The Salvation of Pisco Gabar and Other Stories (5 page)

At last the procession returned to the church. The faithful dispersed to their houses and to food. The other three bearers and a few of his favorite parishioners went into the sacristy with José-Maria. Pisco was momentarily left alone in the church. He sat down on the altar steps and rubbed his shoulder.

“You,” he said to the Niño, “should be very grateful to me.”

The exquisite little face laughed at him. The sailor cap was awry, and the Niño looked as if he had been enjoying the fun.

“You ought to be ashamed of that suit,” said Pisco solemnly. “You are of the people. You have nothing to do with the present system. You understand us.”

The Niño continued to smile. His face was nobly unconscious of the suit. He seemed to Pisco to be returning a diviner pity for his human one. Pisco felt very weary and very much alone.

“You,” he said, “have nothing to do with the Church. They put things into your mouth that you never thought. I've seen the same thing myself. The priests and politicians and philosophers make us all say what we don't really think.”

The tears came up into his eyes. On a sudden impulse he rolled over on to his knees before the image, and whispered:—

“O Son of God, help us to make the earth as you would have it be.”

EL QUIXOTE DEL CINE

RAMON AMEZAGA and I were sitting in the village inn at Ventas, and wondering if we could train ourselves to go to sleep at 9 pm. It was hard to come by amusement in that little Spanish town. On a Friday there was an organ recital in the church. On a Saturday there was often a boxing match. On a Tuesday, market day, the inn was worth a visit, for the farmers, the carriers, and the wine merchants gathered together, and there was much racy talk while the chorus of mules jangled their bells as they fed. On all the other days there was nothing to pass the evening but the popular amusement of walking up and down the station platform and watching the trains. Ramon was as bored as I. He was an engineer—a hearty Spaniard of the new school, with a horror of sentiment, politics, and provincialism. His countrymen found Ramon a little too frigid for their taste. To the Anglo-Saxon he was delightful.

There was a cinema in Ventas, but it had never occurred to either of us that we might go. We had sat in silence for half an hour before I suggested it. Ramon protested, but gave way.

The film was called
A Strong Man's Agony.
The poster at the door translated it—
La Angustia de un Fuerte.
It sounded more endurable in Spanish. We had plenty of the Agony. There were also a sheriff, the inevitable cactus plant, and a blonde heroine in riding breeches that did not fit her. Ramon wanted to go out and get his money back. I persuaded him to see the funny side of it. The Spanish sense of humor is very like our own, but less sensitive. It can see the subtlest of jokes, yet, without prompting, it does not appreciate the humor of something that is not deliberately meant to be funny. But once set a Spaniard on the track of laughter and there is no holding him.

Ramon began to laugh. A little man came down the gangway, switched a torch on him, and told him to shut up. He did. But the next close-up of the hero was too much for him. The man was tied to a tree by the neck. His eyes were dim with tears and his neck bulged. The tears were for the girl in the riding breeches. She had just been tied to another tree, and her virtue, by this time doubtful, was again threatened. Two ladies behind us made sympathetic exclamations. Ramon opened his mouth and gave tongue.

“
Haga el favor de callarse,
” said the little man. “Do me the favor of being quiet!”

“But, man!” said Ramon. “Don't you see how funny it is?”

“It is very serious. Please respect the public.”

But now the public was aroused. “Shameless one!” … “Be decent!” … “You have no feeling!” … “Please, please,
caballero!
” Nobody said, “Throw him out!” A gentle race. The little man switched off his torch in kindness to Ramon, and the show passed on in silence towards its climax. The villain died a violent death. The riding breeches were gathered into strong arms. The Agony was over.

As we filed out, a tall and oldish man came abreast of us in the vestibule. He drew Ramon on one side, and turned up the lapel of his coat. Beneath it there was a large star made of silver paper.

“
Soy el alguacil,
” he hissed. “I am the sheriff!”

Ramon looked worried.

“I wonder what induced him to make that star,” he said. “Well, well, I suppose it is just his fun.”

“Who is he?” I asked.

“Don Macario de la Fuente. But don't you know
el tio
Macario? Uncle Macario? A hidalgo! A classic hidalgo! He might be any one of his ancestors!”

“I should like to meet him,” I said.

I was tired of modern, international Spain. True, by riding a mile out of Ventas I could see the country, arid, fantastic, unchanged by the centuries. But I was mixing with townsmen, and a town with a railway junction, a main road, and a couple of factories produces very much the same type of man in Spain as it does anywhere else.

“Let us call on him to-morrow,” said Ramon. “He will be pleased to see us, and you will like him. But do not expect to be invited into the house. You understand?”

I did. Unless a Spaniard is rich in his social class he will not ask you into his house. He expects to be treated as a prosperous man, and in return will treat you as such, spending his last dollar on your entertainment. But he spends it outside his house. Within it, the courteous pretense would be exposed.

Don Macario lived in a low white house standing in its garden outside the town. A high wall enclosed the little estate. It was a satisfying house, but it had long needed a coat of paint, and there were broken panes in the many-windowed verandahs. There are such houses in most of the villages of Spain, built long ago by the younger sons of great families as a refuge for their gentility, and still inhabited by their last descendants. But even before the revolution the breed of these landless country gentlemen—the hidalgos—was dying out. They were losing the struggle for existence like some much harried animal, and there was no leisurely zoo to take care of them, except the court. But once at the court they became directors of companies, and were no longer hidalgos.

We rode into the courtyard and found Don Macario feeding the chickens. He scattered the golden maize as if it were largess, with a wide and magnificent sweep of his arm, looking to right and to left of him. When he saw us his mouth set rather haughtily, and for an instant I doubted whether our reception was going to be as cordial as Ramon expected. Then his face puckered into a smile, changing him as completely as a cat's-paw of wind changes the countenance of water.

“
Hola,
Ramon!” he cried. “Welcome, you and your friend!”

We dismounted, and Ramon introduced me.

“I am charmed to meet a representative of your great country,” said Don Macario.

“I am greatly honored that you should say so,
caballero,
” I replied.

“You are very courteous.”

“Your countrymen have taught me to be so.”

He laughed. “We have our ways,” he said. “But you too have taught us much.
Vaya, vaya,
what inventions! What pleasures! What discoveries!”

“Toys!” grunted Ramon. “Who discovered the New World?”

“Fernando Sebastian de la Fuente,” answered Don Macario surprisingly, “Quartermaster of the
Santa Maria
.”

“I have always heard so,” Ramon lied politely.

“It is a tradition in the family that he was the first to touch land,” said Don Macario. “Come with me. I will show you his picture.”

We started up.

“Ah, I forgot! My housekeeper has gone out, and I have no key.”

He looked diligently in his waistcoat pockets.

“Never mind. It will be for another day. What a pity! For I wished to offer you a glass of wine. But let us go to the
taberna.
You do not mind?”

“Not I,” I said. “They have a splendid red wine of Toledo….”

It was good, that wine; but I suggested it because it cost rather less than a penny a glass. I knew at that first meeting that Don Macario was not rich. Later, I saw that he was so poor that if he had enough in his pocket to pay for his one amusement, he had no other use for money. He owned no land beyond his garden, and no livestock except the fowls and pigeons that happily laid and bred with very little human intervention, and provided him and his housekeeper with all the solid food they ever ate. For the rest, there were the vegetables of the garden. They bought little but the oil for cooking. His income was perhaps four hundred Spanish dollars a year, and it sufficed.

He was a tall, spare man in the late fifties; clean-shaven, ever dressed in the same suit of some unwearing English tweed. It had been cut by a country tailor at least thirty years before, and buttoned nearly up to the neck. The trousers were always creased as neatly as the thick stuff would permit. Ramon told me that Don Macario performed two duties every night. He said his prayers and he put the trousers under the mattress. Which he did first I do not know.

We led our horses down the street to the tavern, Don Macario walking between us. My mare nuzzled his shoulder, and he reached up and stroked her nose with delicate fingers.

“It is long since I rode a horse,” he said.

“Take her out to-morrow,” I answered. “She needs more exercise than I can give her.”

He looked afraid. Eager, but afraid, as one face to face with a spiritual temptation.

“No! No! It might not be—good for me.”

“She is very quiet,” I said.

“I must not!” he cried with fierce emphasis.

We hitched our horses to the rings set in the tavern wall, and went in.

“Don Macario!” cried the innkeeper. “
Buenas tardes,
Don Macario. Good evening,
caballeros!
What will you take?”

“Four
chiquitos,
” said Don Macario.

“Four?”

“You will not join us?”

“It is not my custom,” said the innkeeper. “One has to be careful, you understand. But since it is you, Don Macario, who invite me—”

He poured four little glasses from the pigskin behind the bar. We drank them. Then he poured four more.

“On the house—if you will so honor me!” he said.

We sat talking for a while. Cattle … horses … the mayor … the government … what does one talk of in a country inn?

“What is the new program at the cinema?” asked Don Macario.

The innkeeper took a long paper cylinder from behind the bar, pinned the two top corners to the wall, and began to unroll it downwards. Don Macario watched him eagerly, uttering little exclamations of pleasure as foot by foot the cinema poster revealed its immodest beauties. The innkeeper bent down to fix the bottom, and then stood back to regard his handiwork.

“
Que cosa!
What a thing!” he exclaimed with mingled admiration and ridicule.

It was a thing. A fellow with a tremendous jaw, who earned his living in quieter times by herding cows, was galloping on a yellow horse down the centre of a railway track. He had a gun in his right hand with which he was blazing away at an unknown foreground. His left arm was holding a girl round the middle. There was a locomotive about a yard behind him, and the closed gates of a crossing about a yard ahead. Above the locomotive was a crimson aeroplane, and alongside an automobile full of Mexican hats and more guns. It was a remarkable bill.

Don Macario excused himself, bade us a courteous farewell, and swung out of the tavern with the air of an old soldier going into action. His jaw was set. He walked as if he had spurs on his boot heels. I could almost hear them click.

“I am needed,” he said.

The innkeeper winked at Ramon, and poured out two more
chiquitos.

“He is there every evening,” he said. “Well, well—I hope that when I am his age I will get as much pleasure out of something. You don't go?”

“No,” said Ramon. “
Es para niños
—it is for children!”

The following day I paid a formal call on Don Macario. I found him walking with long, swift strides up and down the garden, his hands clasped behind him.

“Walk with me awhile,” he said. “Exercise is good for the spirit.”

I fell into step with him. There were a table and chair on the lawn, and on the table a book open, face downwards to mark the place. It was the
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius
in the Greek.

“Do you read much?” I asked.

“No. When I was a boy I used to read a lot. But since then, no. There is much to do. You do not know how much there is to do in house and garden when it is all you have. Look! To-day I have mended the roof of the pigeon house. Padre Tomas, my confessor, told me it would be good for me.”

“I hear you are very fond of the cinema,” I said.

“
El cine?
I should say so! What a wonder! And to think that there are men in America who live such lives!
Ay de mi,
they do not mend the pigeon house. No, señor; they ride, they ride!”

He planted himself astride the chair, and hitched it a few paces forward between his knees.

“So!”

The gesture startled me. Then I laughed. I was becoming accustomed to his sudden dramatic poses. They were, I supposed, humorous. But it was clear that the cinema was giving him the mental food for which, unknown to himself, he had longed during thirty years of house, garden, and Padre Tomas.

He was romantic; but poverty and, perhaps, shyness had forced him into celibacy. Indeed his face was lined like that of a priest. Yet the mouth, although it turned down at the corners, was full and eager, and his large eyes had no peace in them. He never met my glance, save when he wished to impress me with his courtesy. Then he would look me full in the eyes gravely and calmly. He was never anything else but courteous, but he would keep that look for the formal occasions—asking me if I would accept a pigeon from him, for example, or insisting that I should pass first when I had opened a door for him.

He certainly was a funny old boy. He would have made a fine country gentleman, with his chivalry and his love of horses, if only he had had the money to indulge the tastes that his traditions had given him. Chivalry, I thought, perhaps explained his love of
el cine.
The ideals of the silent cinema were much the same as those of the old romances. If there is a maiden to be rescued, it matters little who rescues her. In legend he was always an armored knight; on the screen he might be a prince of the blood prepared to shed it in gallant duel, or a sheriff with inextinguishable revolver.

Don Macario was much in my thoughts during the following weeks; but I was busy, and they were perfunctory thoughts. I gave to him that terse and kindly psychology with which we are content to sum up our friends, and made no attempt at spiritual understanding. We are lazy creatures. We watch our fellows as a man looks through a window at distant dancers. They are pleased to dance. Well, he knows why. He has danced himself. But he does not hear the music. It was not until one evening when I was returning to Ventas from the country that I heard the music to which Don Macario was dancing.