Peeling Oranges (14 page)

‘There was a baby.’

‘Yes,’ I say hesitantly, ‘that... that was me.’

‘Ah.’ She pauses to reflect for a moment. ‘So you are the son of Martha, how estrange life is. Let me look at you, yes you are like her, the blue eyes. Ah yes.’

‘I’m here to find out something,’ I say.

Perhaps it is a maternal quality about her that attracts me. Perhaps it is her big bosom or her openness, or maybe it is desperation on my part. Diaries after all are only words written in ink, silent recorders. I want to hear a human voice confirm or negate my fears.

‘I came to find out if Patrick Foley was... I mean apart from the name…’

‘Your mother never told you?’

‘She was always too ill. I was afraid …I’m sorry, I feel a little… ’

She sighs. ‘Martha was like that. She made life more difficult for herself by keeping so much inside.’

She pours coffee into the china cups. They are so delicate, the coffee, viscous-like, seems too heavy for them to bear. ‘It was a strange country for Patricio to be in. I sometimes called him Patricio, but of course not in the eh…
embajada?’

‘I know, the embassy.’

‘I am forgetting my English. How could I forget such a word? All the years I spent there. But Espain for Patricio, it must have been estrange.’

‘Why strange?’

‘
Pues
, in Espain families were encouraged to have lots of children. General Franco, he made rewards to husbands. It is funny, he gave nothing to the mothers. Patricio was a lonely man, don’t you know.’

I think of the phrase,
don’t you know?
Could she have learned it from my mother – was it possible? – as both women sat side by side in a Madrid patio on warm evenings, when words and lace were embroidered together into a fabric of lies.

Conflicting feelings whirl around in my head. Her voice, though gentle, is like a frontal assault on the shards of my family.

‘I don’t know if I should say this, but Martha, I don’t think she...’

‘My mother was not promiscuous.’ I say.

She notices the emotion rising in my voice.

‘Oh Derek,
niño,
’ she says embracing me.

‘I think my mother was …coerced,’ I say, my voice almost breaking.

‘Coerced?’

‘Forced against her will.’

‘
Claro,’
she says, squeezing me into her bosom; but I know she is really saying that a son must always find an excuse for an errant mother.

‘There was someone who came to her,’ I say, releasing myself from her embrace (feeling self-conscious now). ‘He had control over her. He used our house.’

‘You should not think on things like that, Derek. They are things of the past. You must find peace with yourself. And you came all this voyage. Have you money?’

Like my aunt Peg who was forever giving to me as a child, she dips into a leather handbag and, ignoring my protestations, stuffs money into my pocket.

‘Will you be all right,
niño
?’

‘Yes,’ I say, ‘thank you.’

‘Be careful out there; those explosions.’

As I am going out the door, she says, ‘There was one thing that nobody knew about Patricio.’

‘What was that?’ I say.

‘What he did on Thursday nights.’

‘
You
knew?’

‘Yes. I knew.’

She pauses and looks at me. ‘I don’t know if I should tell you.’ Her voice is deadly serious, but I can’t help feeling that she is teasing me a little at the same time.

‘It’s all right,’ I say.

‘He used to visit someone in Barcelona, in the
barrio chino
.’

‘The
barrio chino?
’’

‘Near the
Ramblas
. He knew a woman. Well she would be a woman now. Then she was only a young girl. Her name was Luisa. Of course she may not be there anymore. It was a long time ago.’

***

When I get off the train in the Catalan capital, I book into a pensión. I feel affluent – I hadn’t realised until I came away from señora Martínez that she had given me such a large sum of money. I go to the post office and post a card to Mam. The postmistress gives me sweets as change instead of
céntimos.
‘Everything is fine,’ I write to Mam (I had quickly learned in boarding school the futility of expressing to her epistolary emotions). I sit at a café and study some Spanish from my book, but I am restless. I can’t concentrate. The words
barrio chino
keep ringing in my ears. A group of hippies whom I recognise from Cuadro come and sit nearby. They smoke and strum guitars, and some of them are still complaining about being ordered off the beach by ‘fascist pigs’. I ask them if they had seen Willy, and I describe him. But they shake their heads except for one long-haired guy who says he thought he saw someone who looked like Willy heading down the coast. ‘Yeah, a way-out man with hair oil,’ he says. ‘They’re all hitching down south, all the way down to Africa. It’s like a human chain, man, you know, and all the women getting laid.’

***

I hear the sound of bells. Sunday. I follow the sound which brings me to a side-street church. In the crevice of one of its outside pillars is the mould of a hand. People, before going into the building, place their hand into the stone indentation, meticulously splaying their fingers to fit the mould, and hold their hand there for a few seconds as if to receive some vibes or spirit from it. Others kiss the stone. I can hear the sound coming from inside. It is a Mass in Catalan. I enter in an attempt to hear the
Word
in a different grammar. Perhaps it will afford me new insights apart from providing a temporary lull from loneliness. But it has the contrary effect: it exacerbates my feeling of remove from closely-knit families, well-dressed with the spit and polish of Sunday. They colonise entire pews: mothers and maiden aunts in mantillas, scented fathers, supplicating grandparents and pristine children in their immaculate brightly coloured suits and dresses. They leave no room for an individual; act as stiff as statues when I try to push in, and blow me away with the swish of their fans.
La familia –
a monolith, casting a self-satisfied glance at the unworthy one who has to crouch down in the back of the church, confirming that his problem with the
Word
is not of a linguistic nature.

I come away and wander up and down the
Ramblas
amid the bustle of the stalls and the bright colours of the vendors’ flowers. I watch young, courting couples with their chaperons walking behind at a distance,
de paseo.
And at the end of the
Ramblas
: the sea and Columbus’
Santa María
with promises of a new world.

Several ragged children approach me aggressively demanding
céntimos
.
‘Por Dios, señor…’
they shout. I throw the sweets and some change towards them and I watch them scramble and vie with each other, not for the sweets, but for the feel of a coin, the feel of capital, like Liberties’ children in a grush.

The rich pass by,
los ricos
who are afraid of a pinprick, ornately decked out on their way to the opera.

As night falls I watch the prostitutes, the
rameras or putas,
standing in shadows.

Suddenly my arm is pressed.

‘¿Señor, quiere compañía…?’

She looks about nineteen or twenty and, although she gives a hint of her wares with a bum freezer of a skirt, her face is masked in thick makeup.

‘I’m looking for someone,’ I say in faltering Spanish
,
‘someone who is called Luisa.
’’

‘¿Luisa?’

‘Si.’

‘¿La Santa?’

‘Si,’
I say, not understanding what she means.

She laughs. ‘She is old for you. But if you wish?’

I go with her through a warren of streets, and then into a tall building and up many flights of stairs. I feel the
frisson
of danger once more
,
like when I turned towards the lighthouse in Cuadro, wanting to turn back, yet daring to go on.

She knocks at a door bearing the number 47B.

‘Oye, Santa.
There’s a young fellow here to see you. Without his mother.’ She laughs again. I understand what she says but I haven’t the opportunity to take umbrage, for she has gone, her laughter fading in the darkness of the stairs.

‘Un momento,’
says a voice from inside.

The door is opened by a woman adjusting her blond hair. She is perhaps in her early forties, dressed loosely in a blouse and skirt. She is like the girl from Patrick’s magazine. Older, but the same dark eyes; just like her, except for the colour of her hair.

‘¿Inglés?’

‘No,’ I say, ‘but I speak English.’

She beckons me into the room. A naked bulb shines down on a bed, a little table with a drawer, a sink and a fridge; and on a shelf, with a cracked ceramic vase.

A window with open shutters looks out on the night.

‘¿Americano?’

‘No,’ I say,
irlandés.’
I am slow to say where I am from this time, partly because of shame, and partly because, if she did know Patrick Foley, it might make her suspicious of me.

‘¿Holandés?’

‘No, irlandés.’

‘Ah, irlandés,’
she says rolling her r, something which I had not done. Nationalities can change in the slip of a tongue.

‘The country of the bang bang.’

‘That is only in the north,’ I say, ‘not where I live.’

‘Ah.’

‘Not where you see on the TV,’ I say, trying to confirm the point. ‘I live in the republic.’

‘
Viva la república
,’ she says. ‘We tried to live in one too. You like dark hair?’

‘Yes,’ I say, ‘it’s okay.’

She takes off her wig. Her hair is dark brown. ‘The espanzish,’ she says, ‘they like
rubia
. They think it is more foreign.’

She sits on the bed and starts to unbutton her blouse. ‘You asked for me especially?’

‘Yes. I…’

‘You are timid.’

‘One of the girls... she…’

‘Ah yes, sometimes they send the timid ones to me to make up for the other ones.’

‘I’m not timid,’ I say, taking offence.

She smiles. ‘You have a kind look on your face, s
impático
. You are lonely for your
patria,
yes? Let me...’

She puts her hand on my crotch.

‘I must be going. I made a mistake,’ I say, removing her hand. Maybe I was like my mother after all, an adventurer but only in safe coves.

‘Already? Wait a while.’

She offers me a drink. I hesitate. I’d heard in the hostel about
Spanish fly
and substances that can alter the way we are in our heads, in our organs.

‘It’s all right,’ she says, ‘it’s good.’

Slowly I raise the glass to my lips and sip. It is some kind of liqueur with a flavour of orange. ‘Where did you learn your English?’ I ask, trying to steer her away from the physical.

‘Oh, from the
marineros
and distinct clients. You are sad?’

‘I’m not sad.’

‘It is all right to be sad,’ she says. ‘I am sad if I don’t bring in enough pesetas for
el tío
.’

‘Uncle?’

‘Yes. Uncle.’

Before I can offer her money or do anything, she has removed her clothes; the already loosened blouse and skirt flow down effortlessly from her frame. She comes towards me smiling, and unbuttons and removes my shirt.

‘Oh, you’re burned,’ she says. ‘You are so red. You must be careful of the sun. Such fair skin.’ As she turns to get cooling lotion from the drawer of her little table, I see the shape of a triangle scorched into her left buttock.

She rubs the lotion on my shoulders, her fingers sliding slowly down my chest towards my stomach. Her breasts are swinging as she works, a nipple grazing my skin. I look at the folds in her thighs, the mole with little tufts of hair on her right arm.

She undoes the buckle of my belt. I resist.

‘What is wrong?’ It is not annoyance but concern that is in her voice.

‘I must go. Perhaps tomorrow.’

I put my shirt back on and leave pesetas on the bed.

‘You
must
go?’

‘I must,’ I say.

‘And your name? For when you call again.’

‘Derek,’ I shout, as I hurry out of the room.

***

I think of Luisa as I lie in bed in my pensión. I think of Patrick Foley. I should have asked her straight out if she knew him. She could be a different Luisa. I was afraid of what I might hear. I need a little time. Everyone needs a little time to confront the unsavoury aspects of their lives. I wonder about the identity of my birthfather – no, that term is too complimentary. I wonder about the identity of my begetter, my engenderer. Is he dead? If not, does he know? Does he know anything about me?

I look up at a full moon through the open shutters. It is like the Host just hanging there without a priest to hold it up. I hear the sound of a ship’s siren, and I wonder how many men bring children into the world through dark ports? I turn on my side. Sometimes even boys who are
nearing manhood cry themselves to sleep.