Spanish Highways and Byways

In that strange, maddening sea of faces, that hubbub of hostile voices, the bull, as soon as his blinking eyes had effected the change from the darkness of the toril to the glaring light and gaudy colors of the coliseum, caught sight of a horseman with the familiar pike. Here was something that he recognized and hated. Lowering his head, the fiery brute dashed with a bellow at that tinselled figure. Ah, the pike had never been so sharp before! It went deep into his shoulder, but could not hold him back. He plunged his horns, those mighty spears, into the body of the helpless, blindfolded horse, which the picador, whose jacket was well padded and whose legs were cased in iron, deliberately offered to his wrath. The poor horse shrieked, plunged, reeled, and fell, the chulos deftly dragging away the armored rider, while the bull ripped and trampled that quivering carcass, for whose torment no man cared, until it was a crimson, formless heap.

Such sickness swept over me that I did not know what followed. When I looked again, two bloody masses that had once been horses disfigured the arena, and the bull, stuck all over like a hedge-hog with derisive, many-colored darts, had gone down under Guerrita's steel.

My friends, observing with concern that I was not enjoying myself as much as they had promised, tried to divert my attention to the technical features of their ghastly game. It was really, they explained, a drama in three acts. It is the part of the mounted picador to draw off the first rage and vigor of the bull, weakening him, but not slaying him, by successive wounds. Then the jaunty banderilleros, the streamers of whose darts must correspond in color with their costumes, supply a picturesque and amusing element, a comic interlude. Finally an espada, or matador, advances alone to despatch the tortured creature. The death-blow can be dealt only in one of several fashions, established by rule and precedent, and the espada who is startled into an unprofessional thrust reaps a bitter harvest of scoffs and hisses.

A team of gayly-caparisoned mules with jingling bells had meanwhile trundled away the mangled bodies of the slaughtered animals, fresh sand had been thrown over the places slippery with blood, and the band pealed the entrance of the second bull. This was a demon, black as a coal, with a marvellous pride and spirit that availed him nothing. Horse after horse crashed down before his furious rushes, while the circus, drunk with glee, shouted for more victims and more and more. It was a massacre. At last our hideous greed was glutted, and the banderilleros took their turn in baiting the now enfeebled but undaunted bull. Wildly he shook himself, the fore half of his body already a flood of crimson, to throw off the ignominy of those stinging darts. The chulos fretted and fooled him with their waving cloaks of red and yellow, till at last the creature grew hushed and sullen. A strain of music announced that the matador Fuentes was asking beneath the president's box permission to kill the bull. For my part, I gave the bull permission to kill the man. Fuentes, all pranked out in gray and gold, holding his keen blade behind him and flourishing a scarlet square of cloth, swinging from a rod, the muleta, advanced upon the brute. That bleeding body shook with a new access of rage, and the other espadas drew near and stood at watch. But even before a blow was struck the splendid, murdered creature sank to his knees, staggered up once more, sank again with crimson foam upon his mouth, and the music clashed jubilantly while Fuentes drove the weapon home. And again the team of mules, with foolish tossing of their bright-ribboned heads, jerked and jolted their dead kindred off the scene.

The third bull galloped in with a roar that was heard far beyond the Plaza and gored his first two horses so promptly and so frightfully that, while the hapless beasts still struggled in their agony, the amphitheatre howled with delirious joy. Several capas were caught away on those swift, effective horns, and one picador was hurt. But the rain of darts teased and bewildered the bull to the point of stupidity, although he was dangerous yet.

"Dark is his hide on either side, but the blood within doth boil;And the dun hide glows, as if on fire, as he paws to the turmoil.His eyes are jet, and they are set in crystal rings of snow;But now they stare with one red glare of brass upon the foe."

It was the turn of Bombita, a dandy in dark-green suit with silver trimmings; but his comrades, pale and intent, stood not far off and from time to time, by irritating passes, drew the bull's wrath upon themselves, wearying him ever more and more, until at last Bombita had his chance to plant a telling blow.

Would it never end? Again the fatal door swung open, and the fourth bull bounded in to play his tragic rôle. He was of choicest pedigree, but the utter strangeness of the scene turned his taurine wits. He made distracted and aimless rushes hither and thither, unheeding the provocations of the horsemen, until he came upon the spot drenched with his predecessor's life-blood. He pawed away the hasty covering of sand, sniffed at that ominous stain, and then, throwing up his head with a strange bellow, bolted back to the door by which he had entered, and turned tail to the arena. The fourteen thousand, crazy with rage, sprang to their feet, shook their fists, called him cow. The chulos brandished their cloaks about his horns; men leaned over from the barrier and prodded him with staffs. Finally, in desperation, he turned on the nearest horse, rent it and bore it down. The picador, once set up by the chulos upon his stiff, iron-cased legs, his yellow finery streaked with red from his lacerated horse, tugged savagely at the bridle to force that dying creature to a second stand. One attendant wrenched it by the tail, another beat it viciously over the face; the all-enduring beast, his entrails swinging from a crimson gash, struggled to his feet. The picador mounted, drove in the spurs, and the horse, rocking and pitching, accomplished a few blind paces toward those dripping horns that horribly awaited him. But to the amazement and scandal of the aficionados, the circus raised a cry of protest, and the discomfited rider sprang down in the very moment when his horse fell to rise no more. A chulo, at his leisurely convenience, quieted those kicking hoofs by a stab, – the one drop of mercy in that ocean of human outrage.

Straw-colored darts, wine-colored darts, sky-colored darts, were pricking the bull to frenzy. I wished he had any half-dozen of his enemies in a clear pasture. Those glittering dragon-flies were always just out of reach, but he stumbled on the sodden shape of the unhappy horse and tossed it again and again, making the poor carcass fling up its head and arch its neck in ghastly mockery of life. Cowardice avails a bull as little as courage. This sorry fighter had been deeply pierced by the garrochas, and now, as he galloped clumsily about the arena, in unavailing efforts to escape from his tormentors, his violent, foolish plunges made the dark blood flow the faster. It was Guerrita, Guerrita the adored, Guerrita in gold-laced jacket and violet trousers, who struck the ultimate blow, and so cleverly that sombreros and cigarettes, oranges and pocket-flasks, came raining, amid furies of applause, into the arena. This was such a proud moment as he had dreamed of long ago in the Cordova slaughter-house, when, the little son of the slaughter-house porter, he had stolen from his bed at midnight to play al toro with the calves, and then and there had solemnly dedicated himself to the glorious profession. Now the master of his art and the idol of all Spain, easily making his seventy-five thousand dollars a year, earning, in fact, three thousand on that single afternoon, Guerrita little foresaw that with the coming autumn he should go on pilgrimage to La Virgen del Pilar, and before her beloved shrine at Saragossa cut off his bull-fighter's pigtail and renounce the ring.

The fifth bull was black as ebony. He dashed fearlessly into the arena, charged and wheeled and tossed his horns in the splendor of his strength, sending every red-vested chulo scrambling over the wall. Then he backed to the middle of the sanded circle, snorting and pawing the earth. Another instant, and the nearest horse and rider went crashing against the barrier. The picador, with a bruised face, forced up the gasping horse, mounted and rode it, the beast treading out its entrails as it went, to meet a second charge. But the swaying horse fell dead before it reached those lowered horns again. The next picador, too, went down heavily under his jade and received an awkward sprain. He mounted once more, to show that he could, and the circus cheered him, but his horse, torn to death, could not bear his weight. He gave it an angry push with the foot as he left it writhing in its life-blood. This whirlwind of a bull, who shook off all but one of the banderillas, mortified even the matadores. Disregarding the red rag, he rushed at Fuentes himself. The nimble torero leapt aside, but the bull's horn struck his sword and sent it spinning half across the arena. His comrades immediately ran, with waving capas and bright steel, to his aid, but that too intelligent bull, fighting for his life, kept his foes at bay until the circus hissed with impatience. The toreros, visibly nettled, gathered closer and closer, but had to play that death-game cautiously. This bull was dangerous. The coliseum found him tedious. He took too long in dying. Stabbed again and again and again, he yet agonized to his feet and shook those crimsoned horns at his tormentors, who still hung back. It really was dull. The matadores buzzed about him, worrying his dying sight, but he stood sullen in their midst, refusing the charges to which they tempted him, guarding his last drops of strength, and, cardinal offence in a toro, holding his head too high for the professional stroke. His vital force was ebbing. Red foam dripped from his mouth. That weary hoof no longer pawed the earth. The people shouted insults even to their pet Guerrita, but Guerrita, like the rest, stood baffled. At last that formidable figure, no longer black, but a red glaze of blood and sweat and foam, fell in a sudden convulsion. Then his valiant murderers sprang upon him, the stabs came thick and fast, and the jingling mule-team pranced in to form his funeral cortège.

One more, – the sixth. I was long past indignation, past any acuteness of pain, simply sickened through body and soul and unutterably wearied with this hideous monotony of slaughter. The last bull, a white star shining on his black forehead, tore into the arena, raced all about the circle, and struck with amazing rapidity wherever he saw a foe. Three horses were down, were up again, and were forced, all with trailing intestines, to a second charge. The bull flashed like a thunderbolt from one to another, rending and digging with his savage horns, until three mangled bodies writhed on the reddened sand, and stabbers watched their chances to run forward and quiet with the knife the horrible beating of those hoofs in air. The circus yelled delight. It had all been the work of a moment, – a brave bull, a great sensation! For the performers it was rather too much of a good thing. Those disembowelled carcasses cluttered up the arena. The scattered entrails were slippery under foot. The dart-throwers hastened to the next act of the tragedy. Theirs was a subtlety too much for the fury-fuddled wits of that mighty, blundering brute. He galloped to and fro, spending his strength in useless charges and, a score of times, ignoring the men to hook wildly at their brandished strips of colored cloth. The darts had been planted and he was losing blood. The matador went to his work, but the uncivil bull did not make it easy for him. Bombita could not get in a handsome blow. The house began to hoot and taunt. A stentorian voice called to him to "kill that bull to-morrow." Exasperated by the laughter that greeted this sally, Bombita drove his Toledo blade to its mark. While the final scene of general stabbing was going on, boys, men, even women vaulted into the arena, played over again with one another the more memorable incidents, ran to inspect those shapeless carcasses of what God created horses, and escorted the funeral train of the bull, one small boy riding in gleeful triumph on top of the great black body, harmless and still at last. As we passed out by a hallway where the dead animals had been dragged, we had to pick our way through pools of blood and clots of entrails. Thus by the road of the shambles we came forth from hell.

"I do not understand at all," sincerely protested my Spanish host, disconcerted by the continued nausea and horror of red dreams which, justly enough, pursued me for weeks after. "It was a very favorable corrida for a beginner, – no serious accident, no use of the fire-darts, no houghing of the bull with the demi-lune, nothing objectionable. And, after all, animals are only animals; they are not Christians."

"Who were the Christians in that circus?" I asked. "How could devils have been worse than we?"

He half glanced toward the morning paper but was too kindly to speak his thought. It was not necessary. I had read the paper, which gave half a column to a detailed account of a recent lynching, with torture, in the United States.

X

GYPSIES

"'Life is sweet, brother.'

"'Do you think so?'

"'Think so! – There's night and day, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon, and stars, brother, all sweet things; there's likewise a wind on the heath. Life is very sweet, brother; who would wish to die?'

"'I would wish to die.'

"'You talk like a gorgio – which is the same as talking like a fool – were you a Rommany Chal you would talk wiser. Wish to die, indeed! – A Rommany Chal would wish to live forever!'

"'In sickness, Jasper?'

"'There's the sun and stars, brother.'

"'In blindness, Jasper?'

"'There's the wind on the heath, brother; if I could only feel that, I would gladly live forever. Dosta, we'll now go to the tents and put on the gloves; and I'll try to make you feel what a sweet thing it is to be alive, brother!'"

– George Borrow.

No foreigner has known the Zingali better than George Borrow, the linguistic Englishman, who could speak Rommany so well that gypsies all over Europe took him for a brother. In the employ of the English Bible Society, he spent some five adventurous years in Spain, wandering through the wilds and sharing the life of shepherds, muleteers, even the fierce gitanos. As he found the Spanish gypsies half a century ago, so, in essentials, are they still – the men jockeys, tinkers, and blacksmiths, the women fortune tellers and dancers, the children the most shameless little beggars of all the Peninsula. Yet there has been an improvement.

The gitanos are not such ruffians as of old, nor even such arrant thieves, although it would still be unwise to trust them within call of temptation.

"There runs a swine down yonder hill,As fast as e'er he can,And as he runs he crieth still,'Come, steal me, Gypsyman.'"

Still more compromising is the Christmas carol: —

"Into the porch of BethlehemHave crept the gypsies wild,And they have stolen the swaddling clothesOf the new-born Holy Child."Oh, those swarthy gypsies!What won't the rascals dare?They have not left the Christ ChildA single shred to wear."

There are wealthy gypsies, whose wives and daughters go arrayed with the utmost elegance of fashion, in several Spanish cities. Seville has her gypsy lawyer, but her gypsy bull-fighter, who died two years ago, was held to reflect even greater credit on the parent stock.

By law the gypsies are now established as Spaniards, with full claim to Spanish rights and privileges —Nuevos Castellanos, as they have been called since the day when Spain bethought her of these Ishmaels as "food for powder" and subjected them to the regular military draft. Even in Granada, where the gypsy community still lives in semi-barbarism, there are hopeful signs. The gitanos drive a sharp trade in donkeys, but their forge fires, gleaming far up the Albaicín in the evening, testify to their industry. The recent opening by the municipality of schools for the gypsy children has already wrought a marked change for the better. Some half-dozen dirty little palms, outstretched for cinco centimos, pester the stranger to-day where scores used to torment him, and the mothers take pride in the literary accomplishments of their tawny broods. On one occasion, when, having, as the Spanish say, "clean pockets," I firmly declined to see a small gypsy girl dance or hear her sing, the mother assured me, as a last greedy expedient, that "the child could pray."

On the Alhambra hill the gypsies, who scent tourists from afar and troop thither, on the track of newly arrived parties, like wolves to their banquet, are picturesque figures enough, the men in peaked hats, spangled jackets, and sashes of red silk, the women with bright handkerchiefs bound over their raven hair, large silver earrings, gay bodices, and short, flounced petticoats.

There is one old gitano, in resplendent attire, who haunts the Alhambra doors and introduces himself to visitors, with bows queerly compounded of condescension and supplication, as the King of the Gypsies, modestly offering his photograph for a peseta. If you turn to your attendant Spaniard and ask, sotto voce, "But is this truly the Gypsy King?" you will receive a prompt affirmative, while the quick-witted old masquerader strikes a royal attitude, rolls his eyes prodigiously, and twirls his three-cornered hat at arm's length above his head, until its tinsel ornaments sparkle like crown jewels. But no sooner is his Majesty well out of hearing than your guide hastens to eat his own words. "No, no, no! He is not the King of the Gypsies, but he is a gypsy, yes, and it is better not to have his ill will."

Whether this hardened pretender could cast the evil eye or not, we never knew, for having bought two of his pictures at the first onset, we suffered ever afterward the sunshine of his favor. In fact we often made a wide detour rather than pass him on the hill, for he would spring to his feet at our remotest approach and stand bowing like an image of perpetual motion, his hat brandished high in air, until our utmost in the way of answering nods and smiles seemed by contrast sheer democratic incivility.

The swarthy faces and glittering eyes of the gypsies meet one everywhere in the Granada streets, but to see them in their own precinct it is necessary to take off your watch, empty your pockets of all but small silver and coppers, and go to the Albaicín. This hill, parted from the Alhambra by the deep ravine of the gold-bearing Darro, was in Moorish times the chosen residence of the aristocracy. Still Arabian arches span the gorge, and many of the toppling old houses that lean over the swift, mountain-born current, shabby as they look to the passer-by, are beautiful within with arabesque and fretwork, carven niches, delicate columns and open patios, where fountains still gush and orange blossoms still shed fragrance. Such degenerate palaces are often occupied by the better class of gypsies, those who traffic in horses, as well as in donkeys, while their women, grouped in the courts and doorways, embroider with rainbow wools, in all fantastic patterns, the stout mantles of the Andalusian mountaineers.

As we climbed the Albaicín, fronting as it does the hill of the Alhambra, the exceeding beauty of the view at first claimed all our power of seeing. Below was the gray sweep of the city and beyond the fruitful plain of Granada, its vivid green shading into a far-off dimness like the sea. Just opposite us rose the fortress of the Alhambra, a proud though broken girdle of walls and towers, while in the background soared the dazzling snow peaks of the Sierra Nevada, glistening with unbearable splendor under the intense blue of the Andalusian sky.

In the midst of our rhapsodies I became aware of a shrill voice at my feet, a persistent tug at my skirts, and reluctantly dropped my eyes on a comely little gypsy lass lying along a sunny ledge and imperiously demanding cinco centimos.

"Now what would you do with cinco centimos if you had them?"

With the universal beggar gesture she pointed to her mouth. "Buy a rusk. I am starving. I am already dead of hunger."

Crossing her hands upon her breast, she closed her eyes in token of her mortal extremity, but instantly flashed them open again to note the effect.

"Your cheeks are not the cheeks of famine."

At a breath the young sorceress sucked them in and succeeded, plump little person though she was, in looking so haggard and so woe-begone that our political economy broke down in laughter, and we gave her the coveted cent in return for her transformation act.

Off she darted, with her wild locks flying in the wind, and was back in a twinkling, a circlet of bread suspended from her arm. She tripped along beside us for the rest of the afternoon, using the rusk sometimes as a hoop, sometimes as a crown, sometimes as a peephole. She tossed it, sang through it, dandled it, stroked it, and occasionally, while the bread approximated more and more in hue to her own gypsy complexion, took an artistic nibble, dotting the surface with a symmetrical curve of bites. It was not mere food to her; it was luxury, it was mirth – like a Lord Mayor's feast or a Delmonico breakfast.

Following the Camino del Sacro Monte, marked by many crosses, our attention was more and more withdrawn from the majestic views spread out before us to the gypsies, whose cave dwellings lined the way. Burrowing into the earth, from the midst of thickets of prickly pear, are these strange abodes, whose chimneys rise abruptly out of the green surface of the hillside. Dens as they are, the best of them possess some decencies. Flaps of cloth serve them for doors, their peering fronts are whitewashed, they are furnished with a stool or two, a box of tools or clothing, a few water-jars, a guitar, and, in the farther end of the lair, a family bedstead, or more often a heap of dirty sheepskins. Cooking tins, bottles, saddles, and coils of rope hang on the rough walls; there may be a shelf of amulets and toys for sale, and the indispensable pot of puchero simmers over a handful of fire.

Out from these savage homes swarmed a whining, coaxing, importunate horde of sly-eyed women and an impish rabble of children. Young and old clutched at us with unclean hands, clung to us with sinewy brown arms, begged, flattered, demanded, and dragged us bodily into their hill. We felt as if we had gone back to German fairy tales and had fallen into the evil grip of the gnomes. Hardly could escort, carriage, and a reckless rain of coppers break the spell. We were forced to taste their repulsive messes, to cross witch palms with silver, to buy even the roadside weeds the urchins gathered before our eyes. We were birds for the plucking, sheep for the shearing. Only when we had turned our pockets inside out to show that we had not a "little dog" left, were we suffered to go free, followed, doubtless, by the curses of Egypt, because we had yielded such poor picking.

In Seville, too, the gypsies have their own quarter, but in proportion as Seville is a gentler city than Granada, so are the looks and manners of her gypsy population more attractive. Crossing the yellow Guadalquivír by the bridge of Isabel Segunda, we come immediately on the picturesque, dark-visaged figures, with their uneffaced suggestion of wildness, of freedom, of traditions apart from the common humdrum of humanity. The boy, clad in one fluttering garment, who is perilously balancing his slender brown body on the iron rail; the bright-kerchiefed young mother, thrusting her tiny black bantling into our faces; the silent, swarthy men who lean along the bridge side, lithe even in their lounging; – all have a latent fierceness in their look. Their eyes are keen as knives – strange eyes, whose glitter masks the depth. But as we go on into the potter's suburb of Triana, into the thick of the gypsy life, we are not more seriously molested than by the continual begging, nor is this the rough, imperious begging of Granada; a flavor of Sevillian grace and fun has passed upon it. Offer this bush-headed lad, pleading starvation, the orange he has just tossed away, and he will double up over the joke and take to his little bare heels. Give to the fawning sibyl who insists on telling your fortune a red rose for her hair, and the chances are that she will rest content. But the time to see the gypsies in their glory is during the three days and nights of the Feria.