Uno de enero, dos de febrero,
tres de marzo, cuatro de abril,
cinco de mayo, seis de junio,
siete de julio, San Fermin.
A Pamplona hemos de ir,
con una media y un calcetin.
Pobre de mi, pobre de mi. Se han
acabado las fiestas de San Fermin.
Folk song from the Province of Navarra„
For three hundred, fifty eight days out of the year
Pamplona is a sleepy provincial village, but for the
seven days between July seventh and fourteenth it is a
Mecca for bullfighters, bullfight aficionados and
crazies of every persuasion. Hotels are booked for
months in advance as are the private homes that are
opened up by families, not just to earn a few extra
pesetas, but also to share with the rest of the world
their very special fiesta. Through my connections as an
officer in the embassy I managed to get us all into a
small pension just off the main square.
It was late in the afternoon by the time we arrived
in Pamplona, and after checking in to the pension we all
headed into the streets. It was not long before Thais
and I were separated from the others and we sat down in
a cafe to order a drink.
"I'm in love with you and I want to go to bed with
you," Thais said.
It wasn't
Thais talking. It was Lady Brett Ashley, and I was Jake
Barnes. We were being held captives in a Hemingway
novel that was set in Pamplona during the week-long
Feria de San Fermin.
We were sitting in the Cafe Iruña on the Plaza de
Castilla, and the town was overflowing with French,
English, Germans and Swedes. Basque fife and drum bands
played jotas Navarras while the white-suited, red-sashed
Mozos de Pamplona danced.
"If we go to bed together," I said, "we're going to
cause a lot of pain and suffering for a lot of people,
not the least of whom are you and me."
"I don't see how love can ever hurt anyone," she
replied. "Love is not meant to hurt."
"What about my wife, Marsha? Your husband, Jack?
Do you think they'll be overjoyed with our love for each
other?"
"I don't care about other people. I only care about you and me, and I know that we won't be hurt."
I dipped my hand into the pocket of my Levis,
pulled out a handful of pesetas and paid the bill. We
pushed our chairs back from the table, and left the cafe
to amble through the crowds.
"Are you going to run with the bulls tomorrow?" she
asked and slipped her hand into mine.
"If your husband has his way I am. Didn't you
notice how insistent he was this afternoon when he tried
to get me to go out and buy something besides these rope
soled alpargatas I'm wearing. He wasn't going to let me
get by with the excuse that I didn't have any shoes to
wear. He isn't going to let me sit in the cafes and
bullshit about being a macho bullfighter. He wants to see me out
there on the streets with those horns."
"He's jealous of you," she said.
"Jealous! For crissake why? What does he have to
be jealous about?"
"Oh, Pete, you're such a boy. I guess that's why I
love you so much. You really don't know how special you
are, do you?"
"I'm not special, Thais. I'm just like everyone
else. I'm just trying to muddle through."
We stopped and watched a group of mozos dance.
When they finished, one of them pressed his bota, a
leather wine skin, into Thais' hand. Shaking his thumb
towards his mouth, he urged her to drink.
She held the bota out at arms's length and squeezed
a stream of dark red Rioja wine into her mouth. She cut
it off smartly without spilling a drop, and they all
applauded her. She handed the bota back to the mozo,
and he handed it to me. I took it, repeated the
performance, and was rewarded with a round of applause.
We shoved our way through the milling crowds of
laughing, drunk, half-drunk and just plain happy
tourists, bullfighters, mozos, pimps, whores and queers,
then turned off the main square and roamed through the
narrow cobbled streets that zigzag out from the plaza to
the street where they run the bulls each morning.
We stopped at the fence that is erected each year
to close off the street. I put my foot on the bottom
rail, and rested my arms on the top one. Looking up and
down the street I had a tightening in the pit of my gut.
Shit! I thought. How in the fuck did I allow myself to
be conned into this absurd situation? Do I have some
compulsion to self-destruct?
"Are you scared?" She rested her head on my arm.
"Yes," I replied, "a little bit. That was pure
Jake Barnes bullshit. I was scared to death - just as I
had been scared to death when I agreed to kill that three
year old novillo.
"Then don't do it," she said and rubbed her cheek
against my bare forearm.
Don't do it! My God, I thought, if the word got back to Madrid that at the eleventh hour old hard
drinking, hell raising, Pete Stuart had lost his nerve,
I'd be finished. What if they, whoever they are, found
out that I had watched Henri and Jack run with the bulls.
I'd be exposed as a fraud. No, godamnit, I'd gotten
myself into the box, and I'll have to run my way out of
it.
We turned away from the fence and walked back
toward the Plaza de Castilla. Without being aware of
where we were headed, we ended up beside her husband's
silver Porsche and my Italian Racing Red Fiat.
I pulled the tonneau cover off and opened the door
for her. She slipped in. I walked around to the
driver's side, and slipped in behind the wheel.
Whether it would hurt me or her, Marsha or Thais' husband, I didn't know, and I didn't give a shit. If I
was going to run with those bulls the next morning, I
might get killed, and if I was going to die tomorrow, I
wanted to die with a little sin on my soul.
We inched our way through the crowded streets,
drove out of town, and I stopped at a dark place beside
the river. We got out of the car and I spread a GI
blanket and the tonneau cover on the ground. As we lay
by the river under the stars we could hear the noise
coming from the town, and overhead we could hear and see
the traca exploding in the sky.
"Oh, God, I'm crazy about you, Pete."
I took her in my arms to kiss her and she pushed
her tongue into my mouth.
"I'm crazy over you Thais," I said.
She reached to open my levis.
"God, I'm on fire! Fuck me, Pete! Fuck me now!"
There is nothing as sweet as the first meeting of two
bodies and souls that are crying out for communion. That
night we used the tonneau cover and a GI blanket spread
under an oak tree beside the river, but with the speed
and surety of a laser beam our minds raced in union
toward the conclusion that we would have to have bed to
share.
From that supreme second in infinity we were locked
together in a conspiracy of love that would take us all
over the Iberian Peninsula, North Africa and Mexico.
From that time on we were star crossed lovers.
It was almost two in the morning by the time we got
back to the Plaza de Castilla, and the action was in
full swing. The bars, streets and sidewalk cafes were
jammed with the fun seekers who migrate each year to
Pamplona. I parked the car and we walked through the
park in the middle of the square, stepping over the
collapsed bodies that either from fatigue, drunkenness,
or both had given up the ghost.
In our rambling around town Thais and I had
conveniently managed to get ourselves separated from Marsha, Thais' husband and the rest of our gang, and
even though we both knew that we should get back to our
separate rooms at the pension, we were in no mood to
part. We stopped in a sidewalk cafe and ordered two
bowls of sopa de ajo. To wash in down we asked for a
pitcher of Rioja wine.
For lack of a guidebook to my life I have frequently
missed the importance of certain events and moments, and
as I sat looking into Thais' mysterious oriental eyes I had
not even a slight hint of what I was heading for. I was
not just starting a love affair. I was starting on a
journey through time and space into the soul of a woman
who was the best of all possible worlds. An Asian
American born in California, seasoned by years of living
in Europe, Thais was at once Yin and Yang, the perfect
blending of East and West, and she was luring me into a
whirlpool that would leave me dizzy and dazed.
We finished our soup and tossed off the last of the
wine, then walked back to the pension. We climbed the
narrow stairway to the first floor where we embraced one
another.
"I don't want to leave you," she said. "I don't
want to ever leave you." She pressed her body against
mine and clutched at me as though trying to merge me
into her very being, "Oh, Pete, what are we going to
do?"
"I don't know, Thais, but we'll work some
thing out
when we get back to Madrid," I said. "Right now we have
to part."
As I slipped into bed beside Marsha that night I
felt no guilt, no shame, no sorrow. I was already
mesmerized. What I did not know was that Marsha had
overheard our last conversation.
I dreamed I was standing in the center of a bullring
looking into the gates of fear. From the stands I could
hear a crowd roaring and a bunch of mozos singing the
folk song about the sanfermines. Uno de enero, dos de
febrero, tres de marzo, cuatro de abril, cinco de mayo,
seis de junio, siete de julio, San Fermin. A Pamplona
hemos de ir con una media y un calcetin.
Pobre de mi, pobre de mi, se han acabado las
fiestas de San Fermin.
The sun was low in the sky and my shadow stretched
out before me, pointing toward the dark tunnel from
which my enemy would soon come thundering at me. The
trumpet sounded and the crowd began to roar. The gate
opened and my balls were in my throat from fear.
"Get out of that bed you son of a bitch," Marsha
screamed, and pulled the blanket off of me.
"You're going to run with those fucking bulls
today! Thais likes her men virile."
She stood at the
end of the bed and all I could see was a raging, wounded lioness. "So you'll work something out when you get
back to Madrid will you! If I had my way you'd never
get back to Madrid! You'd have one of the horns of
those bulls you're going to run with jammed into your
groin!"
I grabbed at the covers.
"I can't run today. I didn't buy any shoes. I'll
run tomorrow," I moaned.
"Oh no you won't. You're running today! Jack and I
bought you a pair of tennis shoes last night." She
threw the shoes at me. "Do you know what kind of bulls
they are today? They're Miuras, Pete! Does that scare
you?"
Oh shit, I thought. Miuras! The same bulls that
killed Manolete and God only knows how many other dumb
bastards like me! I wanted out of that Hemingway novel,
and I wanted out fast! Then the full impact of what I
was going to do hit me. I was not a character in a
novel that I could close the cover on. This was my
novel, my life, and I was going to have to put it on the
pass line in front of a herd of God damned Miura bulls!
The fear that I had felt the night before was nothing
compared to what I felt as I stood on the street in front of the
Ayuntamiento looking down the street, waiting for the
gun to go off that would signal that the bulls were on
their way.
Thais' husband, Jack, stood a few feet away. I
wondered if he hoped I would get a horn jammed into my
groin. Henri was behind both of us.
The same white suited mozos who had given us their
bota the night before were all around me joking and
laughing with or at me. One of them passed his bota to
me and I took a long pull of the wine from it. I
wondered how many terrified gringos they had watched
before me? How many smart ass Yanquis had stood in the
same place where I was standing and peed their pants? I
was not playing with little two year old calves with a
cape in a tienta. I was there with no cape waiting for
a herd of five year old Miuras! Oh God, I prayed, don't
let me pee my pants.
The gun went off, signaling that the bulls were on
their way. I started running. I ran as though the
Devil himself were chasing me. I passed the place where
I had stood the night before with Thais, and out of the
corner of my eye I saw her standing with Marsha watching
me. I wondered if Marsha still hoped that I would get a
horn jammed into my groin. I ran faster and harder as I
heard the cow bells on the Judas oxen that lead the
bulls to their final destiny, and the thought crossed my
mind that I still had time to jump the fence, but I was
at that point in the street where there was no fence.
There was nothing but buildings; there were no doors to
run into, no fence to jump. There was no way out; no exit! Then the bulls were right beside me. I looked
sideways. They were big black bastards, and their horns
were as long as my arm. Their heads swayed from side to
side searching for something solid to hook into.
I stumbled and fell. A bull trampled over me; his
hoof pressed into my chest. I looked up. The bull
stopped, turned and charged. His horns slipped under
me. He had found something solid to hook into. He
tossed me, and I flew through the air like a rag doll.
I remembered what Carmina de los Reyes had told me
about staying away from bulls. I landed on the cobbled
street, and felt a piercing pain in my shoulder. My
head hit the curb. I could feel the blood gush down the
side of my face, but I didn't have time to worry about
it.
I was dazed, but I looked up again. One of the
mozos had stopped running. He pulled the bull's tail.
The bull turned on him. The mozo ran, and the bull
followed him. The mozo jumped the fence, and the bull
ran after the herd. The bulls had passed me. I stood
up. The mozo jumped the fence again and ran to me.
"Estas bien?" he shouted.
I remembered what Birgitta said one day about not
being able to appreciate life until you have been really
scared. I appreciated life.
"Si," I said and laughed. "Estoy muy bien."
"Que bueno!" he shouted, smacked me on the ass, and
turned to run down the street toward the plaza de toros.
He still hoped to get into the action.
I had done it, and I hadn't peed my pants nor had a
horn jammed into my groin. I felt very macho, but I
knew that it was something that I never wanted to do
again.
* * * * *
As I usually did after having been gone for a long
period, I went into the embassy at six o'clock in the
morning to have a few quiet hours to go over the
accumulated mail and cable traffic. I put the Fiat in
the parking lot beside the embassy and walked across the
street to the Bar Blanco and sat down at one of the
tables.
The climate at home had been chilly, but I passed
off what I had said to Thais about "working things out"
as nothing more than having had too much wine to drink.
Marsha was both hurt and angry. She wanted to believe
me, but she knew that I was lying to her.
As I sat there dipping my churro in my coffee my
thoughts were focused on just exactly how I was going to
work things out. I gazed across the street at the
emba ssy, and with the sun rising behind the church, the
shadow of the cross that stands on top of the steeple of
the church was cast on the facade of the embassy.
If I had been really tuned into karmic signalsI would have realized that my thoughts about Thais were
very unchristian, and that the wages of sin are death,
but Hemingway heros don't think that way. They are
lusty idealists who fall in love very fast and very
deep, and at that moment I was very much in love with
Thais.
I paid the bill and walked back to the embassy. I
rang the bell for the Marine guard to open the door for
me and went up to my office.
By ten o'clock I had gone through all of the mail,
and I had drafted a few replies to routine cables. The
concentration on my work kept my mind off Thais, but the
moment that I relaxed she was in the fore of my thoughts
again.
Thais had become what I call my residual thought.
When I had nothing else to think about, work, Marsha, my
children or myself, my thoughts automatically turned to
Thais in the same way that the needle of a compass
swings to magnetic north. I suppose that some people
might call this an obsession, and I suppose also that
some, perhaps most people, reserve this place in their
thoughts for God or their Higher Power.
As I sat trying to "work things out" in my mind the
phone rang. I picked it up.
"Economic Section," I said.
"Pedro?" It was Thais.
"Yes," I replied. "How are you this morning?" My
heart was racing like the engine of a Lamborghini going
flat out in bottom gear.
"Missing you terribly," she said. "Are you busy?
Am I interrupting your work?"
"Of course not, I was just sitting here thinking
about you," I replied. "Where are you?"
"I'm downstairs at the Marine guard's desk," she
replied. "Do you have time for a cup of coffee?"
"I'll take time," I said. "I'll be right down." I
cradled the phone and walked to the elevator.
I spotted her the moment I walked into the lobby.
She was wearing a smart purple suit, and she had just
had her hair done. She looked both anxious and radiant.
I knew in that moment that I was powerless over
Thais. Her scent, her complexion, the shape of her body
and breasts, the tone of her voice matched some imprint
that I carried inside of me in my psyche or my heart
from some other time, or from beyond the point when time
began for me. As the Sufi poet Rumi wrote, I knew that
my drunkenness started in some other tavern. I wanted
to seize her and embrace her, but such behavior in the
lobby of the American Embassy would have been very
unbecoming a Foreign Service officer. Instead we shook
hands and looked into one another's souls.
"Let's go across the street to the Bar Blanco," I
said and took her by the arm. "The coffee is better
over there."
"How is your head?" she asked.
"Mixed up," I said and laughed.
"Stop it," she said and spanked my arm. "Are you
okay."
"Yes," I said. "I'm fine now that you're here."
I was wearing a bandage on my head where I hit the
curb. We had gone to a Red Cross clinic up in Pamplona
where they cleaned the wound, took two stitches, and
told me to stay away from bulls. I finally got the
message.
"How are you?" I asked.
"After almost a week of seeing you everyday up in
Pamplona I couldn't bear not seeing you this morning,"
she said after the waiter had served us two cups of
thick espresso coffee. "You look so much different all
dressed up in your embassy clothes. You look like an
Ivy League professor in your Brooks Brother's suit and
regimental tie. I think I like you better in Levis and
alpargatas."
I like myself better in Levis and alpargatas," I
said. "The Brooks Brothers suit is part of my State
Department cover. The real me is Levis, denim shirts
and alpargatas."
She smiled at me.
"I think they are both you. There are so many
facets to you that I get confused." She reached across
the table and took my hand. "Oh Pete, what are we going
to do? I can't bear being without you."
I looked at her for several moments, not knowing
what to say, then I told her, "We're going to have a
love affair."
For a while we met secretly for lunches, then I
found a pension on the Calle Ferrar del Rio where we
could go in the afternoons. In the private lover's
language that developed between us we called the pension
FDR.
At the end of the summer I sent the family home,
and Jack, Thais' husband, left Madrid to live at the job
site of the refinery his engineering firm was building.
At last, after months of secret teasing,
tormenting, touching and kissing one another, we were
alone together in Madrid.
We were like two children in paradise, living and
loving each other one day at a time, with no thought of
tomorrow.
It was the last week of summer by the time Jack and
Marsha left Madrid. I arranged for two weeks of leave,
and Thais and I left Madrid to drive to the coast to the
village of Calpe, a tiny Mediterranean fishing village
between Valencia and Alicante that I had discovered in
my travels. It was a magnificent autumn day, and we
drove with the top down. At noon I pulled off the road
to stop at an inn for coffee and some lunch.
We took a table outside, and when the waiter had
served our coffee Thais reached in her bag then brought
out a small gift wrapped package.
"Happy birthday," she said and leaned across the
table to kiss me.
I accepted the gift then leaned over and kissed her
again.
"Thank, you, darling," I said. "I had totally
forgotten that today is my birthday."
"How could you? Birthday's are so special. I
always think of birthdays as the day to indulge people.
I love them, and I love you," she said and reached under
the table to take my hand in hers.
I squeezed her hand, then opened the gift. It was
a tiny, slim silver Dupont cigarette lighter.
"Thank, you, darling." I kissed her again.
"This is the third birthday that I've spent in
Spain," I said. "And it's the best. Last year I
arrived in Gibraltar on my birthday, and the year before
that I was in Sevilla. I had just arrived in Spain."
"Do you mind if I ask how old you are?" she asked.
"Not at all. I'm thirty-four going on sixteen," I
said and laughed.
"You're just a baby. I'm going to indulge you all
day," she said.
"I know, and I love it. I love to be indulged,
coddled and caressed." She pushed her finger gently
into my ribs. "You're incorrigible."
"I know."
It was late when we arrived in Calpe to check into
a small hotel on a cliff overlooking the Peñon de Ifach,
a large phallic rock that rises out of the sea at the
entrance to the little fishing harbor.
The tourist season had passed, and the hotel clerk
was asleep behind the desk. I tapped on the door. He
yawned, staggered to the door, opened it, then shuffled
back behind the counter.
I walked to the desk, and handed my diplomatic
carnet, and Thais' passport to him. He did not look at
either, but pushed a registration card and key to me.
"It's number twenty-one. It has a view of the
harbor and the Peñon."
I filled out the hotel and police registration
forms. The clerk thumbed through Thais' passport, and
opened my carnet to look at, and I thought, compare the
names. I held my breath. The Spanish can be very
puritanical about unmarried people sharing hotel rooms.
I pushed the completed forms to him.
He picked them up to examine them.
"Muy bien," he said and smiled. "Bienvenido." I
didn't know whether he was sleepy or just didn't care
that we had different last names.
The next morning we awakened to the sound of fishing
boats putting out to sea, made love, ate a leisurely breakfast then walked down the hill to the wharf where
the fishing boats tie up. Just above the harbor we
spotted a tiny whitewashed house with a Se Alquila, For
Rent, sign in the window. I walked to look at the sign.
There was an address in the village to make inquiries.
I turned to look at Thais.
"Shall we?" I asked.
"Yes! yes! yes!" she squealed.
We walked back up the hill to the car and drove to
the village. The address was for a bodega, a wine
cellar. The house belonged to the owner of a small
vineyard and winery. He was cordial, friendly and
delighted to have a tenant out of season; he gave us a
case of the local wine as a bonus.
We moved all of the furniture out of the living
room and sat around on the floor to drink the red wine
from the village, read poetry and I played the guitar.
We made love in the half light of the early morning
when we were awakened by the pucka ta pucka chug of the
fishing boats putting out to sea, and then we heated
water in big pans and poured it over one another for our
baths.
In the evenings we sat on the porch for sundowners,
then cooked dinners, over a charcoal fire, of fresh
lobster and lenguado bought from the fishermen when they
came in with their day's catch.
We swam, spearfished and went skin diving in the
transparent waters of the coves along the coast, or
packed a lunch and drove in the Fiat to explore some of
the villages in the mountains that rise up just behind
the shoreline.
When we returned to the city I moved out of the big
apartment that Marsha and I had into a small place in
the old part of Madrid. Thais helped me decorate it,
and with her eye for beauty and simplicity it turned out
to be cozy and comfortable. She used a lot of local
fabrics with bright colors, and sort of guided and
interpreted my own tastes. It had a fireplace and we
charcoal broiled lambchops, steaks and ribs in it.
It was a wonderful location on a narrow cobbled
street, and from the terrace we had a view that looked
out over the red tile roofs toward Carabanchel. Many
mornings we got up early and watched the sunrise then
went for a walk while the street cleaners were hosing
down the streets. We both loved the street cleaners in
Madrid who looked more like foresters in their brown
corduroy suits with red lapels and broad brimmed
sombreros. When you're young and in love the simplest
things such as the street cleaner's uniforms or the
melody of a knife sharpener's whistle take on a special
meaning for you.
We gave champagne brunches on Sundays and invited
writers, painters and people in the theater who were
friends, of Henri Fultan. Thais knew a lot of interesting people, too, and frequently they came. I
always included a few of my diplomatic contacts in the
Spanish Government, and they loved the informality as a change from the normal diplomatic fare.
Our parties were not the usual stuffy, formal
diplomatic receptions to which they were accustomed. At
our parties people got a chance to know one another.
There was always a mixture of people so that it was not
just a case of diplomats telling each other diplomatic
secrets which are also referred to less euphemistically
as lies.
Thais loved Spain as much as I did. She was
enthusiastic about all of the things that were available
for us to enjoy. She loved to walk and window shop.
She saw beauty in the most simple of primitive hand
tools like the pitchforks that are grown with the tines
formed by branches. She was interested in my work in
the embassy; she read the stories that I wrote as well
as some of the dreary reports about the food program,
gross national product, trade and commerce.
We made a half hearted effort to keep our love for
one another a secret, but it's very hard to hide love.
We went to parties and receptions together, and
Thais was always at my house for any entertaining I had
to do. She helped plan the menus; she did the shopping;
she always saw that there were fresh cut flowers
displayed. Arranging flowers for Thais was a form of
Zen meditation. We did the cooking together. When it
came to money, Thais was meticulous. She kept an
account of all the money that we spent both in the house
and when we went out or travelled. Even though I paid
for things when we were out she wrote it down in her
ledger. Periodically she would add things up, divide by
two, and either give me a bill for the money I owed her,
or give me the money that she figured she owed me. She
said she understood that with the children I had
obligations that she did not have, and that she did not
wish to cost me any money. Where Thais got her money I
could only guess. When she worked I knew she made a lot
of money, but it had been a long time since she had a
job. I know she said one time that she had five
thousand dollars saved up, and that she wanted to buy a
house in Spain. She was very generous with her money,
and she didn't just tell me that she loved me. She
showed me that she love me.
Thanksgiving approached, we were both invited to my
boss, Tom Blacka's house for a cocktail party, and as we
walked in the door Tom met us. His face was ashen and
drawn.
"What's wrong, Tom?" I asked.
"The President's been assassinated," he replied.
"The President? What president? What are you
talking about?" I asked.
"Our president, President Kennedy has been
assassinated."
If he had told me that my own father had been
killed, I could not have been more shocked.
"Oh, God no," I moaned.
Thais and I stayed for a few minutes, received
messages of condolence from the few Spaniards who
arrived then went to my apartment. We were both
catatonic. I felt as though a piece of me had died.
For the first time in my life I understood what
John Donne meant when he said "no man is an island....
therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls."
All official functions were cancelled. The
officers in the embassy wore black ties for thirty days.
The flag was flown at half mast. The Spanish held a
memorial service in the Jesuit church opposite the
embassy, and General Franco attended after signing a
book of condolences at the Marine Guard's Desk in the
lobby of the chancery. The policeman who directed
traffic at the intersection in front of embassy wore a
black arm band on his blue tunic, and held his hand to
his helmet in a salute each time I drove out of the
parking lot.
On the day of President Kennedy's funeral we
listened on the radio to the Voice of America to the
muffled drums and the clop of the horses pulling the
caissons to Arlington Cemetery.
I had projected my idealism, my hope, and my dreams
for the future into President John Fitzgerald Kennedy,
and when they buried him, all of my noble, youthful
idealism and hope were buried with him.
Some intuitive insight told me that neither I, nor
America would ever be the same again.
* * * * *
In the Spring I had to go to Sevilla on business. It
was during the Feria de abril, and through the Marques
de Villa Noble we got the loan of a horse.
I dressed up in a traje corto, the short jacketed
Spanish outfit that is typical of Andalucia, and Thais
still had her lavender polka dot gypsy dress; each
morning we dressed, and rode the horse in the paseo.
I rode in the saddle, and she rode behind me, a la
grupa, as they say in Spanish, with her dress spread out
over her legs and the flanks of the horse. We drank
vino fino de Jerez, danced Sevillanas in the casetas and
went to the bullfights every afternoon.
Jose Maria del Prado had a tienta to which we were
invited, and after a full day of bullfighting, drinking,
dancing and eating we drove back to our pensiOn in the
Barrio de Santa Cruz , t he most local-coloured and
folkloric section of Sevilla.
The next morning we were to drive back to Madrid,
and while I packed our things in the car, Thais shopped
in the small tiendas near the pension for grapes, fruit,
wine, cheese and bread for our trip home. When I had everything set I leaned against the car and smoked a
cigarette while I soaked up the street scene.
Children were at play around a fountain in the
small cobbled square. Behind the wrought iron grill
work and whitewashed facades of the houses I could see
into the patios with colorful mosaic tiles and a
painter's palette of green, red, orange, blue and
magenta flowers and plants. Each patio had its own
fountain so that a symphony of gurgling water played
softly behind the street sounds of children at play, and
the call of a knife sharpener's whistle as he pushed his
one wheeled honing cart through the streets.
"Okay, I'm ready if you are," Thais said from
behind me. I turned and looked at her for several
moments. She was dressed in jeans and a course woven
Spanish peasant's smock. Around her neck she wore a red
scarf, left over from Pamplona.
I'm not ready, but I'll go anyway. I think I could
live here forever," I said taking the wine bottle and
packages of brown paper from her.
"Why don't we just stay, Pete. You can write
stories, and I'll decorate houses, or work in a
cigarette factory. Isn't that where Carmen worked," she
teased.
"You'd make a beautiful oriental Carmen," I said
and kissed her neck as she slipped into the seat of t he
car.
We drove with the top down, and after crossing the
Guadalquivir River we headed northeast toward Cordova.
Once out of the city we passed through miles of grape
vineyards, and on the slopes of the mountains, row upon
row of olive trees stretched into infinity. The meadows
between the olive groves were emerald green after the
Spring rains, and splashes of blood red poppies combined
with yellow sunflowers to make a natural Spanish flag.
In Jaen we turned north toward Madrid. The highway
cut across the vineyards and wheat fields of la mancha,
and in the late afternoon I pulled off the road under an
oak tree beside a brook to eat our lunch. I stretched
the tonneau cover, and the same GI blanket that we had
used in Pamplona, on the ground and Thais carefully set
out the food and wine, then cut a bouquet of
wildflowers.
We ate quietly, savoring the stillness of the
countryside. We were sipping the last of the wine when
Thais broke the silence.
"Will you be transferred some day, Pete?" she
asked.
"Yes, of course," I replied. I was stunned by her
abrupt focussing on the reality that neither of us
wanted to face.
"Where will they send you?" she asked.
"Who knows. With all of the new African countries
becoming independent I could end up down there someplace. Then there's always Vietnam," I said. "Why
do you ask that now?"
"Oh I was just thinking about how Spain would not
be the same for me without you. All of this will still
be here, but I won't see it the same way." She pulled
her legs up and put her arms around them, and rested her
chin on her knees. "I hope they don't send you to
Vietnam."
"So do I," I replied, and stroked the back of her
neck.
"Things do look different when you're in love." I
said. "The colors are brighter, the sounds more
melodic. People smile more; the summers are cooler and
winters are warmer. Everything is just better. When
I'm away from you I don't feel whole. What ever I am,
when I am with you, I feel that I'm more me because of
you. Does that make sense?"
She looked at me and smiled.
"Does anything make sense? Sometimes I think I'm
crazy; a middle aged woman in love with a boy. Then I
think of you and nothing else matters to me. I feel
that I am, I exist only because you see me. You see me
as I am, as I think I am. Your every utterance confirms
to me that you love me for what I am. I don't have to
scream at you to see me for what I am, and not what you
want me to be. I know that you see the very essence of
me. I know that I see you for what you are, a very
sensitive, imaginative and intelligent boy, man who I
love, respect and admire. I see you for what you were,
are and will be. I feel you, and I know that you feel
me."
We lay back on the blanket and I kissed her.
"Yes, I am only because you feel my being. Oh,
God, I love you, Thais." I pulled the blanket over us
and we made love, on our sides, face to face, under the
crystalline Castilian sky.
We stopped for dinner in a small country inn on the
river in Aranjuez, and arrived back in Madrid late in
the evening where we went straight to bed.
I went into the embassy early the next morning to go
over the mail and cable traffic. I was again treated to
the shadow of the cross on the facade of the embassy as
I sipped my morning coffee in the Bar Blanco. This time
I thought God must be showing his pleasure with the
Americans, at least this American.
By mid morning I had cleared out my "IN" box and
was just preparing to go downstairs to the embassy
cafeteria for another coffee when my secretary stuck her
head in my office.
"The ambassador's secretary just called and he
would like to see you upstairs, right away," she said
.
"Thank you, Paquita," I replied. "I hope the old
boy is in a good mood this morning because I am."
"Ambassador Walker is always in a good mood. You
should have seen some of the other ambassadors that we
have had," she said.
I laughed. "You're right, Paquita, Ambassador
Walker is a nice man," I said and walked out of the
office to the elevator.
"You can go right in, Pete," the ambassador's
secretary said as I walked into the outer office. "Tom
Blacka's in there and they're expecting you. I'll bring
you a cup of coffee right away."
The ambassador and my boss, Tom, were sitting at
the coffee table in the black leather sofa and chairs.
"Good morning, Pete," the ambassador said. "Come
in and sit down, please."
"Good morning, sir, Tom," I replied and sat down in
the chair at the end of the table facing the ambassador.
"How was the trip to Sevilla?"
"Excellent," I replied. "I'll have a report on it
in the mail to you this afternoon."
"Good. But that's not what I want to talk to you
about, Pete," the ambassador said. "I have some good
news for you. I was on the phone to Washington while
you were gone. You're being transferred to Mexico. They
want you there as soon as possible after you have your
home leave."
"How does it sound to you?" Tom asked and smiled.
"I'm both stunned and pleased," I replied. "I knew
that I was scheduled for a transfer, but I had never
thought that I might be sent to Mexico. With all of the
African countries becoming independent, I thought that I
would end up somewhere down there. Then, too, there's
always Vietnam."
"That's true for all of us," Tom said. "It's a
real break for you, Pete. I'll miss you, but it's a
great career opportunity. How soon can you have your
work cleared up to leave?"
"How soon do they want me?"
"ASAP, of course, but we can keep you till mid
June, that's almost two months away. Can you make it?"
"I'll be ready," I replied; I was already thinking
about how I would tell Thais.
I broke the news to her that night at my apartment.
We were sipping drinks on the terrace looking out toward
Carabanchel.
"I'm being transferred to Mexico, Thais," I said.
"When did you find out?" she asked and picked up
her drink.
"Today. The ambassador called me to his office
this morning."
"Are you pleased?" she asked and smiled a timid
half smile.
"Yes, and no," I replied. "Tom says it's a great
career opportunity."
"And it's better than Vietnam," she said and lit a cigarette.
"Yes, it's better than Vietnam."
"I'm pleased for you. Mexico is an important
country, and I know you'll do well. I'm proud of you.
Now I have something to tell you," she said.
"What do you have to tell me?" I asked.
"I was on the phone with Jack this morning. He's
being transferred to Barcelona, and he wants me to go
with him," she said.
"Are you going?" I asked.
She sat silently looking straight into my eyes for
several minutes.
"Yes," she replied. "Maybe I can come and see you
in Mexico."
"That would be nice," I said, and saw that she was
crying.
Within a week, Jack returned to Madrid, and they left to
drive to Barcelona in their Porsche. I stood on the
curb in front of their apartment and waved good bye to
them on a Sunday morning, then walked back to my own
apartment. It seemed very empty.
I never truly understood the relationship that
Thais had with Jack. I don't think I tried to understand
it. I just denied that she was married and had
obligations to him. I knew that they had separate
bedrooms, but I didn't know how much he knew about us.
I did know that he did not seem to be jealous. If Jack
did know what was transpiring between Thais and me he
never showed it. When we were all together he was
friendly and courteous, but having an affair with a
married woman nagged at my soul. I did not have much
sophistication and I felt guilty,
guilty, guilty.
Even though I tried to deny my guilt, I knew Thais
was married and that I was still married to Marsha; I
knew, also, that I would have to deal with that issue
while I was on my home leave; when I was alone in my
apartment with just my own thoughts, and couldn't deny
the guilt, I tried to kill the pain with alcohol. It
worked for a while.
Fortunately, I was too busy with work and making my
arrangements to leave to dwell too much on what was
happening to me. One of the first things that I had to
take care of was the selling of the Fiat. It was
customary for diplomats to sell their cars upon
transfer, and to make a little money on the sale. To
replace the Fiat I bought a red Volvo 1800-S coupe.
I then made a reservation to return to the States
on a ship from Algeciras, but there was a part of me
that didn't want to go. There was a part of me that
wanted to stay in Spain, put away the Brooks Brothers
suits and go back down to Calpe to put on an old pair of
Levis, a faded denim shirt and a pair of alpargatas.
There was a part of me that wanted to live one day at a ime with Thais, loving, writing, cooking and shopping,
just the way we had lived during those last two weeks of
summer, but there was another part of me that wanted to
go on to new adventures, new conquests. There was a
part of me that had to go on. I had children to support
and educate, but I had realized my dream. I had been a
Foreign Service officer in Spain, and it had been better
than any of my fantasies. Several times over the next
few weeks, for no reason it seemed, I would sit alone
drinking in my apartment and cry. I didn't have the
courage to leave the Foreign Service, and I didn't know
if I really wanted to leave it.
During my last week in Madrid there was a round of
farewell, despedida, parties that were almost
unendurable, but finally it was my last night in Madrid
before my transfer to Mexico City. Thais was still
living in Barcelona, and was coming to meet me in
Malaga, so I was alone that night. I had plans to visit
with a few friends to say my farewells before driving
down to Malaga the next morning when an inexplicable
synchronistic event occurred.
As I was walking into my apartment building, an
attractive woman waited with me at the elevator.
"Pardon me," she said, "but aren't you Pete Stuart?"
I looked at her curiously trying to identify her.
"Yes," I said, not knowing who she was.
"Well, I'm Mimi from Mexico City," she said. "Do
you remember me? I'm Dick Porter's sister."
Dick Porter had been a chum when I was going to
college in Mexico, and once when I was ill I had stayed
in his home where he lived with his mother and sister,
Mimi. As it turned out Mimi was divorced, had two
children, and Dick, she told me, was now a medical
doctor in practice in Mexico City. Mimi was on a trip
of self discovery in Spain, and was living in the same
building as I.
I, of course, told her that I was leaving the next
day on transfer to Mexico.
Mimi joined me on my
farewell calls; we had dinner together and filled one
another in on what had transpired in our lives over the
past ten years. She was planning to spend a few more
months in Spain, and promised to call me once she got
back to Mexico. We will have more to say about Mimi
later.
The next morning I packed my things in the Volvo to
drive to Malaga to meet Thais before going on to
Algeciras to catch my ship. I stopped by the Cafe Gijon
for one last coffee with Henri, and he ended up driving
with me all the way to Malaga where Thais flew from
Barcelona. She told Jack that she was going to Madrid to
do some shopping.
The three of us stayed in the Playa Monte Mar in Torremolinos where we had dinner together, and after
dinner we went to the Bar Central for coffee and cognac.
We took a table outside, and I recognized the pied noir Algerian mother and daughter, and Nannette who was back
with Christian the composer. I thought about Birgitta,
and wondered how she was.
Thais and Henri lifted their glasses in a farewell
toast.
"My God! Pete Stuart! I thought I recognized that
profile." I turned to look at a woman standing at my
side, then stood up.
"Angela!" I said and embraced her.
She was with a handsome suntanned man. "Pete, I'd
like you meet my husband, Derek Wynn-Watkins."
I shook Derek's hand, and introduced him and Angela
to Thais and Henri.
"What are you doing down here?" I asked.
"We're on sort of on a honeymoon, but we're going
to stay a while. Derek is a writer, and I'm going to
try my hand at painting. Do you remember my fantasy?"
she asked and smiled.
"I sure do," I said. How could I forget it."
"What do you write, Derek," I asked.
"Novels," he replied.
"What about?" I asked.
"Oh, about people," Derek said and laughed. "I
used to be in the British Foreign Service. I got out to
do what I have wanted to do for years. It took Angela
here to convince me that we could make it. If this
doesn't work, we'll try something else. Right Angela?"
He turned to look at her, and kissed her on the cheek.
"Right," she said and kissed him on the cheek.
"Fantastic!" I said. "Scratch any Foreign Service
officer and you'll find a writer. Angela is persuasive.
Good luck."
"Thanks," Derek said.
"How about you, Pete? What are you up to?" Angela
asked.
"I'm on my way to Mexico," I said. "I've been
transferred."
She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.
"Good luck to you," she said. "I'm glad I ran into
you. It brings back fond memories of my first trip to
Spain. Bye, bye."
"They are fond memories," I said. "Bye, bye."
"Who was that?" Thais asked.
"A woman who I met a long time ago in Sevilla," I
said.
"Did you have a love affair with her?" she asked.
"No," I said."It was just serrendipitous encounter."
The next morning I drove Henri to the airport in Malaga.
"Goodbye, Henri," I said and embraced him.
"Goodbye, Pedro. I'll miss you."
"I'll miss you, Henri. Break a leg." Henri turned
and walked to the plane to fly back to Madrid.
Thais and I spent the next three days driving up into
the pueblos blancos of the mountains above the Costa del
Sol, to Coin, Ronda and Arcos de la Frontera. On the
last day we drove to Tarifa to take the ferry to
Tangier. While we waited for the ferry to leave we paid
a visit to Father Pedro Garibaldi, and he gave Thais the
full tour of his operation. His seamstresses were now
making dresses and tote bags from the flour sacks, and
he gave one of each to Thais.
Coming back from Tangier we had to pass through
Spanish Immigration and I held Thais' passport in my
hand. I thumbed through the pages and for the first
time I saw that Thais was ten years older than me.
In that moment the whole kaleidoscope of our affair
came into focus. I realized that neither I nor Thais
had any expectations of one another. We had given to
each other what we had to give without expectation that
anything would be returned, nor that we had any future
together. We lived completely in the now, and gave
because we wanted to give. I trusted Thais. I had made
myself totally vulnerable. I knew that she was not
hostile toward me, and all of my defenses had been
lowered; I knew she had not, would not, could not ever
hurt me.
Thais had been my teacher, but in my unconscious I
had made up my mind that I was not good enough for her.
Her husband was a rich and successful engineer, a man;
and, in her words, I was a boy.
I turned the Volvo over to the shipping agent to be
loaded on the ship the next morning, and that night
Thais and I took a taxi to have dinner in a small
restaurant in Algeciras. Thais wore her "Donated by the
People of the United States of America" dress.
We had finished our meal and were sipping coffee
and cognac in a sidewalk cafe before taking a taxi back
to the hotel. Thais suddenly put her hand to her cheek.
"Oh my God!" she moaned.
"Thais, what's the matter?" I asked and grasped her
other hand.
"It's Jack's boss, Dave Whitney and his wife,
Carol," she said. "They've seen me. They're coming to
the table. What shall I tell them?"
"Just tell them I'm a friend," I said. "Tell them
we just ran into one another. There's nothing wrong
with two friends having coffee together."
"Thais!" Carol Whitney exclaimed. "I thought you
were in Madrid."
"I was in Madrid," Thais said. "I just came down
to the coast for a holiday. This is my friend, Pete
from the American Embassy. We just ran int o one another." Thais was not a good liar.
"So you're in the embassy," Dave said. "In
Madrid?"
"I was in Madrid," I said. "I'm on my way to
Mexico. I've been transferred. I'm catching a ship to
New York tomorrow morning."
"Well, have a bon voyage," he said.
"Thank you," I said.
"Thais, call me when you get back to Barcelona.
We'll have lunch," Carol said. "Pete, have a nice trip
home." She looked at me as though she were selecting
pork chops in a meat market.
The Whitneys walked on, but Thais was visibly
shaken. Our never-never land bubble had been burst.
"I'm sorry that happened, darling," I said.
"I'm just sorry that you had to endure her dreadful
looks. She's such a bitch. She made me feel cheap and
shabby, and what we have together is not cheap. She
cheapens everything,"
"Forget about her," I said. "Let's not let
anything tarnish this moment or our love." I reached
across the table and took her hand. It was cold.
"Pete, I have the terrible feeling that I'll never
see you again.
"Don't talk that way, Thais. This is not a war."
Her eyes fluttered as she tried to hold back tears.
"Yes," she said. "I am being silly. It's just
that I love you so much." She took a tissue from her
purse and dabbed at her eyes. "Promise me you'll take
care of yourself."
"I promise," I said. "You promise me the same."
I paid the bill and we left the cafe to catch a taxi
back to our hotel. The magic was clearly gone.
