SPANISH ROADS AND ROADSTERS
In the gloom of evening I espied on a dull, sterile hillside a vast
rambling venta, as bare, slate-colored, and marked with time as the
hills themselves. Here was exactly such a caravansary as that in which
he of the Triste Figura had watched over his arms by night and won his
Micomiconian knighthood. It consisted of an immense enclosure that was
half farmyard, backed by a great stable of which a strip around two
sides beneath the low vaulted roof had been marked off for the use of
man; the whole dull, gloomy, cheerless, unrelieved by a touch of color.
Within the building were scattered a score of mules, borricos and
machos. Several tough-clothed muleteers, with what had been bright
handkerchiefs wound about their brows, sauntered in the courtyard or sat
eating with their great razor-edged navajas their lean suppers of brown
bread and a knuckle of ham. Even the massive wooden pump in the yard
among an array of ponderous carts and wagons was there to complete the
picture. Indeed, this was none other than the Venta de Cardenas,
reputed the very same in which Don Greaves passed his vigilant night,
where Sancho was tossed in a blanket and Master Nicholas, the barber,
bearded himself with a cow's tail.
The chance betrayal of my nationality aroused in the arrieros a
suggestion of wonder and even an occasional question. But in general
their interest was as meager as their knowledge of the world outside the
national boundaries. Not once did they display the eagerness to learn
that is so characteristic of the Italian. For the Spaniard considers it
beneath his dignity as a caballero and a cristino viejo to show any
marked curiosity, especially concerning a foreign land, which cannot but
be vastly inferior to his own. Four centuries of national misfortune and
shrinkage have by no means eradicated his firm conviction, implanted in
his mind by Ferdinand and Isabel in the days of conquest, that he is the
salt of the earth, superior in all things to the rest of the human race.
Spain is one of the most illiterate countries of the civilized world,
yet also one of the best educated, unless education be merely that mass
of undigested and commonly misapplied information absorbed within four
walls. Few men have a more exact knowledge, a more solid footing on the
everyday earth than the peasant, the laborer, the muleteer of Spain.
One does not marvel merely at the fluent, powerful, entirely grammatical
language of these unlettered fellows, but at the sound basic wisdom that
stands forth in their every sentence. If their illiteracy denies them
the advantage of absorbing the festering rot of the yellow journal, in
compensation they have a wealth of vocabulary and a forceful simplicity
of diction that raises them many degrees above the corresponding class
in more "advanced" lands.
It is of the "lower" classes that I am speaking, the common sense and
backbone of Spain. The so-called upper class is one of the most truly
ignorant and uneducated on earth--though among its members, be it noted,
is no illiteracy. The maltreated Miguel was adamantinely right in
choosing his hero from the higher orders; no Spaniard of the masses
could be so far led astray from reason as to become a Quixote.
It is noticeable that the Spaniard of the laboring class has almost none
of that subservience born in the blood in the rest of Europe. Not only
does each man consider himself the equal of any other; he takes and
expects the world to take for granted that this is the case, and never
feels called upon to demonstrate that equality to himself and the rest
of the world by insolence and rowdyism. Dissipation he knows not,
except the dissipation of fresh air, sunshine, and a guitar. Nowhere in
Christian lands is drunkenness more rare. Like the Arab the hardy
lower-class Spaniard thrives robustly on a mean and scanty diet; he can
sleep anywhere, at any time, and to the creature comforts is supremely
indifferent. One can hardly believe this the country in which Alfonso X
felt it necessary to enact stern laws against the serving of more than
two dishes of meat at a meal or the wearing of "slashed" silks. Yet the
Spain of to-day is not really a cheap country; it is merely that within
its borders frugality is universal and held in honor rather than
contempt.
When the evening grew advanced, my fellow guests lay down on the bare
cobble-stones of the venta, making pillows of the furniture of their
mules, and were soon sleeping peacefully and sonorously. For me,
soft-skinned product of a more ladylike world, was spread a muleteer's
thick blanket in the embrasure of a wooden-blinded window, and amid the
munching of asses and the not unpleasant smell of a Spanish stable I,
too, drifted into slumber.
From dawn until early afternoon I marched on across the rocky vastness
of Spain, where fields have no boundary nor limit, a gnarled and osseous
country and a true despoblado, as fruitless as that sterile neck of sand
that binds Gibraltar to the continent. It is in these haggard,
unpeopled plateaus of the interior that one begins to believe that the
population of the peninsula is to-day barely one-third what it was in
the prosperous years of Abd er-Rahman.
At length, across a valley that was like a lake of heat waves, appeared
Santa Cruz, a hard, colorless town where I was forced to be content with
the usual bread, cheese and wine, the former as ossified as the
surrounding countryside. In the further outskirts of the place I found
a potter at work in a large open hovel and halted to pass the most
heated hour with him. In one end of the building was a great trough of
clay in which a bare-foot boy was slowly treading up and down. Now and
again he caught up a lump of the dough and deposited it on a board
before the potter. This the latter took by the handful and, placing it
on his wheel, whirled it quickly into a vessel of a shape not unlike a
soup-bowl. I inquired what these sold for and with a sigh he replied:
"Three small dogs apiece, cocidos (cooked)"--pointing at the kiln--"y
cuantos--how many break in the glazing! It is no joyful trade, senor."
Once he left his work to munch a crust and to offer me a cigarette and a
drink from his leather bota, but soon drifted back to his task with the
restless, harassed look of the piece-worker the world over. As I sat
watching his agile fingers a bit drowsily, there came suddenly back to
memory the almost forgotten days when I, too, had toiled thus in the
gloomy, sweltering depths of a factory. Truer slavery there never was
than that of the piece-worker under our modern division of labor.
Stroll through a factory to find a man seated at a machine stamping
strips of tin into canheads at two cents a hundred by a few simple turns
of the wrist, and his task seems easy, almost a pastime in its
simplicity. But go away for a year, travel through half the countries
of the globe, go on a honeymoon to Venice and the Grecian isles, and
then come back to find him sitting on the self-same stool, in the
self-same attitude, stamping strips of tin into canheads at two cents a
hundred by a few simple turns of the wrist.
Three blazing hours passed by, and I found myself entering a rolling
land of vineyards, heralding wine-famous Valdepenas. The vines were low
shrubs not trained on sticks, the grapes touching the ground. A dip in
an exotic stream reduced the grime and sweat of travel, and just beyond
I came again upon the railway. A half-hour along it brought me face to
face with the first foreign tramp I had met in Spain,--a light-haired,
muscular youth in tattered, sun-brown garb, his hob-nailed shoes swung
over one shoulder and around his feet thick bandages of burlap. He was
a German certainly, perhaps a modern Benedict Moll whose story would
have been equally interesting in its absurdity. But he passed me with
the stare of a man absorbed in his personal affairs and accustomed to
keep his own counsel, and stalked away southward along the scintillant
railroad.
I halted for a drink at the stuccoed dwelling of a track-walker. In the
grassless yard, under the only imitation of a tree in the neighborhood,
slept a roadster. Now and again the chickens that scratched in vain the
dry, lifeless earth about him, marched disconsolately across his
prostrate form.
"Poor fellow," said the track-walker's wife at the well, "he has known
misery, more even than the rest of us. Vaya como duerme!"
I sat down in the streak of shade that was crawling eastward across him.
He wore a ten-day beard and the garb of a Spanish workman of the city,
set off by a broad red faja around his waist. In one bulging pocket of
his coat appeared to be all his earthly possessions.
There was no evidence of overwhelming "miseria" in the cheery greeting
with which he awoke, and as our ways coincided we continued in company.
He was a Sevillian named Jesus, bound northward in general and wherever
else the gods might lead him.
"For a long time there has been no work in Seville for nosotros, the
carpenters," he explained, though with no indication of grief. "This
half year I have been selling apricots and azucarillos in the bullring
and on the Alameda. But each day more of Seville comes to sell and less
to buy. I should have gone away long ago, but my comrade Gaspare would
not leave his amiga. Gasparo is a stone-polisher and had work.
"Then one day I am taken by the police for I know not what. When after
two weeks I come out, Gasparo is gone. But he has come north and
somewhere I shall run across him."
Jesus had just passed through a marvelous experience, which he proceeded
to relate in all his Latin wealth of language--though not in the
phraseology, of a graduate roadster:
"Mira V., hombre! Two nights ago, when my feet are worn away with more
than ten leguas of walking on the railroad, I come to Baeza. It is
dark, and I wander along the track to find a soft bank to sleep. On the
short railroad that is at each station there is waiting a train of
merchandise. Suddenly a great idea comes to me. 'Sh! Jesus,' I
whisper, 'what if you should hide yourself away somewhere on this train
of merchandise? It would perhaps bring you to the next station.'
"With great quiet I climb a wagon and hide myself between bales of cork.
Screech! Brrr! Rboom! The train is off, and all night I am
riding--without a ticket. But at Vilches the man that goes with the
train with a lantern comes by and it is my curse to be making some
noise, moving to roll a cigarette. 'Ya te 'pia!' (I spy you!) he cries.
Vaca que soy! So of course I must get down. But mira, hombre! There I
have traveled more than twelve miles without paying a perrito!"
I had not the heart to disillusion him with a yarn or two from the land
of the "hobo."
In the telling we had come within sight of Valdepenas. It was a "valley
of rocks" indeed, though a city of good size and considerable evidence
of industry, abounding with great _bodegas_, or wine warehouses. As we
trudged through the long straight street that had swallowed up the
highway, we passed the _taller_ of a marble-cutter.
"It is in a place like this that Gasparo works," sighed Jesus, wandering
languidly in at the open door. I was strolling slowly on when a whoop
as of a man suddenly beset by a band of savages brought me running back
into the establishment. Jesus was shaking wildly by both hands a
stockily-built young fellow in shirt sleeves and white canvas apron, who
was rivaling him in volubility of greeting. Gasparo was found.
Still shouting incoherently, the two left the shop and squatted in the
shade along the outside wall.
"Hombre!" panted Jesus, when his excitement had somewhat died down. "I
have told myself that by to-morrow we should be tramping the carretera
together."
But Gasparo shook his head, sadly yet decisively.
"No, amigo. Jamas! Nunca! Never do I take to the road again. I have
here a good job, the finest of patrons. No. I shall stay, and send for
the amiga--or find another here."
With the dignity of a caballero, Jesus accepted the decree without
protest, and wished his erstwhile comrade luck and prosperity. Then
that they might part in full knowledge, he launched forth in the story
of his journey from Seville. Gasparo listened absently, shaking his
head sadly from time to time. When the episode of the amateur hoboing
began, he sat up with renewed interest; before it was ended he was
staring at the speaker with clenched fists, his eyes bulging, the
cigarette between his lips stone-dead. From that great epic Jesus
jumped without intermission to a hasty survey of the anticipated joys
that lay between him and Madrid. Suddenly Gasparo sprang into the air
with an explosive howl, landing on his feet.
"By the blood of your namesake!" he shouted. "How can a man stay always
in one place? This daily drudgery will kill me! I will throw the job
in the patron's face, and get my wages this very minute, amaguito, and
we will go to Madrid together. Jesus Maria! Who knows but we can hide
ourselves on another freight train!"--and crying over his shoulder some
rendezvous, he disappeared within the establishment.
We sauntered on to the central plaza. It was utterly treeless and paved
with cobble-stones; nor could we find a patch of grass or a shaded bench
in all the neighborhood.
"Look here, senor!" cried Jesus, suddenly rushing toward a policeman who
was loitering in the shade of a bodega. "Don't you have any parks or
Alamedas in this val de penas of yours? You call this a city!"
"Senor," replied the officer in the most apologetic of voices, "we are
not a rich city, and the rain so seldom falls in La Mancha. I am very
sorry," and touching a finger respectfully to his cap, he strolled
slowly on.
Though the sun was low it was still wiltingly hot in the stony streets.
Jesus, as I knew, was penniless. I suggested therefore that I would
willingly pay the score of two for the privilege of retreating to the
coolness of a wineshop.
"Bueno!" cried the Sevillian. "The wine of Valdepenas is without equal,
and of the cheapest--if you know where to buy. Vamonos, hombre!"
He led the way down the street and by some Castilian instinct into a
tiny underground shop that was ostensibly given over to the sale of
charcoal. The smudged old keeper motioned us to the short rickety bench
on which he had been dreaming away the afternoon and, descending still
lower by a dark hole in the floor, soon set before us a brown glazed
pitcher holding a _quarto_--about a quart--of wine, for which I paid him
approximately three and a half cents.
In all western Europe I have drunk the common table wine in whatever
quantity it has pleased me, and suffered from it always the same effect
as from so much clear water. It may be that the long tramp under a
scorching sun and the distance from my last meal-place altered
conditions. Certainly there was no need of the seller's assurance that
this was genuine "valdepenas" and that what had been sold us elsewhere
as such was atrociously adulterated. Before the pitcher was half empty,
I noted with wonder that I was taking an extraordinary interest in the
old man's phillipic against the government and its exorbitant tax on
wine. Jesus, too, grew in animation, and when the subterranean
Demosthenes ended with a thundering, "Si, senores! If it wasn't for the
cursed government you and I could drink just such wine as this pure
valdepenas anywhere as if it was water!" I was startled to hear us both
applaud loud and long. A scant four-cents' worth had seemed so
parsimonious a treat for two full-thirsted men that I had intended to
order in due time a second pitcherful. But this strange mirth seemed
worthy of investigation. I sipped the last of my portion and made no
movement to suggest a replenishing. A few minutes later the old man had
bade us go with the Almighty, and we were strolling away arm in arm.
The sun was setting when we reached the plaza. We sat down on the
cathedral steps. The Sevillian had suddenly an unaccountable desire to
sing. He struck up one of the Moorish-descended ballads of his native
city. To my increasing astonishment I found myself joining in. Not
only that, but for the first and last time of my existence I caught the
real Andalusian rhythm. An appreciative audience of urchins gathered.
Then the sacristan stepped out and politely invited us to choose some
other stage.
Across the square was a casa de comidas. We entered and ordered dinner.
The senora served us about one-third of what the bill-of-fare promised,
and demanded full price--something that had never before happened in all
my Spanish experience. I protested vociferously--another wholly
unprecedented proceeding. The policeman who had apologized for the
absence of parks sauntered in, and I laid the case before him. The
senora restated it still more noisily. I declared I would not pay more
than one peseta. The lady took oath that I would pay two. The
policeman requested me to comply with her demand. I refused to the
extent of commanding him to take his hand off the hilt of his sword. He
apologized and suggested that we split the difference. This seemed
reasonable. I paid it, and we left. Dark night had settled down. We
marched aimlessly away into it. Somewhere Gasparo fell in with us.
Somewhere else, on the edge of the city, we came upon a heap of bright
clean straw on a threshing floor, and fell asleep.