Four Months Afoot in Spain

by Harry Alverson Franck

Those who are curious may also visit, at seasons and with permissions, the unpleasing royal palace, about the outer walls of which sleep scores of fly-proof vagrants in the shade of half leafless trees, and sundry other government buildings, all of which--except the vagrants--are duly and fully described in the guide-books. There is, too, the daily juego de Pelota, imported from the Basque provinces, a sort of enlarged handball played in a slate-walled chamber in which the screaming of gamblers for bids and their insults to the players know no cessation. Wandering aimlessly through her streets, as the sojourner in Madrid must who cannot daily sleep the day through, I found myself often pausing to admire the splendid displays in the windows of her tailors. Spain has no wool schedule, and as I gazed a deep regret came over me that I could not always be a dweller in Madrid when my garb grows threadbare or a tailor bill falls due. But there was sure remedy for such melancholy. When it grew acute I had but to turn and note the fitting of these splendid fabrics on the passer-by, and the sadness changed to a wonder that the madrileño tailor has the audacity to charge at all for his services.

An Alameda by day--chairs stacked until busy night-time

So bare and uninviting are her environs--and she has no suburbs--that Madrid never retires outwardly as other cities for her picnics and holidays, but crowds more closely together in the Buen Retiro. The congestion is greatest about the Estanque Grande. The largest body of water the normal madrileño ever sees is this artificial pond of about the area--though not the depth--of a college swimming-pool. On it are marooned a few venerable rowboats, for a ride in which most of the residents of Madrid have been politely quarreling every fair day since they reached a quarrelsome age. Small wonder dwellers in the capital cry out in horror at the idea of drinking water. One might as sanely talk of burning wood for fuel.

Obviously no untraveled native of "las Cortes" has more than a vague conception of the sea. Indeed, the ignorance on this point is nothing short of pathetic, if one may judge from the popular sea novel that fell into my hands during my stay. The writer evidently dwelt in the usual hotbox that constitutes a Madrid lodging and had not the remotest, wildest notion what thing a sea may be, nor the ability to tell a mainsail from a missionary's mule. But he was a clever man--to have concocted such a yarn and escaped persecution.

Madrid, however, like all urban Spain, comes thoroughly to life only with the fall of night. Occasionally a special celebration carries her populace to some strange corner of the city, but the fixed rendezvous is the Paseo de Recoletos, a broader Alameda where reigns by day an un-Spanish opulence of shade enjoyed only by the chairs stacked house-high beneath the trees. There is nothing hurried about the congregating. Dinner leisurely finished, the madrileño of high or low degree begins to drift slowly thither. By nine the public benches are taken; by ten one can and must move only with the throng at the accepted pace, or pay a copper to sit in haughty state in one of the now unstacked chairs. Toward ten-thirty a military band straggles in from the four points of the compass, finishes its cigarette, languidly unlimbers its instruments, and near eleven falls to work--or play. About the same time there come wandering through the trees, as if drawn here by merest chance, five threadbare blind men, each with a battered violin or horn tucked tenderly under one arm. During the opening number they listen attentively, in silence, after the manner of musicians. Then as the official players pause to roll new cigarettes the sightless ragamuffins take their stand near at hand and strike up a music that more than one city of the western world could do worse than subsidize. Thereafter melody is incessant; and with it the murmur of countless voices, the scrape of leisurely feet on the gravel, the cries of the hawkers of all that may by any chance be sought, and louder and more insistent than all else the baying of newsboys--aged forty to sixty and of both sexes--"El País!" "El Heraldo!" "La Cor-r-respondencia-a-a-a!"

Midnight! Why, midnight is only late in the afternoon in Madrid. The concert does not end until three and half the babies of the city are playing in the sand along the Paseo de Recoletos when the musicians leave. Besides, what else is to be done? Even did one feel the slightest desire to turn in there is not the remotest possibility of finding one's room less than a sweatbox. The populace shows little inclination to disperse, and though many saunter unwillingly homeward for form's sake, it is not to sleep, for one may still hear chatting and the muffled twang of guitars behind the blinds of the open windows. As for myself, I drifted commonly after the concert into the "Circo Americano" or a zarzuela, though such entertainments demonstrated nothing except how easily the madrileño is amused. Yet even these close early--for Madrid; and rambling gradually into my adopted section, it was usually my fortune to run across a "friend of the house"--of whom more anon--to retire with him to the nearest Juego de Billar, or billiard-hall, there to play the night gray-headed.

The doors of Madrid close at midnight, and neither the madrileño nor his guests have yet reached that stage of civilization where they can be entrusted with their own latch-key. But it is easy for all that to gain admittance. One has only to halt before one's door, clap one's hands soundly three or six or nine or fifteen times, bawl in one's most musical and top-most voice, "Ser-r-r-r-reno!" not forgetting to roll the r like the whir of a broken emery-wheel, and then sit calmly down on the curb and wait. Within a half-hour, or an hour at most, the watchman is almost sure to appear, rattling with gigantic keys, carrying staff and lantern, and greeting the exile with all the compliments of the Spanish season, unlocks, furnishes him a lighted wax taper, wishes him a "good night" and a long day's sleep, and gracefully pockets his two-cent fee.

Theoretically the sereno is supposed to keep order--or at least orderly. But nothing is more noted for its absence in Madrid by night than order. The sereno of the calle San Bernardo showed great liking for the immediate neighborhood of our casa de huéspedes--after I had been admitted. Rare the night--that is, morning--that he did not sit down beneath my window--for my promotion to the third-floor back was postponed until I left the city--with a pair of hackmen or day-hawks and fall to rehearsing in a foghorn-voice the story of his noble past. Twice or thrice I let drop a hint in the form of what water was in my pitcher. But the serenos of Madrid are imperturbable, and water is precious. On each such occasion the romancer moved over some two feet and serenely continued his tale until the rising sun sent him strolling homeward.

"Don Ricardo," of our German boarders, aspired to change from his stool in a banking-house to the bullring. He had taken a course in Madrid's Escuela Taurina and was already testing his prowess each Sunday as a banderillero in the little plaza of Tetuan, a few miles outside the city. In consequence--for "Ricardo" was a companionable youth for all his ragged Spanish--our casa de huéspedes became a rendezvous of lesser lights in the taurine world. Two or three toreros were sure to drop in each evening before we had sipped the last of our wine, to spend an hour or two in informal tertulia. I had not been a week in the city before I numbered among my acquaintances Curdito, Capita de Carmona, Pepete, and Moreno de Alcala, all men whose names have decorated many a ringside poster.