SAN ANTONIO--CHURCH ON SUNDAY--THE NORTHER--THE S. FAMILY.
The least shrub has its blossom, if you only know how to find it. The
dullest country town in New England has its days when people hear
speeches and get drunk, the one act illustrating the morals, the other
the manners of the community. In like manner, the smallest village in
Cuba has its Sunday, when the imprisoned women go to church in their
best clothes, the men attend cockfights, and in the evening there is
ball or sermon, according as the Church makes feast or fast. The
population of San Antonio does not seem particularly given to weekday
devotion, nor indeed do you anywhere in Cuba find men and women praying
in the churches, as you do in Rome. There is a degree of sobriety among
the people in all things, partly Spanish, it may be, partly the result
of the extreme climate,--certain it is, that the Cuban Spaniard has not,
either in pleasure or devotion, the extravagance of the French or
Italian. The church at San Antonio was always open, but I always found
it empty, except on the one Sunday morning when I went thither to
observe manners and customs. High mass was at eight o'clock, and was in
all respects a miniature of the same ceremonial as described at
Matanzas, the accompaniment of martial music and the regiment being left
out. The body of the church was covered with prayer-carpets, which were
closely occupied by kneeling figures. The display of good dresses and
good looks was cheerful and invigorating. There was less flouncing and
fanning, methought, than in the larger town; but no doubt the usual
telegraphy was carried on, only in a more covert manner, as became the
severer exigencies of village decorum. The priest went through his
harmless little functions at the altar with what seemed to be a calico
Dalmatique on his back, but we have no doubt that it was a brocade of
creditable thickness. What he said was, of course, inaudible. Juanito
was at the organ, perched sideways in a high gallery, so that his impish
face and dancing eyes formed a part of the picture. Though nearer heaven
in his position, he looked more full of the devil (pardon the
expression) than we had ever seen him. With him were three young
choristers, laboring away at the "Kyrie Eleison,"--he made the fourth in
the Quartette, and played the accompaniment, too, losing, moreover,
nothing of what went on below. The music was good, very like something
of Mozart's, but when subsequently interrogated, Juanito declared it to
have been a _Capriccio_ of his own. We can only say, that if it was not
Mozart's, we shall certainly hear of Juanito some day, as a composer.
The two old beggars who take off their tattered hats with such stately
humility all the week, were here to-day, but did not beg in church.
Item, they do not chatter like their Italian brethren in the trade, but
commence a slow statement of their grievances, which you interrupt with
"_nada_," nothing, when they walk sadly away. A Cuban generally gives
them something, and always without rebuke. In the church was, too, a
kneeling figure of Christ, neither divine nor human, fastened to a
platform, with four lanterns at the four corners,--it is carried through
the streets on Fridays in Lent for devotion, and the priests chant, and
bear candles before it.
Well, Mass is over, and we walk back to the hotel,--and here is our
pretty neighbor, Maria Luisa, watching at the door to see the people
come from church. "What, not at Mass, Maria Luisa?" "No, I'm so sorry,
but Papa is away, and Dolores has a cold, and Mariquilla has been
sitting up with a sick friend, so there was no one to go with me."
Clearly, there is a laxity in matters of religion in the house opposite.
On the other hand public opinion, even in San Antonio, would never have
permitted Maria Luisa, or any other female under sixty to have walked
the quiet streets without escort, upon whatever errand of piety or of
charity. Scarcely to the bedside of a dying mother might she go,
unattended by a suitable companion. We pass the remainder of the Sunday
in quiet resignation to the heat, the thermometer standing at 86 in the
shade, (say, on the fourth of March,) and letter-writing causing one to
perspire like a wood-sawyer, or a stout youth in the Polka. For the
nobler sex, there is the cockpit,--all the _cafés_ and billiards too are
full of soldiers and countrymen,--one hears the click of the balls
throughout the quiet streets. Towards sunset we walk out, and find the
village alive with little groups of people, and the windows of the
houses, at least the window-gratings, filled with the best women in the
best dresses. Some of them are well got-up. All look cool, easy, and
indolent. Here and there is seen amongst them the glimmer of a furtive
cigar. We pass the Cavalry Barracks, once a spacious monastery, and see
the horses gathered in from their wide pasture for the night. They obey
the voice, and with a little driving, make a tolerable charge at the
arched doorway, and carry it in style. The sense of smell too is regaled
with the savory odors of the soldiers' supper, and looking in at a
grating, we see huge stewpans simmering over charcoal fires,--the rest
in darkness, for it now grows late. The men are a stouter looking set
than the regiment we saw at Matanzas, but the horses have not the bone
and muscle requisite for heavy action,--they could only make respectable
light-horse. Returning home, we meet our friends of the house opposite
going to "_Sermon_," as they tell us, for this is Lent, and not
Carnival. Mamma wears a black veil,--the others are bareheaded. We have
still tea to look forward to, but under such difficulties! we have given
a dollar for a teapot which in Boston should cost twenty-five cents. Our
precious pound of black tea, brought from home, has not yet given out,
but how hard is it to make Antonio, the head-waiter, put the tea in the
pot, make the water boil, and pour it boiling over the tea. Yet this
sacred rite we accomplish every evening. It has the solemnity of a
religious observance, for where the tea-table is, there is home. After
tea, a chair by the well in the middle of the Court, and a silent feast
of tropical starlight. The lady of the house is chattering nothings
with that queer Californian, who looks as much like a spoiled preacher
as anything. The excitable Carolinian has got some one to hear him abuse
Cuba, and glorify Charleston. Yonder at the left angle the flare of a
lamp betrays the kitchen, and in the next compartment of the picture
Polonia, the slave washer-woman, who has been kept at the ironing-table
all day, vents her feelings in passionate snatches of talk, shakes her
kerchiefed head, tosses her arms about, and returns to the ironing with
more determination than ever. Poor slave,--a great debt was piled up
against her before she was born, and the labor of all her life cannot
work it out. Bankrupt must she die, and hand down the debt, sole
inheritance, to her children. So the world to the slave is a debtor's
prison, with a good or bad Jailer, and for utmost alleviation, an
occasional treat all round. And while the cooking, and chattering, and
ironing goes on about us, Reader, you and I will ponder this, sitting by
the well, under the stars set an hundred thousand miles deep in the
dark velvet of the tropical heavens.
This was Sunday, and with the next day came one of those changes which
resemble in kind, not in degree, the caprices of our own Continental
climate. The day has been a little less genial than usual, still we are
all comfortably seated at dinner, when a sudden wind shakes the house,
and blowing in furiously at the blinds, threatens to make the tablecloth
fly over our heads. A fierce shower of rain follows,--our table is set
in a gallery inclosed on one side only with Venetian blind-work, and
through this the rain rushes at us like a volley of canes flung into the
pit of a theatre. It grows dark, and for an hour or so, very cold. There
is an instantaneous closing of doors and wooden window-shutters, and we
of the Dinner protect ourselves from the wet and chill with the few warm
garments we have with us,--for is not the bulk of our solid clothing
laid up at Havana in that sea-trunk which we could wish never to open
again? We pass the remainder of the afternoon under hatches, as it
were. The rain soon exhausts itself, but the cold wind continues for
some days. This is the Norther, fatal to yellow fever, but fatal also to
those who are ill of it, and dreaded by all patients whatever. To us,
the storm being over, the wind is only chilly, bringing with it a dull
sky, and the desire for exercise, but the invalids shrivel up in it like
rose-leaves in a frost,--the hectic gives place to deadly pallor, and
the purple hues that mark the orbit of the eye come out, stronger than
ever. Meeting, they interrogate each other's faces with anxious looks,
as if wishing to see what headway their little community could keep
against the common foe. The aspect of the streets is changed. The women
scarcely appear, save where you see the heads of three or four of them
in a row, looking through the small square breathing-hole cut in the
window-shutters, and giving one the idea of so many people standing
erect in their coffins. The men walk moodily about, each one enveloped
in the dark folds of a Spanish cloak, or _capa_, of which the material
varies from fine to coarse, but the shape is always the same. These
solemn, stalking figures so resemble the _mysterious personages_ of the
theatre, the bandits, spies, disguised lovers, and other varmint, that
we saw for once where the stage has preserved a tradition of real life,
these costumes having been, no doubt, long since imitated from Spain,
and never changed.
What crime is this grave man meditating, with heavy brow and splendid
eyes? Murder or conspiracy, at least. No, he only wants to purchase a
string of onions at that shop at the corner. And this melancholy hero
with the pale olive complexion, dark as the stage-Romeo after he has
bought the poison? He enters yonder door to refresh himself with a glass
of _aguardiente_, and a game of billiards. At the house opposite,
Dolores complains of "_muchisima flussion_,"--a most severe cold. "Is it
the President's Message?" we ask. "No, in San Antonio they call the cold
'_el Polvorin_,' after the powder-magazine that exploded, last year, in
Havana." We tell Dotor Hernandez that he must cure Dolores, and he
promises her a "_vomitivo_" next morning, the very mention of which
considerably hastens her convalescence. The health of the village is
suffering from the Norther, the Doctor has his hands full. Mariquilla
must give us some account of the sick friend she is nursing. "He has a
_Calentura_, (fever of the country,) with delirium. They treat him with
leeches, bleeding, borage tea, mustard at the feet; around the head
bread with oil, vinegar, and pepper, as a _preventivo_." "Why," cried
one of us, "you have seasoned him and stuffed him with herbs, fit for
roasting." Dotor Hernandez gravely explains and defends his practice.
While the Norther is in full force, we go to pay a visit to Don Juan
Sanchez, a man of wealth and position in San Antonio, and proprietor of
large estates in the neighborhood. Don Juan is not at home,--his wife,
Doña Tomasita, and the Tutor, an elderly Frenchman, receive us. She is
young, but the mother of seven children. At our request, the nursery is
reviewed in the parlor, as follows: Enter Manuel, eight years of age,
enveloped in the stage cloak, and with the utmost gravity of
countenance. He marches up to us, and startles us by inquiring after
our health, in very good English. Enter Tomas Ignacio, seven years of
age, also in a _capa_, and grave. This infant addressed us in French,
and took a seat beside his brother. He was followed by two noble imps,
of six and five, dressed in the same manner, and with the same decorum.
These four creatures in linen suits, with black cloaks, were positively
imposing, and it was not until Dolorita, the baby, had begun to howl in
her mother's arms, and Ricardo, the three-year old, to tumble on the
floor at her feet, that we could feel we were in the presence of
lawless, spontaneous childhood. Before we departed, Doña Tomasita kindly
placed her whole house, and all her earthly goods at our disposition,
and we, with great moderation, claimed only the right of exit at her
front door.