FORTUNATE ISLAND
By GEOFFREY HOLDSWORTH
IAM awakened by the caressing beat of the sea—a sea of the deepest gentian blue, shot with vivid green over the sand patches. There are other sounds—the morning song of chaffinches, Francisca humming a Flamenco tune as she lights the fire in the kitchen with fir twigs, the squealing of Miguel's little pigs that he is fattening for the autumn. My window in the whitewashed fonda looks on to a Mediterranean cove, pink rocks on either side crowned with wind- blown pines. You can lie on those rocks, the sun beating on your body, and watch the bright-hued fishes playing and nosing and feeding among the weeds. Children fish successfully for them with a bamboo rod, their hooks baited with a sea-worm rather like a centipede from the pools. Mallorca—still after twelve years and in spite of many changes, the Island of Calm.
There is no " modern comfort " in the fonda, beyond a good bed and spotless cleanliness. No running water, nor hot baths, no tea, no butter, no padded arm-chairs—though elsewhere on the island all those things can be had at a price ; even Mallorca's match- less and odourless olive oil ;s short. But if you like rough brown bread, oranges three times a day, fresh salads, sopa containing peas, young broad beans, globe artichokes, lentils and carrots ; that noble Spanish dish Paella de Arroz, made of real rice, as well as the mussels, chicken and strips of pimiento that go with it ; if you like omelettes made of new-laid eggs, and more exciting dishes like fried octopus tentacles ; a light and admirable wine of the country and nothing out of tins for just under ten shillings a day . . .
Included in the price is the kindness, the gaiety and the charm of all poor people in Latin countries—their native artistry, to which is added the proud piety, the high courtesy of Spain. Free, too, is the unfailing sunlight, the aromatic smell of the Maquis, the hearten- ing sight of an architecture that even when new is still traditional and lovely. You walk a little way among the pines, with their under- growth of rosemary, lentisk and lavender, among which the wild gladiolus has just finished blooming, and find a secluded beach where you can lie naked in the sun, and bathe in the same happy condition. If you are lucky you may set a kingfisher skim like a flying jewel over the water ; a fishing eagle stooping majestic in a long dizzy slant from the sky.
And you can think long, long thoughts, of all the galleys with their long oars and lateen sails that have come to these Balearic
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Islands—from Crete and Troy and Tiryns, from Tyre, from Corinth and from Marseilles. From Carthage—Mago, brother of great Han- nibal, gave his name to Port Mahon, capital of the sister isle of Menorca, as well as to mayonnaise sauce. Carthage fell, and the Romans came, to colonise the islands in grim earnest and to recruit from them the famous stingers who became such notable auxiliaries to the legions. (I have never seen Mallorquin children slinging, though I have .seen boys in Corfu playing cricket, which must be a relic of the British occupation of the Ionian Isles from 1815 to 1863.) 55o years of Roman rule, and then Genseric and his -Vandals, the brief resurgence of Byzance, the Moors—whose buildings still stand, whose irrigation system is still used till they in their turn were expelled by Jaime of Aragon, the Conquistador, who was connected by marriage with our own Simon de Montfort. A mile or two westward was where he landed, and I like to think of the swallow that built her nest under the flap of his silken pavilion.
Or you may give a thought to the Marques de la Romana, last of Mallorca's great men, whose body lies in Palma cathedral. He was with Wellington through much of the Peninsular campaign, though he did not always approve of the Duke's Spartan habits. " What time do we start tomorrow?" he would ask. " Dawn," was the stern reply. " What is for breakfast?" " Cold meat." "How I hate those two words, ' Dawn ' and ' Cold meat!' " remarked the Marquis. Or you may be glad just to be away from the jargon of Civil Service English. There are quite a few forms to fill in, of course, but nobody knows what they mean, and on one of- them you signify that you wish the distinguished cavalier in the police station a long Ile and the blessing of God, which seems a courteous wish.
In the fields, the grain stands high under the almond trees, the caroubs with their pendent bunches of beans, the gnarled olives— some of which, they tell you, are two thousand years old. There are two crops of corn a year in this fortunate isle, and as for almonds— Mallorca is one of the great almond orchards of the world, and their blossom, at the end of January, surpasses, I dare believe, anything Loti ever saw in Japan. The peasants trudge along the roads beside mule carts piled high with brushwood. Little black kids frisk round their mothers ; the nightingale sings day and night. Geraniums riot over terraces ; your eye is assailed by the purple bougainvillea.
In the evening after supper, I talk to Miguel and his family- Francisca his plump and comely wife, seventeen-year-old Jaime, Leonora who is nine—in broken and horrible Spanish. They are very patient about it. Old peasant men come in for a glass of wine lovely gentle gnarled old men. We do not talk politics nor war nor the " marvels " of modern science. To my uninstructed mind none of these things has ever made ordinary people any happier. To Miguel I talk about spearing octopus by night and about the bulls. Manolito, he tells me, is better than any of the toreros I saw before the Movimiento—as Spaniards call their Civil War—better even than joselito Belmonte in their prime.
With Francisca I discuss the climate, of England—which, like so many Latins, she imagines to be one perpetual fog—the high cost of living, and traditional Mallorquin music; I try to persuade Jaime not to play Boogie Woogie, or whatever it is called, on the gramo- phone, and suggest the superior merits of the paso doble; I double him up with laughter at my celebrated imitation of the beginning of a speech by Mr. Churchill, and laugh myself when he conscien- tiously writes down " will you come with me " as " uil yu cam uiz mi." As for Leonora, I am fascinated by her movements, her smile, her frown and her pansy-velvet eyes.
All that the greatest artists have painted can be seen here by looking at sea and sky and buildings and the way trees grow, and at the faces, old and young, of a still vigorous peasantry. This is just escapism, you will say, the cheap nostalgia of a townsman. I have not troubled to peer below the surface. Nothing about the black market, nor the iniquities of State lotteries, nothing for psychiatrists nor fierce young ideologists. I can only say that in Mallorca workmen sing at their work because they can't help it ; that agriculture, still the most important industry in the world, thrives ; that if these people are not happy they are consummate actors ; and that whatever the rest of the world may do, the Mallorquines genuinely like and welcome the British.
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