Mare Nostrum | Page 5

of the rich farmers, incapable of
believing in any other legal science than his. That was the time when
the antique dealers had not yet discovered rich Valencia, where the
common people dressed in silks for centuries, and furniture, clothing
and pottery seemed always to be impregnated with the light of steady
sunshine and with the blue of an always clear atmosphere.
Don Esteban, who believed himself obliged to be an antiquarian by
virtue of his membership in various local societies, was continually
filling up his house with mementoes of the past picked up in the
villages, or that his clients freely gave him. He was not able to find wall
space enough for the pictures, nor room in his salons for the furniture.
Therefore, the latest acquisitions were provisionally taking their way to
the pòrche to await definite installation. Years afterward, when he
should retire from his profession, he might be able to construct a
medieval castle--the most medieval possible on the coasts of the
Marina; near to the village where he had been born, he would put each
object in a place appropriate to its importance.
Whatever the notary deposited in the rooms of the first floor would
soon make its appearance in the garret as mysteriously as though it had
acquired feet; for Doña Cristina and her servants, obliged to live in a
continual struggle with the dust and cobwebs of an edifice that was
slowly dropping to pieces, were beginning to feel a ferocious hatred of
everything old.
Up here on the top floor, discords and battles because of lack of things

to dress up in, were not possible among the boys. They had only to sink
their hands into any one of the great old chests, pulsing with the dull
gnawing of the wood-borers, whose iron fretwork, pierced like lace,
was dropping away from its supports. Some of the youngsters,
brandishing short, small swords with hilts of mother-of-pearl, or long
blades such as the Cid carried, would then wrap themselves in mantles
of crimson silk darkened by ages. Others would throw over their
shoulders damask counterpanes of priceless old brocade, peasant skirts
with great flowers of gold, farthingales of richly woven texture that
crackled like paper.
When they grew tired of imitating comedians with noisy clashing of
spades and death-blows, Ulysses and the other active lads would
propose the game of "Bandits and Bailiffs." But thieves could not go
clad in such rich cloths; their attire ought to be inconspicuous. And so
they overturned some mountains of dull-colored stuffs that appeared
like mere sacking in whose dull woven designs could be dimly
discerned legs, arms, heads, and branching sprays of metallic green.
Don Esteban had found these fragments already torn by the farmers
into covers for their large earthen jars of oil or into blankets for the
work-mules. They were bits of tapestry copied from cartoons of Titian
and Rubens which the notary was keeping only out of historic respect.
Tapestry then, like all things that are plentiful, had no special merit.
The old-clothes dealers of Valencia had in their storehouses dozens of
the same kind of remnants and when the festival of Corpus Christi
approached they used them to cover the natural barricades formed by
the ground, instead of building new ones in the street followed by the
processions.
At other times, Ulysses repeated the same game under the name of
"Indians and Conquerors." He had found in the mountains of books
stored away by his father, a volume that related in double columns,
with abundant wood cuts, the navigations of Columbus, the wars of
Hernando Cortez, and the exploits of Pizarro.
This book cast a glamor over the rest of his existence. Many times
afterwards, when a man, he found this image latent in the background

of his likes and desires. He really had read few of its paragraphs, but
what interested him most were the engravings--in his estimation more
worthy of admiration than all the pictures in the garret.
With the point of his long sword he would trace on the ground, just as
Pizarro had done before his discouraged companions, ready on the
Island of Gallo to desist from the conquest: "Let every good Castilian
pass this line...." And the good Castilians--a dozen little scamps with
long capes and ancient swords whose hilts reached up to their
mouths--would hasten to group themselves around their chief, who was
imitating the heroic gestures of the conqueror. Then was heard the
war-cry: "At them! Down with the Indians!"
It was agreed that the Indians should flee and on that account they were
modestly clad in scraps of tapestry and cock feathers on their head. But
they fled treacherously, and upon finding themselves upon vargueños,
tables and pyramids of chairs, they began to shy books at their