I caught the pick pocket.
Madrid
June 3rd, we arrive in Madrid and find the splendid Hotel Real awaiting us. Joey had wired ahead and arranged a fine bottle of champagne and fruit plate in celebration of our 37th wedding anniversary. And a surprise note for me: I can’t reveal its contents other than to say, “Happy Anniversary.” The bike trip through Portugal, our adventures in Barcelona, the room, the champagne, the surprise had been and was all so wonderful and so heady that we just sat in our suite and grinned while polishing off the Tattinger’s.
Then, like the tourists that we were, we went out walking through ‘Old Town’ searching for a tie that I would wear that night at our Anniversary dinner. Smiling, happy, a little high from the champagne, there we were strolling down the narrow sidewalk with throngs of people, map in hand, eyes wandering all over, when someone tapped me on the back of my right shoulder. I turned around and saw this youngish scuzball pointing to my shoulder as if there was something on my shirt. Immediately I recognized the pick pocketing scam (three days earlier upon our arrival in Barcelona the hotel had provided a written warning about such events and Joey had taken the time to read it to me). I whirled around to my front just at the same moment the second man was ‘bumping’ into me and reaching into my left front pocket for my money.
I grabbed him by the neck with both hands and spun him around 90 degrees pushing him up against the wall in the process. He looked surprised. And perhaps a little scared. I was surprised, but not scared. Rather I felt empty and calm inside. That’s because I didn’t know what to do next. I did free my left hand from his neck and felt for my money in that left front pocket. I had it. The pickpocket jabbered and protested in Spanish, which, of course, I couldn’t understand. But it sounded like: “What are you doing?! Let me go! I didn’t do anything! What’s the matter with you?” There followed a simple reflex reaction: I smacked his face with my free hand as hard as I could. ‘Wow, where’d that come from?’ I wondered.
Maybe I thought this would shut him up. But it only made matters worse. The decibel level of his whining shot up 25%. A crowd had now stopped and was watching. They couldn’t tell who the aggressor was and were just frozen, mouths open, all around us waiting to see what would happen. Meanwhile, my mind is racing: I’m thinking that Joey would probably be angry with me for slapping this guy around (I can hear her making two syllables out of my name: “JAYaims!”) and that I should let him go before I got into real trouble. I’m also thinking, ‘Geez, I’m holding this dude with just my right hand and he’s not getting away. How come? I must be stronger than I thought. Look at that ... one hand around his neck. He’s going to have some bruises there when this is over.’ It does occur to me, though, that he has a partner and that guy might come at me with a knife or something. Also, what am I really going to do? Turn the guy in to the Police? I don’t think so. It’s always best, in my book, to just let these things go and not let them poison your emotional life. After all, I caught the guy; scared him; embarrassed him. That was enough. So I refocus on his whining, mewling, little gutter rat face and his cowardly protestations trip some other wire deep inside me. Whack, I smack him again. This time really good, flush on the side of the head. I stare into his eyes: ‘You picked the wrong guy, Bozo,’ I’m trying to say to him. I think he gets it, so I let the little rat go. He scurries off. With his compadre, who I now see was lurking behind the crowd about 15 feet from the action.
Joey is right next to me. “What happened?” “He was a pickpocket,” I tell her, “just like you read. One guy bumped me from behind and the other tried to dip into my pocket.” She understood immediately and applauded my lightning fast reflex reaction. ‘Yeah,’ I’m thinking, ‘I was fast! Damn! And with a half a bottle of champagne in me, too! That’ll teach ‘em to fool around with me!’ The crowd dispersed and we turned and headed back down the street. With shoulders back and heads high in triumph, we continued on our shopping mission. The pickpocket incident was history. But the flow of adrenalin seemingly getting stronger inside said otherwise.
After a few minutes of looking at a bunch of cheap ties, I said: “None of these appeal to me. Let’s go back there and see if we can find those guys again.” I wanted more. By now I’m really steamed over this and want to punish the guy. All kinds of Schwartzeneger like movie scenarios are filling my mind: my muscles are rippling; the sun glints off my hardened body; my eyes are cold. I have the rat in my iron grasp again, and I’m squeezing the life out of him. “No,” says the calmer head, “let’s go to lunch.” Which we did. Having one of the most memorable meals of our trip.
The restaurant was El Rincon de Esteban, or Steven’s Corner. It was an all-Spanish crowd of politicos, lobbyists, office workers, and local businessmen because we were situated right across the street from the Congreso de Diputatos. The waiter Manuel must have recognized the aura now emitting from my person – how could he not? I was positively glowing. Or maybe he thought I was John Wayne reincarnate -- and he couldn’t have been more attentive or charming or professional. The truth is the Missus was glowing at twice the rate that I was, and she charmed him right out of his socks. I was just grinning like a fool because I couldn’t stop replaying the “incident.”
After discussing and ordering an anchovy appetizer (the fresh and the salted alternated like the spokes of a wheel), the owner, Esteban came over and with only three or four words of English made us feel not only welcome but like his long lost American cousins back from the wilderness and home at last to sample his finest. The parade of wines and treats from the kitchen began and didn’t end until he embraced us at the door two hours later and presented Joey with souvenir bottles of olive oil and an “Esteban” shot glass that we coveted. What a lunch. What an introduction to Madrid. What a perfect Anniversary present.
I went to sleep that night still replaying my reflex reaction and wondering whether I was really that fast, or the pickpocket just slow. I prefer the notion that I was that fast. And that those two guys spent the rest of the day arguing with each other and accusing each other of being incompetent.
Lunch at El Rincon de Esteban was so perfect that we asked the Hotel Concierge to make a reservation for us the following night for dinner. Manuel and Esteban had our table ready and waiting for us, complete with the anchovy appetizer already on the table. Manuel revealed it with a flourish. This time we played the role of honored royalty. Kisses all around like we hadn’t seen each other for months. Senora Esteban from the kitchen with a little sausage appetizer “like from the North” she explained. Special attention and knowing smiles from the whole staff. And Joey in the guest of honor seat right under the large and prominently displayed picture of Esteban with his arm around King Juan Carlos like they were Fraternity brothers. It was all too much and we didn’t resist it very well either proceeding through the appetizers, dinner, two bottles of wine, crème Brule, cookies, desert wines, grappa, and chocolates. We promised Esteban that we’d come back the following night after we attended the bullfights. But sanity prevailed and we wound up somewhere else.
Portugal
All this excitement came on the heels of our bicycling trip through Portugal, a fairly magical procession down the West Coast of the Country from Lisbon to Sagres in the Algarve.
The idea for the bike trip was an outgrowth of a couple of things: one, our continuing effort to stay reasonably fit; and two, a desire to take a somewhat novel vacation and see a foreign Country in a different way. It scored big in both departments. We felt like real athletes when we finished; and, in fact, after biking for a week through the bucolic and beautiful countryside of rice fields, olive groves and cork tree plantations and alongside the magnificent cliffs and beaches, it’s hard to imagine seeing Portugal from the perspective of the cities and tourism centers.
The trip was an organized bike tour sponsored by a US company, and in fact, all of the riders, eleven of us, were Americans. We met at the Lisbon airport on a Sunday morning and were taken by van to the nearby coastal resort town of Sesimbra where we spent two nights at the Hotel do Mar overlooking the bay and the Hotel pool. A small room and two small beds greeted us. That was to be a continuing theme on the trip – small beds -- but for the most part, a very minor one. It wasn’t until the last two nights that the lack of sleep caught up to us and we became a little cross-eyed and contentious.
Another theme was the Atlantic Ocean. It was beautifully serene and calm from Lisbon south all the way to Cape St. Vincent, because it’s sheltered by the Northern Headlands and alee of the weather. The Ocean was always peaceful and seductive from afar, always gently roaring and cold up close, and always soothing and restorative when in it. The beaches were silky and endless; the coves plentiful and impossibly deserted; and the roads along the high bluffs all dirt and available to whomever wanted to chance a ride on them. No development here. No crass exploitation of the beachfront. Only what Nature had provided. All the way down the Coast. We all loved it. It was impossible to resist.
That first day we met each other and our guides Vitor and Pedro. Vitor, mid forties, was something of an enigma, preferring not to reveal too much about himself other than his manifest pride in his Country and profound knowledge of the history, geography and flora and fauna of the ride. I asked him if he was perhaps a teacher? No, was the answer, a part time salesman in his family’s car business. Hmmm, that was interesting; why lead bike tours, then? Oh, well... Pedro, who had gone to an English speaking school, was simply one of those warm and generous souls that everybody instantly loved. Especially some of our single companions.
And that turned out to be yet another minor theme of the bike trip: companionship, or the lack thereof. Seven of the eleven were single and after a few warm up drinks not embarrassed at all to detail the pain of it. To say that the singles were preoccupied with their quest for companionship is to state the obvious. Fun and funny at first, it became a constant after a while and then a little saddle burr at the last. The thought of sitting with the group at the farewell dinner and listening to more of the same had me digging my heels into the tile flooring.
But these are minor complaints. The truth is the whole adventure was magnificent in scope and overwhelming to the senses and imagination. The tour had something different and special planned for us every day and each event was singularly enjoyable and unique. There were lonely farm roads that passed abandoned villas and olive groves – they made me think of “Under The Tuscan Sun” and about buying one; vast fields of gold and lavender wild flowers stretching to the Ocean; an invigorating morning sail aboard the 50’ Galeo Riquitum to the Tróia Peninsula where the Captain actually beached the boat on the sandy bottom and then ferried us ashore in the dinghy (you could never do that in the US, I thought, somebody would sue you for something); a tile manufacturer where the hand painted work was done according to 300-year-old formulas (Joey has ordered platters and olive bowls); the Roman ruins of Mirobriga, an almost complete hilltop town where one could actually walk in the ruins and contemplate the Roman way – the smallish Temple of the Emperor, for example, situated right on top of the hill in a little forum where I stood and overlooked the entire town, or the old, one lane, stone bridge over the river that was the entrance to the town and that had speed bumps in it to slow down those speeding chariots (this was as thrilling for me as the day in Rome a few years ago when we snuck behind the barriers and I walked right out onto the Tarpean Rock).
There was also a two night stay in Vila Nova de Milfontes at the old Castle that used to guard the river mouth -- providing the opportunity for beachcombing and picnicking (which we did), swimming (which we didn’t), and sidewalk cafes (which we did); an incredible picnic on the cliffs high above the crashing surf at the Cabo Sardao lighthouse – simply spectacular; lunch at a beachfront restaurant the following day where the sea bass had literally just come out of the water and was grilled within minutes on an open pit – no fish ever tasted so good; a spectacularly long ride – 60 miles! - down the coast and out onto the coastal plain to Cabo Sao Vincente, the Southwestern most point in Europe and the site of Prince Henry the Navigator’s School of Navigation (the Portuguese invented the Sextant which allowed them the ability to sail the African Coast and return long before Columbus). Standing right out there on the very edge of Western Europe, high above the crashing waves, and looking out into the constant wind and the vast Atlantic, the urge to go and discover what lies beyond comes over one. It can’t be helped, and it brought to life and to mind the excitement of my fourth grade “Explorer” studies: Vasco de Gama, Columbus, Balboa, De Soto, Ponce de Leon, Cortez, Vespucci. And, lest we forget, there were any number of sleepy country towns where the old men, sitting on benches in front of their white Churches, were welcoming and friendly and where the life seemed slow, attractive and benign.
A typical riding day began with a hearty breakfast at which the whole group attended, followed by a ‘map meeting’ during which Vitor took us through the map of the route that day and its accompanying ‘cue sheet.’ The Cue Sheet is a two or three page summary of all the important landmarks, mileages and turns we were to make so that one could follow the correct path if one was separated from the group. Uh... that would be me. Always last. Always bringing up the rear. Well, me and Joey, since she kindly decided on most occasions to drop back and “make sure nothing happened to me,” as she so delicately put it. She’d frequently try to disguise her purpose by taking pictures. I was always last because everybody else was younger and faster and because there were a lot of hills, which are not my forte. Let me put it this way, going up the hills I was always last. Going down the hills, I was always first. In spite of Galileo’s experiments, weight does make a difference when gravity comes into play.
The Cue Sheet fits into a cylindrical plastic cover that threads through the top of the handle bar bag. That way, one can, while riding, simply roll the plastic sheet forward and read what the next landmark or turn or mileage will be. It’s a very clever set up. The handle bar bag was also used to carry a windbreaker, extra T-shirt, bicycle lock and most importantly, snacks and goodies. You’re out there burning up lots of calories and every once in a while the odd piece of chocolate or cookie was just what was needed to keep you from bonking.
The support van went ahead and would wait at critical turns and junctions. There was always plenty of water and snacks in the van. And one could, if so desired, simply put one’s bike onto the rack towed behind the van and ride for a while. I did this one morning after crashing on a steep downhill dirt trail and leaving a few ounces of blood and tissue in the gravel. But as soon as we got across the river and to the top of the opposite hill, I got back on the bike and rode the rest of the way. It was so peaceful and pleasant that riding the bike was much preferable to riding in the van. Joey rode every mile, every day. And this was pretty remarkable given the fact that she had just come off of a very serious back and hip injury, which had totally laid her up for six weeks.
Lunch was always at a prearranged locale. One of the more memorable ones was at the small town of Porto Covo. The cove was only about 75 yards wide and was situated below the bluff we happened to be on. There were colorfully painted little boats anchored in it. A snorkeler bobbed in the water on some kind of languid mission. We ate outdoors at a terraced restaurant right above. The view of the cove, the boats, the blue sky and Ocean was unforgettable. Two accordion players greeted us with a tango. Whenever street musicians came around they always played a tango first and I don’t know why. It was all I could do to keep from dancing. Fresh fish and good wine, sunshine, and the laughs of our companions complete the picture.
The other thing that was so charming about Porto Covo, and this was common to many of the smaller beachfront towns that we saw, was that it seemed to be completely new. All of the houses were of recent construction and all were immaculately white with royal blue trim around the bottom. The TV guy in me thought that the towns looked like they had been prepped for some sort of National Commercial shoot. The blue trim, so prominent wherever we went, Pedro explained, was a traditional good luck or good spirits symbol.
It turns out that when Portugal became a democracy and entered the EU thirty years ago or so, they were very poor compared to the rest of Europe, having had stability under the dictator Salazar, but not prosperity. And so, the rest of the EU began to invest heavily in Portugal in order to “bring it up to speed.” All of the highways in the Country are new. So are many of the towns. The investment, construction and remaking of the Country continues today.
The afternoon rides were of varying length, but always characterized by that final few kilometers to the next Hotel, during which one begins to think of a hot shower and a lie down on the bed. It reminded me of my days in football summer camps: get up, go to practice, come back, lie down and rest; eat; lie down and rest; get up and go to afternoon practice, come back, lie down and rest; eat; lie down and rest. It has a rhythm to it that you can’t resist. If only those beds were more comfortable I might not have turned into an embryonic werewolf and scratched up those tile floors at the end there.
On the last riding day of the tour, we gave up the option to ride to Lagos, a booming tourist town – the vacationing English have made the Algarve a little Riviera -- so that we could stay in Sagres and enjoy the beach. What a good decision. We found a protected little cove where somebody had previously built up a three-foot high stonewall for privacy and protection from the wind, and we just reveled in the heat of the sun and cool of the water. Lunch at the beachfront restaurant was delicious (fresh fish, what else?) and great fun. We managed to make friends with the owner (I guess we have a talent for this) who subsequently gave us a thumbnail history of the place.
On the last day we drove back to Lisbon, retracing most of our bike route. It was interesting to see it in reverse, pick out the landmarks, think about all the events of the ride and realize the mileage that we had piled up on the way down to Sagres. Wow: two hundred miles. It all went by too fast.
I had stored a large suitcase in Lisbon at our first hotel and the idea was that we would leave Sagres in plenty of time in order for Vitor to drop us off there so that I could retrieve it before proceeding to the airport and our flight to Barcelona. The only problem was that Vitor, like all the rest of Portuguese, had a very relaxed attitude towards time. “We get there when we get there” was basically his thinking. As we proceeded north, I started to get annoyed because my built in ‘time cushion’ evaporated during our leisurely ride, and we reached the point where even if we made a perfect taxi connection at the Hotel and the departure proceedings went perfectly, we’d just barely make the flight!
When we finally arrived at the Hotel, I was tied up in knots and convinced that we were going to miss that 3:30 PM departure. We were an hour and a half behind schedule! I ran in and grabbed the bag. Joey said a hurried good-bye to the rest of the folks in the van while I tried to flag down a cab along with the Hotel doorman. I’m standing on the sidewalk sweating, fuming and worrying: there was no way all that luggage was going to fit into one of those little cabs! But we got lucky. It did. And the driver was an ace. When Joey said, “toute
suite,” he understood. He stood on it! We were doing 110-120 km/hr in the bus/taxi lane on the way out to the airport. I looked at Joey. She rolled her eyes. I didn’t want to think about the danger and tried to pretend I was someplace else: like, in the cool, medicinal surf at Zambujeira.
Before the waves knocked me down, we made it safely to the Departures Terminal and tipped the appreciative driver generously: “Obrigado, obrigado, te nada,” we kept saying half way into the terminal. We figured out the check-in process and it went smoothly enough. I only had to pay an extra twenty-five Euros for the excess weight of the new bag, one of those two-ton jumbo jobs. We then got through security. And finally to the gate, only to discover that there was nobody there. No plane, no gate personnel, no nothing. Nervous and anxious, I went to the Lufthansa gate next to us and asked if they knew anything.
“Oh, those Portugalia people are never on time,” the young German informed me, “just wait at the gate, they’ll come by.” Thirty minutes later a Portugalia employee did come by and confirmed that the flight had been delayed an hour or so. Vitor knew something that we didn’t, that’s for sure: “everybody’s going to get to where they want to go, and it’s probably going to happen today. So, relax, my friend.” ... Okay. Okay, Vitor. I think I can do that. But I do have to work at it.
Barcelona
We slept for a day when we got to Barcelona, so comfortable was the bed and so quiet and cool the room. With no special agenda, other than simply relaxing, we spent a few very carefree days just wandering the City and sampling what it had to offer: fantastic art, the most beautiful architecture, the height of European sophistication, and outstanding restaurants.
We quickly learned that most of Spain speaks with a lisp. So, Barcelona is pronounced Barth-thell-OH-na; gracias: GRATH-thi-AHSS, and so on. Now for years, when I’ve had to spell my somewhat unusual name for people over the telephone I would always say: “B as in Boy, A, FF as in Frank, ICO.” But that all changed the night I heard our Concierge make a dinner reservation for us and spell my name for the restaurant thusly: Bay, Barth-thell-OH-na; AH, AF-ri-ca; Effay, FRAN-cee-ah; Effay, FRAN-cee-ah; EEE, i-TAL-ya; Say, Co-LUM-bee-ah; OH, Oh-REG-gon-oh. With a hard trilling of the ‘R,’ the OhREGgonoh dissolved me into laughs that lasted for days. Furthermore, I’m resolved to forever spell it this way for anybody who asks or can’t quite get it from the pronunciation.
It’s impossible to be in Barcelona and not be awed by its beautiful architecture. Two men, Domenech i Montaner and Gaudi are mainly responsible. They were leaders of the Catalonian modernisme movement of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries; one that drew heavily from the latent Romanesque and Gothic traditions of the region. They experimented with ceramic tiles, ironwork, stained glass and decorative stone carving, to say nothing of fanciful design. The work is startling and frequently fantastic. Joey thought the Gaudi was akin to Early Disneyland. And, she pointed out that it could be the origin of the word ‘gaudy.’ It’s not, but it could be. But this imaginative work set the tone for those who followed and the result is a City on a par with Paris in terms of its sheer beauty. I will always think of Barcelona as the Paris of the Twenty First Century.
In particular, we visited Gaudi’s famous Church, the Sagrada Familia and his Park Guell. The park was a little like Fantasy Land in Anaheim with 15 foot high stone palm tree sculptures lining the road (they looked like they could double for huge tiki torches if need be), brightly colored tiled ‘tea cup’ sitting areas circling the large main terrace, combinations of straight and leaning support columns, and a bewildering variety of visual detail from the sublime to the grotesque. The winding wall, for example, that bordered the path we walked wasn’t just a wall, it was full of nooks and crannies and architectural features made just for their visual impact. Moreover, the wall was composed of blocks roughly a cubic foot in size. But these weren’t just simple blocks of stone. No, the building blocks were made up of a variety of other materials like rocks, shells, and glasses that had been carefully combined to appear random in their organization. So the effect is detail upon detail upon detail. It’s wonderfully excessive and makes one smile.
The Sagrada Familia, however, wouldn’t make anyone smile. The same idea of detail piled upon more detail, but now combined with a heavy-handed gothic religiosity, is almost frightening. Four lattice-like soaring spires at each end of the Church are made up of what appears to be dark stones and darker holes. (The last four, totaling 12 for the 12 Apostles, have yet to be built.) The spires create a real sense of foreboding, even with their balls of brightly colored fruit on top. There are balconies and gargoyles and statues of Saints; and bulges and protuberances and stone towers; and written words and brightly colored fruit like decorations and an ominous stone mouth stretched wide open, 10 feet across, with long sharp stone teeth placed directly over the main entrance. If I were a child, I would not want to go into that place. It would scare the hell out of me.
We balanced all this Gaudi with a visit to the Picasso Museum. Normally we don’t do Museums. My feeling is that I’d prefer to take the time to simply study the pieces in a book and to try to know something about them rather than just walk by them and pass in review, as it were. However, there is so much art in Barcelona, one just gets into the spirit of it and the Museum seemed like the natural thing to do. And it was quite good. They had the majority of Picasso’s work there, Barcelona being his home before going to Paris, and much of it from his youth and early development. One could clearly see the traditional origins of his work and then the morphing expressionism, impressionism, cubism, abstraction and so on. We wanted to see his masterpiece “Guernica” but had to wait until Madrid. I confess that the later work, from Cubism on, leaves me basically cold. I don’t connect with it. Don’t even pretend to understand it.
But the Museum capped a nice day of walking and exploring the barrios. From our Hotel in Eixample where the architecture is so wonderful, we strolled over to Las Ramblas – an endless series of small and interesting shops, then El Raval – more of a tourist and trinket district, down to the wharf and past the great statue of Cristofor Colon high atop a magnificent column and pointing to the West just like you think he would; then back through the Old Town of Ciutat Vella – a true taste of the Barcelona of two hundred years ago. The Barri Gotic with its old Cathedral was next, then the chic La Ribera where the Museum is located. Afterward, we took a cab back to the Hotel. My dogs were barking.
Madrid
Our trip was coming to a natural climax. We flew off to Madrid, our last stop. And arrived on our Anniversary. That first day was fairly exciting with the Champagne and the pickpocket incident and lunch at Esteban’s. That night, after Siesta, we had an exquisite Anniversary dinner at nearby place called Balzac. It was very haute cuisine. Maybe I should say, “very, very haute cuisine.” The kind of restaurant where the food bears no resemblance at all to what the menu says or what you expect, so far out is it in its conception and presentation. I wore my new tie, but it was so warm I wished I hadn’t. Fans were the order of the day. There were a couple of Spanish ladies nearby who flipped and fanned with great expertise. Josephine was beautiful and cool as a cucumber.
I guess it was the result of being in Barcelona, but the one thing we both wanted to do in Madrid was go to the famous Prado Museum. Since it was right across the Boulevard from our Hotel, we did just that. Because I have been so focused in my life studies on Marlowe and Shakespeare and the English of the Sixteenth and early Seventeenth Centuries, I never really took the time to understand that the Spanish were the dominant European power for hundreds of years. During the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries they had all the money and all the power. And as a result, they acquired all of the art, too.
The Prado collection is absolutely spectacular. We spent hours there. It was jaw dropping. We walked and looked and walked some more until we couldn’t do it any longer. I have never seen so much Roman sculpture. It was as if Madam Tussaud had an “Imperial Rome Salon” set up in Madrid: Caesar, Mark Antony, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, Claudius, Caracala, Trajan, Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius, et. al. There was even a bust of my personal hero, Marcus Agrippa, Augustus’ right hand man and the original builder of The Pantheon and the famous aqueduct at L’Orange. ‘Marco Bruto,’ the Spanish had labeled him: ‘Ugly Marcus.’ “Hey, wait a minute,” I wanted to protest, “you have to think about what this man did, not what he looked like!” “And you don’t call Nero ugly? What’s up with that?” I looked at the bust again. He wasn’t ugly. He was my brother. Spiritually, anyway. “You go, Marcus. You’ll always be number one in my book. And I’m so glad I finally got this chance to SEE you.”
Then we walked a few blocks to another Museum, the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, and finally saw Picasso’s Guernica. The Reina Sofia houses much of the modern Spanish art of Miro, Dali, Picasso and the like. One woman in front of the Guernica was weeping. Joey was moved to stillness and contemplation. I was glazed. The overload alarm had gone off and I was flashing yellow warning lights. I think my wife was in the same condition, but it was hard to tell in the midst of all that abstraction.
On the way back to the Hotel, the only thing that saved me from blacking out was the “Ham Museum” we passed. I know you think I’m kidding, but I’m not. A real Museum of Ham. Oh, and a Deli, too. But I had to peek in there. My wife understood. And it was a hoot with great hams hanging all around the walls of the place. I think they were all labeled, too, signifying the great feats that each had, or was about to, achieve(d). There were also all kinds of Ham kitsch and sandwiches and the like, for sale. It positively revived me. It made me laugh. It also made me stop and wonder: “What does it say about a man that he rejects the “Guernica” but connects with the humor of Ham Hocks?”
Bullfights
All that remained before heading home was our date with the Matadors at the Plaza des Torros on Saturday night. Joey had misgivings about going, but since I wanted to go and had planned it for so long, she bravely decided that she’d be a good sport and tough it out. After the first bull, she wished she hadn’t. After the sixth bull, I wished that I hadn’t.
You know for years I’ve heard about and read about this great contest between man and bull; this display of courage in the face of extreme danger; this life or death struggle, which somehow ennobled the Matador, the bull and the spectator. This graceful and beautiful dance of death. Puh-LEEZE! It’s nothing like that at all.
Fifteen or so guys, including horses in full body armor, come out and tease and torture and wound and bleed and humiliate this gorgeous and powerful creature until he’s so weak and so disoriented and so exhausted that the Matador can then stand next to him and show his courage by letting the bull “charge” his cape. But it’s hardly a charge since the bull is so tired. It’s more like a three or four step lurch. And 95% of the time, the Matador doesn’t even stand his ground, preferring instead to jump out of the way lest he come too close to a goring.
After five or so minutes of this ‘close in’ kind of work, the Matador takes a special “killing” sword and thrusts it into the bull’s shoulders, plunging it down to the heart. The bull stops, stands, stares, then keels over. Frankly, after the preliminaries, it’s a little anti-climactic. Nevertheless, now comes the part that really annoyed me: the Matador’s grandiose gesture of triumph at the death before him. “I am so-and-so, and I, the all-powerful, have given you death!” he said with his very theatrical gesturing and body language, expecting the crowd to be as awed as the dead bull, I guess. ‘Give me a break!’ I thought.
The mule team comes out, the carcass is hooked up to it and then unceremoniously dragged out of the ring while the crowd either cheers or is silent, or on occasion whistles as they try to influence the judging. With the last bull of the day, the Matador stabbed him five times and couldn’t kill him. The crowd was very impatient with this. There was lots of hissing and clucking and whistling. Finally, the judges must have told him to use another method of dispatch, and the Matador stuck him in the brain. At least I think that’s what he did. I was contemplating my shoes and not watching too closely. He might have been bopping him on the head with a sledge like they do in a slaughterhouse. Nevertheless, after two or three of these attempts, the bull died. Okay. Thanks.
Now, as you’d expect, the crowd was very sophisticated in these matters. They liked and cheered some performances and booed or whistled at others. The less the Matador jumped out of the way and the more skillfully he worked the bull, and the cleaner the ‘coup de grace,’ the greater the appreciation. The crowd definitely did not like the work on two of the bulls, and those Matadors quickly left the ring. Two others were considered average, and there was little or no applause and no curtain call. But, they did give a curtain call to two of the Matadors.
The applause was vigorous and sustained. In return, the Matadors acknowledged this by proceeding slowly around the ring waving their cap to the crowd. Just like doing “the Wave” the crowd would rise and greet the Matador with its cheers as he came in front of them. Flowers and hats were thrown in appreciation. The other Matadors, graciously serving as assistants to the man who just fought the bull, came behind and picked up the tribute. On one occasion, a “humbled” Matador picked up a single flower thrown to him by a woman. He turned to the lady, kissed it and bowed slightly to her before proceeding on. We knew what that meant: he had read somebody’s old movie script and knew he was supposed to meet her at the back gate afterwards. At any rate, these two best Matadors were awarded an ear by the judges. The crowd roared its approval as it was cut off.
I think I gave all this a fairly objective look. I certainly tried to. I understood and agreed that these two Matadors who were applauded were better than the others. They had skill and a certain bravery. But still, the bottom line is that it’s really no contest. Every natural asset the bull has is carefully taken away or negated, leaving him at the mercy of his adversaries. Where’s the struggle in that, I wondered. More to the point, after he kills the bull, why does the man gloat about it?
Sitting in the bullring, you can’t help but think about the Roman Coliseum and the similarities with gladiatorial combat. I wondered how the Romans reacted to this kind of preening and gloating when a gladiator triumphed in the ring before them. What would Agrippa have thought? I’ll tell you what he would have thought, he would have thought the same thing that I thought: “get serious, you little bastard, death is nothing to gloat over.”
They killed six bulls in two hours and I tried hard to understand the attraction of it or see the beauty in it. I couldn’t.
We went home the next day. But instead of leaving a bad taste in our mouths, the bullfights simply reoriented us to the reality that not everything in life is as perfect as the rest of our vacation was. Some things are ugly. (Not you, Marcus. In spite of what those Spaniards think, not you.) And some things defy explanation.
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