“Yes, I know. The money’s pretty good.”
“I don’t exactly know why you’ve come to me.” “Well, I wanted to know whether you thought there would be any chance for an English doctor in Spain?”
“Why Spain?”
“I don’t know, I just have a fancy for it.”
“It’s not like Carmen, you know,” I smiled. “But there’s sunshine there, and there’s good wine, and there’s colour, and there’s air you can breathe. Let me say what I have to say straight out. I heard by accident that there was no English doctor in Seville. Do you think I could earn a living there? Is it madness to give up a good safe job for an uncertainty?”
“What does your wife think about it?”
“She’s willing.”
“It’s a great risk.”
“I know. But if you say take it, I will: if you say stay where you are, I’ll stay.”
He was looking at me intently with those bright dark eyes of his and I knew that he meant what he said. I reflected for a moment.
“Your whole future is concerned: you must decide for yourself. But this I can tell you : if you don’t want money but are content to earn just enough to keep body and soul together, then go. For you will lead a wonderful life.”
He left me, I thought about him for a day or two, and then forgot. The episode passed completely from my memory.
Many years later, fifteen at least, I happened to be in Seville and having some trifling indisposition asked the hotel porter whether there was an English doctor in the town. He said there was and gave me the address. I took a cab and as I drove up to the house a little fat man came out of it. He hesitated when he caught sight of me.
“Have you come to see me?” he said. “I’m the English doctor.”
I explained my errand and he asked me to come in. He lived in an ordinary Spanish house, with a patio, and his consulting room which led out of it was littered with papers, books, medical appliances and lumber. The sight of it would have startled a squeamish patient. We did our business and then I asked the doctor what his fee was. He shook his head and smiled.
“There’s no fee.”
“Why on earth not?”
“Don’t you remember me? Why, I’m here because of something you said to me. You changed my whole life for me. I’m Stephens.”
I had not the least notion what he was talking about. He reminded me of our interview, he repeated to me what we had said, and gradually, out of the night, a dim recollection of the incident came back to me.
“I was wondering if I’d ever see you again,” he said, “I was wondering if ever I’d have a chance of thanking you for all you’ve done for me.”
“It’s been a success then?”
I looked at him. He was very fat now and bald, but his eyes twinkled gaily and his fleshy, red face bore an expression of perfect good-humour. The clothes he wore, terribly shabby they were, had been made obviously by a Spanish tailor and his hat was the wide-brimmed sombrero of the Spaniard. He looked to me as though he knew a good bottle of wine when he saw it. He had a dissipated, though entirely sympathetic, appearance. You might have hesitated to let him remove your appendix, but you could not have imagined a more delightful creature to drink a glass of wine with.
“Surely you were married?” I said.
“Yes. My wife didn’t like Spain, she went back to Camberwell, she was more at home there.”
“Oh, I’m sorry for that."
His black eyes flashed a bacchanalian smile. He really had somewhat the look of a young Silenus.
“Life is full of compensations,” he murmured.
The words were hardly out of his mouth when a Spanish woman, no longer in her first youth, but still boldly and voluptuously beautiful, appeared at the door. She spoke to him in Spanish, and I could not fail to perceive that she was the mistress of the house.
As he stood at the door to let me out he said to me:
“You told me when last I saw you that if I came here I should earn just enough money to keep body and soul together, but that I should lead a wonderful life. Well, I want to tell you that you were right. Poor I have been and poor I shall always be, but by heaven I’ve enjoyed myself. I wouldn’t exchange the life I’ve had with that of any king in the world.”
THE POINT OF HONOUR
SOME YEARS AGO, being engaged on writing a book about Spain in the Golden Age, I had occasion to read again the plays of Calderon. Among others I read one called El Medico de su Honra, which means the Physician of his Honour. It is a cruel play and you can hardly read it without a shudder. But rereading it, I was reminded of an encounter I had had many years before which has always remained in my memory as one of the strangest I have ever known. I was quite young then and I had gone to Seville on a short visit to see the celebration of the Feast of Corpus Christi. It was the height of summer and the heat was terrific. Great sail-cloths were drawn across the narrow streets, giving a grateful shade, but in the squares the sun beat down mercilessly. In the morning I watched the procession. It was splendid and impressive. The crowd knelt down as the Host was solemnly carried past, and the Civil Guards in full uniform stood at salute to do homage to the heavenly King. And in the afternoon I joined the dense throng which was making its way to the bull-ring. The cigarette girls and the sewing girls wore carnations in their dark hair and their young men were dressed in all their best. It was just after the Spanish-American war, and the short, embroidered jacket, the skin-tight trousers and the broad-brimmed, low-crowned hat were still worn. Sometimes the crowd was scattered by a picador on the wretched hack that would never survive the afternoon, and the rider, with conscious pride in his picturesque costume, exchanged pleasantries with the facetious. A long line of carriages, dilapidated and shabby, overfilled with aficionados, drove noisily along.
I went early, for it amused me to see the people gradually filling the vast arena. The cheaper seats in the sun were already packed, and it was a curious effect that the countless fans made, like the fluttering of a host of butterflies, as men and women restlessly fanned themselves. In the shade, where I was sitting, the places were taken more slowly, but even there, an hour before the fight began, one had to look rather carefully for a seat. Presently a man stopped in front of me and with a pleasant smile asked if I could make room for him. When he had settled down, I took a sidelong glance at him and noticed that he was well-dressed, in English clothes, and looked like a gentleman, He had beautiful hands, small but resolute, with thin, long fingers. Wanting a cigarette, I took out my case and thought it would be polite to offer him one. He accepted. He had evidently seen that I was a foreigner, for he thanked me in French. “You are English?” he went on.
“Yes.”
“How is it you haven’t run away from the heat?”
I explained that I had come on purpose to see the Feast of Corpus Christi.
“After all, it’s something you must come to Seville for.” Then I made some casual remark about the vast concourse of people.
“No one would imagine that Spain was bleeding from the loss of all that remained of her Empire and that her ancient glory is now nothing but a name.”
“There’s a great deal left.”
“The sunshine, the blue sky, and the future.”
He spoke dispassionately, as though the misfortunes of his fallen country were no concern of his. Not knowing what to reply, I remained silent. We waited. The boxes began to fill up. Ladies in their mantillas of black or white lace entered them and spread their Manila shawls over the balustrade so as to form a gay and many-coloured drapery. Now and then, when one of them was of particular beauty, a round of applause would greet her appearance and she would smile and bow without embarrassment. At last the president of the bull-fight made his entry, the band struck up, and the fighters, all glittering in their satin and gold and silver, marched swaggering across the ring. A minute later a great black bull charged in. Carried away by the horrible excitement of the contest. I noticed, notwithstanding, th
at my neighbour remained cool. When a man fell and only escaped by a miracle the horns of the furious beast, and with a gasp thousands sprang to their feet, he remained motionless. The bull was killed and the mules dragged out the huge carcass. I sank back exhausted.
“Do you like bull-fighting?” he asked me. “Most English do, though I have noticed that in their own country they say hard enough things about it.”
“Can one like something that fills one with horror and loathing? Each time I come to a fight I swear I will never go to another. And yet I do.”
“It’s a curious passion that leads us to delight in the peril of others. Perhaps it’s natural to the human race. The Romans had their gladiators and the moderns have their melodramas. It may be that it is an instinct in man to find pleasure in bloodshed and torture.”
I did not answer directly.
“Don’t you think that the bull-fight is the reason why human life is of so little account in Spain?”
“And do you think human life is of any great account?” he asked.
I gave him a quick look, for there was an ironical tone in his voice that no one could have missed, anti I saw that his eyes were full of mockery. I flushed a little, for he made me on a sudden feel very young. I was surprised at the change of his expression. He had seemed rather an amiable man, with his large soft friendly eyes, but now his face bore a look of sardonic hauteur which was a trifle disquieting. I shrank back into my shell. We said little to one another during the rest of the afternoon, but when the last bull was killed and we all rose to our feet he shook hands with me and expressed the hope that we might meet again. It was a mere politeness and neither of us, I imagine, thought that there was even a remote possibility of it.
But quite by chance, two or three days later, we did. I was in a quarter of Seville that I did not know very well. I had been that afternoon to the palace of the Duke of Alba, which I knew had a fine garden and in one of the rooms a magnificent ceiling reputed to have been made by Moorish captives before the fall of Granada. It was not easy to gain admittance, but I wanted very much to see it and thought that now, in the height of summer when there were no tourists, with two or three pesetas
I might he allowed in. I was disappointed. The man in charge told me that the house was under repair and no stranger could visit it without a written permission from the Duke’s agent. So, having nothing else to do, I went to the royal garden of the Alcazar, the old palace of Don Pedro the Cruel, whose memory lives still among the people of Seville. It was very pleasant among the orange trees and cypresses. I had a book with me, a volume of Calderon, and I sal there for a while and read. Then I went for a stroll. In the older parts of Seville the streets are narrow and tortuous. It is delicious to wander along them under the awnings that stretch above, but not easy to find one’s way. I lost mine. When I had just made up my mind that I had no notion in which direction to turn I saw a man walking towards me and recognised my acquaintance of the bull-ring. I stopped him and asked whether he could direct me. He remembered me.
“You’ll never find your way,” he smiled, turning round. “I’ll walk a little with you until you can’t mistake it.”
I protested, but he would not listen. He assured me it was no trouble.
“You haven’t gone away then?” he said.
“I’m leaving to-morrow. I’ve just been to the Duke of Alba’s house. I wanted to see that Moorish ceiling of his, but they wouldn’t let me in.”
“Are you interested in Arabic art?”
“Well, yes. I’ve heard that that ceiling is one of the finest things in Seville.”
“I think I could show you one as good.”
“Where?”
He looked at me for a moment reflectively as though wondering what sort of a person I was. If he was, he evidently came to a satisfactory decision.
“If you have ten minutes to spare I will take you to it.”
I thanked him warmly and we turned back and retraced our steps. We chatted of indifferent things till we came to a large house, washed in pale green, with the Arabic look of a prison, the windows on the street heavily barred, which so many houses in Seville have. My guide clapped his hands at the gateway and a servant looked out from a window into the patio, and pulled a cord.
“Whose house is this?”
“Mine.”
I was surprised, for I knew how jealously Spaniards guarded their privacy and how little inclined they were to admit strangers into their houses. The heavy iron gate swung open and we walked into the courtyard; we crossed it and went through a narrow passage. Then I found myself suddenly in an enchanted garden. It was walled on three sides, with walls as high as houses; and their old red brick, softened by time, was covered with roses. They clad every inch in wanton, scented luxuriance. In the garden, growing wildly, as if the gardeners had striven in vain to curb the exuberance of nature, were palm-trees rising high into the air in their passionate desire for the sun, dark orange-trees and trees in flower whose names I did not know, and among them roses and more roses. The fourth wall was a Moorish loggia, with horseshoe arches heavily decorated with tracery, and when we entered this I saw the magnificent ceiling. It was like a little bit of the Alcazar, but it had not suffered the restorations that have taken all the charm from that palace, and the colours were exquisitely tender. It was a gem.
“Believe me, you need not regret that you have not been able to see the duke’s house. Further, you can say that you have seen something that no other foreigner has seen within living memory.”
“It’s very kind of you to have shown it to me. I’m infinitely grateful.”
He looked about him with a pride with which I could sympathise.
“It was built by one of my own ancestors in the time of Don Pedro the Cruel. It is very likely that the King himself more than once caroused under this ceiling with my ancestor.”
I held out the book I was carrying.
“I’ve just been reading a play in which Don Pedro is one of the important characters.”
“What is the book?”
I handed it to him and he glanced at the title. I looked about me.
“Of course, what adds to the beauty is that wonderful garden,” I said. “The whole impression is awfully romantic.”
The Spaniard was evidently pleased with my enthusiasm. He smiled. I had already noticed how grave his smile was. It hardly dispelled the habitual melancholy of his expression.
“Would you like to sit down for a few minutes and smoke a cigarette?” “I should love to.”
We walked out into the garden and came upon a lady sitting on a bench of Moorish tiles like those in the gardens of the Alcazar. She was working at some embroidery. She looked up quickly, evidently taken aback to see a stranger, and gave my companion an enquiring stare.
“Allow me to present you to my wife,” he said.
The lady gravely bowed. She was very beautiful, with magnificent eyes, a straight nose with delicate nostrils, and a pale smooth skin. In her black hair, abundant as with most Spanish women, there was a broad white streak. Her face was quite unlined and she could not have been more than thirty.
“You have a very lovely garden, Scnora,” I said because I had to say something.
She gave it. an indifferent glance.
“Yes, it is pretty.”
I felt suddenly embarrassed. I did not expect her to show me any cordiality, and I could not blame her if she thought my intrusion merely a nuisance. There was something about her that I could not quite make out. It was not an active hostility. Absurd as it seemed, since she was a young woman and beautiful, I felt that there was something dead in her.
“Are you going to sit here?” she asked her husband.
“With your permission. Only for a few minutes.”
“I won’t disturb you.”
She gathered her silks and the canvas on which she had been working and rose to her feet. When she stood up I saw that she was taller than Spanish women generally are. She gave me an u
nsmiling bow. She carried herself with a sort of royal composure and her gait was stately. I was flippant in those days, and I remember saying to myself that she was not the sort of girl you could very well think of being silly with. We sat down on the multi-coloured bench and I gave my host a. cigarette. I held a match to it. He still had my volume of Calderon in his hands, and now ho idly turned the pages.
“Which of the plays have you been reading?”
“El Medico de su Honra.”
He gave me a look, and I thought I discerned in his large eyes a sardonic glint.
“And what do you think of it?”
“I think its revolting. The fact is, of course, that the idea is so foreign to our modern notions.”
“What idea?”
“The point of honour and all that sort of thing.”
I should explain that the point of honour is the mainspring of much of the Spanish drama. It is the nobleman’s code that impels a man to kill his wife, in cold blood, not only if she has been unfaithful to him, but even if, however little she was to blame, her conduct has given rise to scandal. In this particular play there is an example of this more deliberate than any I have ever read: the physician of his honour takes vengeance on his wife, though aware that she is innocent, simply as a matter of decorum.
“It’s in the Spanish blood,” said my friend. “The foreigner must just take it or leave it.”
“Oh, come, a lot of water has flowed down the Guadalquivir since Calderon’s day. You’re not going to pretend that any man would behave like that now.”
“On the contrary I pretend that even now a husband who finds himself in such a humiliating and ridiculous position can only regain his self-respect by the offender’s death.”
I did not answer. It seemed to me that he was pulling a romantic gesture, and within me I murmured, Bosh. He gave me an ironic smile.
“Have you ever heard of Don Pedro Aguria?”
“Never.”
‘The name is not unknown in Spanish history. An ancestor was Admiral of Spain under Philip II and another was bosom friend to Philip IV. By royal command he sat for his portrait to Velasquez.”
The Complete Short Stories of W. Somerset Maugham - II - The World Over Page 34
