To celebrate Cresswell’s refurbishing I invited Sissie to join me in a hike to San Francisco Javier, the main hamlet of the island, in the center of its wind-swept plateau. This suited Sissie; she loved hiking. “Simply awf’ly delaightful!” she crowed. So, leaving Nelson a plate of burgoo onboard, and with Sissie in her hiking gear (knee-length khaki shorts, ditchdigger’s brogues, long black woolen stockings, a shabby brown raincoat with the belt left dangling, and a sort of Rhodesian infantryman’s hat perched on top of her electrically frizzy hair), we set off, with Sissie singing “Keep right on to the end of the road” at the top of her voice, and me trying to lag behind her as we passed through the hamlet, hoping that the fishermen would not think she was with me.
We wended our way along the narrow winding road, over the undulating, rocky hills, for about five miles, enjoying the air and the freedom from care. We passed hundreds of tiny, stone-walled fields and a couple of dozen gray, weather-beaten stone windmills. A few stunted, wind-sculpted trees leaned drunkenly on the horizon and in the arroyos. It took us about two hours to reach the main hamlet; not because Sissie was a slow walker—far from it—but because she was continually stopping and chattering away about the view. “Awf’ly naice,” and “Supah . . . Look, dahling, ovah theah.” She clambered over low stone walls to scamper fifty yards into a field to sniff a flower or to pet a kid goat.
“If you get any goat shit on your boots, don’t take it onboard,” I admonished her as she took hold of my sailing jerkin. “We’ve done enough cleaning this week.”
“Such ebsolutely sweet little deahs!”
“We ought to nick one on the way back and roast the bugger.”
Sissie slapped my arm lightly and turned her Saxon-blue eyes on me, like a battleship’s guns. “Oh, dahling, you wouldn’t. They’re so awf’ly charming.”
“No, ’course I wouldn’t, but not because of that. Only because the bloke that owns them probably has nothing else.”
Finally we reached San Francisco Javier and its one small hotel-bar, the “Fonda Alonzo.” Apart from the fonda the hamlet consisted of only about twenty small cottages, whitewashed in the Balearic style.
We strolled into the bar, Sissie shyly, I thirstily, and found Alonzo sitting behind the bar, staring into space. Had he been literate he would have been reading. As it was, he was remembering, which is probably almost as rewarding as reading, and much cheaper.
Alonzo stood up. He was a burly man of about forty-five, with the jet-black hair and eyes and the clear but ruddy complexion which are common on the islands. He wore an open black waistcoat over an off-white collarless shirt, and black, baggy pants. On his feet were straw sandals. Most of the islanders wore clothes made by local women; Alonzo’s, no doubt, were made by his diminutive wife, who was one of the hardest-working, harassed individuals I have ever seen anywhere.
Alonzo was a semi-millionaire—in dollars—as he had sold off various lots of inherited land to foreign real-estate investors. All the land was earth-thin and rocky, fit only for olive trees and goats. There was no water on the island—only salt- and rainwater—but the beauty of the vistas had fooled the foreigners and they had eagerly plonked down their money in pounds, francs, kronor, guilders, dollars, and lire. Alonzo had it all stashed away in clay pots in the bar cellar. He couldn’t speak a word of anything but the obscure and excruciating-sounding Formenteran dialect of Catalan, which very few foreigners could ever hope to learn, so no blame could be laid to Alonzo for the foolish waste of money. The smart city-boys and girls had come to this remote, beautiful island, so near to an up-and-coming tourist Mecca, and they had, they thought, taken this ignorant, stupid-looking clodhopper and paid a song for prime beachfront property. They’d been doing it for years. The land lots were still there, as arid and rocky as ever. The goats still grazed on them and the sun still beat down on them and the blue Mediterranean lapped their golden-rock shores—and Alonzo was still there in his fonda. All the money was in the cellar, and the smart people were all back in their stuffy offices in smoky cities. So who took who? I am quite sure that, at that time at least, Alonzo had no idea of what the money represented. You might just as well have swapped him a computer for his wooden plow and sandals. It would have been all the same to Alonzo. He would have stored the computer in the cellar, too.
But Alonzo had been a great friend of Deaf Henry Gillon and Closet the Aussie, the skipper and crew of the good ship Fanny Adams, whose rusting iron keel was now the home of a thousand angelfish on the bottom of Formentera harbor. Anyone who was a friend of that pair was my friend, too. (See Saga of a Wayward Sailor.)
At first Alonzo, astonished at Sissie’s appearance, stared at her for a moment; then he turned to me, flashing his white teeth. His eyebrows shot up. “Hola, Señor Treestan! Cómo estás?”
Alonzo’s tiny, gypsy-dark wife, barefoot, dressed all in black, with a shawl thrown over her head, ran swiftly through the bar, carrying a basket of laundry about twice her size. Alonzo, while seemingly faithful to his wife, had a sharp eye for any foreign female between the ages of fourteen and ninety. He seemed to melt before their holy presences. Before other men and the island women he was big, healthy, strapping and strong—a man to be reckoned with. Before foreign females he was a helpless mass.
“Alonzo! How’s business?”
“Oh, very good. I still have two guests in the hotel . . .” Alonzo’s eyes turned toward the ceiling. “They’re coming down. Of course the señora has been here for some time. She is a book writer. But now we have a man . . . I think he’s a German or something, and . . .” Alonzo stuck out his already-bulging chest, “and he’s an artist, a painter!”
Alonzo grabbed my shoulder and gently led me toward the one rough wooden table and bench on the bare concrete floor of the bar. Then he turned to Sissie, gleamed his white teeth at her, and with a half-bow swept his hand down in front of him toward a chair—the only one—which he was already dusting with his other hand.
Just as Sissie, almost fainting at Alonzo’s genuine good manners, sat down, through the low front door of the bar walked two figures. The first, when it was in the shade, turned out to be a woman. At a wild guess I would say she was about sixty. She was slender, frail, and very short—no more than five feet. Her hair was blue and cut in a pageboy style, as was the rage in the twenties. She had a tiny, bird-like face, which was plastered with powder over her deep suntan. It made her look as if she’d dipped her face in a flour bag. On her cheeks were two daubs of thick pink rouge, and her thin lips were painted with scarlet lipstick in a Cupid’s bow. She wore a shiny satin dress, light blue, the waist of which was about where her hips would have been if she’d had any, but with a skirt shorter than the then-popular mini-skirts. Below this her legs were clad in beige stockings, and she was shod in silver shoes, the heels of which were at least three inches high. Around her neck, which had as many folds as my mainsail, she was decorated with about a dozen strings of pearls. She looked like the oldest teenager alive.
Her movements were sudden and jerky, as if she were under electric-shock treatment, and her face, with teeth protruding from her lips as if they were out to dry, carried an expression that said she had just remembered something, but couldn’t think what it was.
Alonzo, beaming, introduced Sissie and me. “Meess Pomeroy.”
Her voice was just like a bird twittering, and she ran all her words one into the other. “OhgoodnessgraciousEnglish? PleasedtomeetyouI’msure,” she chirped. It sounded like a metal spatula being dragged quickly, under great pressure, across a frying pan.
When I had recovered from the shock of this apparition I realized that something was blocking the sunlight from the door and making the bar even darker than usual. I looked toward the obstruction, and there, seeming to fill a good quarter of the area in the room, was one of the biggest people I have ever come across. At first I thought it was a yeti, because of the shaggy long hair, but when my eyes be
came accustomed to the gloomy shadow that the figure cast, I discerned that it was, in fact, first of all human, and then—a man.
Alonzo ran behind the bar. The huge man—he was at least seven and a half feet tall, with shoulders about three feet wide—made for Sissie. With each footstep the whole bar vibrated. He stood to attention before the Dragon of Devon and bowed from the waist. “Madam,” he said in thick English, “I am Sven Knutsen—at your service, charming lady!”
Sissie looked as if she was about to have kittens. The giant turned to me, took my proffered hand with what seemed to be a side of beef, and wrung it as if it were a dishcloth. Even Sissie winced at my pain.
Sven’s hair was the blondest of blond. It was almost albino. It fell in long white strands from the top of his head all the way down to the small of his back. It covered most of his face, so that it was difficult to see his small, button nose and his bloodshot, pale blue eyes. Around his neck he wore a chain of shields, and over his shoulders was thrown an Ibizan poncho of flannel, with stripes of a hundred different shades. Below the poncho, which drooped fore and aft, his pants were so streaked with multicolored paint that it was impossible to see of what material they were made. His huge feet were bare and dirt-encrusted. Studying them during the ensuing conversation I found myself somewhat surprised, upon counting the toes, to see that he had the usual complement of five on each. Again, making a wild guess at age, I would say he was around forty.
Suddenly, after staring at me intently in silence for a full half-minute, he turned and thudded over to the bar, behind which Alonzo was still smirking at the two foreign females as if he were imagining all kinds of exotic sexual delights.
Miss Pomeroy was smiling at me, slyly, with her Cupid’s bow.
“You’re a writer, Miss Pomeroy?” I enquired civilly.
“Ohyesbutonlyforchildren,” she giggled. I found that she giggled after almost everything she said. It seemed to me that she would have giggled after declaiming a churchyard elegy.
“Have you had anything published?” asked Sissie
Miss Pomeroy glanced nervously at Sissie. “Ohnonotyet . . . I’mhalfwaythroughmyfirstbookatthemoment.” She giggled again.
“How long have you been at it?” I asked gently.
“OnlythreeyearsandIshouldhaveitfinishednextyear.” Another giggle. Her accent was posh English, but with Northern undertones. Charlotte Brontë probably had the same accent.
“Really?” said I. “How did you get into that line of business?”
“OhIwasonceEnidBlyton’ssecretarybutonlyforthree weeks.” Giggle.
By this time Sven had collected four bottles of the rough house-wine from Alonzo, and scrawled his name and four chalk strokes on the slate behind the bar. He turned and thudded over to our table. As he walked, he thrust one shoulder at a time ahead of him, as if he were forcing his way through thick, head-high undergrowth. His roll reminded me of a destroyer in a full gale.
Sven slammed the bottles down on the table and bent his head over until it almost collided with the bottles. Then he reached over to Sissie, gently took her hand, raised it to his lips, and gave it a great, slobbering kiss. “For you, charming English lady, nothing but the best is good enough,” he murmured. His hair had fallen over his face. He looked like a giant, insane polar bear. Sissie almost turned liquid.
Alonzo set four (for once) clean glasses on the table. He reached for a wine bottle, but Sven was at it before him. With a hand like a gorilla he splashed the thick, dark-red, bitter plonk into the glasses without pausing between pouring, so that wine ran all over the table. One stream trickled onto Sissie’s khaki hiking shorts and she pushed herself back quickly.
Sven thrust himself upright and reached over toward Sissie. “My dear charming English lady, do please accept my most humble apologies . . .”
“Oh, it’s quaite all right.” Sissie smiled bravely at the giant.
“But please let me . . .” A hand came from under the poncho, bearing a grubby, paint-flecked, once-white handkerchief.
“Oh, no, I assure you, Sven,” Sissie blushed, “it’s ebsolutely all right. I assure you, I really, honestly do!”
Sven sat down, grabbed a glass of wine, and swallowed it in three gulps. He refilled his glass, then looked at me as if nothing at all untoward had ever occurred in this world or any other.
“You met Miss Pomeroy?” he asked in a flat voice.
“YesMisterJonesandIhavejustbeenhavingalittlechat,” giggled Miss P.
The giant turned to the tiny woman at his side. Slowly, thickly, he said, “Shut up. I didn’t ask you. In bed you talk. At the table you shut up.”
“Yesdearohmy!” Giggle.
The giant refilled his glass again and drank the wine. Actually he didn’t drink; he literally poured the stuff into his gullet.
“Hey, Englishman,” he bellowed at me, “you know Copenhagen?”
“Well, I’ve been there a few times, years ago. To tell you the truth I can’t remember much about it,” I said casually.
“You don’t remember Copenhagen? What are you, stupid?”
“I’ve told you, I don’t remember it much . . .”
“You sailing?” Sven bawled, as the two women sat paralyzed.
“Yeah.”
“How long you been sailing?”
“Oh, a couple of years.”
“Where you been?”
“Here and there . . .”
“Here and there,” he mumbled to himself. “Here and there? Here and there? Where the fuck you been?”
“I told you. Here and there.” I took a sip of the most vinegary wine south of the Pyrenees. I was astonished at how steady my hand was, though inside I was raging and trembling at the same time.
“You never sailed into Copenhagen?”
“As I told you, I’ve been there a couple of times.”
“It’s the Paris of the North!” he bellowed at the top of his voice. “We got everything there. We make the finest pottery, we make the best furniture, the best paintings, the best of anything—the best in the world!”
“Your marine diesel engines aren’t bad, either,” I said, quietly, as Sven gulped down another glass of wine.
“Engines? Engines?” He poured another glass and drank it. Then he grabbed another bottle and drank a third of it from the neck. He leaned his head between his hands, with his elbows on the table. “What about the fuckin’ Royal Palace?”
“I saw the town hall on the main square.”
There was silence for a full minute, except for Sven gurgling down another third of the bottle. By now a small crowd of locals had gathered at the door of the bar to watch the strange foreigners. Fascinated, they inspected us as carefully as scientists would some new-found biological specimens.
Sven hammered the bottle down on the table. He looked at me. His eyes closed to mere slits behind the mop of blond hair. He saw me watching the crowd at the door. He reached over with his huge mitt, grabbed a glass and, without turning to aim, flung it at the crowd. The dozen or so people, mostly children and youths, scattered in retreat.
“Hey, Alonzo!” Sven shouted. Alonzo ran from behind the bar, trembling, but still as humble as ever. The Dane reached into his pocket, brought out a dirty fifty-peseta note, and thrust it into Alonzo’s hand. “For the glass,” he said in English. Alonzo nodded and smiled anxiously. He took the note with a shaking hand and put it in his pocket.
The Dane turned to me again. “Hey, Englishman,” he snarled, “you know anything about painting?”
“Well,” I replied quietly, “Sissie and I have just finished painting the insides of our boat.” I looked at Sissie and grinned. “Haven’t we?”
Sissie was too frightened to reply. She merely nodded with a weak smile.
The giant’s eyes almost popped out of his head. He choked on the wine he was swallowing, crashed the bottle
down, and glared at me. He wiped the back of a huge fist across his lips, belched, and scoffed. “Huggh!” He banged his fist on the table. The bottles and glasses jumped. “Engelsman, you don’t know a damned thing. You don’t know one fuckin’ thing.”
Both Sissie and Miss Pomeroy were holding onto their glasses and staring at the Dane, like rabbits hypnotized by a cobra. He had their full attention now, just as a crying, spoiled child would have his mother’s.
Again he stared at me. “The base of religion, that’s what art is. Look at them—look at the Buddhists, the Christians, the Jews, the Catholics—look at any of them!” he shouted. The crowd had gathered at the door again to see the show.
“You know when religion started to die?” Sven slammed another bottle down. “You know?”
“About the time of the Vikings, wasn’t it?” I said.
“Shut up. I’m serious, Englishman.” He took another gulp. “You know when the faith started to die?”
“No idea.”
“Of course not. Well, I’ll tell you. It was when they discovered perspective.” He brought his fist down on the table with each syllable as he repeated in a loud roar, “PER . . . SPEC . . . TIVE!” His voice dropped, almost to a low moan. “Perspective—bullshit!” He almost spat the words out. He grabbed yet another bottle and gulped again.
“You know what we do?” he shouted. “All of us, from Giacco to Picasso, from Ma Yuan to Hokusai?”
I shook my head.
“We express . . . aspirations. That’s what we do! We express the whole of human experience, the whole of philosophy!” He slugged at the bottle again, slammed it down, and shouted, “Alonzo!”
Alonzo ran to the table and stood trembling at attention. Sven laid a huge arm across tiny Miss Pomeroy’s shoulders. It seemed as if it would compress her frail body into one of her silver shoes. “Tell this idiot to go upstairs and fetch my latest painting.” He poked a massive thumb at me. “He’s buying it.”
Alonzo sped away to do as he was bid. Sissie started to say, “But Tristan doesn’t have any . . .”
Seagulls in My Soup Page 8