A Guide for the Perplexed

by Jonathan Levi

  I left her lying flat on her shoulder bag outside Colón. A squadron of fighter planes—ours? theirs?—overflew us (that’s the condo term) as soon as the airport workers ran us out of the departure lounge. I’m from the generation to whom the sound of planes overhead is the sound of rescue. My poor lady journalist must have had a Southeast Asia assignment somewhere in her past, filming Hanoi Jane for David Frost—who knows what horrifying matinee shot into her retina at that moment. I felt bad leaving her on the pavement, but it was late, and the last taxi, and rain was threatening, and by the time the driver could hear me over the roar of the fighters, it was too late to stop. Besides, I hate journalists.

  I asked the taxi driver to head for the Casa Curro, where I was sure the manager would give me back my old room. The driver told me there was a choo choo convention in town, and that the Curro was undoubtedly full. He dropped me at the Huéspedes La Rábida instead and suggested I talk with the night maid, Maraquita, and mention his name.

  Maraquita was no maid. The Huéspedes La Rábida, as you well know, is a bordello, pure and simple, and the taxi driver, long gone, is another Iberian imbecile. No matter, I told Maraquita, if you have a room to spare I will take it and reimburse you for the lost business.

  “Impossible, Señora.” She smiled. “There is a chew convention in town. Even if you could afford the cost, you would get no sleep, and worse, I would feel guilty.” Indeed, the line of well-dressed men with shiny shoes, stretching past her desk, through the inner courtyard and up a flight of wooden stairs in the dim distance, was neither patient nor quiet. The moment called for dramatic gesture. I sank down on the trunk and pulled out your Guide. The effect was instantaneous.

  “Señora,” she said, moving me away from the comments of the customers into the office behind the desk, “you are welcome to stay here. You will not sleep, but I have television and coffee, and the boy has just run out for churros.”

  An office! The couch was a lightly upholstered remnant from the sixties with the Ilums Bolighus tag still on the arm. Two Louis XIV-repro side tables held a pair of Chinese lamps. Maraquita drew me coffee from a stainless steel samovar and tuned the TV—every bit as big as Mr. Samson’s in 12E, who made his fortune in cable—to a remarkably clear rerun of Roots dubbed into screechy Castilian. Everything in beige and chrome, not a flake of whorehouse red.

  “A furniture convention last spring.” Maraquita beamed at my approval. “I took payment in trade.”

  Two of the customers lugged your trunk into the office. I tried to tip them, but they raised their hats and handed me their cards: S. Jaime Carranque, BigFoot, Lima; Ryszard Koksacki, Shoe Coup, Krakow. I offered coffee, but they begged off with more-pressing business. A couple of real gents. I almost forgot I was in Spain.

  “About that book.” Maraquita closed the door on Messrs. Carranque and Koksacki.

  “Do you know it?” I asked, handing your Guide up to her. She backed away.

  “Of course, I know it. Everybody knows it,” and her accent on “know” seemed a comment on how few appropriate words there are in English to convey what the Spaniards think of your Guide.

  “You aren’t by any chance …”

  “Of course I am, page 35.” And sure enough, there she, or rather her establishment, lay.

  HUÉSPEDES LA RÁBIDA

  In the Old Spain of long engagements and formidable duennas, serenades to unseen señoritas and sex supervised by sextons, establishments like the Huéspedes La Rábida carried out a noble and necessary function. Much as the picador initiates the bull in the art of the game, sapping the beast of his vital spirits before his encounter with the inevitable matador, so have the ladies of La Rábida prepared scores of Mariposan men for the Spartan hardships of the Spanish connubial bed.

  One legend has it that La Rábida reclines on the site of a tenth-century Moorish bordello, the first established in Spain after the landing of Tariq at Gibraltar in 711. Another popular story dates from 1498. That was the year in which Cardinal Ximenes, Queen Isabella’s confessor and later Grand Inquisitor, ordered all Spanish clergy to refrain from the common practice of concubinage. Despite appeals to Rome and Isabella, the better part of the ecclesiastics obeyed. Four hundred monks from Andalusia, however, fled to North Africa with their “wives” and turned Muslim. And a small group of disgruntled friars from the monastery of La Rábida—which had sheltered Christopher Columbus only six years earlier, before his first Voyage of Discovery—left the Church and carted their concubines across the marshes of the Coto Doñana to the site of the current establishment in the center of Mariposa Antigua.

  Among the patrons reputedly registered in the guest book, carefully locked away daily by the proprietress, are Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, Miguel de Unamuno, Francisco Goya, Pope Alexander IV, and Ferdinand V, the Catholic, King of Aragón and Castile.

  In the New Spain, the house has become infested with Germans and Japanese on well-financed Sexspielen and Labu-Tripu. To the extent that Mariposa can boast a red-light district, Huéspedes La Rábida is at its scarlet heart. This may explain its popularity with conventioneers, although the house discourages British clientele, especially coach tours. The girls are generally well maintained, with most hailing from the region, suffering neither from the severity nor the wit of the Big City.

  You will also pay less at La Rábida than you will in Madrid or even Granada. The difference in price is reflected in the decor. The rooms are functionally appointed, lacking both the picturesque antiquity of the novels of García Márquez and the big-hearted Catholicism of Graham Greene. This may come as a disappointment to the non-Spaniard, who equates the function of a bordello with fantasy and adventure, who requires the Chinoiserie of one room, the rawhide of another, the chalkboard and ruler, the lace, the ribbons, the fresh-baked smell of buttermilk biscuits.

  This is a Spanish whorehouse! Enough with form, enough with ceremony, enough with ritual and dignity! Those are for courtship, marriage, and widowhood! The function here is Aristotelian: pure, complete, cathartic.

  Tel: (39) 492 291. 33 Plaza La Rábida. Reservations not accepted. From 1,500 pesetas upward, safety equipment provided. AE, MC, Visa, Diners Club, Traveler’s Checks.

  Submitted by S.Z. (with additional comments from P.P., E.H., and B.H.)

  “Not a bad recommendation,” I said, with the slight conviction that had more to do with my ignorance of these places than my judgment of your critique.

  “Ben doesn’t recommend,” Maraquita said. “He comments.”

  “Isn’t the fact you are listed a recommendation?” I asked. She smiled.

  “How do you find Ben, my dear Hanni?” I hadn’t remembered introducing myself to Maraquita, but it was late and perhaps I had. I said a few nice things, of course, Benjamin, more curious to hear the sound of her voice.

  “I’ve never had the privilege.” If a three-hundred-pound middle-aged madam could look coy, Maraquita would have been stuffed there and then, with eyes full of the question, “Have you, dear Hanni, met the boy?”

  “Never,” I said, and I saw her relax immediately. “But I owe him.”

  “Even though he’s left you stranded in the middle of the night in a Mediterranean whorehouse?” Maraquita rested back against a teak veneer doorjamb. I closed the Guide. “Why not call him? His office is right here in Mariposa. Ask him how he plans to get you out of Spain.”

  “Certainly there will be a flight tomorrow,” I said, and stood, feeling I had worn out my welcome with either argument or gullibility.

  “Certainly?” she said. “There was a strike, no?”

  I sat down. I stood. I sat down. I opened your book and looked for your phone number in Mariposa.

  “Forty-six, sixty-five, thirteen,” Maraquita said. “Dial nine to get an outside line.” And she left me alone.

  I’m always reluctant to phone travel agents when I’m in a jam, when it’s less a question of planning and more a question of screaming for help. But I phoned you. For all the good it d
id. That synthesized message of yours with all its preplanned options—press “1” if you need transportation information, “2” if you need hotel reservations, “3” for daytime entertainment, “4” for nighttime. I tried “1,” and then “1” again for airplane, “D” for departure, “8” for Aeropuerto Cristóbal Colón, “12” for the month of departure, “30” for the original date, “H-A-L-E” for the first four letters of my last name, “H” for the first initial of my first, “M-I-A” for the city I called from to buy my ticket, but by mistake I pressed “M-1-A” and the recorded voice, more obsequious and scratchy than that of the worst day nurse on the Beach, apologized that the code I had dialed was incorrect, and hung up. My own fault. Never should have screamed.

  I flipped the channels on the TV—only one other station broadcasting after midnight, a talk show, with what seemed to be either two transvestites and a magician or three local politicians. I understand Spanish through French, and Andalusian through hand signals and grimaces.

  I took out my map and found the Plaza La Rábida.

  My comedian of a cabby had driven me around the statue at the center several suggestive times—what a beacon for the red-light district, a fifty-foot column topped by Columbus. But we had somehow bypassed the Teatro La Rábida. How thoughtful of you, Benjamin, to include a flier with a translation of this month’s schedule in my copy of the Guide.

  TEATRO LA RÁBIDA

  “Because All Men Desire Happiness”

  Shows at: 20.00, 22.15, 00.30, 02.45. Program changes daily. Closed Fridays

  December 1991

  1.

  Morocco Bound

  2.

  I Am Curious—Basque

  3.

  Inside Isabella

  4.

  Autoerotic-da-Fé

  5.

  Inside Lola Falange

  6.

  closed

  7.

  The Golden Rain in Spain

  8.

  Tilting at Windmills

  9.

  Rocky of Gibraltar

  10.

  Extrema Dura

  11.

  The Lewd of Kima

  12.

  Venus in Monteras

  13.

  closed

  14.

  Lez Is Moor

  15.

  Cris and Izzy

  16.

  Carmen Whore

  17.

  Teenage Dominicans

  18.

  Naughty Anarcho-Syndicalists

  19.

  Isabella, Mistress of the Damned

  20.

  closed

  21.

  Dong Quixote

  22.

  Barbara of Seville

  23.

  El “Greco”

  24.

  Spanish Harem

  25.

  Maria Makes Marbella

  26.

  The Dirty Nights of Torquemada

  27.

  closed

  28.

  Behind the Inquisition

  29.

  Rambam, Thank You, Ma’am

  30.

  Cante Jondo, Flamenco Halevy

  31.

  Adiós, Colón!

  Is this what pornography has come to, Benjamin? Not that I am an authority. (I have, in fact, gone once, or should I say only once, on a date with a Gestapo officer in ’42, Heisse Hebräische Huren—how could I forget?) But the titles in the old days used to be literal, bare of irony and illusion—Corn Flakes was Corn Flakes.

  I’d seen ¡Adiós, Colón! at the Hampstead Everyman back in the sixties (although that isn’t pornography, is it?), and I wish I’d been here on the 18th to see Naughty Anarcho-Syndicalists. Nevertheless, I was intrigued that this being the night of the 30th, although several minutes already into the new day, the Teatro La Rábida had planned a rare program of echt Kunst. And Flamenco Halevy no less, not that I knew the company, but what a name!

  So I breathed in heavily through my nostrils, the way Gershon Mundel’s yoga instructor—he’s fighting Parkinson’s—has instructed him, and, with my measured exhalation, decided not to worry that my flight had been delayed, not to spend all night on the phone to your office, on the phone to the airport in the hope that the strikers had gone back to work, not, in short, to kvetch. I walked out. Maraquita shrugged—the trunk would be perfectly safe. I passed the boy on the stairs and relieved him of a churro. Halevy Ho!

  Under the sconce above the outer door I took my bearings. Lorenzo was long set. I was glad to have my cardigan and a warm piece of dough to munch—although churro can’t hold a candle to kipferln. A trio of American sailors chatted on the low seawall across the street. Below the column, Columbus presumably secure on top, a violinist played through the sound of the distant waves. Across the plaza, six golden lanterns lit up an arcade below the gilded sign of the Teatro La Rábida. My watch read 12:45. I was slightly late. Not at all, I reminded myself. I am off my itinerary.

  I had almost passed the violinist when I was ambushed by sound and memory. The song she was playing—for it was a she, a very young she with thick dark hair, a seductive pout to the lips, and just the tiniest fold of baby fat where the chin met the violin—flashed a sudden, vivid image of Zoltan, Zoltan the violinist, Zoltan on the train. I had heard a great deal of violin music since—Leo was a particular fan of Henryk Szeryng—but not this, and not played as if I were still in my private boxcar recital hall, rocking gently through the green-veiled innocence of the Auvergne, with Zoltan standing above me, rolling quietly through his entire repertoire. Forty-seven years ago, this piece of music had rescued my mind from politics, distracted me, for a few golden moments, from the danger of our journey. It was a slow movement, a handful of notes, each one simple, together weighty with a fully lived youth. I remember thinking that this piece was written for me, about me, eighteen years old, my own long hair long since bobbed, my own short life already well beyond experience.

  But to find the composer, the title to fit the sound?—my Alzheimer’s again. I was sure I hadn’t heard the piece since my marriage to Leo. So it couldn’t have been Mendelssohn or Bruch—Leo had a thing for Jewish composers. Bach was the strongest candidate. Leo hated Bach with an irrational but immovable passion. Play Leo the most obscure cantata, the organ snatch that hadn’t seen daylight since Bach wrote it for a bygone Sunday, and Leo would snort that guttural name from the least attractive barrio of his throat.

  So Bach, in all likelihood, but which Bach? Bach of the partitas, Bach of the concerti? Zoltan didn’t mind playing without accompaniment, the clicking of the train wheels over the splices of the rails was orchestra enough. The incessant, obsessional Bach, that was for sure, although the girl played with a depth and a concern for each note that painted Zoltan’s own profile down to the fine droop of the eyelashes and the concentration of the lips. Or maybe not obsession, but confession—Zoltan playing out his own failure, measure by measure, through the repertoire, coaxing his sins out the narrow f-hole that was his talent.

  He had failed. I could see that the moment Frau Wetzler led him into our flat on Iranische Strasse. My duty was to escort this failure to the Pyrenees, where he might find the safety to try again. But each click of the train wheels made it more and more difficult to hang failure around the neck of this wonder. Here was Success itself, every note proof of Man’s triumph over God. By the time we jumped from the boxcar at Port Bou, I believed to the depth of my eardrums that as long as Zoltan continued to play the violin, we would win the war.

  I was right, of course—that stretcher disappearing down the goat path to Figueras. I had lost Zoltan. We had lost the war. All that remained was the clicking of wheels to the east.

  The music stopped. The girl stood shyly, the violin tucked under an arm, the bow dangling from long fingers toward the ground, her eyes lowered. I groped for my purse, struggling to cross the tracks to 1991, wondering if this was the proper response, or whether I was interrupting some fantas
y of the house of La Rábida. Then I heard the click.

  I turned, expecting a stiletto, or, worse still, the re-enactment of a nightmare of half a century ago in godforsaken southern Spain. It was My Lady Journalist. My Lady Journalist with her clicking trolley and her Palestinian scarf, crossing the cobblestones to the arcade of the Teatro La Rábida. I watched her disappear through the double doors and took my second deep breath of the night. I turned back to the girl with my hundred pesetas. She had vanished.

  I looked up at Columbus, vaguely searching for what? A violin, a Zoltan? The Explorer stood, peering out to sea, to the west, holding a robe, a toga, a map. The moon, a cold winter Catalina, floated naked above him. Out where he looked, even the sailors had gone, all was darkness. I held my Guide closer, and turned to the lights of the arcade.

  HOLLAND—PHARAOH’S DAUGHTER

  FAT MAN

  Ay, ay, ayaaaaaayyyyyyyyy …

  (throat squeezed through a buttoned-up size o, no collar, jacket too tight for shirt, sleeves for arms, trousers for thighs, socks for ankles, words for heart, so squatting just milli-inches above a terrified chair in the narrow tunnel between the burning dust of the theatre’s footlights and the golem of the singer’s own shadow, drawn like the monstrous cave paintings of La Pileta on the half-curtain of burlap bags and clothesline)