We came, especially I, upon them as a catastrophe. The light died out of their eyes, the smiles disappeared from their faces, mouths dropped open, fingers pointed, people grasped each other. It was similar to the moment when an elephant comes along in the village circus procession, and I was the elephant.
During our first weeks in Murcia our appearance in the streets invariably caused excitement and shrieks of laughter among young girls and gossips. If we entered a shop the children crowded in with us to listen to our attempts at Spanish. This was not done with deliberate rudeness, but was more the result of unrestrained curiosity. This attitude was not very evident when we went for strolls with Luis: the presence of a fellow-townsman seemed to have a calming influence. At last I found an effective weapon. With mock horror I stared at the feet and ankles of any young woman too malicious. Self-consciousness at once gripped her—almost invariably she hurried away to examine her shoes and wonder what was wrong with them.
Curiously enough we never became conscious of a case of incivility among the men. Even groups of lads at the difficult age which breeds larrikins in Australia were on the whole less offensive than in other countries. It seemed to us that if a Spanish woman were kind-hearted—and the majority are so—she was the most kindly and charming of women, but if of a spiteful nature she took less pains to hide or curb it than do the women of more sophisticated countries.
The narrow street which we had discovered by accident was perhaps the most disconcerting part of the town, as it was full of cafés, and therefore of loungers; but we often had to go there for small necessities. There we had to go for smoked glasses because of the brilliance of the sun, for a parasol, and for a hatpin. The first two objects were easily found, but the last was difficult. Hats, even in Southern Spain, are worn only by the crème de la crème for great ceremonies, and the hatpins sold by the jewellers were intended for such occasions. They were decorated affairs with huge heads of complicated workmanship set with garish stones. Probably no other woman in the town wore a hat for normal use, so we gave up the search and Jan made out of hairpins something which served.
We ran the gauntlet of the quizzing street and made our way home.
All along the streets the people had brought their chairs out of doors and were sitting on the pavements in the cool of the night. At Antonio's door we found a group of his family, almost invisible in the dark. We sat down with them. Presently Antonio said:
"I will go and fetch Don Luis, and he will play for us."
What then could be seen of Don Luis was a large nose, a check cap and a pair of gnarled hands which grasped his guitar in a capable manner. He sat down on a chair on the sidewalk and began to play.
"Curse it!" he exclaimed. "Do you know I used to play very well, but all this factory work ruins the fingers for playing. Mine are getting as stiff as if they had no joints in them."
Presently he was playing a jota and demanded that somebody should dance.