THE TAVERN OF THE CATS
IN Seville, at the half-way point of the road that runs from the Macarena gate to the convent of San Jerónimo, there is, among other famous taverns, one which, because of its location and the special features that attach to it, may be said to have been, if it is not now, the real thing, the most characteristic of all the Andalusian roadside inns.
Picture to yourself a little house, white as the driven snow, under its roof of tiles, some reddish, some deep green, with an endless growth of yellow mustard and sprigs of mignonette springing up among them. A wooden overhang shadows the door, which has on either side a bench of cemented brick. Mortised into the wall, which is broken by various little casements, opened at caprice to give light to the interior, some lower, some higher, one square, another imitating a Moorish arched window with its dividing colonnettes, or a dormer, are seen at regular distances iron spikes and rings for hitching the horses. A vine, full of years, which twists its blackening stems in and out of the sustaining wooden lattice, clothing it with clusters of grapes and broad green leaves, covers like a canopy the guest-hall, that consists of three pine benches, half a dozen rickety rush chairs, and as many as six or seven crippled tables made of ill-joined boards. On one side of the house climbs a honeysuckle, clinging to the cracks in the wall, up to the roof, from whose eaves droop sprays that sway with the wind, like floating curtains of verdure. On the other side runs a fence of wattled twigs, defining the bounds of a little garden that looks like a basket of rushes overflowing with flowers. The tops of two great trees, towering up behind the tavern, form the dark background against which stand out its white chimneys; the decoration is completed by the orchard-plots full of century-plants and blackberries, the broom that grows on the borders of the river, and the Guadalquivir, which flows into the distance, slowly winding its tortuous way between those rural banks to the foot of the ancient convent of San Jerónimo, that peers above the thick olive groves surrounding it and traces the black silhouette of its towers against a transparent, azure sky.
Imagine this landscape animated by a multitude of figures – men, women, children and animals, forming groups that vie with one another in the characteristic and the picturesque; here the innkeeper, round and ruddy, seated in the sun on a low chair, rolling between his hands the tobacco to make a cigarette, with the paper in his mouth; there a huckster of Macarena who sings, rolling up his eyes, to the accompaniment of his guitar, while others beat time by clapping their hands or striking their glasses on the tables; over yonder a group of peasant girls with their gauzy kerchiefs of a million colors, and a whole flower-pot of pinks in their hair, who play the tambourine, and scream, and laugh, and talk at the top of their voices as they push like mad the swing hung between two trees; and the serving-boys of the tavern who come and go with trays of wine-glasses full of manzanilla and with plates of olives; and the group of village people who swarm in the road; two drunken fellows quarrelling with a dandy who is making love, in passing, to a pretty girl; a cock that, proudly spreading out its wings, crows from the thatch of the poultry-yard; a dog that barks at the boys who tease him with sticks and stones; olive-oil boiling and bubbling in the pan where fish is frying; the cracking of the whips of the cab-drivers who arrive in a cloud of dust; a din of songs, castanets, peals of laughter, voices, whistles and guitars, and blows on the tables, and clappings, and crash of breaking pitchers, and thousands of strange, discordant sounds forming a jocund hullabaloo impossible to describe. Fancy all this on a pleasant calm afternoon, the afternoon of one of the most beautiful days in Andalusia where all the days are so beautiful, and you will have an idea of the spectacle that presented itself for the first time to my eyes, when, led by its fame, I came to visit that celebrated tavern.
This was many years ago; ten or twelve, at least. I was there as a stranger, away from my natural environment, and everything about me, from the cut of my clothes to the astonished expression of my face, was out of keeping with that picture of frank and boisterous jollity. It seemed to me that the passers-by turned their heads to stare at me with the dislike with which one regards an intruder.
Not wishing to attract attention nor choosing that my appearance should be made the butt of mockeries more or less dissembled, I took a seat at one side of the tavern door, called for something to drink, which I did not drink, and when all had forgotten my alien presence, I drew out a sheet of sketching paper from the portfolio which I carried with me, sharpened a pencil, and began to look about for a characteristic figure to copy and preserve as a souvenir of that day.
Soon my eyes fastened on one of the girls forming the merry group around the swing. She was tall, slender, brunette, with sleepy eyes, big and black, and hair blacker than her eyes. While I was making the sketch a group of men, among them one who played lively flourishes on the guitar with much skill, chorused songs that alluded to personal qualities, the secrets of love, the likings of the girls who were sporting about the swing or stories of their jealousy and their disdain, – songs to which these in their turn responded with others no less saucy, piquant and gay.
The slender brunette, quick of wit, whom I had chosen for model, led the singing of the women, composing the quatrains and reciting them to her companions who greeted them with clapping and laughter, while the guitar-player seemed to be the leader of the lads and the one eminent among them all for his cleverness and ready retorts.
For my part, it did not take me long to understand that between these two there was a feeling of affection which betrayed itself in their songs, full of transparent allusions and enamoured phrases.
When I finished my drawing, night was beginning to fall. Already there had been lighted in the tower of the cathedral the two lanterns of the shrine of the bells, and their lustres seemed like fiery eyes from that giant of brick and mortar which dominates all the city. The groups were going, melting away little by little and disappearing up the road in the dim twilight silvered by the moon, that now began to show against the violet dusk of the sky. The girls went singing away together, and their clear, bright voices gradually lessened until they became but a part of the other indistinct and distant sounds that trembled in the air. All was over at once, – the day, the jollity, the animation and the impromptu festival; and of all there remained only an echo in the ear and in the soul, like the softest of vibrations, like a sweet drowsiness such as one experiences on waking from a pleasant dream.
When the last loiterers were gone, I folded my drawing, placed it safely in the portfolio, called the waiter with a hand-clap, paid my trifling account, and was just on the point of departing when I felt myself caught gently by the arm. It was the young guitar-player whom I had noticed before and who while I was drawing had often stared at me with unusual curiosity. I had not observed that, after the fun was over, he approached under some pretext the place where I was sitting in order to see what I was doing that I should be looking so steadily at the woman in whom he seemed to have a special interest.
“Señorito,” he said to me in a tone which he strove to soften as much as possible, “I am going to ask you to do me a favor.”
“A favor!” I exclaimed, without comprehending what he could want of me. “Name it, and if it is in my power, count on it as done.”
“Would you give me the picture you have made?” On hearing this, I could not help pausing a moment in perplexity, surprised both by the request, rare enough in itself, and by the tone, which baffled me to determine whether it was one of threat or of entreaty. He must have understood my hesitation, and he immediately hastened to add:
“I beg it of you for the sake of your mother, for the sake of the woman whom you hold dearest in the world, if you hold any dear; ask of me in return all that my poverty affords.”
I did not know how to make my way out of this difficulty, I would almost have preferred that it had come in guise of a quarrel, if so I might have kept the sketch of that woman who had so deeply impressed me; but whether it was the surprise of the moment, or my inability to say no to anything, the fact is that I opened my portfolio, took out the drawing and handed it to him without a word.
To repeat the lad’s expressions of gratitude, his exclamations as he gazed at it anew by the light of the tavern’s metal lamp, the care with which he folded it to put it away securely in his sash, the offers of devotion he made me, and the extravagant praises with which he cried up his good fortune in that he had met one whom he called, in his clipped Andalusian speech, a “reg’lar señorito,” would be a task most difficult, not to say impossible. I will only say that, as the night, what with one delay and another, was now fully upon us, he insisted, willy-nilly, on going with me to the Macarena gate; and he laid so much stress on it, that finally I decided that it would be better to take the road together. The way is very short, but while it lasted he managed to tell me from beginning to end all the story of his love.
The tavern where the merry-making had taken place belonged to his father, who had promised him, when he should marry, an orchard which adjoined the house and was part of its holding. As to the girl, the object of his love, whom he described to me with the most vivid colors and most picturesque phrases, he told me that her name was Amparo, that she had been brought up in his father’s house from her babyhood, and that it was not known who her parents were. All this and a hundred other details of less interest he related to me on the way. When he had come to the gates of the city he gave me a strong pressure of the hands, again put himself at my service, and made off trolling a song whose echoes spread far and wide through the silence of the night. I stood a moment watching him depart. His happiness seemed contagious, and I felt joyous with a strange and nameless joy – a reflected joy, if I may say so.
He sang till he could sing no longer. One of his refrains ran thus:
“Too long our separation;
Soul of my soul thou art,
The Virgin of Consolation
On the altar of my heart.”
When his voice began to die away, I heard borne on the evening wind another voice, delicate and vibrating, that sounded at a further distance yet. It was she, she who impatiently awaited his coming.
A few days later I left Seville, and many years went by before my return. I forgot many things which happened to me there, but the memory of such happiness, so humble and so content, was never erased from my memory.
II
As I have said, many years passed after my leaving Seville without my forgetting in the least that afternoon whose recollection sometimes passed over my imagination like a reviving breeze that cools the heated brow.
When chance brought me again to the great city which is called with so much reason the Queen of Andalusia, one of the things that most attracted my attention was the remarkable change effected during my absence. Great buildings, blocks of houses and entire suburbs had risen at the magic touch of industry and capital; on every side were factories, public gardens, parks, shady walks, but unhappily many venerable monuments of antiquity had disappeared.
I visited again many proud edifices full of historical and artistic memories; again I wandered and lost my way amid the million turns of the curious suburb of Santa Cruz; I surprised in the course of my strolls many new buildings which had been erected I know not how; I missed many old ones which had vanished I know not why; and finally I took my way to the bank of the river. The river-bank has ever been in Seville the chosen field for my excursions.
After I had admired the magnificent panorama which offers itself to the view at the point where the iron bridge connects the opposite shores; after I had noticed, with absorbed gaze, the myriad details, – palaces and rows of small white houses; after I had passed in review the innumerable ships at anchor in the stream, unfurling to the wind their airy pennants of a thousand colors, and when I heard the confused hum of the wharves, where everything breathes activity and movement, I transported myself, following in imagination the river, against its current, to San Jerónimo.
I remembered that tranquil landscape, reposeful, luminous, where the rich vegetation of Andalusia displays without cultivation her natural charms. As if I had been in a boat rowed upstream, again, with memory’s aid, I saw file by, on one side, the Cartuja [Carthusian convent] with its groves and its lofty, slender towers; on the other, the Barrio de los Humeros [the old gypsy quarter], the ancient city walls, half Arab, half Roman, the orchards with their fences covered with brambles, and the water-wheels shaded by great, isolated trees, and finally, San Jerónimo. – On reaching this point in my imagination, those memories that I still cherished of the famous inn rose before me more vividly than ever, and I fancied myself present once again at those peasant merry-makings; I heard the girls singing, as they flew through the air in the swing; and I saw the groups of village folk wandering over the meadows, some picnicking, some quarrelling, some laughing, some dancing, and all in motion, overflowing with youth, vivacity and glee. There was she, surrounded by her children, now holding herself aloof from the group of merry girls who were still laughing and singing, and there was he, tranquil and content with his felicity, looking with tenderness at the persons whom he loved best in the world, all together about him and all happy, – his wife, his children, his father, who was there as ten years ago, seated at the door of his inn, impassively twisting the paper about his cigarette, without more change than that his head, which then was gray, would now be white as snow.
A friend who accompanied me in the walk, noting the sort of blissful revery in which for several moments I had been rapt with these imaginings, shook me at last by the arm, asking:
“What are you thinking about?”
“I was thinking,” I replied, “of the Tavern of the Cats, and revolving in my mind all the pleasant recollections I cherish of an afternoon when I was at San Jerónimo. – This very instant I was ending a love story which I left there well begun, and I ended it so much to my liking that I believe there cannot be any other conclusion than that which I have made for it. And speaking of the Tavern of the Cats,” I continued, turning to my friend, “when shall we take a day and go there for luncheon or to enjoy an hour of revel?”
“An hour of revel!” exclaimed my friend, with an expression of astonishment which I did not at that time succeed in explaining to myself, “an hour of revel! A very appropriate place it is for that!”
“And why not?” I rejoined, wondering in my turn at his surprise.
“The reason is very simple,” he told me at last, “for at one hundred paces from the tavern they have laid out the new cemetery” [of San Fernando].
Then it was I who gazed at him with astonished eyes and remained some minutes silent before speaking a single word.
We returned to the city, and that day went by, and still more days, without my being able entirely to throw off the impression which news so unexpected had made upon me. The more variations I played upon it, still the love story of the brunette had no conclusion, for what I had invented before was not conceivable, since I could not make natural a picture of happiness and mirth with a cemetery for a background.
One afternoon, determined to resolve my doubts, I pleaded a slight indisposition as an excuse for not accompanying my friend in our accustomed rambles, and I started out alone for the inn. When I had left behind me the Macarena gate and its picturesque suburb and had begun to cross by a narrow footpath that labyrinth of orchards, already I seemed to perceive something strange in my surroundings.
Whether it was because the afternoon had become a little clouded, or that the tendency of my mind inclined me to melancholy ideas, the fact is that I felt cold and sad, and noticed a silence about me which reminded me of utter solitude, as sleep reminds us of death.
I walked a little without stopping, crossed the orchards to shorten the distance and came out into the street of San Lázaro, whence already may be seen in the distance the convent of San Jerónimo.
Perhaps it is an illusion, but it seems to me that along the road where pass the dead even the trees and the vegetation come to take on a different color. I fancied there, at least, that warm and harmonious tones were lacking, – no freshness in the groves, no atmosphere in space, no light upon the earth. The landscape was monotonous; its figures black and isolated.
Here was a hearse moving slowly, covered with mourning draperies, raising no dust, cracking no whip, without shout to the horses, almost without movement; further on a man of ill countenance with a spade on his shoulder, or a priest in long, dark robe, or a group of old men poorly clad and of repugnant aspect, with extinguished candles in their hands, who were returning in silence, with lowered heads, and eyes fixed on the ground. I believed myself transported I know not whither; for all that I saw reminded me of a landscape whose contours were the same as ever, but whose colors had been, as it were, blotted out, there being left of them merely a vague half-tone. The impression that I experienced can be compared only to that which we feel in those dreams where, by an inexplicable phenomenon, things are and are not at one and the same time, and the places in which we believe ourselves to be, partially transform themselves in an eccentric and impossible fashion.
At last I reached the roadside inn; I recognized it more by the name, which it still keeps printed in large letters on one of its walls, than by anything else; for as to the little house itself, it seemed to me that it had changed even its outlines and its proportions. At once I saw that it was much more ruinous, that it was forsaken and sad. The shadow of the cemetery, which rose just beyond it, appeared to fall over it, enveloping it in a dark covering, like the cloth laid on the face of the dead. The innkeeper was there, utterly alone. I recognized him as the same of ten years back; I recognized him I know not why, for in this time he had aged even to the point of appearing a decrepit old man on the edge of the grave, whereas when I first saw him he seemed fifty, abounding in health, satisfaction and vitality.
I sat down at one of the deserted tables; I asked for something to drink, which the innkeeper brought me, and from one detached remark after another we fell finally into continuous conversation relating to that love story of whose last chapter I was still in ignorance, although I had several times attempted to divine it.
“Everything,” said the poor old man to me, “everything seems to have conspired against us since the period in which you remember me. You know how it was with us. Amparo was the delight of our eyes; she had been reared here from her birth; she was the joy of the house; never could she miss her own parents, for I loved her like a father; my son had loved her, too, from his boyhood, first as a brother, afterwards with a devotion greater yet. They were on the eve of marriage; I was ready to make over to them the better part of my modest property, for with the profits of my business it seemed to me that I should have more than enough to live at ease, when some evil spirit – I know not what – envied our happiness and destroyed it in a moment. In the first place the whisper went about that they were going to locate a cemetery on this side of San Jerónimo; some said close by, others further off, and while we were all uneasy and anxious, fearing that they might carry out this project, a greater and more certain trouble fell upon us.
“One day two gentlemen arrived here in a carriage; they put to me thousands of questions about Amparo whom I had taken in her babyhood from the foundling hospital; they asked to see the swaddling-clothes which she wore when she was abandoned and which I had kept, with the final result that Amparo proved to be the daughter of a very rich gentleman, who went to law to recover her from us and persisted until he gained his end. I do not wish even to call to memory the day when they took her away. She wept like a Magdalen, my son would have made a mad resistance, I was like one dumfounded, not understanding what was happening to me. She went. Rather, she did not go, for she loved us too much to go of her own accord, but they carried her off, and a curse fell upon the house. My son, after an attack of terrible despair, fell into a sort of lethargy. I do not know how to express my own state of mind. I believed that for me the world had ended.
“While these things were going on, they began to lay out the cemetery. The village-folk fled from this neighborhood. There were no more festivals, songs and music; all the merriment of this countryside was over, even as the joy of our souls.
“And Amparo was no happier than we; bred here in the open air, in the bustle and animation of the inn, brought up to be joyous in poverty, they plucked her from this life, and she withered, as wither the flowers gathered in a garden to adorn a drawing-room. My son made incredible efforts to see her again, to have a moment’s speech with her. All was in vain; her family did not wish it. At last he saw her, but he saw her dead. The funeral train passed by here. I knew nothing about it and I cannot tell why I fell to weeping when I saw her hearse. The heart, loyal to love, clamored to me:
“ ‘She is young like Amparo; she, too, must be beautiful; who knows if it may not be herself?’ And it was. My son followed the train, entered the enclosure and, when the coffin was opened, uttered a cry and fell senseless to the ground; and so they brought him back to me. Afterwards he went mad, and is now a lunatic.”
When the poor old man had reached this point in his narrative, there entered the inn two gravediggers of sinister bearing and repellent look. Having finished their task, they had come to take a drink “to the health of the dead,” as one of them said, accompanying the jest with a silly leer. The innkeeper brushed off a tear with the back of his hand and went to serve them.
Night was beginning to fall, a dark night and most gloomy. The sky was black and so was the landscape. From the boughs of the trees still hung, half rotted, the ropes of the swing swaying in the wind; it reminded me of a gallows-rope quivering yet after the body of the felon had been taken down. Only confused noises reached my ears, – the distant barking of dogs on guard in the orchards; the creaking of a water-wheel, prolonged, melancholy and shrill like a lament; disconnected, horrible words of the gravediggers who were plotting in low tones a sacrilegious robbery – I know not what; my memory has kept of this fantastic scene of desolation as of that other scene of merriment only a confused recollection that I cannot reproduce. What I still seem to hear as I heard it then is this refrain intoned in a plaintive voice, suddenly disturbing the silence that reigned about:
“The coach of the dead was grand
As it passed our humble door,
But from it beckoned a pallid hand,
And I saw my love once more.”
It was the poor boy, who was locked up in one of the rooms of the inn, where he passed his days in motionless contemplation of the picture of his beloved, without speaking a word, scarcely eating, never weeping, hardly opening his lips save to sing this simple, tender verse enclosing a poem of sorrow that I then learned to decipher.