The South (3 page)

“Yo, Miguel,”
he said. “Miguel,” he repeated it.

“Y tú?”
he asked, pointing at me.

“Katherine,” I said.

“Katherine,” he tried to repeat it.

“Me Tarzan,” I said and he wanted me to say it again but I did not feel able to explain.

“Is this a school?” I asked Rosa.

“Yes, it is a college for painters.”

“I paint,” I said. “Can I join the college?”

“You must ask Ramon,” she said. She pointed at the sallow man who had been in the café.

“You ask him for me,” I said.

I watched her walk up to where he was standing. The man who had introduced himself as Miguel approached me and
when the sallow man glanced down again he could see us both standing together. Eventually, Rosa came over to me.

“Can you come back in a week? He will talk to you then.”

“Will he take me then?” I asked. “Tell him I can draw.”

“I am not sure,” she said. “He does not know. You must return next week.”

The cathedral has just rung midnight and there are no more shutters to be pulled down. The day is over. Tomorrow I will go back to the grammar book I bought. Tomorrow I will learn more verbs. But tonight there is no place for me in this city except here in this dingy bedroom in this small hotel. Until the morning no grammar will be of any use to me. Sleep my husband, sleep easy. I will not be back. My son is asleep in Ireland and I will not be back. I will settle into bed. I will sleep. I will not be back. I will think about the future until I fall asleep.

BARCELONA

She had forgotten about them now, they came in dreams sometimes and melted into other dreams. She was away. She opened the small window in the bedroom and looked down on Berga. A cold spring morning in the foothills of the Pyrenees. Dead silence. She lit a cigarette and rested her elbows on the window ledge. Mist was still clinging over the town and there was a faint hint of ice in the air.

She was naked and she was aware that if he woke he would see her. She looked around at him, his face angelic in sleep, all malice and amusement gone, all the life taken out of him.

The town had been alive all night. The crowds had come from the villages around; people had come too from Barcelona, from Lérida, from Gerona. Miguel had insisted on taking an early bus from Barcelona and staking his claim on this bed in the back room of his friend’s flat. He was given a key to the room, which he locked before they went down into Berga for lunch. He told her to eat as much as she could because there would be no time to eat later. The rest of the day would be spent drinking and shouting, he said, and he looked both words up in her pocket Spanish-English dictionary to make sure she understood. Drinking and shouting.

Miguel met several friends for lunch and they spoke intensely throughout. Katherine tried to follow what they were saying with little success. They spoke in Catalan; for months she had been learning Spanish. Occasionally one of
them spoke to her in Spanish but in general they were too involved in their conversation to pay her any attention.

This was Corpus Christi—the opening day of the Patum de Berga. At ten o’clock in the main square the drums would roll and the fireworks would bang in the sky and then the huge giants would walk the streets and the people would try to get as close to them as they could.

Now in the morning the mist was clearing and she could see the few tents pitched on the meadow beside the small river to the north of the town. She stubbed the cigarette out on the window sill and closed the window against the cold morning.

The bed was a mattress on the floor. As she pulled the blankets up and edged her way back into bed, Miguel opened his eyes, closed them again and smiled. He kissed her on the mouth. When he stood up and stretched she lay back and watched him: his straight, thin white back and the rough hair on his legs.

He was cold when he came back from the toilet and they huddled against one another in bed, shuddering at the cold. She gasped when he put his cold hands on her back. For a moment she managed to rest the sole of one foot against his stomach and he cried out and pushed her away.

“Good morning,” he said, trying to mimic her English.

His breath tasted of garlic when he kissed her. He held his face against hers and stared at her, trying to outstare her. He lay on his back and pulled her on top of him with his face buried in her breasts.

He waited a long time before he came into her and when he finished he wanted, as always, to sleep for a while holding her in his arms, keeping her as close to him as he could. Sometimes he would sleep for just five or ten minutes; he would doze and wake again and want to talk to her; sometimes
she would not let him know that she didn’t understand much of what he said. It was taking her a long time to learn the language.

Jordi owned the flat; Katherine had met him before. His studio was on the floor above with two windows looking down on Berga. She spent the first morning after the Patum watching Jordi paint. The canvases were about three feet in length and a foot across. He had finished six of them which he ranged against the wall for her. All of the canvases had been first painted a bright, almost luminous white. In two of them, this white covered most of the finished surface; in one of these, there was a half moon in black on the white and very thinly towards the bottom of the canvas a worked-over mass in red, blue and pink. She was impressed by the subtlety in the painting, although she still couldn’t understand what he was trying to do. She looked at another canvas: the white, faintly luminous background and on the right a number of black lines forming oblique cruciform shapes; nothing else.

The other four paintings were warmer, but still stark. Thick black lines divided squares of colour from one another. Sometimes the paint had been left so thin that it shimmered in the black surroundings. There was a painting of a mountain, brown, black, dark green with scalpel or knife marks incising the canvas and a flat blue sky behind. In the bottom corner were two people, about one inch high, painted like cut-out figures. They seemed to be embracing.

Jordi told her that the paintings had been commissioned by the monks in the abbey of Montserrat. They were the stations of the cross: the fourteen images which represent the closing scenes of the passion of Christ.

They stood looking at the work: the black and white painting, he told her, was the crucifixion; the painting with the half moon and the shapes at the bottom of the canvas was Christ’s
descent from the cross, the deposition; the three paintings of shimmering colours and black lines were the three times Jesus fell on his way up the hill of Calvary, and the painting of the mountain with the cut-out figures was of his meeting with Mary.

She walked down into Berga to meet Miguel. He was sitting on his own at the bar with a full glass of beer. When they had moved into the restaurant and were looking at the menu Katherine explained to him what Jordi had told her about the paintings of the stations of the cross. He laughed. He put the palm of his hand towards her and rubbed his thumb against his fingers; his face took on a miserly expression. He laughed again. She told him she didn’t understand.

“Money,” he said, “Jordi does it for the money.” He went on to say that Jordi had more interest in the Patum de Berga than he had in the via dolorosa. He just needed the money and the monks were willing to pay. She told him she didn’t believe him.

They had pasta and a bottle of rich red wine. Opposite them was a thin man in his thirties whose hair was prematurely grey. His skin was almost yellow; he looked as though he was recovering from some disease. From time to time his eyes darted across the table at them and he paid great attention to the discussion on the stations of the cross. His wine had come in a
porrón
but he didn’t hold the spout in the air and let the wine jet into his mouth, as the others did. He poured the wine into his glass from the neck of the
porrón.
She noticed that his eyes were green.

Miguel wanted to talk to her about the future. After his exhibition in Barcelona they would go away together and live in the mountains, north of here, higher up. By that time she would speak Spanish perfectly and could start to learn Catalan.

She was embarrassed by the loudness of his voice and by
the vehemence of his tone. They had not discussed money. He did not know that her mother sent her money at intervals. She was unsure what he lived on. There were other things about him she was unsure of; she had no context in which to place him. It was easier to be with him from one day to the next without having to make a grand decision to go and live in the mountains with him.

They went to a bar further along the street and had coffee at a table outside. Miguel ordered a sweet purple drink he called
paxaran.
After two of these and two coffees she felt drunk and tired and she urged him to come back with her to the flat.

*   *   *

As soon as they went into the room she took off her clothes. She stood in the middle of the room while he made the bed and smoothed out the sheets. He took off his jacket and shirt and when he was naked he came over and put his arms around her and she could feel his heart beating fast. She could taste the alcohol and the coffee from his mouth as though it were an integral part of him like the pattern of black hairs on his chest. When they were in bed he lay on top of her and his hands held her head; all his energy came from his mouth and tongue. Sometimes he kept his mouth closed and kissed her on the lips. He had left the packet of condoms on the floor beside the mattress; he rolled the rubber down on his penis and she held it and guided it into her. As he moved it in and out she could feel the effortless throb of orgasm come on. He kept his two hands under her as she gasped and he tried to get his penis further and further in. He started to ejaculate and together they held it for as long as they could.

It was twilight. She had turned her back to him before they fell asleep and he lay cupped around her. As soon as she moved he awoke. They were both warm and sweaty in the
bed. There was no sound in the house. She turned and kissed him and he put his hands on her breasts; he held the nipple between his thumb and forefinger; he put his mouth down and kissed it. His penis was hard again. She smiled as she lay on top of him and he put his face against her breasts. He pushed her back and put his tongue between her legs. When he came into her he did not use the rubber but he pulled out when he was ready to ejaculate and sat up. In the dim light she watched the jets of his seed pour on to her stomach.

There was no hot water in the shower and the bathroom was freezing. They stood together under a trickle of ice-cold water and tried to wash themselves. They stood together trying to wash the soap off. Miguel ran back to the bedroom to get towels and clean clothes. By the time they left the house they could see the fireworks and hear the rolling of the drums. The Patum had started.

The drums banged out the same sound: “Patum! Patum!” The giant figures in the small square towered above everything; the orchestra played fast dance music. The king and queen came first in all their guise of wisdom and solidity and the crowd followed them cheering. The other figures, each of them twelve feet tall, followed on; they, too, seemed majestic and implacable.

Katherine and Miguel moved around the crowd looking for Jordi but they couldn’t find him. At one point Katherine noticed the man she had seen earlier in the restaurant, the man with the green eyes and the grey hair. She caught his eye for a second. He looked much more foreign among the crowds of Catalans than at lunchtime.

It was pitch dark and the crowd was gathered around the giants and the drummers in the big square. The fireworks were going off, crackling in the air. The giants’ faces seemed as though they might at any moment come to life and frown
down at the people of Berga. She wanted to stay and look at them and follow them, but Miguel wanted to go to the bar and buy a
porrón
of a drink he called
mau-mau
so they could wander about the streets for the rest of the night.

“Next year, we can follow the giants,” he said. He looked at her and they walked towards the bar. Next year, she had understood that.
El año que viene.
The year which comes.

They stood in the bar and had a beer. She remembered that he had spoken of the future—next year—as though they had agreed that they would spend the future together. She had not agreed to spend the future with him. She knew nothing about him. What he had told her she had no way of verifying. She went over in her mind again what he had told her. He would soon be thirty-five. He was born in a town called Reus in the province of Tarragona. He had told her he had not married and she had no evidence to the contrary. He had been put in prison for a short while after the civil war—his family was Republican and he hated Franco. He had lived in Paris and in Lyons. He had worked as a waiter in Lyons. But for the past ten years he had lived in Barcelona and, as far as she could make out, for most of this time he had painted. He had shown her the catalogues of his shows going back to July 1944. He told her that he had been involved in the civil war.

She wanted to know if she should trust him. Now here in Berga, late at night in a bar, she wanted to know if she could believe him. She thought of approaching Rosa. She thought of approaching Ramon Rogent, the painter who ran the studio where she went every day. She would give anything to know more about Miguel, but she realised she could not ask, she would have to watch and find out.

She looked around the bar for a moment. The man with the yellow skin and cat-green eyes was staring at her and when she saw him he stood up and came towards her. He had
a carrier-bag in his hand. She turned away from him towards the bar and emptied her bottle of beer into the glass. Miguel was still talking to the barman. “Do you speak English?” the man asked. The accent was Irish. She stiffened, Miguel also looked at the man.

“Habla español?”
she used the formal third person to ask if he spoke Spanish. She did not want to meet anyone from Ireland. He said that he spoke it but very badly. Miguel joined in and said that they were a pair then who spoke Spanish badly. The man said nothing. They both looked at him, waiting. He looked at both of them, taking them in, almost smiling at them. Miguel offered to buy him a beer and he accepted. After that no one spoke. Katherine stood uncomfortably at the bar, aware that Miguel was ignoring the man. She excused herself and went to the toilet. When she came back he was still there, self-possessed, quiet, watchful. She wanted him to go away.