He was her own saint, she said, and after all
her devotion to him, and all the candles and flowers, this was how he
treated her! It was all very well, she told her saint, to amuse
himself by causing the rain to fall for days and weeks just to find
out whether men would be drowned or turn themselves into frogs to save
themselves: now she, Dona Pascuala, was going to find out how _he_
liked it. There, with his head in the water, he would have to hang in
the well until the weather changed.
Four years later, in my tenth year, Dona Pascuala moved away and was
succeeded at Los Alamos by a family named Barboza: strange people!
Half a dozen brothers and sisters, one or two married, and one, the
head and leader of the tribe, or family, a big man aged about forty
with fierce eagle-like eyes under bushy black eyebrows that looked
like tufts of feathers. But his chief glory was an immense crow-black
beard, of which he appeared to be excessively proud and was usually
seen stroking it in a slow deliberate manner, now with one hand, then
with both, pulling it out, dividing it, then spreading it over his
chest to display its full magnificence. He wore at his waist, in
front, a knife or _facon,_ with a sword-shaped hilt and a long curved
blade about two-thirds the length of a sword.
He was a great fighter: at all events he came to our neighbourhood
with that reputation, and I at that time, at the age of nine, like my
elder brothers had come to take a keen interest in the fighting
gaucho. A duel between two men with knives, their ponchas wrapped
round their left arms and used as shields, was a thrilling spectacle
to us; I had already witnessed several encounters of this kind; but
these were fights of ordinary or small men and were very small affairs
compared with the encounters of the famous fighters, about which we
had news from time to time. Now that we had one of the genuine big
ones among us it would perhaps be our great good fortune to witness a
real big fight; for sooner or later some champion duellist from a
distance would appear to challenge our man, or else some one of our
own neighbours would rise up one day to dispute his claim to be cock
of the walk. But nothing of the kind happened, although on two
occasions I thought the wished moment had come.
The first occasion was at a big gathering of gauchos when Barboza was
asked and graciously consented to sing a _decima_ - a song or ballad
consisting of four ten-line stanzas. Now Barboza was a singer but not
a player on the guitar, so that an accompanist had to be called for. A
stranger at the meeting quickly responded to the call. Yes, he could
play to any man's singing - any tune he liked to call. He was a big,
loud-voiced, talkative man, not known to any person present; he was a
passer-by, and seeing a crowd at a rancho had ridden up and joined
them, ready to take a hand in whatever work or games might be going
on. Taking the guitar he settled down by Barboza's side and began
tuning the instrument and discussing the question of the air to be
played. And this was soon settled.
Here I must pause to remark that Barboza, although almost as famous
for his _decimas_ as for his sanguinary duels, was not what one would
call a musical person. His singing voice was inexpressibly harsh, like
that, for example, of the carrion crow when that bird is most vocal in
its love season and makes the woods resound with its prolonged grating
metallic calls. The interesting point was that his songs were his own
composition and were recitals of his strange adventures, mixed with
his thoughts and feelings about things in general - his philosophy of
life. Probably if I had these compositions before me now in manuscript
they would strike me as dreadfully crude stuff; nevertheless I am
sorry I did not write some of them down and that I can only recall a
few lines.
The _decima_ he now started to sing related to his early experiences,
and swaying his body from side to side and bending forward until his
beard was all over his knees he began in his raucous voice:
En el ano mil ochocientos y quarenta,
Quando citaron todos los enrolados,
which, roughly translated, means:
Eighteen hundred and forty was the year
When all the enrolled were cited to appear.
Thus far he had got when the guitarist, smiting angrily on the strings
with his palm, leaped to his feet, shouting, "No, no - no more of that!
What! do you sing to me of 1840 - that cursed year! I refuse to play to
you! Nor will I listen to you, nor will I allow any person to sing of
that year and that event in my presence."
Naturally every one was astonished, and the first thought was, What
will happen now? Blood would assuredly flow, and I was there to see -
and how my elder brothers would envy me!
Barboza rose scowling from his seat, and dropping his hand on the hilt
of his _facon_ said: "Who is this who forbids me, Basilio Barboza, to
sing of 1840?"
"I forbid you!" shouted the stranger in a rage and smiting his breast.
"Do you know what it is to me to hear that date - that fatal year?
