The Road to Santiago: Pilgrims of St. James

character-actor. “I was afraid you might have cut your wife’s too, had it not been for the police.”
    “Wasn’t I in my rights?” cried Don Eusebio. “Do I look like a man who would let a whipper-snapper of my company blatantly make love to his wife in public? Do I look like a consentido, my friend?” “You are like Canio in I Pagliacci, Don Eusebio,” I said, laughing, “or better still the husband in Calderon’s play, El Médico de su Honra: you should be more modern and welcome the piropos to your beautiful wife.”
    “Piropos do you call it? There’s nothing wrong with piropos: they are the flower and essence of Andalusia and don’t mean a thing, but I had been watching Master Ricardo....”
    “Your outburst wouldn’t have mattered that night, had it not been for the police,” said Don Miguel dryly.
    “What right had the police to interfere?” shouted Don Eusebio. “I was in my own theatre and I was settling an account with one of my actors.”
    “You closed his eye and broke two of his teeth, not to mention the cut you gave him on the wrist,” said the other imperturbably.
    “Come now,” said I, trying to turn the conversation on to a peaceful plane. “All that is finished. Tell me about your present prospects.” “What’s done can’t be remedied,” said the actor sighing and mopping his brow. “Patience; and let’s shuffle the cards. I’m well rid of that swaggering castigador, who was as dangerous to a decent self-respecting company as a cat among a flock of pigeons. Good riddance, I repeat; besides I believe he was gafe and brought us bad luck. Ever since he went I’ve had peace and quiet at home and at night I sleep like an angel.”
    Don Miguel then handed me a leaflet announcing the opening performance of the company, which was fixed for the morrow. “Leaflets are no good, Miguel,” said Don Eusebio. “Far better to spend a bit more on the town crier and get him to beat his drum and announce the show. Propaganda, my boy, that’s what we need. Get the company round tonight to the casino and we’ll do some turns for the mayor. Doña Virginia and I will recite and you, Miguel, do one of your sketches, El Morao will give us a guitar solo, and you, amigo, must play to us and tell us a few stories.”
    After accompanying Don Eusebio and Miguel to their fonda, where they retired for their siesta, I explored Mansilla of the Mules, which the sixteenth-century German pilgrim, Kiinig, dignified, calling it a city which all could enter freely, for no tolls were exacted. By the eighteenth century it had declined in status, for Manier calls it a township of scanty importance surrounded by high walls which are made only of yellow clay.
    When I arrived at the casino in the evening it was crowded. Doña Virginia, the wife of Don Eusebio, was dressed in light red, and over her shoulders she had draped a yellow shawl which added lustre to her dark skin and ebony hair. She was more of a femme fatale than ever: she ogled me provocatively, simpered and pouted, making me so uneasy that I longed for the return of the banished Ricardo and thus save myself from becoming the target of Don Eusebio’s jealous crises. He, however, was busily engaged ordering drinks and giving instructions to his minions, who were preparing the platform at the end of the room which had to serve as a stage.
    The habitues in the casino were stolid and unmoved at first and none of us discovered his duende for a long time, in spite of repeated libations of cazalla and brandy. The guitarist El Morao was a squint-eyed old man who thrummed his instrument in the monotonous style of one who had always developed his art in noisy bars as a faint background to excited conversation. Matters improved, however, when Miguel gave an exhibition of his powers as a conjuror, bewildering the audience with his tricks with coloured handkerchiefs and balls, and enlivening his turn by his grotesque mimicking and patter. He not only took everyone into his confidence, but he enlisted help from among the audience who, in spite of their sheepishness, had to stand on the platform and become the butt of general laughter as the little actor pulled rabbits out of their hats and chickens out of their pockets.
    Don Eusebio, the ham actor, then did a scene with Doña Virginia out of Maríana, one of Echegaray’s blood and thunder tragedies based on jealousy. Maríana the wife victim in a long narrative recalls her childhood and draws sobs from