“You’re late,” he shouted.
“Very,” Jesús said.
Emilio clenched his fists.
Jesús dumped the canister outside the kitchen door, asked for a glass of water, and joined Diane and me on the terrace. Emilio followed.
“You foreigners love your pets,” Jesús said in a mixture of Spanish, Valenciano, and English, pointing at Jones and Ethel.
“We don’t have a choice,” I said. “You leave them with us.” British, Americans, and Dutch were the favored recipients.
“Do you like bull fighting?” Jesús asked. A provocative question, because he knew many foreigners condemned it.
“I have no strong feelings,” I said diplomatically.
“No strong feelings?” Emilio smote his hands together. “How can anyone not have strong feelings on such a topic?”
“You’re an aficionado?”
“I prefer football,” he said.
“So do I,” Jesús said.
Emilio glared at him. “But I do like to see a true torero. Manolete, now there was a man,” he said, referring to the legendary matador who was goaded out of retiring by the public and killed by a bull named Islero in 1947. The death of the sad-faced bull fighter at the age of thirty encompassed all the double-bladed qualities of the corrida—the futile bravery of the bull, the educated courage of the matador, the fickleness of the aficionados, the fans—from the opening parade with the three matadors marching abreast in their glittering suits of lights to the Suerte de Matar, the act of killing. Manolete’s crime was that, having established himself as a purist and maestro of his calling, he was weary. His health, sapped by whisky and a capricious mistress, was failing, and all he wanted to do was cut the pigtail, bull-fighting speak for calling it quits. But the aficionados, having become much taken with a handsome torero named Luis Miguel Dominguin, whose name was linked with the film star Ava Gardner, accused him of cowardice. This he could not take so he agreed to fight one last season.
In the southern city of Linares he faced Islero, a Miura bull, the breed known as the Bulls of Death because they realize quicker than others that the enemy isn’t the muleta, the heart-shaped red cloth attached to a baton, it is the man holding it.
Manolete entertained the spectators with his usual repertoire of refined passes, then went in for the kill, considered perfect if the sword plunges into the base of the neck above the bull’s lowered head, severing the aortic artery. For a moment, as he takes his weight on his left leg, the matador’s right leg is vulnerable to the horn of the exhausted bull if it suddenly makes a thrust. Which is what Islero did, severing Manolete’s femoral artery in his right thigh, the wound dreaded by bull fighters.
Both man and bull died and aficionados throughout the land who had sent Manolete to his death mourned guiltily.
“What right have you to criticize bull fighting?” Emilio demanded. “Bulls bred for battle have a wonderful life and a glorious death and all you foreigners do is fatten them up for rosbif.”
He had a point. I didn’t understand the intricacies of the fiesta brava—the art of the banderilleros who thrust long frilly barbs into the bull, the matador’s sequence of passes known as the faena—but I did know that after a picador on horseback has thrust a lance into the bull’s muscle at the back of its neck, it is an unequal fight.
And I did know that the aftermath of a bungled kill—dispatch with a shorter, substitute sword through the spinal cord and a final stab with a dagger by an assistant—was a degrading spectacle.
Emilio was getting into his stride now. “In Britain men and women on horseback chase one small fox and stand back while dogs tear it to bits. What about the Grand National horse race? Do you really have to shoot the horses when they break their legs? Would you expect to be shot if you broke your leg?”
I went on the defensive. “I didn’t say I was against bull fighting.”
“What about your old people?” He was diversifying wildly. “What do you do with them? Stick them in nursing homes. We keep them with us and they die among their loved ones.”
“Emilio is right,” Jesús said, staring at the distant mountains.
“About what?” Emilio demanded.
“Everything you’ve said.”
I intervened, looking for genuine common ground. “But you’re both fond of animals, aren’t you?”
They waited, willing each other to make an admission. Jesús broke first: he didn’t have much choice because he was stroking Jones. “I have nothing against animals.”
“As long as they are kept in their place,” Emilio said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked. “Keeping dogs chained up all day and night?” It was an uncalled-for remark because I had only seen one chained up in a farmyard, but I was incensed by his accusations that the British were hypocritical about animals.
“I have heard,” Jesús said, “that in the north of England they still bet money on cock fighting and dog fighting.”
A chill breeze heralding evening sprang up and Jesús and Emilio departed. A carro, a small covered wagon drawn by a pony with bells jingling on its harness, passed the gates.
We lit a wood fire in the living room hearth and switched on the secondhand television we had recently acquired. A series of cabaret routines from South America appeared, introduced by a young man who seemed to have more teeth than most people.
It was so boring that we let the fire burn itself out and at seven-thirty drove with Jonathan to a nameless restaurant nearby, which we favored because the steaks were Texan-size and the owner was so outrageously rude that we respected him. It was late for Jonathan. In a country where children sometimes stayed up to midnight and beyond, he was normally in bed by eight. But it was Friday, no school in the morning.
The restaurant was stark, a few tables and chairs gathered around an open fire. The owner, a Basque named Aitor, was waiting at the door, the scowl on his face a permanent fixture.
He was tough and insular like many Basques. As far as I could ascertain they had every right to be: their homeland, set among misty green hills in the north on the border with France, was unique. They spoke euskera, or “eskara” according to their dialect, a language like no other; they were descendants of Europe’s aboriginal inhabitants, pre-dating migrants from Asia three thousand years ago; they were taller than their neighbors; as well as the ballgame pelota, they enjoyed esoteric sports such as woodcutting and stone-lifting; they ate and drank hugely; their reputation for chivalry to women, real or romanticized, pre-dated Women’s Lib by centuries.
Their autonomous region is known in Castilian as the Pais Vasco and consists of three provinces, Guipuzcoa, Alava, and Vizcaya. Tragically the struggle for separation was still being waged in blood by ETA terrorists.
Aitor pointed at a table covered with a red-and-white-checkered cloth, the only concession to civilized eating, and gave us a pitcher of red wine from Jalon, a small town fifteen or so miles away. It was a heady brew liable to put you to sleep before your meal arrived. We ate hunks of toasted bread to damp down its fumes and watched him prepare two steaks, each the size of an elephant’s ear. There was no menu, just steaks.
First he pumped the log fire into life with a pair of cracked leather bellows, then he waited until the flames had died down and mounted a grill across the embers. He tenderized the steaks with a carpenter’s mallet, seasoned them with salt and pepper, and threw them on the grill where they sizzled and spat, drops of fat flaming in the ash.
“Turn them when they’re ready,” he told Diane, handing her a toasting fork.
He made his way, still scowling, from the dining area, deserted except for the three of us, to the crowded bar. Customers were said to come from miles around for the privilege of being insulted by him.
We finished the bread, the produce of a bakery in a nearby village where a soulful girl with flour-gloved hands wrapped barras, Spain’s answer to France’s baguettes, while she gazed into the street for a glimpse of a shy young m
an who was trying to pluck up courage to ask her to go to the movies with him.
Diane approached the fire and flipped the hissing steaks. “Do you think I should serve them?” Jonathan was going to share the steaks with us—neither Spaniards, nor Basques for that matter, minded parents getting three meals for the price of two.
“I’ll ask him.” Aitor was said to keep a gun under the bar and I felt that protocol should be observed.
I told him. “I think the steaks are ready.”
“So? Eat them.”
As Diane speared the steaks and dropped them on our plates, he emerged from the kitchen carrying dishes of French fries and canned peas.
“If you have complaints,” he said, staring at me through blood-shot eyes, “let me know.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “We will.”
Every restaurant and hotel is obliged by law to keep a book in which dissatisfied customers can record complaints, which are supposedly read later by bureaucrats. When asked for these tomes by clients who claim they have been fed salmonella with their salmon, proprietors often discovered to their astonishment that they have mislaid them.
When we had finished the steaks, Aitor said: “Well, do you have any complaints?” his tone implying that they were as rare as truffles in the desert.
“The steaks were a little overcooked,” I said, looking at his muscular forearms and wondering if he was a stone-lifter or a woodchopper.
“Your wife cooked them.” He stared at Jonathan. “What did you think of them?”
“They were a little tough,” said Jonathan in Spanish—he was fast becoming bilingual, a great asset in the future.
“Tough, were they?” Aitor rasped his finger on his unshaven, Rocky Marciano chin and went back to the bar. To fetch his gun maybe.
When he returned he gave Jonathan a handful of boiled candies, each wrapped in silver foil.
“You’d make a good Basque,” he said.
What could have been the ghost of a smile flitted across his face. I later reported this phenomenon to shopkeepers in the village who knew him but they said I must have been hallucinating.
Diane went on the offensive. “I might have cooked the steaks,” she said, “but you were in charge.”
Aitor turned to Jonathan. “If you say the steaks were tough then they were tough. Steaks shouldn’t be too tender. How’s the candy?”
“Good,” Jonathan said, munching.
“Anyway,” I said, “we’ll be back.”
One of Aitor’s reddened eyes twitched. “Don’t hurry,” he said.
The three-legged cat arrived several days later.
To be accurate it was a three-and-a-half-legged cat. One of its front legs had been severed halfway up, probably by a trap set to catch foxes in the orange groves. It had a ring of black fur around one eye in an otherwise white coat, and sported a piratical air—a feline Long John Silver.
It came in the arms of Emilio, supposedly archopponent of domestic animals’ rights, while Diane was picking up Jonathan from kindergarten.
I was amazed at such a display of tenderness but apprehensive that he hoped to off-load the cat. “Where did you find it?” I asked him.
“In the ditch outside your house.”
“Are you sure?”
“Have I ever lied to you?”
I didn’t bother replying. “What are you going to do with it?”
“I thought you might—”
I told him I now owned a house that looked like the set of a disaster movie, a chair-chewing dog, and a pregnant cat. A three-legged cat didn’t fit into my scheme of things.
Emilio shrugged his shoulders. “Okay, I’ll take it to the vet.” To have it put down, he meant. I was appalled.
“Okay, let’s have a look at it.”
Emilio laid it gently on the floor. It sat up and tried to wash its stump. The wound had partially healed but blood still seeped from it. Perhaps it would it be kinder to have it destroyed painlessly. It looked at me, tried to raise its other front paw and fell on its face.
Emilio fondled it behind the ears. “What are you going to call it?”
“Hoppity,” I said. “What else? But that doesn’t mean I’m going to keep it—Jones would have it for breakfast. Why don’t you keep it?”
“My wife is allergic to cats.” News to me. “But in any case they can take care of themselves.”
“Not three-legged cats.”
But I had an idea. I asked Emilio to drive into Denia and buy some electric lightbulbs to get him out of the way.
When he had gone I found a short length of kindling wood and took it to the garage where he kept some of his tools. I sawed it in half, whittled it with a razor-sharp chisel, and cut a wedge from one end. Then I sandpapered my handiwork and went back into the house.
When Emilio returned, Hoppity was wearing a wooden leg attached to his stump with a bandage and adhesive tape, the bandage threaded in between prosthetic limb and open wound. (I later made a canvas harness that girdled his shoulders and chest.)
After Hoppity had made a couple of unsteady circuits of the living room, I brought in Jones on a tight leash to test his reactions to the cripple. Hackles raised, he went into the attack mode that had so far brought terror into the lives of nothing more ferocious than insects and small rodents.
Watching him superciliously, Hoppity sat in front of the fire and began to wash his whole front leg. Jones whined, lip curling. When he was within sparring distance, Hoppity unleashed a haymaker with his wooden leg that caught Jones on his already abused nose. I released him onto the terrace where he continued to repel voles and beetles.
I tapped Hoppity’s new leg. “So what do you think of my handiwork, Emilio?”
“Not bad,” he admitted grudgingly.
“Couldn’t have done better yourself?”
“Maybe not.”
Such an admission was a victory of sorts for me so I offered him a sop to his pride. “If you like I’ll say you made it.”
“You’ll tell Jesús and Ángel that?”
I nodded.
He punched me on the arm and left without saying another word.
The birds flew in a week later. A flock of them with plumage so vivid, purple, scarlet, and emerald, that they looked as though they had arrived from an Amazonian rain forest. Or had the rough red wine from the bodega at the end of the road affected my perception?
The birds circled the garden a couple of times before settling on a lemon tree and folding their wings.
They were soon followed by a posse of men, thirty or so strong, young and old, who parked their cars, Fords, Citroëns, Renaults, Peugeots, and Seats, as well as mopeds, on the road outside our gates. They wore hunting jackets with zippered pouches, peaked caps, and old flying helmets and they looked like Sicilian bandits. Shotguns lay on the backseats of some of the cars. I watched mesmerized from our driveway.
As they approached the open gates on foot the birds rose again, wheeling and free falling high in the sky, feathers bright in the afternoon sun.
The “bandits” stopped in their tracks, some making notes, others aiming field glasses at the birds.
The two-car Alicante train piped its way through the thick citrus groves at the foot of our broad-browed mountain, Montgo, half a mile away. An aircraft chalked a line across the sky.
Watched by Jones and the two cats, the birds swooped and settled again, this time on a grapefruit tree. A collective sigh issued from the visitors as they swarmed through the gates and took up positions behind the house.
I approached one of them who had the presence of a leader, a Sicilian Godfather, squat and strong with wary eyes in a seamed face, and asked him what was going on.
He put one finger to his lips.
He was telling me to be quiet on my property. I took a step forward.
At that moment Diane, who had been taking a siesta, emerged from the house and coolly appraised the visitors.
“I don’t know who they are,” I said, “or
what they’re doing here but they’ve got a nerve.”
“Shush.” She put her finger to her lips, just as the Godfather had done. “It’s all about sex.”
“Sex?” Had the rough red reached some untrammeled region of her libido?
“I’ll explain later.”
The little train tooted again as it took off from the village station and the birds rose once more.
As they flew away the Godfather approached. “We’re very grateful,” he said. “Don’t you know who I am?”
I shook my head.
He pointed at the dining hall. “I’m Tomás, your builder. You didn’t recognize me in my flying helmet.”
“If you’re that grateful,” I said, “perhaps you could start building again—it’s been weeks.”
But he was gone, heading for a green Dodge, a status symbol in the post-Franco era, followed by the rest of the pack.
Sex?
Pilar, the owner of one of the village groceries, young and pretty with a fringe of black hair, had apparently told Diane about the sort of spectacle we had just witnessed: it was an early stage in a Spanish-style pigeon race.
“But they weren’t pigeons,” I said. “They looked more like parrots.”
“Pigeons with wings painted in the colors of their owners,” Diane explained.
She went into the kitchen to make tea and I followed. Apparently the gaudy cock birds all pursued one dowdy hen. One by one they dropped out, vanquished by superior wing power or, occasionally, by beak and claw—feathers spotted by blood sometimes spun to the ground—until only a single suitor remained.
Its owner was declared the winner and picked up the prize; in a prestigious race it could be a new car or an apartment at a beach resort. And millions of pesetas changed hands in bets.
A fast and amorous pigeon was expensive, said Diane, heady with insider knowledge. One breeder bought a potential champion for five thousand dollars and it was killed the same day by a sparrow hawk.
We had chosen accidentally to live in the heart of pigeon-racing country, which was why, by unwritten law, we were expected to allow aficionados onto our property.
Spanish Lessons Page 6