The walls of the cave of Cachachin were of bare earth, whitewashed over, streaked by the bitter smoke of the fire. There were two filthy mattresses in a corner on the ground. There were plates and copper pans on the walls. There were two chairs where the chickens laid their eggs. Two goats were lying on the mattresses. Two naked babies were rolling with the goats. The biting smoke of the fire and the bursting greasy smoke of the meat drooped like veils in the cave.
“What right had he to strike me for ten reales? Ay, Virgin, I can never return to the home I had and the beasts I had,” sobbed the man.
Cachachin looked up at this and spat into the fire. “Beasts …” thought Cachachin, “little beasts?”
He laughed a lot after that, cheered the Man, promised to go into Granada to see how the land lay. The Man wept and kissed Cachachin, and fell a steaming heap of rags into a corner.
Cachachin went to Granada the next day to see what was happening. He left the road and stumbled through the olives to the cactus and the hillside. The earth after the rain was limp, exhausted without hope or illusion. After the passionate pouring of the rain the earth was cast aside, vacant-eyed and gaping. The water in the branches of the olives hissed at Cachachin as he went down the hill. Heavy blue were the hills and lined, and they had the wrung pallor of a gypsy’s face. A wide, indifferent world of mountains and places with roads and houses on them, he saw, used to the temper of the sky, and the tricky ways of men with beasts and carts.
Cachachin went to the Venta outside the town. The Venta was a high white building, airy. There was the smell of sherry and of wine. There were barrels six feet high standing on the floor. The place was clear, clean and the air was maddened, soured and embittered by the tang of wine. Its walls were tired, aching white, dead. Its windows were like hollow listless eyes. Funerals would pass by the Venta on their way to the cemetery. There was a shrine below and a chapel dug into the hill like a cave, because a man had one day seen the Virgin walking there. When the dead had been carried up in their white, wooden coffins and the appropriate habitual ceremony had been performed, the sweating bearers and mourners would leave their long, lighted candles and hurry back to the Venta to drink there, sullenly at first: then with exasperated gaiety. Cachachin said to the long, bent man at the Venta:
“Hombre, a fine funeral you must have had those days. Poor Juan. Ay! What a thing it was!”
The innkeeper looked at Cachachin and winked. Then he banged Cachachin on the shoulders and roared with laughter.
“Ay! What a thing! Mother of mine, what a thing. What a joke. What a barbarity. Never in my life have I heard of such a barbarity. Such a joke. Who told you about it?”
“Oh, a man. Said Juan was dead,” said Cachachin, mystified. “What happened?” asked Cachachin.
“Well, nothing, nothing. Juan was never hurt nor killed. It was the little animal, the little donkey that was struck, and the man thought he had killed Juan, and ran off. We nearly died of laughter. What a joke!”
Excitedly Cachachin asked, “What about his animals, the little donkeys and the kids?”
“Don’t worry about that,” said the innkeeper. “Juan took all the little beasts. ‘He won’t come back for them,’ said Juan. And that man running across the road.”
Cachachin went angrily back to his cave, slowly. At noon on the second day he got there. He turned one trick and another over in his mind till the thought of that whimpering fool lying useless, hiding from nothing, possessing nothing, in his cave enraged him. And a wasted journey on top of all. What was the good of a man like that?
When Cachachin got back to his cave he found it empty. His wife was bound to a tree. The whimpering murderer with his sobbing and his prayers had stolen the remaining donkey and made off with it on the road to Baza.
Now the blue spring is rising from the earth. The water pallor has gone. Irises, daffodils, crocuses, and the carpeted daisies are on the hills. Almond blossom is encrusted on the candid sky. The sun strides about the earth. The Man is in Murcia now, where rain never falls. He has planned thirty tricks for escaping the Guardias if they come for him. The blue weather has brought peace to his eyes. At times he stands as if considering his mighty strength; as he breathes the air he feels the intense passion of the earth is his. He has conquered. He has destroyed. But the rush of water in an irrigation channel will start the fear in him, and down on his knees he goes:
“Virgin, my little Virgin, little Virgin of the Snows!” he says, sometimes threatening, sometimes reminding.
The Sack of Lights
She was an old charwoman whose eyes stared like two bits of tin and whose lips were twisted like rope round three protruding teeth. All day long she was down on her knees scrubbing flights of stone stairs, cleaning out evil passages, emptying oozy pails down the drain with the soapsuds frilled about it, and listening to its dirty little voice gulping out of the street. All day long she chattered to herself and sang “Valencia, land of oranges …” and broke out into laughter so loud at some fantastic recollection that it sounded as though she had kicked her pail downstairs.
One evening, after a week’s absence from her work, she said mysteriously, as she left the house, “I’m going to do it again. I’m going orf to git me lights.”
“Lights?”
“Yes, ’e stopped me ’e did. ‘Better practise it at ’ome,’ ’e said. So I took the lot. I took the train, an’ rockets, an’ that wicked ol’ General with the monercle, oh, I took ’im. I took ’em all ’ome. 0, ’e warn’t ’arf a wicked ol’ dear.” She laughed, and her teeth seemed to skip up and down like three acrobats with the rope lips twirling round them. “Yer know what ’e called me, the ol’ monercle? ‘Lor,’ says ’e, peeping through the winder, ‘ain’t she a proper beauty!’ That’s what ’e called me. We didn’t ’arf dance.”
“Trains! Rockets? Generals? Dance?” The people of the house touched their sound foreheads. “Gone, oh quite gone,” said the people of the house. “Haven’t you noticed, the last few days? Away a week and comes back singing and talking about dances and Generals worse than ever.”
Before there was time to say any more she was off again down the road singing “Valencia, land of oranges …” and gutter children calling after her.
No one else could hear what her mind heard. No one else could see what her eyes saw. Alight with it, she walked from her room at the back of Euston to Piccadilly Circus with a sack on her back—the sack which she always carried in case there was anything worth having in the gutters— and “Valencia, land of oranges …” twiddling like a ballroom of dancers in her head.
No one noticed her as she stood on the curb of Piccadilly Circus, nor guessed that at that moment she could have died of laughter, she was so happy. She wanted to shout to see what would happen, but she laughed instead. A miraculous place as high and polished as a ballroom. The façades of the buildings were tall mirrors framed in gold, speeding lights. “Chucking it about,” she cried out. The crowds did not even hear her in the roar. If she jumped, could she see herself in the mirrors? She jumped, but not high enough. She laughed. Rockets shot up in numbered showers and exploded noiselessly into brief diagrams of green stars. A tilted bottle dripped beads of wine as red as railway signals into a glass and there was the General—Smoke the Army Smoke—standing on a house-top, with a white-hot monocle in his eye, and his cigarette pricking red. Diamonds and pearls and rubies were streamers flying into the Circus and flashed so that people’s faces bobbed up and down like Chinese lanterns.
But below the streaming lights everything was dancing. That was what she noticed. Below it was “Valencia, land of oranges …” She sang it out and waved to the cars as they passed. “Valencia …” The dark couples of taxis waltzed down dipping to the roll of the tune, and the big dowager cars slipped by, their jewelled bosoms beaming. The young sparking cars darted like dragon-flies—those were the ones she liked, the noisy, erratic ones. The perfume of the dance rose among them. Low horns breathed out flights of warn
ing. The saxophone horns wailed, the jazz engines drummed—how her heart was dancing—and under all was the everlasting undertone, the deep ’cello vibration of the wheels. The ’cello, the voice of movement being born, the voice of the soul. That sound caught her by the waist like a lover. “Valencia …” She ran out into the traffic, not to cross the road, but to dance in it!
In a second she was carried away by the traffic, and it waltzed graciously, understandingly about her. She felt its rhythm. Dancing a grotesque step she let herself drift on a river of circling moody joy as though she were another Ophelia floating with flowers about her.
She was dancing in a land of oranges, and she saw women as beautiful as orchids gliding high beside her in their dowager saloons. She chased them as you chase butterflies, but she could not keep up with them. The chauffeurs were at their wits’ ends, swerving to avoid her, as something too awful even to run over. Then as she gambolled the cars began to slow down; she saw the spaces narrowing, the floor of the Circus disappearing under thickening wheels. The traffic crowded, breathing and swearing about her. To her surprise she saw it had stopped. A policeman was coming for her. She wanted to throw her arms round his neck and kiss him, but he gripped one arm and led her away.
“’Ere, Lizzy,” he said. “You’d better practise it at home a bit before you try it on ’ere.”
“Yer right. In course y’are,” she shouted at him. “But I must get me lights. Can’t do it without me lights.” And with her free hand she held the sack open like a pail she was filling to wash down flights and flights of stairs with, but in poured the lights instead: all the signs and diagrams and patterns, the bottle that poured endless wine, the engine wheels that never stopped, all the jerks and clicks of brilliance. The last to go was the General, monocle and all.
“Garn, yer wicked ol’ dear,” she laughed, giving him a kick. The following crowd laughed to see her give the policeman one like that.
“Lor, it’s ol’ Bertha,” voices shouted. “Drunk and disorderly, got it bad. Ya! Gor!”
She was in a cold cell, but she was far too excited to know that. As soon as they left her she carefully took her sack and shook it upside down. The warder was watching her through the grille. The tune began turning again in her head. “Valencia …” she jumped to her feet. Out of the sack the lights sprang like so many eels and serpents. The wine poured, the engine wheels whizzed, the yellow rockets broke upwards, and the General—he skipped out like a harlequin.
“Gawd! Ain’t she a proper beauty!” said a voice from the grille of the cell.
“Lor, General!” she retorted. “I’m surprised at a man of your age.” She danced up to him and tried to pull the monocle out of his eye. He dodged her. She danced up to him and away from him, leading him on while the lights rained their brilliance upon her. Big cars swayed by as she pirouetted, and there hummed in her ear the buzzing undertone of wheels, like the voice of a lover. She jumped sky high to see herself in the tall gilt mirrors that went up out of sight among the stars. She jumped, but not high enough. She laughed. The rockets clicked and spilled and glittered in tune like an orchestra playing. The railway engines running on catherine-wheels rushed on and on, into infinity. Words hopped off into space. The messages of the electric signs stepped away as daintily as a ballet into nothing.
The Cuckoo Clock
The little boy went up alone to the North by train to spend his holidays with his great-aunt, Helen, and his great-uncle, Ben. Aunt Helen met him at the station and they drove together five miles, climbing into the moors, which were tilted up to the sky like a black sea with the lonely farm floating like a bird in the middle of it. The two wound their way by a long white ribbon of road towards the farm, and arrived. Uncle Ben told him to wipe his boots and to be careful of the furniture, and Aunt Helen asked him if he would like her to take care of the shilling his father had given him when he had said good-bye.
“No,” said the boy, holding on the shilling.
“No what?” said Uncle Ben.
“No thank you,” said the boy hurriedly.
“He’s got a lot to learn,” said Uncle Ben, over the boy’s head, glaring at his wife.
It was a bad beginning for a long holiday, but the boy forgot about it, though he was never quite happy with his aunt and uncle, and there was no escaping from them. He was not allowed to go upstairs in his muddy boots. The “best room” was always locked and its blinds drawn. The only place to sit was the big parlour kitchen where, however hot the day, a strong fire trembled in the range. It was a house full of work. Every piece of furniture in the house was there because you could do something with it. Every sound was a busy sound, every smell was a busy smell, from the smell of the oven to the tick of the clock, from the smell of manure in the stable to the crowing of cockerels in the yard.
“Satan always has summat for idle hands to do,” Aunt Helen said, as she scrubbed, baked, washed and polished and wore herself thinner and thinner. It sometimes frightened the little boy to remember that he was the only idle thing in the house. This idleness meant something bad.
But there was another thing in the house that was different and useless, gay and irresponsible as the little boy himself, and he would come quickly down the stairs in the morning to see it. This was a little painted fretwork cuckoo clock which hung in the kitchen, and he would go to it a dozen times a day to see which was winning, the cuckoo or the grandfather.
“More haste, less speed. There’s a lesson for you,” Uncle Ben said, as he put the cuckoo clock back. “Do ye whist what I’m telling ye, boy?”
It was also a house of lessons. But every day the little boy kneeled on the horsehair sofa till his knees were sore, looking up at the clock eagerly, sympathetically, waiting for the fretwork doors to snap open and the cuckoo to bob and cry the quarters and the hours. The tick of the grandfather was slow and stern as the heavy breathing of Great-uncle Ben himself as he walked across the room, with one thick hand held on the small of his back; it spoke seldom, and then with sudden loudness, like Uncle Ben, as if it had been storing it all up inside. But the cuckoo clock was always chattering, always full of thoughts, always getting ahead of Uncle Ben and annoying him.
In the middle of the ten commandments its mocking voice would cry, when Uncle Ben with his thick stained fingers, following the line of Scripture, would be reading out, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” Then he would look straight at the little boy. He had a glass eye; the other one was bright and violet. Cuckoo! Cuckoo! The happy, mocking wheels would buzz and the little bird would pop into life.
One day the little boy found courage to ask:
“Is it alive, Uncle?”
“Ay, boy.”
“Whist, man. I’m fair shamed to hear ye tell the bairn lies. I’m fair shamed,” Aunt Helen corrected.
“I’m not telling lies,” said Uncle Ben hotly.
“’Tis only a toy one,” Aunt Helen said tartly.
Toy was a magic word for the child.
“Can I have a look at it?” he pleaded.
“Nay,” said Uncle Ben. “No coveting. Thou shalt not covet. Don’t ye heed the Commandments your aunt teaches ye?”
“But, Uncle—”
“Manners, boy!” shouted Uncle Ben. “That clock isn’t a toy. I wouldn’t take fifty pounds for that clock now, and d’ye think I want it smashed up, do ye? I’d ne’er forgive myself. You’ve got to learn the value of things, see! Have everything ye canna, and best learn that lesson now.”
“Well, ’tis my clock, and if the bairn wants to see it I’m sure he may,” said Aunt Helen, but not kindly, for she seemed more anxious to annoy Uncle Ben than to please the child. Uncle Ben became suddenly very angry.
“Ay! That’s right,” he blustered. “’Tis your clock, isn’t it? Eh? There’s nowt in this house but ’tis yours, eh? Ay, you bought it and paid for it, and you own it, and I live on your charity, eh, woman?”
And then Uncle Ben found himself saying more than he had intended.
“Where did ye get it from? Where did ye get it all from, can ye tell me? You’ve buried two good men,” Uncle Ben said. A great deal more he said.
“Whist your clack of the dead!” cried Aunt Helen shrilly.
“Nay, don’t ye rob the dead as well as the living,” cried Uncle Ben.
Somehow one of their big quarrels had started. What were they all about? Satan had caught them in their idleness. Aunt Helen went very red, as though the tempter himself had set fire to her. Uncle Ben clenched his fists, and his tawny face narrowed into deep lines between which the skin glistened. It was frightening to see these two older animals becoming angrier and louder.
“Eh, go along outside, d’ye hear? Don’t stand there staring at nowt, boy,” Uncle Ben cried. And the little boy reluctantly went out of the room. He stood outside the door listening: something terrible was going to happen in the house, and he craved to be near the terrible thing.
“Go on!” shouted Uncle Ben. “Don’t stand out there, d’ye hear?” Uncle Ben had seen his shadow in the hall. The child ran out into the yard as though Uncle Ben were chasing him with a stick.
Over the barn, the orchard, the walls and the fields, the sky was tall and blue and lively with cloud. It was like a great tree, branching everywhere, and hanging its blossoms over the world. Swallows were flying in and out of the door of the barn. Flies were buzzing in the stables. Ducks were gobbling in the paddock, and the orchard was an embroidery of sunlight and flowers. He lay restlessly in the field, picking dandelions to pieces and watching the ants climb their way through the jungle of grasses. He lay there aching to go back to the house where the quarrelling voices bubbled away. Here was one of those quarrels between Aunt Helen and Uncle Ben which he had heard his father talk about. Robbing! Stealing! If only he could go back to the house, listen at a window! But the hot hours dropped by and no one came from the house. The horses were in the fields, the girls were scrubbing in the dairy, but neither Aunt Helen came out with the washing, nor Uncle Ben with his whip. The worst of it was that soon it would be twelve o’clock and he wanted to hear, just once more, the cuckoo clock strike twelve.
The Spanish Virgin Page 17