ALICANTE
Our second experience in Spanish village life was to be at Jijona, a
small town in the country near Alicante. Our friend had what he called a
studio there, and this was at our service. Luis said that there was
furniture in the studio but no cooking utensils or bed. After our
packing-case bed in Verdolay, we determined to take with us nothing but
a mattress and either to sleep on the floor or to buy planks locally. So
we had packed our trunk with painting materials, crockery and clothes.
We had also made up a large roll of bedclothes and mattress such as
emigrants travel with. Having risen with the dawn, our preparations were
complete by the time at which the donkeyman who peddled drinking-water
about the streets of Murcia called for us with his long cart. He was not
quite satisfied with our roll, and with expert hands repacked it in a
professional manner. But his long water-cart would only take our trunk
and the rolled mattress, so, burdened with rucksacks, camera, guitar,
thermos flasks and a rush basket containing crockery which would not
pack into the trunk, and the laud, we walked the quarter of a mile to
the station. Thus burdened, we expected more staring and laughter than
before from the Murcianos, but, to our amazement, the people looked upon
us with kindly eyes and wished us God-speed. Thus Spain reverses the
manner of England.
[Illustration]
Jan took his place in the ticket queue while I, assisted by a friendly
porter, looked for seats in a third-class carriage. The carriages were
full enough despite the fact that we were in good time. Large numbers of
children seemed to be travelling, and many of the passengers were
stretched out on the wooden seats, taking a snooze before the train
should start. The divisions between the compartments were only breast
high, and already animated conversations had begun between the passengers
who, from different compartments, shouted remarks to each other. In our
compartment were a sandalled peasant stretched at full length, a bearded
man with a huge brass plate on his breast and a shot-gun, evidently a
gamekeeper, and a smart young man with patent leather boots and a straw
hat. The last was reading a hook. On the platform we noted an important
priest striding about, his black soutane covered with a silk dust-coat,
and an old woman with a posy of bright flowers about twice as big as her
head. The train was the centre of an excited crowd, the carriage full
almost to bursting-point. As the time for departure came near most of
those we had imagined to be our fellow passengers got slowly down on to
the platform; all the children disappeared. They had merely been taking
advantage of the train's presence in the station to take a rest.
The three strokes on the bell, which denote the starting of the train,
had sounded when our carriage door was flung open and a panting bundle
of humanity was thrust upwards and amongst us. As the train moved out,
it resolved itself into a small woman, very loquacious, carrying in her
arms three babies. Talking very excitedly, she laid her brood out on a
wooden seat. The woman was-black-haired and her jet eyes sparkled with
excitement.
"They are bandits," she exclaimed. "Yes, bandits they are, rushing about
like that. I was with my children in Uncle Pepe's donkey-cart. Then they
come along. Of course the bullocks in the stone waggon in front wouldn't
move quick enough, and so they come tearing across the road, flip us
under the axle, and over we all go into the dust. Uncle Pepe strained
his wrist and the shaft is broken. And that's the way they treat us just
after my poor husband has died of smallpox. It's lucky that nobody was
killed and that I didn't lose the train. Murderers, that's what they
are."
We noted that she and her babies were covered with dust, and that she
was dressed all in black even to her alpagatas. While she had been
talking so volubly she had been unpacking a basket which, with the
bundles, had been thrust in after her. She got out a bottle of water and
a piece of rag. With a moistened rag she tried to wash the babies, but
made rather a smeary mess of it. The occupants of the other compartments
were leaning over sympathizing with her mishap. But, as she had omitted
the cause of the mishap, somebody questioned her.
"Why, motors, of course," she snapped. "It's murderous the way they go
rushing about. Not caring for any one, and not waiting to see what
damage they have done."
As most of the carriage occupants seemed to be peasantry, they agreed
with her. Somebody went on:
"And are those all you have?"
The young woman drew herself up with pride. "No," she answered, "I've
got four, and all men too."
The train was rolling with a determined manner down the Murcian valley.
On one side the bills drew closer, on the other they were receding. We
noted that all the carriage doors were left swinging wide open to admit
as much air as possible. Presently there was a noise outside and the
ticket-collector scrambled into the carriage. He examined all the
tickets in our coach, and swung himself again out on to the footboard,
making his way slowly forward. Some of the passengers, too, who had
friends in other carriages made visits _en route_, scrambling along the
moving train. And the carriage doors had notices on them saying: "It is
dangerous to put the head out of the window."
After an hour or more of sedate travel, we came to Orihuela, which
boasts a huge monastery on the hill and a broad zigzag road which looked
like an engineering feat. The station was like a flower shop. Vendors
were running up and down the train thrusting elaborate bouquets into the
windows. Some women dressed in royal blue satin came into our carriage,
they stuffed unfortunate live poultry and rabbits, with feet tied up,
under the seat and covered the wooden bench of the compartment with
magnificent flowers. During the rest of the journey, the monotonous
flip, click of their fans as they were opened and shut punctuated the
conversation.
We passed through the famous date palm groves of Elche and at last came
in sight of the sea at Alicante, which was our terminus. The journey of
about forty-five miles had taken us nearly four hours, and we were
almost an hour and a half late. Time-tables are more or less ornamental
in Spain.
Outside the station at Alicante there was a horde of omnibuses
surrounded by a fringe of touts. They were conducting their chaffering
for passengers with a reasonable quietness, until they espied us. But
perceiving that we were English and, therefore, fair prey, pandemonium
broke out. Gradually the omnibuses filled and the babel, for babel it
was, consisting of Spanish, Valenciano, bad French and worse English,
died down. Two omnibus touts, however, persisted, and at last, in order
to prevent battle between them, we chose our man for his looks. He
promised to take us to the fonda from which started the motor service to
Jijona.
We had been warned by our English friend that it was often difficult to
get seats on the motor, because the conveyance started from Jijona and
many of the passengers booked return tickets. The omnibus tout added to
this that there was a fiesta at Jijona, and that many people were going
there. However, he said:
"If there are no seats in the motor, we will surely get them on the
lorry, which will do just as well and is cheaper."
The omnibus was full with an unsmiling family, but we were crushed in.
We were dragged along beneath a magnificent avenue of date palm trees
which bordered the deep blue expanse of the Mediterranean, and then into
streets of modern and of bad architecture. The family got out and paid
the driver. Jan strained his eyes to see how much was the price, for we
had foolishly made no bargain with the driver. As far as he could see
most was paid in coppers. We then passed up into narrow and steep
streets and halted before a wide door. The tout got down, but returned
almost immediately, saying that the motor was full for two days.
"The motor-lorry is better," he said.
With some difficulty the bus was turned round in the narrow street and
we went downhill again, coming at length to the entrance of another
fonda. We passed through its broad entrance and at a small office window
interviewed an old man who said that there was room in the lorry but
that he did not know when it was going. So we deposited our luggage in
the wide entrance, amongst packing-cases, sacks of flour, mattresses
and japanned boxes. We then asked the price of the bus from the tout.
"Seven pesetas," he said.
The whole drive had not taken twenty minutes, and Jan was sure that the
other family of four had not paid more than two pesetas for the lot.
After some argument and much blasphemy from the driver, we paid five
pesetas, and the bus drove off vomiting curses at us from both driver
and tout. (On the return journey from Jijona we happened on the same
bus, but we made our bargain beforehand. The same trip then cost us two
pesetas, and was accomplished with smiles instead of curses, and both
driver and tout clapped us on the shoulder and wished us: "Vaya con
dios.")
This fonda was a typical peasant inn. The entrance door which pierced
through a block of buildings was big enough to admit a full-sized
traction engine, had there been such a thing in Alicante. This wide
passage led into a big courtyard open to the skies. On each side of the
courtyard a staircase led to balconies from which opened the doors of
the bedrooms, below were the dark stables, and the courtyard itself was
filled with the large two-wheeled tilted carts which, dragged by from
two to eight draught animals, keep up communications in Spain wherever
the railway does not penetrate. To the right of the entrance was the
fonda restaurant, and also a huge kitchen with several cooking fires at
which the traveller, if he wished, could cook his own meals, and a long
dining-table at which he could eat them. We went into the restaurant,
for we were hungry. To our table came an old couple. They were at once
friendly and told us that they had come from Africa. They were Spanish
but had lived more than thirty years in North Africa, and though the old
man could neither read nor write he could speak several African dialects
quite well. They were making a pleasure tour of the south of Spain for a
short holiday. They told us that the fonda was quite clean, and that we
could take a room in it without fear. They added that though Murcia was
but "a dirty village" the fonda there had been clean also, but that at
Guadix they had been eaten alive.
Our dinner finished, we sat ourselves down on a bench in the entrada and
looked about us.
To one side of the entrance was a small stall which sold iced drinks.
Men and women were sitting in after-lunch ease amid the boxes and sacks
which lined the opposite wall, on low chairs, or on the bench with us. A
dog, shaved all over its body, partly because of the heat, partly to
keep off the fleas with which all Spanish animals are infested, was
asleep on our mattress. The proprietor of the fonda was standing in a
lordly manner in the middle of the floor. He was dressed in white shirt
and flannel trousers, and must have weighed almost sixteen stone,
although quite young. He looked as if he had been inflated with air.
We had noticed, though we have not before mentioned, a curious illness
which seems prevalent in Spain. In Murcia were large numbers of
monstrous children; boys and girls had reached enormous proportions
before the age of ten years old. We came to the conclusion that it was a
form of illness, because, though the children seemed healthy enough, we
have never seen this development of monstrosity elsewhere, nor did large
numbers of them appear to survive adolescence, though there were a
certain number of excessively fat girls. The proprietor was such a
monstrosity grown up. His wife, a dark-eyed beauty, was sitting in a
rocking-chair near the kitchen door and her baby of about three years
old, standing in its mother's lap, was having a great lark, pretending
to catch lice in its mother's head. Thus do our ideas of innocent sports
for children differ from those of other nations.
There was some coming and going amongst the fonda visitors. The guests
seemed to be all peasants, the men in blouses, the women in pale skirts,
black blouses and shawls of paisley pattern over the shoulders. Many had
bundles of towels and of bathing dresses. One group we heard saying that
they had come down to Alicante for a week's sea bathing.
As the afternoon drew on and the lorry delayed, we again interviewed the
old man, who answered that probably it would not come that day.
Accordingly, we spoke to the proprietor, who rather roughly said that we
could have a room for two pesetas a night. The room was small, and the
bed only just big enough for two. There were two doors, one leading into
the interior of the inn, one out on to a balcony. The latter was half of
glass and had no lock, and as there was plenty of traffic along the
balcony, which was used for drying linen, underclothes and bathing
dresses, one only had a chance of privacy by closing the shutters,
leaving oneself in the dark, and no chance of sleeping with the window
open despite the heat. But Spain does not believe in open windows or
doors at night; it has "a robber complex."
We put our small luggage into the bedroom, leaving the large trunk and
the roll of mattress in the entrada. We then went out to explore the
town and to find a young painter to whom we carried an introduction from
Luis. Emilio, for such was his name, was one of the lucky ones of this
world. His parents kept a wine-shop which relieved him of a pressing
need of earning a living. He could thus study at his ease. Our
investigations took us through a shop full of large barrels, up some
narrow stairs and on to a landing where two girls were working at pillow
lace. Emilio received us with a brusque cordiality, showed us some of
his work, which had talent, came back to the inn with us, where he
arranged for our transport by the lorry whenever it should arrive, and
said that he would also find a carter to take our heavier luggage out on
a road waggon. This readiness to help a stranger, often at considerable
personal effort, we found characteristic of the parts of Spain which we
have visited.
Emilio, having an engagement, left us, and we strolled through the town.
To the east lies the older part of the Port clambering up the rugged
side of the steep rock, at the top of which lies the castle. The fishing
village, at the extreme end of Alicante, is beautiful with its small
primitive cubic houses painted in garish patterns. Through steeply
sloping streets we came to the beach. Here were Mediterranean fishing
boats drawn up in ranks; then, as we returned towards the harbour, more
open beach covered with people in gay dresses and children playing on
the sands. Then came the bathing establishments built out on piles over
the tideless sea. The bathing establishments increased in luxury towards
the town and were, for the most part, fantastic wooden erections of
Moorish design. We came back to the broad double avenue of palm trees
which faced the more luxurious hotels and cafés.
Night came softly on, and one by one amongst the palms the lights of the
town threw beams over the chattering people who strolled in
ever-thickening processions to and fro beneath the palm trees; mingled
with the conversation was the incessant click, click of the fans of the
girls and women. We went back to the fonda for supper and afterwards
returned to the sea front. The cafés had spread tables beneath the
palms, and we sat down enjoying our "Blanco y negro," an iced drink
composed half of white cream ice flavoured with vanilla, and half of
iced coffee.
Bands of musical beggars assailed us. Most of the mendicants were blind.
One group, a veritable orchestra, travelled from café to café clinging
to the edges of a bass viol which the one seeing member, the money
collector, dragged the way it should go, by the peg-head. There was an
old guitarist who played and made queer noises through a small gazoo.
Another orchestra of three, guitar, laud and bandurria, the latter
instrument a small cousin of the laud, and in this case played
beautifully by a blind boy of about nineteen years. There were other
beggars too, but the devil of cheap European music had entered into them
all. Not one played their own native Spanish music. I suppose nobody
would pay to hear it played.
At the end of the palm avenue an artist had set up an easel on a raised
dais. His work was illuminated by a strong acetylene gas lamp. The
canvas was painted bright sparrow's egg blue and surrounded by a frame
of staring gilt.
[Illustration]
On the blue canvas he was painting an imaginary landscape, the blue
serving as sky and for the waters of a still lake. A drab woman was
threading her way to and fro through the crowd which surrounded him,
crying out: "The numbers, the numbers. Who would like to win a
magnificent picture, framed complete for ten chances a penny?"
Another crowd surrounded a buck nigger who, displaying his magnificent
and gleaming teeth, was crying out the virtues of his dentifrice.
A third crowd listened to a quack doctor who, backed by a large picture
depicting the jungle, was selling a specific called "African Tonic." The
tonic, he said, was derived from essences extracted at enormous expense
from the tiger, the elephant, the monkey, and from I know not what else.
From time to time he rested his voice by turning on a squeaky
gramophone.
Tired from our journey we went to bed betimes.
We got up early. In the waggons, which were lined up in the big
courtyard, the families which had slept in them were making their
toilet. In the entrada, the old man of the inn, aided by the stable boy,
was packing away the hammock beds slung from trestles, on which slept
those travellers who, having no waggon, did not wish to pay the expense
of a bedroom.
We had noted small café stalls near to the market, so, in order to see
some more of Alicante life, we took our breakfast there rather than in
the fonda. The café stalls were wooden box-like kiosks, and they spread
wicker chairs and tables over the open street, and soldiers and workmen
were sitting sipping their morning refreshment. Beneath the shelter of
the kiosk a lad was making the day's supply of ice cream. The cream is
frozen by the amount of heat absorbed from it by the freezing mixture.
One might also say that the amount of refreshment to be derived from ice
cream seems proportionate to the amount of energy absorbed from the lad
who manufactures it: it appeared a fatiguing business. Crowds of people
on the way to market passed us, and to where we sat came the cries of
the market salesmen. We were not stared at here as we had been in
Murcia. Strangers were evidently more common.
A small boy stationed himself near our table gazing longingly at a
breakfast roll. To all intents and purposes he hypnotized it from the
table into his hand. He broke into unexpected French. His father, like
so many Spaniards, had been working at Lyons during the war. He deplored
the fact that he had no education, but said that he was trying to learn
some English from the sailors who came to Alicante. He had begun with
the swear words, of which already he had a fair collection. He said that
his father was a bootmaker, out of work, and asked if we had any boots
to mend. He wheedled also some cigarettes and a few coppers from us.
Emilio, who had sent off our heavy luggage on the previous night as he
had promised, met us, and together we went to a café on the front, where
we wrote a letter to Antonio saying that we had left our passports
behind by accident. In spite of this oversight we had decided to push on
to Jijona and to trust to luck.
After lunch we again sat down in the fonda wondering if the motor-lorry
would come. Many peasants also were there. Motor omnibuses drove in, but
these were destined for other parts. Opposite the bus office was a
gambling machine, into which one pushed a penny and if one were lucky
received back twopence, fourpence, sixpence or even tenpence. But this
machine had gone wrong, and the bulky proprietor spent the greater part
of the afternoon over it with a screw-driver. A drunkard was staggering
up and down, now shouting, now singing, now dancing a few unsteady
steps. The stable boys were making a butt of him. Presently he sat down
on a sack and fell asleep, his head tilted back, his mouth open. The
opportunity was too good to miss.
Pulling out his sketch book, Jan began to make a sketch. The old
ticket-office man, perceiving what Jan was doing, leaned over his
shoulder, and as the sketch developed began to chuckle. Soon there was a
double queue of spectators, giggling with suppressed laughter,
stretching on each side from Jan to the drunkard across the width of the
entrada. When the drawing was finished, the old man exclaimed:
"But that is excellent; will you not give it to me, Señor?"
Jan made of the drawing a rapid tracing which pleased the old man as
much as the original.
"I'll keep that," said the old man.
[Illustration]
To our horror he walked across the entrada, with a thump in the ribs
awoke the drunkard, and showed him the sketch. Gradually, as he realized
what had been done, an expression of wrath grew on the drunkard's face.
Luckily for us, he became possessed of the idea that the drawing had
been done by one of the stable boys. No one undeceived him and, amidst
roars of laughter, he addressed a long speech to the stable boy in
question.
"The rights of man," said the drunkard, "are inalienable, and of all the
rights of man, the greatest right is that of his person. The stable boy
has, therefore, transgressed against the most sacred of men's rights. I
could have excused most things," went on the drunkard, "but this is
inexcusable; to inflict indignity on a man in his own person. Since
neither the stable boy nor the spectators of this crime seem sensible of
the enormity they have committed, the only act by which I can express
the contempt which I feel for the meanness of your natures is that of
removing myself from the company of such low mortals."
Having thus delivered himself with the air of a Demosthenes, he
literally shook the dust from the soles of his alpagatas and staggered
out into the street. Coincident with the departure of the drunkard was
the arrival of the Jijona motor-lorry.
The lorry was heavy, with solid tyres. Michelin's motor guide had
described the route as: "Cart road bad and very indisposed," and we
wondered what the sixteen miles would value as experience. We all
scrambled in, arranging our luggage as best we could on our laps or
under the narrow wooden benches nailed to the lorry's sides. The centre
of the lorry was occupied with cargo, in this case barrels, some full,
some empty, standing on end. We thought that we had all fitted in so
nicely, but a wail from the courtyard drew our attention to an old woman
who, loaded with parcels and almost weeping with despair, had failed to
find a seat. We said "Move up" to each other, but no moving up was
possible. The old man came out in anger from the ticket-office.
"But this is ridiculous," he shouted; "there is room, there are so many
seats on the lorry, I sell so many seats, therefore there must be room."
Slowly the elucidation of the mystery dawned on us. Three of our
passengers were of such girth that each ought in common fairness to have
booked two seats for himself. So with much effort we squeezed and
shoved into the fat men until we gained a narrow slit of seat into which
the little old woman was dropped. But immediately the active pressure
was released the resilience of fat reasserted itself, and the little old
woman spent the first part of the journey moaning out that she was being
crushed to death. Most of the voyagers were peasants; one or two were
travellers going to the fiesta; one was dressed in soldier's uniform,
but he seemed to be neither officer nor private. We discovered later
that he was a veterinary surgeon. Our musical instrument caused some
attention and our fellow voyagers smiled at us with sympathy and
kindness.
"Are you artists?" they asked.
"Yes," we replied.
"Then we will come to your concert," said they.
The road was indeed "indisposed." We rolled, rocked, and bumped along
miles of dusty road, by the side of which the trees were so drenched in
dust that they were but ghosts of themselves; the herbage below seeming
like the delicate clay work of a magic potter, having no hint of green
for the eye. Nor can empty barrels be considered good travelling
companions. If the lorry were toiling uphill the barrels sidled down the
floor with a seeming leer. One snatched one's toes out of the way
without ceremony. On reaching the end of the lorry, the barrels spread
themselves sideways, crushing the knees of the sitters. When the lorry
reached the top of the hill and began to thunder down the new slope the
barrels bounced and bumped to the other end of the lorry, bruising
everybody in their passage. Finally the young soldier sat on one of the
centre barrels and tried to quell their antics, without much success.
The lorry climbed into the mountains, round roads which curved like a
whiplash. At one spot the young soldier remarked: "The motor-bus fell
over here once; six of the passengers were killed."
The sun beat down on the canvas top of the lorry, and the large white
porous water-jug hanging at the end was in constant demand. We halted at
a small and lonely house where beer was for sale. The passengers also
bought beans pickled in salt and handed them to each other.
The dusty miles rolled off, at one moment through grey cliffs which
shone in the evening light, and another over deep water courses, along
the bottom of which ran serried terraces of vines. Presently a pretty
girl, whom we took to be the daughter of a wealthy farmer, and who had
spent the better part of the journey flirting with the young soldier,
exclaimed: "Mira! Shishona!"[20]
Through a cleft between two mountains we caught a glimpse of distant
houses clustered up the side of a hill towards an old Saracen ruin which
gleamed ochreous against the evening sky.
In spite of the presence of a couple of factories, the entrance of
Jijona from the south is one of the most romantic sights we have seen in
Spain. Ancient Spanish buildings sprang from the edge of a ravine
covered with prickly pear, and faced a steep cliff, along the
precipitous face of which ran water courses. Old houses stood step above
step, on a hill so steep that the roadways were all staircases and the
houses had two entrances, the front into the lowest story and the back
into the upper, and often the back-yard was higher than the roof. A
white stone bridge carried the road with a noble curve across the
ravine, and round this curve we swung, the passengers waving hands and
shouting greetings, into the town.
Our destination was a casa de huespedes (half inn, half boarding-house)
called "La Vinaigre," and the name was not altogether unsuitable. But
our first reception was as cordial as we could have wished. Owing to our
friend's mattress, which the old hostess had recognized, we were
welcomed with open arms.