The Past is a Foreign Country (15 page)

I WOKE UP about seven in the evening, bathed in sweat.
Francesco
had already got up and I could hear the noise of the shower from the bathroom. The room we were in was quite simply
ridiculous
. The wallpaper had a pattern of horse’s heads on it, the two bedspreads were different colours, and the TV was a huge black and white set from the Seventies. I stared at it for several minutes, still dazed from tiredness and a sense of strangeness. There was a curious smell, unpleasant but familiar. It took me a while to realise it was me. I didn’t like noticing I stank, and as soon as Francesco came out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, I went in to have a wash.

We went out about eight, both looking like our old selves again.

Francesco phoned his friend. I heard him talking in a mixture of Italian, Spanish and French. What I understood from the
conversation
was that someone called Nicola wasn’t in Valencia right now, but would be back in a few days. Francesco didn’t seem surprised, and said he’d call again. There was something strange about the way he said it.

Nicola was an old friend of his, Francesco told me after putting the phone down. He was from Bari but had lived in Spain for more than two years, moving around constantly and doing
all sorts of different
jobs
. End of conversation. I wasn’t particularly interested in Nicola. I was wide awake, I felt good, I was hungry and we were in Spain.

After eating – Valencian paella, of course, and lots of beer – we set off for a walk around the city.

We wandered from bar to bar. All the bars were open and all of them were full. Eventually, we ended up in a garden full of little tables in the half-light, a large stand in the middle, and a lot of
people
, some at the tables, some standing, some sitting on the ground. A smell of dope permeated the air. We found a free table and sat down. Unlike the way it had been on the journey, we both talked, a lot. We were euphoric. We talked over each other, neither of us listening to what the other was saying. A flood of words about how free we were, how we were rebels, living outside the hypocritical rules of society. How we were looking for the meaning of things beneath the stale veneer of convention. Conventions we rejected in the name of a moral code that most people couldn’t aspire to.

A flood of bullshit.

The waitress who came to our table said, Hola, but then when she heard us talking she spoke to us in Italian.

She was from Florence, or to be more precise Pontassieve, and her name was Angelica. She wasn’t beautiful but she had a pleasant face. She kept looking at Francesco. She asked us where we were from. She said she’d passed through Bari on the way to Greece and had been warned to watch out for bag snatchers. She took our order, still looking at Francesco, and said she’d be right back.

‘What do you think?’ Francesco asked me.

‘Pretty. Well, nice anyway. She has something, even though she’s not beautiful. Anyway she was looking at you.’

He nodded, as if to say, of course, he’d noticed. ‘Let’s get friendly with her. We could wait until she finishes her shift and leave together. That way, until Nicola gets back, we have someone we know in Valencia.’

‘Maybe she can recommend a better hotel than the shithole we
ended up in!’ I said, but he didn’t reply. Clearly he didn’t mind the hotel. Angelica came back with our two caipirinhas.

‘How come you’re working here in Spain?’ Francesco asked her.

She looked around her for a moment, to make sure she wasn’t needed. ‘I was trying for a year to pass my university exams. I’m studying languages, but I had a few problems. So I thought I’d come to Spain for a while, to improve my Spanish and try to figure out what I want to do. How about you two?’

‘I’m about to graduate in philosophy and my friend Giorgio in law. We finished our exams in July and decided to take a couple of weeks’ holiday in Spain. And here we are. How late does this place stay open?’

He had lied with his usual naturalness. I didn’t care. I was feeling fine and I didn’t care about anything.

Angelica looked around again and saw that someone at a table on the other side of the garden was trying to attract her attention. ‘It depends,’ she said, in a rush. ‘Two or three. It depends on how busy it is. We usually stay open as long as there are customers.’ She paused for a moment, as if thinking about what to say next. ‘Listen, I have to run now. If you aren’t in a hurry you could wait for me. I’ll be an hour at the most. You can walk me home, it’s only fifteen minutes from here, and we can talk properly. I can even give you some tips on what to do in Valencia and the area round about.’

We weren’t in any hurry, Francesco said, and we’d be happy to wait for her. So she went back to her work and we sat and drank. I was feeling good. The air was warm and I felt pleasantly, invincibly idle. Time didn’t matter, I had no responsibilities, it was as if my ego was dissolving. Part of it was the alcohol – first beer, now stronger drinks – and part of it was this exotic atmosphere, somewhere on the edge of a strange city.

We left with Angelica an hour and a half and three caipirinhas later. I’ve always been good at holding my drink and so I was slightly
confused, euphoric, but alert. I noticed that Angelica had not only changed, but had let her long, copper-coloured hair down. She’d also put on make-up.

We drank a couple of shots of rum in a bar that was just about to close. The owner was a friend of Angelica’s. He drank with us and wouldn’t accept payment.

We continued on our way. Francesco and Angelica were talking to each other now, and I was excluded. Of course. So I decided to walk a few steps behind.

I looked around, with what I think must have been an absent smile on my face. It was after three, but the streets were still full of people. Not just groups of young people, drunks, junkies, but elderly men in white shirts with short sleeves and bizarre collars, and families with children, grandfathers and dogs. We even passed two nuns. They were in full habit, walking slowly along, having a lively conversation. I stopped to watch them as they walked away. To
imprint
them on my mind, so that – I remember thinking clearly – the next morning, or ten years later, I wouldn’t think I’d only dreamed them.

Everything was improbable, unreal, intoxicating, and quite nostalgic.

We got to Angelica’s building and she asked us if we wanted to come up for a drink. What she meant was: if Francesco wanted to come up. I was too tired and drunk, I said, lying. Not too drunk, I thought, to understand the facts of life. So Angelica gave me a
goodnight
kiss on the cheek and she and Francesco disappeared together behind that filthy wooden door.

It took me more than an hour to get back to the hotel. On the way I stopped in a couple of bars and drank a couple of rums. When I lay down, after a pee that seemed to last forever, the bed started spinning, which made me think of Galileo. The founder of the modern scientific method. Or was that Newton? It was a nuisance, but I just
had
to remember. Damn it, I was good at holding my
drink, everyone said so. Who was everyone? And anyway, why did I
have
to remember?

Then, all at once, everything went black.

I WAS WOKEN by a loud crash from outside. I got out of bed and dragged myself to the window. My mouth felt as if it was coated with cement. I tried saying a few words – swear words – just to check that everything was in working order. Then I opened the blinds and put my head out.

Two lorries had collided. Two men stood near the point of
impact
, waving their hands and shifting their weight from one leg to the other. A small group of onlookers had gathered on the
pavement
. The two men were both tall and bulky, with identical dark cotton t-shirts stretched over bulging shoulders and stomachs. They were moving and waving their hands almost in time to one another and seemed to be following some kind of choreography. The whole scene had a crazy sense of synchronicity, a strange symmetry I couldn’t figure out.

Then I realised that the two lorries were the same. The same
models
, the same colours – white and mauve – and the same writing on the sides. They belonged to the same haulage company, and the two men were both wearing the company’s t-shirt. At that point I lost interest. I shrugged my shoulders and came back inside.

Francesco wasn’t back yet, so I decided to take my time. Wash, dress, go down to breakfast, have a cigarette. It was after nine now, and if I did all those things I could kill time at least until ten. If Francesco still wasn’t back by then, I’d think about what to do.

But he didn’t show, and I started to feel worried. Last night’s
euphoria had vanished and now, in the breakfast room of that
shabby
hotel, I felt a mounting anxiety that was close to panic. For a few minutes I thought of packing my bag and getting out of there, alone.

Then, having regained a modicum of self-control, I asked the hotel porter for a map of Valencia, left a note for Francesco and went out.

It was very hot. The city on that scorching morning was quite different from the surreal, slightly enchanted place I’d wandered through the night before. The shops were all closed, there weren’t many people in the streets, and those who were looked worn out by the heat. There was a feeling of sadness, of finality.

As I left the hotel, Valencia seemed to me like a beautiful older woman you’ve made love to all night and now you see in the
morning
. Last night, she was well dressed, made up, scented. But now, she’s only just got up, her eyes are bleary with sleep, her hair looks too long, and she’s wearing an old t-shirt. You’d like to be
somewhere
else. And she’d probably like you to be somewhere else, too.

I walked around the streets with a curious feeling of
determination
. The longer the day went on, and the hotter it got, the faster I walked. Aimlessly, because I had no particular goal, I didn’t know the city, I hadn’t even looked at the map, and I had no idea where I was going.

I passed some decrepit-looking buildings and came to a large park. An elderly lady told me, without my having asked her, that we were in the dried-up bed of a river called the Turia. The river had been diverted from its course years before, and where it had been they’d built a park.

My memories of that day of fierce sunlight in Valencia are strange and soundless. Like images in a vividly-coloured but silent film.

I walked for many hours, stopped to eat tapas and drink beer in a bar which had tables outside, with old discoloured umbrellas,
then walked for quite a while longer, looking for the hotel. When I found it, I felt willing to bear its shabbiness for the sake of the air conditioning. It was noisy but it worked, whereas outside it was more than forty degrees.

When I asked the porter for the key, he told me the other
caballero
had come back and was in our room. I felt relieved.

I knocked at the door of the room, then knocked again. It was only at the third knock that I heard Francesco’s voice saying
something
incomprehensible. A moment later, he opened the door,
wearing
only his pants and a black t-shirt.

He went back to the bed without a word, and sat there for a
couple
of minutes with his eyes half closed as if looking at something on the floor. He was gradually coming to his senses. He looked like someone who’s been travelling for two days in a goods wagon. At last, he shook his head and looked up at me.

‘How was it?’ I asked.

‘She’s a real sleaze, our little Angelica. Mounts you like a horse. Maybe she’ll give you a demonstration one of these days.’

I had a vaguely unpleasant feeling when he said that, but
Francesco
didn’t give me time to identify it. Tonight, he said, we’d pick up Angelica after she finished work and drive south, to the sea. We’d get there at dawn, which was the most beautiful moment of the day. We’d bathe while the beaches were still empty, then go and look up some friends of Angelica’s who owned a guesthouse with a
restaurant
, and then we would decide if we’d stay and sleep over, because tomorrow was Angelica’s night off.

I liked the idea. In any case, Francesco wasn’t asking for my
opinion
. He was letting me in on what he’d already decided. As usual.

‘Remember to bring the cards tonight.’

It was the last thing he said before lying down on the bed and turning his back to me, ready to go to sleep again.

I didn’t ask why.

WE LEFT VALENCIA about four in the morning. There were still people in the streets. We’d picked up Angelica from the bar, driven to her place, where she’d grabbed a small bag, and then set off.

I drove, Angelica sat next to me, and Francesco sat in the back, in the middle.

Travelling at that hour of the morning, we were heading for an encounter with the universe in all its unfamiliar splendour. We left the city as the night was coming to an end and those who had
peopled
it were on their way home. It was cool, so we kept the windows open and the air conditioning off. Day hadn’t broken yet, but we were waiting for it, talking in hushed voices.

I felt good. I’d slept until evening, and it was already dark outside when I’d woken up. And with the darkness my bad mood had
dissolved
. I felt full of energy and ready for everything. Francesco, too, felt good. Immediately before we left our room, he’d done
something
strange.

‘Are you my friend?’ he had said, when we were almost at the door.

I’d hesitated to reply, not knowing if he was joking.

‘Are you my friend?’ he had repeated, and there was something
unusual
in the way he said it, something serious and almost desperate.

‘What kind of question is that? Of course I’m your friend.’

He had nodded in agreement and had looked at me for another few seconds. Then he had embraced me. He had hugged me tightly and I had stood there, almost frozen, not knowing what to do.

‘OK, friend, it’s time to go. Have you got the cards?’

I had them, and we had gone out like two crazy, innocent rogues into the night, and the day, and whatever was waiting for us.
Nothing
else mattered.

The sun hadn’t yet risen when we got to Altea. The air had the
stillness
and transparency of a dream. There was no one on the beach except a very old lady in shorts and a t-shirt, with a strange-looking mongrel, huge and furry, running circles around her. Lazy little waves gently lapped the foreshore.

We all undressed without a word. I’ve rarely in my life felt so totally at ease as I did that dawn on a strange beach in Spain. We walked slowly into the water, all around us a sense almost of the sacred, of what was about to happen. Of infinite possibilities.

We were swimming slowly out to sea, separated from each other by a few metres, with our heads out of the water, when suddenly the universe filled with pink splendour.

The sun came out of the sea and I could feel tears mixing with the drops of water that slid down my face.

After breakfast, we spread our towels on the beach, very close to the sea, and lay down. People were starting to arrive.

‘Why not get out the cards?’ Francesco said to me. And to
Angelica
, as I took the cards out of my rucksack, ‘Giorgio’s a brilliant
magician.’ The expression on his face was perfectly serious, but he was playing. He was pulling our legs, both of us in different ways. But even though I was perfectly well aware of that, I felt full of pride because of what he had said.

‘Come on, show her some tricks.’

I didn’t object. I didn’t tell her he was my teacher. I showed her a few tricks and, damn it, I was good. Angelica was watching me, frowning slightly, looking ever more surprised.

Francesco asked me to show her the three card trick. Without a word, I took out the queen of hearts and the two black tens.

I showed her the queen. ‘The winning card.’ I showed her first one ten, then the other. ‘The losing card.’ I could feel my heart beating faster, which hadn’t happened to me when I’d shown her the other tricks. I gently put down the cards face down on the towel.

‘Which one’s the queen?’

Angelica turned over a card. It was the ten of clubs.

‘Do it again,’ she said, looking me up and down. There was a tone of feigned severity in her voice, but her eyes were laughing, like a child’s.

‘All right. The winning card, the losing card. The quickness of the hand deceives the eye. The winning card, the losing card.’

I put down the cards. She looked at them for several seconds. She knew there was a trick to it, but her eyes told her the queen was the card on her right. That was the one she pointed to in the end. It was the ten of spades. I did the trick again, with variations, and she still didn’t guess right. After getting it wrong a couple of times, she asked to turn over the other two cards as well, to make sure that I hadn’t conjured away the queen of hearts.

‘It’s incredible. I’ve never seen anything like it. I thought it was something you only see in films. Fuck this, you’re doing it just a few centimetres from my face.’

It was at this point that Francesco suggested we could have a bit
of fun with this skill of mine. As he talked, I realised he’d had this idea in mind from the start.

We would move to another beach, a few kilometres away because someone might already have noticed us here – and the three of us would make a little money. I was about to say something, but
Angelica
beat me to it. It was an amusing idea, she said. I looked at Francesco and he smiled back at me. He didn’t really care about whatever small change we could con out of a few suckers on a beach. He wanted to celebrate this new initiation of mine. Mine and
Angelica’s
. There was something dark about this new game of his. It was as if he was pushing us into each other’s arms, but hoped to be present when we made love. He wanted to make us do something he had decided on and he wanted to enjoy watching what happened.

I paused for a few moments, then shrugged and nodded. If the two of you really want to.

Francesco told us his plan. We would drive along the coast for a few kilometres and park near another beach. I would go ahead, find a place where there were people passing, and start to play with the cards. They would watch me from a distance. After about fifteen or twenty minutes, Francesco would come up to me and bet, or rather, pretend to bet. He would lose several times, getting conspicuously angry and drawing attention to himself. Then Angelica would
arrive
. By this time, there would already be a bit of an audience. I would invite her to play the game. She would bet, and win, then lose, then win again. By this point, one of the onlookers was bound to ask if he could bet, too.

Angelica gave me a brief course in street hustler’s Spanish.

Carta que gana. Carta que pierde. Donde está la reina? Lo siento, ha perdido. Enhorabuena, ha ganado
.

It all went as Francesco had predicted, of course. Following
Angelica’s
directions, we came to a resort beach, full of Dutch, German and English tourists. I bought a couple of cold beers from a stand,
and went and set up my pitch at the start of the sandy path that led to the beach, in the shade of a pine. I folded my towel in two, placed it on the ground, sat down, had a few swigs of beer, lit a cigarette and started playing with the three cards, apparently unaware of the passers-by. A few people slowed down to see what I was doing. I looked up and smiled at everyone without saying a word, and they went away.

After about ten minutes, Francesco arrived. He stopped to watch me, staring at me open-mouthed like a fish. The part came naturally to me. I looked up once, then twice, then a third time. He was still there. So I stopped playing and asked him, in English, if he wanted to bet. I explained to him how the game worked, moving my hands a lot as I spoke. By now, a few people were stopping to watch. When I’d finished my explanation, he put a thousand-peseta note down in front of me, on the sand. I took an identical note out of my rucksack and placed it over his. I made sure the audience was following all this.

‘Carta que gana, carta que pierde
.’ Then, moving more quickly than I needed to, I placed the cards on the ground. I hadn’t used any trickery. Anyone paying reasonable attention could have said where the queen was.

Francesco looked at me like an idiot convinced that he’s clever, and pointed at the wrong card. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the look on the face of one of the onlookers. A tall, solidly-built, pear-shaped man with thick red hair and a freckled face. He didn’t understand how anyone could make a mistake about something so simple, and damn it, he’d like to bet, too.

I turned over the card Francesco had pointed to, showed it to him and the people watching, smiled, shrugged my shoulders, almost as if apologising for winning, and took the money. He indicated, partly in words, partly in gestures, that he wanted to play again. We repeated the same sequence. This time, I put the queen down in
a different position, though I still wasn’t playing any tricks. Once again anyone who had followed my moves with a reasonable amount of attention would have been able to point to the queen. But
Francesco
was wrong again. The big pear-shaped guy was getting restless. He wanted to play. He was our man.

In the meantime Angelica had arrived. By now seven or eight
people
had gathered to watch. A thin, slightly cross-eyed man of about thirty asked in Spanish if he could place a bet. I said yes, and as I did so felt a rush of adrenalin. This was starting to get serious. He bet, and this time I played the trick. He pointed to the wrong card and lost. He played again and lost again, three, four, maybe five times.

Now Angelica stepped forward. As far as I could tell, she spoke almost perfect Spanish. She bet. The first time, she won. Then she lost. Then won again. Then lost. And lost again. I hadn’t played any tricks and the big guy was trembling. When Angelica said she had had enough, Francesco made as if to step forward again and the big guy literally pushed him aside. It was his turn. No, I thought,
smiling
to myself inwardly, it was
my
turn.

Things went as they were meant to. He lost. He lost. He won. He lost. He lost. And so on.

After I don’t know how many games, I looked at my watch and told everyone, partly in English, partly in gestures, and partly in an imaginary Spanish which consisted of putting an ‘s’ on the end of every word, that it was late and I had to go.

The big guy went crazy. He turned threatening. He was losing, he said, and had a right to carry on playing. I looked around,
pretending
to be surprised and slightly worried. Then I took all the money I’d won and put it on the sand. I looked at the big guy. Did he want to play for the whole amount? One last hand, double or nothing?

For a moment, he stood there looking perplexed, as if something like a suspicion – or a thought – had crossed his mind. Francesco butted in and said he was willing to try his luck again. That was
enough to make the other guy stop thinking, if that was what he had been doing. This game was his. ‘Fuck it,’ he said, in English.

He counted out the money and put it down next to mine, on the sand. I watched him with a look on my face that was a mixture of embarrassment and anxiety.

I held up the cards, two in my right hand and one in my left. Once more I recited the formula and put the cards down. Then I picked them up again, all with my right hand this time, and put them down again. In the jargon of card sharks, this variation on the three card trick is called the coup de grâce. Usually it’s done at the end. Which was what this was.

The card on the left was the queen. Among the onlookers silence had fallen. The big guy hesitated for a moment. There was no doubt his senses were telling him the queen was in the middle. But he hesitated. I could feel my heart beating. I watched his eyes as they moved from side to side. At last he reached out and put his hand on the card he had chosen.

The one in the middle.

I slid my finger under the card and turned it over. It was the ten of diamonds.

The onlookers broke into a babble of incomprehensible
comments
in various languages.

I was reaching out my hand to take the money – mine and his – when the red-haired guy fell to his knees in the cool sand, grabbed the other two cards and turned them over, one after the other. Just as Angelica had done, on the other beach. He held the queen of hearts in his hand for a few moments, looking like someone who’s rushed at a door to push it open and fallen flat on his face because it was already open. Then he threw the card angrily on the sand, got up again with difficulty and walked off, swearing in a language that sounded like English, though I couldn’t understand a single word.