Luna Benamor | Page 2

the closed and silent
buildings. It was the Spanish day laborers arriving from La Línea ready
for week at the arsenal; the farmhands from San Roque and Algeciras
who supplied the people of Gibraltar with vegetables and fruits.
It was still dark. On the coast of Spain perhaps the sky was blue and the
horizon was beginning to be colored by the rain of gold from the
glorious birth of the sun. In Gibraltar the sea fogs condensed around the
heights of the cliff, forming a sort of blackish umbrella that covered the
city, holding it in a damp penumbra, wetting the streets and the roofs
with impalpable rain. The inhabitants despaired beneath this persistent
mist, wrapped about the mountain tops like a mourning hat. It seemed
like the spirit of Old England that had flown across the seas to watch
over its conquest; a strip of London fog that had insolently taken up its
place before the warm coasts of Africa, the very home of the sun.
The morning advanced, and the glorious, unobstructed light of the bay,
yellow blue, at last succeeded in penetrating the settlement of Gibraltar,
descending into the very depths of its narrow streets, dissolving the fog
that had settled upon the trees of the Alameda and the foliage of the
pines that extended along the coast so as to mask the fortifications at
the top, drawing forth from the shadows the gray masses of the cruisers

anchored in the harbor and the black bulk of the cannon that formed the
shore batteries, filtering into the lugubrious embrasures pierced through
the cliff, cavernous mouths revealing the mysterious defences that had
been wrought with mole-like industry in the heart of the rock.
When Aguirre went down to the entrance of the hotel, after having
given up all attempt to sleep during the commotion in the street, the
thoroughfare was already in the throes of its regular commercial
hurly-burly, a multitude of people, the inhabitants of the entire town
plus the crews and the passengers of the vessels anchored in the harbor.
Aguirre plunged into the bustle of this cosmopolitan population,
walking from the section of the waterfront to the palace of the governor.
He had become an Englishman, as he smilingly asserted. With the
innate ability of the Spaniard to adapt himself to the customs of all
foreign countries he imitated the manner of the English inhabitants of
Gibraltar. He had bought himself a pipe, wore a traveling cap, turned
up trousers and a swagger stick. The day on which he arrived, even
before night-fall, they already knew throughout Gibraltar who he was
and whither he was bound. Two days later the shopkeepers greeted him
from the doors of their shops, and the idlers, gathered on the narrow
square before the Commercial Exchange, glanced at him with those
affable looks that greet a stranger in a small city where nobody keeps
his secret.
He walked along in the middle of the street, avoiding the light,
canvas-topped carriages. The tobacco stores flaunted many-colored
signs with designs that served as the trade-mark of their products. In
the show windows the packages of tobacco were heaped up like so
many bricks, and monstrous unsmokable cigars, wrapped in tinfoil as if
they were sausages, glitteringly displayed their absurd size; through the
doors of the Hebrew shops, free of any decoration, could be seen the
shelves laden with rolls of silk and velvet, or the rich silk laces hanging
from the ceiling. The Hindu bazaars overflowed into the street with
their exotic, polychrome rarities: clothes embroidered with
terror-inspiring divinities and chimerical animals; carpets in which the
lotus-flower was adapted to the strangest designs; kimonos of delicate,
indefinable tints; porcelain jars with monsters that belched fire;

amber-colored shawls, as delicate as woven sighs; and in the small
windows that had been converted into display cases, all the trinkets of
the extreme Orient, in silver, ivory or ebony; black elephants with
white tusks, heavy-paunched Buddhas, filigree jewels, mysterious
amulets, daggers engraved from hilt to point. Alternating with these
establishments of a free port that lives upon contraband, there were
confectioneries owned by Jews, cafés and more cafés, some of the
Spanish type with round, marble-topped tables, the clicking of
dominoes, smoke-laden atmosphere and high-pitched discussions
accompanied by vehement gestures; others resembling more the
English bar, crowded with motionless, silent customers, swallowing
one cocktail after another, without any other sign of emotion than a
growing redness of the nose.
Through the center of the street there passed by, like a masquerade, the
variety of types and costumes that had surprised Aguirre as a spectacle
distinct from that furnished by other European cities. There were
Moroccans, some with a broad, hooded cape, white or black, the cowl
lowered as if they were friars; others wearing balloon trousers,