The House in France

by Gully Wells

  At night Madrid was as dark as Señora Marañón’s apartment in the daytime. It felt almost Edwardian compared with the only other cities I knew—London, Paris, and New York—no dazzling neon, no lit-up shopwindows, no sodium yellow glare, just the cozy glow of bars and restaurants and old-fashioned streetlamps that emitted ineffectual pools of flickering light. The restaurant where we had dinner that first night lurked at the end of a cobbled cul-de-sac somewhere behind the Plaza Mayor. Not a single thing did I recognize on the menu, so after a few copitas of chilled manzanilla, and a couple of appetizers—fried blood sausage (morcilla) and some grotesque barnacles, long black appendages dangling obscenely from their shells (percebes)—Tom offered to order for me. Whether he chose the dishes to jolt me out of my effete Francophile ways, or whether they represented the ne plus ultra of Spanish cuisine, or whether he quite genuinely wanted to eat them I will never know. But here’s what we had after our rat’s penis and coagulated blood amuse-gueules at the bar.

  Tom and the owner of the establishment were old friends—apparently he used to go there with his grandfather when he was a little boy—and greeted each other with hugs and cries of “Hombre!” After which there was naturally no need to consult a menu, because Tom would be having his usual, and I would be having the roast suckling pig. Suckling. It wouldn’t have been quite so awful if the entire newborn baby hadn’t arrived at the table on a silver tray with an apple shoved in her mouth—couldn’t she have been dismembered in the kitchen first? But no, we had to admire her, and then she was whisked away by her nurse/waiter and returned soon after to her parents, in the form of tender chunks of milk-fed meat beneath a deeply tanned layer of the crispiest and most irresistible skin I have ever tasted.

  Tom’s usual turned out to be even more frightening. Take a lamb’s head, split it open, sprinkle with sea salt, grill, and serve. Simplicity itself. The sightless milky eyeballs gave his face a resigned, dispirited air, as if he had known all along that this would be his fate, and it was quite obvious that he’d never thought to visit an American dentist. Misshapen and stained, his teeth betrayed a lifetime’s addiction to unfiltered Ducados and way too many flagons of vino tonto. Tom dug into his brains, I took another bite of my roasted baby, and the beaming owner reappeared to check that everything was to our liking. “Perfecto. Delicioso,” we replied, quite truthfully.

  After dinner we wandered back through the shadowy colonnades of the Plaza Mayor, and I listened as my tutor explained how, in 1589, Philip II had commissioned Juan de Herrera to design him a modern plaza in the fashionable Renaissance style for his brand-new capital. A multipurpose complex, it was perfect for all kinds of entertainments; everything from bullfights—you could still see faded bloodstains on some of the walls—to executions, and, during the Inquisition, autos-da-fé. So began my first tutorial in Spanish history. We would start on politics later that night at the Café Gijón.

  Gregorio Marañón, Tom’s grandfather, had been one of the great Spanish intellectuals of the twentieth century. And the Café Gijón on the Paseo de la Castellana, a few blocks from the dark mazy apartment where his widow still lived, was where he used to hang out, and where we went for a drink later that night. A physician, scientist, historian, and philosopher, Doctor Marañón had been liberal in his politics and omnivorous in his interests, and I kept wishing that he and Freddie could have been sitting there with us on the red leather banquette, just so I could have listened to them talking together. But instead we were joined by some of Tom’s friends, whose conversation inevitably—because that was all anybody in Spain in the early seventies talked about—turned to Franco and what would happen after the old murderer was finally dumped in his Speer-like mausoleum in the Valle de los Caídos. Surely he couldn’t last much longer (he hung on another four years), but nobody knew what his heir, Prince Juan Carlos, would do when he came to the throne.

  The Prince with the Pubic Hair on his Head, as he was affectionately known on account of his tightly coiled locks, had been educated in Spain (away from the influence of his exiled family in Rome) under Franco’s vigilant eye, and had sworn a public oath of loyalty to El Jefe. So maybe he had been brainwashed and would follow in his soi-disant godfather’s jackbooted footsteps. But then again he was rumored to be in touch with his far more liberal father, Don Juan, and with opposition politicians, so maybe he would lead Spain into the promised land of democracy. An enigma wrapped up in the rigid embrace of a dictator, the prince floated in regal ambiguity way beyond the grasp of Tom or any of his friends. And I floated off to unambiguously common sleep, curled up on the banquette, my head in my tutor’s lap.

  Doctor Marañón’s house just outside Toledo had been a monastery in the sixteenth century—the chapel was still intact, and one of the monks’ cells had been turned into the doctor’s study, seemingly untouched since his death. If you stood by the sundial near the front door, and looked back across the valley, the view—the Alcázar, the cathedral, the steep hills, the bridge, and the swirling clouds—could have been, and was, painted by El Greco. Naively, ignorantly, absurdly, I gazed at Toledo and imagined I was seeing it through his eyes, failing to understand that nobody has ever been able to see what El Greco saw. Down some steps on the lower terrace our lunch—bread, wine, and a still-warm tortilla—had been set out on a stone table in the dusty shade of a grape-heavy pergola. Lizards bustled about in the ivy, cicadas thrummed away with no apparent sense of rhythm in the cypress trees, and way off in the distance I could hear the desolate clumsy clanging of church bells.

  Later that afternoon Tom said he would take me to see a synagogue that looked like a mosque, improbably called Santa María la Blanca—its Jewish name obliterated during a series of savage pogroms in the fourteenth century. This would be my first lesson in the religious bouillabaisse that had existed in Spain before Ferdinand and Isabella, los Reyes Católicos, decided that on the whole they preferred their soup to be composed of a single Christian theme. Heat weakened and dizzy with wine, I listened as best I could to the story of an enterprising rabbi named Solomon ha-Levi, who had somehow or other transformed himself into the archbishop of Burgos, but my thoughts kept sliding back to the claw-footed tub I had glimpsed earlier on in a cool, grottolike bathroom upstairs. Maybe we should continue our discussion of la Reconquista up there?

  A trickle of rust-tinged water dribbled into the enormous bath, pipes shuddering, as I lay back, eyes closed, and waited patiently for my body to be submerged. I could hear Tom talking to the cook and her husband in the kitchen downstairs, and after that total silence until he appeared at the door about half an hour later—“I’ve brought you some presents.” First he arranged a Leaning Tower of Books on the floor, then he balanced a couple of glasses and an ashtray on top of the laundry basket, and after that he settled into a rickety armchair and began to feed me warm figs, cold wine, and the occasional fiery drag of his cigarette while reading out loud from Gregorio Marañón’s book El Greco y Toledo.

  “But do you know who wrote about El Greco better than anybody? Even better than my grandfather.”

  I did not.

  “He was a German art historian who came to Spain in 1908 to study Velázquez, but he fell in love with El Greco instead. His name was Julius Meier-Graefe.”

  Who had been married to Busch, our friend in France with the filthy sex-crazed dog. Not much interested in hearing about Meier-Graefe’s widow or her revolting new consort, Tom found the book somewhere near the top of the listing tower: “This is what he says. ‘All the generations that follow after El Greco live in his realm. There is a greater difference between him and Titian, his master, than between him and Renoir or Cézanne.’ And that is the whole point! Which is why he only ever got two commissions out of Philip II, who could not begin to understand his vision. So, deprived of royal patronage, he moved to Toledo where he could paint what he wanted. You’ll understand what Meier-Graefe is talking about when we go see The Burial of Count of Orgaz.”

  No doubt I would, but
in the meantime, maybe he could pass me a towel? It was dusk when I woke up in an unfamiliar bedroom overlooking a garden in Spain.

  “Too late for the synagogue and the count?”

  “Oh yes,” he whispered. “Much too late.”

  HERE WAS OUR PLAN: After Toledo we would drive south through Andalucía, staying in a series of monasteries and castles that had been converted into paradores, so I could continue my education in Spanish art and history, partly by osmosis and partly with the help of my traveling tutor. The Grand Tour à l’espagnol. I like to think that I made some progress along the way, and by the time we arrived at Tom’s family’s house on the coast, I was already familiar with the vague contours of Mudejar architecture, knew that when Philip II had the Escorial designed, he took his inspiration from the grisly grid on which Saint Laurence had been barbecued, and I’d learned that a glass of fino must always be held by the stem, never the bowl. I even made a bit of headway with the language, helped along by a publication called ¡Hola!, which Tom told me was read only by idiotic shopgirls and even more half-witted cleaning ladies.

  Admittedly its editorial focus was narrow, but no less affecting for being so. How could one resist being swept up into the joys, tears, sorrows, and heartbreaks of the assorted royals (reigning and deposed), bullfighters, and soap opera stars who inhabited its colorful pages week after week? Even though I could just about stumble through a story about the tragic death of the Duchess of Ávila’s teenage son in a car crash, my spoken Spanish never progressed beyond six words—hola, adiós, gracias, por favor, and cama matrimonial. The last two being the most crucial. Every time we checked into a hotel, if I didn’t kick my tutor hard in the shins and hiss cama matrimonial into his ear, the sad, repressed, acne-stricken clerk behind the front desk would invariably show us into a room with two sad, repressed, and extremely narrow single beds.

  Eager to please my new boyfriend’s parents, I was on my best behavior at their house, and flattered myself that things were going even better than I’d dared to hope. No more swearing—I was particularly careful to avoid any reference to Jesus H. Christ—I listened with genuine interest to his father’s musings on Saint John of the Cross, to his mother’s memories of life as an exile in Paris after the civil war, and appeared at breakfast, smiling and on time, each morning. Except that after three or four breakfasts we were asked, extremely politely, to leave. How could this be? Apparently the problem was related to the cama matrimonial business. When we arrived my suitcase had been firmly deposited in his father’s dressing room, conveniently located next door to the parental boudoir, while Tom was to share a room with his brother at the other end of the house. An odd arrangement, but ever the gracious guest, I was more than happy to follow the peculiar customs of these peculiar people in this peculiar country.

  And yet, perhaps there was something to be said for their strange, antiquated ways. Forbidden pleasure. Illicit sex. Christianity clearly had its uses. Why had sex in our house never been associated with guilt? Why had there never been any rules to break? Well, I’d done my best and taken up with a Catholic and gone to fascist Spain, but my parents didn’t care and were actually extremely fond of Tom. His parents, on the other hand, cared a great deal about their son’s nocturnal ramblings, which is how we found ourselves waving adiós to them rather sooner than planned, and heading off to Extremadura.

  Now, could it be a coincidence that in the very same year, 1492, that Ferdinand and Isabella had finally declared victory over the Jews and Moors, Columbus had sailed the ocean blue and discovered a whole new world full of infidels in need of persecution? Probably. But my kindly tutor at least pretended to take my facile aperçu seriously.

  “Well, actually you’re quite right, there are some historians who see the Reconquista as a kind of dress rehearsal for the conquistadores, but I’ve always thought they got the hell out of Extremadura because it was—and is—the harshest, most miserable, and poverty-stricken region in the entire country.”

  Not a great deal appeared to have changed in the five hundred years since Cortés, Pizarro, and their henchmen had abandoned their homeland in search of gold and glory. It was the emptiness that struck me first. We drove for hours and hours across a landscape drained of life—no people, no animals, hardly another car on the road, until we arrived at an equally desolate village. Its inhabitants had barricaded themselves away behind shutters to escape the heat; a sad, skeletal dog slept in a doorway; and in the dusty plaza only the church and a bar—the twin opiates—were open for business.

  BEHIND THE PALACIO DE PIZARRO, at the top of a steep hill, Tom told me there was a convent where the nuns made the best yemas he had ever tasted, and since it was only about three in the afternoon, God knows we had plenty of time to kill before lunch. Yemas?

  “You’ll love them. They’re incredibly sweet and sticky, just egg yolks and sugar.”

  Unconvinced, I nevertheless trudged up the hill toward the convent’s stone facade, punctuated by windows barred with Saint Laurence–style grilles and two massive doors tattooed with metal studs. The nuns belonged to a closed order, and from the day they betrothed themselves to Jesus H. Christ to the day they died, they would never again have any contact with the world outside. Imagine. Quite apart from the horror of being buried alive in this prison, I wondered, on a more practical level, how they managed to conduct their yemas transactions without ever setting eyes on their eager customers.

  “Like this,” and my tutor pulled a rusty chain beside a contraption with a small revolving door, waited until it creaked slowly around, put the money inside, waited for it to creak around again, and there was a box of yemas, neatly wrapped in brown paper and string.

  “Until quite recently they used the same system for abandoned babies, except of course they traveled in the opposite direction.”

  Oh no, poor little babies. Imagine being brought up by those faceless nuns in that fortress. If I hadn’t been quite so hungry I would have worked myself up into a tearful state about them, but instead I followed Tom down the hill and into a dimly lit restaurant hidden away behind Pizarro’s palace.

  “Today we’re going to have an extremely simple lunch. Bread, ham, and wine. That’s it. The bread I don’t know about, but the ham and the wine will be más delicioso than anything you have ever tasted in your entire life. The pigs, who have pretty little black hooves—pata negra—snuffle around under the oak trees here in Extremadura eating acorns, until the happy day arrives when they are transformed into jamón ibérico.”

  Tom picked up a slice of ham—rosy, almost translucent with a creamy flutter of fat along the edge—and handed it to me, with a glass of Vega Sicilia wine. With nothing to do, nowhere to go, nobody to meet, surely it made far more sense to linger a little longer at our table by the window, in which case we were in need of más vino y más jamón, por favor.

  Only rarely, in my experience, and usually for only the briefest of moments, does life—quite capriciously—take it into its head to suddenly give you everything you could possibly desire all at once. And this was one of those mysterious ineffable moments. Which was why I couldn’t stop my thoughts from climbing back up that hill, slipping through the barred windows, and creeping along the shadowy flagstoned passages to spy on those ghostly nuns as they stirred their bubbling copper cauldrons full of egg yolks and sugar. Imagine.

  “Tom, now we’re going to play a game that I made up as a little girl in France many years ago. It’s called ‘Which Would You Rather?’ Imagine we had a daughter”—he smiled, apparently happy with this idea—“and on her eighteenth birthday you have a very, very difficult choice.”

  He took another sip of Vega Sicilia, and his face assumed an appropriately concerned expression.

  “Would you rather she became a nun in a closed order making yemas for the rest of her life, or would you prefer her to be a lesbian?”

  An impossible dilemma, exquisitely balanced, carefully calculated just to torture my poor tutor. I knew he’d go nuts agon
izing over these two equally distressing choices and maybe it might even lead to an interesting discussion about the Catholic Church’s attitude toward homosexuality. But no, I had gotten it all wrong. Tom just looked at me as if I were completely mad, and without agonizing for a split momentito, replied, “A nun, of course.”

  Of course.

  Le Meule de Foin

  WHENEVER THINGS AT HOME got a bit too exciting and my mother’s natural exuberance went a bit too far, Freddie would retreat to his study, nervously twiddling his silver chain and muttering, “That dreadful woman, that dreadful woman”; Nick would hide in his room and smoke; and I would run around the corner to the Haystack. The exterior of Colin and Anna Haycraft’s house—a grimy brick facade, its details highlighted in olive green, blackened windows, the front door hidden behind an Amazonian jungle of vines—was, I’ll admit, a bit alarming. Years before, a cabdriver shook his head incredulously when he dropped me off at 22 Gloucester Crescent, “Blimey, it’s the bleedin’ ’Ouse of Usher. You’d better be careful in there, Miss.” And he drove off cackling at his own witticism.

  Inside, however, the House of Usher was anything but sinister, and put you more in mind of that capacious and chaotic shoe inhabited by the old lady in the nursery rhyme, who had so many children that she hadn’t the slightest idea what to do. Except that this lady wasn’t old at all, and knew precisely what she wanted to do, which was to have lots of babies (there would be seven in all) and write lots of books (about a dozen) while entertaining anybody who felt like dropping in (the front door was never locked). Anna rarely left her kitchen and didn’t care for other people’s houses. So if you wanted to see her—and everybody did—you never waited for an invitation, or bothered to call ahead, or rang the doorbell; you just hacked your way through the vines, barged through the door, kicked the toys out of the way, pushed aside the curtain of damp laundry hanging on a swaying rack suspended from the ceiling, and shouted, “You there?!”