Four Months Afoot in Spain

by Harry Alverson Franck

Once admitted to the sleepy interior, I regaled myself on bread, cheese, and "bino" and scrambled back to the highway. It wandered more and more erratically, slinking often around hills that a bit of exertion would have surmounted. I recalled the independence of the donkeys and, picking up a path at an elbow of the route, struck off across the rugged country.

But there is sound truth, as in all his venerable if somewhat baggy-kneed proverbs, in the Spaniard's assertion that "no hay atajo sin trabajo." In this short-cut there was work and to spare. As long as the day lasted the way continued stiff and stony, ceaselessly mounting or descending, with never a level of breathing-space breadth nor a moment's respite from the rampant sunshine. A few times I stumbled upon an inhabited heap of stones in a fold of the hills. Man, at least fully clothed, seemed never before to have strayed thus far afield. From each hutch poured forth a shaggy fellow with his draggled mate and a flock of half-naked children, all to stare speechlessly after me as long as the crown of my hat remained in sight.

The highway had deserted me entirely. As darkness came on, the dimming outline of the cragged hills rising on either hand carried the thoughts more than ever back to the savage, Bedouin-skulking solitudes of Asia Minor. Long after these, too, had blended into the night I stumbled on. At length there fell on my ear the distant dismal howling of dogs. I pressed forward, and when the sound had grown to a discordant uproar plunged, stick in hand, into a chaos of buildings jumbled together on a rocky ridge,--the village of Peñarruria.

The twisting, shoulder-broad channels between the predelugian hovels were strewn with cobblestones, no two of equal size or height, but all polished icy smooth. I sprawled and skated among them, a prey to embarrassment for my clumsiness, until my confusion was suddenly dispelled by the pleasure of seeing a native fall down, a buxom girl of eighteen who suffered thus for her pride in putting on shoes. Throughout the town these were rare, and stockings more so.

The venta into which I straggled at last was the replica of an Arabic khan, as ancient as the days of Tarik. It consisted of a covered barnyard court surrounded by a vast corridor, with rock arches and pillars, beneath which mules, borricos, and a horse or two were munching. One archway near the entrance was given over to human occupation. The posadero grumbled at me a word of greeting; his wife snarled interminably over her pots and jars in preparing me a meager supper. Now and again as I ate, an arriero arrived and led his animal through the dining-room to the stable. I steeled myself to endure a rough and stony night.

When I had sipped the last of my wine, however, the hostess, sullen as ever, mounted three stone steps in the depth of the archway and lighted me into a room that was strikingly in contrast with the dungeon-like inn proper. The chamber was neatly, even daintily furnished, the walls decorated college-fashion with pictures of every size and variety, the tile floor carpeted with a thick rug, the bed veiled with lace curtains. It was distinctly a feminine room; and as I undressed the certainty grew upon me that I had dispossessed for the night the daughter of the house, who had turned out to be none other than that maid whose pride-shod downfall had so relieved my embarrassment. Evidently the venta of Peñarruria afforded no other accommodations befitting a guest who could squander more than a half peseta for a mere night's lodging.

Over the head of the bed, framed in flowers and the dust-dry memento of Palm Sunday, was a chromo misrepresentation of the Virgin, beneath which flickered a wick floating in oil. I was early trained to sleep in darkness. When I had endured for a long half-hour the dancing of the light on my eyelids, I rose to blow it out, and sank quickly into slumber.

I had all but finished my coffee and wedge of black bread next morning when a double shriek announced that my forgotten sacrilege had been discovered. The modern vestal virgins, in the persons of the posadera and her now barefoot daughter, charged fire-eyed out of my erstwhile quarters and swooped down upon me like two lineal descendants of the Grecian Furies. I mustered such expression of innocence and fearlessness as I was able and listened in silence. They exhausted in time their stock of blistering adjectives and dashed together into the street publishing their grievance to all Peñarruria. Gradually the shrill voices died away in the contorted village, and with them my apprehension of figuring in some modern auto da fé. As I was picking up my knapsack, however, an urchin burst in upon me shouting that the guardia civil thereby summoned me into his presence.

"Ha," thought I, "Spain has merely grown more up-to-date in dealing with heretics."

The officer was not to be avoided. He sat before a building which I must pass to escape from the town; a deep-eyed man who manipulated his cigarette with one hand while he slowly ran the fingers of the other through the only beard, perhaps, in all the dreaded company of which he was a member. His greeting, however, was cordial, almost diffident. In fact, the cause of my summons was quite other than I had apprehended. Having learned my nationality from the inn register, he had made so bold as to hope that I would delay my departure long enough to give him a cigarette's worth of information concerning the western hemisphere.