The Color of a Dog Running Away

by Richard Gwyn

  I said nothing of this to Nuria, whose very presence coursed like a fresh breeze among all this degenerate dross. I felt secretly ashamed at bringing her. Perhaps, with my guilt and my zealous criticism of all around me, I was just like all these other people after all.

  Antonio, meanwhile, danced and danced again, but once he had done enough, he bowed politely, collected his money (charging double the arranged price when he realised that he was performing for a bunch of drunken guiris, or foreigners) and left. Only at the door did he permit himself a scowling valediction which most of his audience would not, in any case, have understood.

  Nuria and I sat and chatted with a young woman from Liverpool who went by the name of Susie Serendipity. Susie was a singer, and had recently formed a women’s singing group by the name of Serendepans. They sang the whole range, from a capella, through jazz, to their own compositions, and were recording their first album. Blonde, energetic, attractive and articulate, she was the only other expatriate who was clearly embarrassed at the dubious patronage of Antonio de la Palma by the partygoers. I had known Susie for a couple of years, as she had, until recently, lived next door to two other acquaintances of mine: Igbar Zoff and Sean Hogg, who were sitting nearby, talking agitatedly over a bottle of single malt whisky. Igbar the human salad, so named for the variety of foodstuffs that could, on a normal day, be found adhering to different articles of his clothing. Claiming a White Russian ancestry from some lesser branch of Romanoff princelings, Igbar had been educated at the finest schools in England, Switzerland and the USA, and had been thrown out of all of them. He spoke with a pronounced and absurdly incongruous upper-class English accent, at odds with his astonishing dress-sense, which was made up of charity throwaways spattered randomly with globs of paint as well as the remnants of breakfast. Every meal was breakfast to Igbar, since he only ever ate when aroused from a deep sleep, usually brought about by his habitual inebriation. And yet Igbar possessed an idiosyncratic charm, which singled him out from others at the party. When caught at the right time, in that window between the first drink and cognitive meltdown, he could be a fund of obscure and esoteric information as well as an unstoppable raconteur.

  Sean Hogg, a Europhile New Yorker, acted straight man to Igbar’s Fool. He was a thin man in his early thirties, with an oval face, refined good looks that gave prominence to cheeks and nose, and rather bulbous, dark, enquiring eyes. Sean played flamenco guitar and had studied for a prolonged spell in Jerez. He had also published some quirky and depressingly accurate poetry, almost entirely bereft of adjectives, and occasional essays on contemporary art that appeared in unmarketable international journals. Apart from Susie, they were the only partygoers present I had any time for, though I recognised among the others Dickie White, a small-time crook and professional conman, for whom I held a certain fondness, and who claimed to be writing a novel set in the Gothic quarter. No one had seen any evidence of such a book, which Dickie White declared to be a ten-year project. Nor, in fact, did he ever appear to write anything at all, passing most of his time arranging “deals” with the local criminal fraternity, ingesting category-A drugs, and spending occasional vacations in the Modelo prison. Perhaps that was where he did his writing.

  None of these friends were employable as teachers of English as a foreign language, even if they had aspired to such work. It might have been said that where Zoff was concerned, all languages were foreign, hence his histrionic struggle with the aristocratic English that he affected. His father, once a renowned art-dealer and arm-wrestler, had lost the family fortune through a disastrous gambling habit. But Igbar had learned enough about art and artists (dangled from Marc Chagall’s knee as a child, he claimed; “breakfasting” with Picasso in Antibes) to have developed his own untutored style of demented and nightmarish expressionism, which at least provided him with the occasional windfall. A full-scale exhibition was rather beyond his powers of concentrated forethought, and this was where Sean Hogg’s entrepreneurial skills came in handy. True, the New Yorker had helped organise only two Barcelona shows of his friend’s work in the past seven years, but when they occurred, they caused minor stirrings in the normally cynical and superior world of the Catalan artistic cognoscenti, and along with a show in London, and another in Bern, had provided the pair with the occasional excuse to get thrown out of a better class of restaurant than they were used to. For as long as I had known them, Sean Hogg had been working on the New York show that was finally going to bring about his friend’s big break.

  On seeing me, Igbar ambled over and slumped on the sofa between Susie Serendipity and myself. Nuria watched him in fascination. I expressed surprise at seeing him here.

  “Not your kind of thing, is it, Igbar?”

  “Gate-crashed, Lucas old bean.”

  Sean, also moving over to our company, elaborated.

  “He can sniff out a bottle of single malt from half a mile.”

  “Alastair’s personal stash. Didn’t hide it well enough. But I didn’t come for the drink, far less the freak show. I simply felt deprived of the company of beautiful women. Living, as I do, with a hog.” Here he stared admiringly at Nuria, and then, as if in courtesy, glanced over at Susie, who rolled her eyes and sighed. As the less committed half of a longstanding gay item, Igbar insisted on maintaining an arch lecherousness in the company of women.

  I introduced Nuria to Igbar and Sean, and added, to Igbar, “Susie the serendipitous, you already know.”

  “Charmed, I’m sure,” said Igbar, to nobody.

  “There are many ways of putting fur on a cat,” said Sean Hogg, sitting cross-legged on the floor now, rolling a joint.

  “Or a pelt on a pussy,” mused Igbar Zoff aloud.

  Nuria blinked in simulated astonishment. “What is it you do, Igbar? Is that your real name? Igbar? I mean, what is your, er, function?”

  I could not tell whether Nuria was simply taunting him, or automatically accommodating to the strain of free association in Igbar’s talk that either bemused or infuriated any audience that did not know him well, and many who did.

  “My function?”

  “Yes. I mean other than possessing such an improbable name. Presumably somebody has brought your function into question before now?”

  Igbar Zoff considered this. He eyed Nuria lasciviously and smacked his lips, then wiped the remnants of something that had once been food from his drooping moustaches.

  “Your request is most aptly countered by means of an anecdote, or allegory. Many years ago, probably before you were born, but who knows—you may have aged particularly well—perhaps on the very day that your own function was brought into question, as you emerged, no doubt as serene and beautiful as you now are, from your mother’s loins…”

  “Christ,” moaned Sean Hogg, spilling tobacco from his half-rolled spliff. “You are such an asshole, Igbar.”

  Igbar glared at his friend, before continuing.

  “Many years ago I disembarked from a bus in a remote and impoverished village in central India. It must have been before the hippies did for India what the Russians did for Afghanistan, but that’s beside the point. Well, not entirely beside the point.” He took a slug of his pilfered drink and fumbled in his pockets, finding a pack of the cheapest non-filter cigarettes that Spain provided. He lit one laboriously with a match, apparently having difficulty in judging the distance of the cigarette from his mouth. Blowing out a rank-smelling lungful of smoke, he added, “Actually, it’s probably all beside the point, just like the question, but anyhow,” he continued, certain of his audience’s attention, “as I got off the bus in this middle of nowhere, humping an old ruck-sack; you know, I travelled light: a few sketch pads, pencils, pastels, a blanket.”

  “No change of clothes,” said Sean.

  “Dressed in the way one dressed in 1969: red or orange Turkish baggy pants, sandals, some kind of lurid floral shirt, shades. Beads, I’m horrified to say. Draped in beads like a sultan’s bloody concubine. In the village square, just as I hoist
ed my rucksack onto my shoulders, I caught sight of this old man: long white hair and beard to match. Dressed in just a loincloth, you see, and, yes, beads. Well, it took a moment, you realise. He’d never seen the likes of me before. This place, as I say, was way off the beaten track. He’d never seen the likes of me, and as for me, I’d never seen anything like him. A fucking fakir. There at the bus-stop in the middle of the middle of nowhere.”

  Sean Hogg, meanwhile, had finished rolling his joint, and was lighting up.

  “Well, he looked at me, this fakir chappy, he looked at me long and straight, and I took off my shades and looked at him. We stood there for a long time in the square with all these people milling around, chickens, goats, stray dogs. And then he started laughing. He laughed so much I thought he was going to have a seizure. He laughed at me, and then I started too. I laughed until it hurt. And when I next looked up he’d gone. Vanished in the crowd.

  “So, yes,” he turned to Nuria again, wily now. “Someone, at least, has called my function into question before today.”

  Igbar shook his head when proffered the spliff by Sean, who passed it on to Susie.

  “And you,” he asked, showing off his yellow teeth to Nuria, as he imitated her manner of questioning. “What is your, er, function? Other than looking radiant, of course.”

  “Me? I hang out on rooftops and eat raw fish. Cast spells. Fly on a broomstick. Embroider smoke. And rescue men in art galleries.”

  “Meaning him, I take it. Llewellyn Lucas Morgan Whatsit.”

  “Is that your name?” Nuria looked at me as though I had withheld some vital piece of information from her.

  I shrugged. “If he says so, it might be true.”

  “Ha!” Igbar Zoff spluttered revoltingly, as though I had conceded him some minor triumph. “She doesn’t even know your bloody name!”

  “Nor, it appears, do you,” I replied.

  “Aw, shit, guys, a name’s a name,” said Sean the peacemaker. “What of it?”

  “Well, buddy, you would say that, would you not? Old. Hogg.”

  Igbar made it sound like a rare brand of Bourbon.

  “Perhaps,” said Susie, “perhaps your name is something you grow into. Though obviously not in my case, since mine’s invented. Or earned. But your actual given name, and family name, maybe that is something that gradually folds you into it. You become the thing you’re called.”

  “Oh dear,” murmured Sean Hogg. “That does for me.”

  “Hash talk, old boy. Gal doesn’t know what she’s on about. Chin up. What’s your real name, Susie? Robson, Dobson, Hobson?”

  “Lawson.”

  “Sorry, of course. Should have been Hobson,” asserted Igbar, merrily. “Hobson’s choice. Would have upheld your little theory.”

  “Patronising git,” said Susie Serendipity.

  “By which I mean,” continued Igbar, in pompous stride now, “it would have explained your change of name. Hobson, offering no choice, to Serendipity, by which choices are made fortuitously and at random.”

  “Ah, I get it,” said Nuria, catching onto this rapid exchange. “Serendipia.”

  “Precisely,” confirmed Igbar Zoff the Sage. “How nice. Ser. End. Ee. Pee. Ah. The faculty of making valuable and fortunate discoveries by accident.”

  “Where does this word come from?” asked Nuria, with what appeared to be genuine interest.

  Igbar liked nothing more than to show off obscure articles of learning.

  “A series of folktales from Sri Lanka, once called Ceylon, and before that Serendip. The story goes that there were three princes of Serendip who went out into the world dressed as commoners in order to discover the ways of things, and they discovered, of course, that the world outside their palace walls was full of misery and hardship. There are many stories about these princes, probably added to by others from Persian sources. What they hold in common is that in the most dire and, er, forlorn circumstances, quite wonderful things sometimes turn up unexpectedly.”

  We waited for Igbar as he refilled his glass and lit up another Tres Caravelas, again singeing his facial hair in the process.

  “One story concerns the princes and a merchant, whom they discovered weeping and cursing by the banks of a flooded river. He was dressed in fine clothes, and attended by servants, but nothing they could say or do seemed to placate him. The princes asked why he carried on in such a fashion, cursing the river and the gods, and he wailed that he had suffered a disaster of such great magnitude that he could barely bring himself to speak of it. Eventually they coaxed the story from him. It seemed that the merchant, who had been born and raised in this same place, had set out years before to seek his fortune, as is the case in folktales of this ilk. He had encountered great success, travelling the world and making of himself a very wealthy man indeed. Now he had returned to the place of his childhood in order to build a palace on the banks of the river he had played in as a boy. And for the first time in living memory the river had flooded its banks, carrying off his treasure chests, the fine works of art and tiles he had brought for adorning his mansion, leaving him with practically nothing.

  “The princes were not in the least alarmed. On the contrary, they told the merchant: ‘You have been granted a most wonderful blessing. If you find out the purpose behind your misfortune you will achieve even greater fortune than you had before.’ And with that—hardly the kind of message one wants to hear in times of such distress—they went on their way, leaving the merchant puzzling over their words.

  “Some years later the princes were returning through the same country, when they were met by a messenger, who told them that they must follow him to his master’s palace, to enjoy the hospitality that he offered to passing travellers such as themselves. He led them to a mansion built high on a cliff that overlooked the river valley, and there they were greeted by the merchant who, the last time they met, had been so miserable, but who now was clearly enjoying a life of unparalleled prosperity. He invited them to dine with him, and then he told them his story.

  “The last time they’d met, he said, had caused him to think a great deal. He had chosen the place by the river to build his house, he said, because as a boy he had spent such a happy time playing in the waters. But as the merchant looked around the valley he noticed a cliff, and realised that from there he would enjoy the most wonderful view, and decided to set up a temporary home, just a humble hovel, with his meagre remaining wealth, before discharging his servants and settling into the life of a hermit. But as his servants prepared the ground for his modest new home, they came across a field full of precious stones and gems. The merchant was now even richer than before, and he built his palace and invited guests from all the places he had travelled in, to share his hospitality. He also invited travellers to rest there, and some were wealthy like himself and brought him treasures for his palace, and others were poor and brought him only company and friendship. So, in time he grew to understand the nature of the gift he had been given by the river, which was that hospitality and friendship were worth more than all the finest jewels and treasures in the world.”

  Here Igbar concluded his peculiarly mannered telling of the story, stubbing out his cigarette on a nearby plate. A young American, who had been talking with Susie when Nuria and I joined the party, leaned over the back of the sofa and commented, in the ensuing silence, “Though I guess sharing hospitality and stuff is limited to those wealthy people with the good luck to have money in the first place.”

  I tried to work this convoluted utterance out, then answered, “On the contrary. It’s usually the poorest people who are the most hospitable.”

  Sean Hogg nodded his head in agreement.

  “But that’s not the point, you baboons,” wailed Zoff. “The point is that out of any situation, whether apparently disastrous or not, can spring unforeseeable benefits.”

  “Precisely,” said Susie suddenly, revealing that she too had researched her adopted name. “I have another one. It tells of love, treachery a
nd abandonment.”

  “Bravo. That’s the stuff,” Igbar gargled from the far end of his glass.

  “The Emperor Beramo, I think that was the name, retained the three princes for a long time, convinced that they had extraordinary powers of divination. One day, after returning from one of their adventures, the princes discovered that the Emperor had been overtaken by catastrophe.”

  “Catastrophe, catastrophe,” mumbled Hogg, in the manner of a Greek Chorus.

  Susie cast him a warning glance.

  “It transpired that during their absence, Beramo had fallen in love with a slave girl, who went by the name of Diliramma. One day this Diliramma did something to question her lordship’s honour, and in public too, the uppity wench, and he, Beramo, had her tied up and dumped in a nearby forest. There are always forests in these stories, of course, and women always seem to find their way into them. Anyhow, be that as it may, the following day, Beramo, gutted with remorse, sent out a search party for his beloved slave girl, but no trace of her was found. Not hide nor hair,” she added, pre-empting another inane choral interjection from either Zoff or Hogg.

  “The Emperor Beramo, after the fashion of such men, became sick with guilt and sorrow. Inconsolable. The princes, needless to say, hatched a plan. They told the Emperor to build seven palaces in distinct parts of his realm, and to spend a week in each palace. The seven best storytellers from the seven greatest cities of the kingdom would be invited to tell the most compelling story that they knew.

  “Obviously, what with the construction of the seven palaces and all that that involved, it was a while before the Emperor was ready to start his circuit of the country. The storytellers who came to him provided wonderful tales, and for the first six weeks Beramo listened with a growing interest: even his health began to improve. The therapy of storytelling started to do its work.