The widow lady, although no longer in her first youth, was tall, handsome, and very well dressed. She had been for days past expressing her desire to see this tango of which she had heard so much before she came to Spain, and I am afraid she rather hoped to be shocked by it. I saw the moment she came in that Juanillo admired her, and heard him remark to Carolina that she was guapisima, meaning extremely attractive. Carolina rapped him over the knuckles, unaware that I was watching, and told him to behave himself and remember that the tango was to be performed for distinguished ladies and must have nothing of the corral (low-class tenement house) about it; but I rather wondered what was going to happen.
He sprang on to the table with the graceful agility of a cat, and began the tapping with one foot which prefaces all these dances, his eyes meanwhile fixed on the widow, who as yet had not realised that she was his objective. Then suddenly, regardless of the din of voices, palmas, and stamping in the patio, he burst into song.
I could not catch all the words, but I heard enough to grasp their tenor. The rascal was addressing a passionate declaration of love to the American widow; and now his cavernous eyes began to light up, and even she, unconscious as she was of the meaning of his song, realised that he was looking very hard at her. And when he began the dance not only she but every one else in the room was made fully aware that the entire performance was wholly and solely addressed to her. I never saw a cleverer pantomime of devotion, jealousy, scorn, pride, humility, and final despair than the impudent scamp contrived to act by his movements in this tango. And all without moving from the middle of the kitchen-table on which he danced—indeed, if he had not kept to the dead centre of it he would inevitably have come down with a crash, for it did not measure over three feet any way. The whole thing was dramatic to a degree: one’s attention was caught at the outset by the expression of his eyes, and he never allowed his hold on us to relax for an instant. His ugly face, shabby dress, and hideous yellow boots all fell into the picture, which was none the less effective because the only light was a flaring petroleum lamp held up by the bridegroom, whose delight in his friend’s performance caused him to wave it about dangerously in his efforts to keep it, like the lime-light at a theatre, always on the dancer’s face.
“I never saw anything so horrible in my life,” murmured the widow in my ear when the tango came to an end. “Do let us go; I am quite frightened! The man looks as if he could commit a murder. No more tangos for me, thank you! I felt as if he might stick a knife into me at any moment.”
She was really frightened, and, humour not being her strong point, I felt that it would be useless to try to make her see the joke of it. Dramatic expression comes naturally to the Andalucian, and I knew that Juanillo had taken her as the heroine of his pantomime simply because she was the most noticeable member of our party, expecting her to be as gratified as a Spanish Señorita would have been at the compliment. During the remainder of her stay the lady ceased from troubling me with demands to be taken to see the local dances; but when her nerves had recovered from the shock it became evident that not the least pleasing of her recollections of Spain would be the little comedy of admiration played by Juanillo. In that version of the tango there was nothing to bring the blush of shame to the cheek of modesty, but I imagine that it is not quite what is danced in London or Paris.
Another dance with its accompanying song, which is known, at any rate by repute, outside Spain, is the Jota of Aragón, the music of which does not seem to be of Oriental origin. No one attempts to decide when it first came into being, but the probability is that, like the “war dance” of the Basques, it dates from prehistoric times, when women were won not by favour but by force. Be this as it may, the Jota now is the hymn of Aragón as well as her national dance, and has the same extraordinary religious influence over the Aragonese as the saeta has over the Andalucians. Fully to appreciate its swing and dash one must hear it sung by a native of the province, but wherever and by whomsoever performed it sets the blood dancing when the refrain bursts out—
“À la jota, jota,
Que viva Aragón
Y la Pilaríca
De mi corazón.”