Two Sketches of Disjointed Happiness

by Simon Kinch

  Sat in Barcelona Sants station thinking about Stefani, that same guilty feeling – that feeling I’d had sat opposite her having coffee – welled up in me. God, it felt stupid, especially now. How I’d felt so guilty about such a tiny flutter of attraction to Stefani, that I’d toyed with the idea of going to the station the next day, to take her for coffee again. It felt so stupid that that guilty feeling had made me think so much about Alyson back in the States and that by the end of that evening, after getting through a few beers, I’d made myself feel more strongly than ever about Alyson and never went back to that station cafe, never saw Stefani again.

  I span one of my spare coins on the table, wondering what Stefani would be doing now. Probably working in that station in Bari. I had no idea. I glanced at the clock, collected my things and made my way to the platform.

  FIVE

  I slept most of the train journey, with my backpack under my legs and bank card in my pocket. I again dreamt repetitively of that unremarkable waiting room in Barcelona and then of pursuing some unknown girl who just wouldn’t pay any attention to me. I woke up just before Sevilla, my body stiff and my mind sluggish, but when I stepped out of the air-conditioned station I forgot those gripes. There was a mid-morning heat I couldn’t have imagined for the end of May, visibly rippling from the sidewalks and roads. The station was on a slight hill and, from there, the city’s skyline appeared as a haze.

  I took a taxi to the centre. I didn’t really want to chat with the driver, so stared either at my lap, or out the window. He dropped me off outside a hostel. The building looked as if it should have been some aristocratic home, but inside, it was indeed a hostel. The receptionist had her name, Clara, printed in capitals and folded into her pin. She smiled as she took my details, which was enough to convince me that here was the place, for now at least. I booked three nights, paying cash up front.

  As I hauled myself up the hostel’s staircase, I tried to regain that feeling of adventure I’d felt in Portbou, or recall it at least. There was nothing though. All I could feel were the hours of travel, of carrying backpacks and sitting upright. I followed the door numbers until I found my room. I didn’t really feel like socialising with anyone. Maybe it would have lightened my mood, but I didn’t have the energy. There were two Scottish guys in my dorm, who really made an effort with me and insisted I came out with them that night. I said that maybe I’d join them, but fell asleep on the bed as soon as they left.

  I woke up mid-afternoon, not knowing where I was. My head ached, but my muscles felt looser for sleeping on a mattress. I fumbled around for my phone and then remembered flinging it into the sea from Portbou harbour. And I then tried really hard not to think about Alyson, but as soon as I’d remembered her it was impossible not to. I sat up, pulled off my shoes and lay down again.

  I thought about my room in Madison. The single bed under the window, the desk, the bookshelf. There too, just a few months ago, I would pull off my shoes and lie on my back. Sometimes I’d just lie back and chuck a baseball up in the air. I got so good I didn’t have to watch the baseball back into my hand. Instead, I could spend an afternoon just watching birds land on the branches of the tree outside our house, chucking that baseball up and catching it. I closed my eyes, hoping to recall that image, but could remember neither the shape of the tree, nor the branches.

  Without realising, I must have slipped back to sleep, and it was 11pm when I woke up again. Bleary-eyed, I went down to the hostel bar. I really wanted a coffee, but the bartender said he’d have to turn on the machine, so I said a beer would be fine. I took a guide to Andalusia off the bookshelf and sat down. I was alone, until half an hour later, a girl came downstairs, ordered a sangria, then came over and asked if she could sit with me. I said okay and put the book on my lap. She asked how I was and I said I’d been asleep. She laughed and said she had too. Then she told me all about her coach trip from Madrid and everything that had happened in every bar there last night. As she talked, she kept adjusting a large headband, which spread her blonde, wavy hair backwards and out. She was petite, but I noticed her shoulders seemed a little broad for a girl of her size. I tried not to think about this and instead tune in again to why she’d missed the first bus to Sevilla and why she had been asleep all day.

  She asked how long I was staying. I didn’t really know. I said three days. I finished my beer and ordered us another drink each. As I pulled out my cash, she noticed I didn’t have a wallet – or anything else – in my pockets. I told her about my bag being stolen in Barcelona. She suddenly seemed really sorry and said that she couldn’t imagine anything more troublesome happening. It kind of made me feel a bit better, even if the stolen bag hadn’t been on my mind that much that day. The nice thing was that if she was that supportive about a missing bag, I imagined she’d be the type of person who’d be really supportive about all the things actually troubling me, the things I was really trying hard not to think about. And just that reassurance was enough to make me stop thinking about them.

  After our beer and sangria, she wanted to go out. There was this really cool bar she’d seen earlier that day, where the people spilled out onto the street clutching mojitos. I agreed to go with her. On the way, she told me her name was Jess and asked mine. She laughed because she didn’t think Granville was a very cool name. I said Jess wasn’t a very cool name, but she said it was cooler than Granville. I then asked if she was from Scotland and she said no, Newcastle. I said the accents sound the same. She told me that they didn’t.

  We left the main streets of Sevilla and entered a maze of side-streets, each building a different design, no street perpendicular to the next. Jess was right about how cool the bar was. It was tiny though – longer than it was wide and almost higher than it was long. Bulbs hung down from the ceiling, picking out the hundreds of copper coins glued to the bare brickwork, shining down on tables made from antique sewing machines, every chair taken.

  We squeezed through to the bar. I ordered another beer. Jess asked for a mojito and we perched at the bar whilst the bartender chopped and muddled the lime, sugar, mint and rum.

  She talked about how much she wanted to learn and improve her Spanish. She showed me how well she could roll her R’s. The bartender flashed her a look that was neither impressed nor interested. Jess continued unawares. She stopped after a while and asked if it was interesting and I said yes. I then said that I’d probably have to learn Spanish too. When she asked why, I said I was going to live here. I was almost caught by surprise hearing myself say it. I’d been trying not to really think about that type of thing, but it just came out. She seemed a little confused at first, but quickly became very excited. She asked why, how, for how long, but I couldn’t answer any of her questions. I guessed it was because I didn’t want to turn back again, that I didn’t want to get to Paris or London, but I didn’t mention that. She moved on to saying how fantastic life here would be and kept talking and talking. I smiled at first, but the more she spoke about how exciting it was, the less enthusiastic I felt. I thought about whether I’d be excited for her in the same situation.

  It was all a little overwhelming thinking ahead too much, seeing as I hadn’t really confirmed with myself what was happening. I asked if she had a cigarette, but she didn’t smoke, and from there managed to keep the conversation away from the matter for the rest of the night. She got through another mojito, I got through another two beers. We walked back to the hostel, chatting about nothing in particular.

  SIX

  I stayed in the hostel for the other two nights I’d paid for. I couldn’t sleep that well with all the noise and asked the receptionist if she knew anywhere with private rooms. She gave me the number of a guesthouse across the river.

  The morning I left, I went and found Jess. All I said was goodbye and gave her the name of the guesthouse, should she be in town any longer and want to hang out. She told me she was leaving for Málaga the next day, but would be going out drink
ing and maybe to a club with a few of the guys from the hostel. She asked if I wanted to come too, but I said I had quite a lot to sort out.

  The room at the guesthouse consisted of a single bed, a small desk and chair, a wardrobe and a small white sink in the corner. The building was nearly empty and the vacancies sign looked as if it were always up.

  I hung my clothes in the wardrobe, placed my few possessions on the desk and tucked my backpack under the bed. I knew I couldn’t stay here for ever. The rent was almost twice the hostel bed and the shower blasted only either boiling hot or freezing cold water. But for now, for a few days at least, I’d treat myself to feeling at home here.

  I spent the afternoon wandering around the neighbourhood, Triana. I bought an English-Spanish dictionary from a sidewalk bookseller on the main bridge, then sat in a cafe flicking through it, trying to pick up a bit of the language and constructing longer sentences in my notepad.

  In the city centre, tourists bustled along the main avenue and swarmed around the cathedral where caballeros peddled their horse-and-carriage rides. But in Triana, as you got away from the main bridge and the river, everyone seemed to be a Spanish local, not some photo-snapping tourist. The buildings were no longer ornate, baroque architectures, but high-rise blocks of apartments with wide balconies. Local shops served the local people. Short old ladies collected bread and groceries. The cafe patios were full of old men, who seemed to know and greet nearly half the people that walked past.

  I walked back to the guesthouse. A gentleman with a caramel-coloured suitcase and large moustache stood in reception, taking a night’s rent from his wallet. I smiled at the guesthouse owner. She pursed her thin lips and the edges of her mouth turned up, which I took as a smile back. The man with the caramel-coloured suitcase looked at me questioningly, then turned back to the guesthouse owner. I returned to my room and fell asleep on the bed.

  SEVEN

  I continued my stay at the guesthouse. As I paid the board each day, I marked down the amount in my notebook, where I kept a rough log of what I’d spent. I wasn’t at all sure on the amount in my bank account, nor the bank machine charges, nor conversion rates, nor whether to work in euros or dollars. For all the accounting, I still wouldn’t know beforehand when my money would run out. Its meaninglessness made it little more than an obsessive quirk.

  The only schedule I kept to was eating breakfast before they shut the guesthouse’s dining room at 10am each day – a cup of filter coffee and a toasted roll with jam. I kept myself to myself, always taking the small table by the door, below a framed Cézanne print. After breakfast, the guesthouse would empty, with whichever tourists staying there either going off to explore the city, or leaving the city for good.

  I began to miss the din of the hostel, of having people around me all day. A lethargy crept over me and I became timid just thinking about socialising. Tired of wandering around Triana, I spent most of my time in the guesthouse. I found a pack of cards in the lobby and would play patience in my room, or sometimes steal the daily copy of the El País newspaper from reception and try deciphering it with the help of my dictionary. I picked up a copy of a murder mystery novel in English from the book vendor on the bridge, but could only read a paragraph at a time before becoming uninterested in the plot.

  Mornings began to repeat themselves. I thought about going back to the hostel. I didn’t even have to stay there, I could just chat to people in the bar. But the thing was, I didn’t mind being alone as much as that. My lethargy was stronger than any desire to meet new people.

  I’d make myself take a walk each day though, always around mid-afternoon, when the spring sun beat down the hardest. Most days I was happy just to stop and watch people: outside the metro station, by the cathedral, across the bridge. I picked a favourite spot, a small cafe looking out across the river. Every day, I’d order the same, until the point where the waitress knew my order. She would see me, nod and, moments later, bring over a glass of half espresso and half steamed milk.

  The Triana side of the river was dotted with small jetties – a few steps down and then a ledge jutting out into the river. Scrawny-looking kids would cast make-do fishing lines off them, while groups of teenage boys and girls sat in groups, smoking, with their feet hanging over the edge. For a few days I watched from the small cafe, as people came and went from the jetties, until on a quieter day, I plucked up the courage to go and sit on one myself.

  I crossed the river and made my way down the steps of the first empty jetty, perching on the edge. A tour boat glided slowly past, the ripples spreading right across the river’s width. I looked back across at the cafe I’d been sat in ten minutes before. A pair of ladies had just sat down on the table I’d been at and had begun gesturing and laughing.

  I tried to count the days I’d been at the guesthouse. Six or seven. And when I thought about it, I realised I hadn’t really spoken to anyone in that long. I’d been content by myself. Jess had probably been the last person I’d spoken to, when I gave her the address of where I was staying.

  I suddenly felt a wash of paranoia that I’d come across too closed and irritable around her. I couldn’t recall how I’d acted in her presence at all. I just wanted her to know it hadn’t been her, it had been the people, the situation, but it was too late.

  And when I remembered Jess, I remembered how relaxed and friendly she’d been and how she was exactly the type of person who just sitting beside would make me feel better. And despite the contently insular person I’d become, happy in my independence, if she said that we should go and grab a coffee, I’d say sure, or even a beer. I’d make the effort of going to a club with her and the guys from the hostel if she wanted to.

  My mind then jumped to Alyson. And in that moment on the jetty, I couldn’t picture her as any kind of ex-lover. It seemed impossible we’d ever shared a bed, shared a kiss, laughed about something together. I tried to recall something I’d said that made her smile, but instead, thought about Stefani. And then I thought about Mom and Dad and that they didn’t even know where I was and that I really should call. Maybe they’d sent an email, but I really didn’t feel like checking, in case they hadn’t. And thinking about all that made me feel that here was the last place in the world I wanted to be. But as soon as that thought had escaped, I felt the sun on my neck, warming every fine hair along my collar, and instantly appreciated how fantastic that feeling was for the end of May.

  EIGHT

  I walked back from the river to the guesthouse, tipsy with this feeling that I’d stepped out from the fringes of life in Sevilla. The more I concentrated on the warmth of the sun, beating down on those fine neck hairs, the giddier I felt.

  Nothing had changed around me. I still walked past countless Sevillians, nobody looking at me, nobody recognising me. I was still a stranger here. I still carried the same few possessions – my dictionary, my notebook, a pen – and wore the same jeans and T-shirt I had that morning. My pockets were still empty, save my bank card, a twenty euro bill and maybe five euros in change. I showed no more wear than the week or two I had been in Sevilla, the tops of my ears and nose caught a touch by the sun. If you had asked me for directions, I would still know that same handful of street names I had for those last few days shying away in my guesthouse room, the same few landmarks and shops for reference.

  In body, I had been in Sevilla ten days. Yet some piece of me had only just arrived. Some elastic cord had been severed, releasing me with momentum. I hadn’t been aware of it before, but it was only now that I felt as if I were in one time and one place – in my entirety. I would no longer cast my mind back to people in other countries, other continents, I promised myself. As I walked, I stretched my forearms out in front of me, to really feel the sunshine heat my pale skin. This sun, and these coins in my pocket, I thought. Nothing more, nothing less.

  I got back to the guesthouse and went up to my room. I quickly changed my T-shirt, then splashed my face with
water. Looking up, I caught my reflection in the mirror and looked deep into the whites of the eyes. They seemed, I don’t know, fresher, or refreshed maybe. But I had no point of comparison from beforehand. I could not be sure if I’d had my recent perceptiveness clouded by those suffocating thoughts – thinking so much of the harbour bench in Portbou, the rail station in Bari, even at times thinking of the walk between Alyson’s house in West Madison and the bus stop at the end of her street.

  I made my way out into the streets again, with my now usual collection of possessions. That elastic, that constraint, had been severed – I walked with the spring of that momentum in my step. Where had this come from? Deep in my own thoughts, I hadn’t considered my insularity over the past days. But suddenly aware of this, I was happy to settle on that I had either gained a freshness, or gained a perceptiveness, and neither was such a bad thing.

  It was nearly five o’clock. People had begun leaving their homes after their siestas and were heading to work or out on errands. I strolled among them, through the busyness of Triana, on a back street parallel to the river lined with ornate apartments and parked cars. A girl stood in the street below a balcony, calling up to a guy in the apartment above. As I passed, he emerged, a little dazed, then mumbled something and gestured that he was coming down. I continued walking, hearing the distant sound of him exiting his building as I turned the corner at the end of the street.