Spanish Lessons

by Derek Lambert

  I went back to his shop three days before the party to buy stamps—the tobacco and postage stamp concession handed down from family to family was one of the most prized possessions in Spain—but it was shut.

  I learned later that he had died in his sleep. Nothing specific, the priest told me, just los años, the years. “I am waiting for his wife to join him,” he said.

  This she did a few days later, no doubt a tigress once again wherever they were now sharing a bowl of broth.

  Friday, the day before the roofing party, Emilio and Ángel argued about everything; Emilio volubly, Ángel with lofty disdain.

  The rented trestle tables that were to be put up in the dining hall—its walls still unplastered, its floor untiled—had been lost in transit from a warehouse in Denia. I phoned the rental company and the manager told me this was to be expected, because the driver of the delivery truck was from Cadiz in the south and hadn’t yet memorized the local geography. I slammed down the phone, my fury fueled by the knowledge that instead of a gratifying bang, he heard only a click.

  Rain was forecast.

  Algae took over the swimming pool and it turned from blue to emerald green.

  Hoppity’s truncated leg began to fester.

  Diane remembered belatedly that Friday was the day she had a weekly English-speaking slot as a DJ on a local radio station. The program for expats lasted only an hour in the morning but it would mean a significant interruption in arrangements for the party the following day.

  For four days a week the father of Jonathan’s friend Arturo, Miguel Senti, an irrepressible and genial son of Denia who, having worked in Manchester in the United Kingdom for several years, spoke fluent English, introduced the records. On Fridays his wife, Jenny, and Diane, took over. I recorded their show at home on the new music center we had just bought.

  I was proud of Diane’s initiative and urged our newfound expatriate friends to listen to the show. Spanish radio was very professional—good music and crisply pertinent chat shows—but it was refreshing to hear English on a local station instead of the BBC World Service and Voice of America on shortwave.

  Diane usually rushed into the studio just as the show was going on the air and the sound of heavy breathing could be heard. Jenny, from Birmingham, a lady of great presence, would take over until the rate of respirations subsided.

  Repartee of a fairly professional quality ensued although occasionally it became personal and domestic.

  Jenny: “So what have you been up to, Diane?”

  Diane: “Excuse me a moment, Jenny. Are you up yet, Jonathan?”

  She meant “Are you out of bed?” but listeners must have wondered who Jonathan was and why a disc jockey had to ask him if he was up. Was he a pilot awaiting permission to take off?

  Jenny, finding maternal worries infectious, sometimes followed up with queries such as: “Have you got your books together, Arturo?”

  Listeners, unaware that she wanted to make sure her son was ready for school, must by now have been totally baffled. Did Jonathan’s copilot need books to tell him how to get a Boeing 747 off the ground?

  Requests for records were plentiful, but because the stock was limited they weren’t always fulfilled. I regularly requested “Mack the Knife” and was rewarded once with a full-blooded rendering of “Land of Hope and Glory,” the unofficial British national anthem, twice by Simon and Garfunkel with “The Sounds of Silence,” a daunting title for any record show.

  That morning I primed the music center and waited for the program, punctuated by commercials for local shops and services, to begin. Diane’s contribution was preceded by the usual breathlessness.

  Then she announced that she had received a request from a Dutch artist named Sonje. The German tank commander’s adversary at my Spanish classes?

  “She has asked for a song from World War Two for a gentleman named Klaus.” So it was she.

  “Roll Out the Barrel”? “Lili Marlene”?

  A pause while, I assumed, a technical difficulty was sorted out. Then, loud and clear, “Land of Hope and Glory.”

  I brushed aside a ghostly hand from my thigh.

  Saturday dawned hazily, banks of pink cloud on the horizon. Spiders’ webs bearded with dew sparkled on the grass, small black-and-white birds, pied wagtails, strutted around the pool. The last star of the night was still pinned to the sky but fading fast.

  The trestle tables arrived—they had been delivered by mistake to a neighbor’s house. Ambrosio fixed the pool, adding crystals of copper sulfate to make it bluer and brighter. Hoppity’s stump seemed to be healing again. Prospects for the party looked altogether brighter.

  The only threats to its safe passage were the weather and the friction between Ángel and Emilio. And the unforeseen.

  The guests were due at one P.M., early for the Spanish, but they have a flexible attitude to time. At ten-thirty the pastries and cocas were delivered, at ten-forty-five the drinks. I put the sparkling wine in the fridge, three bottles in the deep freeze, and drove Jonathan, who was once again spending the day with Arturo, into Denia.

  When I got back, Ángel and Emilio were inside the covered barbecue complete with built-in bar, basin, and cupboard, preparing the ingredients for the paella for Diane to cook. Relations between the two of them seemed to be relatively calm.

  Diane was in the kitchen in a state of controlled hysteria. The cold soup was warm even though it had been in the fridge . . . the pineapples seemed too soft, the bread stale . . . no one was going to turn up anyway.

  I returned to the barbecue. Emilio was chopping meat while Ángel opened a plastic sachet of saffron. Neither spoke.

  Clouds were gathering. A rain-smelling breeze ruffled the pool. The portents were once again ominous: we had planned to serve prelunch drinks on the terrace so that guests could wander into the garden. If all of them were inside the house, tempers might fray, parochial hostilities surface.

  I could hear Diane on the phone. “The first cancellation,” she said, replacing the receiver, a note of grim told-you-so triumph in her voice.

  “Let’s have a drink,” I said.

  I opened the deep freeze to get a bottle of sparkling wine. All three bottles had burst, and their contents were frozen solid.

  The first to arrive were the builders’ foreman and his wife. He wore a births, deaths, and marriages suit, black and single-breasted, his chopped hair shone with oil, and the collar of his shirt had sawn a pink line on his neck. His dumpily pretty wife wore a floral dress and pearls. He asked for a beer, she asked for a soft drink. I stared at her blankly. I hadn’t bought any. Mineral water would do, she said, but I hadn’t got any of that either. Sangria? She recoiled in horror. I introduced her to Diane, leaped into the Jaguar and drove to Pilar’s to stock up with Coke, Tri-Naranjus (a nonfizzy orange drink), and mineral water.

  When I got back, Vicente the roofer had arrived with his girlfriend, a demure girl with long pale hair and glistening red lips. They sat on the terrace while Vicente elaborated to the foreman and his wife about the ease with which he had overcome his fear of heights.

  “Four arrivals, forty-four more to go counting the cancellations,” I said to Diane, who was dropping cubes of ice into the tureen of gazpacho.

  She shook her head. “Tomás, the boss of the building company, and his wife canceled—he’s gone to a pigeon race in Gandia, very apologetic. I doubt if anyone else will turn up. Not if they’ve got somewhere better to go.”

  Had I married a manic depressive?

  From the direction of the barbecue I heard voices raised in anger. I strode across the lawn; rain had started to fall, the powdery sort that stalks English garden parties.

  “What the hell’s going on?” I demanded.

  Ángel was wearing a chef’s hat and a blue striped apron; Emilio had stripped down to shorts and undervest.

  “That man,” Emilio said, pointing at Ángel, “is an idiot.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “He’s trying to ru
in the paella. Look.”

  A plate of meatballs stood between Ángel and the paella pan.

  “Diane’s cooking the paella,” I snapped. “You’re just assistants. If the ingredients she has chosen aren’t ready by one-thirty you’re both fired.”

  Not the judgment of Solomon, but it left them both stunned. By the time I got back to the house the rain had thickened; all we needed was thunder and lightning.

  Guests were arriving thick and fast now. The driveway, relaid with new paving stones, was crowded with cars, others were parked on the roadside.

  Maria, Diane’s slow-moving home help, was pouring champagne in tulip glasses—I had substituted a tape of the “Radetzky March” for a waltz to kick-start her—and distributing peanuts, slices of cold tortilla, and potato chips to guests who were drifting into insular groups dictated by profession, age, and means, most of them in the dining hall and living room.

  The priest approached. “I haven’t seen you in church lately, Señor Lambert.”

  “I’ve been very busy, Father.”

  “God is very busy too but he always finds time to listen to prayers.” His plump face was damp with perspiration but a gray suit and clerical collar had transformed him from humble clergyman into ecclesiastical dude.

  “I’ll come tomorrow, I promise.”

  “Never make promises you can’t keep.”

  “I’ll be there, Father,” I said.

  He held out his glass and Maria replenished it. “Better than altar wine,” he said appreciatively. “Do you always serve champagne before a meal?”

  “Doesn’t everyone?”

  “Oh, no—in Spain it’s served after a meal.”

  Glass in hand, I circulated, listening to incomprehensible Valenciano, taking my cue from the language of the hands. The women, freshly delivered from hairdressers, mostly wore lightweight suits, blouses, and necklaces, flapping their fans irritably when they were ignored by their menfolk. The men shed their jackets and lit cigarettes. No ashtrays! I found a couple in the back of our cabinets and supplemented them with saucers.

  Diane, wearing an apron printed with tropical fruit, went out to the barbecue to cook the paella.

  Rain drummed on the new roof of the dining hall. The air sweated despite the absence of a door or glass in the windows.

  Jones made his move while Maria was laying out soup bowls on the two long trestle tables covered with damask tablecloths. Until now, although he’d frightened a couple of children with one of his exuberant welcomes, he had behaved himself, with athletic dexterity catching potato chips and peanuts thrown to him.

  Suddenly he hurled himself between the builders’ foreman and Pilar, knocked over a couple of chairs and, barking hysterically, disappeared through the doorway.

  The enemy was at the gate—the woodman. “That dog should be shot,” he said as Jones hurled himself against the wrought-iron bars.

  “He lives here, you don’t,” I told him.

  Diane joined me and spoke to him in Valenciano.

  “He doesn’t want to come to the party, does he?” I asked her.

  “He wants you to know that if you order your orange and olive tree logs now they will be two pesetas a kilo cheaper than if you order later.”

  “Tell him to come back tomorrow at ten.” Jones had my complete support in his dislike of this man—he was a hustler and an animal hater.

  “Why ten?”

  “Because I’ll be in church. When he comes tell him we want them three pesetas cheaper . . . that’s fair. If he doesn’t agree threaten him with Jones.”

  The rain had stopped but a wind had sprung up, blowing leaves and grass clippings through the windows and doorway into the dining hall. I saw Ángel’s sloe-eyed wife remove a pine needle from her glass of wine and drop it in the fireplace.

  When the wind finally died down I heard a splash and a shout. I ran into the garden. A small girl was struggling and gasping in the deep end of the pool and two boys were stripping off to mount a rescue bid—they had probably pushed her in.

  I thrust toward her the net, attached to a long pole, for skimming the surface of the water, told her to catch hold of it, and pulled her to the side of the pool. She sat on the grass and began to cry. “I didn’t want to be rescued,” she said between sobs. “I can swim.”

  She was taken home by her mother, one of the village hair-dressers. Ten minutes later she was back wearing another party dress and threatening to jump in the pool to prove she could swim.

  I was too distracted to take much notice of her because I had lost the Spanish flag that was supposed to be raised on the roof after lunch. As master of ceremonies I was a failure. It was beginning to look as if I didn’t give a damn about anything, carelessly losing the national flag and displaying minimal interest in little girls dicing with death in the swimming pool.

  I told the guests to take their seats, guiding them to their chairs and making sure that princes sat next to paupers.

  Maria served the gazpacho. I poured wine—no one wanted my sangria. Nothing more could go wrong.

  The crash registered only peripherally because I was deep into a debate with the policeman and the owner of the pharmacy about street lighting in the village. But a metallic thud followed by stifled cursing penetrated my consciousness.

  Maria cleared the soup bowls, I refilled wineglasses while the guitarist played flamenco, coaxing wistful smiles from a couple from Andalusia, the home of the gypsy music. Through the doorway I could see blue sky above the cypress hedge.

  From the terrace where we had seated five children—Jonathan could have stayed if we had known they were coming—came the sounds of giggling and barking. I went outside but nothing more serious than Jones embarking on a gecko stakeout was happening—he would sit for an hour at a time willing the small sticky-footed lizards to fall off the face of a wall.

  In the barbecue on the far side of the lawn Ángel and Emilio were wrapping damp cloths round the two handles of the piping hot paella pan. Steam rose from the paddy field of yellow rice within its circumference. Often families sat round the pan eating directly from it, prospecting for the crisp soccarat beneath the rice. But this paella was on the heroic scale and we had brought a plastic table from the terrace into the dining hall to accommodate it.

  Ángel and Emilio placed the pan on the table. Plates in hands, guests lined up to be served by Maria, returning to the trestle tables which, put end to end, stretched the length of the room, to await the go-ahead from the foreign couple with their peculiar ideas of protocol.

  Diane forked a peeled prawn and everyone began to eat. The chewing slowed, a faint grating could be heard. Paper napkins were applied to lips. Despair settled coldly on me as I realized that the crunchy morsel in my mouth was not a crispy vegetable, but gravel!

  I removed a piece from my mouth, asked the guests to lay down their spoons and forks, and went outside to confront Ángel and Emilio, who were in the barbecue.

  They confessed in a welter of recriminations. They had carried the paella pan to the front of the house, intending to bring it through the doorway of the dining hall but one of them had slipped on the rain-wet paving stones—I never discovered which—and they had spilt the contents onto the driveway where builder’s gravel had been piled.

  “And you put it all back in the pan?” I shut my eyes. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this.”

  “We took it back to the barbecue,” Emilio said. “We picked out as much gravel as we could. Then we smoothed it over.”

  I stormed back to the house. The dining hall was quiet, guests staring at their plates with awe and amazement. I told them what had happened.

  Tears gathered in Diane’s eyes.

  It was Pilar who ended the crisis. “We’re not blind, are we?” she demanded, addressing the other guests. “We can all see a piece of gravel and take it out.” She took a spoonful of rice, removed a chip of gravel from it and began to eat.

  One by one others followed. The extranjeros, the forei
gners, had tried: that was what mattered.

  Soon they were all eating as tentatively as hedgehogs making love. Relief surged through me and I too began to eat.

  After that the party rallied. Doughnuts and pastries, bowls of fruit glistening with ice, Manchego cheese, brandy and more champagne were dispatched. I found the Spanish flag in the laundry basket. Vicente tied it to the chimney, where it fluttered regally in the breeze.

  I squeezed Diane’s hand. She squeezed back. It was our first communal get-together and we sensed we were on the threshold of acceptance. It would take much longer—and we would always be the extranjeros—but the party had established that we wanted to belong, a sentiment not always evinced by foreigners. What had helped, of course, were the mishaps, which had dispelled any suspicion that we were patronizing: it was difficult to resent anyone who served a gravel paella.

  The children played football in the dripping garden. One speared his arm on a rapier-tipped blade of a yucca that my shears had missed; his mother dabbed the wound with a scarlet antiseptic—he told the others it was blood and they touched it reverently.

  The musician, black curls bobbing, fetched a piano accordion and played the latest pop music hits. I folded the trestle tables and danced with Ángel’s wife. Other couples took to the floor, shyly at first, as if they had just met, then with nimble-footed abandon. Emilio sang robust songs.

  At six o’clock the musician departed to play at his own saint’s day party. But the festive spirit still pervaded the house so I grabbed the first cassette that came to hand and slotted it into the music center.

  The tape whirred for a moment. Then I heard two familiar voices emerging from the loudspeakers.

  “So what have you been up to, Diane?”

  “Excuse me a moment, Jenny. Are you up yet, Jonathan?”

  I pressed Fast Forward until “The Sounds of Silence” filled the room.

  EIGHTEEN

  The Gecko Blaster

  The plasterer arrived on what I had hoped would be a tranquil morning. The dog days of summer had passed, stems of smoke rose serenely from bonfires in the citrus groves, smudges of white cloud drifted toward the sea, almond pickers knocking nuts from their trees with poles punctuated the daylight hours with a drowsy clatter.