V
SEVILLE FAIR
THE Guadalquiver was a swollen, tawny flood, whirling dead leaves and dry branches down to the sea.
“Look,” said Pemberton, “the river has piled enough firewood against the piers of Triana bridge to keep a thrifty family a month.” A small boat, sculled by an old fisherman with gold earrings and a blue jersey, crept slowly towards the largest pile of brushwood at the middle pier. “I’m glad Isidro comes in for that bit of luck; he is a good sort, brings us fish every fast day, and doesn’t know I have a bula de cruzada and may eat meat o’ Fridays. We shall see him at the house soon; when the river is at the flood we sometimes get shad,—an advantage of living in Seville.”
As he roped the driftwood to the stern, the old fellow sang in a high, quavering voice a popular copla:
“Antiquamente eran dulces todas las aguas del mar;
se baño mi amor en ellas y se volvieron salas.”
(Once on a time all the waters of the sea were sweet;
My love bathed in them and they turned salt.)
Other women are praised as sweet, the Andaluz as salt! Andalusian salt is the supreme quality, wit, sparkle, humor, grace combined.
A white yacht, a fine lady of the sea, lay alongside the river bank near the Paseo de las Delicias. Sailors were busy polishing brass that shone before, scrubbing decks already clean as starched damask. A blond viking sitting aft, mending a sail, sang a stave that told where he and the yacht Peerless hailed from.
“I wish I was in Baltimore, O, O, O, O,
A dancing on the sanded floor a long time ago!”
By the Torre del Oro, the Buenaventura, from Malaga, a rusty freight steamer, was taking on cargo. The stevedores, like busy brown ants, trotted to and fro, stooping under bales of cotton from the Isla Mayor in the delta. The mole smelt tarry and sea-faring; looked prosperous, bustling, alive. Watching sailors, stevedores, longshoremen, we tried to visualize our emotions, but alas, the set pieces of sentimental fireworks, prepared beforehand, wouldn’t go off! We reminded ourselves that here, in this port of Seville, the Tribunal of the Indies, the whole trade of the Americas once centred. From the shadow of that old Moorish tower of gold, the Spanish galleons sailed for the new world, carrying the yeast and ferment of young adventurous blood, bringing back—a poor exchange—the ingots of the Incas. Alas! No ghost, not even of Columbus sailing up the Guadalquiver that Palm Sunday of his triumph, could materialize in that vital atmosphere of oozing kegs, fish-nets, and oakum. A swart gypsy dropped a line into the river, a crane flapped across the sky, a fish leaped, flashing silver in the sun; the wonderbook of life was still to read; history and its ghosts must wait for old age and winter fireside.