CRAVING FOR TOBACCO

Southland Times, Issue 23793, 15 April 1939, Page 13

CRAVING FOR TOBACCO

Experiences In Loyalist Spain

By

JOSEPH KESSEL

would be followed by well-dressed men whose eyes were rivetted on my cigarette. They hoped to pick up my butt. In a country that is passionately fond of its children, adults would scrap with little tots over cigarette butts in the gutter. The organized waiters in the cafes who indignantly refused tips as an insult stretched out their hands for tobacco.

ON my trip through Loyalist Spain I did not come across a single man, no matter how famished, who mentioned his hunger in my presence. If the women voiced their complaints at times, it was for the sake of their children rather than for themselves. There was but a single flaw in this proud stoicism. The people who turned their heads away when you opened a tin of food or unwrapped a chocolate bar, who would not consent to share your provisions with you unless you brought great pressure to bear, these same people developed an avid look and beseeching eyes as soon as they saw tobacco. Can it be that man is so constituted that his acquired appetites hold him in greater thraldom than those that Nature has planted in him? Or is he less inhibited in giving expression to the former precisely because they are artificial? I cannot presume to' answer these questions. Nor do I know whether the Spanish people are more addicted to tobacco than others. I can merely describe the veritable psychosis that has gripped the country on the subject of tobacco. * Grasping Hands I first came in contact with it as I was travelling in a bus full of carabineros from the frontier town of Las Junqueras to Barcelona. When I lit a. cigarette my companions visibly showed great nervous strain. Some of them, unconscious of their facial expression, began twitching their lips as though they were parched with thirst. Others clenched their teeth. Some tried desperately to feign unconcern. Several fixed their importunate gaze on me. In their eyes one could read the idee fixe that obsessed them. Slightly embarrassed, I offered to pass my cigarettes around. Rarely have I seen such eager, grasping hands. Yet these men were hardened soldiers, . steeled in deprivation and struggle. In Barcelona I soon became accustomed to this sort of thing. I could not walk across the lobby of my hotel without the janitor, the elevator man and the bell boy asking me for a cigarette. If I smoked on the street I

One day a street cleaner accompanied me for a whole hour to help me find an address. When I gave him a few cigarettes out of gratitude, he began trembling with emotion. “I . . . I . . . had quite forgotten how to smoke,” he mumbled. In the stores it was possible to buy only chopped-up eucalyptus leaves, mixed with moss and hay—a combination that turned your stomach. Form Of Money How many times did I hear people say, “You could buy the whole city of Barcelona for a single package of tobacco!” All usage and custom were upset by the tobacco famine. Tobacco had become a veritable monetary standard. Money could no longer entice eggs, butter or chickens from the countryside or lure goods from their hoardingplaces in the cities. But tobacco never failed to turn the trick. The music hall stars were feted not with bouquets of flowers but with cigarettes. Artists who were confident of their hold on their audience even inserted direct allusions between their lines. And when the precious offerings fell at their feet, they stooped to pick them up as they sang and hid them in their bosoms.

During a performance one evening a whole package of cigarettes was thrown from the logos by a group of English. volunteers. The audience gasped and then sent up a cry of admiration that was not unmixed with pain. The performance was interrupted for a few moments. A roll of banknotes thrown on to a stage in America could scarcely have created a greater sensation. I soon became hardened to such scenes. But my sang froid could not make me indifferent to the following incident.

A young woman who was not connected with the official propaganda department had offered her services as interpreter to me. She spoke a limpid French; before the civil war she Had

made a habit of spending several months in Paris each year. She did her utmost to dress fashionably, and was reserved, almost to the point of timid—ity. The evening before my departure I learned that her little daughter had the grippe and offered her a box of aspirin tablets—not obtainable in Barcelona. She thanked me in a distracted way. As I was taking leave of her, she suddenly asked, “Have you any cigarettes to spare by any chance?” Before she had finished the question she had already stretched out a beseeching hand. These are people who have lived in the shadow of starvation for months and months. Not one of them would dream of begging food of a stranger.