MURCIA--SETTLING DOWN
By the time we left the hotel, which we did on the second day, the maid
had reviewed her decision as to the state of our mentality. Receiving
her tips she shook our hands warmly, asked where we were going and said
that she would without fail call upon us. The tatterdemalion bootblack
at the hotel door, who could never quite make up his mind whether he
were bootblack or lottery-ticket seller--neglecting each business in
favour of the other--helped us with our luggage. He also on receipt of a
tip inquired our future address and assured us that he would call upon
us. The driver of the tartana told us that he would look us up one day
to see how we were getting on; and another visit was promised by a
ragged lounger whom we called in to aid us in getting our luggage
upstairs.
"Spain," we said, "seems to be a sociable country."
Don Antonio was waiting for us at his house, which was but a few doors
away from our own. He introduced us to his wife, a buxom, jolly woman of
about twenty-five; his sister, tall, elegant and dark, perhaps the most
complete type of Spanish woman we had yet met; and his brother-in-law.
Don Thomas, for such was the brother-in-law's name, was able to speak a
portion of the American language, and often by his imperfect knowledge
he would deepen our ignorance of what others were saying in Spanish.
Don Antonio had a small box factory. His house was two-storied, as were
most of the houses in the Paseo. On the ground floor the front room, or
entrada, was filled with wood, wood-working benches, and stacks of
unfinished boxes; the kitchen behind was not exempt from business, for
here Antonio made up his glues and pastes, while the whole top story was
occupied by girls who covered the crude shells of the boxes with velvet
and looking-glass and papier mâché adornments. Antonio and his wife were
crowded into two small rooms, a bedroom in the front alongside of the
entrada and a dining-room at the back parallel with the kitchen.
Our planks were ready for us, but Antonio refused to be paid for them.
He said that when we had finished with them he could make boxes out of
them. We spent the afternoon in our flat unpacking and arranging the
plank bed. The mattress was not broad enough to cover the planks which
we put down, but we managed to find a padded sofa-covering which, laid
alongside of the mattress, supplemented the inefficient breadth. As we
had met neither mosquitoes nor net in the hotel, we left the
mosquito-net in the trunk.
In the evening Luis Garay called for us. He led us through a maze of
darkened streets, at one time skirting the tall, over-decorated rococo
front of the cathedral, and brought us to a large doorway within which
was a smaller door. Two sharp raps and the door swung wide mechanically,
though a long rope tied to the latch and looping its way upstairs showed
how it had been opened. Up wide white stone stairs we went, watched by
an old, old man hanging over the balcony of the second floor. Luis said
no word to him, nor he to Luis.
The chief keynote of Spanish interiors is whiteness. The room into which
we came was white, and out of it was another white room set with
dining-tables and decorated with a huge white filter. This was "Elias,"
where we could dine excellently for the sum of one peseta fifty centimos
apiece.
Elias himself looked like a cheery monk painted by Dendy Sadler. Clad in
a long white overall, he stood in the midst of his snowy tables and
greeted us merrily.
Luis went away, having said good night, for he had an engagement. We ate
omelet, beefsteak and fried potatoes, finishing with a plate of fruit,
fixed by the multiple stare of the young men dining there. I was the
only woman at Elias while we dined there, for Spanish women are home
clinging folk, and even to the cafés they never go in large numbers.
As the young men finished their meals, they went out. Each one as he
passed through the door bowed and said something. It sounded like "Dobro
Vetche," but "Dobro Vetche" is Serbian for good evening. We could not
make out what the words were, so, as the Serbian seemed to be
appropriate, we boldly answered it in return. Later on we discovered
that they said "Buen Aproveche" with the first part of the sentence
slurred over by habit. It means "May it do you good," and the customary
sentence to say to any one who is dining. The correct answer is
"Gracias."
We left Elias' very satisfied with our cheap discovery. Jan, who
generally has a good head for locality, engaged to find his way back
without a guide. But he turned the wrong way out of Elias' door. We
wandered amongst deep darkened streets till suddenly we came out into
one as narrow as the others, but laid with flat pavements, instead of
rugged cobbles, and blazing with light. Through this we ran the gauntlet
of Murcia. The street was crowded with hotels and cafés, both sides
being lined with tables at which the evening drinkers were sitting. The
street itself was filled with a flux and reflux of the youth and beauty,
the "Hooventud, Bellitza and Looho,"[7] of the town.
We came, especially I, upon them as a catastrophe. The light died out of
their eyes, the smiles disappeared from their faces, mouths dropped
open, fingers pointed, people grasped each other. It was similar to the
moment when an elephant comes along in the village circus procession,
and I was the elephant.
During our first weeks in Murcia our appearance in the streets
invariably caused excitement and shrieks of laughter among young girls
and gossips. If we entered a shop the children crowded in with us to
listen to our attempts at Spanish. This was not done with deliberate
rudeness, but was more the result of unrestrained curiosity. This
attitude was not very evident when we went for strolls with Luis: the
presence of a fellow-townsman seemed to have a calming influence. At
last I found an effective weapon. With mock horror I stared at the feet
and ankles of any young woman too malicious. Self-consciousness at once
gripped her--almost invariably she hurried away to examine her shoes and
wonder what was wrong with them.
Curiously enough we never became conscious of a case of incivility among
the men. Even groups of lads at the difficult age which breeds larrikins
in Australia were on the whole less offensive than in other countries.
It seemed to us that if a Spanish woman were kind-hearted--and the
majority are so--she was the most kindly and charming of women, but if
of a spiteful nature she took less pains to hide or curb it than do the
women of more sophisticated countries.
The narrow street which we had discovered by accident was perhaps the
most disconcerting part of the town, as it was full of cafés, and
therefore of loungers; but we often had to go there for small
necessities. There we had to go for smoked glasses because of the
brilliance of the sun, for a parasol, and for a hatpin. The first two
objects were easily found, but the last was difficult. Hats, even in
Southern Spain, are worn only by the _crème de la crème_ for great
ceremonies, and the hatpins sold by the jewellers were intended for such
occasions. They were decorated affairs with huge heads of complicated
workmanship set with garish stones. Probably no other woman in the town
wore a hat for normal use, so we gave up the search and Jan made out of
hairpins something which served.
We ran the gauntlet of the quizzing street and made our way home.
All along the streets the people had brought their chairs out of doors
and were sitting on the pavements in the cool of the night. At Antonio's
door we found a group of his family, almost invisible in the dark. We
sat down with them. Presently Antonio said:
"I will go and fetch Don Luis, and he will play for us."
What then could be seen of Don Luis was a large nose, a check cap and a
pair of gnarled hands which grasped his guitar in a capable manner. He
sat down on a chair on the sidewalk and began to play.
"Curse it!" he exclaimed. "Do you know I used to play very well, but all
this factory work ruins the fingers for playing. Mine are getting as
stiff as if they had no joints in them."
Presently he was playing a jota and demanded that somebody should dance.
"Dance, dance!" he shouted. "Curse it! What's the good of playing if
nobody dances?"
By this time most of the inhabitants of the houses near had gathered
round, although almost hidden; but there were no young men. Antonio's
sister danced a jota with a pretty girl. The jota is the most common of
Spanish dances, as the waltz used to be with us. It has a _tempo_ which
fluctuates between three-four and two-four, the phrases being divided
into two beats each or three bars of two beats each at the will of the
player. The jota that evening appeared to be a very sedate kind of
dance. When it was over the crowd urged us to dance something English.
We asked Don Luis to play the jota again, and to it we danced a rather
mad waltz which we had invented. The path upon which we danced was of
dried mud, which is pounded into unusual shapes in the winter and dries
in whatever shape it happens to be when the heat comes. It was full of
lumps and holes, and the light was dim. In a moment we partially
understood why Antonio's sister had been so sedate. But the
brother-in-law informed us:
"Say," he said, "my girl can dance wonderful. But 't'aint proper, in de
town. Say, you see 'er in de country. Den she hop. She kick de window in
wid 'er toe. Sure. Show you one day."
Murcia is a town of about 100,000 inhabitants and is the capital of its
province, but it is hardly more than an overgrown village in spite of
its cathedral, its bullring, its theatre and its cinema palace. Both at
Avila and at Madrid they had said to us: "Aha, you are going to the town
of the beautiful women!"
But the women of Murcia, with the exception of some lovely and filthy
gipsies, were not unusually beautiful. They were thick-set and useful
looking with muscular necks and ankles, and their eyes had a
domesticated expression. Their clothes emphasized their defects. They
indulged in pastel shades and frills which were used in fantastic ways.
We have seen frills in spiral twisting around the frock from neck to
hem, or a series of jaunty inverted frills round the hips, which gave to
the wearer something of the appearance of one of those oleographs of a
maiden half emerging from the calyx of a flower: or perpendicular frills
which made the wearer resemble a cog-wheel.
We had ample opportunities of observing them from the windows of our
house, at which we started our experimental sketches in Spain, but we
had to sit back from the balcony because small crowds began to gather,
and boys to shout. Antonio then said that he would take us to one of the
big walled-in gardens where we could paint at our ease.
A huge gateway led into a courtyard which was completely covered by a
vine pergola. The grapes hung in large bunches, though yet green. At one
side of the courtyard was a low stall on which fruit and vegetables were
for sale, and near an arched door a woman was washing clothes in a large
basin of antique pattern. The garden was a rich mass of green. Huge
trees of magnolia were covered with waxy white flowers and gave out a
strong odour which scented the wide garden. Lemon trees and orange trees
were ranged in rows; the lemons yellow on the trees or lying on the
ground as thick as fallen apples after an autumn storm, the oranges
still hard spheres of dark green. Along the edges of the paths stood up
the tall palm trees with their golden clusters of unripe dates, or with
their fronds tied up in a stiff spike, some mystery of palm cultivation.
Fronds of palm, hacked from off the trees, lay about the ground, and we
were surprised to find by experience that they possessed long, piercing
and painful thorns.
We painted for several days in this small paradise, but our conscience
was accusing us. We had not come to Spain to paint gardens. One day we
took our courage in our hands.
"It is market day," said we; "we will go and paint the market."
Peasant carts loaded with fruit and vegetables were crowding into the
town; men clad in black cottons were dragging donkeys, upon the backs of
which were panniers filled with saleable provisions; women with
umbrellas aloft against the sun carried baskets in their arms or heavy
packages upon their hips. The market was spread in the sunlight behind
the Hôtel Reina Victoria. Grain was for sale in broad, flat baskets,
cheap cottons were on stalls; fruits--peaches, plums, and lemons--were
mixed with tomatoes, berenginas, and red or green peppers. To one side
of the market place was the fonda which had once been a monastery. This
was for the travellers by road as the hotels were for travellers by
rail. In a huge arched entrada carters and villagers were sitting at
their ease. To one side was a kitchen in which could be seen large red
earthen vessels which made one think of the last scene in "The Forty
Thieves," and beyond the entrada was an open courtyard in which the high
tilted road waggons were drawn up in rows.
Skirting the fonda wall I found a corner which seemed secluded, and
sitting down I began to paint an old woman and her fruit stall. One by
one a few people gathered behind me. Blas, the gipsy musician, came up,
greeted me, and added his solid presence to the spectators. A baker came
out of his shop and watched. The crowd began to increase. Soon they were
pressing all round, even in front, so that I could see nothing.
"I cannot paint if I cannot see," I exclaimed to Blas.
He and the baker set themselves one on each side and hustled an opening
in the crowd.
"Atras, atras!" they shouted. "En la cola, en la cola."[8]
But more and more people hurried up to see what was happening. Soon the
crowd, despite the strenuous efforts of Blas and the baker, closed up
again in front, and no efforts could keep an open vista.
Jan, who had been drawing in another part of the market, came up. He saw
in the midst of a maelstrom of heads the extreme tip of my hat and
worked his way through, to speaking distance. Brown-faced old women,
with market baskets, men with turkeys hung in braces over their
shoulders, young women with babies, gipsy men with tall hats and
gig-whips, noisy boys, all smiling, friendly and curious, were peeping
under my hat discussing the phenomenon.
We left the disappointed maelstrom, which changed its shape and followed
us like a rivulet to a café, where they stood for a while gazing
solemnly while we sipped iced coffee.
We then decided that sketching in the streets of Murcia was not to be
thought of. Luis, to whom we confided this, said that he would find us
balconies and roofs from which we could work, but we wanted to settle in
some small village where we could know everybody in a day, and sketch
where we liked, so Luis made arrangements to take us across the plain at
the foot of the mountains to see some villages that might suit us.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 7: (Spelt phonetically.) These three words, meaning youth,
beauty and luxury, are used in all Spanish theatre advertisements as
especial attractions of the spectacle advertised.]
[Footnote 8: "Back, back! Get into queue, get into queue!"]