Part 13

We came around a curve into a town, and on both sides opened out a sudden green valley. A stream went through the centre of the town and fields of grapes touched the houses. The bus stopped in front of a posada and many of the passengers got down, and a lot of the baggage was unstrapped from the roof from under the big tarpaulins and lifted down. Bill and I got down and went into the posada. There was a low, dark room with saddles and harness, and hay-forks made of white wood, and clusters of canvas rope-soled shoes and hams and slabs of bacon and white garlics and long sausages hanging from the roof. It was cool and dusky, and we stood in front of a long wooden counter with two women behind it serving drinks. Behind them were shelves stacked with supplies and goods. We each had an aguardiente and paid forty centimes for the two drinks. I gave the woman fifty centimes to make a tip, and she gave me back the copper piece, thinking I had misunderstood the price. Two of our Basques came in and insisted on buying a drink. So they bought a drink and then we bought a drink, and then they slapped us on the back and bought another drink. Then we bought, and then we all went out into the sunlight and the heat, and climbed back on top of the bus. There was plenty of room now for every one to sit on the seat, and the Basque who had been lying on the tin roof now sat between us. The woman who had been serving drinks came out wiping her hands on her apron and talked to somebody inside the bus. Then the driver came out swinging two flat leather mail-pouches and climbed up, and everybody waving we started off. The road left the green valley at once, and we were up in the hills again. Bill and the wine-bottle Basque were having a conversation. A man leaned over from the other side of the seat and asked in English: “You’re Americans?” “Sure.” “I been there,” he said. “Forty years ago.” He was an old man, as brown as the others, with the stubble of a white beard. “How was it?” “What you say?” “How was America?” “Oh, I was in California. It was fine.” “Why did you leave?” “What you say?” “Why did you come back here?” “Oh! I come back to get married. I was going to go back but my wife she don’t like to travel. Where you from?” “Kansas City.” “I been there,” he said. “I been in Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, Denver, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City.” He named them carefully. “How long were you over?” “Fifteen years. Then I come back and got married.” “Have a drink?” “All right,” he said. “You can’t get this in America, eh?” “There’s plenty if you can pay for it.” “What you come over here for?” “We’re going to the fiesta at Pamplona.” “You like the bull-fights?” “Sure. Don’t you?” “Yes,” he said. “I guess I like them.” Then after a little: “Where you go now?” “Up to Burguete to fish.” “Well,” he said, “I hope you catch something.” He shook hands and turned around to the back seat again. The other Basques had been impressed. He sat back comfortably and smiled at me when I turned around to look at the country. But the effort of talking American seemed to have tired him. He did not say anything after that. The bus climbed steadily up the road. The country was barren and rocks stuck up through the clay. There was no grass beside the road. Looking back we could see the country spread out below. Far back the fields were squares of green and brown on the hillsides. Making the horizon were the brown mountains. They were strangely shaped. As we climbed higher the horizon kept changing. As the bus ground slowly up the road we could see other mountains coming up in the south. Then the road came over the crest, flattened out, and went into a forest. It was a forest of cork oaks, and the sun came through the trees in patches, and there were cattle grazing back in the trees. We went through the forest and the road came out and turned along a rise of land, and out ahead of us was a rolling green plain, with dark mountains beyond it. These were not like the brown, heat-baked mountains we had left behind. These were wooded and there were clouds coming down from them. The green plain stretched off. It was cut by fences and the white of the road showed through the trunks of a double line of trees that crossed the plain toward the north. As we came to the edge of the rise we saw the red roofs and white houses of Burguete ahead strung out on the plain, and away off on the shoulder of the first dark mountain was the gray metal-sheathed roof of the monastery of Roncesvalles. “There’s Roncevaux,” I said. “Where?” “Way off there where the mountain starts.” “It’s cold up here,” Bill said. “It’s high,” I said. “It must be twelve hundred metres.” “It’s awful cold,” Bill said. The bus levelled down onto the straight line of road that ran to Burguete. We passed a crossroads and crossed a bridge over a stream. The houses of Burguete were along both sides of the road. There were no side-streets. We passed the church and the school-yard, and the bus stopped. We got down and the driver handed down our bags and the rod-case. A carabineer in his cocked hat and yellow leather cross-straps came up. “What’s in there?” he pointed to the rod-case. I opened it and showed him. He asked to see our fishing permits and I got them out. He looked at the date and then waved us on. “Is that all right?” I asked. “Yes. Of course.” We went up the street, past the whitewashed stone houses, families sitting in their doorways watching us, to the inn. The fat woman who ran the inn came out from the kitchen and shook hands with us. She took off her spectacles, wiped them, and put them on again. It was cold in the inn and the wind was starting to blow outside. The woman sent a girl up-stairs with us to show the room. There were two beds, a washstand, a clothes-chest, and a big, framed steel-engraving of Nuestra Señora de Roncesvalles. The wind was blowing against the shutters. The room was on the north side of the inn. We washed, put on sweaters, and came down-stairs into the dining-room. It had a stone floor, low ceiling, and was oak-panelled. The shutters were up and it was so cold you could see your breath. “My God!” said Bill. “It can’t be this cold to-morrow. I’m not going to wade a stream in this weather.” There was an upright piano in the far corner of the room beyond the wooden tables and Bill went over and started to play. “I got to keep warm,” he said. I went out to find the woman and ask her how much the room and board was. She put her hands under her apron and looked away from me. “Twelve pesetas.” “Why, we only paid that in Pamplona.” She did not say anything, just took off her glasses and wiped them on her apron. “That’s too much,” I said. “We didn’t pay more than that at a big hotel.” “We’ve put in a bathroom.” “Haven’t you got anything cheaper?” “Not in the summer. Now is the big season.” We were the only people in the inn. Well, I thought, it’s only a few days. “Is the wine included?” “Oh, yes.” “Well,” I said. “It’s all right.” I went back to Bill. He blew his breath at me to show how cold it was, and went on playing. I sat at one of the tables and looked at the pictures on the wall. There was one panel of rabbits, dead, one of pheasants, also dead, and one panel of dead ducks. The panels were all dark and smoky-looking. There was a cupboard full of liqueur bottles. I looked at them all. Bill was still playing. “How about a hot rum punch?” he said. “This isn’t going to keep me warm permanently.” I went out and told the woman what a rum punch was and how to make it. In a few minutes a girl brought a stone pitcher, steaming, into the room. Bill came over from the piano and we drank the hot punch and listened to the wind. “There isn’t too much rum in that.” I went over to the cupboard and brought the rum bottle and poured a half-tumblerful into the pitcher. “Direct action,” said Bill. “It beats legislation.” The girl came in and laid the table for supper. “It blows like hell up here,” Bill said. The girl brought in a big bowl of hot vegetable soup and the wine. We had fried trout afterward and some sort of a stew and a big bowl full of wild strawberries. We did not lose money on the wine, and the girl was shy but nice about bringing it. The old woman looked in once and counted the empty bottles. After supper we went up-stairs and smoked and read in bed to keep warm. Once in the night I woke and heard the wind blowing. It felt good to be warm and in bed. CHAPTER 12 When I woke in the morning I went to the window and looked out. It had cleared and there were no clouds on the mountains. Outside under the window were some carts and an old diligence, the wood of the roof cracked and split by the weather. It must have been left from the days before the motor-buses. A goat hopped up on one of the carts and then to the roof of the diligence. He jerked his head at the other goats below and when I waved at him he bounded down. Bill was still sleeping, so I dressed, put on my shoes outside in the hall, and went down-stairs. No one was stirring down-stairs, so I unbolted the door and went out. It was cool outside in the early morning and the sun had not yet dried the dew that had come when the wind died down. I hunted around in the shed behind the inn and found a sort of mattock, and went down toward the stream to try and dig some worms for bait. The stream was clear and shallow but it did not look trouty. On the grassy bank where it was damp I drove the mattock into the earth and loosened a chunk of sod. There were worms underneath. They slid out of sight as I lifted the sod and I dug carefully and got a good many. Digging at the edge of the damp ground I filled two empty tobacco-tins with worms and sifted dirt onto them. The goats watched me dig. When I went back into the inn the woman was down in the kitchen, and I asked her to get coffee for us, and that we wanted a lunch. Bill was awake and sitting on the edge of the bed. “I saw you out of the window,” he said. “Didn’t want to interrupt you. What were you doing? Burying your money?” “You lazy bum!” “Been working for the common good? Splendid. I want you to do that every morning.” “Come on,” I said. “Get up.” “What? Get up? I never get up.” He climbed into bed and pulled the sheet up to his chin. “Try and argue me into getting up.” I went on looking for the tackle and putting it all together in the tackle-bag. “Aren’t you interested?” Bill asked. “I’m going down and eat.” “Eat? Why didn’t you say eat? I thought you just wanted me to get up for fun. Eat? Fine. Now you’re reasonable. You go out and dig some more worms and I’ll be right down.” “Oh, go to hell!” “Work for the good of all.” Bill stepped into his underclothes. “Show irony and pity.” I started out of the room with the tackle-bag, the nets, and the rod-case. “Hey! come back!” I put my head in the door. “Aren’t you going to show a little irony and pity?” I thumbed my nose. “That’s not irony.” As I went down-stairs I heard Bill singing, “Irony and Pity. When you’re feeling . . . Oh, Give them Irony and Give them Pity. Oh, give them Irony. When they’re feeling . . . Just a little irony. Just a little pity . . .” He kept on singing until he came down-stairs. The tune was: “The Bells are Ringing for Me and my Gal.” I was reading a week-old Spanish paper. “What’s all this irony and pity?” “What? Don’t you know about Irony and Pity?” “No. Who got it up?” “Everybody. They’re mad about it in New York. It’s just like the Fratellinis used to be.” The girl came in with the coffee and buttered toast. Or, rather, it was bread toasted and buttered. “Ask her if she’s got any jam,” Bill said. “Be ironical with her.” “Have you got any jam?” “That’s not ironical. I wish I could talk Spanish.” The coffee was good and we drank it out of big bowls. The girl brought in a glass dish of raspberry jam.