VERDOLAY--CONENI
The peasant who came every morning with his daughter and donkey-cart
full of vegetables and fruit at the dawn was rather like a genial bird
of prey in features. This type is typically Spanish. There was something
of the condor about him, though one can scarcely picture a condor with
his welcoming smile or his kindly nature. He began with a fixed idea of
our practical dumbness and deafness to the Spanish language. He was, we
learned later, an exquisite dancer. We have heard tell of a well-known
musician who has a dance for making the household beds, and another for
digging potatoes, and so on, trying to bring æsthetics into the
commonplaces of life. Coneni, for such was the peasant's name, tried to
dance for us the fact that tomatoes were a halfpenny a pound or that a
melon was sixpence. His pretty, demure daughter resorted to more
practical measures, held up fruit as samples and condescended to
calculate in pesetas and centimos instead of in "royals" and "little
bitches."
But the manners both of Coneni and of his daughter were impeccable. I
think that they overcharged us slightly, but that was the Spanish
tradition. Certainly they did not overcharge us as much as they would
have done had they not liked us, and later on they quieted their
consciences by making us presents.
Coneni was one of the first of our picture admirers, but he had
pre-Raphaelite tendencies, and always said that he supposed they would
be better when we painted them out properly. He became eager that we
should sketch in his market garden, and gave us elaborate topographical
directions. So one day, shouldering our sketch-boxes, off we set.
[Illustration]
We passed through El Angel on to the Murcia road. We then asked a group
of men, who were winnowing corn on a flat biblical threshing floor of
beaten mud, which was the direction. Unfortunately we had got rather
mixed in the name. The peasant had not spoken his name very clearly and
we had confused it with conecho.[17] The winnowers said that they could
not understand us very clearly, but that it was probably further along,
and they wished us to "go with God." Further along the road we, having
found in the dictionary what conecho really means, tried the other name.
The use of this brought us into a narrow side-path between rows of
mulberry trees and deep watercourses. It took a sudden turn to the left,
and on the path we saw Coneni, tall and lank, waving welcoming arms at
us.
The place was embowered in trees: lemon, fig, pear, plum, apple, quince
and pomegranate flourished luxuriantly in the irrigated soil. The
huertas of the Murcian plain were not separated, one from another, by
hedges, and it was difficult to know how large was Coneni's garden. In
one corner, beneath the shelter of overhanging fruit-trees, was a hut
made of stiff bamboo-like reeds, the roof daubed with mud against the
rain. From the front of this hut projected a long awning of reeds,
beneath which the Coneni family was awaiting us. Mrs. Coneni was plump,
motherly, and had a genial nature covering an inflexible will. She also
had perfect manners, was full of courtliness and kindness, and was
delighted to see us. She showed her naïve pleasure by touching me
whenever she was able to do so without rudeness. Our broken Spanish
aroused her sense of wonder. Coneni, for the first time in his life,
made up his mind to understand us. He stopped his habitual pre-breakfast
pantomime and swaggered about, saying:
"But I understand all they say. Yes, I do."
He disappeared into the square small hut and came out again carrying an
enormous green water-melon called locally a sandia. He tapped it with a
knuckle and, from the sound that it made, decided that it was ripe. He
then cut off top and bottom with a small hatchet and divided it into
huge slices. While we were eating the luscious pink fruit neighbours
began to saunter up. They stood in a circle around us. Coneni, with the
air of a showman, said:
"Now I will show you something. She smokes; it is true. I have seen her
myself."
He made me a cigarette. The men were delighted and Mrs. Coneni was
amazed. Coneni stood behind me with a lean hand on his hip, as if to
say: "Alone I did it."
Beneath the reed shelter some of the children were lying asleep, and the
youngest of all, a baby, was sitting by itself in a corner, stark naked,
playing with a large lemon. The exquisite colour contrast between the
transparency of skin of the sunburnt child and the hard yellow
brilliance of the lemon filled me with a wild desire to paint it.
Indeed, one does not come to appreciate the full beauty of the nude
until one has seen it in a country where it is natural. In Spain the
children, usually half nude, sprawled about in the heat in the most
graceful of relaxed poses, sometimes lying half asleep across their
mothers' laps, and a continual impulse was driving me to make studies of
them. But the task is almost impossible. The fact of being sketched is
too unusual. The people, naturally unselfconscious, at once become stiff
and formal.
Within Coneni's hut was no furniture other than a four-post bed which
almost filled the floor space. Here slept Coneni and his wife, and the
space beneath the bed was used as a storehouse for melons. The children,
three girls and four boys, all slept on the ground in the open beneath
the shelter. But Mrs. Coneni explained to me with some care that the
poverty was only apparent; that this was but their summer residence. For
the winter they had a fine house in Alverca.
We did not have any very keen impulse to paint--it had become for that
afternoon rather too much of a ceremony, like the old State painter
_performing_ before the Court--but to save our faces we had to do
something, so Jan painted a portrait of a calf, while I selected a lemon
tree. Before I had half finished, the interior of the tree was swarming
with Coneni's children, hoping that they would be included. By my side
sat Coneni's little girl nursing a bantam, like a doll, assuring it that
mother wouldn't love it if it were not more quiet.
"And the Señor plays the guitar," exclaimed Coneni. "He is affectionate
to music."
We discussed Spanish music and dancing. Coneni, bursting with
hospitality, said:
"Come again next Sunday. I will invite the young men and the girls and
we will have a party. There are guitar and lute players at Alverca. They
will all come."
Antonio's brother-in-law, Thomas, had spoken of the gay times when there
is a party in the huertas; we accepted eagerly.
We went home laden with presents of fruit which Coneni had pressed upon
us. Especially was our greed delighted with a large basket of figs. We
had been asking the Conenis to bring us some figs for some days, but
they had said:
"We can't bring you figs. Nobody sells figs here. We give them to the
pigs."
So that evening we rivalled the pigs
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 17: Rabbit.]