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4. Stores and Storekeepers THE Casa Rosita, the general store nearest the plaza, was named for a little girl aged five with large brown eyes, dark curls neatly parted, who wore pink and white dresses and smiled at all the men. Her grandfather Juan, the proprietor who looked like an American cowboy, had short bow legs, a black moustache with twirled ends, wore a black slouch hat and rolled his own cigarettes.

I never saw Juan work hard, and he never was completely idle, except on Sundays. He was amiable with his customers and neighbors but in all his life he had never formed but one close friendship. That was with Jose Ribas, the diving champion.

Early Sunday morning Jose would walk in from his dry farm in the hills northwest of town. Juan would be strolling up and down the main street waiting for him.

They would greet one another gleefully, with smiles, handshakes and slaps on the back and would head directly for Cosmi's to get a drink. In passing Can Xumeu's, his brother's place, the diving champion would glance guiltily inside, knowing that he should greet Xumeu forthwith but fearing that in case he did Xumeu would caution him mildly about drinking. At Cosmi's, the old friends would select a
The Diving Champion
small round table for two and would order cazalla. I would have given a lot to know what old Juan and his friend talked about on Sunday mornings. They leaned close together and Jose would stoop so that Juan's moustache was within an inch of his ear. They would whisper in turn, glancing furtively around them from time to time, sometimes bursting suddenly into hilarious laughter, again sighing and shaking their heads in a deprecatory way. It was in 1932 that the incident occurred which gave Jose the title of Diving Champion.

Just after the 1931 revolution there had been a stir of civic pride in Santa Eulalia and a number of the leading citizens and a few of the foreign residents had banded together in an effort to beautify the town. Two long parallel rows of pink azaleas were transplanted from distant dry-creek bottoms to the borders of the town paseo. Holes about the size and depth of graves were dug on either side of the main street at fifty-meter intervals for the planting of plane trees. Before the trees were bought, however, the funds and enthusiasm ran low and the committee broke up in discord over the question of the use of a street sprinkler.

One Sunday morning when the tree holes were filled with rain water, just as the women who had attended mass were filing down the street, Juan and Jose stepped out of Gork's. They started up the street together, arm in arm, trying to be as unconcerned and dignified as possible, as they threaded their way through the colorful procession. But Jose stepped a little too near the edge of the concrete sidewalk, waved his arms wildly on the brink, lost his balance and fell with a great splash into one of the deepest tree holes near by. Everyone in town witnessed the mishap, saw Jose's head come up, saw old Juan risking his own safety in an effort to get his friend's floating hat, saw Guillermo the blacksmith and others rush out from Gork's and pull Jose to safety. The crowd was awestruck as the dripping farmer, sobered by his sudden immersion, walked penitently to his brother Xumeu's and disappeared from view. I expected to hear roars of laughter, but there were none. They were all so impressed with the enormity of the misfortune that they reserved their mirth until Jose was out of sight. Even then the men joked only in whispers and the women shook their heads and thought of the shame that would be visited upon his family forever more. Had Edmundo or Toniet Pardal or Plate or any of the hard-drinking infidels fallen into a hole, no one would have been so much impressed, least of all the victim. But for Jose, brother of a priest and of the respectable Xumeu, a public exhibition of drunkenness meant deep disgrace.

Next time I saw the diving champion he had lost twenty pounds. His eyes were haggard and deep-set and he hurried along the street, looking neither right nor left, and slipped into Xumeu's, going directly to the kitchen without a glance at the bar. For at least two months, on Sunday mornings, Juan the grocer wandered aimlessly up and down, snatching a quick drink now and then but obviously sad and lonely. Then very gradually the two friends resumed their former convivial habit, the champion regained his weight and good spirits, and the next year the trees arrived from Valencia, were planted, the holes filled
Casa Rosita
in, and one of the hazards of the town disappeared.

There was no sense of keen trade rivalry between the storekeepers. Customers usually went to the nearest store and if they could not get what they wanted, they went on to the next one. The Casa Rosita, being nearest the plaza, got the trade from the southern end of town. It was due to Mariano, old Juan's son, that the store was comparatively orderly and systematic. The goods were ranged conveniently and Mariano knew where everything was. He was like Guillermo the blacksmith in that respect. Without the appearance of effort or industry he seemed to be able to accomplish what was necessary. He never tried to advertise, as Guarapinada did. He didn't attempt to carry everything in stock like the proprietor of the Casa Miguel. Business, he thought, should proceed in a natural way as trees grew, and not become an obsession.

Of the four general stores in Santa Eulalia, however, the Casa Rosita was the one for the respectable minority, the primitive peasants, the Guardias and the clergy. It would not occur to a priest to enter Las Delicias, from the doorway of which Ferrer, the proprietor, shot sky rockets and pointed upward, roaring with laughter when the church bells would ring on Ascension Day. The reverend father would not dare go into Guarapinada's "Tot Barat" for fear of being doused with a siphon. And Miguel Tur, of the Casa Miguel, was a socialist and revolutionary from birth.

If General George Washington had marched with a flag down the main street of Santa Eulalia, beginning at the plaza and proceeding north toward Gork's, I think there is no doubt who would have been the first to drop whatever he was doing and join him. I refer to Toni Ferrer, ex-blacksmith and proprietor of Las Delicias. He was a stocky man with broad shoulders, a hearty laugh and mischievous eyes that looked fierce at a distance because of his heavy black eyebrows. As a young man he had been apprenticed to a blacksmith and had learned to shoe mules, mend cartwheels and iron tires, make door latches and the heavy iron keys in use in the town. Although no one locked the door of his home, the shopkeepers always locked their doors at closing time and the proprietor carried the key in his pocket until the next day. Even at noon, when shops were closed until two or three o'clock, this custom was followed. So often the apprentices had to go all over town to find the boss and get the key. Ferrer kept his store open until ten or eleven o'clock at night. There was not much trade in the grocery line at that hour, but men from the country around dropped in during the evening to buy odds and ends. The electric-light plant broke down about three times a week and sent everyone scurrying to the stores for candles. Ferrer kept a stock of wine on tap, a bottle of cognac and a few liqueurs. But at ten he usually closed the place, sent his wife, sons and daughters to bed, and went across the street to Cosmi's. There, after nearly everyone had gone home, he and a few other patriots could talk freely.

In saying that Ferrer would have been the first to join General Washington, I did not mean to slight Cosmi himself, by far the highest-minded and ablest man in Santa Eulalia. Cosmi would have known the General was coming and would have been with him
The Young Bookkeeper
before he got as far as Santa Eulalia. Cosmi was the natural leader of liberal thinkers and courageous men, and he and Ferrer were good friends. I do not mean that there were revolutionary plots, or involved Marxian discussions at Cosmi's in the late reaches of each night. Merely that Ferrer, if he felt like it, could say aloud that it was a damn shame Matutes' second cousin (sole contractor for building roads) had left the gravel piled on the muddy sidewalks for two years. And Cosmi could call attention to the fact that the Guardia Civil permitted young monarchists to hold meetings whenever they liked but that all republican organizations were refused permission on the ground of public safety. To those American readers who have never yet lived in a country where a man could not speak his mind on such simple subjects, this may sound trivial. To others, whose fathers or grandfathers remember long years during which everything they really meant had to be whispered, after hurried glances around them, Cosmi's oasis in a desert of hushed voices and circumspect thoughts, will be green and cool, with sheltering branches of palms and the odor of clean growing fruits in the air.

Additions, subtractions, and what simple bookkeeping was required in Ferrer's Las Delicias were performed by a slim girl of twelve with large dark eyes and a gentle voice. The mother and father watched her proudly and somewhat wistfully as if, had they known it was as easy as it looked when their child did it, they themselves would somehow have learned to add. At the time they were young, however, Alfonso's government was spending one-third of the national income in paying salaries to priests and practically nothing on secular education. Ferrer, as a boy, distrusted the priests and everything in which they had a hand and preferred to work, hard and honestly, in a blacksmith shop rather than to sit mumbling prayers and reading the lives of the saints with a minimum of A.B.C.'s and two plus two make four. What did he gain or lose? Is it worth while to blight your understanding and squander your time in order to learn to read a newspaper in which not one word of essential truth would appear in a year? Two-thirds of the inhabitants of the central part of Santa Eulalia could read, but I never found more than a half dozen who read anything interesting. The two daily newspapers, four-page sheets, were both controlled by Matutes and censored by the bishop. I doubt if six books could have been found in the combined libraries of Don Carlos Roman, Ignacio Riquer and Don Rafael Sainz, all millionaires. And sometimes I wonder if they, in that single instance, might not have acted for the best. I wonder if Don Carlos, having ploughed through the Saturday Evening Post and the New York Times, would have enjoyed his cognac or his boys with more relish or less? Or whether he would have dusted his Phoenician and Carthaginian relics in the museum oftener, or tried to find out where his father had learned so much about them?

I can only be sure of this. That if the rich men in the United States had bought out the army and the police with foreign money, turned loose the Indians with guns and driven the people's government from Washington, Ferrer in Ibiza would have understood the situation better than literate Americans seem to
Safe from Men's Eyes
understand affairs in Spain right now. And his sympathies in the matter would be straight-forwardly and sincerely with the people.

Senora Ferrer was a short strong woman with bright dark eyes, a high forehead, bobbed hair straight and black as an Indian's, and small though capable hands and feet. She wore a sort of Mother Hubbard print dress and no stockings. All the Ibicenca women wore old-style white ruffled drawers and although they stooped in the fields and climbed in and out of high-wheeled carts, they never exposed themselves above their ankles or below their throats. I cannot remember having seen any other portion of any native woman in Santa Eulalia, not even a glimpse, in the years I spent there. Keeping their persons safe from the sun and men's eyes was among their strongest instincts and most thorough accomplishments. Women who had worked all their lives in the fields had complexions pure white. Nevertheless, young mothers would nurse their babies in a crowded cafe without the least embarrrassment and without drawing a glance or comment from the males. So one knew the faces, hands, ankles and breasts of all the delightful young women, and nothing else except clothes.

Ferrer's first child, a girl, was feeble-minded. There was a chair for her in a small alcove just off the main room of the store and all day she used to sit smiling, replying happily when anyone took the trouble to greet her.

As if to compensate the Ferrers for their first disappointment or to reward them for their patience, the other three children were exceptionally promising. Little Maria, who kept the cash box, was not only graceful and amiable, but what the French call spirituelle. It pleased her when lists of figures resolved themselves into a correct total or her father brought her a flower to put in her hair. On feast days, when the other girls were parading up and down the street, dancing and singing songs in chorus Ferrer always sent her out to join them. The younger boy delivered siphons up and down the street and in summer carted chunks of ice to the foreigners. He was always busy, raffling off a fish, cleaning old horseshoes, running to the garden for vegetables demanded in the store. Soon he was to have his turn at the school in Barcelona, where his brother who drove the donkey and later the automobile had learned so much. In certain American comedies I have seen instances where children returning from school attempted to lord it over their less-educated parents. Such an idea certainly never entered the head of one of the Ferrers.

The store was small, half the size of the Casa Rosita, smelling of wine, fresh onions, and Ibicenco tobacco. Dry beans, peas, macaroni, and rice were ranged in boxes and sacks on the floor. The shelves were covered with canned goods, cooking utensils, chamber pots and alpargatas, the native sandals with cactus-fibre soles, cloth tops and ankle strings. When a customer ordered a can of tuna, for instance, Ferrer would hop up on a box, take down a can from the top shelf and hand it to the customer tentatively.

"I think that's tuna," he would say. Quite often he was right. If the can was marked calamares, the customer would hand it back and Ferrer would look at it carefully for identifying marks before he put it away and selected another.
The Ooks of Caesar's Slingers

The family slept in a series of small rooms extending back into the garden. One alcove was used as a dining room, another for the wine and the older daughter's chair. Next door was the blacksmith shop, with the forge cold, and beside that a small room used for storage of cases and in the fall and winter for butchering pigs and making the marvellous Ibicenco sausage called sobresada. Pep Salvador, Cosmi's brother, killed the pigs on the sidewalk outside Las Delicias and then lugged in the carcasses and stretched them on a bench. Pep Salvador was master of ceremonies at nearly all the pig-killing festivals, working like a demon, drinking more than any other man, always the buffoon. At carnival time, the principal clowns were always Pep Salvador and Ferrer. They put on acts in the plaza, visited all the houses and nearly wrecked some of them, caroused from cafe to cafe, trailing half the population behind them. One year Pep was the dentist and Ferrer his patient. They would set up a hideous chair, ring a bell to attract the crowd, then Pep, with a set of tools the Fratellini could not excel, would yank out a huge horse's tooth from Ferrer's mouth while the latter made noises that put dying pigs to shame.

It is Monday morning and Santa Eulalia begins as usual. The Sunday night ooks (Balearic cries of challenge and exuberance which helped make Caesar's slingers formidable) have died, spreading fanwise, in the country roads. Lights twinkle on the fishing boats, (logs stretch and seek food, the motorcycle's bombardment, the early men and women appearing at doors, the rosemary smoke, the bus, then the women, with fibre baskets called cenayons, go out for the day's supplies. On the northern edge of the town, just across a lane leading westward to the hills, is the Casa Miguel the old general store of the pioneer days, dim and roomy inside, the windows obscured by flyspecks and dandling ladles, skimmers, strings of onions and red peppers, fly swatters, shovels and hoe handles. No one, not even the proprietor, Miguel Tur, could have told you what his shelves contained. When you asked for a beanpot, for instance, he would raise his spectacles slowly over his forehead, sigh, look at you with frank, almost challenging eyes and repeat the word "beanpot" as he rose to his feet. He was always sitting by a littered window, reading. He could recite Don Juan Tenario and whole acts of Lope de Vega's plays, long passages of Cervantes, Shakespeare, Voltaire and (duck your heads, legion) Thoreau and Tom Paine.

"Beanpot," he would say again, as if in looking for a beanpot he was indulging one of your mild eccentricities. His head wagged from side to side, like that of a mechanical toy, partly to help him preserve a state of open-mindedness and partly on account of a nervous affliction.

"Beanpot."

His wife, old and dropsical and completely unliterary, would rise at this point from her low chair in the kitchen and appear at the doorway, pushing back her spectacles over her smooth high forehead.

They would start out in opposite directions, pottering through nuts and bolts, cans of sardines, cornstarch, flour, cans of olive oil, washboards and other assorted articles. Miguel Tur would pause, rub his back with
The Public Welfare
one hand, brush dust from the other hand on his trousers leg, and remark that he was sure he had a beanpot.

"Yes," his wife would say. "There's one here somewhere."

If you, the customer, were lucky, a young fat boy with round face, plump cheeks and prominent buttocks would come in from a football game in the streets or a siege with other customers.

"What is it you want?" he would ask, and upon being told would get you a beanpot promptly. He did not look bright, but he was. The fat boy was Miguel 'f'ur's adopted son. When he was outdoors, which was frequently, the turnover in the store was very slow, but Miguel Tur was as conscientious about the boy's freedom as he was solicitous about the affairs of Spain and the oppressed throughout the earth. To me that is by no means funny, but to most of his neighbors Miguel's earnestness, I must admit, had a comical aspect.

Miguel's neighbors' doctrine of "let well enough alone" weighed heavily on his mind and patiently, always, he tried to make them understand that things could and should be better. For this unwelcome attention to public welfare he had been obliged to leave Ibiza in the days of Primo de Rivera. Luckily Miguel Tur's father had been serious-minded, too, and had said that every boy must learn a trade. One could never tell what was going to happen. So Miguel Tur, when chased out of his home by Primo (I know he built wonderful roads and the trains ran on time), was fully equipped to make a living as a pastry cook. He got a ride to Cuba with another grand man who found it safer to absent himself in that golden period of road construction and assassination, our friend Mateo Rosa, master mariner, diver and fisherman. They made their getaway to Cuba, where Mateo Rosa fished and Miguel Tur cooked pastry. Miguel Tur's wife was very pretty and sprightly then and she took a job with a rich American family (who did not suspect they were harboring radicals) and the Americans liked her so well they cried when Ibiza was safe again and the pink laurel bloomed in all the dry creek beds and Miguel Tur and his wife came sailing back on the Isabel Matutes, with money enough to stock their store in such a way that it remains well stocked to this day.

O eighty-foot schooner, beloved Isabel! Do not let our readers forget you! Impress yourself somehow, gently, upon their minds, your sturdy lines, the lift of your masts and spars, the paths through the sea you have left to disappear in sea behind you, the hearts and the heads of the men you have borne away from death and dungeons. There is another voyage ahead, most needful of all, and the saddest, when again you shall sail from the harbor with the sunset astern and the future as uncertain as the wind.

The latest comer among the Santa Eulalia storekeepers was Guarapiñiada, whose hearty and somewhat derisive laughter could be heard whenever a customer entered his shop called "Tot Barat." All by himself, without ever having seen America or read a correspondence course, he had discovered advertising. IIc was the local P. T. Barnum. The other storekeepers never thought of calling attention to their wares. They took it for granted that their customers
A Guardia's Uniform
knew what they wanted and would ask for it. Not so Guarapinada. One day he would have candied pinenuts on display, in tissue-paper packages, with a huge placard he had painted and lettered. If they did not sell fast enough to satisfy his enthusiasm (not greed) he would improvise a gambling machine and offer packages of candied pine-nuts as prizes. The children would flock to his doorway and he laughed and sang with them until they would scatter to their homes and the shops of their fathers to asks for sous to spend. The tomatoes and deep purple eggplants, all the fruits and vegetables at "Tot Barat" were cleaned and polished until they shone. Guarapinada had invented a liqueur he called Aigu de tots boscs (Water of all the groves) which was a strong concoction of alcohol and herbs like the Italian grappa, only much stronger.

There was much that suggested the Italian in Guarapifñiada, his mirth and' expansiveness, his love of the center of the stage his effervescent romanticism He was tall, with twinkling dark-blue eyes and grey hair, a square forehead, determined jaw and a most contagious laugh. As a young man he had been too restless to remain in San Carlos. On the mainland, after much adventure, he thoughtlessly joined the Guardia Civil. He liked the uniform, the black patentleather three-cornered hat, the capes, the dark-blue full-dress regalia, the green-grey uniform for every day. He took naturally to drill, became a crack shot, in every way a credit to his organization, until it began to dawn on him what the Guardia Civil really was. He was not allowed to fraternize with the population, he could not question orders, he found himself pierced by the smouldering hatred in the eyes of his countrymen he had been trained to intimidate and, at the word of his sergeant, to slaughter. For several years, his orders were such that either he could evade them or carry them out without the loss of his soul. He became a corporal, then a sergeant, because it was impossible for a man of his distinction not to get ahead. Then, before the 1931 revolution, in the last days of Alfonso, he was detailed to shoot two young aviators who were suspected of being republicans. Guarapinada took off his natty uniform and threw it into the latrine of his cuartel, he broke his rifle across a stone bench, then he walked out and for one year was a fugitive from Alfonso's justice.

While hiding in Barcelona, Guarapinada worked in a bicycle shop, but ordinary bicycles lacked something for him, so he invented a three-wheeled conveyance with tread pedals and an armchair seat, and when 1931 came and he was free to go where he pleased, he returned to his home town, and astonished the natives by riding back and forth on Primo de Rivera's paved roads in his unique vehicle. He bought a mousecolored young donkey, Napoleon, who learned to respond to Guarapiñada's conversation. Napoleon would follow his master like a kitten, roll over, count up to five, trot, single-foot or walk, according to command. His coat was sleek and beautiful but one day he playfully nipped one of Guarapiñiada's children and in a fit of rage Guarapinada sold him to Ferrer and never spoke to him again.

At the time Guarapiñada returned to the island he was a bachelor in his late forties. A pretty San Carlos girl, fourteen years of age, fell madly in love with
Out the Window
him. He liked her and thought it was time he was married, but the parents, among the most backward and old-fashioned people in the town, objected with all their might and locked the daughter in an upper room. The old folks thought Guarapinada was crazy, and everyone knew he had been wanted by the authorities for more than a year. Besides, he rode tricycles, talked to donkeys, organized counter-processions of unbelievers with brooms when the faithful marched around the churchyard on Palm Sunday, and generally comported himself in an unorthodox manner. He was three times the girl's age and not rich. The girl solved the problem by jumping out of the window at night and rousing Guarapinada out of a sound sleep. They were married next morning, the first civil marriage ever to take place in San Carlos, and moved at once to Santa Eulalia where business opportunities were better and the townspeople more liberal-minded.

Guarapiñada and I addressed one another in French, with elaborate titles such as Monsieur le Directeur and Monsieur le President and were always on the best of terms. Imagine my surprise and chagrin one day when I entered his store to make a small purchase, was greeted in an angry and surly fashion and told to get out and mind my business. I learned not many minutes later that his oldest child was ill. For more than two weeks, during the child's illness and for a day or two after its death, Guarapiñada would speak to no one. He did not try to do business, o dust collected on his shelves, the tomatoes and eggplants lost their gloss. I have never seen such fierce parental love or such profound despair. His wife moved furtively through the back rooms of the house, dull-eyed, afraid, repenting unknown sins of omission. Then suddenly one day Guarapinada laughed again and carved a marvellous doll for the other baby, not a copy of a doll he had seen but a new and strange one that no ancient Aztec or Chinese or South Sea Islander or any living man had imagined or set eyes upon.

It was an intense and happy family in Tot Barat. The young wife worshipped Guarapinada and he was harsh with her only when the children were concerned. They both watched young Eulalia, who had a grave face and large grey eyes which looked terribly intelligent, followed every move she made and were paralyzed with terror if her appetite failed or she slept badly. The next year another baby was born, a boy, and Guarapiñada expressed his joy in billboards and posters and a huge new gambling machine that caught the Sunday crowds. He built himself a thatched terrace, whitewashed his walls out of season, and printed on them in letters four inches high

ON PARLE FRANÇAIS
(and untruthfully) SPEEK ENGLISH.

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