Читать книгу Four Months Afoot in Spain - Harry Alverson Franck - Страница 7

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Gibraltar rises early. Proof of the assertion may be lacking, but certainly not even a "Rock lizard" could recompose himself for another nap after the passing of the crashing military band that snatched me at daybreak back to the waking world. With one bound I sprang from cot to window. But there was no ground for alarm; in gorge-like Waterport street below, Thomas Atkins, a regiment strong, was marching briskly barrackward, sweeping the flotsam of civilian life into the nooks and crannies of the flanking buildings.

According to the Hoyle of travelers a glimpse of Morocco was next in order. But with the absurdity of things inanimate and Oriental both the Tangiers steamers were scheduled to loll out the day in harbor. When "Skittles" had again stowed away my chattels, I drifted aimlessly out into the city. But the old eagerness to tread Spanish soil was soon upon me, heightened now by the sight of Algeciras gleaming across the bay. The harbor steamer would have landed me there a mere peseta poorer. Instead, I sauntered through the Landport gate and away along the shifting highway which the Holder of the Rock has dubbed, in his insular tongue, the "Road to Spain."

It led me past the double rank of sentry boxes between which soldiers of England tramp everlastingly, and into bandit-famed La Linea. A Spaniard in rumpled uniform scowled out upon me from the first stone hovel, but, finding me empty-handed, as silently withdrew. I turned westward through the disjointed town and out upon the curving shore of the bay.

Here was neither highway nor path. Indeed, were each Spanish minute tagged with a Broadway price-mark, the peseta would have been dearly saved, for the apparent proximity of Algeciras had been but a tricking of the eye. Hour after hour I waded on through seashore sand, halting now and then in the shadow of some time-gnawed watch-tower of the departed Moor, before me such a survey of the shimmering sea to the very base of the hazy African coast as amply to justify the setting of an outlook on this jutting headland.

The modern guardian of the coast dwells more lowly. Every here and there I came upon a bleached and tattered grass hut just out of reach of the languid surf, and under it a no less ragged and listless carabinero squatted in Arabic pose and tranquillity, musket within reach, or frankly and audibly asleep on his back in the sand. Yet his station, too, was wisely chosen. The watch and ward of to-day is set for no war-trimmed galley from the rival continent, but against petty smugglers skulking along the rim of the bay. Nor could the guard better spend his day than asleep: his work falls at night.

It was the hour of siesta when I shuffled up a sandy bank into Algeciras. Except for a cur or two that slunk with wilted tail across the plaza, the town lay in sultry repose. I sat down in a shaded corner of the square. Above me nodded the aged city tower, housing the far-famed and often-cursed bell of Algeciras. Recently, which is to say some time during the past century, it was cracked from rim to crown; and the city fathers have not yet taken up the question of its replacement. Meanwhile, it continues afflictingly faithful to its task. At quarter-hourly intervals it clanked out across the bay like the suspended hull of a battleship beaten with the butt of a cannon, a languid sigh rose over the drowsing city, and silence settled down anew.

As the shadows spread, life revived, slowly and yawningly at first, then swelling to a contrasting merry-making that reached its climax toward midnight in the festooned streets beyond the plaza. Algeciras was celebrating her annual feria. Somewhere I fell in with a carpenter in blouse and hemp sandals, whose Spanish flowed musically as a woodland brook, and together we sauntered out the evening among the lighted booths. The amusement mongers were toiling lustily. Gypsy and clown, bolerina, juggler, and ballad-singer drew each his little knot of idlers, but a multitude was massed only around the gambling tables. Here a hubbub of excited voices assailed the ear; an incessant rain of coins fell on the green cloth, from the ragged and the tailored, from quavering crones and little children. The carpenter dived into the fray with his only peseta, screaming with excitement as the wheel stopped on the number he had played. Within an hour a pocket of his blouse was bulging with silver. I caught him by the sleeve and shouted a word in his ear. Wild horses could not have dragged him away, nor the voices of sirens have distracted his eyes from the spinning trundle. A half-hour later he did not possess a copper.

"If you had listened," I said, when we had reached a conversational distance, "you would not have lost your fortune."

"What fortune!" he panted. "All I have lost, señor, is one peseta, and had an evening of a lifetime."

I caught the morning steamer to Gibraltar and an hour later was pitching across the neck of the Mediterranean on board the Gebel Dersa. Third-class fare to Africa was one peseta; first-class, ten; and the difference in accommodation about forty feet,--to wit, the distance from the forward to the afterdeck. One peseta, indeed, seemed to be the fixed charge for any service in this corner of the world. My evening meal, the night's lodging, the boatman's fee for setting me aboard the steamer had each cost as much. It would be as easy to quote a fixed selling-price for mining-stocks as to set the value of that delusive Spanish coin. The summer's average, however, was close upon sixteen cents for the peseta, of which the céntimo is the hundredth part. There are at large, be it further noted, a vast number of home-made pesetas worth just sixteen cents less, which show great affinity for the stranger's pocket until such time as he learns to emulate the native and sound each coin on the stone set into every counter.

It was while we were skirting the calcined town of Tarifa that I made the acquaintance of Aghmed Shat. The introduction was not of my seeking--but of the ingratiating ways of Aghmed I need say nothing, known as he is by every resident of our land. At least I can recall no fellow-countryman whose visiting-card he did not dig up from the abysmal confusion of his inner garments.

To that host of admirers it will bring grief to learn that Aghmed was most unjustly treated aboard the Gebel Dersa on that blistering thirteenth day of June. Yet facts must be reported. It chanced that the dozen Anglo-Saxons sprawled ungracefully about the after-deck composed, at such times as composure was possible, a single party. As all the world knows, it is for no other purpose than to offer the protection of his name and learning to just such defenseless flocks that the high-born Moroccan gentleman in question has been journeying thrice weekly to the Rock these thirty years. Yet the bellwether of the party, blind to his opportunity, had chosen as guide an ignorant, vile, ugly, utterly unprincipled rascal whose only motive was mercenary. True, Aghmed and the rascal were outwardly as alike as two bogus pesetas. But surely any man worthy the title of personal conductor should be versed in the reading of character, or at least able to distinguish between genuine testimonials from the world's élite and a parcel of bald forgeries! Worst of all, the leader, with that stiff-neckedness congenital to his race, had persisted in his error even after Aghmed had recounted in full detail the rascal's crimes. Small wonder there was dejection in the face of the universally-recommended as he crossed the pitching plank that connected the first-class with the baser world, his skirts threshing in the wind, his turban awry.

At sight of me, however, he brightened visibly. With outstretched hand and a wan smile he minuetted forward and seated himself on the hatch beside me with the unobtrusive greeting:

"Why for you travel third-class?"

The question struck me as superfluous. But it is as impossible to scowl down Aghmed's spirit of investigation as to stare him into believing an American a Spaniard. By the time the valleys of the African coast had begun to take on individuality, I had heard not only the full story of his benevolent life but had refused for the twentieth time his disinterested offer of protection. Nature, however, made Aghmed a guardian of his fellow-man, as she has made other hapless mortals poets; and her commands must be carried out at whatever sacrifice. Gradually, slowly, sadly, the "souvenir" which "americano gentlemen" were accustomed to bestow upon him with their farewell hand-clasp fell from twenty shillings to ten, to five, to three, then to as many pesetas. It was useless to explain that I had trusted to my own guidance in many an Arab land, and been fully satisfied with the service. When every other argument had fallen lifeless at his slippered feet, he sent forth at regular intervals the sole survivor, cheering it on with a cloud of acrid cigarette smoke:

"Si el señor"--for his hamstrung English had not far endured the journey--"if the gentleman has never taken a guide, this will be a new experience."

In the end the sole survivor won. What, after all, is travel but a seeking after new experience? Here, in truth, was one; and I might find out for myself whether a full-grown man tagging through the streets of a foreign city on the heels of a twaddle-spouting native feels as ridiculous as he looks.

We anchored toward noon in the churning harbor of Tangiers and were soon pitched into the pandemonium of all that goes to make up an Oriental mob lying in wait for touring Europeans. In a twinkling, Aghmed had engaged donkeys to carry us to the principal hotel. I paused on the outskirts of the riot to inform him that our sight-seeing would be afoot; and with a scream of astonishment he reeled and would, perhaps, have fallen had not the street been paved in that which would have made such stage-business unpleasant.

"Pero, señor!" he gasped. "You do not--you--why, people will say you have no money!"

"Horrible!" I cried, dodging a slaughtered sheep on the head of a black urchin in scanty night-shirt that dashed suddenly out of a slit between two buildings. Aghmed, myopic with excitement, failed to side-step, and it was some distance beyond that his wail again fell on my ear:

"O señor! Americano gentlemen never go by this street. I cannot guide without donkeys--"

"You can perhaps run along home to dinner?" I suggested; but he merely fell silent and pattered on at my heels, now and again heaving a plaintive sigh.

For the better part of the day we roamed in and out through the tangled city. In the confusion of donkeys, bare legs, and immodesty, the narcotic smell of hashish, the sound of the harsh guttural tongue once so familiar, memories of more distant Mohammedan lands surged upon me. Yet by comparison Tangiers seemed only a faded segment of the swarming Arab world set aside to overawe European tourists, Arabic enough in its way, but only a little, mild-mannered sample.

Late in the afternoon I rounded the beach and, falling upon the highway to Fez, strolled away out of sight and sound of the seaport. Aghmed still languished at my heels. To him also the day had brought a new experience. As we leaned back against a grassy slope to watch the setting of the red sun, he broke a long hour's silence.

"Señor," he said, "never have I walked so much. When we had come to the Socco I was tired. When we had seen all the city my legs were as two stone pillars. Yet I must keep walking."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because you must be protected! Ah, señor, you do not know how dangerous is Tangiers; and here in the country alone you would before now be dead, or carried off by bandits. Perhaps this much walking will make me sick. Or if I have been seen by my friends or a gentleman tourist! Allah meskeen! They will say I am no longer a gentleman guide, but a donkey boy."

When her night traffic had taken on its wonted swing, my stone-legged protector called at the inn for the purpose of proving that the far-famed naughtiness of his city was no mere conceit. The demonstration was not convincing. Two hours or more we ambled from wineshop to café cantante, enduring a deal of caterwauling and inane vulgarity by no means superior to a Friday-night performance on the Bowery. The relieving shepherd's crook, moreover, being nowhere in evidence, I fled the torture and retired to bed.

To my infinite relief, Aghmed was on hand in full health next morning to bid me farewell at the end of the pier and to receive his specified "souvenir." He was profuse, too, with the hope that I might soon revisit his land; but I caught no hint of a desire to add my card to his collection.

The steamer plowed her way back to Europe, and by mid-afternoon I emerged from the Sailor's Institute face to face with a serious problem. The most patient of men, which I am not, would hardly set off on a tramp across the Iberian peninsula carrying a forty-pound suitcase, even of unread classics. To have dumped the books in the first alleyway would have been easy, yet painful, for there runs a strain of Scotch in my veins. I dropped in on the nearest bookseller to inquire whether he could see his way clear to accept at a bargain a batch of novels newly imported from New York. But the eager glow quickly faded from his features as I laid the volumes before him.

"Why, sir!" he cried. "These be old books, out of date. I thought had you something New York is reading this summer--"

In which attitude his two rivals also dismissed me, even though I sought the good will of the last by squandering the bulk of a bright gold sovereign for Baedeker's "Spain." As I turned down to the harbor, a thought, or more exactly the sight of a sergeant's uniform under the fortress gate, struck me. The wearer stiffened like a ramrod when I halted before him.

"Have you a library in the barracks?"

"Ah--certainly, garrison library. But I hardly fawncy the commander would allow--"

"Of course not," I interrupted, tossing the books into his arms; "but I am off for Spain and if you have any use for a few novels--"

"Ah--er--well, thank you most kindly, sir!" bawled the officer after me.

Though the fact may never be called to his attention, the sergeant had heard the last phrase of English that passed my lips in many a week. As a personal experiment I had resolved not to speak a word of my native tongue within the kingdom of Spain, even to myself; though this latter proviso, to be sure, necessitated the early acquisition of a few Spanish terms of double voltage.

The forerunner of evening was descending upon Algeciras as I mounted through her now all but voiceless fiesta and struck away over a grass-patched hillock. The further slope was skirted by a dusty highway that wound off through a billowy country pregnant with the promise of greater heights to come. But the trend of the road was west rather than north. Over the hills ahead two male voices were bawling a sort of dialogue of song. I mended my pace and had soon overtaken two peasants rollicking homeward from the festival. When I inquired if this were the highway to Madrid they fell suddenly silent, after a word of greeting, and strode along beside me exchanging puzzled glances.

"Well, then, to Honda, señores?" I asked. "Poresta carretera?"

"No, no, señor!" they answered quickly. "Por aquí no! You must go on the railroad."

"No, I am traveling on foot."

"Perfectamente, señor; and to walk to Honda you must take the railroad."

There was nothing in the mien of either to suggest the practical joker. Yet so far as my experience carried there was not a corner of Europe where two steps on the right of way was rated less a crime than arson or housebreaking.

We reached the line not far beyond, the highway diving under by a stone-faced cutting and bearing the peasants away with it. Over the next rise their dove-tailed duet rang out again and, melting in volume and rendered almost musical by distance, filtered back to me from the deepening valleys a full quarter-hour longer.

I climbed the embankment not without misgiving. Sure enough, a track there was, beside the broad-gauge rails, covered with cinders and scarred with many imprints of donkey hoofs. A mile along it demonstrated how poor a walking kit is even a half-empty suitcase. I sat down to take stock of the contents. In the jumble was a blue flannel shirt past its prime. I fished out thread and needle and sewed a Jack-Tar seam across the garment below the armpits, amputated sleeves and shoulders with a few, slashes, and behold! a knapsack that might bear my burdens through all the kingdom of Spain, and hold its own in any gathering of shoulder-packed wayfarers. When I had stuffed my possessions into it there was still room to spare for such odds and ends as find their way into the baggage of the least acquisitive of travelers. Then pitching the suitcase spread-eagle over the bordering hedge, I cut a stick in a neighboring thicket and struck off again at the regular stride so indispensable to any true enjoyment of tramping.

Night fell soon after. A fall it was indeed; no half-hearted settling down of gloom as in our northern zone, but a descendant flood of obscurity that left the eyes blinking in dismay. To right and left, where had been rolling uplands and heathered fields sharp-cut in smallest detail, nothing--a sea of inky blackness; and ahead, the stony-blind unknown. The cinder path held firm, but only a foot rubbing along the rail guided my steps, until such time as sight resumed its leadership.

An hour or more I marched on into the summer night. Then out of the darkness ahead stole a feeble point of light, an increasing murmur of human voices, and the end of the first day's tramp was before me. Beside the way a stone building stood open, an oil torch twilighting a cobble-floored room heaped at one end with a Spanish grocer's wares. An unshaven man of fifty, a red handkerchief bound brigand-fashion about his head, bulked forward through an inner doorway.

"You furnish lodgings?"

"Sí, señor; and your burro?"

"I am walking. Is supper to be had?"

"Claro, hombre! Choose from the baskets and the señora shall cook it for you in a twinkling."

All through the following day the path continued parasitic to the railway. The roadbed was thickly covered with crushed stone, with nowhere a hint of the existence of section-gangs. On either hand rolled away a landscape stamped with the features of an African ancestry, all but concealed at times by the cactus-trees of a willow's height that hedged the track. At rare intervals a stuccoed station serving some hamlet hidden among the hills found standing-room on the right of way. An occasional hovel built of field stones frowned down from the crest of a parched hillock. Now and again out of the meeting-place of the rails ahead came jogging a peasant seated sidewise on an ass, to swerve suddenly aside and rattle off down a rocky gorge, singing a high-pitched ballad of Arabic cadence. But these were but bubbles on the surface of a fathomless solitude, though a solitude brilliant with an all-invading sunshine that left no skulking-place for somber moods.

It turned out that the railroad had not been built for the exclusive convenience of pedestrians and donkeys. A bit before noon a rumbling arose out of the north, and no unconscionable time thereafter the daily "expreso" roared by--at a rate close upon fifteen miles an hour. The ticket collector, cigarette in mouth, clambered hand over hand along the running board, in imminent peril of losing his footing--and being obliged to pursue his train to the next station. During the afternoon there passed two "mixtos," toy freight trains with a caudal carload of passengers. But the speed of these was more reasonable, varying from six to eight miles, with vacations at each station and frequent holidays in the open country.

The sun was still an hour high when I reached the station of San Pablo. This time the town itself stood in plain sight, pitched on the summit of an oak-grown hill barely a mile from the line. I plunged quickly down into the intervening valley.

It was a checker-board place, perhaps only a century or two old; certainly no relic of the Moor, for there was not a sign of shop or market in all its extent. Only in the last street did I catch sight of one of its inhabitants, dining in solitary state in the center of a bare room. He stared at me a long moment when I halted before the immense open window to inquire for an inn.

"San Pablo, señor," he answered at last, "is a private town owned by the mining company. There is no inn."

I was turning away when he continued:

"But step inside and we shall see what the ama can arrange for you."

He was, as I had guessed, a Frenchman, an expert employed in the mines. The Spanish, however, in which he addressed the ama was faultless.

"Ah, Don Victor!" protested that matron, "How can I give posada, having no license from the government? And without the permission of Don José--"

"Pepete," said the Gaul to an urchin peering in upon us, "ask Don José to have the goodness to step over. He is manager of the mines," he continued, "and so alcalde and potentate of San Pablo."

It would have been a misfortune, indeed, to have journeyed through Andalusia without making the acquaintance of Don José. He burst in upon us a moment later; a very hippopotamus of a man, dressed in baggy trousers, slouch hat, and alpaca jacket. Unfortunately his arrival coincided with my announcement that I was walking to Córdoba--the whole itinerary would have been too strong meat for Latin consumption--and his native geniality was for a time overshadowed by astonishment at my extraordinary means of locomotion. I had all but finished the meal set for me in an adjoining room when the pair entered and sat down beside me.

"Señor," began the manager, in what was meant to be a whisper, "you cannot walk to Córdoba. It is forty leagues."

"How much money have you?" put in the Frenchman.

"Er--I have something over seven pesetas," I answered.

"Bueno! Bonísima!" cried the alcalde, patting me on the shoulder. "Don Victor and I will add the rest and I shall go with you to the station to buy the ticket--in the morning."

Great, I reflected, is the infant mortality among generous resolutions in the gray of dawn, and accordingly held my peace.

Having settled my future to his own satisfaction, Don José linked an arm in one of mine and plunged out into the night.

"Your bed is waiting for you in your own house," he said with Spanish formality. "You have only to say the word."

The first syllable of which I had not found time to say before we marched full front into San Pablo's barrack-like café. A roar of greeting sounded through the dense cloud of cigarette smoke: "Buenas tardes! Don José!"

"Buenas, amigos! Que le gusta!" returned my companion, and pushing toward a table with two vacant chairs he continued without a break, "Un ponche, Don Gregario! And you, señor? Anything you may choose, though there is nothing equal to ponche. Verdad, Rufo?" Then as I opened my lips to express a preference, "Sí! sí! Don Gregario! Dos ponches!"

The room was filled with a hundred bronze-tinted miners over wine and cards. Don José was the industrial autocrat of every man present, yet one would have fancied him rather a brother or cousin, so free was the intercourse from haughtiness on the one hand and servility on the other. Miner and manager addressed each other by their given names, shouted at each other in friendly dispute, thumped each other fraternally on the back. Despite all which one felt absolute assurance that when labor again caught up its pick the manager's word would command instant obedience.

The landlord, flushed with the exertion of their concoction, soon set the incomparable beverages before us. With the alacrity of a man who will have no shadow of debt hanging over his head, Don José thrust a hand into a pocket of his alpaca and cast on the table three mammoth coppers, the combined value of which was close upon five cents. With the first sip he rolled a cigarette and pushed pouch and papers toward me. Then having introduced me as "Señor Newyorkano," he plunged headlong into the story of my life, addressing not merely the assembled miners but whomever else may have been prowling within gunshot of the building. "And to think, amigos," he concluded, "after crossing all the sea el señor should have wandered into San Pablo looking for a posada!"

The company beat their hands on the tables and howled with merriment. Whatever the uproarious humor of that climax to my adventures, it lost nothing of its poignancy as long as the evening lasted, and served to top off a score of otherwise pointless tales.

My ignorance of the Andalusian game notwithstanding, I had soon taken a hand. The alcalde, consuming uncounted cigarettes, beamed over my shoulder shouting praise of my sagacity each time I cast on the table the card he pointed out. As for "ponche," what the peerless libation lacked in favor with the masses it gained in the unswerving fidelity of its sponsor. With clock-like regularity his reverberating voice rang out above the din of revelry: "Don Gregario, un ponche!" In vain did I announce my thirst permanently abated, in vain did I "say the word" or strive at least to take advantage of the free choice offered me. My protest was invariably drowned in the roar of the amended order: "Sí, sí! Dos ponches, Don Gregario!"

Evening rolled into night, night into morning, and still the clank of copper coins continued. Once I attempted to forestall the diving into that fathomless alpaca by thrusting a hand into my own pocket. My unquenchable host started to his feet with a bellow that seemed to set the very walls vibrating:

"Strangers, señor, cannot spend money in San Pablo! We are a private town!"