SPANISH LETTER
were in his charge and he was determined that we should have a com–
fortable night, with space enough to stretch out and sleep. But some–
how, by pressure of numbers, the vacant places were filled and, sensing
our disapproval of such a thing,
h~
did not try to evict the new occu–
pants. He continued to be as solicitous as before. When I broke off a
piece of the loaf I had bought in Hendaye he was horrified to see me
eat such inferior bread. I must have a slice of his tortilla. He dragged
down his valise, touched the lock, and it sprang open. The tortilla was
in a round tin box. Under it lay copies of
Green Hornet, Coyote,
and
otheli pulp magazines. He cut a thick, gray slice of the cake. I ate what
I could of it, excused myself from finishing and went into the corridor.
Most qf the people there were traveling between local stations, a crowd
of
gente humilde,
sad, shabby, and world-worn, resting between the
walls, leaning on the brass rods along the windows, with gloom-deepened
eyes and black nostrils; in muffling shawls or berets that flattened their
heads and made a disproportion in their long, brown faces; melancholy,
but with a kind of resistance to dreariness, as
if
ready to succumb so
far but no farther to it-the Spanish
dignidad.
The passengers in the neighboring compartment had become very
boisterous, and now the colonel's son came out and subdued them. I
returned to my seat and he to his. Immediately he opened a new topic.
Tired of his conversation and of humoring him, I refused to respond
and at last he was silent. Then the shades were drawn, someone turned
off the light, and we tried to sleep.
By morning the passage was bare, swept clean. The colonel's son
said, "We will pass the Escorial soon, where the tombs of the kings
are." I was stony to him. We were running downslope in a rush of
smoke. The shallow fields, extending on either side to the mountains,
looked drought-stricken, burnt, desert, mere stubble and dust. We burst
into the suburbs of Madrid and into the yards. On the platform the
colonel's son was at my back and in the sooty arcades and the hell's–
antechamber turmoil of the station he hung on, rueful and anxious at
my speed. Presumably he had to know where I was staying in Madrid
to complete his mission. From the hotel bus I saw his brown face in
the spectator throng of porters, cabbies, and touts for hotels and
pen–
siones,
watching the baggage being lifted to the roof, hot-eyed, avoiding
my glance, and looking on at the work. Successful!
First and last, the police. In every hotel there are police forms
to fill and passports have to be registered at the station. To obtain
a railroad ticket you must make out a statement stating the object
219
