Pilgrim Son: A Personal Odyssey (32 page)

Then we moved, and one morning pitched our tent in the valley of Ordesa, outside the last farmhouse in Spain. Punctually at noon the valley boomed to the thunder of avalanches as snow fell off ledges high on the giant cliffs of Tabacor above us. The Ordesa is like a smaller, greener Grand Canyon, and is one of Spain's most dramatic scenic attractions and was its first National Park; but in 1952 you needed a military permit to go there, and were forbidden to take photographs. I did not know this, and my camera was confiscated by the corporal of the guard at the Puente de los Navarros, at the entrance to the valley. I cursed and swore, thinking I'd never see it again; but I didn't know Spain well then. Next day the sergeant of the guard walked the four miles up to our camp (wearing his bedroom slippers) to return the camera to me. As he handed it over he said, 'Don't let those swine of the Frontier Police see it.' Then we settled round our camp fire to talk. His name was Manolo; he had eighteen years' service as a regular, and he came from the Asturias. 'Our music is the bagpipe,' he said, 'and our drink, cider.' He poured out of an imaginary bottle at a great height. Bagpipes, I thought, in Spain! No one told you about bagpipes and
jotas
and the Ordesa, only about flamenco and gipsies and Seville. Was there no limit to the diversity of this country?

I asked why there were so many soldiers and civil guards about everywhere. Manolo said that the soldiers were here in these frontier valleys because ever since the end of the Civil War the French had been sending over Communist terrorists. No one could prevent them getting in, but when they had murdered a guardia or a mayor or blown up a bridge or power station there was a better chance of catching them on the way back. He was for Franco because Spain needed security, peace and order much more than it needed democracy, though there were plenty of the opposite opinion, especially in the Basque country and Cataluna. Why were England and America so silly about Franco when they were friendly to the dictatorship of Tito, the Middle Eastern rulers, and the South American banana republics? Anyway, there'd never be another civil war in Spain as long as Franco held power. Or as long as anyone lived who had seen the last one. It was — he shrugged his shoulders, frowning, and corrected himself — we were... like beasts.

Next day Barbara and I walked up to the head of the valley, the lovely Circo de Suaso. We soon caught up with an old man taking three calves up to pasture. The snow was deep in places and the calves were small. Often he carried them bodily over bad places, politely refusing my offers of help. Above a series of falls, from ten to thirty feet high, the valley opened out to a wide grassy plain, now dotted with plaques of snow. The great mass of Perdido towered over the far cliffs, and white waterfalls streamed over every cliff. We all sat together on a huge rock and by being quick with my pack straps I managed to get out our food before he could, and so was able to say
'Le gusta?'

'Gracias, que aproveche,'
he said automatically; but we insisted, and we were both well rewarded: he, like the old lady of the train, loved our chocolate, and we loved the superb highly spiced tripe sausage his wife had made for him. When we had shared our whisky we sat, smoking, and talked a little of Europe and the world. We found him surprisingly knowledgeable and well read — surprisingly to our big-city Anglo-American provincialism, that is.

After a while he said, 'How much does a man such as myself, a plain cultivator, earn in your country?'

Guessing at the earnings of a small farmer, we told him. It was probably between five and six times what he earned. 'How wonderful,' he said simply. 'What a wonderful country, that rewards its working men so.'

The old man's direct and simple response affected us deeply. We had had a bad time with anti-Americanism recently. Too many in England seemed to resent the United States' dominance of the world, and its riches. In France the painted signs A
bas Ridgway
lined the railway tracks. But this old Aragonese had something those people lacked — self-respect. He did not know what jealousy or backbiting were. Whatever fate dealt him he would not whine, because he had never learned how to. His bearing and the other circumstances of our meeting gave firmer shape to our emergent feelings about Spain and the Spanish. He was dignified, but not at all heavy or pompous — he laughed frequently and made such jokes as were appropriate. He was old and poor, had no hope of anything different, had led a hard and tragic life: yet he was obviously experienced in that pursuit of happiness which Jefferson defined as our object in life, meaning 'pursuit' in the sense of 'calling'. He lived in and I think agreed with a feudal and authoritarian society, but also knew that he was as good a man as the dukes, generals, shopkeepers and cardinals who owned so much of what he owned so little.
Hombre, 'man',
is the usual Spanish greeting between such as he and the dukes — each to the other — and with reason. One is a man. In the end, nothing else matters. He had not said a word to us beyond the compulsory
'Buenas dias'
until I offered my help with the calves. That was like the men against the wall in Salient, Teresa and her friends on the train from Puigcerda, the travelling salesmen of Graus. Privacy, independence of spirit, are all. If a man sits beside a broken-down car in a rain-storm, that is clearly what he wishes to do and it would be impertinent to intrude on him. But if he should get up and say, 'My car is useless. Can you help?' — ah, that's different; he knocks at my door, and in the name of our common humanity I will do all I can for him.

And help us they had, every Spaniard we had approached. We had learned the rule: go direct, ask plainly, hold your head up.

We parted with curt handshakes and a gruff
Que siguen bien,
and Barbara and I turned back into the hanging beechwoods above the torrent of the Araza. Lower down it began to snow lightly, and at the foot of the beech woods we saw two Guardia Civil de is Frontera huddled in a shallow cave. One carried a rifle and the other a submachine gun. I noticed that both were in perfect condition, clean-bright and slightly oiled. The men's uniforms were clean, their black leather-work gleaming. I made to show my passport, but one said, 'Pass. We saw you go up with the old man.'

'Here?' I said, for I had not noticed anyone in the cave. The man with the tommy gun nodded, grinning. 'How long have you been here?' I asked curiously, expecting him to answer something like, since dawn. 'Three days,' the other said.

We went on down, I shaking my head. The Guardia Civil, to which care of the frontiers had recently also been awarded, was created a century earlier, to fulfil in Spain much the same duties as the Royal North West Mounted Police used to in Canada. The good and had points of the two forces reflect the different characteristics of man and government; but this internal and self-regulated discipline of the Guardia Civil is something special in Latin countries. (The only other similar case I have met is the Carabineros of Chile.) For fourteen years I had served as an officer of a magnificent volunteer army. We had a hard time getting the men to keep their arms and accoutrements in that sort of condition, and stay fully alert on two-hour sentry shifts, even with the men in large bodies and shoals of sergeants and corporals to keep discipline taut. How the Guardia Civil did it, working always without supervision, in twos and threes, in conditions made for idleness and corruption, I don't know. We had seen already that they were not popular in Spain, but then nor was General Franco. In both cases the word was not 'popular' but 'essential', and this most Spaniards glumly recognized as a fact, as long as Spain remained rural, poor, violent... and Spanish.

From the Ordesa we went east. The train, an occasional express, hurried through a station whose name I just managed to catch. I told Barbara that we had just passed through Retrete. The next station was also called Retrete, and I asked our neighbour whether there were two stations in the town. After some repetitions and double takes he burst out laughing and said, No, senor, nor in Caballeros, either!' He explained that in Spain
retrete,
not
escusado
or
chicago,
was the most commonly used word for 'toilet'; the place was also called the
W.C.
or
water
(pronouced "Vattair').

After three days in Andorra we returned to Barcelona. Here we experienced our first
corrida de toros.
We had not learned that the farther away you sit the more the cruelty of the performances obscures the courage and the colour; for when you are close those horns menace you too, those bright blades flying through the air could slice into
you,
the dust and blood and sweat are acrid in
your
nostrils, and it is in your ears that the bull grunts as he strikes at the cape, and the running banderillero pants and gasps as he hurls himself over the fence. From farther back it is impersonal, antiseptic, and unpleasant. We had done our homework and knew what we were going to see, and we saw it. Our impressions were predictable and not worth recording, except perhaps that nothing prepares one for the combined strength and lightness of foot of the bulls. They run like cats on hoofs tiny for their size, turn and toss their great heads like a woman her hair.

Compared with them the beef bull is like an overloaded farm cart alongside a tank. The power of the fighting muscles on the neck is fantastic. One of the bulls was noticeably larger than the others, with a correspondingly large hump of muscle. When the picador came on, this bull charged the horse with a certain deliberation, not hurrying, and not jabbing. Ignoring the picador's lance now in his withers he carefully planted his forelegs, snuggled his horns in place against the horse's belly rug, and very slowly, like a circus strong man doing a stunt with barbells, lifted horse and rider over his head to land them in a tumbled mess behind him. Then he walked away. The load his neck muscles had lifted without a snatch or pause must have been about 1,600 lb.

From Barcelona we went to Lloret de Mar on the Costa Brava, and I confirmed what I was already beginning to suspect. Those strange white things, rather chicken-like to the taste, which I kept meeting in my paellas and often ate at bars, were squid. I had never felt better; so what of my allergy? I had to give it up, the only one I ever possessed. (I learned later that what I had suffered from during those days of the flaking skin was scarlet fever.)

From Lloret we went to Gerona and so back to England; and we saw many lovely things and met many wonderful people, but formed an opinion that Cataluna was not our personal dish. The people were noticeably more anti-Franco, as Sergeant Manolo had said, but also noticeably less Spanish, less possessed of those remarkable qualities and traits which had enamoured us of Aragon. Nor were their mountains to be compared with the central Pyrenees, and as for the Costa Brava! Busloads of
echt Deutsch
direct from Stuttgart goose-stepped down the water-front at midnight singing beer-hall songs; bars were full of alcoholic British expatriates, who hadn't learned a word of Castilian in ten years, complaining about Spanish laziness and inefficiency; the fearful promise of these phenomena being multiplied a hundredfold come summer... but after all, we were never going to know all Spain. We already had a little part firm in our grasp and there would be others. We could leave Cataluna.

So the panting engine bore us at last to Port Bou and the frontier. The black maw of a tunnel gaped at the northern end of the platform. Through the tunnel lay France, England, and Rockland County. But here we had found a second home and a second folk-family, a family of amazing diversity in music, outlook, background, culture, food, yet one in generosity and independence. The laws their temporal and spiritual rulers set for them were brutal (and sometimes so were they) — but seldom put into literal effect. More usually, with a wink and a finger set beside the nose, it was
Se obedece, pero no se cumple.'
(We obey, but the thing doesn't get done.) Everything about Spain was a matter of form, of inherent shape, not of decoration. It was the quality of the fish that mattered, not the sauce, for there often was none. The land was stark and uncompromising, set in unadorned architectural masses under the snow and sun, and the people stood as severe and hard-edged against it. The cities rose like exclamations from the rocks and ended as suddenly, with no echo. It was a country that showed a hostile face to strangers, but oh, the rewards of going on, with love: the thyme on the moorland wind, the lavender and the ice-cold spring hidden in the rocks, the fat partridges in the wheat, the girl singing by the well, the stone-like clarity of Castilian heard in a lonely place, and
jotas
sung in the market place, wine drunk in the whitewashed cellar...

The train jerked into motion and the spring sun vanished as we bored into the mountain. We said to each other,
Volveremos.
We will return.'

Chapter Twelve

Laurence Pollinger told me that Sir Alexander Korda wanted to discuss some film ideas with me. I went to 146 Piccadilly and a retired captain, Royal Navy, ushered me into the presence. Korda's office was long and gracious, with french windows at the end opening on to a walled garden. Beyond, the traffic hummed and growled up Park Lane. Korda, who resembled a taller and more worldly Einstein, came forward to greet me. We shook hands, beginning a friendship which lasted till his death. He was everything a movie producer is supposed not to be — highly educated, polite, intelligent, and sensitive. He could charm money out of backers as easily as he could charm Winston Churchill, King George VI, Marcel Pagnol, and Laurence Olivier — to name a few of his personal friends. The only 'movie' thing about him was his strong Hungarian accent, of which he was ashamed, though proud of his Hungarian origins. He told me that his favourite among his own films was
The Scarlet Pimpernel;
'Everybody to do with that was Hungarian,' he said, his eyes gleaming behind his glasses, 'The writer — Baroness Orczy. The producer — myself. The director — my brother Zoltan. The art director — my other brother, Vincent. And the star...'