A Year in the World

by Frances Mayes

  Sevilla is full of lived life, surprises, and secret loveliness. We locate La Venera, the Venus, a marble scallop shell on a house that once was the center of the city. In steps and in leagues, legal measurements once were made from here. Two well-fed nuns hoist a stuffed garbage can between them, struggling to keep the can away from their long gray habits. From birdcages perched on balconies or hanging in windows, trills and chirps light the steps of the people below. Ah, Love of God Street. Bells start the dogs barking.

  We dip in and out of churches, admiring the little Arab windows, which look as if they’re formed by big star-and-moon cookie cutters, and the whitewashed arches in San Marcos, and the plaza behind it laden with oranges. In Santa Catalina we spot an Arab arch behind the Christian arch. The air clouds with the cinnamon smell of incense. By the altar to Santa Lucia, hundreds of pairs of eyes and even sunglasses adorn four panels. I exist visually. If I ever laid down a votive in a church, it would be to Santa Lucia.

  To place such a votive, as we see in the archaeological museum, is an ancient instinct. Some of the first found objects shaped in bronze were ex-votos, just as we’ve observed in the Cortona museum. The Etruscans left thousands of these little animals and figures. Farmers turn them up when they plow. Please, bless my girl. Please, cure my liver. Thank you for tipping me clear of the cart. Please, let me cross the swollen river. Thank you for sparing me when I had fever. The instinct to offer a gift to the gods seems deeply human. The archaeological museum also has a wall of marble squares, each with a footprint. These are ex-votos to Isis and Nemesis. The names of the ancient devotees are carved with each footprint. Oddly moving, these surviving gestures toward the holy. They remind me of the thirty-thousand-year-old handprints on the cave wall at Pech Merle. Here, too, we see little heads of bulls thought to have been offered as sacrifice.

  The bull! How he charges through Mediterranean history, how he survives as an icon! Spain itself is the shape of a stretched bull hide, Lorca says. Where did the bull symbol start? We’ve seen them as we’ve hunched and crawled through prehistoric caves in France. Early painters adorned Altamira’s walls with mighty bulls. In the great hall of the bulls at Lascaux, one bull is eighteen feet long, a most potent cultural symbol. Ed tells me that Europa was a Phoenician princess seduced by Zeus while she bathed in the sea with friends. In the form of a bull, he charmed the girls, and when Europa playfully mounted him for a ride, he charged into the sea and swam to Crete. This may be a sun myth, he speculates, since the Semitic origin of Europa probably means “west,” to which she was brought from the east, the place of sunrise. In almost all the paintings of Europa and the bull, she wears a filmy, flowing dress with at least one breast exposed. The white bull is crowned with flowers as he plows through the waves. At the Villa Giulia in Rome, a 520 B.C. panel shows Europa and the bull accompanied by fish, seabirds, dolphins, and an angel holding rings to clash in each hand. How many artists since have picked up their brushes in the service of this myth: Tintoretto, Raphael, Boucher, Guido Reni, Veronese, Moreau, Picasso, Klee, Ernst, et cetera. On ancient, thumb-worn coins, on Greek vases, and in the paintings, she always holds on to the bull’s horns. Since Zeus chose the bull form, obviously the power of this symbol in Crete predated the myth.

  How the bull’s horns spread throughout Europe as a magical symbol fascinates me. Far into fable and scripture and history, the slaying of a bull, and the trophy of its horn, enabled the warrior to marry the princess or assume the kingship. In Hebrew scripture, the messiah was to accomplish this same feat. In the scriptures, a reem, a large bull, gives the root to the name Abraham. The twists and turns of the bull legend reach from the horned headdresses of Abyssinian Astarte worship, to Minerva, to Mary, standing on a crescent moon, which is also the bull’s horn symbol. According to Plutarch’s Lives, Theseus, spoiling for action, went off to fight a bull in Marathon. He’d then take the conquered live bull to sacrifice at Delphi. Even today a common gesture in our town is the raised two fingers—the corno, or horn—showing the sign of a cuckold. Turning the two fingers toward the ground means “Let it not happen here.” Newborn babies are given gold bracelets or necklaces with a coral dangle made in the shape of a horn—protection against the evil eye. That legendary half-bull, half-man who lived in the labyrinth at Knossos, and the bull-leaping games acrobats played—these are deep inside our collective Western psyches. I, too, wear an ivory horn and several amulets against the evil eye under my shirt.

  In the Plaza Alfalfa (I never thought of this as a Spanish word) the pet market is in full swing when we pass through—green and patterned parrots, exotic shrimp-colored birds, canaries, turquoise and yellow songbirds, and some that look as if they’ve been netted from the nearest tree. Fish, puppies, kittens, and crowds of people, many of whom are under ten and begging for a hamster. I hate the crush and the smell of feathers and bird lime. Disgusting. We focus on a clutch of nuns, following them out of the mob, their voluminous gray habits moving in front of us like a rain cloud.

  The list of tapas we’ve tasted has grown. In my notebook I’ve listed in mixed English and Spanish:

  Spinach with bacon and walnuts

  Pork loin with green pepper sauce

  Moussaka with cheese on top

  Solomillo con ali-oli (small beef filet with aioli)

  Bacalao con salmorejo (cod with dense gazpacho)

  Pringa casera (minced meat paté)

  Shrimp croquettes

  Pan de ajo con carne mechá casera

  (garlic bread with larded loin)

  Chipirón a la plancha (grilled squid)

  Empanadas con jamón (pastry with ham)

  Empanadas de carne (with meat)

  Fried anchovies

  Fried tiny fish that look like minnows

  We have had late dinners at several of Sevilla’s top-rated restaurants, which often are in lovely buildings. Some we found overblown and mincingly formal. Others are rustic, with hams hanging from the ceiling and the grill fired up for fish and steaks. We find that we prefer the adventure of going to three or four tapas bars instead. The restaurants seem more or less like restaurants on other trips, whereas the tapas scene connects us immediately to the rhythm and liveliness of the culture.

  We change hotels when our reservation at the Don Alfonso runs out, and suddenly shiny little Czech Skodas are all over the grounds for a convention. We check into a hotel in the Santa Cruz area, where we stay for a couple of days because of the lovely courtyard and the exotic but homey atmosphere. Then we move to another courtyard hotel, where we take two small rooms. On the first day the electricity fizzles out and we go without heat, light, and hot water overnight. No one seems too concerned, so we just walk and walk, come home, light candles in the room, and brush our teeth with bottled water. I’m consoled by all the patterns of tile on the stairways, the trickling fountains, the guitarist who plays in the loggia late in the afternoon, and the desk clerk who loves the history of Sevilla. He greets us, “Did you do a good journey?” The English infinitives to make, to do are hell for foreigners in any conjugation and often produce lovely twists. The next day we are moved to a larger room, as a reward, I suppose, for not complaining. I soak in the big blue cement bathtub and think of the poet Antonio Machado, born in one of these palatial houses, where he heard always the sound of water falling. As an adult, he dreamed of a fountain flowing in his heart, dreamed of a hot sun shining in his heart. Such dreams came straight from this place of his childhood and nurtured him throughout his life. Lying in bed, I imagine my heart as a hot sun.

  Andalucían towns always have been a source of fantasy. I’m shocked to find that Sevilla has plain-to-ugly surrounds and way too much traffic. Somehow traffic never figures into my travel idylls. It’s a heavy spoiler when I arrive somewhere and could be on San Francisco’s awful Highway 101. Many European towns have awakened. They’ve closed off traffic in historic parts of their cities. Florence leads, and I wish all cities would follow suit. We quickly learn where to go in Sevi
lla’s old parts to experience the place’s essence and to avoid cars. The horse-drawn carriages manage to feel authentic, lending romance with the sound of hooves and the slow pace.

  One of the most civilized aspects of this town is the vast greenness of Parque de María Luisa, which must be a cool green respite when Sevilla turns into the frying pan of Andalucía in summer. We walk the whole morning amid the mimosa and banana plants. The park is full of whimsy—fountains and duck ponds, tile benches, gazebos, and waterfalls. Great tropical trees with roots that seem to pour out at the bottom of the trunk, at home since the explorers returned from New World voyages, make me search for identifying labels, but few have them. One, an árbol de las lianas, came from the Amazon. The Swiss Family Robinson could have made their home in the spreading branches. A blind man walks slowly down a path. He knows his way, perhaps by scents and the texture of gravel underfoot. At the monument to the nineteenth-century local poet Gustavo Bécquer, someone has left an extravagant bouquet of bright lilies in the arms of one of the allegorical marble women. Her cool flesh and the hot pink flowers surprise the January morning and make me hope the poet’s language was capable of such contrasts. A local history describes him as “an incorrigible Bohemian, who earned a precarious living by translating foreign novels,” and who “crooned a weird elfin music.” I know him as hopelessly romantic, in the sappy mode, but who occasionally broke through with sharp perceptions such as:

  In a brilliant lightning flash we are born

  And the brilliance still lasts when we die.

  So short is life.

  Something about a park is timeless: glimpsing the wild bouquet in the arms of personified love, and the poet up on his pedestal, I think of them standing there all through the blunt and stultifying Franco fascist years, as though love poetry mattered. I resolve to start leaving armfuls of flowers at my holy spots, not just a wildflower or sprig of daphne picked along the way.

  We exit the park near the last place where people were burned during that precursor of fascism, that evil twin of Franco’s era, the Inquisition, when church and royalty in cahoots went unilaterally crazy, unchecked and blind. Sevilla—here people burned, here marble statues to venerated poets are still visited, here the energy of flamenco could raise the dead, spin them around, and lay them in the ground again.

  In no other city have I grasped so quickly the layout of neighborhoods and monuments. A glance at a sixteenth-century map in a book was all it took. The park, the river, the anchor of the Giralda tower, and that long walk the first day make me feel that I know this place instinctively. We even take shortcuts and land exactly where we want. Getting to know a place on foot connects me to particulars—a green apartment building with a terrace jumbled with banana plants, a grand, peeling turquoise door, the mustard-yellow trimmed bullring with red and black posters of matadors, the tall palms pinwheeling in the sky, the enchanting patio gardens and trickling fountains along Callejón del Agua, Water Street.

  I could live here. Is there a Callejón del Sol for me, a Sun Street? With my spotted background in Spanish, and the knowledge I have of Italian, I could cobble together a walking-around Spanish in a few months. I begin to imagine a house with a two-level courtyard and a fountain always singing; tiled rooms, patterned like oriental rugs, are dappled with light from the intricate windows. In the summer I can press my cheek to the tiles for coolness. The gardens are rooms, as the Arabs knew, and the sound of water smooths my sleep. Perhaps I dream of the desert. The shutters of carved wood close on storms that sweep across the plain. The bath is a remnant of a Moorish hamman, with a deep soaking pool. The vision includes a small blond child playing in the street and calling out his first word in Spanish: amigo.

  I feel especially at home on Sunday morning in the Plaza del Salvador, where families sit at outdoor cafés sipping orange juice and taking in the sun, while babies climb out of their strollers to chase pigeons. After mass at Iglesia del Salvador, the handsome dark-suited young men with slick hair and the girls in short, short skirts stand under the trees at outdoor tables, as though at a party, drinking beer and eating chips. A cart sells pinwheels. All this under fragrant orange trees in the company of the looming church built on the foundations of a mosque. Rather fantastic children’s clothing shops and bridal shops surround the plaza. Probably the impetus for both occasions begins here. We succumb and buy a white outfit for the baby we await in our family: fine cotton smocked a million times in blue, finishes with multiple tucks and dangling ribbons. I wonder who will slide into the pleated arms and pose for a photograph before carrots stain the front.

  A taxi ride away we find a wonderful art exhibit in a Carthusian monastery that became a ceramic tile factory, then was restored by the city as a gallery. Even in January some roses and geraniums perk up the courtyards. Vines droop like long hair, blooming with ornamental pink trumpets. The vibrant paintings lead us back into the city to explore the contemporary galleries. At night we try desserts late at various tapas bars: orange rice pudding with cinnamon, quince with cheeses, fig biscuits with walnut sauce. And late, late flamenco. One venue featured a young male dancer full of passion and precision. I was intrigued by his guitarist singer, whose involvement with the dancer seemed almost to make the dance possible. He strained toward the dancer, intently watched, egged him on, pushed his own energy into the dancer. The performance began with a piercing cry, “Aaiiee . . . ,” a skull-ringing wail that might have originated with Jewish rituals, for the flamenco weaves the traditions of Gypsies, Muslims, and Jews, bringing their sorrow and passion to indigenous folk music.

  I love the moment when the dance suddenly stops and the dancer walks off, as casually as though the light turns and he crosses the street. Snap. The mood is broken. That dramatic shift signifies the difference between the duende of the dance and the normal world where we reveal little of what we feel. We like the new phrases we’re learning—toque de palmas, clapping, pitos, finger snapping, taconeo, heel stamping. All contribute to the body as instrument. Castañuelas comes from chestnuts, and perhaps the first castanets were improvised from two dried ones. Ed buys the CD to take home, perhaps to listen to while we cook, so far away from this courtyard open to the stars. “Do you feel that by experiencing flamenco, another room in your mind has opened?” I ask.

  “I had a pretty stereotyped impression before. Now we’ll be listening to the music, recalling the faces, the passion. Rip-roaring passion.”

  “Good flamenco tours are sellouts all over the world. Did you know that there are three hundred flamenco schools in Japan? Japan! The center of decorum! What explains the rise in popularity of flamenco, here and everywhere?”

  “A yearning. This art touches a yearning we have. The unspoken longings way inside the heart,” Ed says.

  What man can travel this long road and not fill up his soul with crazy arabesques?

  The day arrives when we are to leave, though we are not going far. We will go to a hacienda in the country where they raise bulls and horses. Sevilla falls away quickly, and we are buzzing in our small rented car toward the vega, the plain. Although I never thought so with Las Vegas, the word carries a charge. Vega—we begin to experience it as we drive out of Sevilla and the big sky opens over the slightly rolling fields, some with olive trees, some planted with crops, some left to the bulls. My imagined house in Sevilla quickly reabsorbs into a fantasy of a country hacienda, a cortijo. We pass them every few miles, stark white, walled, big trees, paradises on their own out in the country.

  We check into the Cortijo El Esparragal, three thousand hectares forming a private world with the courtyard as the center of it. A cloister furnished with carved wooden chairs and benches surrounds the arched courtyard with fountain and potted plants. The walls are covered in bull heads and bridles, as in a Florida restaurant where sailfish and marlin hang above the tables. One bull has a bloody tongue and a sword in his back. This is so like the gory religious imagery I found shocking in the Prado. Out in the fields horses play, runn
ing from one fence to the opposite. Your heart has to somersault when you see these handsome animals run, turn with a neigh, and race full tilt in the other direction.

  We are the only guests, and it’s odd—we are in someone’s house. All of the family, the girl at the reception tells us, live in Madrid. We settle into our room on a small leafy courtyard. Ed cracks the window so the murmur of the fountain pours in the window. He’s soon out the door. The lure of the bull pasture, the long dirt roads to drive in silence, the big shady cork trees, the fragrance of ripe oranges, the private chapel, the miniature bullring—the intact world of this hacienda immediately seems compelling to us. I would like a bell tower on my house, and miles of bougainvillea blazing back at the sun. I would like one of these white horses. I would like to paint blue borders and evil eye circles on my house. The stark white haciendas, scattered through the countryside at greater distances than the Tuscan farmhouses, resemble Texas ranches—but of course, those Lazy X ranches descended from the Spanish, as did the tradition of horsemanship.

  Having previously traveled only to Barcelona and Majorca in Spain, I did not know how close visually Mexico is to Spain. I attributed characteristics of Mexico to the indigenous population as much as to Spain until we drive through tiny Andalucían towns with their forlorn, weedy parks, their bodegas painted with waist-high bands of aqua or ochre, with human-sized Coca-Cola bottles out front, their dry fountains, and the open doorways where people sit knitting, smoking, or shelling beans. Shops as small as vending machines overflow with ladders, oranges, shoes, paint—all jumbled together. Often in Mexico I have thought, Where is everybody? I remember this just as Ed says, “It’s quiet as the day after Judgment Day.” One lone woman with a bundle of wash poised on her hip sways down the cracked sidewalk. We could be in the Sierra Nevada villages outside San Miguel. But Ed says, “This is limbo. Or this is where you come for a grande dose of duende.”