Tomb in Seville Read Free Page B

regulations applied to travel. All public transport in the Pamplona area remained at a standstill, in addition to which there were differences of opinion as to whether it was permissible or even safe to use private cars. This led to a delay in the supply of provisions to the towns, long queues at the food stores, and even their temporary closure.
    Then news filtered through that although at first depressing, seemed to Eugene on second thoughts to offer a glimmer of hope. We were assured by one of the communists who had connections in Zaragoza that the only train in service in the country at that time was based in that town, and that it connected solely with Madrid. The capital was not quite halfway to Seville, but even to get so far as this on our journey offered hope of escape from our present frustrations. But how were we to reach Zaragoza? Such was the effectiveness of the State of Alarm in the Pamplona area it appeared that the last private cars had disappeared from the road.
    One of the comrades suggested that we should simply walk there, the distance being a matter of about a hundred and ten miles and—as they assured us—it was a journey that had been done many times in the past. It was a solution, we decided, at least to be contemplated, and with the possibility, we hoped, of toughening ourselves we undertook what for us at that stage were several fairly strenuous lung-expanding walks into the surrounding countryside.
    Finally, assuring ourselves that we had nothing to lose, we took the plunge. In a way we were unlucky due to the fact that after a long and exceptionally dry summer the rains had now started and the unsurfaced road to which we had committed ourselves, in a mistaken hope of shortening the distances involved, was soon to be deep in puddles. Fortunately the rain stopped, although it was to start again in a few hours, and we were able to take refuge and dry ourselves in the first of the few cafés to be encountered in the course of the journey. A remarkable feature of this small village, and several others to follow, was its possession of a church large enough for a medium-sized town, but even more singular was that its main tower appeared to serve as a lookout post over the surrounding countryside. It also had a small bell-tower for the transmission of simple messages. Thus, when after a few minutes we continued our walk, the bells were rung, and this peal appeared to have been answered by bell-ringing in the tower of the next church some three miles along the road. It was a method of communication to be followed from village to village the next day.
    Happily, with the first two settlements behind us, and a sudden change in the weather, the rich gilding of summer returned to the Navarran landscape. It was Navarra that first confronted us with the splendour, the magnitude and even the mystery of these Spanish landscapes, which for many miles into the countryside round Pamplona offered the charm and the delicacy of a Chinese painting on silk. We moved across boundless plains of billowing rock purged of all colour by the sun. Distant clumps of poplar seemed to have been drawn up into the base of the sky in an atmosphere of mirage and mist. Behind the mountains ahead luminous and symmetrical clouds were poised without shift of position as we trudged towards them for hours on end. At our approach an anomalous yellow bloom shook itself from a single tree, transformed into a flock of green singing finches. Lizards, basking in the dust, came suddenly to life and streaked away into the undergrowth.
    Our road crossed and recrossed the river in which vipers by the dozen were corkscrewing their way through the warm sunny water, and under a bridge of wooden planks we counted seven of them. An eagle detached itself from a boulder and flapped away towards the mountains. It was on a smooth rock face that an obituary was carved: ‘Beneath this rock died Tomàs, “The Mule”. June 8th 1916.’ We wondered how Tomàs had