Snippets – Love, passion, Colombia, Oxford, bullfighting.
I gently lifted Maria’s chin and searched her eyes for traces of happiness in the hope of finding contradiction to her sad mouth and drooping shoulders.
‘You don’t understand,’ she said. Then added hurt by saying, ‘you never do,’ before turning away. Her words stung, but knowing they also hurt her, I didn’t react.
‘If you knew what it meant to me, you’d be equally upset. In fact, I think you’re secretly pleased.’ She was correct. I was pleased. However, I knew there was nothing else that made her appear more beautiful, alive and proud to be an attractive woman than holding our equally beautiful fourteen-year-old daughter, Gabriela, by the hand as she’d take her regular seat at the Plaza de Toros de Las Ventas in Madrid for the start of the bullfighting season in May.
I picked up the ball of newspaper from where she’d thrown it, and the cups, glasses, vase and a few other items that had become collateral damage during her rage. “This year’s bulls to go to the slaughter house” I read.
‘Read on, read on! That’s not even half of it!’ she screamed. “COVID-19 has brought bullfighting to a close for this year and it is likely that the financial and animal rights pressures will be the end of bullfighting in Europe.”
‘Satisfied?’ she spat out venomously.
Half an hour later she’d calmed down, but I still couldn’t lift her spirits and she couldn’t share my joy of being in our small back garden in Cowley Road, Oxford, drinking morning coffee and listening to a blackbird, which hadn’t repeated the same string of notes since landing in the pear tree a few minutes earlier. I knew Maria needed excitement, an excuse to wear elegant clothes, to be seen, to be admired and to be in Madrid for the two weeks in May, or better still, when she’s felt low, in the Parque Fernández de Madrid in Cartagena, Colombia, walking and talking with her tall regal mother who, to the pleasure of both, looked more like her sister. They enjoyed receiving glances from men not able to resist a second glance by stirred desire or admiration, or perhaps, a strange sense of loss or possibly all three.
Fifteen years earlier, I’d been leaning on the top rail of the old road bridge in Cartagena, watching pelicans plunging into the bay and taking fish from the many that shone silver just below the shimmering surface. Local men in inappropriate dark suits for the high temperature, passed me by while seeming to accept what I considered, a wonder of the natural world. Full buses painted red, green and blue rumbled over the uneven road surface, causing ripples in the water and the fish to speed away, only to return within seconds while the next bus was within sight. A beautiful brown-skinned young woman, with long black hair and wearing a white tee-shirt and a bright floral-print skirt, got off her bike before the bridge and walked with it along the narrow side-walk towards me. I stood hard against the rail to allow her room to pass.
‘Buenos dias,’ she said glancing at the pelicans.
‘Hola! Buenos dias,’ I replied.
‘What are you looking at?’ she asked in English.
‘I can’t take my eyes of them,’ I replied pointing to one of the brown birds as it hit the water.
‘They will be here all day and so will you,’ she said laughing and then adding ‘adios,’ as she scooted her bike away.
I’d like to think it was coincidence that I was at the same position, on the bridge at the same time the following day, and the day after that, but it wasn’t and by then, the allure of the pelicans had been replaced by wanting to meet the young woman again. I gave myself permission to be on the bridge for ten minutes on the third day when my expectations of seeing her had dwindled to zero. Ten minutes became twenty as the allure of the pelicans returned until I heard, amongst the rumblings of a passing bus, a loud “Hola” and saw an arm waving from one of its windows. I was driven by an immediate fear of loss as I ran after the bus and I almost cried with relief when it drew up within a short distance. I could hear people cheering and laughing as the woman jumped from its platform.
‘It’s the wind in my eyes,’ I said lifting each shoulder to dry my face on my tee-shirt sleeves.
‘I saw you from the bus yesterday but the driver wouldn’t stop and you were gone by the time I got back. And now I’ve got to be on the next bus or I’ll be late for work,’ she said, taking a notebook from her shoulder bag. ‘That’s my address and number,’ she added while scrawling on a page before tearing it out and giving it to me. ‘Can’t talk. I have to run,’ she said. ‘My Name is Maria, Maria Garcia. Don’t ever forget it.’
My limited Spanish couldn’t be understood by the man at the other end of the phone at six-thirty that evening. I heard some nattering before a woman’s voice came on.
‘Ah, the pelican man,’ she said laughing.
‘That’s correct,’ I replied feeling my anxiety drain away.
‘Maria!’ I heard the woman’s voice call.
‘Hello pelican man,’ she said. ‘You have to be here before eight. We’re all going to a café for snacks and dancing. This is Colombia.’
I didn’t find out how Maria knew I was unfamiliar with South America, but that evening I learned to dance with her mother, Antonella, Maria and even her father, Matias, when he insisted that I got the steps correct before launching me off with his wife. He obviously preferred to watch his wife rather than assess my newly acquired skills.
Matias was tall and confident with a “lived-in” face and a shock of black hair that got thicker as it reached his open–neck red silk shirt and I couldn’t help but focus on his eyebrows when he spoke; it was as though they were two live creatures with an eye each. I had a sense of freedom and acceptance as we talked and watched people of all ages dancing to the slow and romantic music in that unpretentious spacious café.
The following evening, I met Maria for shopping before taking it back to her family’s home, where we were all given jobs to do by Antonella, while talking and jostling for resources and spaces. Half the time they forgot I spoke little Spanish, but somehow, I found I’d revealed more of myself to them in a few hours, than I had to the many people I’d considered to be close friends. I was slightly back-footed when I learned that Maria was only 18 which, by my immediate calculation and memory, took me back to kicking a football in a street in Hammersmith, aged eight, when she was born.
‘Matias is fifteen years older than me,’ Antonella volunteered while kissing his cheek.
Moments later, I struggled to answer Antonella’s suggestion of an evening of bullfighting, but Matias, sensing my difficulty interjected.
‘If you’ve not seen a bullfight you should go,’ he said laughing. ‘And take these two blood-thirsty things with you.’ His eyebrows, however, spoke of disapproval, which contrasted sharply with Maria and Antonella’s enthusiasm. Antonella straightened her back, making her appear three centimetres taller and her beautiful eyes sparkled as she swept her black hair back with her right hand as though already at the ring-side. Maria did the same and took a deep breath, which made her lace blouse appear a size too small.
The following Friday, Maria and Antonella looked as though they’d stepped out of a fashion magazine and, to my amazement, they acknowledged claps and cheers of approval from many of the surrounding aficionados at the Plaza de Toros Cartagena de Indias. Earlier that day Antonella had taken me on a whirlwind shopping spree and, although I felt foreign in my new suit, shirt and elevated heeled shoes, I felt proud to be with them and I knew I looked the part.
At Antonella’s insistence, I sat between them and, at my insistence, close to the aisle.
I think I’d prepared myself to view the bullfighting coldly and academically and had inadvertently robbed myself of the emotion of the experience. However, watching individual members of the audience without making it obvious, gave me insight to human behaviour I’d not expected. One row in front and three seats to my left, a woman became more amorous towards her partner with each serving of cruelty. She ignored her quietly crying five-year-old son as he peered through the gaps of his fingers at the bull, which was standing less than six metres away with dark red blood streaming down its shoulder and staining its black body.
Maria and Antonella shouted with excitement when the first banderillero threw his two banderillas into the bull and ran for cover. The crowd booed when the bull shook off the second banderillero’s one banderilla. I, on the other hand, felt alone in my elation when the bull pushed the matador over and everyone stood and gasped, but then I felt cheated as the banderilleros distracted the bull by running at it and shouting, which brought the bull to a halt while the uninjured matador shook himself off. The bull appeared bored as it stood with the red and blue flags drooping at the end of the long banderillas hanging from the back of its neck and, when it had to be cajoled to have another go at the matador’s cape, I very nearly laughed. The most significant part of the incident was the pain in my thigh as Maria’s hand gripped it tight. It was the last fight of the evening and she left her hand there until it was over. I pretended I hadn’t noticed her mother’s smile as she glanced at her daughter’s hand on my leg, while we waited for the main part of the crowd to leave.
I felt like a billionaire with Antonella on my right and Maria on my left while we strode with others along the red tiled avenue between the palm trees towards the car park. I was not a bit perturbed by not understanding a word of their rapid Spanish or, by being 188 centimetres tall, and they being roughly equal at 173, needed to look at each other across the front of me. I felt buoyed up by their laughter and excitement as they occasionally stopped to demonstrate, with one another’s shawls, some particular movement that had impressed or disappointed them. Each replicated the stance of the matador perfectly, proud to be looked at with their backs bent slightly back near the neck, accentuating their elegant figures in high heeled shoes. I wanted the moment to last forever.
Their excitement didn’t wane while I faced them in the back of a large taxi, which was being driven slowly through the heavy late-night traffic. Antonella and Maria occasionally touched my arm or my hand or my leg when they felt the need of my inclusion in their, still rapid, Spanish conversation but whatever they did, I felt myself slipping from their influence. I panicked and started to perspire and had to push my heels hard on the floor to stop my left leg from bouncing up and down as irrational thoughts of losing Maria crept up on me as the taxi got closer to my hotel. Antonella smiled, took my hand and gently squeezed it and then, let it go. Five minutes later when the taxi stopped at the hotel’s entrance, I felt calm with a plan of saying a quick formal good night and leaving with as much dignity as I could muster.
‘Good night and thank you for a wonderful evening,’ I said.
‘Good night,’ said Antonella holding her head to one side for a kiss. I then turned to Maria but she was shuffling along the seat to get out with me. In preparation for a kiss away from her mother, I had hoped. But no, instead, she leant into the vehicle and kissed her mother.
‘Buenas noches, mi querida, querida madre,’ (good night my dear, dear mother) she said holding her mother’s hand.
‘Buenas noches mi niña querida. Ten mucho cuidado,’ (Good night my darling girl. Be very careful) her mother replied while slowly letting go of Maria’s hand.
We didn’t say a word while I collected the keys from the desk or, as we walked up four flights of stairs or, as we used the bathroom in turns, or as we got undressed, or as I followed her into bed and switched off the light.
I became delirious by the taste of her mouth. I kissed her eyes, her nipples, her arms, her legs, I sucked her toes, I buried my head between her legs and kissed her small mound of pubic hair, her navel, her breasts and her throat. We got in each other’s way as we became hungrier for each other and finally, there had been no place on our bodies that our hands hadn’t touched, or our tongues hadn’t reached, as we owned each other that night.
Rays of sunlight penetrated the gaps in the curtains, making us cling to each other to stop the new day from pushing us apart. I kissed her neck, closed my eyes and fell asleep. At 11 in the morning, I awoke with the bedroom door being noisily opened with a key and an apologetic maid’s voice mumbling as it closed. Maria and I were gummed together with dried perspiration and the results of our hectic night. She turned to face me and we hugged for ten minutes or so, before we said our first words since getting out of the car the previous night. She got out of bed to go to the bathroom and I joined her when I heard the shower pulsing. We washed each other’s bodies, shampooed each other’s hair and dried each other using all four bath towels. It took a long time to dress as we kissed and touched and we finished by stripping the bed completely and bundling it into a pillowcase.
We were oblivious of others while we slowly fed each other lunch from our forks. Over the following three hours, we planned our lives and had given the possible product of our night, the name of Gabriela in case it was a girl, and Sebastian if it was to be a boy. Neither of us could fully believe it until Gabriela was actually in our arms in the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford.
Fifteen years has passed since being called “the pelican man” and I knew, as I listened to that blackbird in our garden in Cowley Road, that I couldn’t transpose the joy of its song to Maria; neither could I transpose the feelings I had of the colours of the flowers, or replace the feeling she had for the vultures over Cartagena with the red kites of Oxfordshire. And our walks along Cowley Road with Gabriela, couldn’t ever match a walk with her mother in the Parque Fernández de Madrid in Cartagena, even if bullfighting returned to Spain after COVID-19.
H. E. Roffey