Iberia (47 page)

The woman had been chanting a saeta (arrow; in plural, ecstatic
religious outcries), which would be heard throughout the city on
this day. My Spanish friends tried to tell me that such songs were
spontaneous outbursts of persons overcome by religious
experience, but I found it hard to believe that this woman was an
average person overcome by her identification with the passion;
she was a professional singer if ever I heard one, and I thought
that I was fortunate to have had her as my first saeta performer
because she introduced the form in such a flawless setting that I
have ever since been a devotee. A great saeta, well sung, is
something one can never forget. But I felt sure she had been
planted on that balcony with instructions as to when and how to
sing for maximum effect.

Some hours later, on Good Friday night, when I had wormed
my way to a different segment of Sierpes, across from a corner
bar which had closed in honor of the procession, I watched as an
ordinary man pressed in against the wall shook himself free when
one of the great Virgins approached. Staring as if transfixed by
the statue, this man threw back his head and poured forth a
simple, unadorned song in praise of this Mother. It was an
extraordinary song, more moving than the first, for it was uttered
rather than sung professionally. It was an offering from this man
to this intercessor and it was volunteered in humility and deep
feeling. Its authenticity impressed the marchers and they stood
at solemn attention as the singer’s voice grew stronger and his
cry more fervent. Then suddenly he stopped and returned as if
in embarrassment to his former position against the wall. The
wooden staves with their iron rings beat against the pavement of
Sierpes and the procession continued.

At the far end of Sierpes the floats exit to a large square along
whose side stands the city hall, and it is here that the procession
reaches its temporal climax, for on the wooden grandstands are
seated the official families of the political leaders who have been
marching down Sierpes. Now the various bands explode into a
roar and additional soldiers and police slip into the parade. Very
bright searchlights illuminate the scene and there is no place here
for the singers of saetas.

From the city hall to the cathedral is a short distance along
Sevilla’s main street, and here large areas of chairs have been
rented out by the city government. Here also the parade prepares
itself for the spiritual culmination of the procession, the entrance
to the cathedral. This is much more impressive than it sounds,
for Sevilla’s cathedral is one of the most enormous in Europe. Its
aisles are so broad that the floats are able to pass through more
easily than through Sierpes. I suppose all the Holy Week floats
could fit into the cathedral with ease. As one astonished
Frenchman wrote home: ‘I am sorry to tell you that Notre Dame
could fit inside this cathedral without causing much stir.’

It stands in the center of the city and can be seen from miles
out in the countryside. It is a barnlike structure and only in size
does it compare with Toledo’s Gothic masterpiece, but it does
have two features which make it unique. At one corner rises a
graceful Moorish tower which once belonged to a mosque that
was torn down to make way for the cathedral. This tower is called
La Giralda (Weathervane), after the female figure representing
faith which tops it, and it has become the symbol of the city. I
have often seen it from points many miles away as the driver of
my car would call, ‘Ah, La Giralda. Home at last.’ The second
feature is less conspicuous but perhaps even more lovely, a large
walled-in garden with cathedral cloisters at one end and long rows
of orange trees which spread their fragrance through the area. It
is called the Patio de los Naranjos (Court of the Orange Trees)
and at any time of the year is worth visiting.

It is to this massive cathedral that the floats finally move. They
leave the street, pass through the cathedral door and stop for
ecclesiastical blessing. The hooded confraternity kneel and the
penitents drag their chains before the altar, some with ankles
bleeding from the irons. In silence the float leaves the cathedral
and the politicians duck away. The stevedores wait for the first
stopping point, then crawl out and head for the nearest bar to
refresh themselves before the long march back to their home
church.

One would miss the spirit of Holy Week if he saw only the
solemnity. In the silent crowds are groups of young girls who
would otherwise not be allowed on the streets, and boys follow
them. There is much pinching and bumping and hushed giggling,
and for many girls their first fumbling introductions to sex come
at this time. As Pepe Gómez told me, ‘We don’t always crawl out
from under the boards to get a drink or listen to a saeta. It’s fun
to look up the girls’ dresses as they stand on the balcony.’ The
excitement is keenest in those moments when some popular
Virgin passes, for then the boys and the girls press together
without supervision and give meaning to the cry that will later
be shouted to the Virgin as she returns to her church: ‘Oh, dearest
Virgin! How I remember you!’

On Sunday two significant things happen. The faithful gather
in the cathedral to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, but not
much is made of the matter, for Sevilla in spring is concerned
mainly with the Crucifixion. And promptly at five in the afternoon
Holy Week ends in the blare of a brass band whose lively tempos
herald the beginning of the Easter bullfight, first of the season.

In the weeks that follow, depending upon the year’s timetable,
activity begins in two widely separated quarters of the city. The
first is the more important historically; the second is the more
significant today. Many centuries ago a channel was dredged
connecting Sevilla with the Río Guadalquivir, which flows some
distance to the west, and this enabled Sevilla to function as the
major port of the south, even though it lay many miles from the
ocean. On the flat land that lies between the channel and the river,
gypsies now begin to gather and are in the process of erecting a
tent city with restaurants, bars, trading points and other
appurtenances. They appear to be preparing a traditional gypsy
fair, with spiced foods, crooked horse races and beautiful
fortunetellers.

That is not their intention. For as one studies the strange town
he sees an uncommonly large number of horses, mules and
donkeys. From outlying rural areas come peasants who would
normally have little association with gypsies; the processions of
Holy Week were not attractive enough to lure these peasants, but
the gypsies do. Experts from France and Portugal also arrive, and
the last time I was there three tall gentlemen from Texas appeared
in spurs and sombreros.

For this is the famous horse fair of Sevilla, dating back two
thousand years to the days when Romans came here to buy horses
for their generals. Some think that it was this primitive trading
that later called forth the processions of Holy Week; certainly it
formed the vital nucleus around which the rest of the present
complex fair was built.

When I was in Las Marismas, watching birds with Don Luis
Ybarra González, we had discussed Sevilla’s horse fair, and at that
time he had explained, ‘The fair probably goes back to Roman
days, but sometime in the eighteenth century it was discontinued.
In 1847 my great-grandfather, the Conde de Ybarra, was serving
as mayor of Sevilla. He loved horses, had a bull ranch of his own
and one day got the idea of having an old-style fair. So in its
present form it dates only from 1847.’ To it come horse traders
from all parts of southern Spain, eager to test their trading skill
against the practiced gypsies. There is much bargaining, much
riding of horses back and forth across the dusty plains, much
noise.

If a man likes horses, this rough-and-ready market with no
rules and little order would delight him. It is conducted under a
blazing sun and has about it a strange and ancient quality. I have
attended at three different times and found it difficult to believe
that I was in the twentieth century; always I have thought it
regrettable that most visitors to Sevilla miss the horse fair, because
in many ways it is one of the most authentically Spanish parts of
the spring celebration.

Last time I was there a gypsy boy of eleven was showing a
donkey to a suspicious farmer from a vineyard north of Cádiz.
Boy and man studied the donkey for more than an hour, and if
they found anything unusual in the beast, I did not. The boy kept
stressing the good points of the animal while the man parried
with his suspicions about the wind, the hooves, the obviously
weak back, the splayed foot and the visible sore near the tail.

Hoping by some dramatic gesture to conclude the sale, the boy
took the donkey’s halter and cried, ‘But observe how he runs.’
The beast would not move. Repeatedly the boy urged the animal
to show his unusual skills, but apparently the donkey had none.
All this time the farmer stood aside in contemptuous silence until
finally the child screamed at him, ‘Sir, you have bewitched him!’

Two hours later I observed the same boy with the same donkey
arguing patiently with the same farmer. During the whole of the
horse fair one can see such bargaining taking place along the banks
of the Guadalquivir.

I once spent the better part of a morning with a tall gypsy
named Antonio Suero Varga from the Extremaduran town of
Almendralejo. He was broad-shouldered, had dark hair and very
dark eyes and carried the badge of the gypsy horse trader, a rattan
cane with which he conducted most of his business. ‘Look at that
horse. Have you ever seen finer legs for heavy work?’ With his
cane he would point out the special features of the animal he was
trying to sell, but after I had been with him for a while I heard
him say, as he jabbed at a mule with a weak back, ‘You expect an
honest man…Let’s say a farmer who has to earn his living…You
want him to buy a mule like that?’

I asked, ‘Are you buying or selling?’

 

‘Either.’

 

‘Where are your horses?’

 

‘Mine?’ he laughed. ‘I have no horses. I’m a comprador

[purchaser].’ He went on to explain that he made his living by
attending fairs and bringing suspicious farmers who wanted to
buy into contact with other suspicious farmers who wanted to
sell. ‘The Spanish farmer is a suspicious creature. He’ll never trust
himself or another farmer, so he has to trust a gypsy. He hires me
to do his bargaining for him.’

I had been with Antonio Suero for some time when he was
approached by two fine-looking young farmers from a village
near Almendralejo. José Gallardo and his brother Juan farmed a
profitable wine and olive plantation of a thousand acres. ‘We
already have three tractors,’ José told me, ‘but we’d like to buy a
good mule to do the close-up work.’

‘Why don’t you just buy the mule?’

The Gallardos looked at me as if I were insane. ‘Us? Buy a
mule?’ I judged I had offended their pundonor and wondered if
I should apologize, but José said, ‘A Spaniard can’t go to another
Spaniard and argue with him about the price of a mule. Well, it
just couldn’t be done. Nor would the man with a mule to sell
want to haggle with me. It would be beneath his dignity. So we
hire Señor Suero here to do it for us.’

At this point José and the gypsy withdrew to discuss terms, and
I asked Juan, ‘Do you trust him?’

 

‘Suero? He’s famous for being the best bargainer in these parts.
We have to trust him. Watch.’

 

The gypsy, having learned what the Gallardo brothers wanted
and what they would pay, left them and ran like a young boy from
one group of men to another, waving his rattan cane and cursing.
Once I heard him bellow, ‘For that mule? My friend, I have two
gentlemen who know mules. I’d be ashamed to take that animal
before them.’ Before long he came running back, waving his cane
in the air. ‘My God!’ he cried. ‘I’ve found the finest mule ever to
reach Sevilla.’

 

He brought with him an old, suspicious, mean-tempered farmer
in a broad hat and chaps who was leading what I took to be a very
average mule, but as I watched, Suero put on one of the finest
bits of acting I was to see in Spain. He laughed, he wept, he cursed,
he pleaded, he cajoled and he swore as heaven was his witness
that this was a good mule and that the price was just, but
apparently he had not yet received a firm price from the seller,
for as the bargaining proceeded the latter changed his price,
whereupon Suero began reviling him as a thief for trying to sell
this spavined beast to a decent man. Then, as soon as a firm price
was determined, he became the seller again. Taking José Gallardo’s
hands in his he became a wise and understanding father. ‘Believe
me, Don José, I knew your father, I knew your uncle, and fine
men they were. How many animals did I find for them, tell me.
And did I ever recommend one that was faulty? Take my word
for it, Don José, you’ll search this feria on your knees before you
find a mule as good as this one.’

 

According to the tradition of the feria the gypsy’s job was to
make the Gallardo brothers produce a hundred-peseta note, which
he would then hand as a token to the seller, and the deal would
be closed on the word of the two men. Suero, therefore, took
José’s hand in his right hand, the dealer’s in his left and brought
the two together, pleading with José to produce a hundred pesetas
as a token. Tears came to his eyes; his voice broke; he could only
mumble; then he began to speak like a machine gun and it seemed
to me that about ninety percent of what he said was irrelevant.
Slowly Gallardo produced a note and placed it among the four
clasped hands, at which Antonio Suero gave a deep sigh.

 

‘You have bought yourself a great mule,’ he said, and with this
he turned his attention to a farmer who had been tugging at his
sleeve. To my surprise, it was the suspicious wine grower from
Cádiz who had been haggling with the boy over the donkey.
Apparently the two had remained locked in an impasse and now
sought adjudication from Antonio Suero Varga. ‘Coming,
coming!’ the gypsy cried as he ran off, waving his rattan cane, to
solve this new problem. Later he would return to collect his
commission on the Gallardo purchase.