The Cabin [La barraca]. Vicente Blasco Ibanez

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already knew what this meant: the snares that men set in order to ruin the honourable. If they were going to rob him, let them seek him out on these lands which had become a part of his very flesh and blood, for as such he would defend them.

      One day they gave him notice that the court was going to begin proceedings to expel him from his land that very afternoon; furthermore, they would attach everything he had in his cabin to meet his debts. He would not be sleeping there that night.

      This news was so incredible to poor old Barret that he smiled with incredulity. This might happen to others, to those cheats who had never paid anything; but he, who had always fulfilled his duty, who had even been born here, who owed only a year's rent,—nonsense! Such a thing could not happen, even though one were living among savages, without charity or religion!

      But in the afternoon, when he saw certain men in black coming along the road, big funereal birds with wings of paper rolled under the arm, he no longer was in doubt. This was the enemy. They were coming to rob him.

      And suddenly there was awakened within old Barret the blind courage of the Moor who will suffer every manner of insult but who goes mad when his property is touched. Running into the cabin, he seized the old shot-gun, always hung loaded behind the door, and raising it to his shoulder, took his stand under the vineyard, ready to put two bullets into the first bandit of the law to set foot upon his fields.

      His sick wife and four daughters came running out, shouting wildly, and threw themselves upon him, trying to wrest away the gun, pulling at the barrel with both hands. And such were the cries of the group, as they struggled and contended for it, reeling from one pillar of the grape-arbour to the other, that people from the neighbourhood began to run out, arriving in an anxious crowd, with the fraternal solidarity of those who live in deserted places.

      It was Pimentó who prudently made himself master of the shot-gun and carried it off to his house. Barret staggered behind, trying to pursue him but restrained and held fast by the strong arms of some strapping young fellows, while he vented his madness upon the fool who was keeping him from defending his own.

      "Pimentó,—thief! Give me back my shot-gun!"

      But the bully smiled good-naturedly, satisfied that he was behaving both prudently and paternally with the old madman. Thus he brought him to his own farm-house, where he and Barret's friends watched him and advised him not to do a foolish deed. Have a care, old Barret! These people are from the court, and the poor always lose when they pick a quarrel with it! Coolness and evil design succeed above everything.

      And at the same time, the big black birds were writing papers, and yet more papers in the farm-house of Barret; impassively they turned over the furniture and the clothing, making an inventory even of the corral and the stable, while the wife and the daughters wept in despair, and the terrified crowd, gathering at the door, followed all the details of the deed, trying to console the poor woman, or breaking out into suppressed maledictions against the Jew, Don Salvador, and these fellows who yielded obedience to such a dog.

      Toward nightfall, Barret, who was like one overwhelmed, and who, after the mad crisis, had fallen into a stony stupor, saw some bundles of clothing at his feet, and heard the metallic sound of a bag which contained his farming implements.

      "Father! Father!" whimpered the tremulous voices of his daughters, who threw themselves into his arms; behind them the old woman, sick, trembling with fever, and in the rear, invading the barraca of Pimentó, and disappearing into the background through the dark door, all the people of the neighbourhood, the terrified chorus of the tragedy.

      He had already been driven away from his farm-house. The men in black had closed it, taking away the keys; nothing remained to them there except the bundles which were on the floor; the worn clothing, the iron implements; this was all which they were permitted to take out of the house.

      Their words were broken by sobs; the father and the daughters embraced again, and Pepeta, the mistress of the house, as well as other women, wept and repeated the maledictions against the old miser until Pimentó opportunely intervened.

      There would be time left to speak of what had occurred; now it was time for supper. What the deuce! Grieve like this because of an old Jew! If he could but see all this, how his evil heart would rejoice! The people of the huerta were kind; all of them would help to care for the family of old Barret, and would share with them a loaf of bread if they had nothing more.

      The wife and daughters of the ruined farmer went off with some neighbours to pass the night in their houses. Old Barret remained behind, under the vigilance of Pimentó.

      The two men remained seated until ten in their rush-chairs, smoking cigar after cigar in the candle-light.

      The poor old farmer appeared to be crazy. He answered in short monosyllables the reflections of this bully, who now assumed the rôle of a good-natured fellow; and when he spoke it was always to repeat the same words:

      "Pimentó! Give me my shot-gun!"

      And Pimentó smiled with a sort of admiration. The sudden ferocity of this little old man, who was considered a good-natured fool by all the huerta, astounded him. Return him the shot-gun! At once! He well divined by the straight wrinkles which stood out between his eyebrows, his firm intention of blowing the author of his ruin to atoms.

      Barret grew more and more vexed with the young fellow. He went so far as to call him a thief: he had refused to give him his weapon. He had no friends; he could see that well enough; all of them were only ingrates, equal to don Salvador in avarice; he did not wish to sleep here; he was suffocating. And searching in the bag of implements, he selected a sickle, shoved it through his sash, and left the farm-house. Nor did Pimentó attempt to bar his way.

      At such an hour, he could do no harm; let him sleep in the open if it suited his pleasure. And the bully, closing the door, went to bed.

      Old Barret started directly toward the fields, and like an abandoned dog, began to make a détour around his farm-house.

      Closed! Closed forever! These walls had been raised by his grandfather and renovated by himself through all these years. Even in the darkness, the pallor of the neat whitewash, with which his little girls had coated them three months before, stood out plainly.

      The corral, the stable, the pigsties were all the work of his father; and this straw-roof, so slender and high, with the two little crosses at the ends, he had built himself as a substitution for the old, which had leaked everywhere.

      And the curbstone at the well, the post of the vineyard, the cane-fences over which the pinks and the morning-glories were showing their tufts of bloom;—these too were the work of his hands. And all this was going to become the property of another, because—yes, because men had arranged it so.

      He searched in his sash for the pasteboard strip of matches in order to set fire to the straw-roof. Let the devil fly away with it all; it was his own, anyway, as God knew, and he could destroy his own property and would do so before he would see it fall into the hands of thieves.

      But just as he was going to set fire to his old house, he felt a sensation of horror, as if he saw the ghosts of all his ancestors rising up before him; and he hurled the strip of matches to the ground.

      But the longing for destruction continued roaring through his head, and sickle in hand, he set forth over the fields which had been his ruin.

      Now at a single stroke he would get even with the ungrateful earth, the cause of all his misfortunes.

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