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SEVILLE 35
native simplicity—a true sunflower. He will allude
with a sickly smile to “that damned polar winter of
Arabia,” where the night is six months long and the
day also six months long; and to Old Castile, the
coldest place on earth. In his boundless joy at having
recovered himself again, he is ready even for excesses;
he will visit a café and drink thick chocolate from
diminutive cups, or invite his best friend to a pastry
shop and share three cents’ worth of candy with him.
A crowd of women come strolling out of the silent
semi-darkness of the streets. They wear thin black
shawls with long fringes, are bareheaded and have
paper flowers in their black hair. Some of them are
very pretty, but poverty is not in the habit of breeding
beauty here more than elsewhere. Some are pock-
marked, some have lost an eye, many have wide plas-
ters on both temples; every one of them has distended
nostrils and watchful eyes, seeking a prey for her
laughter. They trip along, a flock of bluejays, bab-
bling and laughing. They crack jokes on the dandies’
thin legs, throw the donkey-driver from his saddle as
they go by, gather in groups about the foreigner, and
throw kisses to the fat priest who quickly disappears
with a suppressed chuckle behind the heavy curtain of
the church door. Everything is a source of laughter
for them, a limping dog, a coffin, a sneezing beggar.
They do not timidly cover up their mouths, but open
them wide and eagerly suck in all the air’s ingredients
of sunlight and cold, contagious substances and stench.
Their high-arched, provocative breasts offer defiance
to the world and to all lung troubles. ‘‘Come, I shall
press you to me, even though you be Death himself,
and I will then cast you off like an empty lemon.” This
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