The autumn seemed to be a period of fiesta. We had luckily just missed the great fiesta of Murcia which culminates with a huge procession out to Fuen Santa in the mountains. But often we were awakened at three in the morning by a series of alarming reports and explosions in the street outside. There was a large church at the end of the Paseo de Corveras, and it seemed as though guns were going off all around the walls. The first time we heard this we sprang to our windows, for we had heard something of the quarrelsome nature of the Murcians. But the explosions were up in the air. Rocket after rocket soared up into the air and exploded with a loud crash, then large zigzag crackers were thrown down into the street. Grumbling at the noise, we went back to bed. Next day we found out that it was a fiesta, the rockets sent up by the priests; and often after that we were awakened in the dead of night by these almost Chinese religious ceremonies.
We had heard much of the quarrelsome nature of the huertanos. Luis and Flores had both told us tales of quarrels amongst the cultivators. Both at Verdolay and in Murcia we had seen small bands of young men wandering about at eventide with guitars and songs. They were hunting for trouble, and if they should meet another band, then a fight ensued, ending with broken instruments and possibly a stab or two.
One afternoon Jan was walking homewards from Emilio's, where he had been buying guitar-strings. He was close to the Paseo de Corveras, when a young man rushed round a corner and cannoned hard into him. Jan stumbled and to save himself clutched the man by the coat. It was a corner around which youths were accustomed to lark, and Jan, believing this to be a piece of horse-play, decided, while yet stumbling and clutching, that the horse-play was too rough. So dragging at the blouse of the man, who struggled to escape, Jan exhorted him to come back and to explain himself. While he was still holding on to the man, a crowd burst around the corner and flung itself on to the presumed joker. Jan's head was in a whirl. One man leapt fiercely on to the joker's back, wrenched his arms behind him and grasped him. The struggling crowd swayed to and fro and suddenly lurched sideways through the door of a tobacconist's shop. Two women in the shop began to shriek at the upper pitch of their voices.
The turmoil quietened. A furious talk began in the shop. The young man who had pinioned the joker, trying to explain, loosened his grip to use his hands conversationally. At once the joker leapt for freedom. He ran, panting like a dog, out of the shop, the crowd bellowing, amid screaming, at his heels. The man was chased into an ironmonger's, where he took refuge behind the counter. The crowd blocked up the doorway. Jan, who had joined the crowd in dismayed curiosity, then began to pick up detached words: "Asesino, Asesino ... asesinato."
"Good Lord!" said Jan to himself. "I don't want to get mixed up in a murder trial."
As he turned away, two gendarmes, with the ridiculous schoolgirl hats on their heads, led the murderer away.
During this time I had been at home. A sudden outburst of noise dragged me to the window. Down the street, a man was running. He went in a queer way, holding himself between the legs with his hands, and sometimes stumbling, sometimes leaping as one does in dreams of pursuit. Carts were driven furiously after him. He was shouting out in a voice, full of surprise and of anger. After a moment I made out the words:
"Catch the man who has murdered me! Catch the villain who has killed me!"
He stumbled once more and fell. Men jumped from the carts, lifted him into one, and drove him away.