Sanibel Scribbles (46 page)

In mid-December she turned twenty-two years old, and each person in her Spanish family kissed her
dos veces
, once on each cheek. Rosario made paella, and the entire family claimed it to be the best in Spain. She also baked a chocolate-glazed torte, and everyone drank
Rioja
wine. A few
times Vicki caught Isabella deeply involved in a daydream stare, but they never spoke a word about either Ron or Rafael. Perhaps she felt that sharing it with others might further betray what her own parents didn’t know. Vicki respected this.

After eating a piece of torte, Isabella handed her a box of dark chocolate, and together the women indulged in the moment, perhaps to satisfy the cravings they each had, one for Ron, the other for Rafael. Why did chocolate do this? It terrified Vicki that chocolate brought Rafael to mind. Didn’t that mean something serious? Like love?

The women closed their eyes and savored each bite. They did this until the last round truffle disappeared. Isabella held her stomach, concerned with weight gain. Vicki did notice that Isabella had put on pounds in recent weeks. Overdosed and fatigued, they lay on the hardwood floor of the apartment holding their stomachs and laughing at first, and then crying from feelings of gluttony and abuse.

“Mañana, mañana, mañana,”
said Vicki. “I will eat healthy tomorrow.”
Mañana
came and Nacho invited her for a walk through the Rastro, Madrid’s biggest flea market and a tradition thriving over five hundred years. They started at Plaza de Cascorro and walked downhill toward Rio Mananares, then walked shoulder to shoulder in crowds down Calle Ribera de Curtidores.

“Have you lost anything since you’ve been in Madrid?” he asked her.

“No, why?”

“Because you’d probably find it here for resale,” he said as they stopped to look at an assortment of used-looking leather purses.

“Wise to wear one of these,” declared Vicki as she pulled money out of the fanny pack securely fastened around her waist. She bought a bullfighting poster and a copy of a Valazquez painting, and wanted badly to buy some of the Franco-era furniture. Instead she bought her father a leather day planner at another table. She had already bought her mother blue-and-silver earrings from a day trip to Toledo, and her sister a Madrid T-shirt.

They wandered for hours down the streets that once were the center of the slaughterhouse and tanning industry. Nacho didn’t care if he drew attention
to himself as he sang, “God rest ye merry gentleman, I dunno the rest of the words.”

Vicki nudged him, hoping he’d be quiet just a bit, and then stopped. It was his country, and he could do as he pleased. His voice echoed through the chilly street while a group of little boys tossed a couple of pennies at him.

“I’m just a man who loves to sing and play life key by key,” he sang his own words to the holiday tune that reminded Vicki of a list, not exactly her typical Christmas shopping list, but something deeper.

As they walked and he sang her mind journeyed further from the materialistic list, to a place she had never visited before, a place that might put the North Pole out of business. Instead of costly objects, her mother needed to know how much she loved her as a friend, not just a mom. Her father needed to know how much she loved him. Her sister needed to know that, no matter how far apart they might be living, she would always love her as a friend and a sister, and no distance could fade that love.

She looked around at the booths filled with Spaniards deep in price negotiations. She noticed the birds of the air and heard Spanish-sounding chirps. She smelled the aroma of bread from a nearby shop. How would she survive in America without true, authentic Spanish paella? She looked at her friend walking beside her. What would she do without seeing his beautiful face, full of expression, emotion and drama as he talked? He looked more alive now that he was reunited with the love of his life.

She felt comfortable and didn’t want to say good-bye to the people and the city she had grown to love. Maybe she should stay just a bit longer.

“Nacho, remember when I told you I’ve never been to a symphony?”

“Si, si.”

“Well, I promise I’ll go one of these days.”

“Vicki, you have already been to a symphony.”

“No, I haven’t, really.”

“Si, si
. And you played a very important part.”

“No, I would know if I’ve been or not. I hardly know anything about symphonies.”

“You must know!” he shouted. “A person conducts countless symphonies
in life!”

“Oh well, if that’s the case, I’ve sat through emotionally provocative performances, yes?”

“No! You do not sit through the symphonies in your life. You are the conductor.”

“And what does the conductor do?”

“The conductor sets the volume and the speed.”

“Is that all?”

“The conductor interprets the music that the composer has written.”

“Oh.”

“You conduct countless symphonies in your life. It is up to you, the conductor, to interpret the music the composer has given you.”

“Well, no wonder life can be exhausting.”

“It doesn’t have to be. Every symphony has four parts, four movements of music. Between those four movements, there is silence. It is up to you to do as you like in the moments of silence.”

“You say we conduct countless symphonies. Well, how will I know when one symphony has ended?”

“Believe me. You will know!”

They left the Sunday flea market and walked to the Metro stop. “I guess it’s time to say good-bye,” said Vicki. “I’m leaving your country. I’m not going to see you anymore.”

“You see me more. You see me when you close your eyes and remember me. Now go.”

“Hasta luego, Nacho.”

“Hasta luego
, Vicki.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

SCREAMING, CLAPPING PEOPLE NUDGED
her from all directions, and she couldn’t hear a single word Rafael kept shouting into her ear. As they sat in the stands on a sunny Sunday afternoon, waiting for the initial pageantry to start, she felt disgusted that people were waving flags and cheering for the onslaught of a bull, as if cheering a touchdown. Why hadn’t reading Hemingway prepared her for this? It had, until she sat in the bleachers herself and now had to see things with her own eyes. She knew it was her first time and that her emotions were taking over. She knew she wasn’t allowing the facts of bullfighting to penetrate her mind, and that she had allowed herself to revert to ignorance.

Here sat the only still body in the bleachers, and her face stuck out in the crowd, her nose red from fighting back tears—Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer amidst a group who cheered. She didn’t want to ruin Rafael’s time, but then again, she didn’t want to hide her feelings either.

Rafael fanned her face with a folded brochure and explained that the
corrida de toros
wasn’t a sport but a spectacle. He told her that his country respected it as art and asked her how many paintings, sculptures, music, dance, and literature revolve around football?

“No
mucho,”
she answered. Nonetheless, the poor bull. She told him that in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Crete, bulls were the objects of worship. Her ancient civilization professor once told her so. “Now look at them.”

The black creatures stood in their little pens in the arena below. “They look naive and adorable,” said Vicki.

“No! Fierce and untamed,” shouted Rafael.

She asked him how they trained bulls to “charge.”

He said they aren’t
trained
to charge. He said
toros
are born with the instinct to attack anything that threatens their predominance.

She laughed when the Spaniard next to her said bulls don’t know the cloth is red. They’re color-blind.

As the bulls grumpily stood in their suffocating pens, she blew her nose, aware that such creatures, only five years old, would soon experience what Rafael called the ultimate test of their existence: their performance with the bullfighter. He said that bulls lived a spoiled, noble, enviable life, spared from slaughterhouses.

She disagreed, and like a rebel in an animal research lab, she sat in Madrid’s Plaza de Toros, feeling compelled to run down the bleachers and let the five-year-old creatures loose. She felt foreign, and Rafael was a stranger with different values. She longed instead to be at an American football game.

Like the energy of a bull, rising and rising as it sits in the tiny pen waiting to defend itself, her own questions. about Rafael - who he was, why he never told her his last name, were also rising. She had to know. She felt sick from not knowing who he was. Yes, she loved his company. Yes, she had learned a lot of culture from him, and yes, she once craved to kiss him, but the chocolate took care of that, and now she demanded to know more! She too prepared to fight.

“Rafael, tu estas un hombre muy mysterioso. ¿Quien estas?
” She tried to sound both serious and mad but knew her tone in Spanish always came out the same. That of an American with a Dutch accent, carefully choosing words with the right meaning, and hoping she made the right choice as she said them.

“Victoria
…
“

A loud trumpet sounded, interrupting him. She couldn’t compete with the crowds as they sprung from their benches, jumping up and down. It was an opening parade of some sort. Men attired in sixteenth-century
clothes entered the arena on horses. The three bullfighters, killers,
matadores
, celebrities, or whatever they’re called, walked into the arena wearing colorful costumes and black hats.

Their objective was obvious, to kill a bull, she told Rafael.

“No!” he shouted, offended. He said the objective was to artistically and intricately maneuver the cape and
muleta!
And while doing so, to elegantly dance with the bull in all its animalistic
brutalidad
.

“Oh,” she said.

Individual teams accompanied the three bullfighters, and Rafael explained to her that the team members handled all sorts of things, including using the cape and placing sticks in
los toros
. He said the team members once dreamed of becoming
matadores
, bullfighters, and it may have been their only ambition in life for quite some time. But they never made it past the novice stage, so they were just part of the teams now. Only
matadores
had the right and permission to kill full-grown
toros
, he added.

Some workers entered the scene and smoothed out the sand in the arena, and Vicki’s mind paved over Rafael’s proposals. She knew his offer to stay in Spain sounded good, and she found herself considering it, but first, she demanded once more that he tell her everything. She asked for his last name again and didn’t know why she felt obsessed with the question when she herself never told him her own last name. She felt bothered, perhaps because he kept his secrets stuffed far down like toys stuck in the toes of a stocking. She couldn’t wait any longer. Everyone else shared their stories, their fears, and their feelings. Why wouldn’t he? She asked him why he wouldn’t tell her. Then she said it.

“I will never see you again, Rafael,” she told him in Spanish.

“No!” He yelled louder, as if she had triggered his temper. He warned her never to say such a thing again.

Everyone in the arena below stood in designated spots. The president of the
corrida
took out a white handkerchief and waved it, and a bull charged out of the tiny pen after its morning of rest.

“Rafael!” Vicki yelled.

His eyes followed the action in the arena below, but he answered. “I do have secrets.”

Those words struck her. She felt fear, like the charging bull. But then she glanced in the arena below and decided that no one feared anything. She saw no fear in the bull, or the matador, as if dying meant nothing in the arena below. How could a young man stand face-to-face with a ready-to-charge bull yet show no fear? She herself, sitting safely on the bleachers next to a stranger in some ways and a friend in others, felt more fear than the matador waiting for the bull’s charge. Crazy! Absolutely crazy! But her fear wasn’t crazy. It felt real. Rafael knew she would soon leave his country, and he’d never see her again. So maybe he planned to kill her out of passion, like the scene in the arena. It must be passion in the arena below. Why else would these young men make this their life’s ambition? Passion. It had to be. A passion planted long ago and shared by an entire country.

The initial stages continued, and the
torero
was experimenting with his cape and the bull. “His objective, Victoria, is to find out if the
toro
favors one of its horns over the other. Yes, the
torero
needs to get in touch with the animal’s natural tendency. He needs to test the bull’s eyesight and try to understand and learn whether it charges in a long, smooth manner or short and choppy,” said Rafael in Spanish.

She glanced back and forth from the bullfight to the man next to her, watching his face for reassuring clues—something that would reassure her that the blood below meant nothing serious. She also watched the man about to battle the bull. His good posture and perfect walk proved that he felt no fear. She glanced around at the Spanish faces in the bleachers around her. They looked as if they loved life too much to fear death. She envied them.