rest of the evening.
Meanwhile, as the coñac warmed us, there was dancing in the patio, where the pigâs corpse swung white in the moonlight. We danced till three; the nieces did the sevillana; the aunt recited âThe Siege of Saragossaâ; the telephone lights twinkled unheeded; and we ate the whole side of the pig.
Next day we left in a horse and carriage, with pork chops in our hands. Paco, the hotel porter, gave us a parting present â a poem specially and laboriously written in red chalk capitals on the back of our bill. It combined tributes to Katiâs beauty with, somehow, a lament on the death of Manolete. Then we rattled away through the cobbled streets to the shouts of the beggar children.
At the outskirts of Ecija we paused, briefly, to look back at the city. It lay in its little pool of sunlight, eternally gilded, eternally drowned. The ghostly bells called dryly to each other, and the ornate towers rose high above the clay like the stumps of once exotic flowers left from some other summer.
4. The House of Peace â Granada
Granada is probably the most beautiful and haunting of all Spanish cities; an African paradise set under the Sierras like a rose preserved in snow. Here the art of the nomad Arab, bred in the raw heat of deserts, reached a cool and miraculous perfection. For here, on the scented hills above the green gorge of the Darro, he found at last those phantoms of desire long sought for in mirage and wilderness â snow, water, trees and nightingales. So on these slopes he carved his palaces, shaping them like tents on slender marble poles and hanging the ceilings with decorations like icicles and the walls with mosaics rich as Bokhara rugs. And here, among the closed courts of orange trees and fountains, steeped in the languors of poetry and intrigue, he achieved for a while a short sweet heaven before the austere swords of the Catholic Kings drove him back to Africa and to oblivion.
But Granada never recovered from this flight of the Moors, nor saw again such glory. When the cross-bearing Spaniards returned to their mountain city they found it transformed by alien graces and stained by a delicate voluptuousness which they could neither understand nor forgive. So they purged the contaminated inhabitants by massacre and persecution; and in the courts of the palaces they stabled their mules and horses. But the inheritors of Granada, even today, are not at home in the city; it is still dominated by the spirit of Islam. Fascinated and repelled by it, they cannot destroy it, but remain to inhabit an atmosphere which fills them with a kind of sad astonishment, a mixture of jealousy and pride. The people of Granada in fact, are known throughout Andalusia as a people apart, cursed with moods which reduce them at times to almost murderous melancholy.
Our first day in the city was lit by the dead white light of reflected snow, and after the soft-blown airs of Ecija, we were immediately chilled by it. The hotel was starched and fireless, so we walked out to warm our blood. We went across the Darro gorge and up the Alhambra hill, climbing a rain-torn path behind the Palace. Here, an oasis in the dry burnt south, were green trees, banks of ivy, flowers and gushing water. A bird sang a thin cold song, and the Palace glowed with a winter redness among its leaves. Climbing, and skirting the great wall, we came out on to a rocky cemetery road leading to the high place of the dead. Groups of mourners, laden with chrysanthemums, were going to the graves, and the road was strewn with gold and purple petals which exuded mournful odours under foot.
On the crest of the hill we sat down, with our backs to the cemetery wall, and looked out across the Vega. This was the highest point in the city, a favourite site for graves, and the view was tremendous. A thousand feet below us stretched the wide and populous plain, shafted with light and scattered with smoky villages. In the clear air one saw
Meanwhile, as the coñac warmed us, there was dancing in the patio, where the pigâs corpse swung white in the moonlight. We danced till three; the nieces did the sevillana; the aunt recited âThe Siege of Saragossaâ; the telephone lights twinkled unheeded; and we ate the whole side of the pig.
Next day we left in a horse and carriage, with pork chops in our hands. Paco, the hotel porter, gave us a parting present â a poem specially and laboriously written in red chalk capitals on the back of our bill. It combined tributes to Katiâs beauty with, somehow, a lament on the death of Manolete. Then we rattled away through the cobbled streets to the shouts of the beggar children.
At the outskirts of Ecija we paused, briefly, to look back at the city. It lay in its little pool of sunlight, eternally gilded, eternally drowned. The ghostly bells called dryly to each other, and the ornate towers rose high above the clay like the stumps of once exotic flowers left from some other summer.
4. The House of Peace â Granada
Granada is probably the most beautiful and haunting of all Spanish cities; an African paradise set under the Sierras like a rose preserved in snow. Here the art of the nomad Arab, bred in the raw heat of deserts, reached a cool and miraculous perfection. For here, on the scented hills above the green gorge of the Darro, he found at last those phantoms of desire long sought for in mirage and wilderness â snow, water, trees and nightingales. So on these slopes he carved his palaces, shaping them like tents on slender marble poles and hanging the ceilings with decorations like icicles and the walls with mosaics rich as Bokhara rugs. And here, among the closed courts of orange trees and fountains, steeped in the languors of poetry and intrigue, he achieved for a while a short sweet heaven before the austere swords of the Catholic Kings drove him back to Africa and to oblivion.
But Granada never recovered from this flight of the Moors, nor saw again such glory. When the cross-bearing Spaniards returned to their mountain city they found it transformed by alien graces and stained by a delicate voluptuousness which they could neither understand nor forgive. So they purged the contaminated inhabitants by massacre and persecution; and in the courts of the palaces they stabled their mules and horses. But the inheritors of Granada, even today, are not at home in the city; it is still dominated by the spirit of Islam. Fascinated and repelled by it, they cannot destroy it, but remain to inhabit an atmosphere which fills them with a kind of sad astonishment, a mixture of jealousy and pride. The people of Granada in fact, are known throughout Andalusia as a people apart, cursed with moods which reduce them at times to almost murderous melancholy.
Our first day in the city was lit by the dead white light of reflected snow, and after the soft-blown airs of Ecija, we were immediately chilled by it. The hotel was starched and fireless, so we walked out to warm our blood. We went across the Darro gorge and up the Alhambra hill, climbing a rain-torn path behind the Palace. Here, an oasis in the dry burnt south, were green trees, banks of ivy, flowers and gushing water. A bird sang a thin cold song, and the Palace glowed with a winter redness among its leaves. Climbing, and skirting the great wall, we came out on to a rocky cemetery road leading to the high place of the dead. Groups of mourners, laden with chrysanthemums, were going to the graves, and the road was strewn with gold and purple petals which exuded mournful odours under foot.
On the crest of the hill we sat down, with our backs to the cemetery wall, and looked out across the Vega. This was the highest point in the city, a favourite site for graves, and the view was tremendous. A thousand feet below us stretched the wide and populous plain, shafted with light and scattered with smoky villages. In the clear air one saw
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