Sónnica. Vicente Blasco Ibanez
and seeing that the customer released his garment from her clutch and continued on his way, she raised her voice, believing that she had not divined his taste, and she spoke of white youths with long hair, beautiful as the Syrian boys who were contended for by the gallants of Athens.
The Greek had passed out of the winding lane, but he could still hear the voice of the old woman, who seemed to become shamelessly intoxicated crying her infamous wares. He was now in the country, at the beginning of the high road to the city. On his right rose the hill of the temple, and at its base, opposite the flight of stone steps, he saw a house larger than the others, an inn with doors and windows illuminated by lamps of red earthenware.
Seated on stone benches were sailors from all countries, demanding food in their several languages—Roman soldiers wearing corselets of bronze scales, short swords hanging from their shoulders; at their feet helmets topped by a crest of red horsehair in the form of a brush; rowers from Massilia, almost naked, their knives half hidden among the folds of the rag knotted around their waists; Phœnician and Carthaginian mariners with wide trousers, wearing tall caps in the form of mitres with heavy silver pendants; negroes from Alexandria, athletic and slow of movement, displaying their sharp teeth as they smiled, making one think of frightful cannibalistic scenes; Celtiberians and Iberians with gloomy dress and tangled hair, looking suspiciously in all directions, and instinctively raising their hands to their broad knives; some redmen from Gaul, with long mustaches and coarse red hair tied behind and falling down their necks; people, in fine, who had come, or had been flung by the hazards of war and the sea, from one point of the known world to another, one day victorious warriors, and slaves the next, now sailors and anon pirates, acknowledging no law nor nationality; with no other respect than the fear of the master of the vessel who was quick to order them to the whip or the cross; with no other religion than that of the sword and the strong arm; testifying by the wounds which covered their bodies, in the long cicatrices which furrowed their muscles, by cuts on their ears covered by matted hair, to a past mysterious with horrors.
Some ate standing by the counter, behind which were ranged the amphoræ corked with fresh leaves; others seated on the stone benches along the walls held earthenware plates on their knees. Most had thrown themselves down on the floor upon their bellies, like wild beasts devouring their prey, reaching into their plates with their hairy claws, crunching the food in their jaws as they talked. They had not yet upset their wine nor asked for the women. They ate and drank with the appetite of ogres tormented by the deprivations of the long voyages, and morally starved by the brutal discipline on shipboard.
Finding themselves huddled together in a small space, filled with smoke from the lamps and with vapors from the food, they felt the necessity of communicating with each other, and between mouthfuls, each spoke to his neighbor, paying no heed to difference of idiom, making themselves understood finally by a language composed more of gestures than of words. A Carthaginian was telling a Greek about his last voyage to the islands of the Great Sea, beyond the Pillars of Hercules, through a gray body of water covered with fog, until they arrived at an abrupt coast known only to the pilots of his country, where tin was found. Farther down the bench a negro, with grotesque mimicry, was describing to a couple of Celtiberians an excursion down the Red Sea, until they reached mysterious shores, deserted by day, but covered by night with moving fires and inhabited by hairy men as agile as monkeys, the skins of some of whom they stuffed with straw and carried to the temples of Egypt to offer to the gods. The older Roman soldiers, paying no attention, in their insolence as conquerors, to the humiliated Carthaginians who were listening, told of their great victory on the Ægates islands which drove the Carthaginians out of Sicily, ending the first Punic War. The Iberian shepherds mixed in among the navigators wished to off-set the effect of these maritime adventures, and they bragged of the horses belonging to their tribe, and of their marvelous swiftness, while a little Greek, lively and keen, in order to overwhelm the barbarians and to demonstrate the superiority of his race, began to declaim fragments of some ode learned in the port of Piræus, or he intoned a lyric poem, slow and sweet, which was lost amid the noise of conversation, of crunching jaws, and of clattering plates.
They called for more light. The smoky atmosphere of the inn was constantly growing denser, and the frames of the lamps were scarcely more distinctly visible than drops of blood on the soot-blackened walls. From the kitchen floated an odor of piquant sauces and smoky wood which made many of the customers cough and weep. Some were drunk soon after beginning dinner, and they asked the slaves for crowns of flowers to adorn themselves as in the banquets of the rich. Others growled applause as they saw the den illuminated by the lurid flame of the candlewood which the proprietor lighted. The slaves passed behind the stone counter overturning great amphoræ, and ran into the kitchen only to rush back again immediately, red with suffocation, bearing great platters. Wine ran across the floor as a crater was overturned. When there appeared at the window the painted faces of some of the prostitutes—she-wolves of the port—who were awaiting the moment for making an irruption into the inn, the mariners greeted them with hoarse laughter, imitating the howl of the beast after whom they were nicknamed, and throwing them a portion of their food, over which the women fought, scratching and shrieking.
The food was all thirst-giving, so that each mouthful should be accompanied by a sip. The Greeks ate snails floating in a sauce of saffron; fresh sardines from the gulf appeared arranged in circles around the dishes, festooned with laurel leaves; birds' heads were served covered with green sauce; the Iberian shepherds were satisfied with dried fish and hard cheese; the Romans and Gauls devoured great chunks of lamb dripping blood, and eels from the basins of the port decorated with hard-boiled eggs. All these dishes and many others were loaded with salt, pepper, and herbs of acrid odor, to which the strangest qualities were attributed. Everybody was eager to spend his money, to satisfy his hunger and thirst, and to roll on the floor drunk, consoling himself thus for the hard life of privation which awaited him on shipboard. The Romans who were to sail the next day had collected their back pay and were determined to leave their sestertii in the port of Saguntum; the Carthaginians boasted of their Republic, the richest in the world, and other mariners praised their masters, ever generous when they touched that port where business was excellent. The innkeeper was continually throwing into an empty amphora coins of all kinds, those from Zacynthus, bearing the prow of a ship, with Victory flying above it; those from Carthage with the legendary horse and the frightful Cabiric deities; and Alexandrian coins with their elegant Ptolemaic profile.
The meanest of the rowers felt the caprices of a potentate, the itch to imitate the opulent for a night that they might console themselves with its memory in future days of hunger; and they asked for oysters from Lucrinus, which an occasional ship brought packed in amphoræ with sea water as a delicacy for the great merchants of Saguntum, or the oxygarum, salted fishmilt, prepared with vinegar and spices as an appetizer for which the patricians of Rome paid a great price. Black wine from Laurona and the pink wine from the Saguntine vineyards were scorned by those who had money. The wine from Massilia they despised also, sneering at the rosin and gypsum employed in its preparation, and they called for wines from the Campagna, Falerno, Monte Massico, or Cæcubum, which, in spite of the price, they drank in capacious cymbas—boat-shaped drinking vessels of Saguntine clay. Hungry for the fresh products of the field after their long sojourn on the sea, these men devoured immense quantities of vegetables and fruits, in addition to the hot dishes and a great variety of drinks ranging from Celtiberian beers to foreign wines. They fell greedily upon the plates of mushrooms; they ate handfuls of radishes dressed with vinegar; leeks, beets, garlic, and heaps of fresh lettuce from the gardens of the Saguntine domain disappeared down their throats, while they littered the floor with green, muddy leaves.
The Greek stood in the doorway with a few of the mariners who could not find room within, and contemplated the spectacle. As he gazed on the rude banquet the stranger remembered that he had not eaten since morning, when the master of the rowers on Polyanthus' ship had given him a piece of bread. The novelty of disembarking in an unknown land had quieted his stomach, accustomed as it was to privations; but now in sight of so many different foods he felt the pangs of hunger, and instinctively set one foot within the tavern, drawing it back immediately. What was the use of going in? The pouch hanging from his shoulder held papyri testifying to his past achievements; tablets for memoranda; even pincers for extracting his beard; a comb; all the small objects of which a good Greek, addicted to the scrupulous care