Love, Let Me Not Hunger (29 page)

He passed around the corner of the building and from the bar heard the sound of a cash register, then strains of cha-cha music and some shrieks of feminine laughter and voices mingling with those of men. He shuddered quietly to himself and shuffled off back in the direction of town; and though he was not aware of it, it was probably this visit that decided him at the next opportunity to pay a call upon the Marquesa de Pozoblanco.

C H A P T E R
2 0

T
hree mornings later, Mr. Albert set off on foot for the
finca
of the Marquesa. Her farm—villa—palace, he had heard it referred to as all of these, was supposed to lie a matter of no more than ten kilometres outside of Zalano along a dusty road as straight as a piece of surveyor’s chain, and he was sure he could make it there and back well before the others returned to the circus encampment.

He came to the edge of the town after which there were only the plain and the road ribbon cleaving it and disappearing into the distance. Resolutely Mr. Albert set his face to the north-east and began the long trudge, and from that moment on left behind forever the world that he had known and marched straight into a dream from which he was never thereafter wholly to emerge.

Against the sky-line of La Mancha he was himself a part of this dream, looking as incongrous as would have Don Quixote had he come riding down the dusty pike in his pieced-together armour on his bony mare. Mr. Albert was clad in a pair of khaki trousers. He wore his black-tailed frock coat and black bowler hat, but for the occasion had also donned his black string tie which he wore around the neckband of his collarless shirt. On his feet were heavy brown utility boots and his spectacles were pushed well back onto his nose for the journey, which gave him an air both of purpose and direction.

Everything about the campo was strange and upsetting. Mr. Albert had never really seen much of Spain, for they had travelled at night from one town to the other, both for convenience as well as to avoid the heat of the day for the animals, and the beast man was, of course, always in one wagon or another with his charges. Now suddenly he found himself plunged into this vast dry land-ocean, making his way through an endless vista of what might have been a lunar landscape.

He should have been marching through seas of purple grapes but there were none, for the storm that had so changed all their lives had stripped the vines of their fruit and leaves so that only the dark crooked sticks and tatters of yellowed, withered vegetation remained.

Habits of the country contributed to the weirdness of the scene. The Spanish
péon,
straw sombreroed, sat upon the haunches of his little donkey or mule, further loaded with a pannier on each side, his back to the head of his beast, never looking where he was going, but gazing to the rear stolidly in the direction from which he had come. As they passed him, they gave Mr. Albert the odd feeling of not knowing himself quite whether he was coming or going. He saw men and women bowed down toiling in the fields at some distance upon either side, and the women were clad in black as though mourning for the crop that had been destroyed. The storm had passed along this road and it was like marching through a desert.

The flat nature of the country, the desolate sameness of the scenery, and the distant line of purple mountains on the horizon gave Mr. Albert the illusion of walking upon a treadmill. He was at the centre of a vast circle from which he was seeking in vain to escape and reach the ever withdrawing perimeter. Yet he must have been making progress for on his left there had sprung up suddenly what in the distance had resembled only a patch of shrubbery, and now turned into a rectangular walled-in enclosure from which sprouted gloomy Cyprus trees, the whole springing starkly from the plain with no single house or barn or other human habitation nearby. Indeed, so Mr. Albert saw, this was an inhuman habitation. Only the dead slept within the walls beneath the boles of the tall, slender Cyprus. The sight accentuated the loneliness, and Mr. Albert shivered. Far away, still some kilometres to go, shimmered the white buildings of a village, or at least what appeared to be a village.

Other strange sights laced the beginning of his dream. A donkey in a nearby field was attached to a machine, the arm of a windlass, that lowered a chain of buckets into a well and brought them up one after the other to irrigate a farm. The animal was blindfolded and walked ceaselessly in a circle, pursued by a small boy who beat with rhythmic regularity upon its posterior with a stick.

Age had endowed Mr. Albert with a measure of philosophy. His heart was stricken for the beast as he watched it winding round and round on its endless journey with only the covering over its eyes to keep it from knowing that it would never get to where it was going. And he wondered why man, too, was not granted that same mercy of the blindfold so that he need never know that he had failed to reach his goal.

He trudged onwards. Often, black and white magpies arose from a mined field on one side of the road and sailed across gracefully to glide and alight on the other.

Once, when he had had one of his so temporary jobs in Northern Ireland, he had run into an Irishman who had acquainted him with the superstition that it was the utmost bad luck to ignore such magpies either a-wheel or a-foot, and that if one did not accord them the politeness of the time of day they would put a most severe curse upon one. And so, trudging down the white road of La Mancha which disintegrated into shimmering heat waves in the distance, Mr. Albert made a further contribution to the oddity of it all by lifting his bowler hat to these sailing birds and mumbling, “Good day, Mag.”

And then, suddenly and seemingly miraculously, he was there and it was not a village at all which had been receding from him but a cluster of buildings tucked away behind the inevitable wall. It lay a hundred yards or so off to the right of the highway and there was a finely gravelled road that led to the entrance and the two wide and massive wrought-iron gates some twelve feet high through which he could see the balconied façade of a two-storey villa surmounted by a tower.

There must have been a dozen or so buildings inside the enclosure. Mr. Albert could see the red tiles of their roofs shining just over the edge of the wall. Marching across the plain at right angles, a line of poles brought two strands of wire from somewhere on the horizon into this group of buildings for them alone and for no other. There was no village, hamlet, or town within miles of this place or nearer than Zalano, whose cathedral spire he could see in the far distance from whence he had come. This, then, could be the
finca
of the Marquesa de Pozoblanco. Heartened, he turned resolutely and walked down the gravel road, and indeed, written boldly in wrought-iron letters upon the side of the wall was the name of
POZOBLANCO
.

Within there was no one in sight and it was quiet except for the noise of someone hammering upon metal, a kind of a black-smithy sound. Mr. Albert thought that if all the gossip he had heard about the Marquesa were true he ought to be entertaining premonitions of evil, the kind one encountered in book stories about weird places. He felt none.

He saw that to one side of the great, black gates was a bell-pull, a wooden handle attached to a wire. Forthwith he tugged at it and set up a clamour and jangling which immediately evoked the barking of many dogs and the clucking of fowl, and he heard the trampling of horses’ hooves somewhere in a stable. Two men materialised from the white beehive-shaped gatehouse to the left of the portals. They were dressed in white trousers and white tunics with red sashes at their waists. They came peering out at Mr. Albert, and one of them questioned him in Spanish, evidently asking him who he was and what he wanted.

Mr. Albert had not reckoned with this, or if he had thought of it the long walk and the weird and lonely landscape had driven it from his head, but now he was faced with a problem of making them understand that he wanted an interview with the Marquesa. It was obvious that the two guardians would not open the great iron portals to anyone not properly identified, and though Mr. Albert kept repeating, “The Marquesa de Pozoblanco,” and saying loudly, in English, that he wished to see her, he was met only with shrugs and the shaking of heads. He kept telling them that he was from the stranded English circus. He essayed pantomime. In the end it was his own bizarre appearance that saved the day, and perhaps the words of English and of circus had penetrated, for they had never seen any local tramp or, for that matter, anyone quite like Mr. Albert before.

One of the attendants thus signalled the old man to wait while he telephoned. And shortly afterwards, to Mr. Albert’s great joy, there appeared the man he recognised, the dapper-looking gentleman in striped trousers and short black jacket. It was he who had attended the Marquesa during the performance, who had purchased all the tickets for the poor children of Zalano, and who had brought the purse from her to Mr. Marvel at the close of the show.

The man strode forward, spoke briefly to the two guards and then glanced out through the iron-work at Mr. Albert, but not unkindly.

He said to the old man in his slightly accented English, “Pablo thinks you were speaking English. Who are you and what is it you want?”

“My name is Albert Griggs, but they call me Mr. Albert. I’m from the circus. I look after the animals. Can I talk to the Marquesa?” He pronounced it “Markweeser.”

The major-domo nodded and said, “Ah yes, I remember. The circus that burned to the ground. But I thought you had all left?” He reflected for a moment and then shook his head. “I am afraid the Marquesa cannot be disturbed. If you wish me to convey a message—”

“Please,” pleaded Mr. Albert. “You wouldn’t understand. Please let me in to see her so I could explain. Our animals are starving. She was so kind. Perhaps she would be willing to help us if you would only give me a chance to tell her what has happened.”

He had taken off his bowler hat upon which the white dust of the road had settled, just as it had upon his shoes and frock coat. Somehow the gesture of removing the hat had disturbed his grey hair so that it stood up in a kind of aureole, and with his light, washed-out blue eyes blinking through his spectacles he looked absurd yet strangely appealing. Something clicked in the mind of the major-domo and he remembered when he had last seen this man, looking even more ridiculous. He saw him sprawled in the ring, sloshed with water, bounced from a trampoline, suspended from a trapeze, and he remembered to what straits of helpless laughter the spectacle had reduced his mistress.

The reason that Don Francisco was the perfect major-domo was that he lived his life only through the eyes and mind of the woman he served. Nothing that might for an instant please her, delight or tickle her fancy was allowed to escape. She would hear that there had been a stranger at the gates; she would wish to know who it had been.

He signalled to the two guards who, working like twins, pulled the heavy bolts so that they clanked simultaneously, and then tugging upon the massive gates swung them inwards.

Don Francisco said, “You may come in. The Marquesa is at her toilet but it is also the hour when she gives audience. I will take you there. When she signs to you to come forward, do so and state your case quickly and, I advise you as well, simply. She understands English. If she is inclined to help you she will let you know, but if she is not interested, if you have failed to gain her attention, you must leave at once. Is this clear? Those are the conditions.”

The dream-like quality was continuing. Mr. Albert could hardly believe his good fortune. “Yes, yes, yes!” he cried. “Of course! But she’ll help me. You’ll see. When I tell her about Rajah and King and Bagheera and poor old Judy and Hans—we’ve done everything we could. They’ve never had enough food since Mr. Marvel went away. He promised he’d come back but he never has, and when we telephoned—”

Thus be babbled on as he followed towards the portico of the main building. Upon the threshold of the three steps leading up to a pair of old carved-oak and nail-studded doors, Don Francisco paused for a second to repeat, “Keep your story brief, old man. It is not easy to engage her attention and her mind is often elsewhere.” Then for an instant he placed a hand on Mr. Albert’s arm and warned him, “Whatever happens, whatever you see, whatever she may say or do, you are not under any circumstances to show that you are either shocked, disapproving, or taken by surprise. Is that clear?”

“Oh yes,” said Mr. Albert, “I’ll do anything. Anything you say. You’re very kind.”

“Then come.”

As they passed through the doorway and into the patio that lay at the centre of the house it was well that Mr. Albert obtained an inkling of what the major-domo meant when he said he was to show neither shock nor surprise at what he might see, for as a foretaste of what was yet to come, the courtyard was like an anteroom to an oriental paradise. It was a mass of colour in rich crimson, gold, and alabaster white, with contrasting shades of thousands of tiles in Moorish designs panelling the walls, and flaming flowers tumbling from the ancient teakwood balcony that ran around the four sides of the structure. This balcony was supported upon white pillars, Corinthian, crowned in gold, reaching to intricately carved beams painted in red. A fountain played from the centre of a blue-tiled pool, and a great leather coffer studded with golden nails stood at one end. Two huge green vases with wings instead of handles reposed in tripods.

Mr. Albert gasped, goggled, and removed his bowler hat. To be plunged into this glorious uproar of hues after the aridity of the desert plain through which he had trudged and the stark lime of the buildings in Zalano was almost more than his senses could support. But he quickly recalled what he had been told, and, controlling himself, placed his hat upon his head once more and followed on, determined to steel himself for whatever might follow upon this dazzling exhibition.

They mounted a broad flight of tessellated steps and paused before another carved oaken doorway. “Remember now,” the major-domo said, “wait until you are summoned.” He thereupon went in without knocking and Mr. Albert followed.