Pilgrim Son: A Personal Odyssey

by John Masters

  We asked the old lady if she knew a good, cheap hotel in Huesca. She didn't know Huesca, but... The car awoke. Huesca? Who knew anything about Huesca? Not me, sir, I am going to Zaragoza. Nor I, unfortunately I live in Monzón and travel seldom. But these gentlemen, perhaps? Yes, we know Huesca...

  They were travelling salesmen from Graus. We had to go to Graus; it was beautiful, on a river, in the mountains. The food was good, the water good, and the people alegre, simpática. And what were we going to do in Huesca? Find the Pella Guara. Well, we've never heard of it, but that's no problem. But you must have an introduction to the president of the Diputación (what in hell is a Diputación?), and the Mayor, and see the Bell of Huesca, and the park, and eat castaños de mazapan, and...

  When we eventually chugged into Huesca, and the Guardia Civil had marched briskly into the darkness beyond the street lamps and the soldier had climbed into the military bus — a little horse-drawn box on wheels — the travelling salesmen picked up our suitcases and led us to the hotel. After leaving us for an hour they returned and ate with us, at their expense. Next day whatever they were supposed to be selling they didn't sell, as they were introducing us to the mayor and the president of the Diputación. (Pray, sir, tell us what is a diputación? It is a form of provincial government, with little responsibility for He in Madrid does not like to delegate power except to those more directly responsible to him).

  The Bell of Huesca was a gruesome painting of a lot of headless bodies in a cellar. The park was small, hot and dusty, with a large war memorial inscribed 'Fallen for God and Spain'. New buildings were going up everywhere because the central government was making plenty of money available for Huesca, the Most Loyal, Most Noble City. It had fought and held for Franco for two years, just as Madrid had held for the Reds. The Reds? You mean the Loyalists? Ah yes, but everyone called them Reds then, they called themselves Reds, and they'd be proud of it if they'd won. But it's all over now, thank God. We're all one people now. Except some.

  It was thirteen years since the end of the Spanish Civil War but its presence was universal and overpowering. Every Spaniard talked of life and events ates (before) and never thought it necessary to say before what. The scar on the people's memory was almost as visible as the actual destruction. Still, after thirteen years, we passed rusted locomotives and boxcars on railroad sidings, the marks of bomb splinters and machine-gun bullets unmistakable. Still, after thirteen years, we saw houses in rubble, and twisted fallen bridges where the road wound up and down on a 'temporary' diversion. The names on the memorial in the park evoked harsh memories even to me, who was not there. I knew the names: Monte Argon: Estrecho Quinto... below that George Orwell was shot in the throat...

  It is over but not yet forgotten, that is asking too much. But there will never be another. Never never! That is all we ask of Franco. That is the reason of his power.

  On the way to the bus station, the day we left Huesca, we saw a huge old man in Aragonese costume: rope sandals with low black cross gartering over home spun stockings; white lawn under breeches ruffled out to show at the knees under black velvet breeches; a purple sash a foot deep from the waist to the buttocks, black velvet waistcoat and white shirt; and on his head a sort of bowler, low crowned, curly brimmed, with a small piece of bright cloth hanging from the back over his neck.

  It was a wonderful costume, good-looking, simple, and practical; but we learned that only a few old men from this one village of Anso still wore it regularly. We asked ourselves a question to which we have never found an answer: Where do machines get this will of their own? When the English‑made machines were imported into Spain to make clothes, surely it would have been natural and sensible to set them to make the clothes already in use. But no — the machines made English clothes, and that's what the people had to buy. Why?

  The Peña Guara, in the persons of Julio Nogues and Antonio Lacoma, gave us advice, what few maps were available, and, at last, just when we were despairing of ever finding out what they were — castaños de mazapan.

  They turned out to be caramel-coated chestnuts made of marzipan, and as Antonio passed a huge box of them into our hands just as the bus was leaving Huesca (they had already got us seats and explained to the driver and conductor where we were going), we wondered when we would ever want to eat them in that hot afternoon.

  The answer was — we didn't. Learning a lesson from the amazing generosity of Spain, we handed them round the bus. That served as an introduction and before we had reached Arguis everyone on board knew about us, to the third and fourth generation.

  The bus was old, bulbous, and asthmatic. Everything rattled except what groaned, there were no treads on the tyres, we were heavily overloaded and the road was narrow, unsurfaced, and mountainous. I realized that anywhere else in the world I would be in a paroxysm of nervousness, but here it seemed inappropriate. The driver was very careful, and our neighbours cheerful: it was not dignified to let mere machines oppress us. We joined in the general conversation.

  On the edge of a particularly menacing precipice we stopped to change a tyre and in the small dirty town of Sabiñanigo we changed buses, the new one being smaller, older and more bronchial than the last. Darkness and rain fell together as we started up the valley of the Gallego. The feeble light in the ceiling went out. Huddled like cattle we swayed into a gorge. Lightning flashes showed a torrent, a cliff... vultures, surely waiting? The horn blared continuously, but was barely to be heard under the echoing barrages of thunder. Every twenty seconds regularly we looked down over the edge of a steep curve into a black boiling chasm loud with water. Three times we had to back out over the abyss, on a gradient of 1 in 3, because the bus could not otherwise negotiate the hairpins. Conversation died away as the uselessness of talking against thunder penetrated the minds of all, even the 200-decibel housewife behind us.

  Dimly I realized we were among houses. The bus stopped. A single electric light bulb on a tall stone wall illumined only the slanting rain. Suddenly the bus was empty. We were alone. Then I saw three sinister figures, black-cloaked, standing pressed against the wall below the lamp, the water pouring down from the eaves making a curtain in front of them. Did they have knives hidden under their cloaks? What were they waiting for, except to rob and murder us?

  There was no sign of a hotel or bus station or any other living thing. We couldn't spend the night in the bus, so, summoning my courage and my Castilian I scrambled out, splashed across to the cloaked figures and cried, 'Please, gentlemen, pray tell me where is the Hotel Balaitous?'

  The three were galvanized into activity and I saw that one was a Guardia Civil. 'The Balaitous?' they cried, 'We'll show you. Come... Your bags! The lady! Ah, the rain.' We waded up the street and soon arrived, dripping, before a huge dark barrack that looked more like a prison than a hotel. In Spain, ask, and it shall be opened. The Guardia banged on the door and we went in, shaking ourselves like a troop of Newfoundlands. In those days in Spain one was lucky to find large rooms lighted by a single 30-watt bulb, and that's what they had in the Balaitous, but it shone out like a torch in a primeval cave, giving far more than light; and the host was a small man who greeted us with an accordion in his hands, and there was a great fire burning in the grate, several young men playing violent ping-pong in the next room, and a cheerful, efficient, copper-voiced serving girl called Milagro (Miracle).

  I said, before we went to sleep, 'I've got it. Spain is India.'

  'People usually think it's Africa,' Barbara said, 'Like that man who wrote that Africa begins at the Pyrenees.'

  'We don't know Africa,' I said, 'so to us its India... another India to replace the one we lost.'

  In the succeeding days we began to confirm, with growing excitement, that it was true. Spain was not particularly similar to India, but the two countries touched the same chords in us — a sense of space, of poverty faced with courage, of man-to-man relationships that had nothing to do with the obvious class or caste systems, of indestructibility, of values quit
e different from ours, seeming sometimes barbarous, sometimes ethereal. We had learned already that there was only one key to the riches of this country — the ability to speak Spanish. To the man who tries to speak Spanish, and is not afraid of making a fool of himself in the process, no doors are closed.

  We sat down before Spain — the country, the people, the language, the food — like hungry hunters before a bottomless bowl of stew. We asked a thousand questions, mostly very stupid. We peered and poked and inquired, trying to find out not only what but why. The Frontier Guards arrested us in one direction and an Army outpost in another. (That one ended in several jugs of wine and a large group photograph.) The secret police, naturally, became suspicious and came to ask why we took such excursions so close to the French frontier, who we were, what we were after. We answered, 'Tourists,' but were worried until Francisco came, playing his accordion, and said, 'Those people have nothing else to do. Forget them.'

  It was early May, the snow low above the town and daffodils and primroses curtsying in the corners of the fields. Spain was stirring after its long agony, and the encircling mountains rang to the hammer and pick and echoed to the roar of dynamite as the new hydro-electric dams went up to bring power and water to the medieval poverty of Upper Aragon. We hired a guide to show us a good walk, and he took us up to the tunnel they were making through the mountain, to tap the water of Lake Respumoso. He was Luciano Urieta. once ski champion of Spain, now working for the power company as a watchman. He said, striding slowly along beside us, 'In the war, when I was sixteen, we had to ski over to the next valley, about ten of us, and bring back food for everyone in the village. We were cut off all winter. I carried 180 lb. a time.' It began to rain, the spring rain of the mountains, almost sleet, and a man came charging down the huge slope front the works above. He was wearing a sack as a cloak and as he came near us I said 'Buenas dias.' The man was big and wet and dark-eyed. 'Good day?' he yelled in Spanish, 'It's a terrible day! The weather's bad, Spain's bad, Franco's bad.' He charged on down the hill, but not before the shadow of a grin creased his streaming face.

  I had said good morning because we were learning our Spanish manners, and in the country never passed anyone without the proper greeting. We had learned to look surreptitiously at our watches before opening our mouths because every shepherd knew exactly when it was noon, without a watch, and if we said 'Buenas días' at 12.10 would answer, with a hint of reproach, 'Buenas tardes.' We never left a bar or shop without muttering a general farewell to everyone there. We knew now that we had committed a solecism by accepting the old lady's proffered food on the train. You were supposed never to eat food in a public place without offering to share it with anyone nearby, in the phrase Le gusto? But the one to whom it was offered was supposed to refuse it with the words Gracias, que aproveche. (Thank you, no — but enjoy it yourselves.) Now whenever we opened our sandwiches on the trail I would bellow Le gusto? to anyone within half a mile, until Barbara said I was, as usual, overdoing things.

  In the mornings we listened to Milagro sing hoarsely about Aragon and the Virgin of Pilar as she scrubbed the floors, and learned that she was singing jotas, the folk songs of Aragon. In the evenings, before the very late dinner, we ourselves sang to Francisco's accordion, and played ping-pong with the squad of young engineers from the hydro-electric works. At supper we ate trout perfectly fried in olive oil and drank ice-cold Aragonese red wine that had been left out under the eaves all winter and strengthened thereby from 11 per cent to 20 per cent alcoholic content; and learned to handle the twin-headed porrón and the leather bota with the proper abandon if not with the corresponding skill. And on Monday and Wednesday after the main course at supper Milagro would come to the table with big hopeful eyes and say, 'Tonight for dessert there is fruit, or flan;' and on Tuesday and Thursday she would say, 'Tonight for dessert there is flan, or fruit.'

  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.'