In Seville, at the half-way point of the road that runs from the
Macarena gate to the convent of San Jerónimo, there is, among other
famous taverns, one which, because of its location and the special
features that attach to it, may be said to have been, if it is not now,
the _real thing_, the most characteristic of all the Andalusian roadside
inns.
Picture to yourself a little house, white as the driven snow, under its
roof of tiles, some reddish, some deep green, with an endless growth of
yellow mustard and sprigs of mignonette springing up among them. A
wooden overhang shadows the door, which has on either side a bench of
cemented brick. Mortised into the wall, which is broken by various
little casements, opened at caprice to give light to the interior, some
lower, some higher, one square, another imitating a Moorish arched
window with its dividing colonnettes, or a dormer, are seen at regular
distances iron spikes and rings for hitching the horses. A vine, full of
years, which twists its blackening stems in and out of the sustaining
wooden lattice, clothing it with clusters of grapes and broad green
leaves, covers like a canopy the guest-hall, that consists of three pine
benches, half a dozen rickety rush chairs, and as many as six or seven
crippled tables made of ill-joined boards. On one side of the house
climbs a honeysuckle, clinging to the cracks in the wall, up to the
roof, from whose eaves droop sprays that sway with the wind, like
floating curtains of verdure. On the other side runs a fence of wattled
twigs, defining the bounds of a little garden that looks like a basket
of rushes overflowing with flowers. The tops of two great trees,
towering up behind the tavern, form the dark background against which
stand out its white chimneys; the decoration is completed by the
orchard-plots full of century-plants and blackberries, the broom that
grows on the borders of the river, and the Guadalquivir, which flows
into the distance, slowly winding its tortuous way between those rural
banks to the foot of the ancient convent of San Jerónimo, that peers
above the thick olive groves surrounding it and traces the black
silhouette of its towers against a transparent, azure sky.
Imagine this landscape animated by a multitude of figures--men, women,
children and animals, forming groups that vie with one another in the
characteristic and the picturesque; here the innkeeper, round and ruddy,
seated in the sun on a low chair, rolling between his hands the tobacco
to make a cigarette, with the paper in his mouth; there a huckster of
Macarena who sings, rolling up his eyes, to the accompaniment of his
guitar, while others beat time by clapping their hands or striking their
glasses on the tables; over yonder a group of peasant girls with their
gauzy kerchiefs of a million colors, and a whole flower-pot of pinks in
their hair, who play the tambourine, and scream, and laugh, and talk at
the top of their voices as they push like mad the swing hung between two
trees; and the serving-boys of the tavern who come and go with trays of
wine-glasses full of manzanilla and with plates of olives; and the group
of village people who swarm in the road; two drunken fellows quarrelling
with a dandy who is making love, in passing, to a pretty girl; a cock
that, proudly spreading out its wings, crows from the thatch of the
poultry-yard; a dog that barks at the boys who tease him with sticks and
stones; olive-oil boiling and bubbling in the pan where fish is frying;
the cracking of the whips of the cab-drivers who arrive in a cloud of
dust; a din of songs, castanets, peals of laughter, voices, whistles and
guitars, and blows on the tables, and clappings, and crash of breaking
pitchers, and thousands of strange, discordant sounds forming a jocund
hullabaloo impossible to describe. Fancy all this on a pleasant calm
afternoon, the afternoon of one of the most beautiful days in Andalusia
where all the days are so beautiful, and you will have an idea of the
spectacle that presented itself for the first time to my eyes, when, led
by its fame, I came to visit that celebrated tavern.
This was many years ago; ten or twelve, at least. I was there as a
stranger, away from my natural environment, and everything about me,
from the cut of my clothes to the astonished expression of my face, was
out of keeping with that picture of frank and boisterous jollity. It
seemed to me that the passers-by turned their heads to stare at me with
the dislike with which one regards an intruder.
Not wishing to attract attention nor choosing that my appearance should
be made the butt of mockeries more or less dissembled, I took a seat at
one side of the tavern door, called for something to drink, which I did
not drink, and when all had forgotten my alien presence, I drew out a
sheet of sketching paper from the portfolio which I carried with me,
sharpened a pencil, and began to look about for a characteristic figure
to copy and preserve as a souvenir of that day.
Soon my eyes fastened on one of the girls forming the merry group around
the swing. She was tall, slender, brunette, with sleepy eyes, big and
black, and hair blacker than her eyes. While I was making the sketch a
group of men, among them one who played lively flourishes on the guitar
with much skill, chorused songs that alluded to personal qualities, the
secrets of love, the likings of the girls who were sporting about the
swing or stories of their jealousy and their disdain,--songs to which
these in their turn responded with others no less saucy, piquant and
gay.
The slender brunette, quick of wit, whom I had chosen for model, led the
singing of the women, composing the quatrains and reciting them to her
companions who greeted them with clapping and laughter, while the
guitar-player seemed to be the leader of the lads and the one eminent
among them all for his cleverness and ready retorts.
For my part, it did not take me long to understand that between these
two there was a feeling of affection which betrayed itself in their
songs, full of transparent allusions and enamoured phrases.
When I finished my drawing, night was beginning to fall. Already there
had been lighted in the tower of the cathedral the two lanterns of the
shrine of the bells, and their lustres seemed like fiery eyes from that
giant of brick and mortar which dominates all the city. The groups were
going, melting away little by little and disappearing up the road in the
dim twilight silvered by the moon, that now began to show against the
violet dusk of the sky. The girls went singing away together, and their
clear, bright voices gradually lessened until they became but a part of
the other indistinct and distant sounds that trembled in the air. All
was over at once,--the day, the jollity, the animation and the impromptu
festival; and of all there remained only an echo in the ear and in the
soul, like the softest of vibrations, like a sweet drowsiness such as
one experiences on waking from a pleasant dream.
When the last loiterers were gone, I folded my drawing, placed it safely
in the portfolio, called the waiter with a hand-clap, paid my trifling
account, and was just on the point of departing when I felt myself
caught gently by the arm. It was the young guitar-player whom I had
noticed before and who while I was drawing had often stared at me with
unusual curiosity. I had not observed that, after the fun was over, he
approached under some pretext the place where I was sitting in order to
see what I was doing that I should be looking so steadily at the woman
in whom he seemed to have a special interest.
“_Señorito_,” he said to me in a tone which he strove to soften as much
as possible, “I am going to ask you to do me a favor.”
“A favor!” I exclaimed, without comprehending what he could want of me.
“Name it, and if it is in my power, count on it as done.”
“Would you give me the picture you have made?” On hearing this, I could
not help pausing a moment in perplexity, surprised both by the request,
rare enough in itself, and by the tone, which baffled me to determine
whether it was one of threat or of entreaty. He must have understood my
hesitation, and he immediately hastened to add:
“I beg it of you for the sake of your mother, for the sake of the woman
whom you hold dearest in the world, if you hold any dear; ask of me in
return all that my poverty affords.”
I did not know how to make my way out of this difficulty, I would almost
have preferred that it had come in guise of a quarrel, if so I might
have kept the sketch of that woman who had so deeply impressed me; but
whether it was the surprise of the moment, or my inability to say no to
anything, the fact is that I opened my portfolio, took out the drawing
and handed it to him without a word.
To repeat the lad’s expressions of gratitude, his exclamations as he
gazed at it anew by the light of the tavern’s metal lamp, the care with
which he folded it to put it away securely in his sash, the offers of
devotion he made me, and the extravagant praises with which he cried up
his good fortune in that he had met one whom he called, in his clipped
Andalusian speech, a “reg’lar _señorito_,” would be a task most
difficult, not to say impossible. I will only say that, as the night,
what with one delay and another, was now fully upon us, he insisted,
willy-nilly, on going with me to the Macarena gate; and he laid so much
stress on it, that finally I decided that it would be better to take the
road together. The way is very short, but while it lasted he managed to
tell me from beginning to end all the story of his love.
The tavern where the merry-making had taken place belonged to his
father, who had promised him, when he should marry, an orchard which
adjoined the house and was part of its holding. As to the girl, the
object of his love, whom he described to me with the most vivid colors
and most picturesque phrases, he told me that her name was Amparo, that
she had been brought up in his father’s house from her babyhood, and
that it was not known who her parents were. All this and a hundred other
details of less interest he related to me on the way. When he had come
to the gates of the city he gave me a strong pressure of the hands,
again put himself at my service, and made off trolling a song whose
echoes spread far and wide through the silence of the night. I stood a
moment watching him depart. His happiness seemed contagious, and I felt
joyous with a strange and nameless joy--a reflected joy, if I may say
so.
He sang till he could sing no longer. One of his refrains ran thus:
“Too long our separation;
Soul of my soul thou art,
The Virgin of Consolation
On the altar of my heart.”
When his voice began to die away, I heard borne on the evening wind
another voice, delicate and vibrating, that sounded at a further
distance yet. It was she, she who impatiently awaited his coming.
A few days later I left Seville, and many years went by before my
return. I forgot many things which happened to me there, but the memory
of such happiness, so humble and so content, was never erased from my
memory.