Francie Again (7 page)

“What are we going to do?” she asked. “Just visit some ranch and look at the cows?”

“No, it's more than that, I believe,” said Mrs. Barclay. “There's a ceremony called the
corrida
, the running, when the bulls are moved into Coruche. It seems they don't just move them; they make a party of it. The bulls are herded along the streets and everyone in town comes to watch. It must be interesting. Mark sounded most enthusiastic.”

“Well … I must say it sounds awfully tempting. I guess school can wait one more day,” Francie decided. “I don't feel quite right about starting in before I've paid the fees, anyway. Let's leave the arrangements as you made them.” Besides, she told herself, it would be a pity to spoil Aunt Lolly's first all-day expedition, since she seemed to feel well enough to undertake it.

They started out in two cars about the middle of the morning, carrying a picnic lunch in a large hamper. The Wilkinsons, who had arranged the party, had of course invited Phyllis' young man Derek as well. There was the usual polite discussion, always necessary in Portugal, as to which car should go first and avoid the dust which the other must take.

The road was bad indeed, but it was the first time Francie had been well out in the countryside and she was fascinated. First they drove through a sparsely wooded, hilly country, between tall pines, but then the land flattened out and the woods were left behind. The road now meandered, leading them over country that looked to the Americans almost like desert.

“I do love these pretty little houses,” said Mrs. Barclay as they drove past a farmhouse that gleamed with fresh whitewash. A broad band of turquoise blue ran around the building near its base, and the shutters were picked out with the same color. A similar blue band encircled the white wall that enclosed house and barn. “It's a beautiful color,” she said. “Are all the houses in Portugal trimmed in the same way?”

Mrs. Wilkinson said, “No, it's just the preferred design in this district. You find other arrangements in the north. In the region near Oporto, for instance, they all go in for gray on white. And in other places they use black bands instead of the gray. It's most effective, I think.”

Within a mile or two they saw another house. Francie said, “It's rather thickly settled, considering.”

“Considering what?” asked Mark.

“Well, I can't figure out what the people do who live here,” said Francie. “You can see for yourself, nobody's farming this land. It's all dry red soil. Nothing grows on it but those scrubby trees.”

Mark slowed up and stopped the car. “I won't be long, Mrs. Wilkinson,” he said. “I'm going to show our American cousin here what the trees are.”

He had paused near a very strange-looking tree with a naked pink trunk. The branches were brown and gnarled and appeared normal, but the trunk, as Francie saw at close quarters, had been totally stripped of its thick bark. “Whatever's happened to it?” she asked.

“That's a cork tree,” said Mark. “Here's where a lot of the cork you use for bottles comes from. It's an important industry. It's what keeps the people busy, the ones you were worrying about, who live in those pretty houses. Sometimes they grow olives as well.”

“Will this tree die now?”

“Oh no,” said Mrs. Wilkinson. “It will grow more bark, and then in a few years they'll strip it again.”

“Rather on the sheep-shearing principle, I always think,” said Mark, starting up the car.

They had their lunch by the roadside and then drove on into the fringes of the town. A few gaily-colored ribbons had been stretched across the streets from window to window, and there were temporary archways covered with flowers, but the brightest splashes of color, in rugs and patterned shawls, hung like banners from the windows of the high, flat-fronted houses. Francie was thrilled with them.

“There, Aunt Lolly! Those are something like the blankets and heavy rugs I saw in that store. Don't they look lovely in the sun? Look at that one with big roses.”

Craning his neck to see what she was talking about. Mark nearly ran into a knot of people in the road. They shouted, but cheerfully. Nobody wanted to be angry on this day of festivity.

“Some of those patterns are jolly interesting,” he admitted. “My father has sometimes thought of picking up ideas from the Portuguese weavers for our textiles. But on the whole, domestic English taste runs to quieter colors.”

“I know. Floral patterns in pastel pink and blue,” said Francie, in innocent tones.

“Well, what's the matter with good honest flowers?” Mark asked sharply. The shaft had struck home, but he grinned at the same time.

“Nothing at all, within limits,” said Francie. “It's only that I get tired of flowery dresses, day after day.”

Mark said, “We don't all want to look like pirates.” He spoke with emphasis and looked pointedly at the brilliant red and blue bandanna Francie was wearing for a collar. It was an innovation of her own.

“Don't you like it?” she asked, rather disappointed.

“As a matter of fact, I do. It suits you. But you can carry it off, and lots of girls couldn't. It's not English style, actually. Remember, in textiles one tries to design for the average woman.”

“I don't see why,” said Francie. “I wouldn't if I were doing it.”

Mark said, “We try out a few original patterns every season, of course, in the big multiple shops we supply. Once in a while a novelty catches on, but in general they're conservative in England.”

“You're telling me!” said Francie, and they both laughed.

“If it comes to that,” added Mark thoughtfully, “nobody's more conservative than these Portuguese in their taste. Don't think that merely because they're traditionally devoted to bright red or blue or black—” Here his lecture was broken off; a driving emergency had arisen, brought on by a large cart, ox-drawn and laden with big pieces of cork bark, coming along in the opposite direction.

“We'll simply have to leave the cars outside the town, Mark, because of these narrow roads,” said Mrs. Wilkinson after they had got around the cart. “Let's see what the others are doing, and follow them.”

A man in a black slouch hat told them where they should put the cars, and they came back on foot to the public square, where temporary wooden benches had been erected along the side of a little park. They squeezed in on the back bench, which was highest and safest. It was almost time for the running to begin, Phyllis told them, and the whole town was there. Families with small children sought the safety of the bleacherlike benches, but the young men all stood around in the street, looking eagerly toward the end from which the bulls were expected.

Then, with a fanfare of horns, the local band came marching. Following them came a series of slow-moving oxcarts, some piled with bark and others with olive wood. “In celebration of local industry,” Mrs. Wilkinson explained.

After that, there was rather a hiatus, filled only with the sound of low-voiced chatter and impatient babies crying. Then from the distance they heard excited shouting that drew rapidly nearer, and the bulls came in.

They looked small and frightened. They seemed hardly more than calves, mere pygmies compared with the great oxen that had drawn the carts. They ran in little crowds, kicking their heels and lowering their heads; their gait was that of rocking horses, or small boats on high waves. All along the sides of the street, boys and men shouted and made little darts at them, grabbing at their horns. Behind the bulls came two riders in green-and-red stocking caps, herding them along, their horses tacking back and forth on the cobbled street, passing and repassing each other, rounding up the little bulls.

Still the young men on the sidelines teased the bulls.

“Oh, stop them!” said Francie, grabbing Mark's arm. “Can't somebody stop those boys?”

“My dear child, nobody would stop them. That's the whole idea of the running. The young bloods of the town want to show how brave they are,” he said.

Just as he spoke, a boy more daring than the others ran straight across the path of a bull, in his eagerness to reach another on the far side. He tripped and rolled on the ground, under the oncoming animal's hoofs. Everyone shouted. The bull paused and lowered his head to sniff, but as one of the mounted men yelled and rode his horse straight at him, the bull ran away down the street. The boy rolled nimbly out of the way and jumped up, laughing, to join his companions in a doorway.

“Idiot,” muttered Mark. “Now he'll have something to boast about all year.”

It was over in a minute, a minute toward which the whole day had been aimed. The bulls turned a roped-off corner of the street and were gone from sight. They would be taken to the barns of the bull ring for the night. A sense of anticlimax pervaded the square. The young men sauntered away, or disappeared into the houses, and mothers with their babies and their excited older children climbed down from the benches. Soon nothing would be left of the
corrida
but the rugs hanging from the windows.

“Anyone hurt badly?” called Phyllis to Derek, who was chatting with a policeman.

“One man, a chap who lives near the ranch. He was badly hurt and this fellow thinks he'll die,” said Derek. “On the whole, he says, it's been an unexciting day. On a really good day, it seems, they manage to kill two or three innocent bystanders.”

“Extraordinary people,” said Mark, sighing. “Well, if we want to get back before dark, we'd better make tracks.”

“And tomorrow,” thought Francie, “I'll really get started on my career as a great artist.”

From the beginning Francie was interested in Catarina de Abreu. As the days went by and she grew to know the students better, the interest increased. Catarina seemed all that was romantic and tragic, with her large sorrowful green eyes and her clear, almost transparent skin. She was talented. Fontoura praised her work. She was married, Francie learned, and had two children, and her husband didn't approve of the art school.

A few of the students went every day for lunch to a small restaurant near Fontoura's. Francie was usually one of this group. She found she picked up Portuguese far more readily in this way than she did with the language teacher who came to Estoril now and then, in desultory fashion, to instruct Aunt Lolly. Besides, it all seemed an important part of the school work; they were earnest young people who talked at length about painting and sculpture and literature. Most of the discussion was above Francie's head, she felt, not only because of the language. The talk was about things she didn't know. Therefore, during the stroll to the restaurant, or sitting at table, whenever some impassioned student galloped off on a monologue of the intellectual sort, she got into the way of chatting about personal matters with Catarina de Abreu. They tended to be de Abreu matters rather than Nelson, most of the time.

Catarina was forthright, imparting the most confidential facts with a lack of reserve which charmed Francie. Even an American woman, she felt, would not have told as much about herself as Catarina did, with the flat announcement, “I lead an unhappy life.” And the details—the description of her husband's cruel mama, and his cold lack of understanding, and the general stresses and strains of being an artist in a materialistic world! It wasn't restrained, but it was decidedly interesting.

“Like reading an exciting novel,” said Francie enthusiastically to Maria one afternoon. They were eating ice cream in their favorite tea shop, an enormous place of mirrors and dainty furnishings. Among the crowded tables you saw few men, but for long hours every day the ladies of Lisbon consumed cakes with whipped cream and drank tea in this shop, especially during the rainy season when it was not pleasant to be out of doors. Ruy hated the place, but when Maria and Francie were alone they usually went there.

“Catarina's almost too good to be true, isn't she?” continued Francie. “And so beautiful!”

“Catarina beautiful?” Maria looked genuinely surprised. “She is well enough, but I wouldn't have said she was out of the ordinary. Lisbon is full of women who look like Catarina. Perhaps we have different standards of beauty, you and I.”

“We certainly must have, because I think she's stunning. Any of the men I know at home would fall all over themselves at the first look. And she's so young, too,” said Francie. She sighed. “It seems queer that she should be married, and have two children, and quarrel with her husband and all that. She doesn't seem old enough to be a matron.”

Maria said seriously, “Yes, it is a great pity that Catarina married so young. I think myself if they had left her alone and not persuaded her to marry until later there would have been less trouble now. With a little freedom beforehand she'd have made a better wife. But old-fashioned families, you know, don't look at things in that way.”

“You seem to know all about her.”

“Of course,” said Maria. “We all know about each other. Catarina's husband's family, the de Abreus, are connections of my mother's. I've known them all my life. I am really sorry for Catarina. I've always been, though she is so silly.”

“Silly?” repeated Francie, displeased and a little shocked. “But she's very talented, Maria.”

“Oh yes, she is
talented.”
Maria said no more about the glamorous Catarina. Francie resolved to probe Ruy on the matter, and find out his opinion of Catarina's beauty, among other things.

When she had the opportunity to ask him he gave her little satisfaction. He merely shrugged his shoulders and said, rather as Maria had done, “Lisbon is full of women as pretty as Catarina.”

“You only say that because she's a kind of cousin of yours,” said Francie. “At home she'd be famous, I can tell you. People would be painting her portrait and everything.”

“Then it's as well that Catarina isn't likely to go to America,” said Ruy. “She is conceited enough as it is.”