by Laurie Lee
Next day we left in a horse and carriage, with pork chops in our hands. Paco, the hotel porter, gave us a parting present – a poem specially and laboriously written in red chalk capitals on the back of our bill. It combined tributes to Kati’s beauty with, somehow, a lament on the death of Manolete. Then we rattled away through the cobbled streets to the shouts of the beggar children.
At the outskirts of Ecija we paused, briefly, to look back at the city. It lay in its little pool of sunlight, eternally gilded, eternally drowned. The ghostly bells called dryly to each other, and the ornate towers rose high above the clay like the stumps of once exotic flowers left from some other summer.
4. The House of Peace - Granada
Granada is probably the most beautiful and haunting of all Spanish cities; an African paradise set under the Sierras like a rose preserved in snow. Here the art of the nomad Arab, bred in the raw heat of deserts, reached a cool and miraculous perfection. For here, on the scented hills above the green gorge of the Darro, he found at last those phantoms of desire long sought for in mirage and wilderness – snow, water, trees and nightingales. So on these slopes he carved his palaces, shaping them like tents on slender marble poles and hanging the ceilings with decorations like icicles and the walls with mosaics rich as Bokhara rugs. And here, among the closed courts of orange trees and fountains, steeped in the languors of poetry and intrigue, he achieved for a while a short sweet heaven before the austere swords of the Catholic Kings drove him back to Africa and to oblivion.
But Granada never recovered from this flight of the Moors, nor saw again such glory. When the cross-bearing Spaniards returned to their mountain city they found it transformed by alien graces and stained by a delicate voluptuousness which they could neither understand nor forgive. So they purged the contaminated inhabitants by massacre and persecution; and in the courts of the palaces they stabled their mules and horses. But the inheritors of Granada, even today, are not at home in the city; it is still dominated by the spirit of Islam. Fascinatéd and repelled by it, they cannot destroy it, but remain to inhabit an atmosphere which fills them with a kind of sad astonishment, a mixture of jealousy and pride. The people of Granada in fact, are known throughout Andalusia as a people apart, cursed with moods which reduce them at times to almost murderous melancholy.
Our first day in the city was lit by the dead white light of reflected snow, and after the soft-blown airs of Ecija, we were immediately chilled by it. The hotel was starched and fireless, so we walked out to warm our blood. We went across the Darro gorge and up the Alhambra hill, climbing a rain-torn path behind the Palace. Here, an oasis in the dry burnt south, were green trees, banks of ivy, flowers and gushing water. A bird sang a thin cold song, and the Palace glowed with a winter redness among its leaves. Climbing, and skirting the great wall, we came out on to a rocky cemetery road leading to the high place of the dead. Groups of mourners, laden with chrysanthemums, were going to the graves, and the road was strewn with gold and purple petals which exuded mournful odours under foot.
On the crest of the hill we sat down, with our backs to the cemetery wall, and looked out across the Vega. This was the highest point in the city, a favourite site for graves, and the view was tremendous. A thousand feet below us stretched the wide and populous plain, shafted with light and scattered with smoky villages. In the clear air one saw tiny figures, as though in a landscape by Breughel, scampering about in streets and squares. It was Christmas Eve, and a muttering air of holiday came up to us on bursts of the wind.
Across the plain, and huge to our northern eyes, stood the long range of the Sierra Nevadas, half-filling the whole sky. The foot-hills climbed in writhing terraces, great granite rocks threw shadows ten miles long, and the snow peaks, crisp as crystal, flashed among drifting clouds like a string of jagged moons.
In spite of its magnificent prospect the cemetery hill was not a popular place to live. Mourners and lovers walked darkly among the cacti and stunted olives. There was a solitary farm, high up; and here and there, though hidden among the rocks, a few brushwood hovels built by beggars. Otherwise the hill was left to the dead.
It was therefore rather surprising to see, on the edge of a cliff near by, a large brass bedstead with a woman and child lying on it. Pots and pans were scattered about the ground, but there was no sign of any habitation near. The woman lay silent, gazing at the sky, and the small child slept at her breast. Strange and surrealist it was, the naked bed, the child so still, the woman so unconscious of us. What could they be doing, exposed on the hilltop thus?
We were wondering about this, when suddenly, from the ground under our feet, appeared a boy with a basket of stones. He was about thirteen, very poor, barefooted, with dusty hair and a suit of clothes sewn together with string. He emptied the stones on the ground near by, and saluted us gravely.
‘Where did you spring from?’ I asked.
‘Out of the ground,’ he said, pointing downwards with a blackened thumb.
‘That’s what I thought,’ I said. ‘What are you doing? Gold-digging?’
‘No gold there,’ he said. ‘Only stones. We are making a cave. Much work it is. Ay!’
‘What is it for?’ I asked.
He straightened his shoulders and lifted his head.
‘It is our house. We shall live there. See my mother and sister on the bed? They are waiting to go in. Tonight all will be done. It will be a stupendous cave, tall, wide and will have a chimney. It will be the best cave in Granada.’
‘Where did you live before?’ I said.
‘Down there, by the river,’ he said. ‘But a bad house, full of rain and frogs. Three sisters died coughing, and the landlord took all our furniture. But the cave shall be much better, dry, with a strong roof. When we move in we shall have a feast.’
While the boy was talking we heard a hoarse muted voice calling from under the ground. At first the boy took no notice. Then we saw a man come out of a hole and crawl on his belly among the rocks. We also saw that the man had no legs.
‘That is my father,’ said the boy. ‘He is very strong.’
He picked up his basket and left us, and it began to rain. The man and the boy crawled back into the ground, and immediately we heard the sound of the pick-axe under our feet. The woman on the bed lay waiting, making no sound. The rain fell on her face but she seemed not to notice it. The small child slept.
In a narrow street near the Cathedral we found a cheap café called ‘The House of Peace’. And quite a find it was. For a shilling one could have soup, steak and chips, and fruit. A bottle of white wine, fetched from a near-by tavern, cost fourpence extra, and was as strong as a blow on the head. The company was mixed and noisy – mostly carters and thin hungry medical students – and in time we got to know it well.
The house was run by a large spreading family under the nominal head of one, Don Porfino, who was a melancholic and a drunk. He never did any work at all. But among the more active members of his staff were Trini, his beautiful tragic-faced wife, who did all the cooking; his old mother, who sat all day shivering among the potatoes; Elvira, a pretty quick-tongued widowed sister who served the food; and another sister, the fat, no-good Caridad, whose only value to the establishment lay in the fact that she had a butcher-lover who sold them bull-meat cheap. There were also two worn-down servant girls: Concha, a good-natured, sentimental dwarf; and La Sorda, a red-cheeked, short-sighted, half-deaf girl from the hills. These last two slept in cupboards behind the kitchen and spent their days in scrubbing the house, washing the dishes, peeling potatoes, running for wine, and fleeing from the embraces of the students.
On that afternoon of Christmas Eve, as we sat down for lunch in ‘The House of Peace’, the students and carters were in holiday mood and calling for second helpings. Elvira stood in the kitchen doorway, surveying them.
‘You’ll get no more,’ she said. ‘One plateful’s enough, and one is all you’ll have.’
‘Go on,’ they shouted. ‘Even the cockroaches h
ere eat better than we do.’
‘You eat like kings,’ she said.
‘Ay,’ muttered a carter, ‘one meal here, and by five o’clock we’re as empty as street-thieves.’
Elvira, keeping up a running battle with her tongue, wiped the grease from her hands and descended upon them. Weaving gracefully among the tables, she swept up their plates and drove them beaten into the street. When she brought us our steaks, she said: ‘When you’ve finished, go and sleep, for you won’t sleep much tonight.’
We asked her why.
‘Tonight is Noche Buena,’ she said. ‘In Granada no one sleeps on such a night. All the world goes to the streets. There will be walking and singing all through the town, with pom-poms and bombas and radidas and bonfires – stupendous noise all night. You wait. You will be much diverted.’
She asked us if we had made any special arrangements, and we said no.
‘Then you must eat with us,’ she said. ‘At nine o’clock we have a big feast here, with all the family at a long table. There will be wine and butter-cakes and all you can eat. The grandmother invites you, and so does Don Porfino.’
So we accepted gladly, and went out into the streets and found the shops making their last festive fling, with dolls of cut paper and rings of sugared cake for the children. Peasants were coming in from the country, driving flocks of turkeys before them, or carrying bunches of squawking fowls slung over their shoulders. In the market we bargained for a fat live cockerel and sent him back to the ‘House of Peace’ as a contribution to the feast.
But we did not sleep; there was too much going on. Broody Granada seemed to be shaking out its feathers and gathering strength for a night of riot. People were hurrying from the market with wine in their pockets and carrying hens by the neck like umbrellas. By the cold coming of evening bright strings of braziers began to appear along the pavements, surrounded by squatting gypsies. With fiendish faces flickering over their fires, they were selling bombas and rattles to add to the noise of the night. The bombas were different to any others we had seen – earthenware pots, slashed bright with savage paint and sealed at the top with a drum-skin. The skin was pierced with an upright cane which gave forth hollow growls when you stroked it. The rattles were loose tins nailed to sticks, all richly coloured in reds and greens and purples. Such instruments, in the right hands, could fill the air with fine barbaric sounds, dark and devilish as any jungle. As night fell, we bought one of each, and walked through the rapidly crowding streets adding our lot to the din.
Granada, sealed among its mountains, began to stir and glow with a special enchantment, as though it were the only city in the world to rejoice at this time. It seemed to be caught in the throes of some local miracle, some imminent wonder to be revealed only here. It was Christmas Eve, but not like any other we had seen. The wintry air, both fresh and dry, was spiced with the wood-smoke of the fires in the streets. One smelt, too, a mixture of snow and desert, far off and strange. Fugitive fowls ran screeching under foot. All traffic stopped, and the Arab stars shone bright. And the marching crowds, with their bombas and rattles, moved through the roaring lanes in an atmosphere of primitive buffoonery and joy.
By seven o’clock one could scarcely move; one threaded one’s way from bar to bar. Comic hats and false noses began to appear. We found a rich young man with two blonde girls, all wearing beards and black moustaches, and went with them on a spree. By this time I was merry, and playing a Moorish pipe. Our whiskered friends, clashing cymbals, led us to a curious house full of hairdressers, dandies and dancing whores. Wine and dishes of sickly sweets were passed among us while a fat girl danced and stamped her feet till the combs fell out of her hair. The bearded dandies sat round her in a circle, clapping smartly and barking hoarse cries. The girl flared out her scarlet skirts and writhed her mouth and shook her shoulders, weaving among them roused and burning, her raw face hot from their eyes. She reached at last a sensual frenzy, a snarling smile on her face, throbbing, posturing and combing her body with her fingers, till her stamping feet filled the air with dust and she collapsed on the floor to the screeches of the hairdressers. One of these, a beautiful young man, then leapt on to an ironing-board and began to execute a fine-toed zapateado, flaring his nostrils and tossing his curls the while. Clearly the night’s entertainment promised to be long and varied. But we had to go . . .
We arrived at the ‘House of Peace’ to find the feast already spread. Don Porfino’s family, together with a picking of students and carters, had taken their places around the table and were drinking hard and snapping biscuits at each other.
‘Behold!’ cried the grandmother, her chin on the table, ‘the sun and the moon have arrived.’
We were ushered, with pretty ceremony, to the head of the table, and immediately Concha and La Sorda began to bear in great platters of pork and rice. When, to the accompaniment of speeches, this had been satisfactorily dispatched, our cockerel, well roasted, was placed before us, and in spite of every protest, nobody else was allowed to touch it. There were thirty of us at the feast, and each of us, from the grandmother to the children, had his own bottle of wine, which was the colour of rain. Don Porfino sat on my right, and was already far gone with his drink. His face, like wet clay, was yellow and dead-looking and oozed with peculiar oils. His pale-green eyes crawled slowly over me, as though groping for support. His lips wore a sad and permanent grin, and his tongue fought stumblingly for words.
‘Lorenzo,’ he said. ‘I am hot and sick. My head burns and my heart is dirty. Let us leave this shameful place. Let us go to the mountains and throw snow at each other.’
Trini, the wife, sat near, listening and watching with her tragic eyes. When she caught my glance she tapped her head and flicked an imaginary fly off her shoulder.
The hungry students, now bold with food, began to raise their voices. They threw mangled jokes at me, mangled compliments at Kati, which, having mangled further, we then threw back. The children screamed and covered each other with rice. The widowed Elvira looked young and shining and longing for love. And the little grandmother sank lower and lower in her chair, tearing her food with her fingers and squeaking like a mouse.
The feast grew noisy. We gorged and grew heavy, and La Sorda brought each of us a fresh bottle of wine. We began to sing; and during the intervals there were exercises in wit in which even the silent Trini joined, revealing a sharp and flashing tongue, salty and edged with irony. But intoxicated as we all were, she stood apart, her black eyes ringed with pain, inhabiting a haunted territory of her own. I could not see what she was doing here. Her head on its long neck was proudly negroid, her brooding features ravaged and beautiful; she was straight and dark and savage, and she lived among that scheming, squabbling family like a hostage of royal blood.
We had pushed back our chairs now and were drinking coñac, and Don Porfino had wandered off into the cellars. The plump Caridad, her tongue well loosened, leaned across and began to tell me tales.
‘My brother’s a simple man,’ she said, ‘but kind, too kind. Look what he’s done for her.’ She jerked her head at Trini. ‘Of course, she’s not one of us. He found her in Morocco. And she is bad for him. Bad and proud. Though no one knows why, for she brought not a penny with her.’
I asked why she looked so ill.
‘Oh, she has had a misfortune,’ said Caridad, pulling a conventional face. ‘Four days ago she was put to bed with a boy. He died, and she went out and threw him in the river. She is not strong yet.’
Don Porfino came back, singing a sad song, and dropped into his chair.
‘Lorenzo,’ he said, ‘look at my face. Touch it. Feel my tears. I make myself weep. I have too much feeling.’
‘Feeling!’ spat Elvira, coming close. ‘He has no more feeling than a sack. He is like all the others. Pigskins we women carry to the grave.’ Her pretty face grew flushed and fierce. ‘No, Lorenzo. The men of this country – pouff! – they are nothing. I pollute them all. Give me the foreign man, ay, there i
s the true gentleman.’ And swift and hot she kissed me on the neck.
Meanwhile the students had advanced their chairs inch by inch across the room and were now sitting in front of Kati gazing upon her with glum desire. The first exhilaration of wine had left them, their eyes were glazed and their mouths hung open. They, too, had too much feeling.
At midnight we left the ‘House of Peace’ and went to the church to watch the Christmas Mass. The place was warm and scented and it seethed with a lively multitude. Walls and ceiling were starred with tiny lights, and the host of candles round the Virgin whirled, to my wine-struck eyes, like a cloud of fireflies.
Back in the streets, with midnight past, it was bright and brassy bedlam. The drums and cymbals crashed and thundered, and the wide pavements surged with young men, singing and fighting. It was the height of the night when anything might happen. Cries, salutations and groans of stifled desire greeted Kati as she passed. A tide of gallants began to follow her, lamenting her beauty and singing sad praises. One of their number, driven harder than the rest, detached himself from the group and approached her close, calling to heaven that he was helpless before such perfection. ‘If I die for it!’ he cried, and tried to embrace her. With drowsy dignity I took her from him and pushed him lightly away. But the crime was done. Outraged by his boldness, and shocked to silence, his friends leapt upon him, twisted his arms, and sat him on the pavement. Then they began to chatter and scold him, scandal in all their voices.
So we left them, and entered our hotel, which was near. We had not been in our room for more than a few minutes, when there came a loud banging on the door. It was Kati’s victim, covered with shame.
‘Go home,’ I said.
‘I cannot,’ he answered.