Except for a very few women from the center of the town, the worshippers came long distances from the white plaster houses which dotted the outlying hills. About ten o'clock Sunday morning they would begin to converge toward the rocky hill from farms and groves, terraced orchards, stony pasture lands. The roads curved and twisted through the valleys, zig­zagged around the stone fences, approaching the church and the town in devious ways. The costumes of the women, always with a touch of gold, showed spots and flashes of red, blue, purple and orange, which heightened the colors of spring or of harvest and stirred to holiday vibrations the vivid greens of the trees and the fields, the buff of the wheat and the beaches, and the blue of the sea and the sky. The black coats and hats of the men intensified the white walls of the houses. The two-wheeled carts creaked and bumped in the ruts. On they came from all direc­tions, obscured by thickets of cane, then reappearing, pausing as the occupants shouted greetings to friends in doorways, continuing without reference to the bell which rang lazily and frantically by turns, according to the mood of the sexton. Each woman carried a small camp stool on the woodwork of which was carved her name or that of her deceased mother or grandmother.

It seemed almost as if whoever planned the island roads, in Phoenician, Carthaginian or Roman times, had suspected that the inhabitants of the main settle­ment of Santa Eulalia would not be pious, for the country roads nearly all reached the hill on which stood the church without passing through the prin­cipal street of the town. There was no room on the hilltop for the mules and carts, so the animals were tied to trees at the foot of the hill and many of the men and women who had ridden together parted there, the men intent on visiting their favorite cafes, while the women trudged up the spiral paths in chat­
Ibicenco Flute and Drum
tering groups until the whole rocky hill was kaleidoscopic with bright silks and alive with shrill voices. A few of the men, perhaps twenty, got as far as the cafe just below the church, from which could be seen far below five miles of the road to Ibiza, the summit of the Cala Llonga slope, the twisting and turning of the river bed, with cane and oleanders to mark its course through the corn fields and alfalfa patches. The beat of the Ibicenco drum would be heard, first softly then imperatively, the sharp horse-castanets would join in, clicking demoniacally, then the shrill flutes, two or three in imperfect unison, would em­bark upon an Ibicenco melody. Every musician knows what it means to hear, suddenly and unex­pectedly for the first time a kind of music he has never heard before-new timbre, a different beat, a tune from some weird and unknown inspiration. I wept with joy when first that music burst upon me, not because it was sentimental or in any way sad, but as a botanist might have wept in finding without warn­ing a new kind of orchid or striped satanic vine. I shall try to say more of the Ibicenco music, of which Primo de Rivera and all his Guardias disapproved and which has been extinguished by war. I am glad that I have some decades and acres and even cen­turies of it in my head, which some time, if ever I feel equal to hearing it again, I can commit to paper. There are ballads and children's songs, invocations and quicksteps, chants that must have had their origin in Solomon's temple.

Only the women sat in the main body of the church, packed tightly together on their stools, chattering even more loudly in anticipation of the entrance of the officiating priest and his assistants. They filled the broad area and leaning toward them at odd angles from the walls were wood and plaster saints in stiff and characteristic gestures, flat-faced painted virgins with haloed children, bearded patriarchs, tinselled suffering and stereotyped ecstasy. Santa Eulalia, pa­troness of the town, was a young Catalan virgin who was done to death for her faith in Barcelona in the days of one of the Caesars. Like Saint Peter, Saint Paul, Saint Joseph and the other favorites, Santa Eulalia was mounted on a platform with wooden handles and on certain holy days was carried in bumpy procession through the churchyard and around the top of the hill. Never had the saints ven­tured down town, as they did in San Jose at the southern end of the island or in the town of Jesus which could be seen from the summit of the Cala Llonga ridge. High on the wall, left of the altar, was a wooden statue of God the Father with a purely ac­cidental expression of ferocity on his face, due not to Old Testament traditions so much as to the uncer­tainty of the sculptor's hand. The stained-glass win­dows in the modern part of the church, that is, the rear annex built since the days of the Moors, were tawdry and unbeautiful and the patches of colored light they threw on the walls and the floor were not up to the standard of the silks and gold lavallieres of the women assembled for conversation and prayer.

I think that the twenty men who climbed the hill did so because of their love of music. In all the years I passed in Spain I never met a truly pious Spanish man. Plenty of them thought the church was useful for keeping wives in order while the husband went his
The Henpecked Millionaire
way. Others had relatives or employers who wished them to keep up appearances now and then. Others feared that if the church declined terrible things would happen. Most of them thought very little about the church at all. In Santa Eulalia I never saw Don Ignacio Riquer, Don Carlos Roman or any of the big landowners in church. The fact that Don Rafael Sainz was in such fear of his wife that he went shame­facedly with her to mass caused chuckles and laughter to follow their auto all the way from the theatre to the plaza. His wife, Secora, breathed nothing but in­cense. She kept their house half filled with visiting priests. When not actually in childbed she was busy with catechisms and first communions. Don Rafael, round-faced and grotesquely heavy in the poop, wad­dled dismally where she led, escaping whenever he could to snatch a bottle of beer in the grape arbor behind the Royalty. He had wanted to build his house by the sea. Secora said no, because of possible danger to the children, so the ungainly mansion he erected north of Santa Eulalia was situated just off the San Carlos road, where the passing vehicles constituted such a menace to child life that Secora was in hysterics between prayers. Ironically enough, it was Don Rafael's long domestic martyrdom that saved his great fat neck in 1936. The militiamen all thought he had suffered enough and forgave his riches in a comradely way.

Not even Xumeu, of the telephone office bar, ever mounted the hill except for family funerals, and his brother was a priest. Ex-Captain Nicolau's wife was always in attendance at the Sunday evening dance, but she seldom bothered to go to mass. Mass was primarily, in Santa Eulalia, an occasion for young farm women to get together weekly and to meet the young men after service was over. I think the local priests, and most of the priests in Spain, preferred it that way. Whatever criticism of them or their actions had ever been offered had been offered by men. Men had tender political sensibilities, the Spanish women none. Men had a liking for privacy, the women were not reticent by nature. As. long as the men contrib­uted, the clergy were not severe with them.

There were three priests in Santa Eulalia, and on special religious occasions two other young ones came out from the city of Ibiza. The oldest one took little part in the Sunday services and was seldom seen on the main street. On weekdays one would often meet him on unfrequented roads or see him vanish into doorways where old people lived, especially old women. He belonged to a generation whose ideals and mode of life had disappeared before its hardiest mem­bers were dead and it always seemed to me as if old Father Coll got more comfort from his surviving par­ishioners than he was able to give them. The younger priests took advantage of Father Coll's popularity with the oldest and poorest of the peasant women by placing the collection of funeral and other fees in his hands in cases where they would not have dared to exert pressure themselves. The old priest was lonely. There were no marks on his wrinkled face of intel­ lectual or spiritual attainments. He haunted the coun­ try roads like a daylight ghost in black and nothing he said or did gave the slightest indication that he had grasped the passing of Alfonso's monarchy or the Middle Ages. In the center of the town he had no
Father Torres
friends. One of the houses in the paseo, the one occu­pied by Guillermo the blacksmith on the ground floor and a priest upstairs, had come to Father Coll by in­heritance, and whenever the old priest hobbled down to collect the rent, the crowd around the fishermen's bar would look after him and grin, as if they were mildly surprised that he was still alive.

Father Torres, who had owned the building torn down to make way for the Royalty, was tall, very pasty, about thirty-five years of age. It was he who was thoroughly detested in town, and I never heard even one of the most assiduous church-going women say a good word for him. His round flat face wore a look of perpetual disdain. He walked through a crowd as if he were afraid of contaminating his robes, con­temptuous of the ignorant because of their ignorance, suspicious of the clever men because they knew more than they should know. He had been born in Santa Eulalia, in the shade of the magnificent palm tree which stood before the Estanco, and it was said that he had tuberculosis. I saw no signs of it except his unusual pallor. It was Father Torres who lived in the magnificent old Arab house just below the church. There was a connecting passageway into the church vestry and a communicating tunnel which had been walled up by Bonéd, the fascist mason, after it had been filled with firearms. Father Torres preached the political sermons and went from house to house in­cessantly, speaking venomously of the Republic and all republicans and impressing upon the newly en­franchised women that to vote liberal was a mortal sin. This gem of information was also included in the children's catechism. His sister augmented the family income by keeping rabbits which fed on the luxuriant grass in the walled cemetery around the church. About a year after the 1931 revolution, Father Torres preached a sermon one Sunday in which he spoke of the sinful way in which the new government had cut off the priests' salaries. He asked for contributions for his own and his colleagues' support and passed around written receipts which, he said, would insure the bearer's being buried in consecrated ground. Before the day was out, his words had been repeated to Miguel Tur who immediately wrote a petition to the new municipal authorities. The result was that the keys of the cemetery were taken from Father Torres and deposited with the embarrassed Secretario. The priest's sister made a bitter complaint because of her rabbits, but the Secretario did not dare give her the keys, so the rabbits had to be sold in a hurry and for a day or two rabbit was cheap and plentiful.

Three years later, in 1934, Father Torres had a serious clash with the civil population. The govern­ment of that year, under Gil Robles and Lerroux, was more anti-republican than Father Torres himself and the priests had become bolder. A meeting was an­nounced in the theatre on a Sunday afternoon and it was advertised on the posters, to attract a crowd, that a concert was to be given by musicians from Barcelona. The men of Santa Eulalia and San Carlos would go anywhere to hear music, and the theatre was crowded to capacity. No musicians appeared, and a priest from Ibiza began the proceedings by speaking in favor of the return to the Jesuits of the property confiscated in 1931. I was standing near the rear of the hall and heard ominous comments. A few of the
Ooks for the Clergy
young men began to ask aloud when the music would begin. Still no musicians appeared, and when Father Torres began an anti-republican tirade, the men be­gan to ook and cat-call until the din was magnificent. The priests, in a panic of fear, tried to run out the stage door but found it locked and were obliged to hurry through the yelling angry crowd all the way to the main entrance. Wild yells and laughter followed them down the street, and when they passed Cosmi's their robes were flowing behind them, so great was their haste.

That was the only instance in which the priests in­vaded the town itself. Always they kept to their hill and the more circuitous roads. When they rode in the bus, they read breviaries assiduously. If one of them was called to a death bed, he hurried through the back street. Once in a while a man from one of the official families would say "Good day" to a priest but there were no long conversations out of doors. Surely the clergy was cut off from the general population more definitely than the Guardia Civil.

I must make an exception of Father Margall, who lived upstairs from my dear friend Guillermo. Father Margall was a Madrileno who had been banished from the city he loved probably because he loved it too well. He had bought himself an upright piano and spent his leisure hours trying to learn to play the sim­plest tunes. As is often the case, he had enthusiasm and persistence but no talent. He had as little as pos­sible to do with the native priests, downed a quick drink now and then in the Royalty grape arbor and when the communists searched his house, in the lively days of August 1936, they found not machine guns and ammunition but two years' files of a nudist magazine.

The only one of the priests who looked to me as if he might be helpful to one in the throes of spiritual suffering was young Father Clapés, who was sent to Santa Eulalia from Ibiza each Sunday and on impor­tant holidays. He was courteous and responsive, sen­sitive to a high degree, really good to look upon. I could only think of Aloysha Karamazov every time I saw him, except that young Father Clapés was not beset with doubts. He had Aloysha's all-embracing love for the human race, his naivete and impractica­bility and a thorough aesthetic appreciation of his offices. To see his gesture as he raised the chalice, or hear the inflection of his perfect voice as he gave God's blessing was a touching experience from any point of view. One would have thought that because of his youth and beauty he would have been the favorite of all the women, but it seemed to me as if the women were afraid of him. The other priests who looked like clerks or butchers or tired old men were approachable in ordinary ways. Father Clapés had an air that was truly unearthly, and therefore, to the simple mind, disconcerting. Of course Don Ignacio Riquer and others among the rich had wives, but their women's mentality was in no way superior to that of the farm girls. In fact, it had been dulled by torpor and neglect, while that of their poor neighbors had been sharpened by daily activity and closer companionship. Whether in Santa Eulalia or Madrid or Seville, the female aris­tocracy was a pale and bloodless imitation of the common women, their clothes, their amusements­ everything was copied and devitalized. The factory
The Mass of the Angels
girls and shop girls and farm girls had the colors, the wives of the rich the tints. The gypsies danced wildly with their bodies, the rich girls languidly with their fans. One day, a short time before one of the most im­portant saint's days, Father Clapés sought out Pep Torres (no relation to Father Torres) and me to ask if we would play the violin and harmonium for the Mass of the Angels, which was to be sung by a group of fifteen or twenty of the girls. The harmonium had been in the church seven years but no one had ever played it, probably because the chief resident priest disliked innovations and did not wish to pay the bus fare and lunch of an organist from the town of Ibiza, if there was one to spare. There was a strong under­current of friendship between Pep Torres and Father Clapés. They had been classmates in the seminary where Pep had found doubts and torment while his friend had found peace.

Pep Torres, without outside contacts, had dis­covered free thought as Guarapiñada had discovered advertising. Raised on a farm in an inland town, with six hard-working brothers and three sisters, he had been singled out by his mother and father for the priesthood. His mother was gently devout, his father harshly pious. Pep, with boyish misgivings, had con­sented, thinking principally of a possible musical training. It had been impossible for him to continue. He was honest, outspoken, obstinate and courageous. He suffered for himself, on account of abstract truth and justice as he saw it, and much more on account of of his mother who he feared would die of disappoint­inent. Nevertheless, after the beginnings of a brilliant career in the college he felt obliged to leave. He had no money to go away and had to carry on his struggle under the eyes of all his lifelong acquaintances. His father cursed him bitterly, his mother was ill for a long time. The pressure of ecclesiastical displeasure kept him from any of the lucrative Matutes jobs for which his education fitted him. So he came to Santa Eulalia and got a job as mason's helper with Costa, one of the republican builders and the rival of Bonéd the fascist. I shall have much more to write of Pep Torres, who lived in my house and played and studied with m;. every evening. Enough now to say that he and I con­sented to play the mass, to the great amusement, when the word got round, of all our anti-clerical friends. Father Clapés had brought us the score, a Georgorian chant of great beauty which for me had all the flavor of antiquity and to the Ibicenco farm women would sound as modern as the " Sacre du Printemps."

Pep and I together had built up quite a competent little orchestra to play for weekly dances and on feast days. Also we were much in demand for weddings and pig-killing festivals in the country. During the fall and winter season we nearly ate and drank ourselves to death. Pep played the violin and trumpet and had a rich tenor voice. I played my accordion and an amaz­ing wreck of a piano the proprietors of the town theatre had bought for two hundred pesetas (about eighteen dollars). Pep had taught a young mason's helper to play the lute, and two young girls to play the Spanish mandolin. Guillermo the blacksmith played the guitar. A fine Catalan laborer played the cas­tanets, tambourine, chimburriba, and triangle. On the
American Dance Tunes
night before the Mass of the Angels was to be per­formed in the church there was a big dance in the theatre, especially well attended. The importance of the weekly dances had been growing steadily since the orchestra was organized, until the townspeople had learned to look forward to the dance as a happy social occasion and could recognize not only the Spanish paso-dobles we played, but could follow the Amer. can dance tunes I had arranged for our odd group of instruments. "Tammany" was a favorite, and "Har­vest Moon" a close second. "No pod se que plogi mes" (" It Ain't Goin' to Rain No More ") always brought out resounding oles and glasses of cognac and gin which were ranged along the piano top for the adult members of the band. On the night in question, the crowd responded with eagerness to the music, the young couples dancing with gusto and applauding each tune until it was repeated. The boxes formed a horseshoe around the dance floor and in them the older women and children sat in an animated half­circle around us, talking, smiling and visiting with their friends in other boxes. The men cheered, took off their coats, danced always more furiously. The graceful peasants' skirts swung wider as the beat was quickened. Outside, in the corridor, the older men's voices rose and fell around the bar like the drone of a huge bagpipe. When we got tired, Pere des Puig played a dance or two on his accordion. At half past twelve, the hour when ordinarily we would have begun to think about closing, the crowd was having such a good time I did not have the heart to quit. My mandolinists, aged twelve and thirteen, respectively, were bright and wide awake and their parents gazed on them with pride and on Pep Torres, their teacher, with touching gratitude.

The dance that night broke up at half past three, after which most of the people had a walk of two or three miles to reach their homes. Guillermo, Pep and I were detained at the bar and served with dark home­made bread, red wine and sobresada. Nevertheless Pep and I wrenched ourselves out of bed at half past eight the next morning, doused our heads in cold well water and after coffee at Cosmi's started up the long stony hill. Guillermo joined us at the plaza. He had no guitar part in the mass but could not see us venture into strange territory without him.

Father Clapés, the seraph, and his colleague from Ibiza, who looked like a Shakespearean lout, met us at the entrance of Father Torres' house. They are both dead this day, and I pause to say I am as sorry for one as for the other, only now and then I reflect that if they were right, and are now in the kingdom of heaven side by side, with wings and snowy raiment, they will afford in the radiance of the presence of the Most High as incongruous a picture as they did in black robes on the steps of the Arab house high on Santa Eulalia's hill.

That morning, alive and gracious, the seraph-faced Father Clapés brought in a tray on which were glasses of cazalla. We all touched glasses and drank, and what with my long night of banging the piano and the generous dose of spiced sausage I had eaten before going to bed, I can say that that drink warmed my heart to the clergy. Very soon it was repeated. The furnishings of the house were sparse but the room did contain a clock and I saw with some uneasiness that
The Mass Postponed
the hands pointed to quarter past nine. The church bell, which had been ringing spasmodically for some time, slowed down, then stopped altogether. I began to feel bad. Except for Pep, Guillermo and me not a soul had climbed the hill. Father Torres started through the corridor toward the church at half past nine and timidly I followed him. We glanced around the corner, left of the altar. The spacious auditorium was empty. I expected Father Torres would be angry, even that he might be reproachful to me as an in­stigator of dances. Nothing of the kind. He turned back philosophically and we joined the others in his living room. More glasses of cazalla were passed around. At half past eleven a few women entered the church and the noise of their shrill chatter reached our ears. Some time after noon the girls who were to sing arrived. I think I was the only one present who thought it strange that the mass should begin three hours and a half after schedule time.

I had my troubles with the harmonium that morn­ing. Seven years of disuse had left the action fright­fully stiff and the bellows somewhat uncertain. The instrument was placed just to the left and in front of the altar. The girls were grouped behind Pep, Gui­llermo and me. A few minutes after the priests entered, the beat of an Ibicenco drum sounded in the church doorway and the men marched down the middle aisle in ragged formation, following the drum, flute, cas­tanets and triangle. They took their seats on the plat­form around the altar, on a level two feet above the women massed behind us. Men and women never sit together in an Ibicenco church.

After a few instrumental solos three of the men rose Nineteen thirty-six, take your place in the corridor of bloody years! Be proud, if you can, of what you have evoked and produced and spilt. No redder blood has trickled down the rocks, no more innocent victims have been led to the sacrifice. The smell of tripes and incense. Your shrieks are the equal of old echoes, your bones will lie in a layer, nineteen thirty-six, which is now the top but will sift down gradually.

One might have waited seven hundred years and seen nothing violent at all.

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