Part 8 (2/2)

After a while he began talking. From outside the hand-clapping and the sound of castanettes continued interrupted by intervals of shouting and laughter and an occasional s.n.a.t.c.h from the song that ended every verse with ”_y manana Carnaval_.”

”I travelled when I was your age,” he said. ”I have been to America ...

Nueva York, Montreal, Buenos Aires, Chicago, San Francisco.... Selling those little nuts.... Yes, peanuts. What a country! How many laws there are there, how many policemen. When I was young I did not like it, but now that I am old and own an inn and daughters and all that, _vamos_, I understand. You see in Spain we all do just as we like; then, if we are the sort that goes to church we repent afterwards and fix it up with G.o.d. In European, civilized, modern countries everybody learns what he's got to do and what he must not do.... That's why they have so many laws.... Here the police are just to help the government plunder and steal all it wants.... But that's not so in America....”

”The difference is,” broke in Telemachus, ”as Butler put it, between living under the law and living under grace. I should rather live under gra....” But he thought of the maxims of Penelope and was silent.

”But after all we know how to sing,” said the _Padron_. ”Will you have coffee with cognac?... And poets, man alive, what poets!”

The _padron_ stuck out his chest, put one hand in the black sash that held up his trousers and recited, emphasizing the rhythm with the cognac bottle:

'Aqui esta Don Juan Tenorio; no hay hombre para el ...

Busquenle los renidores, cerquenle los jugadores, quien se precie que le ataje, a ver si hay quien le aventaje en juego, en lid o en amores.'

He finished with a flourish and poured more cognac into the coffee cups.

”_Que bonito!_ How pretty!” cried the old hunchbacked woman who sat on her heels in the fireplace.

”That's what we do,” said the _padron_. ”We brawl and gamble and seduce women, and we sing and we dance, and then we repent and the priest fixes it up with G.o.d. In America they live according to law.”

Feeling well-toasted by the fire and well-warmed with food and drink, Lyaeus and Telemachus went to the inn door and looked out on the broad main street of the village where everything was snowy white under the cold stare of the moon. The dancing had stopped in the courtyard. A group of men and boys was moving slowly up the street, each one with a musical instrument. There were the two guitars, frying pans, castanettes, cymbals, and a goatskin bottle of wine that kept being pa.s.sed from hand to hand. Each time the bottle made a round a new song started. And so they moved slowly up the street in the moonlight.

”Let's join them,” said Lyaeus.

”No, I want to get up early so as....”

”To see the gesture by daylight!” cried Lyaeus jeeringly. Then he went on: ”Tel, you live under the law. Under the law there can be no gestures, only machine movements.”

Then he ran off and joined the group of men and boys who were singing and drinking. Telemachus went back to bed. On his way upstairs he cursed the maxims of his mother Penelope. But at any rate to-morrow, in Carnival-time, he would feel the gesture.

_XI: Antonio Machado: Poet of Castile_

”I spent fifty thousand pesetas in a year at the military school....

_J'aime le chic_,” said the young artillery officer of whom I had asked the way. He was leading me up the steep cobbled hill that led to the irregular main street of Segovia. A moment before we had pa.s.sed under the aqueduct that had soared above us arch upon arch into the crimson sky. He had snapped tightly gloved fingers and said: ”And what's that good for, I'd like to know. I'd give it all for a puff of gasoline from a Hispano-Suizo.... D'you know the Hispano-Suizo? And look at this rotten town! There's not a street in it I can speed on in a motorcycle without running down some fool old woman or a squalling brat or other.... Who's this gentleman you are going to see?”

”He's a poet,” I said.

”I like poetry too. I write it ... light, elegant, about light elegant women.” He laughed and twirled the tiny waxed spike that stuck out from each side of his moustache.

He left me at the end of the street I was looking for, and after an elaborate salute walked off saying:

”To think that you should come here from New York to look for an address in such a shabby street, and I so want to go to New York. If I was a poet I wouldn't live here.”

The name on the street corner was _Calle de los Desemparados_....

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