Two men dressed as they were would not fail to attract attention. Extranjeros, naturally; de donde bueno? A sturdy, unshaven laborer across the table asked the question politely, and when he heard the magic word americano, he revealed that it was a great moment. He had been to the movies, oh, many, many times, and knew all about that land of wonders; also he had a cousin in San Francisco, and did perhaps the Senor know him? It wasn’t so easy to communicate, because he was a Catalan and knew only a little Spanish; but it wasn’t long before a Murcian dockworker with a heavy black mustache and a red shirt moved over from the next table to help out. Word spread, “El es american,” and everybody in the place wanted to listen; when they had finished eating their rice with sausages, or codfish with tomatoes, instead of going out in the normal way, they stood around the table. Lanny ordered an extra bottle of red wine, and then another, and soon had them talking freely.
No one had the slightest hesitation in telling about, political affairs in Catalonia. The revolution was under way, and it had begun with the right to say what you pleased and to pound upon the fable while saying it. In every group of these workers and fishermen was someone who had recently been released from jail and was making the most of his opportunity. The majority of them were anarchists, in a crude, elementary way. They all belonged to unions which were dominated by syndicalist thought; the government was to be shoved aside and the trade unions were to take control of industry and run it. With them it wasn’t a matter of theory but of direct observation of politicians and what they did when they were elected—or rather what they didn’t. Al hacer punetas with them! Here they had been in office for four months, and what had they done but talk? At this rate, how many lifetimes would it take to put down the patrones and put up the trabajadores?
No greater delusion in the world than that the workers could change their condition by dropping a piece of paper into a ballot box! “Not that we won’t do it,” said the Catalan who had started the conversation and who stuck to his chair within reach of the wine bottle. “I myself was paid fifty pesetas for doing my duty as a citizen; an agent of the C.E.D.A. paid me the money to vote their way, and I took the money and voted republican.” There was laughter and applause, and Lanny gathered that others had discovered this method of expropriating the expropriators. Since his researches had unearthed the same practice in the land of the Pilgrims’ pride, he could not be too greatly shocked.
V
This trip was going to subject Raoul Palma to a novel experience, of stopping at the most expensive hotel in each city or town. It was not merely that Lanny was used to doing this, nor yet that they would be safer from vermin in these places, but because of the clients and what they would think. Painting pictures was an art, but selling them was an artifice, and Lanny told how his entire career had begun from the accident of meeting the wife of a Pittsburgh plateglass manufacturer in one of the de luxe hotels of London. In order to belong in such places one must have the right clothes, and this applied also to one’s secretary or translator; so, before being put up at the Hotel Ritz, Raoul was taken to a shop and provided with shirts and ties, and three suits of white tussah in order that he would not be dripping perspiration in the heat of midsummer Spain.
“Don’t let all this corrupt you,” said the host, with a grin; and the Spaniard answered gravely that he wouldn’t. He hated it with true proletarian ardor; but Lanny had watched many pupils of the school in their attitude toward leisure-class practices, and it had been as with the monster Vice: “We first endure, then pity, then embrace.”
They were going by appointment in the morning to call upon a wealthy retired shipowner. Many years ago, while visiting in Cannes, this gentleman had purchased through Lanny a Holy Virgin by one of the minor Italian painters. It was up to the expert to do him the courtesy of inquiring how he was pleased, and of seeing his collection. Senor Amengol might have got tired of some item, or he might like to hear about the Lucas belonging to Senora Villareal—who could say? Raoul wouldn’t be needed, because the old gentleman spoke French of a sort; but Lanny explained that a secretary was impressive, and it wouldn’t do Raoul any harm to learn about the manners, costumes, and interior decoration of the Catalan bourgeoisie. Raoul must bow politely, smile frequently, and listen attentively, but there was nothing to forbid his thinking anything he pleased.
They drove into the suburbs, and in a large villa on a hilltop met a rosy-pudgy gentleman who might have served as any caricaturist’s model of the exploiting classes. But he was a kindly and expansive soul, and evidently understood that an American art expert was a personage of consequence. He was so pleased by Lanny’s appreciation of his collection that he insisted upon their staying to lunch; he produced his best foods and wines, and pressed them upon his guests with the same ardor that he pressed them into himself.
All through the meal he entertained them with a most lugubrious account of the state of his native land, for whose future he could see no gleam of hope. It was the obverse of the picture they had got on the previous evening. The elderly employer of labor had turned the business over to his sons, but he still carried the responsibility in his soul. He scolded the imbeciles who, without education or the least knowledge of finance and trade, presumed to dictate to their employers how a business should be run and what wages could be afforded. He raged even more fiercely at those canallas of Communists and other Reds who came in from abroad and by subtle arts incited the workers to discontent and rebellion against their lawful masters.
Senor Amengol revealed that the blackness of his mood was due to a demand from the stevedores’ union for a raise in wages and the fact that they had the support of the politicians in office. When Lanny asked tactfully whether there might not be some possibility of ousting this left-wing government, the shipowner held out no hope, at least so far as concerned Catalonia. He declared the Reds would burn and slay in sheer blind hatred of the rich; far from any thought of buying new paintings, the old gentleman was on the verge of packing up those he had, and trying to smuggle them over the border into the more civilized land of France. “But there is a Leftist government now in France also,” remarked Lanny. The Senor had apparently not heard this, and his round features drooped lower; for a minute or two he forgot the mixture of chicken, rice, and red peppers which he had upon the plate before him.
Throughout the meal Raoul Palma said not a word; the proper behavior for an employee honored by an invitation to sit down with his betters. Lanny guided the conversation so as to draw out the old bourgeois, and chuckled inwardly, knowing how his friend would be bursting with rage. “Ah, le sale cochon!” exclaimed Raoul, when they had left the villa a safe distance behind. “He stuffed himself with food for a dozen men—and you have seen the ragged, half-famished little ones—following us on the streets to beg for a centavo!”
VI
Strolling in one of the parks of Barcelona they came upon a sight which restored Raoul’s hopes for the proletariat of this city. Under a spreading live-oak was a small platform, and in front of it half a dozen benches; upon the platform stood a tall lean man of middle age, wearing dark glasses against the glare of the hot afternoon, and upon the benches sat a score or more of thin and ragged urchins. They were being taught their letters, in order that they might later on be able to read Socialist papers, leaflets, and manifestoes, and learn how their parents were exploited. At least that was the way it appeared to Raoul, and he wanted to stay and hear every word, and afterward talk with the teacher and learn if such open-air schools were a regular affair and for how long they had been established.
Lanny, in the meantime, went to look at the Barcelona Cathedral, dark, mysterious, magnificent, with its fifteenth-century stained-glass windows. Thereafter in each city he had only to say that he was going to inspect religious art, and Raoul would set forth to look for schools and collect data to send home and use in a series of articles for the Socialist press. A happy compromise, for Raoul could find not the slightest interest in endlessly multiplied
Madonnas or endlessly crucified Christs, even when he had a tiptop connoisseur to point out the details of technique. Realistic art the younger man could appreciate, especially when it dealt with the humble and the poor; but Catholic art was one of the curses of Spain, only surpassed in its evil effects by Catholic education, Catholic politics, Catholic landlordism and banking.
VII
The car rolled on to Valencia, very old city of blue and white and golden domes, making Lanny think of Constantinople and other cities of the Levant. Here were old Roman ruins such as he was used to at Antibes, and modern buildings constructed of ancient stones. It was the city of the Cid, hero of the wars against the Moors, of whom Lanny had read much in boyhood. Now industries of many sorts had sprung up, mostly in old buildings ill adapted thereto; the workers were crowded into tenements, many to a single room. Outside the town were groves of olives and oranges, and uncounted thousands of extremely tall date-palms; this was the most fertile part of Spain and the land was less inequitably divided. The peasant homes were primitive, but the people appeared well fed. They were rather thick-set and wore the blusa, a canvas shirt nearly always black.
The art expert had a letter from Emily Chattersworth to a one-time school friend who had married a Spanish landowner of this district and had some fine paintings. There was no need of a translator, so Raoul elected to study education. Lanny drove to the estate and met a lady of the old school, humane and sympathetic, unhappy over the strife and suffering she saw in the land of her adoption. But she was helpless; her husband was active in the local C.E.D.A., the reactionary political coalition which had just been defeated, and one of her sons was a leader in the Falange, the Spanish Fascist group, financed by Italian funds as in France. Senora Artieda was most happy to see an art lover from the outside world, and while she could not talk frankly on short acquaintance, she did say that she feared bloodshed and deplored the unwillingness to compromise which was a defect of the native character throughout its long and tragic history.
She possessed some beautiful French and Spanish works of art, and when he asked in his usual tactful way whether she might be willing to part with any of them, she told him that the decision would rest with her husband. He might consent, because the times were so hard and uncertain. As usual, she had but a vague idea of what the paintings might bring, and Lanny had to make guesses for her. He prepared a duplicate list of them, with his estimates, and she promised to let him know before he left Valencia.
Raoul had discovered another school, and had struck up an acquaintance with the teacher, a young woman. He had told her about the school in Cannes and the delights of teaching adult workers to read. It was like teaching the blind to see—with the difference that it could always be done. Anyone who could speak words could learn to read them. The Spanish teacher had begged him to talk to a group of her friends, and Raoul wanted to know if that would be “political.” Lanny had the hard duty of pointing out to him that in times of strife such as these, talking about workers’ education would almost certainly bring the talker to the attention of local authorities and cause spies to be set upon them. The fact that the reactionaries had lost control of the national government didn’t in the least mean that Valencia had become republican; the thing for Raoul to do was to get the address of his teacher friend and send her literature about the school after they were safely out of the country.
VIII
More kilometers along the Mediterranean shore, a long and hard drive through arid mountains by rutted and dusty roads, then down to the valley of the Guadalquivir River, and they were in Seville. The most Spanish of cities it has been called, which means that its streets are narrow and its white buildings aged and crowded. Here is the biggest cathedral in the country; but Lanny found that his studies of its art were interfered with by the flitting of innumerable female figures, many with the head covered by a black lace mantilla. It was supposed to hide the face, but the ladies had to see where they were walking so as not to collide with the enormous stone columns, and that gave opportunity for side glances and revelations of dark eyes and other allurements. The ladies came here to have their sins forgiven, but it would appear that some had not yet accumulated a sufficiency.
Raoul was moved to discourse upon the position of women in Spain, which was now changing fast but had constituted an evil second only to the woes of the poor. This visit to the confessional had constituted the sole form of public life which women of the middle and upper classes enjoyed, and then the mantilla had been obligatory. The rest of the time they had spent behind the walls of the home, to which men not members of the family were rarely invited. Raoul showed his friend the rejas, the heavy iron bars at low windows through which it was permitted for the virgins to be courted by their lovers. Sex and superstition had made up their lives, if you could believe an ardent Marxist; the priests and the women had kept Spain out of the current of modern progress.
Lanny had read poetry and listened to music about Seville, and was prepared for the tinkling of guitars, the clacking of castanets, and voices singing on these hot summer nights; but the tunes were seldom gay, and the aspect of the singers gave him the impression that they had required artificial stimulation. The men on the streets wore conventional European clothes, unless they were decked out for a festival; the workers wore blouses or shirts which might have come from the factories of New York or London, and generally they were faded and dirty. Lanny decided that the poets had lied, and he understood why Plato had excluded them from his ideal republic.
The travelers put up at the Hotel Alfonso XIII, regardless of expense and of Raoul’s dislike of the name. Next morning they drove out to the estate of the Senora Villareal, through the famous river marshes on which bulls were bred. The mansion was several miles back from the river, and the property extended for miles into the hills, some of which were covered with ancient olive trees while others were given up to flocks of sheep and goats. The steward was making his morning inspection tour, and a ganan, a servant who looked after the bulls, got into the rear seat of the car and guided them through valleys and over ridges, until Lanny felt that he was in the very heart of Spain. Here and there were the usual red-clay hovels, and half-naked children with black hair straggling into their eyes, staring at the strange apparition, perhaps the first vehicle they had ever seen moving of its own accord. The men toiling in the fields seldom lifted their eyes, for whatever it was it did not concern them. They lived on bread and onions, a diet which kept them going but did not provide a superfluous ounce of flesh. Lanny recalled the travel diary of the Englishman, Arthur Young, in the last days of the ancien regime of France; he guessed that the time of Spain was coming soon.
IX
The steward, a sturdy, black-mustached horseman wore the traje corto, long narrow trousers with zahones, a short leather apron in front; a white linen shirt with narrow collar, a short jacket with a wide band instead of a belt, and a broad-brimmed gray felt hat. He greeted the visitors with formal courtesy and rode back to the mansion with them. He opened up the building and ordered the ganan to unbar the windows and draw back the curtains of the drawing-room. All the sunlight of the province of Seville streamed in, and upon the wall in front of Lanny gleamed a picture of a grape harvest of Valencia, the birthplace of Sorolla y Bastida, who had revivified the art of his native land. A work bright with all the colors of the rainbow, and perhaps Spain had once been like that, its people hearty and laughing; but surely they weren’t like that now, and Lanny had difficulty in keeping sociology out of his art criticism.
Photographs would be necessary to the proper marketing of these works, so another servant was summoned, and the two of them lifted each picture in turn from the walls and placed it in the proper light. He set his camera upon a chair and photographed each in turn. The steward watched in grave silence while the visitor measured each canvas and entered the data in his notebook, and sometimes studied the brush-work through a lens. He was required to say whether each of these works was genuine, and he
knew, alas, that many false signatures have been painted upon canvas; also many paintings have been relined and prettified.
The process took time, and when it was over the steward invited them over to his cottage, where a maid served bread and wine and olives, also delicious ripe melons which had been cooled by keeping them wrapped in wet cloths. Senor Lopez spoke neither English nor French, but with a capable translator there was no difficulty in finding out what he thought as to the state of his country. In his view there were no agricultural problems which could not be solved by firm commands backed up by a German-made pistol. As for the wider view, there was the Guardia Civil, of which Lanny had noticed groups riding here and there in their uniforms of gray with yellow stripes and black hats made of patent leather. As for the nation as a whole, this believer in law and order was certain that it had had enough of government by camouflaged anarchists; he had received information that its days were precisely numbered, and he and his neighbors were prepared to do their part when the hour struck. He said this without any thought of reserve, because he was talking to a friend of the Senora, un hombre rico who would surely understand.
“If we are going to get any of these paintings out of the country, it might be well to start soon,” suggested Lanny. “Should I not perhaps mention this to the Senora?”
“She has two or three weeks yet,” replied the steward. “And anyhow, I do not think there will be serious trouble in these parts. Our friends will land at Cadiz, and all this country will be in our hands in a few hours. We have never let the perreira get the better of us here in Seville.”
Wide Is the Gate (The Lanny Budd Novels) Page 46
