Espresso Tales 4ss-2

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “They behaved in a fairly boisterous way, too,” said Domenica,

  “although not as markedly as the Colombian dogs. They seemed less concerned about their appearance – they were much scruffier

  – and they were very outgoing. They were also very good at chasing balls.

  “The Japanese dogs” she continued, “were very interesting –

  from the animal behaviour point of view. They were very sensitive. Very concerned with face.”

  Pat laughed. “All rather like their owners?”

  “You could say so. And I suppose it shouldn’t surprise us.

  Animals with whom we live in close proximity are bound to throw our behaviour back at us, aren’t they? I’m not sure if we should be surprised by such findings.”

  “No,” said Pat. “But it seems a little bit far-fetched.”

  Domenica looked thoughtful. “I had occasion to reflect on this myself,” she said. “Last year, when I was in Havana. I recalled that bit of Stanford research while I was there. And I must say I thought that he had a point. But I’m not sure if you want to sit there and hear all this from me. You have that picnic to tell me about.”

  Pat wanted to hear about Havana. There would be time enough for Moray Place later on.

  Encouraged to continue, Domenica picked up one of the books from the pile, glanced at it thoughtfully, and replaced it. “I wanted to go to Havana,” she said, “before two things happened. The first of these is before the place fell down altogether. Do you know that over one hundred of their lovely old buildings collapse every year? And the second is before the Americans got their hands on it. I am not one of those people who are uncharitable about the Americans, but the truth of the matter is that the United States has been breathing down Cuba’s neck since the early nineteenth century and continues to do so. I cannot believe – I just cannot believe – that if the average person in the United States knew how that lovely island has been treated over the years they would feel anything but shame. Pure shame. Indeed, everybody has bullied Cuba. The Spanish were simply murderous. Then they looted the place. We had a go at it. Then the Americans tried to buy it. They 266 Havana

  occupied it. They treated it as a private playground. Organised crime ran the place. They built big hotels. They had their meet-ings there. And then Castro and his crew appeared and we all know what happened then. Thousands and thousands imprisoned and held under the thumb. Poor Cubans. It’s ever thus.”

  Pat wondered what this had to do with dogs, and Domenica sensed her puzzlement.

  “You’re obviously wondering where dogs come into this,” she said.

  “A bit,” said Pat.

  “Dogs have everything to do with this,” said Domenica.

  “Cuban dogs are rather special, you see.”

  81. Havana

  “I arrived in Havana at night,” said Domenica. “That’s a good time to arrive anywhere, because you don’t see very much and then you wake up in the morning and open your shutters to an entirely new world. That’s how I felt. There was a balcony to my room and this looked out over the rooftops to the most gorgeous tower I have ever seen. A tower on top of an ornate palace of some sort, with small arches and windows painted in that light blue they go in for in Cuba – almost a turquoise. And when I looked down and along the street to the front of my building, I saw nothing but three- or four-storey buildings with decorated stucco facades, all in faded white or yellow or pink.

  Ironwork balconies. I have never seen such beauty in a city.

  Never. Not even in Italy. Not even in places like Siena or Vienna.

  It’s a wonderful, very feminine architecture.

  “But the problem with the beauty of Havana is that it’s so decrepit. So many of those wonderful buildings are on their last legs. The people can’t afford to fix them. They have no money.

  When you don’t even have enough money for food or soap or any of those things, then you won’t have enough money for your buildings, will you?

  Havana

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  “And so you walk past these buildings in which whole floors, or rooms within floors, have collapsed. And yet people who lead their lives in the rooms next to those that have simply fallen to the ground continue to live where they are. So you will see gaps in buildings, like missing teeth, and right beyond the gap will be a lighted window which shows that others are hanging on in the midst of the falling masonry.

  “I had a friend who lived in one of those buildings. I had met her at an anthropological meeting in Jamaica a few years earlier, and we had kept in touch. They are desperate for friends, the Cubans. They are loveable, charming people and they want to belong to the world like the rest of us. And so they write when they can afford the stamp.

  “She asked me to her flat, which was on the edge of the old city. The staircase which took you up to the top floor, where she lived, was distinctly suspect and there were large holes in it. You had to watch where you put your feet. And her flat had three rooms. A kitchen, and two other rooms. She lived in one with her young son, and her husband, from whom she was divorced, lived in the other. Yes, she was divorced from him on the grounds of his adultery and cruelty, and yet they were trapped 268 Havana

  together because you just can’t move in that society unless you go through a very complicated and expensive system of exchanging flats. They couldn’t afford this. So they still had to live under the same roof and share the kitchen and the bathroom, such as it was. And in order to get to his room, he had to go through hers, at any time of the night and day. Can you imagine it?

  “And yet, like so many other Cubans, she had a dog, a little dog called Basilio. She wanted her little boy to have a dog, and so they had one. Every Cuban gets a ration of food, and you can’t get anything else unless you have a lot of money to spend, which she didn’t. So Basilio had to be fed out of the wretched, barely adequate food ration that she had. In other words, she gave him her own food.

  “And when you went out in the streets or the plaza, you saw these bands of little dogs walking around with such good spirit.

  They were not really strays – they all had owners – and all of them were loved by somebody. In other cities, you would expect to see collarless dogs persecuted. Rounded up. Taken to pounds.

  And then executed by lethal injection. These dogs just wandered about perfectly happily.

  “And in a way I thought of it as a metaphor for the society.

  These cheerful small dogs, these perritos, all getting by in the face of terrible material privation. And putting up with it in such good spirit, just as the people about them seem to do. All of them, dogs and people, smiling in the face of constant, grinding poverty.

  “Which may be part of the problem, of course. Communism has failed miserably in Cuba, just as it seems to have failed elsewhere. It just does not seem to have been able to provide for the material needs of people. It has only survived through the denial of freedom – there are many charges one can levy against it. And if the people weren’t so nice about it, then they would have risen in anger and demanded their freedom, demanded some more effective response to material needs, just as they did in Eastern Europe. But they haven’t. They’ve continued to dance and play music and keep their sense of humour. It’s quite A Great Sense of Purity

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  remarkable, and really rather sad – sad to think that there must have been many people who genuinely wanted to create a decent society, people who believed they were doing the right thing, and then they found that everything went so wrong, the whole thing involved lies and distortion and repression, and had become so utterly shabby. And that happened. Even the signs that claim victory are falling down. And if people are given half a chance, they flee, out of sheer desperation, braving no matter what dangers.

  “And waiting in the wings are those who are rubbing their hands and saying that it’s only a question of time before the whole place is covered in fast-food restaurants, the ports crowded with the cruise ships full
of spoiled tourists, the prostitutes and the pimps triumphant, and that charming, beautiful culture crushed in the deluge.

  “Globalisation, my dear. And in this way, is our wide and entrancing world, our vivid world of songs and music and cultural difference, brought to an end by the crude, the false, the mindless, the imposed.”

  Domenica became silent. She was looking down at the floor now. Pat had not even begun to tell her what she wanted to tell her, but could not now, after a story of such sadness. So she finished her coffee in silence and asked Domenica to excuse her until another moment, another day. Domenica understood.

  82. A Great Sense of Purity

  Pat reflected, in private, over what had happened. Peter had left a note that afternoon, pushed through the letter-box at the flat, with her name written on the outside of the folded paper. That picnic – remember? – it’s on! I’ll come and collect you at five. If you can’t make it, give me a call at this number.

  She had retired to her room – there was no sign of Bruce –

  and re-read the note. When he had issued the invitation she had certainly not accepted it there and then. After she had overcome 270 A Great Sense of Purity

  her initial surprise – it was not every day that one was invited to a nudist picnic, and in Moray Place Gardens too – she had said that she would think about it. That was all. And she had thought about it, and although she might have decided to go, she had not yet told him that.

  She looked out of the window. It was a warm enough day –

  much warmer than one would expect for early September – and this must have encouraged the nudists to go ahead with their picnic. But the weather in Edinburgh was notoriously change-able and sunlight could within minutes become deep gloom, empty skies become heavy with rain, snow give way to warm breezes. There was simply no telling.

  By five that afternoon, when the bell rang, she was in a state of renewed indecision, although, if anything, she was now marginally more inclined to decline the invitation. She would tell Peter that she did not feel ready to go to a nudist picnic just yet. Though when would one be ready for such an event?

  How did one prepare oneself ? Perhaps nudists had a coming-out process in which they gradually came to terms with the fact that they felt more comfortable without any clothes. Or it could be a road to Damascus conversion, when the restric-tiveness of clothes suddenly came home to one with blinding clarity.

  She went to the door and was just about to open it when the thought occurred to her: would Peter be clad or unclad on the doorstep? It was an absurd thought, and she dismissed it immediately. And when she opened the door, there he was, dressed quite normally in a tee-shirt and jeans. But he was carrying a small bag with him, and that, she assumed, would be for the abandoned clothes.

  He greeted her quite normally, as if he had come to collect her for the cinema or a restaurant rather than a nudist picnic.

  “We should be getting along there soon,” he said, looking at his watch. “Things begin quite promptly.”

  And what, she wondered, were these things?

  “I’m not quite . . .” she began. But he did not seem to have heard her. He asked her instead whether she had a bag which A Great Sense of Purity

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  she could bring. “Or you can share mine,” he said, pointing to his bag. “There’s enough room in there for both of us.”

  “But . . .”

  “No, that’s fine. This bag is big enough. You don’t have to bring anything else. That’s fine.”

  “But I was . . .”

  He tapped his watch. “Really, we must hurry. It’ll take us fifteen minutes to get there and I really don’t want to be late.”

  She took the path of least resistance and left with him. After all, it was only a nudist picnic and everybody knew that nudists were harmless enough. So they walked back along Cumberland Street, Peter swinging the bag as he went, and Pat largely silent beside him.

  “You’re quiet,” he said as they crossed Dundas Street. “You aren’t nervous, are you?”

  She hesitated. “A bit, I suppose. I’ve never . . .”

  He smiled and playfully put his arm about her shoulder. It was only there for a moment, and then he withdrew it. “There’s nothing to it. It’s very easy, you know. You won’t even notice it after a couple of minutes.”

  “Did it take you long to get used to it?” she asked.

  “I was born to it,” he said. “My parents were prominent nudists. Over in Helensburgh. We used to go on naturist holidays in Denmark each year. We had lots of Danish friends. I was brought up to accept it. I don’t even think about it now.”

  “And how did you get involved with these people in Moray Place?” Pat asked.

  “Through my parents,” Peter explained. “When I came to university in Edinburgh, friends of my parents got in touch and asked whether I would like to come to a dinner party. The dinner party was in Moray Place and I discovered that it was a nudist affair. These people had a very nice drawing-room flat with views over the Dean Valley. It was a pretty stylish affair – a typical Edinburgh dinner party, except for the fact that nobody had any clothes on.”

  Pat tried to imagine it, but found it difficult. “But what did you talk about?” she asked.

  272 In Moray Place Gardens

  “The same things that they talk about at any Edinburgh dinner party,” said Peter. “House prices. Schools. So it was pretty boring for me, apart from one or two people of my own age who had been invited as well. They put us all together at one end of the table. The other end was full of lawyers and people like that.”

  Pat was silent. “And then?”

  Peter shrugged. “After dinner we went through to the drawing room for coffee,” he said. “We played charades for a while, and then we put on our clothes and went home. Pretty dull stuff.”

  Pat thought for a moment. Charades: did they act out the story of Adam and Eve, or was that done so often at nudist dinner parties that nobody did it any more? Three words. From a book. First word . . . The whole idea seemed so completely absurd, and yet there must be a reason why people did it. She looked at Peter. What went on in his head when he went to these things? Did he feel any different without his clothes on?

  “Why do you do it?” she asked. “Does it do something for you?”

  Peter laughed. “It means nothing in that sense, if that’s what you’re asking. No, it gives you a feeling of complete natural-ness. All falseness, all pretence stripped away. You feel as if a great burden of restriction and secrecy is taken off your shoulders. It’s . . . Well, it’s completely liberating. And pure. You feel utterly pure.” He paused. “You do believe me, don’t you, Pat?

  I really mean it. You’ll find out for yourself when you try it. I promise you.”

  83. In Moray Place Gardens

  When they arrived in Moray Place there was no sign, absolutely no sign, that a nudist picnic was about to take place. The great sweep of architecture, with its handsome facade and its high windows, was as dignified and discreet as ever. Those who were going about their business, walking on the pavement, parking In Moray Place Gardens

  273

  their cars, or going in and out of their houses, were entirely clad.

  “It’s not those gardens,” said Peter, pointing at the rather dull gardens in the middle of the circle. “We go round the back. The gate is at the very top of Doune Terrace.”

  They walked round until they came to the point where Doune Terrace sloped off to the north. At the top of this road, a small gate, discreetly set in the iron railings, gave access to the gardens that stretched down the steep side of the hill to the Water of Leith below. It was a magnificent set of private gardens, reserved for those who held a key. But now no key was necessary, as the gate had been propped open and there was a bearded man standing just behind it.

  Peter led the way, shaking hands with the man at the gate.

  The man laughed and pointed up at the sky. There, rolling in from the north, wer
e the rain clouds which had been nowhere in sight when they had left Scotland Street.

  “The weather looks bad,” said Peter as he and Pat went into the gardens.

  “Will they cancel it if there’s rain?” asked Pat. There was a note of hope in her voice, but this was soon dashed by Peter’s response.

  “It’ll go ahead,” he said. “It’s just that it will be a bit different, that’s all.”

  At that moment the rain started, not pelting down, but falling with insistence, blotting out the view of the town to the north, running in rivulets down the sharply dipping paths of the gardens. Peter looked at Pat and smiled. “Here’s your mac,” he said, taking two black plastic raincoats out of his bag and handing one to her.

  Pat thanked him and began to put it on.

  “Not yet,” he said, wagging an admonitory finger. “You have to take your clothes off first. There’ll be a couple of changing tents down there on the grass. Wait till then.”

  Two small white tents now came into view behind a hedge.

  And there, on the other side of the hedge, shielded from view until the barrier of the hedge was actually negotiated, was a 274 In Moray Place Gardens

  group of about twenty people, all clad in voluminous mackintoshes. The mackintoshes were opaque, with the result that the only evidence that they were unclad underneath were the bare ankles sticking out below the lower skirts of the raincoats. The heads of the nudists were bare, though, and their hair was plas-tered to their skulls. They looked very wet and very uncomfortable.

  “Welcome to the picnic,” said a tall man. “The ladies’

  changing tent is over there. The men are in that one.”

  Pat made her way to the tent and drew aside the flap. Inside, a middle-aged woman was in the process of buttoning up the front of her mackintosh.

  “This rain is such a pest,” said the woman. “But we shall have our picnic come hell or high water.”

  Pat nodded. She slipped out of her clothes and donned her mackintosh. She did not feel at all exposed in this new garb; and indeed she was not.

  “You’ll need a bag for those clothes of yours,” said the woman helpfully. “Here’s a Jenners bag for you.”