CRUMBLING CITIES
It was well along in the next afternoon that I descended at the station
of Avila and climbed a long dusty mile into the city. A scent of the
dim, half-forgotten past hovered over the close-walled, peculiarly
garbed place. When I had made a circuit of her ancient wall, through
which her no less time-worn cathedral thrusts its hips, I drifted down
into the dusty vega below, where in the church of Santo Tomas sleeps the
dead hope of "los reyes catolicos." If the sculptor be trustworthy the
prince would have been an intelligent, kindly lad, even though his
martial valor might never have rivaled that of his stout-hearted mother.
Returned to the city, I strolled for an hour along the lofty Paseo del
Rastro, watching the sun sink red behind the serrated jumble of
mountains on the far western horizon, beyond which lay my next
stopping-place; and so to bed in the Posada de la Estrella amid the
munching asses and snoring arrieros.
Avila is connected with Salamanca by rail, but the route forms a sharp
angle with its apex many miles to the north. I had decided, therefore,
to walk. Swinging down through the western city gate and across the
babbling Adaja by the aged stone bridge, I clambered again upward to
where a huge stone cross invites to a rest in its shade and a final
retrospect of crumbling Avila and her many-turreted, constraining wall.
An easy two-days' walk lay before me. For had not Heir Baedeker, so
seldom in error as to plain facts, announced the distance as thirty-five
miles?
As I wended on up the hillside, however, I was suddenly stricken profane
by a stone sign-post rising before me with the dismal greeting:
"Salamanca 99 kilometres."
Herr Baedeker was wrong by a little matter of thirty miles.
But I had set the time of my entrance into Salamanca; delay would bring
havoc to my delicately adjusted itinerary. I doubled my pace.
The way led through a country as savage of aspect as any in Spain,
waterless, dusty, glaring, overspread with huge rocks tumbled pell-mell
as if the Mason of the universe had thrown here the materials left over
from His building. By afternoon a few lean farms began to crowd their
way in between the rocks, now and then a sturdy, thick-set tree found
place, and over all nature hovered great clouds of locusts whose refrain
reminded how euphonious is the Spaniard's name for what we dub "dog
days,"--"canta la chicharra--the locust sings." The inhabitants of the
region seemed somewhat more in fortune's favor than the rest of the
peninsula. Passing peasants, though rare, had none a hungry look; their
carts were fancifully carved and painted both on body and wheels, while
the trappings of their cattle were decorative in the extreme.
All a summer day I tramped forward over hill and hollow toward the great
jagged range, the hardy trees dying out, the fields growing in size and
number, but the sierra seeming to hold ever as far aloof. Beyond a
small withered forest in which were roaming flocks of brown goats, I
climbed a steady five miles to a summit village exhibiting every outward
sign of poverty and most fittingly named "Salvadios--God save us." The
keeper of its one quasi-public house deigned after long argument to set
before me a lame excuse for supper, but loudly declined to furnish
lodging. I withdrew, therefore, to a threshing-floor across the way,
heaped high with still unbroken bundles of wheat, and put in a
shiveringly cold night--so great is the contrast between the seething
plains by day and this hilltop bitten by every wind--not once falling
into a sound sleep for the gaunt, savage curs that prowled about me.
At dawn I was already afoot and three hours later entered the city of
Penaranda, in the outskirts of which a fine plaza de toros was building,
but within all the confines of which was no evidence of school, library,
nor indeed of restaurant. I contented myself with a bit of fruit and
trudged on. This may not, perhaps, have been the hottest day of all that
Spanish summer, but it bore certainly all the earmarks thereof. The
earth lay cracked and blistered about me, the trees writhing with the
heat, the rays rising from the rocky soil like a dense stage-curtain of
steam. In a shriveled and parched pueblo of mud huts, exactly
resembling the villages of Palestine, I routed out a kindly old woman
for a foreshortened lunch; and then on again in the inferno, choking
fields of grain and vineyards soon becoming numerous on either hand.
The wise husbandmen, however, had sought refuge, and in all the grilling
landscape was not a human being to be seen, save and except a
sweat-dripping pedestrian from foreign parts straining along the
scorching highway.
This swung at length to the right, swooped down through a river that had
not a drop of water, and staggering to the top of an abrupt knoll,
showed me far off, yet in all distinctness, a rich reddish-brown city
gathered together on a low hilltop and terminating in glinting spires.
It was Salamanca; and of all the cities I have come thus upon unheralded
and from the unpeopled highway none can rival her in richness of color,
like ripe old wine, a city that has grown old gracefully and with
increasing beauty. So fascinating the sight that I sat down beneath the
solitary tree by the way to gaze upon it--and to swing half round the
circuit of the shrub as the sun drove the scanty shadow before it.
But I was still far off the golden-brown city and, setting slowly onward
in the descending evening, I all but encircled the place before the
carretera, coming upon the ancient puente romano, clambered upward into
its unrivaled Blaza Mayor.
Just back of this, four stories above the Plaza de la Verduga, or Place
of the Green Stuff, lives a widow whose little spare chamber is let in
the winter season to some unpretentious student of the now unpretentious
university. I engaged this, together with what of physical nourishment
should be reasonable, at three pesetas a day. As I took possession, the
daughter of the hostess, a muchacha of eight, peered in upon me hugging
a doll under one arm.
"Que muneca mas bonita!" I hazarded, which turned out to be unwise, for
the homage so overcame her diffidence that she came in not only to offer
the information that my complexion strangely resembled that of a lobster
in the salmantino museum, but such a fund of further information that it
was long before I had inveigled her outside the door and, throwing
myself on the bed, slept the clock round.
As in many another city it had been my fortune to reach Salamanca on the
eve of one of her great festivals. Indeed, that must be a foresighted
traveler who can journey through Spain without being frequently caught
up in the whirlpool of some local fiesta. The excuse this time was
Assumption Day. The festivities within the city walls offered nothing
of extraordinary, being chiefly confined to a band concert in the
central plaza. Richer by far would be the richest city of the earth
could she purchase and transplant into her own midst the Plaza Mayor of
Salamanca, with its small forest of palms, the rich brown medallioned
facades and surrounding colonnades beneath which the salmantino is wont
to stroll, la salmantina on his arm, while the band plays in the
flower-shrouded stand in its center. Salamanca might sell, too, in
spite of her boast that it is the finest in Spain, being poorer than the
proverbial church mouse, were she not also Spanish and prouder than she
is poor.
The real fiesta, however, took the form of a bullfight that had a
character all its own. Salamanca, as I have hinted, is no longer a city
of wealth. Indeed, those occasions are rare in these modern days when
she can indulge in a round of the national sport, even though she
possesses one of the largest bullrings in Spain. On this great holiday,
however, the city fathers had decided that nothing within the bounds of
reason was too good for the recreating of Salamanca's long unfeasted
children. A full-sized bullfight would, to be sure, have far
overstepped the bounds above mentioned. But after long debate and deep
investigation it had been concluded that a corrida with four bulls, no
horses, one real matador, and seats of all shades and distinctions at
one peseta each might be conceded.
With this unlimited choice of vantage-points at my own price I went out
early to the plaza and picked my place in the sombra in what was
evidently a section reserved for the guardia civil; for before long the
guards, in full uniform and their three-cornered hats, began to gather
about me, first in pairs, then in groups, then in swarms, until I was
wholly, shut in and surrounded by guardias civiles like a dandelion in
the center of a bed of tulips. Far from resenting my intrusion, however,
if such it was, they initiated me into their order with botas and
cigarettes and included me in their conversation and merriment during
the rest of the day.
The entertainment began at four. With that exception, however, it had
few points of similarity with the regulation corrida. The procession
entered, fully six men in torero garb--though that of two or three of
them fitted like amateur theatrical costumes--followed by two horsemen,
two, in their shirt-sleeves, as was also senor el alcalde in his box.
The key thrown, the fight began; with the elimination of the one
unquestionably unpleasant feature,--the killing of horses. Even aged
hacks cost money and, as I have already more than once suggested, money
is a rare commodity in Salamanca. When the bull had been worried a bit
with the cloaks, the banderilleros proceeded at once to plant their
darts. The professional matador, a young man rejoicing in the name of
Trueno--"Thunder"--had, therefore, a far more difficult task than usual,
for more than anything else it is the venting of his rage and strength
on the blindfolded steeds that tires the bull, and on this occasion it
was a still wild and comparatively fresh animal which the diestro was
called upon to face. He despatched his three allotted bulls, however,
without accident and to the vociferous satisfaction of the audience,
which filled even at the low price only a bit more than the shaded
section. It was not, as the guardia beside me was at some pains to
explain, that there were not salmantinos quite sufficient to pack the
plaza to overflowing, but that there were not pesetas enough in town to
go round. In the throng, too, were no small number of peasants from all
the widely surrounding country, some in the old dress with knee
breeches.
But to touch upon the unusual features of the corrida. As a part of the
worrying of the second bull a chulo placed a chair in the ring and,
standing upon it with neither weapon nor cloak, awaited the charge.
When the bull had all but reached him he sprang suddenly into the air,
the animal dashed under him and, falling upon the unoffending article of
furniture, dissolved it thoroughly into its component parts and
scattered them broadcast about the arena.
The most nerve-thrilling performance, however, that it was my privilege
to see in all the devil-may-care land of Spain was the feat that
followed immediately on the death of the chair-wrecker. It was the
"star attraction" of the day and was announced on the posters in all the
Spaniard's richness of superlatives--and he is a born and instinctive
writer of "ads." Clinging as closely as possible to the eloquent
phraseology of the original the announcement may be set forth in
near-English as follows:
"Various are the chances (tricks) which are executed in the different
plazas of Spain inside the taurine art, but none that has more called
attention than that which is practised by JOSE VILLAR son of the
memorable matador (killer, murderer) of bulls Villarillo who"--not
father Illo, who has left off all earthly sport, but son Jose--"locating
himself in the center of the arena and placed with the head towards
below and the feet by above imploring the public to maintain the most
impressive silence during the risk (fate) consummates the trick (chance)
of Tancredo; very well, this Management not reflecting on (sparing)
either expense or sacrifice has contracted with him in order that he
shall fulfill (lift, pull off; _sic._) this trick (risk) on the third
bull to the end that the salmantinos shall know it, with which program
this Management believes to have filled to the full the desires of the
aficionados (rooters, fans, amateurs)."
The second bull, therefore, having been ignominiously dragged to
oblivion and the butcher-shop, and the blood patches of the arena
resanded, there sallied forth from the further gate a small, athletic
man of thirty-five or so, hatless--and partly hairless--dressed from
head to foot in the brightest red, of a material so thin that the
movement of his every muscle could be plainly seen beneath it. He was
entirely empty-handed. He marched with sprightly stride across the ring
and, bowing low to the alcalde in his box above, addressed to the public
a warning and an entreaty to maintain the utmost silence during the
"consummation of the risk." An assistant then appeared, carrying a
small wooden box with a piece of gas-pipe six feet long fixed upright in
the top of it. This Villar placed exactly in the center of the ring, a
hundred yards or more in every direction from the barrier. Across the
gas-pipe, near the top, he fastened a much shorter piece, thus forming a
cross. On the box he placed a circular roll of cloth, stood on his head
thereon, hooked his toes over the cross-piece, waved a hand gaily to the
public, and folded his arms. Every other torero stepped outside the
ring, and the toril gate swung open.
A wild snort, and there plunged into the arena as powerful and savage a
brute as it had ever yet been my lot to see. For an instant he stood
motionless, blinking in the blinding sunlight. Then suddenly catching
sight of the statue flaming with the hated color, he shot away toward it
with the speed of an express-train--a Spanish express at least--until, a
bare three feet from it, he stopped instantly stone-still by thrusting
out his forelegs like a Western broncho, then slowly, gingerly tiptoed
up to the motionless figure, sniffed at it, and turned and trotted away.
The public burst forth in a thunderclap of applause. Villar got right
end up as calmly and gracefully as a French count in a drawing-room,
laid a hand on his heart, and smiling serenely, bowed once, twice,
th---- and just then a startled roar went up from the tribunes, for the
bull had suddenly turned and, espying the man in red, dashed at him with
lowered horns and a bellow of anger.
There is nowhere registered, so far as my investigations carry, the
record of Jose Villar, son of Villarillo, in the hundred-yard dash. But
this much may be asserted with all assurance, that it has in it nothing
of that slow, languid, snail-like pace of the ten-second college
champion. Which was well; for some two inches below his flying heels,
as he set a new record likewise in the vaulting of barriers, the
murderous horns crashed into the oak plank tablas with the sound of a
freight collision and an earnestness that gave work to the plaza
carpenters for some twenty minutes to come.
Therein Villar was more fortunate than the Mexican Tancredo, inventor of
the "suerte," and for whom it was named. Tancredo, like Dr. Guillotin,
was overreached by his own invention, for while his record for the
hundred was but a second or two less than that of Villar, it was just
this paltry margin that made him, on the day next following his last
professional appearance, the chief though passive actor in a spectacle
of quite a different character.
The "Suerte de Tancredo" has never won any vast amount of popularity in
Spain, except with the spectators. Toreros in general manifest a
hesitation akin to bashfulness in thus seeking the plaudits of the
multitude. By reason of which diffidence among his fellows, Jose, son
of Villarillo, memorable matador de toros, pockets after each such
recreation a sum that might not seem overwhelming to an American captain
of industry or to a world-famous tenor, but one which the average
Spaniard cannot name in a single breath.
Salamanca's day of amusement did not, however, by any means end here.
Beneath the name of "Thunder," the professional matador, there was
printed with equal bombast that of FERNANDO MARTIN. Now Fernando was
quite evidently a salmantino butt, a tall gawky fellow whose place in
the society of Salamanca was apparently very similar to that of those
would-be or has-been baseball players to be found vegetating in many of
our smaller towns. Like them, too, Fernando was in all probability wont
to hover about the pool-rooms and dispensing-parlors of his native city,
boasting of his untested prowess at the national game. That his talents
might not, therefore, forever remain hidden under a wineglass, and also,
perhaps, because his services might be engaged at five hundred pesetas
less than the five hundred that a professional sobresaliente would have
demanded, the thoughtful city fathers had caused him to be set down on
the program, likewise in striking type, as "SUBSTITUTE WITH NECESSITY
(CON NECESIDAD) TO KILL THE FOURTH BULL."
It was this "necesidad" that worked the undoing of Fernando Martin.
When the customary by-play had been practised on the fourth animal,
enter Fernando with bright red muleta, false pigtail, glinting sword,
and anything but the sure-of-one's-self countenance of a professional
espada. He faced the brute first directly in front of the block of
guardias civiles, and the nearest he came to laying the animal low at
the first thrust was to impale on a horn and sadly mutilate a sleeve of
his own gay and rented jacket. The crowd jeered, as crowds will the
world over at the sight of a man whose father and mother and even
grandfather they have known for years trying to prove himself the equal
of men imported from elsewhere. Fernando advanced again, maneuvering
for position, though with a peculiar movement of the knees not usual
among toreros, and which was all too visible to every eye in the hooting
multitude. Trueno, the professional, stuck close at his side in spite
of the clamorous demand of the public that he leave the salmantino to
play out his own game unhampered. Martin hazarded two or three more
nerveless thrusts, with no other damage, thanks to the watchful eye and
cloak of Trueno, than one toss of ten feet and a bleeding groin. By
this time the jeering of his fellow-townsmen had so overshadowed the
tyro's modicum of good sense that he turned savagely on his protector
and ordered him to leave the ring. Fortunately Trueno was not of the
stuff to take umbrage at the insults of a foolish man in a rage, or the
population of Salamanca would incontestably have been reduced by one
before that merry day was done.
The utmost length of time between the entrance of a professional matador
for the last act and the death of the bull is four or five minutes.
Fernando Martin trembled and toiled away ten, twenty, thirty, forty.
Slowly, but certainly and visibly his bit of courage oozed away; the
peculiar movement of his knees grew more and more pronounced. No longer
daring to meet the bull face to face, he skulked along the barrier until
the animal's tail was turned and, dashing past him at full speed,
stabbed backward at his neck as he ran, to the uproarious merriment of
the spectators. Trueno saved his life certainly a score of times. At
last, when the farce had run close upon fifty minutes, a signal from the
alcalde sent across the arena the sharp note of a bugle, two
_cabestros_, or trained steers were turned into the ring, and the bull,
losing at once all belligerency, trotted docilely away with them. The
star of Fernando Martin, would-be matador de toros, was forever set, and
if he be not all immune to ridicule his native city surely knows him no
more.
It is law that no bull that has once entered the ring shall live.
Curious to know what was to be the fate of this animal, I sprang over
the barrier and hurried across to the gate by which he had disappeared.
There I beheld a scene that forever dispelled any notion that the task
of the matador is an easy one, however simple it may look from the
tribunes. The bull was threshing to and fro within a small corral,
bellowing with rage and lashing the air with his tail. It required six
men and a half-hour of time to lasso and drag him to the fence. With a
hundred straining at the rope his head was drawn down under the gate, a
man struck him several blows with a sledge, and another, watching his
opportunity, swung his great navaja and laid wide open the animal's
throat.
It was late when, having mingled for some time with the country folk
dancing on the sandy plain before the plaza, I returned to the city for
my bundle and repaired to the station. A twelve-hour ride was before
me. For I had decided to explore a territory where even the scent of
tourists is unknown,--the northwest province of Galicia.
The train that I boarded at eleven was crowded with countrymen returning
from the day's festival, a merry but in no sense intoxicated company, in
which I saw my first wooden-shod Galicians. The car was, for once, of
the American pattern--though of Spanish width--with thirty seats each
large enough for three persons. The brakeman, too, who stood lantern on
arm in the open door, bore an unusual resemblance to an American
"shack."
A dozen men were standing in the aisle, but to my surprise one seat near
the center of the car seemed to be unoccupied. When I reached it,
however, I found a priest stretched out on his back, his hands clasped
over his paunch, snoring impressively. I carried a protest to the
brakeman and with a snort he swooped down upon the sleeper. At sight of
him, however, he recoiled.
"Carajo!" he cried. "Es un padre! I could n't disturb his reverence."
I stooped and touched the monopolist on the shoulder, being in no mood
to remain standing all night. Moreover, I had long been curious to know
the Spaniard's attitude toward a man who should treat a priest as an
ordinary human being. "His reverence" grunted. I touched him again.
His snore lost a beat or two and began once more. I shook him more
forcibly. He opened his blood-shot eyes, snorted "Huh!" so much like a
certain monopolist of the animal kingdom that even the passengers about
me laughed at the resemblance--and fell again to snoring. I sat down
gently on his fat legs and, when he kicked me off, confiscated a place.
He sat up with the look of a man whose known world has suddenly crumbled
about his ears and glared at me with bulging eyes a full two minutes,
while over the faces of the onlookers flitted a series of winks and
smiles.
He was just huddling himself up again in the two-thirds of the seat that
remained to him when the door opened and Trueno, the matador, his little
_coleta_ peeping out from beneath his hat, his sword-case under one arm,
entered and, spying the extra place, sat down in it with scant ceremony.
We fell to talking. The torero was a jovial, explosive, devil-may-care
fellow who looked and dressed his character well. The priest slunk off
somewhere in the thickest hours and his place was taken by a peasant who
had been standing near me since leaving Salamanca. When he found
opportunity to break into the conversation he addressed me with an
amused smile:
"You are not then a Catholic, senor?"
"No."
"Ah! A socialist!" he cried with assurance.
For to the masses of southern Europe socialist and non-Catholic are
synonymous.
"I doubt, senor," I observed, "whether you yourself are a Catholic."
"Como, senor!" he cried, raising his hands in a comical gesture of
quasi-horror. "I, a cristino viejo, no Catholic!"
"Do you go to church and do what your cura commands?"
"What nonsense!" he cried, using a still more forcible term. "Who does?
My wife goes now and then to confession. I go to church, senor, to be
baptized, married, and buried."
"Why go then?"
"Caramba!" he gasped. "How else shall a man be buried, married, and
baptized?"
Toward morning I fell into a doze, from which I was awakened by the
extraordinary sensation of feeling cold. Dawn was touching the far
horizon. The train was straining upward through a sharply rising
country. As the sun rose we came in sight of Astorga, standing drearily
on her bleak hilltop, and in memory of Gil Blas and for the unlimbering
of my legs I alighted and climbed into the town. It proved as
uninteresting as any in Spain, and before the morning was old I was
again riding northwestward. Soon there came an utter change of scene;
tunnels grew unaccountable, the railroad winding its way doggedly upward
through a wild, heavily wooded mountain region that had little in common
with familiar Spanish landscapes. In mid-afternoon I dismounted at the
station of Lugo, the capital of Galicia.