CHAPTER XXVII.
PARADISE—A GUAJIRO BALL—OUR NEIGHBORS—A DAY WITH THE MARQUIS.
Cuba is a paradise for those who are too lazy to do anything but exist, as one can live there without labor. The tall, straight palm-tree, of which the poorer houses are built, can be split from end to end with wedge and axe, the pith easily removed, and the crescent-shaped sides, weighted down with heavy rocks upon the ground, will dry as flat as planks. The trunk, split half in two, makes excellent troughs and gutters, the feathery branches thatch their dwellings, the berries furnish food for their hogs, and the core of the pinnacle is as delicious as cauliflower. One palm-tree will furnish material for a guajiro’s house complete, sides, roof, door, and eaves-troughs included.
The jicory, a large gourd that the guira-tree bears not only on its branches but its trunk from the very ground up, makes all the table-ware necessary for the modest palm hut; divided in twain, and the mossy interior removed, then slowly dried in the shade, it furnishes plates and bowls; with only one small aperture at the stem-end, it is a jug; and if a coarse netting of the strong, fibrous aloe is knotted about it, behold a demijohn (of one or two gallons capacity), that can be easily slung over the shoulder and carried about! The cordage, ropes, and bridles of pita caruja are strong and durable; oftentimes the latter are very ingeniously and elaborately braided and twisted. Any guajiro can make the rude pottery required in their cooking, for which clay is always easily procured, immense amounts being used in the manufacture of certain low grades of white sugar; none of the indigenous fruits and vegetables require more cultivation than the machete affords, and those most generally prized and used, have only to be replanted at intervals of years. Very little clothing is required, and that of the thinnest and lightest material. In the country, children run about au naturel until they are eight or ten years of age. Even in cities, with well-to-do families, a child, until it walks, wears but one thin, short covering, and that, in order to afford more freedom to the limbs, is often knotted around the waist.
I have more than once alluded to a family of guajiros, who lived near us, and were somewhat dependent on Desengaño. They owned an acre or two of land, planted in sweet-potatoes, melangas, and other edible roots. Their simple dwellings consisted of one or two rooms each, and were shaded by a few palms and a clump of banana-trees.
The aged mother and one unmarried son occupied the principal hut, and it was surrounded by those of three married sons with their wives and hosts of dusky little black-eyed children; here they had lived “even unto the third and fourth generation,” probably not one of them ever having been out of the partido. The men were employed in hauling our produce to the depot for shipment from December until May; the remainder of the year they did nothing but attend to their own patches, and one man could easily have done all that and had time to spare. During the summer, when pressed for plowmen, we made frequent tempting overtures to them, which were invariably refused. The women raised chickens, but none for sale; fattened hogs, but they were for home consumption; and braided a few Panama hats for their husbands and sons. We paid each man seventeen dollars in gold, and an arrobe (twenty-five pounds) each of rice and tasajo a month, while they worked for us, and were in the way of continuing the rations, to a limited extent, during the idle season, if there was sickness or want with them. If Panchito came to tell me his mama was sick, I sent her some rice; and if Pio or Manuel, the two boys who were Henry’s attendants on his jutia-hunts, had a mal de cabeza (headache), Henry was sure to think a little tasajo would make him feel better, and it generally did. Per contra, when they heard—which they were sure to do, for some one of them dropped in at Desengaño every day—that Ellie was not well, or Lamo had a twinge of rheumatism, immediately Pio would present himself with a chicken or a few eggs tied up in a listado handkerchief, with the compliments of his mama. Once when Panchito, in awkward handling of a hogshead of sugar, received a hurt, I rode over to their sitio with Henry to express in person our regret at the accident, and to take him a cup of jelly. I so often rode in their direction without crossing the boundary, that my appearance produced no commotion until I had gained the center hut and offered to dismount. The scattering of the children of all ages and sexes to the friendly shelter of the banana-bushes, and behind the coffee-sack curtains that hung at the doors, was amusing.
They were entirely naked, but one by one, as they gained the assistance of their mammas, they appeared arrayed in the thinnest of muslin slips, the merest shadow of an excuse for a covering.
One of the women was braiding a hat in one piece. She began the work at the center of the crown with several very narrow strips of palma téa, gradually adding more strips as it increased in circumference, until the top of the crown was complete, then shaping the sides and brim. It was amazing to see the precision and dexterity with which her slender fingers accomplished the intricate work. I became so interested, that several subsequent visits were made to learn the art. Though the woman was painstaking and patient in her endeavor to teach, she failed to impart the mysterious skill she so deftly exhibited. The hats Ellie and I made were long strands of braided palmetto sewed into shape; those of Carlota had the appearance of imported Panamas. That family was a fair type of innocent, harmless, kindly peasantry, sufficiently numerous to constitute a marked domestic feature peculiar to the island. They were law-abiding, and in their humble way useful, but with scarcely a spark of enterprise. Panchito wanted to marry, but the little patch of land they jointly owned was not sufficient to support a fourth family, so he traded his interest to his brothers for a horse with aparejo (saddle, etc.), two oxen, and a wagon, the creak of whose clumsy wooden wheels could be heard rods off, and prepared to emigrate to the adjoining partido, perhaps ten miles away; but the captain refused to issue him a permit to change his domicile, therefore he could not go. About that time military exactions, of which I have made mention, drove Panchito and his brothers to the desperate resolve to sit down in abject idleness.
The families of the wealthy planters spent so little time on their estates that, for a large portion of the year, we were deprived of their pleasant society, and soon learned to take interest in the occasional entertainments of our more humble neighbors, who were always courteous and friendly. Don Pedro’s four pretty daughters, though lacking in education and cultivation, and quite unused to the best urban society, were amiable, sprightly girls, who talked agreeably, danced gracefully, and played by ear on the piano or guitar the pretty Cuban danzas that, by reason of the peculiar accentuation, are so difficult to learn by note. Several times they had proposed to Ellie, of whom they were very fond, to accompany them to a guajiro ball in the village of Cabezas. One day Félicia called with her father to urge me to chaperon the whole party, as their mother was unable to accompany them. I consented, simply to oblige, and at dusk the four girls and papaito (as they affectionately called Don Pedro) arrived on horseback, followed by an attendant with a pack-horse carrying their wardrobe in hampers. Ellie and I, already dressed for the occasion, seated ourselves in the volante, our escort mounted a horse, and we drove rapidly off. A volante, the most unique of vehicles, is a chaise-body swung low on leather braces between and a little in advance of two enormous wheels—the peculiar construction giving it a swinging motion seemingly independent of the propelling one, that makes the riding exceedingly easy and comfortable. One horse is harnessed between the very long shafts, and the other, the “near” horse, outside, hitched by stout traces to the body of the vehicle. The calisero rides the trace horse and leads the other by the bridle, and on every occasion, except a funeral, proceeds at full gallop. The picturesque volante, the only style of vehicle equally suited to the city streets and the rugged country roads (for it is impossible to upset it), and the graceful mantilla, so well adapted to that voluptuous climate, have gradually yielded to the encroachments of the clumsy cab and the hideous bonnet.
Arrived at Cabezas, we followed the Don to a friend’s house, where the señoritas proposed to unpack the hampers and array themselves in full evening dress. Ellie and I with the gentlemen of our party, and a few of the villagers who sauntered in and out as freely and unrestrainedly as if the house was their own, waited until the young ladies were ready, then we adjourned en masse to the ball. It was given in a building especially designed for the purpose. Besides the ball-room proper, was one adjoining, used as a retreat for the duennas to smoke a cigarette and take a gossipy cup of coffee, and for the young mothers who had not graduated to the position of wall-flowers, to retire and nourish the babies that were apparently about as numerous and demonstrative as any other class of guests; then a third apartment, where the caballeros occasionally vanished to enjoy a roast rib of pork and a glass of red wine or aguadiente, and whence cigarettes and coffee were dispatched to their respective señoras. The Dons did not have to withdraw to smoke; many of them danced with cigars in their lips. Each of these rooms had long windows; and the heavy bars, extending from top to bottom, were availed of by the guests as hitching-posts for their horses, thus giving the equines ample opportunity to gaze upon the scene.
As the younger ladies were mostly sought for partners, I found myself relegated to the back tier of seats, and the captain’s faded wife came out from the nursery with an invitation for me to join the coterie of gossips. Although I neither smoked, nursed, nor talked, my presence was no manner of restraint on the other occupants of the room, who pursued these various diversions with perfect abandon and innocent composure.