Authors: James Michener
We got to the village, a Welsh bullfighter with a Danish
manager, a Portuguese assistant, a Mexican picador and an
American cheerleader. As so often happens, there was no fight;
the local impresario had collected funds to buy the two bulls and
had then absconded.
It was in this world of broken promises, venal arrangements
and utter corruption of all principle that John Fulton struggled.
How he maintained his good humor I will never know, for he
was humiliated by the numbers. One, promise him a fight. Two,
wheedle him into designing the handbills. Three, make him agree
to fight overage bulls. Four, make him employ my brother-in-law
as his picador. Five, postpone everything. Six, abandon everything.
Year after year this continued; year after year either he told me
or wrote me: ‘I will be a matador.’
Gradually, as I visited him more often, I became aware of a
quiet young man who seemed to be sharing the apartment and
to be decorating it with photographs of high quality. For long
periods, when the talk was on subjects in which I had little interest,
I would study the photographs, excellent works in very dark blacks
and pure whites, and I became convinced that the man who had
taken them understood Spain.
The quiet young fellow with well-fitted suits and conservative
haircut was Robert Vavra, from California, a nature photographer.
He had been working for some years on a book of text and
pictures describing in detail the life and death of the fighting bull,
and from the first moment I saw his work in sequence I was
convinced that here was a man who could photograph the
movement and sense of animals; but I was equally impressed by
his shots of people. He seemed to catch the spirit of things in
repose; there was little artiness about him and I began to look
forward to my visits to the apartment: I wanted to see what Vavra
had done recently.
There followed a chain of unforgettable days in Las Marismas,
tracking bulls, watching wildlife and marking the migration of
birds to Africa. It was on such trips that I renewed my
acquaintance with the bee-eater, that spectacular bird which was
to become so important to me when I worked in Israel. Here, too,
I saw my first hoopoe bird, which would be even more important.
Then one day, as I studied a batch of Vavra’s photographs and
listened to his plans for a series of children’s books in color, a
project which was happily come to fulfillment, I happened to see
a chance arrangement of some twenty or thirty fine photographs
depicting the people and life of Spain: they were not the usual
body of material, for there were no cathedrals, no medieval houses
and no flamenco dancers. There was simply the look of Spain,
static and yet persuasively alive, and in that moment not far from
the Court of the Orange Trees this book was born.
Because I was burdened with a heavy schedule that would keep
me busy for some years, I could not then speak to Vavra of my
incipient plans; but when my work was completed I went back
to Sevilla, and in that same quiet and delightful period between
Holy Week and carnival, when the gypsies were again preparing
to trade horses on the riverbank, I proposed that we do this book
together.
I remember the commission we agreed upon: ‘Vavra will go
over Spain guided only by his own eye, completely indifferent as
to what Michener may write or think or prefer. Shoot a hundred
of the very finest pictures he can find and make them his
interpretation of Spain. If he can succeed in this, the pictures will
fit properly into any text. But Vavra must avoid trying to guess
what someone else wants. Make others see what he has seen.’
For the capacity to see a foreign country is extremely rare;
hardly one person in a thousand can do this, so that all the vast
sums of money spent by Pan American and Air France in their
enticing advertisements—‘See Lebanon. See Egypt. See
Brazil’—are largely wasted, because the people who fly forth to
see these places rarely do. Vavra can see.
When the religious parades have ended, when the horse fair
on which the spring activity originally centered has started to
convene, and when old friends have had a chance to renew
acquaintances during the time of relative rest, the real Sevilla fair,
as most people think of it today, convenes. Now the night clapping
begins to echo through the city.
In a spacious park lying at the southern edge of Sevilla, and
within easy walking distance from the center of town, three
separate but connected areas have been staked out, each the size
of a small pueblo. For the next week these three areas will become
the heart of Sevilla to charm the visitor as few other fairs in Europe
can.
In the first area, improbable as it seems, five different circuses,
each complete in itself, have gathered from various parts of the
continent. There’s a Swiss circus, with famous clowns, an Italian
one, a brilliant Chinese one featuring acrobats and Oriental girls,
a Spanish one and, best of all, a large German circus with four
different wild-animal acts.
To one who loves circuses, the Sevilla fair is unique: one can
spend three days moving from one tent to the next and even then
he will not be able to see all the acts. There is something quaint
and even nineteenth century about these European circuses;
occasionally a family will work in one for forty or fifty years, and
no effort is made, as in America, to keep all the women beautiful.
In these tents one sees whole families growing old surrounded by
events they love. For example, I have never seen another animal
act so utterly delightful as the one in the German circus in which
a hefty woman in her late fifties, dressed in bespangled tights, put
a cageful of tigers through their paces. It was charming in the way
sadistic old fairy tales are charming.
In the area adjoining the circuses noise is king. Here you will
find more noise than the human ear can absorb or the sane man
imagine, because this is the carnival space, filled with rides, games,
shooting galleries, half a hundred outdoor restaurants,
loop-the-loops, trips to Mars and a near-score of other rides.
Apparently it is obligatory for each business to own a microphone
and five or six of the loudest loudspeakers. ‘Come here!’ bellow
the shills. ‘Mothers, take your children through the mysteries of
outer space!’ The call of ‘!Churros!’ is popular, for these greasy
fritters served laden with sugar, are the delicacy of the fair. But
no one cry predominates, for wherever you stand you are assailed
by at least twenty loudspeakers, relatively close to your ears.
One night I took a friend from America to the middle of the
carnival area, and he stood in admiration at the frenzy around
him. ‘The Spaniards are to be congratulated,’ he said. ‘They’ve
discovered noise incarnate.’
Yet the area is not vulgar. It too has a controlled Spanish charm
and a much wider variety of booths at which to spend money
than I have been able to indicate. Merely to stroll through the
lanes and sample food at each of the booths would require, I
suppose, a couple of days, and to ride on each of the wheels and
whips would take another two. The section is clean, brightly
lighted and constitutes a little fair by itself, a swirling
concentration of revelry.
It operates, of course, twenty-four hours a day. At four one
morning I wandered among the tents, checking to see how many
features I had missed on previous visits, and I came upon a large
field jammed with nothing but trucks and wheeled caravans that
had hauled this weird collection of rides and restaurants to Sevilla.
Painted red and green and gold and blue, the trucks huddled
together like a collection of bizarre animals assembled from all
parts of Europe, and in almost every cab some man or woman
was sleeping. Now when I think of the carnival part of Sevilla’s
fair I remember not the noise but rather that silent, slumbering
collection of gaudy vehicles.
In spite of the richness of the circuses and the flamboyance of
the carnival, it is the third section of the park that captivates most
people, and it is true that of a hundred foreigners visiting Sevilla
for the spring festivities, a good ninety see only the area I am
about to describe. They miss the Holy Week, the horse fair, the
circuses, the carnival and even the bullfights, but what they do
see makes the trip worthwhile.
This part of the fair has been laid out along a grid of unusually
wide streets, the main ones forming a massive capital H with top
and bottom closed. Along the sides of the streets forming this
enormous H, and along lesser contributory streets as well, the
citizens of Sevilla have been accustomed for the past half-century
to build each spring small wooden structures whose walls and
roofs consist of brightly striped canvas. They are called casetas
(little houses), and each has a wooden floor, electric lights,
running water, perhaps a refrigerator, a table and at least two
dozen chairs. Each caseta stands jammed against its neighbors,
and to see a quarter of a mile of such little houses, each with its
distinctive and gaudy color system, is delightful to the eye.
It is in these casetas that the well-to-do people of Sevilla will
spend most of their time during the fair, returning to their homes
only in time to catch a few hours’ sleep between five and eleven
in the morning.
What happens in the casetas? When the front canvas wall has
been rolled up so that passers-by can see within, specially invited
guests stop by for refreshments, drinks and light conversation.
Entertainment is provided by amateurs and by troupes of noisy
flamenco dancers imported from across the river in Triana. With
music and dancing, with sherry wine and churros, with laughter
and flirtation the long nights drift by. Young couples sometimes
wander away from the caseta to the carnival area or even to the
circus, but by one in the morning most are back where they
belong. A special feature of the casetas is the presence of children
between the ages of four and twelve, beautifully dressed in folk
costumes and dancing flamenco patterns until two or three in
the morning. It is incredible how much music there is in these
lines of gaily colored casetas: one night at two o’clock I made a
casual count and came up with sixty-five different orchestras.
And the songs! In one tour of the casetas I heard amateur
performances covering the complete range of flamenco, from the
so-called deep songs to the little songs. One jazzy folk song
intermixed with the flamenco had a standard opening verse and
a rather startling conclusion:
If a brunette is worth a duro
My Virgin of Marcarena is brunette,
When the real morning star appears the father of the family
rolls down the canvas wall facing the street. A son runs off to
summon a horse-drawn carriage. The gypsies are paid off and the
refrigerator is locked. The tired family piles into the carriage and
drives off through the morning twilight. From the carnival area
nearby come volumes of sound, for the rides and restaurants are
still busy, and as the family rides homeward through the darkened
streets they hear the sound of muffled clapping coming from
other groups who are walking home. At dusk next evening the
family will return to its caseta, and for a whole week this procedure
will be repeated. During the fair Sevilla gets little sleep.
In addition to the small family casetas, at which no stranger is
welcomed unless specifically invited, so that many Americans
spend an entire week at the fair without ever being inside one,
most companies doing business in Sevilla operate their own large
casetas, and some of these are public. By paying a small fee one
can sit at a table, listen to professional flamenco and drink beer
or champagne.
Among these large casetas stands one with special importance.
It belongs to the Aero Club and its membership is so highly
restricted that it constitutes, during the season of the fair, the
focus of Spanish society. Here congregate those especially
handsome people who form the apex of Spanish life: the duques,
the condes, the grandees of Spain. And they are a forbidding,
impressive lot, perhaps the most conspicuous nobility operating
today.
In daylight hours the side curtains of the Aero Club are rolled
up, so that passers-by can observe the great figures taking a light
lunch or drinking their Tío Pepe along with a handful of roasted
nuts. Condesas, accompanied by leading bankers, sit at tables
looking out into the street; duquesas share their tables with famous
bullfighters; at one table it’s all pretty women and racing-car
drivers. At night the curtains are lowered and two different bands
alternate from six in the evening till four in the morning. During
two fairs I held honorary tickets to the Aero Club, and I would
judge the Spanish leaders I met to be among the most carefully
groomed people I have ever seen. It is difficult, as one observes
their old-fashioned gentility, to believe that they are part of this
century.
To observe this manifestation of Spanish society one does not
require a ticket to the Aero Club, entrance to that establishment
costing some forty dollars. Each day at noon an informal parade
starts through the wide streets of the H and in it participate most
of the leaders of Sevilla society. As twelve o’clock approaches, in
all parts of Sevilla horses are saddled up and handsome young
men appear dressed in formal riding habit. They wear fine jackets
with five buttons on the sleeve, dark riding trousers covered by
large hand-tooled leather chaps, white ruffled shirts with lace at
the throat and front, and flat, wide-brimmed hats. When they
have mounted they adjust a pillion behind them, from whose rear
projects a small leather handle which passes under the horse’s
tail. It is on this pillion that the gentleman’s girl companion will
ride, perched sideways across the rear of the horse, one hand
passing about the man’s waist, the other gripping the leather
handle. Since the girls are dressed in resplendent gypsy costume,
gold and blue and red predominating, the couples form attractive
images as they ride forth. When three or four hundred begin to
converge in bright sunlight on the caseta area, a parade of lovely
dimensions is under way. For some three hours they ride back
and forth along the tree-lined streets, halting now and then to
chat with fellow riders, dismounting occasionally to visit with
friends in the casetas and displaying to good effect both their fine
costumes and their well-trained horses. The girls resemble a
convocation of butterflies, they are so colorful.