The snipe (gallinago gallinago)
Yesterday was April Fool’s Day, and I managed to get by it unscathed though probably not unscathing, to judge from the facial expressions of some of my poor students in the “Evergreen Forum” course. But the turn of the calendrical leaf did bring to my mind, as it does each year, my own most memorable exposure as an April fool or rather an April fish. That is the term used in Spain, borrowed I think from the French.
In
1959 in the vacation between Hilary and Trinity terms—the British equivalent of
collegiate “spring break”—I hitchhiked with my good buddy Bob Pearce from
northwestern France to central Spain and back. Bob was a working-class lad from Merseyside. At Oxford he was reading Modern
Languages, specializing in French and Spanish. Spanish, though at that time rarely studied in England was
the only foreign tongue I had had the chance to study in high school, and I
could sort of get by in it. But
only sort of, as this tale will demonstrate. Bob was quite proficient, and of course his Spanish was the
real Iberian thing with its effete-sounding lisps. I don’t know what became of Bob or where he is now. At the Jesus College gaudy I attended
last year no one had word of him.
One of the many follies of youth is the carelessness through which even
vibrant friendships can lapse.
We
had little money but lots of youthful bravado. Franco’s Spain was primitive, exotic, mysterious. If you know only the contemporary scene
of tapas bars and bibulous Brits you can have no idea. There were not too many roads and not
too many vehicles driving on them.
Hitch-hiking was not illegal—it seemed to be the chief mode of transport
for army recruits and even some of the policemen with the huge guns and
sinister tricorn hats—but people willing to pick up obvious foreigners like us
were not numerous. We had
wonderful adventures, but we spent more than one night ride-less, sleeping in
the open fields, still pretty chilly in early spring.
Somewhere
in the boondocks of central Spain, between Avila and Madrid, we got picked up
by a couple of busloads of fascist boy scouts. I speak in the most literal and technical sense. This was a battalion of young,
uniformed, male outdoorsmen belonging to the youth group originating in the old
Falangist political party. They
were returning from a visit to the Valle de los Caídos, Franco's oddly Stalinesque monument to the dead of the Civil War. There were several adults with them,
including a priest and two young seminarians. This priest, probably in his forties, was a man of
parts. He had had a parish in Cuba,
and claimed to have made a dramatic “escape” only weeks earlier. I had no idea then what he could be
“escaping” from. To members of my
demographic Fidel Castro was a heroic figure pure and simple, not a religious
persecutor, but I knew when to keep my mouth shut.
Valle de los Caídos
The
clerical gents invited us to go with them to their bivouac or campgrounds to
spend a night or two, and we readily agreed, As the bus chugged along, spewing great puffs of black
smoke, there was much talk of a hunting expedition, as the season had just
opened with the new month of April.
Would los ingléses like to
participate? The object of the
chase would be the prized gambosino,
a word unknown in my small Castilian vocabulary, but defined for me as
something like a large, semi-avian, and particularly succulent conejo (rabbit). It
sounded like great fun, but there was one hitch. Although gambosino
season had indeed opened that very day, the head-man (jefe) of the campgrounds was opposed to gambosino hunting on principle, so that our activities would have
to be conducted furtively.
After
nightfall eight whispering conspirators, including Bob and me, set off into the
semi-desert terrain carrying stout walking staves and a couple of gunny
sacks. We could barely see
anything. Whenever a vehicle’s
lights flashed on a distant road we were ordered to hide and dove headlong into
the prickly bushes. There were
numerous alleged sightings of the gambosino,
though none by me; there was lots of rushing hither and yon, and hoarse,
whispered exclamations. I could
hear the hunters clomping about, and the thumping of staves.
Eventually
two guys arrived proudly holding up their gunny sacks, which I could dimly
perceive now contained some large objects of substantial weight. “We got two of them,” said one of the seminarians in a whisper-shout. He was practically transported
with satisfaction. Dos gambosinos!
The gambosino (cuniculus spurius)
They
handled the next part brilliantly.
We all marched back exultantly to the rustic campgrounds dining
building, apparently no longer in fear of the jefe, who of course was non-existent. A glass of wine was poured for everybody, including the
thirteen-year-olds. We drank a sip
or two. Then with considerable
ceremony the two seminarians emptied their gunny sacks. Out came two small trussed up bedrolls. It had been a classic snipe-hunt, and
we were classic April fools—or rather April fish, pescados de abril. The
room exploded in laughter, good-natured but raucous. Poor English Bob was mortified. But even then I didn’t quite get it. What I thought I shouted out was “I
want to see the rabbits”. But in
my confusion I muddled the word for rabbit (conejo). What I said was “I want to see the *cojones.” Then they really
laughed.
*cojones,
testicles
