Iberia (4 page)

 

I was a stranger and was not afraid of rebuffs, so I asked to see
everything. What clothes did they have? What eating gear? What
food supplies? What books? Books! Neither wife nor husband
could read. Clothes? Mainly what they had worn on the train,
plus older ones for working, and I have already described what
the good ones looked like. Food? They had enough to live on for
three days, for they had no refrigerator, and after three days they
would go to the store and buy more food, if they had the money.
I did not know the Spanish word for hope, but in a roundabout
way I asked them what their plans were for the future. The future?
What future?

 

And so I wandered back and forth across Teruel, that austere
mountain city, and allowed the reality of Spain to beat in upon
me. One evening I went to the cathedral, if I am using the proper
word for so mean a church, and there I attended my first religious
service in Spain. It was overwhelmingly impressive, with candles
and choirs and priests who seemed to bear the weight of this poor
settlement upon their necks. The people of Teruel that I saw
worshiping that night were devout and to them religion was
terribly important, but as I looked about the gloomy church I
found in the congregation few of the peasants I had ridden with
on the train. This praying group came from a different stratum
and I was pleased to have a chance to see it. The church people
were better dressed than my earlier acquaintances and better
shaved too, but they were equally solid, and when I met them
later in cafés or stores they were equally attractive.

 

I had an exciting time in Teruel, a moving time for a young
man trying to discover for himself what Spain was like, and after
I had seen several of the better-class houses in the city, finding
them to have floors such as we had in Pennsylvania and bookcases
and shelves for storing food and colorful patios, I began to wonder
if I had been unlucky in first stumbling upon that earthen-floored
hut containing almost nothing. Had I by chance been deceived?
Was rural Spain better than I had judged?

 

So I went out into the country in the opposite direction and
stopped at three different farmhouses selected at random, and at
each I introduced myself and was generously received. The farmers
and their wives offered me water and wine, if they had any, and
seemed pleased to talk with a norteamericano who had taken the
trouble to learn their language, however poorly. They showed me
their homes: earthen floors, one table, not enough chairs to
entertain formally even one guest, few clothes, no stores of food.

 

When I returned to Teruel, I was met at the edge of the city by
two armed men dressed in nineteenth-century uniforms featuring
two-cornered patent-leather hats called tricorns after an older
version which had three points. They were members of the
Guardia Civil, whose job it was to keep watch on everything that
happened in rural areas like Teruel, and they traveled in pairs,
having learned that it was safer to do so. They did not stop me
but fell in beside me as I walked. They were cordial and correct
as they asked, ‘Looking at the countryside?’

 

‘Yes.’

 

‘Visiting friends?’

 

‘Not friends.’

 

‘And when are you leaving Teruel?’

 

‘In the morning.’

 

When the train pulled out they were there, extremely pleasant
and smiling, their highly polished hats gleaming in the morning
sunlight as if they were part of the chorus for a New York
production of
Carmen
. They were my last sight of Teruel.

 

I was to rejoin my ship at Valencia, that powerful and often
rebellious capital of the eastern coast, and as my dirty little train
chugged into the center of the city I was made aware that Valencia
was to be something special. I didn’t know it at the time, but I
was arriving on the Saturday evening which marked the height
of the fiesta that celebrates the end of winter, and as I left the
station the sky above Valencia was filled with exploding fireworks
and the air with shouts and music and screams of delight. Valencia
is the fireworks capital of Europe and outdoes itself at the fallas
(bonfires). In the public square enormous wooden structures are
raised, representing horses or galleons or Mont Blanc in
Switzerland or the leaders of the nation, and each foot of timber
is wound with colorful explosives, while chains of smaller
firecrackers hang in festoons in all possible directions. I mean
that these structures are sometimes as high as three-story buildings
and are very solidly constructed.

 

Well, when the maximum crowd has gathered and the wind is
right, these mammoth things are set afire, and as the wood begins
to burn and the explosives ignite and the lovely loops of
firecrackers explode, it seems as if the whole city of Valencia is
going up in flames. It is really something to see, one of the great
spectacles of Europe.

 

And the cafés! They were filled with well-to-do people and the
food was excellent, emphasizing fish provided by the
Mediterranean. The theaters were crowded and the same
comedians who had delighted me in Castellón had arrived to tell
the same bawdy jokes about being forced to spend the night in
the hotel at guess where…Burriana! And as the chambermaid
was described and her sexual capacities suggested, the Valencian
crowd roared approval. Each time the name Burriana was
mentioned the people of Valencia howled. Here the paseo was a
wild affair, with some of the best-dressed women I was to see in
Spain going with the clock and hordes of young men in fine suits
marching in the opposite direction to inspect them. Apparently,
in Valencia the people of Spain lived well.

 

But what I can never forget was the next day, when a tall, heavy
man stopping in my hotel said in fine Spanish, ‘Sir, I trust you
will be attending the bullfight.’

 

‘Is there one?’

 

‘At five,’ he said graciously and offered to lead me to where I
might buy a ticket. As we paraded through the streets I noticed
that the men of Valencia paid deference to my companion and
some spoke to him with a kind of reverence. At the ticket window,
not at the bullring but at a downtown office, the same respect was
paid, and I finally asked, ‘Who are you?’ and he explained that
he was picador for one of the men fighting that afternoon. I was
less impressed then than I was to be later.

 

The cartel that afternoon contained the names of three
matadors who were to be remembered in the history of Spanish
bullfighting: Marcial Lalanda, Domingo Ortega and El Estudiante.
The first was one of the most poetic matadors ever to grace the
rings of Spain, and passes which he invented are still being used
by his successors. Ortega, an illiterate farm-hand often referred
to as el de Borox (he from the trivial village of Borox), was to
become the cold classicist and the idol of those who love an icy,
controlled excellence. On this day in 1932 he was just beginning
his career at the advanced age of twenty-four. In the 1950s he was
still fighting now and then, a man remarkably durable and never
hurried or vulgar. El Estudiante was something special, a young
student named Luis Gómez who had graduated from high school
but who had given up his studies for glory in the bullring. He was
to make a less lasting contribution to the history of bullfighting
than either Lalanda or Ortega, but his arrival on the scene and
under the conditions I have described was emotionally exciting,
and he was to have a series of good years.

 

I could not have been introduced to bullfighting under more
auspicious conditions: a professional picador to choose my seat,
a poetic matador to open the fight and an austere classicist to
compete with him, followed by the young student whom Spain
was taking to her heart. I settled down in my front-row location
and waited. The interior gates of the plaza swung open. The band
burst into music. Bugles sounded and the opening parade was
under way. I did not know enough to identify the matadors, nor
the banderilleros, but behind them on horseback rode the man
who had helped me buy my ticket, and in his leather pants,
cockaded hat and articulated leg armor he looked enormous, as
knights must have looked centuries ago when they ventured forth
to battle. He nodded to me as he rode past and I felt that I was
part of the fight.

 

Some years before, when still a student in a small Pennsylvania
college, I had been cajoled into attending my first symphony
concert, at which Arturo Toscanini was to conduct Beethoven’s
Fifth and Third in that order, and I can truthfully say that in the
first minute of this music I understood as much about orchestral
music as I was ever to know, even though I studied it avidly during
subsequent years. So also, in that first minute in the bullring at
Valencia, I understood bullfighting, even though I have been
improving my knowledge at rather close range ever since. When
Lalanda came out to unfurl his cape and with a series of
breath-taking passes bring his bull under control, I understood
that I was watching a theatrical display and not a sport. When the
bull killed the first horse—because if I remember correctly either
pads were not used that day in Valencia or only inadequate ones
if they were—I understood that I was participating in a tribal
tragedy dating back to prehistoric times and not in a game. At
Valencia in those days they still used on cowardly bulls the black
banderillas with firecracker heads that exploded harmlessly above
the bull’s neck muscles, frightening him into action, and when a
pair of these went off not ten feet from where I sat, with the bull’s
face pointed at mine, I saw the effect on the animal, saw him stare
at me in amazement, then leap sideways in the air and thunder
off, and I was forever after a friend and a student of the fighting
bull. And when on his first bull el de Borox took his truncated
red cloth for the final act of his fight and dominated a towering
bull as if the latter had been a tame puppy, I understood that this
spectacle was intended to show puny man engaged in his war with
the powerful forces of night. I was never to see Ortega better than
he was that day, and I left the ring hopelessly addicted to this
short, swarthy, cold perfectionist. I was curiously pleased to
discover that my picador belonged to the cuadrilla of Ortega and
not to one of the others. Later I was to travel briefly with this
cuadrilla and to see Ortega in various plazas, and he was as great
a matador as I thought him that first day. I concluded then, and
have never changed my mind, that if I were to be a matador I
would want to be like Domingo Ortega. Being far too chunky in
the bottom to qualify as even a thirdrate matador and not being
hefty enough to be a picador aboard a horse, I never entertained
any illusions in this direction even though at intervals I have spent
a lot of time with the bulls and have even fought the smaller calves,
but as a writer I have often remembered Ortega and have tried
in words to attain some of the controlled effects he achieved with
cloth and sword. To me, el de Borox would always be a Spanish
archetype.

 

That Sunday night the picador and I went to a café near our
hotel, where we were joined by a gang of Valencian bullfight fans
who started to discuss the day’s events in an animated dialect
which I could little understand, and it was their opinion that
Ortega had been exceptional. However, the purpose of the evening
was not to rehash the bullfight but to enjoy a famous flamenco
team of a woman dancer and a male guitarist. They had come
from Madrid, I believe, or possibly Sevilla. At any rate, the smoky
hall was crowded and waiters scurried about serving sweet wine
and cakes or sour wine and anchovies, and our table chose the
latter. Girls provided by the management wandered among the
tables and three invited themselves to join us. The picador insisted
that they provide one who could speak English, but none was
available. They did, however, find one who spoke South
American-style Spanish, and her I could understand.

 

What few lights the café had were dimmed. A single chair was
placed on stage to be occupied by a round, fat, baldheaded man
carrying a guitar. He was greeted with applause and launched
directly into a composition which I would remember as one of
the best I was to hear in Spain. I asked the girl beside me to explain
the song, and she said that flamenco had more than a dozen
standard types of song, like malagueños, fandangos and peteneras.
This was a good example of the last. When I asked what words
accompanied the music, she said, ‘We have many versions. But
the best tell the story of a beautiful Jewish girl named Petenera.’

 

Where are you going, Jewish maid?

I suppose that ‘Petenera,’ as this particular song was called, has
become more a part of me than any other piece of folk music I
have ever heard, the story of a Jewish girl and her tragic effect
upon a small Spanish town. It must be very old, dating back at
least to the 1400s, when Jews were common in Spain; the music
is not exceptional and the words are arbitrary, but others have
testified to the fact that the song as a whole has a powerful effect
on them too, so I am not unusual in liking it.

It was obvious that this fat man on the chair was a notable
guitarist, for he could make his instrument roar and whisper,
laugh and sob. Both he and his music were very Spanish, and I
relished each, but in due course he struck a series of commanding
chords that sounded much like a machine gun, and onto the stage
whirled my first flamenco dancer. She was a woman in her forties,
not at all pretty and much fatter than I would have expected, but
after that quick inventory I forgot her visible characteristics, for
she could dance.

On Monday morning an event occurred that was to come back
to me with terrible effect in the years that followed, although
when it was happening I could not have anticipated its
significance. I was in the central square, or at least one of the
central squares, where the ashes of Saturday night’s fire were being
cleared, when from one of the government buildings I saw a
procession crossing toward me. It was composed of many men
in fine dark suits, including three or four in formal morning wear.
In the center of the front rank was a most ordinary-looking man,
apparently in his fifties, undistinguished in face, slightly dumpy
in body and awkward in manner. I remember distinctly that even
then I thought him to be a man of good though flabby will, and
somebody beside me whispered that he was the President of Spain.
It was Niceto Alcalá Zamora, the quiet man chosen to head Spain
after the departure of King Alfonso XIII, who had slipped out of
the country only the year before, thus avoiding the necessity of
abdication. In this simple, fumbling man I saw the Republican
alternative to the Bourbon dynasty (in Spanish, Borbón) and I
was not impressed.