MURCIA--THE LAUD
During our month in Verdolay we had not quite cut off communication with
Murcia. Luis and his friend Flores had come out to lunch with us,
bringing with them a slab of odoriferous dried fish which _they said_
was excellent in salads. On this occasion many families in Verdolay had
offered to cook our dinner for us, Encarnacion's mother, the shopping
woman, the woman who brought the water and La Merchora were the
principal competitors; and the dinner was finally cooked out in the open
in La Merchora's back-yard in a huge frying-pan. We had also travelled
the five dusty miles into Murcia, walking, to the grave astonishment of
Verdolay plutocracy. On the first occasion Antonio told us with a face
of joy that his wife _was out of danger_.
"Out of danger," cried we; "but she was only suffering from a small
digestive attack!"
"Oh, no," replied Antonio; "didn't I tell you that she had smallpox?
Why, a man died of it three doors down the street."
Before we had quitted Verdolay, Rosa (Antonio's wife) was well enough to
be moved, and Antonio had brought her into the country to the Count's
country house. She was spotted like a pard with large brown marks which
Antonio assured us would disappear with time, leaving no pits.
[Illustration]
On another visit Jan had gone into the shop of Emilio Peralta to buy
some guitar strings. The shop of Emilio was not like that of Ramirez in
Paris. It was set in a canyon of a street so deep that the midday sun
for one short hour or so shines on the cobbles, so narrow that the carts
which pass through it are permitted to go in one sole direction marked
at the entrance by a pointing arrow. Ramirez had a workshop only, but
Emilio had as well onhis working bench three brave showcases painted
apple green, one of which was filled with instruments--guitars, lauds
and bandurrias--with a drawer for strings, capo-d'astros and other
instrumental appurtenances. Of the two other showcases, one housed the
guitar-maker's tools, the third having degenerated to a pantry, and
while one was buying strings from Emilio, his wife would be
surreptitiously taking dishes of boiled garbanzos or of dried sardines
out of the garishly painted frand. The place was indeed workshop,
pantry and reception room. A counter cut the place in two. To the left
as you entered Emilio made his instruments. To the right was a rough
semicircle of chairs, and here the _aficionados_[19] of the guitar came
in the evening, to play on Emilio's latest creation. To our dismay,
however, we found that the intensely interesting music of Spain, the
Flamenco, as it is called, was somewhat despised in Emilio's shop. In
Spain, music is divided to-day into the major divisions, Classical and
Flamenco. Classical includes anything from Beethoven to Darewski, from
Sonata or Symphony to Fox-trot or Polka. The guitar-maker to-day says
proudly: "I do not make instruments for 'Flamenco,' mine are made for
'Classical'": and he but echoes the bad taste of the educated Spaniard.
The Flamenco, the native music, having perhaps a stronger character
than any other Folk music in Europe, is considered very vulgar; it is
called "Tavern Music," as "still lives" in painting are called "Tavern
pictures."
Nevertheless, we were not to be seduced from our desire to study the
Flamenco, and for the purpose of continuing that study I had been
looking out for a laud which is peculiarly adapted to the music, much of
which was composed originally upon this instrument. Hitherto I had been
unable to find an instrument which I had liked, for the ordinary lute is
queer in shape and rather harsh in quality. But the plumber-maestro in
Alverca had lent me an instrument--a laud of simpler form and sweeter
tone, called a sonora--which pleased me.
Jan going into Emilio's shop had found there a newly completed sonora,
very like that of the little maestro's, but better in quality. He
engaged Emilio to keep it till we returned, and Emilio said he would
bring the Professor down to play it for us to show off its qualities. On
the evening of the day on which we came back to Murcia we went to
Emilio's shop. The chairs were all set in their prim semicircle and
Emilio, round-shouldered and heavy-faced, sat us down while he
expatiated on the excellence of the workmanship and the beauty of the
tone of his instrument. He demanded sixty pesetas for the instrument,
but said that we might possibly come to some friendly arrangement over
the price, as he was trying to popularize this form of laud. The little
Professor came in. He was a strange man. He was extremely emaciated,
with one eye destroyed and almost blind in the other, dressed in _outré_
style as though he were acting as jockey in an impromptu charade. His
flexible hands seemed almost translucent in their delicacy. He at once
addressed us with such rapidity of speech that we were unable to
understand what he said (though our understanding of Spanish had made
great progress), and he was extremely irritable with us for seeming so
stupid. This frail, delicate, peering thing was a queer contrast to the
burly, almost clumsy form of Emilio.
The little Professor picked up the sonora, and passed it backwards and
forwards slowly beneath his short-sighted eye. He sat down and played.
His nimble fingers ran up and down the strings. We had almost decided to
begin the delicate matter of bargaining when a fat form,
white-waist-coated, straw hat perched jauntily over an Egyptian face,
showed itself in the doorway. It was Blas. And Blas was drunk. He bowed
in an heroic manner to me, shook hands in simulated affection with Jan;
and, his soul obviously consumed with jealousy, greeted the little
Professor, who returned his salutation with coldness.
"Go on," ordered Blas to the little Professor, "play." The little man
put the sonora again on his thigh. One could almost hear his teeth grit.
Then he began to show off. He possessed a very effective trick of
playing intricate runs by the mere beat of the fingers of his left hand,
that is without plucking the strings with his right. This he now
exhibited to its full. He was on his mettle, Greek and Trojan were face
to face. Blas, seated on his chair, his fat hands on his knees, smiled a
drunken and somewhat patronizing approval of his rival's exhibition.
[Illustration]
The little Professor finished his exhibition, which the gipsy did not
attempt to rival, for he played only the guitar. For a moment there was
an embarrassing silence. The gentle art of bargaining was about to
displace the art of music. But we had reckoned without the half-drunken
Blas.
Suddenly rising to his feet he faced Jan, and rubbing his finger and
thumb together he exclaimed:
"Now comes the main point. The brass. Now is the question of cashing up
for it."
Doubtless this was a frank statement of fact. But three-quarters of life
continues bearable enough because one does not put things frankly.
Emilio changed colour and put on a sullen face, Emilio's wife looked
alarmed, Jan was embarrassed, the little Professor seemed to wither into
a crouching shape of half his normal smallness.
But Blas went on in a breezy voice to Jan:
"Come on, come on. What's the matter? You suggest a price to him and he
will tell you if it fits."
Emilio's delicacy was quite revolted by this crude exhibition of gipsy
bad taste. He seized the laud from the little Professor, thrust it on
one side and said loudly that he did not want to sell it at all.
Unfortunately, Jan was afraid of offending Emilio's susceptibility. Not
knowing how to behave in the unfortunate circumstances, he blurted out:
"Look here, Emilio, you said sixty pesetas. Will you not come down a
little, and then we could settle the matter?"
Emilio was, however, extremely bad-tempered by the turn things had
taken. The Spanish sense of decency was outraged. At last, with an evil
look at Blas, he muttered:
"Well, fifty-five pesetas. Not a penny less and no more bargaining."
Jan, to cut the scene short, agreed. The instrument was wrapped up in a
paper bag. While Jan was paying over the money, Blas said:
"And you will give five pesetas to this gentleman, who is a poor man:
and five pesetas to me also."
He seized five pesetas of the money from the counter and pressed them on
the little Professor. The latter, with girlish giggles, refused; but
Blas, with the insistence of a drunkard, pressed his desire until, to
quieten him, the little Professor slipped the money into his waistcoat
pocket. Blas then demanded his own commission, saying that as he had
been Jan's Professor, and as Jan had once mentioned the subject of the
laud to him, he was fully entitled to his claim. But Jan, outwardly
calm, inwardly annoyed with Blas, would not give him a halfpenny. At
last Blas was begging:
"Well, at least give me a peseta to get a drink with."
"You have had enough drink already," said Jan.
He picked up the laud, and with farewells to Emilio, his wife and the
little Professor we walked out of the shop, pushing our way through the
crowd which had gathered at the shop door.
On the following day we returned to Emilio's shop to apologize for the
contretemps. We found both Emilio and his wife very disturbed by what
had happened. They said that their regrets were eternal, and that it
would have been better had we deferred the business matter until a
better occasion.
"It was a disgraceful affair," said Emilio, "disgraceful; and to cap it
all, after you had gone, Blas was most outrageous. We had actually to
pay him two pesetas to go away."
"We were afraid for our lives," said Mrs. Emilio. "He is a bad man, and
one never knows what rogues he might have brought upon us."
Though Jan did not believe much in the active danger of Blas, yet the
terror of Emilio and of his wife was quite evident. So in the end he
disbursed the five pesetas given to the little Professor as well as the
two given to Blas. So that our laud actually cost us sixty-two pesetas,
instead of the sixty for which we might have bought it without any
bargaining.
With the little Professor we had made an engagement for the afternoon.
He was to give me a lesson on which I could study while we were away at
Jijona. He came, feeling his way up our staircase. He shook hands with
us and said that the affair of last night had greatly oppressed his
spirit.
"I felt it much in my heart," he said.
We explained to him that we were going away for a month, but that we
would return to Murcia later, and that when we returned I would take
lessons from him.
"My price," he exclaimed (all his speech was exclamation), "is one duro
a month. I am not one of those villains who charge one price to one
person and a different price to another. No, my price is fixed and
unalterable. One duro, five pesetas, a month."
Now, although this little man was probably as good a teacher as could be
found in the town of Murcia, his price averaged about _twopence a
lesson_.
We discovered later that the laud suffers not only from a ban of "bad
taste," but also from a moral one. To-day its use in Spain is almost
limited to the playing of dance music in houses of bad fame.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 19: Lovers.]