anxious glances above the wall, around over all the plain.
"Look away, look away, but he won't come!"
It was a niece of Pimentó who said this; the daughter of a sister of Pepeta, a dark, nervous girl, with an upturned and insolent nose, proud of being an only daughter, and of the fact that her father was nobody's tenant, as the four fields which he was working were his own.
Yes; she might go on looking as much as she pleased, but he would not come. Didn't the others know whom she was expecting? Her betrothed, the nephew of old Tomba: a fine arrangement!
And the thirty cruel mouths laughed and laughed as though every laugh were a bite; not because they considered it a great joke, but in order to crush the daughter of the hated Batiste.
The shepherdess!... The divine shepherdess!
Roseta shrugged her shoulders with indifference. She was expecting this: moreover, the jokes of the factory had blunted her susceptibility.
She took the pitcher and went down the steps, but at the bottom the little mimicking voice of the niece of Pimentó held her. How that small insect could sting!
"She would not marry the grandson of old Tomba. He was a poor fool, dying of hunger, but very honourable and incapable of becoming related to a family of thieves."
Roseta almost dropped her pitcher. She grew red as if the words, tearing at her heart, had made all the blood rise to her face; then she became deathly pale.
"Who is a thief? Who?" she asked with trembling voice, which made all the others at the fountain laugh.
Who? Her father. Pimentó, her uncle, knew it well, and in the tavern of Copa nothing else was discussed. Did they believe that the past could be hidden? They had fled from their own pueblo because they were known there too well: for that reason they had come here, to take possession of what was not theirs. They had even heard that Señor Batiste had been in prison for ugly crimes.
And thus the little viper went on talking, pouring forth everything that she had heard in her house and in the huerta: the lies forged by the dissolute fellows at the tavern of Copa, all invented by Pimentó, who was growing less and less disposed to attack Batiste face to face, and was trying to annoy him, to persecute and wound him with insults.
The determination of the father suddenly surged up in Roseta. Trembling, stammering with fury, and with bloodshot eyes, she dropped the pitcher, which broke into pieces drenching the nearest girls, who protested in a chorus, calling her a stupid creature. But she was in no mood to take notice of such things!
"My father ..." she cried, advancing toward the one who had insulted her. "My father a thief? Say that again and I will smash your face!"
But the dark-haired girl did not have to repeat it, for before she could open her lips, she received a blow in the mouth, and the fingers of Roseta fixed themselves in her hair. Instinctively, impelled by pain, she seized the blond hair of the mill-girl in turn, and for some time the two could be seen struggling together, bent over, pouring forth cries of pain and madness, with their foreheads almost touching the ground, dragged this way and that by the cruel tugs which each one gave to the head of the other. The hair-pins fell out, loosening the braids; the heavy heads of hair seemed like banners of war, not floating and victorious, but crumpled and torn by the hands of the opponent.
But Roseta, either stronger or more furious, succeeded in disengaging herself, and was going to drag her enemy to her, perhaps to give her a spanking, for she was trying to take off her slipper with her free hand, when there occurred an irritating, brutal, unheard-of scene.
Without any spoken agreement, as if all the hatred of their families, all the words and maledictions heard in their homes, had surged up in them at a bound, all threw themselves together upon the daughter of Batiste.
"Thief! Thief!"
In the twinkling of an eye, Roseta disappeared under the wrathful arms. Her face was covered with scratches; she was carried down by the shower of blows, though unable to fall, for the very crush of her enemies impeded her; but driven from one side to the other, she ended by rolling down head-long on the slippery stones, striking her forehead on an angle of the stone.
Blood! It was like the casting of a stone into a tree covered with sparrows. They flew away, all of them, running in different directions, with their pitchers on their heads, and in a short time no one could be seen in the vicinity of the fountain of the Queen but poor Roseta, who with loosened hair, skirts torn, face dirty with dust and blood, went crying home.
How her mother screamed when she saw her come in! How she protested upon being told of what had occurred! Those people were worse than Jews! Lord! Lord! Could such crimes occur in a land of Christians?
It was impossible to live. They had not done enough already with the men attacking poor Batiste, persecuting him and slandering him before the Tribunal, and imposing unjust fines upon him. Now here were these girls persecuting her poor Roseta, as though that unfortunate child had done anything wrong. And why was it all? Because they wished to earn a living and work, without offending anybody, as God commanded.
Batiste turned pale as he looked at his daughter. He took a few steps toward the road, looking at Pimentó's farm-house, whose roof stood out behind the canes.
But he stopped and finally began to reproach his daughter mildly. What had occurred would teach her not to go walking about the huerta. They must avoid all contact with others: live together and united in the farm-house and never leave these lands which were their life.
His enemies would take good care not to seek him out in his own home.
VI
A WASP-LIKE buzzing, the murmur of a bee-hive, was what the dwellers in the huerta heard as they passed before the Cadena mill by the road leading to the sea.
A thick curtain of poplar-trees closed in the little square formed by the road as it widened before the heap of old tiled roofs, cracked walls and small black windows of the mill, the latter an old and tumble-down structure erected over the canal and based on thick buttresses, between which poured the water's foaming cascade.
The slow, monotonous noise that seemed to issue from between the trees came from Don Joaquín's school, situated in a farm-house hidden by the row of poplar-trees.
Never was knowledge worse-lodged, though wisdom does not often, to be sure, dwell in palaces.
An old farm-house, with no other light than from the door and that which filtered in through the cracks of the roofs: the walls of doubtful whiteness, for the master's wife, a stout lady who lived in her rush-chair, passed the day listening to her husband and admiring him; a few benches, three grimy alphabets, torn at the ends, fastened to the wall with bits of chewed bread, and in the room adjoining the school some few old pieces of furniture which seemed to have knocked about half of Spain.
In the whole barraca there was one new object: the long cane which the master kept behind the door and which he renewed every couple of days from the nearby cane-brake; it was very fortunate that the material was so cheap, for it was rapidly used up on the hard, close-clipped heads of those small savages.
Only three books could be seen in the school; the same primer served for all. Why should there be more? There reigned the Moorish method; sing-song and repetition, till with continual pounding you got things into their hard heads.
Hence from morning to night the old farm-house sent from its door a wearisome sing-song which all the birds of the neighbourhood made fun of.
"Our ... fa ... ther, who ... art ... in heaven."
"Holy ... Mary ..."
"Two times two ... fo ... up...."
And the sparrows, the linnets, and the calendar larks who fled from the youngsters when they saw them in a band on the roads, alighted with the greatest confidence on the nearest trees, and even hopped up and down with their springy little feet before the door of the school, laughing scandalously at their fierce enemies on seeing them thus caged up, under the threat of the rattan, condemned to gaze at them sideways, without moving, and repeating the same wearisome and unlovely song.
From time to time the chorus stilled and the voice of Don Joaquín rose majestically, pouring out his fund of knowledge in a stream.
"How many works of mercy are there?"
"Two times seven are how many?"
And rarely was he satisfied with the answers.
"You are a lot of dunces. You sit there listening as though I were talking Greek. And to think that I treat you with all courtesy, as in a city college, so you may learn good forms and know how to talk like persons of breeding!... In short, you have some one to imitate. But you are as rough and ignorant as your parents, who are also dishonest: they have money left to go to the tavern and they invent a thousand excuses to avoid giving me Saturdays the two coppers that are due me."
And he walked up and down indignant as he always was when he complained of the Saturday omissions. You could see it in his hair and in his figure, which seemed to be divided into two parts.
Below, his torn hempen-sandals always stained with mud: his old cloth trousers; his rough, scaly hands, which retained in the fissures of the skin the dirt of his little orchard, a square of garden-truck which he owned in front of the school-house, and many times this produce was all that went into his stew.
But from the waist upward his nobility was shown, "the dignity of the priest of knowledge," as he would say; that which distinguished him from all the population of the farm-houses, worms fastened to the glebe; a necktie of loud colours over his dirty shirt-front, a grey and bristly moustache, cutting his chubby and ruddy face, and a blue cap with an oilcloth visor, souvenir of one of the many positions he had filled in his chequered career.
This was what consoled him for his poverty; especially the necktie, which no one else in the whole district wore, and which he exhibited as a sign of supreme distinction, a species of golden fleece, as it were, of the huerta.
The people of the farm-houses respected Don Joaquín, though as regards the assistance of his poverty they were remiss and slothful. What that man had seen! How he had travelled over the world! Several times a railway employé; other times helping to collect taxes in the most remote provinces of Spain; it was even said that he had been a policeman in America. In short, he was a "somebody" in reduced circumstances.
"Don Joaquín," his stout wife would say, who was always the first to give him his title, "has never seen himself in the position he is in today; we are of a good family. Misfortune has brought us to this, but in our time we have made a mint of money."
And the gossips of the huerta, despite the fact that they sometimes forgot to send the two coppers for the instruction Saturdays, respected Don Joaquín as a superior being, reserving the right to make a little sport of his short jacket, which was green and had square tails; and which he wore on holidays, when he sang at high mass in the choir of Alboraya church.
Driven by poverty, he had landed there with his obese and flabby better-half as he might have landed anywhere else. He helped the secretary of the village with extra work; he prepared with herbs known only to himself certain brews which accomplished wonders in the farm-houses, where they all admitted that that old chap knew a lot; and without the title of schoolmaster, but with no fear that any one else would try to take away from him a school which did not bring in enough even to buy bread, he succeeded by much repetition and many canings, in teaching all the urchins of five or ten, who on holidays threw stones at the birds, stole fruit, and chased the dogs on the roads of the huerta, to spell and to keep quiet.
Where had the master come from? All the wives of the neighbours knew, from beyond the churrería. And vainly were further explanations asked, for as far as the geography of the huerta was concerned, all those who do not speak Valencian are of the churrería.
Don Joaquín had no small difficulty in making his pupils understand him and preventing them from being afraid of Castilian. There were some who had been two months in school and who opened their eyes wide and scratched the backs of their heads without understanding what the master who used words never heard before in his school said to them.
How the good man suffered! He who attributed all the triumphs of his teaching to his refinement, to his distinction of manners, to his use of good language, as his wife declared!
Every word which his pupils pronounced badly (and they did not pronounce one well), made him groan and raise his hands indignantly till they touched the smoky ceiling of his school-house. Nevertheless he was proud of the urbanity with which he treated his pupils.
"You should look upon this humble school-house," he would say to the twenty youngsters who crowded and pushed one another on the narrow benches, listening to him half-bored and half-afraid of his rattan, "as a temple of courtesy and good-breeding. Temple, did I say? It is the torch that shines and dissolves the barbaric darkness of this huerta. Without me, what would you be? Beasts, and pardon me the word; the same as your worthy fathers whom I do not wish to offend! But with God's aid you must leave here educated, able to present yourselves anywhere, since you have had the good fortune to find a master like me. Isn't that so?"
And the boys replied with furious noddings, some knocking their heads against their neighbours' heads; and even his wife, moved by the temple and the torch, stopped knitting her stocking and pushed back the rush-chair to envelop her husband in a glance of admiration.
He would question all the band of dirty urchins whose feet were bare and whose shirt-tails were in the air, with astonishing courtesy:
"Let's see, Señor de Lopis; rise."
And Señor de Lopis, a mucker of seven with short knee trousers held up by one suspender, tumbled off his bench and stood at attention before the master, gazing askance at the terrible cane.
"For some time, I've been watching you picking your nose and making little balls of it. An ugly habit, Señor de Lopis. Believe your master. I will let it pass this time because you are industrious and know your multiplication table; but knowledge is nothing when good-breeding is lacking; don't forget that, Señor de Lopis."
And the boy who made the little balls agreed with everything, overjoyed to get off without a caning. But another big boy who sat beside him on the bench and who must have been nourishing some old grudge, seeing him standing, gave him a treacherous pinch.
"Oh, oh, master!" cried the boy. "''Orse-face' pinched me!"
What was not Don Joaquín's indignation? What most excited his anger was the fondness the boys had for calling each other by their father's nicknames and even for inventing new ones.
"Who is ''Orse-Face'? Señor de Peris, you probably mean. What mode of address is that, great heavens! One would think you were in a drinking-house! If at least you had said Horse-Face! Wear yourself out teaching such idiots! Brutes!"
And raising his cane, he began to distribute resounding blows to each; to the one for the pinch and to the other for the "impropriety of language," as Don Joaquín expressed it, without stopping his whacks. And his blows were so blind that the other boys on the benches shrank together, each one hiding his head on his neighbour's shoulder; and one little fellow, the younger son of Batiste, frightened by the noise of the cane, had a movement of the bowels.
This appeased the master, made him recover his lost majesty, while the well-thrashed audience picked their noses.
"Doña Pepa," he said to his wife, "take Señor de Borrull away, for he is ill, and clean him after school."
And the old woman, who had a certain consideration for the three sons of Batiste, because they paid her husband every Saturday, seized the hand of Señor de Borrull, who left the school walking unsteadily on his weak little legs, still weeping with fear, and showing somewhat more than his shirttail through the rear-opening of his trousers.
These incidents concluded, the lesson-chanting was continued, and the grove trembled with displeasure, its monotonous whisper filtering through the foliage.
Sometimes a melancholy sound of bells was heard and the whole school was filled with joy. It was the flock of old Tomba approaching; all knew that when the old man arrived with his flock, there were always a couple of hours of freedom.
If the shepherd was talkative, the master was no whit behind him; both launched out on an interminable conversation, while the pupils left the benches and came close to listen, or slipping quietly away, went to play with the sheep who were grazing on the grass of the nearby slopes.
Don Joaquín liked the old man. He had seen the world, showed him the respect of speaking to him in Castilian, had a knowledge of medicinal herbs, and yet did not take from him his own customers; in short, he was the only person in the huerta worthy of enjoying friendly relations with him.
His appearance was always attended by the same circumstances. First the sheep arrived at the school-door, stuck their heads in, sniffed curiously and withdrew with a certain contempt, convinced that there was no food here other than intellectual, and that of small value; afterwards old Tomba appeared walking along confidently in this well-known region, holding his shepherd's crook, the only aid of his failing sight, in front of him.
He would sit down on the brick bench next to the master's door, and there the master and the shepherd would talk, silently admired by Doña Josefa and the bigger boys of the school, who would approach slowly and form a group around them.
Old Tomba, who would even talk with his sheep along the roads, spoke slowly at first like a man who fears to reveal his limitations, but the chat of the master would give him courage and soon he would plunge into the vast sea of his eternal stories. He would lament over the bad state of Spain, over what those who came from Valencia said in the huerta, over bad governments in general which are to blame for bad harvests, and he always would end by repeating the same thing:
"Those times, Don Joaquín, those times of mine were different. You did not know them, but your own were better than these. It's getting worse and worse. Just think what all these youngsters will see when they are men!"
This was always the introduction of his story.
"If you had only seen the followers of the Fliar!" (The shepherd could never say friar.) "They were true Spaniards; now there are only boasters in Copa's tavern. I was eighteen years old; I had a helmet with a copper eagle which I took from a dead man, and a gun bigger than myself. And the Fliar!... What a man! They talk now of General So-and-So. Lies, all lies! Where Father Nevot was, there was no one else! You should have seen him with his cassock tucked up, on his nag, with his curved sabre and pistols! How we galloped! Sometimes here, sometimes in Alicante-province, then near Albacete: they were always at our heels; but we made mince-meat of every Frenchman we caught. It seems to me I can see them still: musiu ... mercy! and I, slash, slash, and a clean bayonet-thrust!"
And the wrinkled old man grew bolder and rose; his dim eyes shone like dull embers and he brandished his shepherd's staff as though he were still piercing the enemy with his bayonet. Then came the advice; behind the kind old fellow there arose a man all fierceness, with a hard, relentless heart, the product of a war to the death. His fierce instincts appeared, instincts which had, as it were, become petrified in his youth, and thus made impervious to the flight of time. He addressed the boys in Valencian, sharing with them the fruit of his experience. They must believe what he told them, for he had seen much. In life, patience to take revenge upon the enemy; to wait for the ball, and when it comes, to hit it hard. And as he gave these counsels, he winked his eyes, which in the hollows of the deep sockets seemed like dying stars on the point of flickering out. He related with senile malice a past of struggles in the huerta, a past of ambuscades and stratagems, and of complete contempt for the life of one's fellow-beings.
The master, fearing the moral effect of this on his pupils, would divert the course of the conversation, speaking of France, which was old Tomba's greatest memory.
It was an hour-long topic. He knew that country as well as though he had been born there. When Valencia surrendered to Marshal Suchet, he had been taken prisoner with several thousand more to a great city—Toulouse. And he intermingled in the conversation the horribly mutilated French words which he still remembered after so many years. What a country! There men went about with white plush hats, coloured coats with collars reaching up to the back of their heads, high boots like riding-boots; and the women with skirts like flute-sheaths, so narrow that they showed all they encased; and so he went on talking of the costumes and customs of the time of the Empire, imagining that it all still continued and that France of today was as it was at the beginning of the century.
And while he related in detail all his recollections, the master and his wife listened attentively, and some of the boys, profiting by the unexpected recess, slipped away from the school-house, attracted by the sheep, who fled from them as from the devil in person. For they pulled their tails and grabbed them by the legs, forcing them to walk on their fore-feet, and they sent them rolling down the slopes or tried to mount on their dirty fleece; the poor creatures protested with gentle bleatings in vain, for the shepherd did not hear them, absorbed as he was in telling with great relish of the agony of the last Frenchman who had died.
"And how many fell?" the master would ask at the end of the story.
"A matter of a hundred and twenty or thirty. I don't remember exactly."
And the husband and wife would exchange a smile. Since the last time the total had risen by twenty. As the years passed, his deeds of prowess and the number of victims increased.
The lamentations of the flock would attract the master's attention.
"Gentlemen," he would call out to the rash youths as he reached for his rattan, "come here, all of you. Do you imagine you can spend the day enjoying yourself? This is the place for work."
And to demonstrate this by example, he would brandish his cane so that it was a delight to see it driving back all the flock of playful youngsters into the sheep-fold of knowledge with blows.
"With your leave, Uncle Tomba: we've been talking over two hours. I must go on with the lesson."
And while the shepherd, courteously dismissed, guided his sheep toward the mill to repeat his stories there, there began once again in the school the chant of the multiplication-table which was Don Joaquín's great symbol of learning.
At sunset, the boys sang their last song, thanking the Lord "because He had helped them with His light," and each one took up again his dinner-bag. As the distances in the huerta were not small, the youngsters would leave their homes in the morning with provisions enough to pass the whole day in school; and the enemies of Don Joaquín even said that one of his favourite punishments was to take away their rations in order thus to supplement the deficiencies of Doña Pepa's cooking.
Fridays, when school was out, the pupils invariably heard the same oration.
"Gentlemen: tomorrow is Saturday: remind your mothers and tell them that the one who does not bring his two coppers won't be let into the school. I tell you this particularly, Mr. de ... So and So, and you, Mr. de ... So and So" (and he would enumerate about a dozen names). "For three weeks now you have not brought the sum agreed upon, and if this goes on, it will prove that instruction is impossible, and learning impotent to combat the innate barbarity of these rustic regions. I contribute everything: my erudition, my books" (and he would glance at the three primer-charts, which his wife picked up carefully to put them away in the old bureau), "and you contribute nothing. Well, what I said, I said: Any one who comes tomorrow empty-handed will not pass that threshold. Notify your mothers."
The boys would form in couples, holding each other's hands (the same as in the schools of Valencia; what do you suppose?), and depart, after kissing the horny hand of Don Joaquín and repeating glibly as they passed near him:
"Good-bye, until tomorrow, by God's grace."
The master would accompany them to the little mill-square which was as a star for roads and paths; and there the formation was broken up into small groups and dispersed over different sections of the plain.
"Take care, my masters, I've got an eye on you," cried Don Joaquín as a last warning. "Look out when you steal fruit, throw stones or jump over canals. I have a little bird who tells me everything and if tomorrow I hear anything bad, my rattan will play the very deuce with you."
And standing in the little square, he followed with his gaze the largest group which was departing up the Alboraya road.
These paid the best. Among them walked the three sons of Batiste, for whom many a time the road had been turned into a way of suffering.
Hand in hand the three tried to follow the other boys, who because they lived in the farm-house next to old Batiste, felt the same hatred as their fathers for him and for his family and never lost an opportunity to torment them.
The two elder ones knew how to defend themselves, and with a scratch more or less even came out victorious at times.
But the smallest, Pascualet, a fat-stomached little chap who was only five years old and whom his mother adored for his sweetness and gentleness, and hoped to make a chaplain, broke into tears the moment he saw his brothers involved in deadly conflict with their fellow-pupils.
Many a time the two elder boys would reach home covered with sweat and dust as though they had been wallowing in the road, with their trousers torn and their shirts unfastened. These were the signs of combat; the little fellow told it all with tears. And the mother had to minister to one or another of the larger boys, which she did by pressing a penny-piece on the bump raised by some treacherous stone.
Teresa was much upset on hearing of the attacks to which her son were subjected. But she was a rough, courageous woman who had been born in the country, and when she heard that her boys had defended themselves well and given a good thrashing to the enemy, she would again regain her calm.
Good heaven! let them take care of Pascualet first of all. And the oldest brother, indignant, would promise a thrashing to all the lousy crew when he met them on the roads.
Hostilities began every afternoon, as soon as Don Joaquín lost sight of them.
The enemies, sons or nephews of those in the tavern who threatened to put an end to Batiste, began to walk more slowly, lessening the distance between themselves and the three brothers.
The words of the master, however, and the threat of the accursed bird who saw and told everything, would still be ringing in their ears; some laughed but on the wrong side of their mouths. That old fellow knew such a lot!
But the farther off they got, the less effective became the master's threat.
They would begin to prance around the three brothers, and laughingly chase each other, a mere malicious pretext, inspired by the instinctive hypocrisy of youth, to push them as they ran by, with the pious desire of landing them in the canal that ran along the road.
Afterwards when this manœuvre proved unsuccessful, they would resort to slaps on the head and sudden pulls as they ran by at full speed.
"Thieves! Thieves!"
And as they hurled this insult, they would pull their ears and run off, only to turn after a little and repeat the same words.
This calumny, invented by the enemies of their father, made the boys absolutely frantic. The two older ones, abandoning Pascualet, who took refuge weeping behind a tree, would seize stones and a battle would begin in the middle of the road.
The cobbles whistled between the branches, making the leaves fall in showers, and bounce against the trunks and slopes: the dogs drawn by the noise of the battle, would rush out from the farm-houses barking fiercely, and the women from the doors of their houses would raise their arms to heaven, crying indignantly—
"Rascals! Devils!"
These scandals touched Don Joaquín to the quick and gave impetus next day to the relentless cane. What would people say of his school, the temple of good-breeding!
The battle would not end until some passing carter would brandish his whip, or until some old chap would come from the farm-houses, cudgel in hand, when the aggressors would flee, and disperse, repenting of their deed on seeing themselves alone, thinking fearfully, with the rapid shifting of impressions characteristic of childhood, of that bird who knew everything and of what Don Joaquín would have in store for them the following day.
And meanwhile, the three brothers would continue on their way, rubbing the bruises they had received in the battle.
One afternoon, Batiste's poor wife sent up a cry to heaven on seeing the state in which her young ones arrived.
The battle had been a fierce one! Ah! the bandits! The two older ones were bruised as usual; nothing to worry about.
But the little boy, the Bishop, as his mother called him caressingly, was wet from head to foot, and the poor little fellow was crying and trembling from cold and fear.
The savage young rascals had thrown him into a canal of stagnant water and his brothers had fished him out covered with disgusting black mud.
The mother put him to bed, for the poor little chap was still trembling in her arms, clinging around her neck, and murmuring with a voice that sounded like the bleating of a lamb,
"Mother! Mother!"
"Lord God! give us patience!" All that base rabble, big and little, had resolved to put an end to the whole family.