by Colm Toibin
They walked up through Barceloneta to the city, watching out for any bars open along the way. She heard Miguel telling Michael Graves a story about his time in prison; she found it impossible to follow the story. Michael Graves nodded but she doubted he understood. At Via Layetana they found a bar open.
She lost count of the bars they went into. At three in the morning they were close to the Ramblas and Michael Graves said that he hadn’t felt so sober in years, he needed more drink. Miguel tried to speak in English and Michael Graves taught him how to say “I need more drink.” The night was still warm as they walked up the Ramblas towards Plaza Cataluña; the street was being washed down with hoses. A taxi went by. Miguel whistled. When it stopped some distance from them, they ran towards it. Miguel spoke to the driver; he didn’t seem to know where he wanted to go and the driver seemed unsure, but after a while the taxi moved off towards Plaza Cataluña and towards the university. Katherine asked Miguel where they were going.
“Le pedí que nos llere a un bar o a cualquier lugar que no sea bordelo ni tampaco muy caro,” he said, and she explained to Michael Graves that the taxi driver was taking them to a bar that was neither a brothel nor very expensive. “Good,” he said. “I’m glad we’re going to a brothel.”
“No,” she told him. “We’re not going to a brothel.”
“Yes, I know. I’m listening. I understood Miguel when he was talking.”
The taxi stopped in a deserted street at the entrance to an underground garage. The taxi driver told Miguel there was a bar in the garage. The taxi drove away and left them there in the dark street staring at the dark empty building. They walked into the garage but there was no sign of a bar, only a small door to the left, possibly a side entrance to the main building. Miguel went to try the handle and then moved back startled, as the door opened and two people came out and went by, towards the street. He put his head through the door, and found a bar, just as the taxi driver had promised. He beckoned the others to follow him.
As soon as they sat down they were handed a menu; the place was half full; loud music was playing. Katherine looked around but could find no other entrance except the one they had just come in. It occurred to Katherine that most of the women looked like prostitutes. Michael Graves proposed they order sandwiches and cold beer. The beer would wake them up, he said. And when the beer was finished he planned to have brandy and coffee.
Miguel began to talk about what to do with the painting of Franco which he had returned to Rogent’s studio. He had promised not to leave it there. Michael Graves proposed that they post it to Franco. Or maybe to his wife. “What is his wife’s name?” he asked Miguel, but Miguel was preoccupied trying to attract the waiter’s attention. Michael Graves noticed the people in the booth behind, who looked like two businessmen and their girlfriends, and asked: “La esposa de Franco, cómo se llama?” They immediately seemed hostile, Katherine realised. She held Michael’s wrist and told him to stop.
* * *
The vague light of the dawn was filling the sky around the port. The Ramblas was deserted. It was five o’clock in the morning. In half an hour the bars in the market would open, but in the meantime there was nowhere for them to go except back to Rogent’s studio, there to decide whether to go home or continue drinking. Miguel was still talking about his portrait of Franco and how he wanted to present it to the Modern Art Museum. Michael Graves wanted to take it down immediately and leave it at the gates of the museum.
Katherine was tired but her head was racing after all the double coffees they had ordered in the garage. When Miguel began to wrap the painting in the studio she assumed at first that he was taking it to his flat. Michael Graves asked Miguel whether he was really going to leave it at the gates of the Modern Art Museum. Miguel said no, he was going to leave it in Plaza San Jaime—there it would have more impact—the police building was on one side and the municipal building on the other. He continued wrapping the painting.
“Pero siempre hay policía por ahí,” Michael Graves said. Katherine agreed. Miguel said he wanted to lean the painting against the main door of the police building. There wouldn’t be any police at five in the morning.
* * *
They had passed the entrance to the cathedral cloisters when they saw the two policemen coming towards them. Miguel was carrying the painting, Katherine and Michael Graves were walking on either side of him. None of them stopped or even hesitated; they walked straight towards the policemen. Miguel tried to whisper that these were not Guardia Civiles, they were just a local militia, and there was no problem. Katherine thought that there was a problem. The policemen appeared to have agreed somehow to stop them and asked questions. “Dónde van?” one asked. Both of the police were middle-aged. “A coger un taxi,” Miguel answered. “Qué es eso?” one policeman said pointing to the painting, wrapped in brown paper. Miguel replied that it was a painting, that he was a painter and these were two friends from Ireland. The policemen looked at Katherine and at Michael Graves.
All they had to do was ask to see the painting. Even if the figure did not look like Franco, it was obviously military. Katherine suddenly felt cold, as though she wasn’t wearing enough clothes. The policemen stood in front of them and looked at them, watched their eyes. The cathedral bell rang half past five. The policemen did not move. Katherine thought about Plaza San Felipe Neri just a few yards away, how peaceful it was, how enclosed.
One of the policemen kept on looking at her. She tried to think of the words of a song, or a poem, something to concentrate on. The other policeman put his foot down on Miguel’s toe and pressed down hard. Miguel did not move.
“Tu eres catalan, verdad?” he asked.
“Si,” Miguel replied. The policeman continued to press on Miguel’s foot. His companion continued to stare at Katherine.
They shall grow not old as we that are left grow old
Age shall not weary them nor the years condemn
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We shall remember them.
She said the words to herself over and over to keep her mind from what was happening. They could hear the pigeons up in the stone walls of the cathedral and the distant sound of a car, but nothing else. The policeman drew back his foot and stared at Miguel, daring him to move. Then, suddenly, without any apparent consultation, both policemen walked on. Katherine was afraid to look behind, to make sure they had gone. No one spoke. The three of them walked quietly on up the street to the plaza. Miguel was pale. Katherine said she wanted to go home. Miguel said that they should turn down towards Via Layetana.
When they reached the square, they saw that the two huge doors of the police building were closed and there was no guard outside. Katherine knew Miguel well enough to realise that he was tempted for a moment to cross the square and leave the painting there, but he didn’t. They turned left instead to Via Layetana and went back towards the studio.
PALLOSA
After eight hours on the bus they arrived. Over and over Katherine had asked Miguel if they were nearly there. The bus had turned another bend in the interminable, steep climb and her ears had popped; and a few minutes later Michael Graves had turned round to say that his ears had popped as well.
The air was cold in Llavorsi, even though it was early afternoon. It was as though ice had been added to the air. And there was the sound, a sound which was to become abiding, day after day, the sound of water rushing, falling against rock. Llavorsi was as high as they could go; impossible that there could be anything beyond, she felt.
They rested against a low wall while Miguel went to find the man he hoped would rent him the house. They shivered with the cold.
“We are going to have to buy winter clothes,” Katherine said to Michael Graves.
“It’s a wonderful cold,” he said. “There’s no dampness here. It’s crisp. It’s good for your lungs.”
“Do you know where this house is?”
“I think it’s a good distance away from here.
Higher up.”
“That means it’s going to be even colder.”
“I think it’s very remote,” Michael said.
“Are you going to stay?” Katherine asked.
“Until my welcome runs out and then I’ll go back to Barcelona.”
“That’s a good excuse. When do you expect your welcome to run out?”
“You’re very difficult to deal with. I don’t know if you understand that. Your husband is much simpler,” he said, and they both laughed as she immediately retorted: “He’s not my husband.”
“What will you do in Barcelona?” she asked.
“I’ve been promised work as a teacher. I used to be a teacher in Ireland.”
“Why did you leave Ireland?”
“I was sick,” he said. “I was sick of Ireland,” he laughed.
“Seriously, Michael.”
“Seriously, if you knew anything about the country you wouldn’t ask me why I left.”
* * *
A jeep came around the corner with a local man driving and Miguel in the front seat. The driver didn’t move while Miguel got out and opened the doors at the back so they could put their bags in. Between his thumb and forefinger he dangled a ring of keys, several of which were large and rusty. Michael and Katherine sat on facing seats in the back of the jeep. Miguel grinned at them as the jeep started.
The road was narrow. There was a small river down a steep bank and there was a sense everywhere of luxuriant green growth, of the damp earth of the Pyrenees springing into life. Michael Graves knelt on the floor looking out of the window, his elbows resting on the seat. She knelt beside him.
They began to climb again. The road became a dirt track cut into the rock. Down below was a valley of fields and forests. Once they had passed through the first village it seemed once more impossible that there could be any habitation higher up. The jeep was having real difficulty with the track and stalled several times.
She had a real sense now of how high they were: not just because of the cold, but also because of the shape of the rock and the sheer drop into the valley beneath, even the mountains in the distance seemed to be lower down. Michael Graves constantly pointed things out to her: the brown rock of the mountain, the deep blue of the sky, the patches of snow on ridges in the distance, the light green of the pasture and the darker green of the trees that peppered the fields or stood in long rows.
Suddenly Miguel pointed at something just above the jeep and Michael Graves roared: “Look, it’s an eagle,” and caught Katherine’s hand in excitement. The eagle hovered; huge, black and grey, holding itself maybe thirty feet out from the track as the jeep turned the corner. Michael Graves and Katherine looked back and saw the eagle hanging like a piece of paper in the high air.
Michael Graves asked Miguel if he had been here before. Miguel answered that he had spent several months in Pallosa, ten years ago. After the civil war.
“El pueblo está abandonado,” he said. Now there were only three or four families and about thirty houses, all of them in good repair. Their house had running water but no electricity. “Es grande la casa que hemos alquilado?” Katherine asked him. Yes, it was big. He would have to go back down with the driver to collect supplies such as candles, food, blankets and some furniture, and would be back up later. He told them he had paid a year’s rent for the house.
He asked her if she was going to stay with him for a year. The driver and Michael Graves listened. She could not answer. She looked out of the window: they were passing through another, smaller village. He repeated the question. She was not sure if he was mocking.
“Vas a quedarte conmigo un año?” She looked at him plainly. “Si,” she said.
They were still climbing. The road twisted less and less. Instead of rock now, there was tufted grass to the left and the drop down into the valley on the other side was gentler. It was as though they had come to the end of the earth, the landscape had played itself out, and this was the quiet top of the world.
“Está muy lejos?” she asked him and he said no, it was not far, they were almost there. They had now been travelling for over nine hours; the sun was low and mellow in the sky.
The village was sheltered below the summit in a small dip; it stretched out beyond a stone church and a narrow street of houses towards a valley. The houses had been built from the yellow-brown stone of the mountains and the rock behind the village was bare so that it was difficult at first to make out some of the houses. A woman leading cows through the village turned and looked when she saw the jeep and then walked on. The jeep moved slowly behind her. When Katherine asked Miguel which house was theirs, he pointed towards the end of the street.
* * *
The house looked extremely small with just a door, one window and a balcony. It seemed to be the smallest and shabbiest in the village; some of the others had three and four storeys and huge windows. Inside, however, it was much larger. There was a bedroom with a balcony and a kitchen after that. At the end of the corridor there was a long room with two windows which looked out to the valley. Off that there was a toilet and another bedroom.
They walked through the house without speaking. It was Michael Graves who discovered the long room at the end of the corridor and took her down to look at it. She went into the toilet and pulled the chain. “It works,” she said. “The house is wonderful.” She pulled back the shutters on one of the windows and walked out on to the small balcony.
The church lay over to the right. Beyond the long valley were snow-covered mountains; the valley was darkening as evening came down. The small hills to the left were capped by a pine forest. She stood there and gripped the railings. The others had gone back inside. She looked down on the valley, trying to register it carefully as though she was preparing an inventory of each shade in the valley and the hills, as though she wanted to be able, at some time in the future, to remember exactly what this felt like.
She was disturbed by Michael Graves, asking her, “Have you been upstairs?”
“What? Is there an upstairs?”
“Yes, there’s a bedroom up there. Come on I’ll show you.”
He led her to another door off the corridor. Up narrow wooden stairs and into an attic room which had walls of varnished pine, and a small dormer window which looked out on to the mountains and the valley. There was a double bed but no mattress.
“Miguel has gone back down,” Michael Graves said. “He says he has to get the things now. It’ll take him a few hours.”
“I hope he’s going to bring a mattress and intends to get some food. We should have got food down below.”
“There’s another floor beneath the kitchen where animals and wood can be kept,” he said.
They walked back down to the ground floor and into the front room. They took chairs out on to the balcony. Katherine lit a cigarette.
“What are you going to do?” Michael Graves asked.
“I’m going to stay,” she said.
“Are you in love with Miguel?”
“I love him, yes.”
“But you’re not sure?”
“Of course I’m not sure,” she said.
“Why are you doing this?”
“I’m trusting my luck. I have made up my mind I’m going to stay.”
“You did that today, didn’t you?”
“I don’t know when I did it. Give me a few minutes—to be quiet.”
They sat in silence as the housemartins swarmed about the village. They listened to the water flowing fast down from the hills above. After a while she spoke again.
“I always feel you live a double life in Barcelona. I think we’re just a small part of what you do there.”
“Are you jealous? Do you want me all to yourself?” Michael asked her.
“No, I’m curious. I don’t know anything about you.”
“And how eager you are to learn things!”
“Can’t we talk directly without you twisting the conversation?”
“You wa
nt me to answer your questions?”
“Yes. What sort of teaching will you do in Barcelona?”
“To be straight, I have a job in a school from September teaching English, the language of my forefathers, to adults.”
“So you’re going to stay in Spain?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’ll be able to come and visit us.”
“I’ve enjoyed meeting you. I like you,” he said, and then he grinned. “In fact, I almost love you.”
“Every time you start to be serious you make a joke,” she said.
“You grasp things quickly, don’t you? You grasped the differences between us more quickly than I did.”
“That wasn’t hard, was it?”
“I think you thought that I was the one who burned your house down. I think you thought I’d come back to burn it again. The peasants are revolting,” he laughed.
“How did you know about our house, and how can you make jokes about it?”
“What else can we do? Sing laments?”
“Think about it, perhaps.”
“Or stop thinking about it,” he said and went to the window.
“So is it a joke then in your little town, the Deacons whose house we burned to the ground one night when they were defenceless . . .”
“Hardly defenceless.”
“I was defenceless.”
“I am so glad to be away from it,” he said. “I am so glad to be away from it.”
* * *
The sun went blood-red over the mountains in the far distance. Michael Graves lit a fire in the kitchen with some kindling that lay about. Katherine sat on the balcony looking down on the valley feeling the cold encroaching as the night came down. And as the hours went by, as they grew anxious waiting for Miguel, hunger and tiredness made them irritable and silent. They sat in the darkness of the kitchen with the firelight casting bleak shadows on the walls.
* * *