Lethe Bashar is on study abroad. He moves into an apartment with a sixty-five year old Senora. Within two weeks, he undergoes an extreme form of culture shock. Between quitting classes, falling in love with his Senora’s maid, smoking hashish, and meeting a group of native Spaniards, an innocent study abroad program turns to living dangerously.
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You might think that Lethe grieved over the news that he would have to leave the Senora’s apartment, but he didn’t grieve at all. Their relationship had become strained over the last couple weeks. Lethe continued to come home late on the weekends and it was still not clear whether the Senora heard him enter her apartment at night. Sometimes he stayed up nearly an hour afterward with the lights burning in his smoky room. Noises rattled from underneath his door. The sound of his chair moving back and forth on its wobbly legs and the grating of his mother’s credit card probably aroused some suspicion. A VISA card with silver lacquer shimmered, cutting into the night.
On these horrible nights, one part of him was drunk and hungry to commit small crimes. He didn’t care if she found out or not. The Spaniards had introduced him to a beautiful thing. And slowly the abundance of moments he was sharing with this substance gave him the sweet, solitary pleasure of a hobbyist absorbed in his craft. He loved cutting it, pressing it, and staring at it under the desk lamp.
The other side of him had a full memory of his interactions with the Senora. It seemed like they had shared a special bond together and he owed her respect. After all, the Senora brought Lethe out of his misery with her suggestion that he quit school. From the beginning, she passionately protected him and never denied him anything. If she was skeptical toward his recovery, she never showed it.
But the strain was there and it was hard to ignore, especially when Lethe was committing these petty crimes in the night.
On the last day, they exchanged gifts. Lethe had gone to the commercial center, el Corte Ingles, earlier in the afternoon. He wanted to buy the Senora a cordless phone; she’d complained so many times about tripping on the long wire that extended between the rooms. The idea to buy her a cordless phone was magnificent and he knew that whatever strain may have existed between them in those last couple months, the new telephone would erase everything.
But he didn’t expect to receive a gift from her. The Senora’s face was livelier that day, as if she had been outside getting some exercise. There was a flush of pink above her eyelids and her normally coarse expression blossomed into sudden happiness.
The color of her eyes remained the same, however, bluish green, like the glass in an aquarium. She handed him a long, flat box. “She bought me a tie,” he thought. But then, upon opening the box, he discovered it was a scarf. He ran his fingers over the gauzy fabric and lifted it to his face. Autumn-colored, the most beautiful scarf he’d ever seen.
The door opened abruptly and Donte appeared with his hemp purse hung around his shoulder.
“Are you leaving today?” Donte asked, interrupting their gift exchange.
“Yes, after dinner I’ll go.”
“Have you found a place to live?”
“I found a pensione in el Plaza del Sol. A small, one bedroom for under a thousand pesetas a night.”
“Plaza del Sol, that’s where all the parties are, right?”
“I guess so. Most hotels are in that district.”
“It’s a good place, he’ll like it there.” The Senora said.
“Well, don’t have too much fun,” Donte added, walking toward his bedroom.
The Senora let out a shriek. “Ah caramba, nino, you shouldn’t have!”
It was a generous gift, but he felt it was necessary. He felt he had to make up for something. Like he was in debt.
“Do you like it?”
“I love it. And now I can get rid of that wretched cord. I was so worried I was going to inadvertently strangle myself one of these days. But now you’ve bought me a cordless. How thoughtful of you, nino!”
She held the box in the air, turning each side and studying the glossy pictures. “Let’s set it up!”
The Senora seemed tired from cooking and cleaning, as if her obligations to these young men were wearing her down. Right when she took her seat for dinner, however, she grew lively again, and said a small prayer, which she never did. Lethe and Donte knew her to be an agnostic. But tonight she prayed.
“Dios, please take care of Lethe while he’s living here in Spain, not under this roof but protected in an apartment in plaza del Sol. Watch over him Lord, and keep him safe.”
They began eating. The bread was passed and Donte broke off the first piece. Lethe carefully ladled the vegetables onto his plate and offered some to the Senora.
“I assume you finished the Spanish Bible while you were here,” she remarked peremptorily.
Lethe leaned back in his chair, so as to see the Senora’s full figure against the curio cabinet. Food stuck between his teeth and he pretended he was chewing. “No,” he said. “I stopped reading the book.”
“You stopped reading?”
“I made it to the second volume, but then . . .”
“I know, I know,” she lowered her eyes on her soup. “Let me tell you how the story ends. So you will know the message behind it.”
“I thought you said there is no single message to the book, that everyone comes to it from a different place and learns something different as a result.”
“I did say that, nino. But don’t be smart. I want you to know the message that is important to me.”
Donte and Lethe put aside their food for the moment. Both craned their necks over the table and hung their heads in curiosity.
“Volume 2, Chapter 74. Don Quixote comes down with a fever and he’s lying in his bed at his home in la Mancha. All the characters are there who were there from the beginning, the priest, Carrasco and Master Nicolás. Don Quixote tells them, ‘I am in my right mind, now, clear-headed and free of the murky darkness of ignorance, brought upon me by my continual, bitter reading of those abominable books of chivalry.’”
“We think he is saved. We think he is better now.”
“But Cervantes will not concede to our wish. We all want to see Don Quixote better. We all want to see him sane. We want him to recover from his madness, his addictions, his fantasies. If he dies in a state of ignorance, then it means . . . nothing was learned from all of these violent episodes, from all the death along the way.”
“So does he die?”
Donte smirked, as if holding back a secret.
The Senora fixed her gaze on the balcony door. It was the first time Lethe had ever seen her confused.
“What’s wrong, Senora?” Lethe asked.
“Nothing nino, nothing.”
All three of them glanced at each other, pretending to know what was going on.
“I forget, nino. That’s all. I forget how the story ends.”
The Director called the next morning when Lethe was still in bed. The Senora was slicing vegetables in the kitchen, full of anxious vigor. “Si . . . si . . . un momento.”
Lethe crawled out of bed and came into the kitchen. He looked like a ball of melted wax; expression hadn’t seeped into his face yet. He took the phone from the Senora’s hand and pressed his ear against the garlic-smelling receiver. The Director’s gruff, commanding voice greeted him: “Good morning, Lethe.”
“Good morning, Director.”
“Sleeping in again?”
“I had a late night last night. Hanging out with the Spaniards, you know.”
“The Spanish don’t take partying lightly, do they?”
“No sir, not at all. But you’ll be glad to know that I’ve mastered the Spanish language.”
“Is that true?”
“I’m perfectly fluent thanks to my native friends.”
The sparkling conversation was beginning to wake Lethe up. The Senora handed him a glass of orange juice.
Lethe continued, “It’s because I left the Institute, I know it is.”
“Of course, your wise decision to leave the Institute advanced your learning. School is backwards, after all. Why should anyone have to attend class?”
Lethe hesitated, unable to translate the Director’s last couple sentences. “Did you hear from my new Senora?”
The Director’s mustache scratched against the receiver. With a muffled sigh, he said, “Okay then. That’s why I’m calling. Senora Raquel de la Tristeza cannot be your senora.”
“What? Why not?”
“She says it’s too late in the year for her to take you in.”
“But I thought you said you were going to help me find a senora?”
“I said I would try . . .”
“You said she owed you a favor–”
“Yes, but that was many years ago and now it seems like she’s forgotten.”
The Senora’s kitchen suddenly became hot. The bubbling pots on the stove produced an unbearable, seething humidity; and the Senora’s flighty housekeeper, Catalin, kept rushing through the center of the room with her thousand and one tasks.
“I’m sorry Lethe, I tried.”
Lethe was sweating; he had to take a shower.
“Don’t forget what we talked about.”
“I’ve already forgotten.”
“You have to leave the Senora’s apartment by tomorrow.”
After hanging up the phone, Lethe ran into his bedroom. The tiny, besmirched room with the wrought-iron balcony and the stupid poster of the clown on the wall was his. The room felt more his own than the sanitized, anonymous bedroom he’d grown up in.
He fell down to his knees and began crying. He never cried, not even when he was trying to kill himself. It was all because of his new Senora. She inspired these tears in him, a woman he would never meet, a woman he would never know. He would never know if she looked the way he imagined her to look, with nut-brown skin, a buxom chest and flowing black hair that covered her shoulders and back. The visions came to a halt before him. She was supposed to be young and beautiful. She was supposed to coddle him and have sex with him. She was supposed to cook for him. Now what was he going to do?
He could call Ricky or Alejandro and ask if he could sleep over at one of their apartments. But that might jeopardize his friendship with them. He didn’t want to ask too many favors.
Standing on his balcony, he lit a cigarette and stared down into the alleyway where the old men sat in the cool shadows protected from the heat. This was the last time he would see those old men lingering there, and it was also the last time he would look across the street to the apartment building with colorful bricks that faced his own. The flower-filled patios, the uniformed maids working in the windows, the junior piano player; he would miss life here.
Oh, goddamnit, it was good to be leaving this place. He loved the little ledge but he also despised himself for sucking up the Senora’s last remaining spirit with his needy, greedy habits. Who was he kidding? The old Senora was no more his mother than the new Senora was his sex-goddess. He got carried away with his fantasies and now all he wanted was a room of his own where he could conduct his business of reading and writing, and maybe socializing on the weekends, perhaps having visitors during the week days, but only on occasion. He remembered Veronica from the International Institute and then searched for her number. It was hiding somewhere among the school books he never opened.
His thoughts were racing as he puffed his cigarette to the very end. It was already noon. He had to look for a place to live. The Senora once told him about the pensiones in el Plaza del Sol, a district of shops, restaurants, movie theaters, hotels and apartments for rent. Quickly, he rushed to the bathroom and drenched his face in hot water–but he did not take another shower. There was no time. He had to find a place to live. He was being kicked out of the Senora’s apartment by tomorrow.
When Lethe arrived back at the Senora’s apartment it was 2:30 in the morning. The residential street resembled nothing like the rest of Madrid on a Friday night. Whereas other sections of Madrid were clamorously alive, the Senora’s street went to bed before twelve o’clock.
The irritable doorman in blue overalls was standing in the corridor. “Why do you come home so late?” He pierced Lethe with one of his angry smirks. “Don’t you know the Senora’s sound asleep? You’re going to wake up my building. Estupido!”
Lethe shook his head and passed the angry doorman’s first floor apartment. He quietly climbed the stairs.
At the Senora’s door, he turned the brass knob and leaned his weight forward just as a thief would before breaking into some old rich lady’s apartment. The nick knacks and antique book shelves, the embroidered furniture and wall-hangings projected an ambient aura, a ghostliness over the room. The Senora’s presence lodged inside these shrunken objects; she was watching him from their various locations.
If only he could be quiet . . . Every wooden beam in the apartment creaked, the door knobs whined, and a single light illuminated the whole floor. He was afraid to make any noise, and he tried to suppress his fears, but it was like being in the classroom of the International Institute. He couldn’t help himself.
He had to wash his face. Every night he washed his face.
The faucet stayed on for an extra five minutes. He was drunk. He loved the feeling of water, the inexplicable wetness of water, the incessant renewal of the ritual. He bathed in the sink, soaking his eyelashes, running the soap wildly over his neck. The shower beckoned him, but he told it “no”. It was too late for a shower. A shower would definitely wake up the Senora.
He clamored down the narrow hallway and stumbled into his bedroom. His breathing was loud. His footsteps were shameful. The wooden beams creaked and cawed underneath him, telling rascally jokes; the springs under his bed squeaked obnoxiously like a thousand mice.
He moved to his desk, an old desk from a children’s library, the Senora once told him. Out of his disheveled jacket, he removed the gift that Ricky had given him tonight and he held it in his hand for a long time. Then he unfolded the paper corner by corner.
Startled by a random noise in the street, he threw a nervous glance to the door. He glimpsed the Senora standing there. But he was only dreaming.
Once he could relax, it was beautiful, the light streaming from the sky at this hour. He threw his face back into the moonlight coming from the balcony. He looked out of his room up-side-down, with all the blood rushing to the crown of his head and the starry sky falling just below his chin.
The happiest he’d ever been in his life was when he was eleven years old. His parents sent him to an arts camp in Michigan for the summer. He went there every year after his tenth birthday, but this was the first year living some place besides home. He’d been at the camp for two weeks and this morning he was walking to the bookstore, on the other side of camp, the ‘light side’ they called it, where the girls’ division was located. On his little escape from the boys’ side, he was enjoying the freedom of being ten and a half.
Big maple trees lined the campus roads and tall concrete buildings rose up everywhere. Mr. Love said campers could expect a tornado soon, and these buildings supposedly protected the campers. The basements were sturdy and secure, but Lethe hadn’t seen the insides yet. As he moved away from the buildings and stretched his gaze to the center of campus, the people looked like dots on the horizon.
He came to an old-fashioned lamppost. The campus had these lampposts scattered throughout. He stood by the lamppost in a sort of dazed dreaminess. He turned 180 degrees and surveyed the woodsy area and the nature trails winding off toward the auditoriums.
As he was moving, everything slowed down and a ray of sunlight broke out from a cluster of leaves, almost blinding him.
With his mother’s VISA, he pushed together a second pile. Then he peeled off his smoky shirt and laid in bed. His heart was beating; he could hear it. He looked up at the ceiling and thought, “I can’t stay here any longer.”
On Friday night Lethe met his Spanish friends at the end of the cul de sac. All the group was there, Carlos, Ricky, Javier, Damien and the others; but they seemed to be waiting for Lethe to arrive so they could take him off somewhere.
Javier, the fat-cheeked, jovial Spaniard, approached Lethe with open arms and ushered him toward the group . . . “My parents are gone for the weekend,” he said. “We’re celebrating at their condo. Will you come?”
Anxiously Lethe crawled into the back of Javier’s small European car and wedged himself between two new friends. The car peeled around the circular drive, gained a steady momentum on a residential street and then plunged into the night traffic.
With the windows down, the wind kept blowing into Lethe’s face and making his eyes water. Loud Spanish music, a mix of Samba, techno and rap trumpeted behind their heads. Soon everyone was talking over everyone else, sharing their favorite music styles and bands. By no means was Javier an experienced driver. He jolted the car nearly a dozen times in a seven mile radius. The five of them flew off every road bump and sunk into every dip, which further provoked their frenzied excitement. Cruising Madrid with a bunch of Spaniards, what could be better than this, what could be more exhilarating? At last Lethe seemed to have found his niche.
Javier’s family must be loaded, because the building was New York City-modern, made of concrete and glass. There was no doorman in the lobby–unusual for upper-class residences in Madrid. Polished stainless steel elevators took them up to the 24th floor and Javier opened the door to a spacious apartment with an eat-in kitchen and an open view of the city. No furniture, however; just an empty condo.
The Spaniards funneled into the loft-like apartment with their whiskey bottles and Coca Cola, their cigarettes dangling from their mouths. They kept their jackets on, surveying the stark environment. Then they dispersed into the various corners of the condo and struck up conversations. Lethe expected to see some women trickle in, but Javier informed him later that his parents wouldn’t allow co-ed parties in their “espacio vivo”.
It seemed strange that women were restricted from this party because the next thing that Lethe noticed was cocaine on the granite kitchen table. The Spaniards gaily incorporated the white powder into their celebration. They did not hide it from the rest of the group or abuse the drug in private. Rather they treated it as a novelty, a mere toy, a party favor.
The fervid animation among the Spaniards increased Lethe’s curiosity. They hunched like merry pranksters around the guy in the center who separated the substance into neat, manageable piles for his friends.
Coke was taboo where Lethe came from, but here it seemed somewhat acceptable, moderately cool. So long as everyone was enjoying it, the drug didn’t arouse suspicion or incite hostility. Lethe watched Ricky, the master of ceremonies, as he expertly snorted the first bump, then casually swiped his nose clean and stepped away from the table. Carlos picked up the rolled Euro after him.
Later that evening Lethe stopped Ricky in the hallway and asked, “You wouldn’t be able to get any more of that would you?”
“Sure,” Ricky said. “Take this–” He handed Lethe a piece of folded-up paper.
“Whenever you want some more just ask.”
They sat at the table waiting for Lethe to arrive. The meal was Spanish rice and beans; a quick meal; the Senora was tired of cooking for absent people. Donte told a story about his classmates while the Senora drank from her glass of wine. Once she enjoyed listening to Donte speak his pretty fluent sentences but now they grated on her aged ears and the more embellishment he gave to the Spanish language the less she cared to listen to him. His head had an oily sheen that reminded her of a slippery eel. She dismissed these thoughts because they were irrelevant.
“Are we eating before Lethe arrives?” Donte asked innocently.
But the Senora was inwardly possessed and thinking of something far more important than when was the proper time to eat. Donte lifted his delicate shoulders and looked into the mirror to adjust his ball of hair.
Back at the International Institute, the Director pounded his hairy knuckles on the desk in front of him. He did this to make his point heard. He had several points and all of them he stated on the phone when he talked to Lethe earlier. His first point was that Lethe should return home immediately (pound).
His second point was that Lethe should see a psychiatrist (pound, pound).
These were issues that needed to be addressed by a professional (pound, pound, pound).
“I’m seeing a professional,” Lethe interjected. “I already have a psychiatrist. You can’t send me home for that.”
And the third? The stupid boy made him forget his third point.
Lethe angled for the Director’s sympathy by bellowing a defenseless cry. These were the emotional reactions he’d been practicing while walking to the International Institute. It was not beneath Lethe to prepare for a big moment.
“I can’t go back to living at home, my parents are getting a divorce and they’ll want to drag me into the whole sad affair. I beg you Director allow me to stay here in Spain. Let me live with the Senora. She’s my only hope.”
“I can’t let you live with her, it’s against the rules. I’ve told you that already. But I may be able to find you another senora.”
“Another senora?” Lethe asked naively.
“If you’re dead set on staying here in Spain,” the Director conceded, “then maybe we can arrange something with a woman I know.”
All the tortured sadness drained from Lethe’s face and he jumped out of his chair to embrace the Director.
“You don’t have to hug me. She’s an old acquaintance of mine and she owes me a favor.”
“I can’t wait to meet her.”
“Slow down, she’s not your Senora yet. We have to agree on a price.”
Linda tapped on the glass window to her husband’s office and pointed to her watch.
“Women can be so damn impatient sometimes,” the Director remarked. “I better get going.”
When Lethe returned to the Senora’s apartment, Donte had on his usual look of perplexed happiness. The balcony door was open and the curtains blew forward and back in the evening breeze. Lethe pushed his cigarettes down to the end of the table and took a seat.
“So how many more days will you be living with us?” Donte asked.
“You act like I’m some sort of a burden–”
“No, not at all. I just wanted to know when I can move my things into the room with the balcony.”
The Senora brought Lethe’s food to the table. The Spanish rice had been reheated and the pan was caked on the sides with burnt beans.
“It could be two days or ten days. I’m not sure. The Director is looking for another senora for me.”
“Another senora?” Donte said incredulously.
“In a rare change of heart, the Director has become sympathetic to my cause.”
The Senora held her cigarette in front of her face. Smoke poured out of her nostrils in small increments.
“So what’s your new Senora like?” Donte probed.
“All I know is that she’s a single mother with two kids. I may have to help out with the kids but I don’t mind.”
“You? Take care of children?” Donte laughed satirically.
“I wouldn’t be that bad, would I?”
The Senora kept silent and allowed her boarders to speak their inanities. Who knew whether Lethe would find a new senora or not; it was none of her business. She needed to focus on the apartment, the cleaning and the cooking. When he was gone, there would be more work to be done. She stood up from the table and carried the dishes to the sink. Donte and Lethe continued talking in a dreamy, hypothetical manner.
Lethe lie in bed that night, imagining his new senora. She was young and strong, but old enough to be his mother, with thick, black Spanish hair and muscular arms and shoulders. She had a buxom chest and strong hands. Her exact features dissolved and morphed into a number of different faces he had seen before in the streets of Madrid. She had some resemblance to the Senora’s maid, Catalin, but a more experienced, darkly erotic personality. These images of the mysterious senora tossed in his mind until the early hours of the morning when he work up confused and alarmed by his dreams.
The Director of the study abroad program had a shiny bald pate with a fluff of thin, gray hair around the back of his head. He smiled generously and spread his arms to welcome you into his office. Some of the younger women (his female students) stood back in terror, but the Director reassured them it was only his “personalidad espanol” coming out. When in his native land, he felt a change in himself, a return to his natural way of being.
The female students at Cranely College may have feared an older man’s release from his life-long inhibitions but he was not making advances toward them; he was merely showing them how passionate one can be about life. He was encouraging them to discover Madrid and to taste the Spanish culture.
“Pero, no habla engles.”
“But don’t speak English” he warned them. One could be deported for such a blatant disregard of the rules; Cranely College prided itself as the Harvard of foreign exchange programs and many students from the Ivy League choose Cranely College in Spain for its rigor and strong reputation.
The Director was not merely an enforcer of the rules; he was also a doting husband who gave his wife the position of secretary in the study abroad office. The Director was a family man. He had brought his family to Madrid thanks to the benevolence an institution, that being Cranely College, where he taught Spanish year round except when he took these trips to Spain. In short, the Director tapped the study abroad fund to pay for his wife and kids’ vacation.
He had vague plans to steal the money when he was only a professor in the Spanish Department. But now that Linda was helping in the office, he hardly thought of it as “stealing”. After all he was getting old and needed his youthful wife to keep him company. He loved her creamy legs, her outmoded, 50’s style skirts and her horrible pink lipstick.
Their offices were on the top floor of the International Institute. Linda sat at the secretary desk and played the designated role, shuffling papers, making appointments and organizing things. They worked in their separate rooms but it was futile to hide their affection for each other; Vidal and Linda were overtly sexual beings and had produced four bumptious children in a very short time. Students who came into the office to sign papers or to speak to the Director found their public displays of affection revolting.
At the height of Lethe’s ecstasy over meeting the group of Spaniards, he received a phone call from the Director. Lethe was not in his bedroom inhaling endless cigarettes and staring over the balcony in despair, but instead talking to the Senora in what he believed to be lucid, intelligent speech about his recent transformation. “And now I can speak Spanish fluently,” he blurted out a rapid string of vowels attempting to prove his point.
“Momento, momento.” the Senora stopped him so she could answer the phone.
Lethe lit a cigarette and looked at the Senora with wild, suspicious eyes. Then she handed him the phone.
“Ola.” Lethe muttered, losing his interest in the Spanish language.
“Hello, Lethe. You haven’t forgotten me I hope.”
“No sir, of course not. How’s life?”
“Life is fine, just fine. Are you enjoying your stay?”
“Yes sir, rather nice here in the Senora’s apartment.”
“I’m sure it is, I’m sure it is. I hear from your teachers that you have been taking it easy these days. You haven’t been to class in eight weeks, Lethe. What’s going on?”
“I’m bored.”
“You’re bored.”
“Yes, my classes are too easy for me. I wanted to really immerse myself in the Spanish culture.”
“And how do you plan on doing that?”
“I’m quitting school and I’ve joined a band of brothers, a group of Spaniards who want to be my friends.”
“How precocious of you Lethe, but don’t you think it would be better to go home, back to where you’re from. Is it Chicago?”
“No, I don’t live in Chicago any more.”
“Where do you live then?”
“I live at college in upstate New York. If I had to leave Spain, I’d go back there. But I don’t see any reason why I’d have to leave. I’m perfectly happy here and the Senora says . . .”
“It’s not up to your Senora. The rules say–and I’m reading off the page of the handbook right here in front of me–No student should be allowed to stay with his host family if he is not enrolled in classes at the International Institute. “
“But I hate the International Institute. I really dread it. I can’t go there anymore, I can’t.”
The pungent smell of the greasy chorizo rose into Lethe’s nostrils. The Senora was preparing sausage for tonight’s meal.
“You need to come to my office right away.” The Director continued.
“Where is your office?”
“The International Institute of course.”
Lethe sighed and held out the phone to the Senora as if they were done. For another minute, the Senora nodded her head and spoke to the Director in Spanish. Lethe tried to make out their words, but the Senora was speaking too fast.
“He wants me to leave, doesn’t he?” Lethe asked.
She reached for her cigarettes and an ashtray nearby. “Don’t worry nino I’m not going to kick you out.”
Lethe appeared much happier than Senorita Lorenzo recalled. The last time she saw him in her office, he was insecure and tense. There was also some awkwardness between them that caused her to consider finding him a new therapist.
Today Lethe was wearing brand new clothes and a confident grin. What caught the psychiatrist off guard was when he sat down next to her and immediately reached for her hand, as if to kiss it.
She recoiled from her patient while forcing a smile. “Is everything okay, Lethe?”
“Things couldn’t be better. I’ve met some new friends . . .”
The psychiatrist covered up her nervousness with, “Oh, I’m so happy for you. That’s wonderful.”
“Do you mind if I have a glass of your wine?” He asked boldly.
“I’d prefer if you didn’t.” Then she looked at the half-empty bottle and said, “Fine, go ahead, but don’t drink too much.” She came to the park about twenty minutes ago and had been sitting here eating goat cheese on crackers before Lethe arrived.
Lethe drank at his psychiatrist’s approval. He loved the fact that she was so young and vibrant. “I think I got some of your lipstick on my mouth,” he said, chuckling to himself.
Senorita Lorenzo looked embarrassed. “Give me that,” she said, “You shouldn’t be drinking wine during the middle of the day. Now tell me about your new friends.”
“I was outside last Friday night taking one of my walks and lo and behold I met a group of Spaniards my age.” He reached for the wine glass again, but she held it away from him. Their bodies touched on the bench and the psychiatrist was starting to become visibly nervous. Lethe grew in confidence and felt like maybe his doctor was attracted to him.
Three pigeons plopped into the fountain across from their bench. Wings flapped merrily against the surface of the water. A busload of children was letting out by the entrance to the park.
“I don’t know what it is,” Lethe said, “But I’ve changed my perception of things.”
“How so?” The Senorita arched her shoulders and placed her hands on her lap.
“Well, for example, I don’t need to see a dermatologist anymore. You can cancel the appointment.”
“I can?” She’d never made an appointment in the first place.
“You’re gonna think I’m crazy, Senorita. But when I look in the mirror, my face looks fine. I don’t see any acne anymore.”
The psychiatrist smiled. Maybe he was getting better.
“You still need to find a job, don’t you? Otherwise your father won’t send your monthly allowance.”
“I found a job. My Spanish friends want me to help them run their mini bar at a local discotheque.”
The psychiatrist responded with a look of skepticism. “Do you think you’re father will go along with that?”
“You’re not going to tell him anything, right?”
“But that wasn’t the deal. The deal was, remember, that I would tell your father everything. I made this very clear at the beginning of our sessions.”
Lethe stared at his psychiatrist in juvenile irritation. Senorita Lorenzo cast a glance across the park and noticed one of her colleagues. Immediately she scooted away from Lethe and covered her legs. The colleague then looked in her direction and waved. She waved back.
“Who’s that?” Lethe asked.
“Just someone I know I from the clinic,” she said, watching the man disappear behind the parade of school children.
Lethe Bashar woke up the next morning feeling . . . marvelous!
He got out of bed and looked at the wall, the same wall he looked at every morning when he woke up. Except today the poster of the clown with the funny-shoes on and blousy shirt made complete sense to him:
To wish for too great a happiness makes it difficult for that same happiness.
Well, of course, it does, Lethe thought. If you expect things to change then they most definitely will not!
But if, on the other hand, you sink yourself into gloomy despair and tell yourself how you’ll always be stuck in this ugly place, then you might have a chance at seeing miracles.
It’s all a matter of perspective. (And here Lethe truly felt as though he were getting at the core of life’s mystery.) Last night, I hardly expected to meet a group of friends. I carried out my usual routine of wandering the streets and looking for a dark alley to smoke hashish. The hashish does nothing for me, you see, it gives me no real pleasure, but plunges me deeper into whorls of dull sensation and confused torpor.
His face brightened as he remembered the the din on the hill.
They called me “El Americano,” my new Spanish friends. They respected me and even showed signs of admiration toward me. Well, then, for three long months I have been brooding here in Spain, locking myself in my room and writing this Novel of Life. I needed to find somebody, I needed an escape. Then they appeared like magic helpers, my Spaniards, Javier, Ricky, Alejandro, Damian, and all the others. They surrounded me with their cups of whiskey and cheered to our new friendship. My God, I would have never expected this to happen to me. At last, I am loved by the Spanish.
Thus ran Lethe’s exuberant thoughts. The mere anticipation of meeting his friends for a second time sent shivers down his legs. He would meet them again tonight on top of the hill. They told him to be there, they repeated themselves in order to make sure he heard them. Yes, yes, of course he would be there tonight. But first he had to buy an outfit to wear. He would buy a pair of black shoes and black pants, just like them.
But wait, he was getting ahead of himself. It was only (he looked at the clock on his nightstand) 10:06 am. He still had to drink his coffee in the kitchen and greet the Senora before he left the apartment.
The Senora worked silently, alone with her thoughts, preparing the meals for the day. She sliced vegetables, organized the spice cabinet, and cut up the chorizo for soup. The maid ironed clothing next to the pantry. It was crowded having the three of them in one space but Lethe hardly noticed this fact. Every morning, waking up late, he strolled into the kitchen and poured the remaining coffee. The Senora secretly despised him for coming into the kitchen so late. They were busy now, couldn’t he see that? But Lethe had a certain unconscious attitude about things, aloofness prevailed. It was very difficult to get Lethe to imagine that there were other people in this world who might have feelings and objectives of their own.
The Senora grew talented at hiding her agitation with Lethe. This morning she saw that he was brimming with confidence and she responded to his contentment with a sort of restrained pleasure.
“And what’s the occasion for your merriment?” She asked.
“If I seem cheerful this morning Maria Angeles, it’s because I am cheerful. Last night I met a group of Spaniards my age. At first they saw me walking along the sidewalk by myself and then they called me over to have a drink with them. Before I knew it we were all partying on the hill at the end of your street, you know, where the wall is . . .”
“Yes, I know where you’re talking about. Those boys who live up on that hill are the sons of doctors and lawyers and politicians. Be careful what you say to them. Remember you don’t live in this country.”
Lethe barely paid any attention to what the Senora was saying. Instead he poured out his grief to her, “I’ve been alone for three months. I quit school because of anxiety attacks. Up until a week ago, I was practically living in my room. You always wanted me to go out and meet new people. Here’s my chance.”
The Senora turned to the spice cabinet and whiffed a half-empty bottle. “Six months old,” she muttered, tossing the bottle into the trash.
“I’m going out this morning to buy a new outfit,” Lethe said.
“Now that you’ve meet these lads, you have to keep up an appearance.”
“That’s right, I’ve got to look my best.”
The Senora chuckled to herself. There were certain things her boarder would never understand.
“Don’t forget you have an appointment with your psychiatrist today. El Retiro Park.”
“I completely forgot. What time was it again?”
“3:30.”
In two gulps Lethe downed his coffee and ran into the bathroom to get his towel. Then he rushed to his bedroom, peeled off his night clothes, and ran back to the bathroom. He jumped into the shower and squirted some of Dante’s strawberry shampoo on his head. Lethe’s showers could take as long as twenty five minutes, another habit that secretly enraged the Senora. But today Lethe was in such a hurry that he showered in less than fifteen.
As he scurried out the door, the Senora flashed a knowing smile to the maid.
Their festive exuberance struck him as odd. He’d never seen university students so open, loving, and free. They embraced like brothers and kissed on the cheeks; they cavorted around the cul de sac, chasing one another. They had fiery, engaging conversations.
Lethe approached them without freezing up or running off. The hashish he smoked earlier removed his inhibitions and he walked right up to them and said, “Hello. I have some hashish here. Care for any?”
The Spaniards were surprised by his obvious American accent. Soon smiles appeared on their faces. One of the Spaniards answered cheerfully, “Let’s see what you got.” Another stepped forward to introduce himself. The glimmer in his eye persuaded Lethe that he was interested in making friends.
“Have a drink,” Ricardo said, while reaching for the whiskey and Coke.
Ricardo was a tall fellow with wire-rim glasses and a narrow face. “How are you enjoying Spain,” he asked.
“Spain? Oh, I love Spain. I have a Senora who I live with . . . and another roommate but I don’t talk to him very much.”
“What about school?” Ricardo asked.
“I’ve just quit school.” Lethe laughed.
“You what?” Another Spaniard entered the conversation.
Lethe chuckled. “I don’t like your International Institute here; that’s where they send us foreigners. The funny thing about the International Institute is that’s it’s filled with Americans. I can’t stand Americans now. They drive me crazy.”
Lethe spoke fluent Spanish. How it happened was a mystery. Suddenly the words, the expressions, the phrases, were released from some deep place inside of him and once he began talking he couldn’t stop. The Spaniards stood amazed at his energy for talking and his manic enthusiasm and the constant flow of ideas brewing inside of him. Soon they had gathered around him and were asking all sorts of questions.
A beam of confidence shot through Lethe. Speaking Spanish was really a cinch. All you had to do was open your mouth and let the words carry themselves. He didn’t know if he was making sense or not, but the Spaniards were laughing and showing signs that they understood him. All Lethe needed was the confidence to say the next word and everything was fine. Suddenly he’d become popular. Suddenly he’d become the center of attention.
And then, wanting to wield his newly discovered gift, Lethe posed some questions of his own. “What’s it like to go to school in Spain? Is it anything like the International Institute? Do you have a lot of homework?”
“We don’t have any homework,” Javier answered, the round-faced, handsome Spaniard in the middle. “In three weeks we will have our final exam. That’s why everyone is out tonight. This is one of our last weekends to party.”
“How many tests have you had this semester?” Lethe asked.
“Tests?” They chuckled. “There’s only one test at the end of the semester. Most of us haven’t even opened our textbooks yet.”
“What about papers? Surely you’ve had some papers to write?”
“No papers, either.”
“But attendance is required of course. You have to go to class don’t you?”
This last question really cracked them up. “No,” a short, bald guy answered. “I haven’t been to class in eight weeks.”
“Either have I,” another Spaniard shouted. “We study the night before. That’s the best, proven technique.”
“You study the night before your final exam and it’s your only grade the entire semester?”
They found Lethe’s skepticism amusing. He seemed to take life so seriously.
Javier explained, “College is free in Spain, but you have to pass your tests or you can’t move on.”
“And doesn’t that worry you? Not passing my tests scares me to death. I quit school because I was afraid I wouldn’t get straight A’s. My language was never this good, I assure you. Just tonight it seems to have dramatically improved.”
“If we don’t pass our tests, we’ll all become plumbers!” The Spaniards cheered.
Lethe was still perplexed by how they managed to enjoy themselves and keep from worrying about the demands in life. But after awhile he simply went along with the festive spirit and drank more whiskey and Coke. They taught him some national songs and toward the end of the night Lethe walked home thinking maybe there was another way to look at reality.
The Senora’s apartment building sat on a cobbled street with a couple boutique shops and an open plaza across the way. During the weeknights, it held a serene, moonlit absence of sound. On the weekends, one heard the youthful crowds stirring; friendly pairs flirting with each other on stone benches.
There was no need to buy any more hashish. Lethe’s regular visits to the other side of Madrid was creating an oversupply of the drug in his bedroom. Not only that but hashish didn’t appeal to him as much anymore; he was growing tired of it. He looked over his balcony and saw the bars opening at nine o’clock. There was some activity but he felt too shy to cross the Senora’s street and simply walk into a bar and introduce himself to a bunch of strangers.
Instead of crossing the Senora’s street, he walked down to the end of her block, passing clusters of Spanish teenagers. The attractive couples, the young, the fashionable were out tonight. He passed them with the weight of his longing to connect and yet his footsteps carried him farther out, away from them, because he was separated, by language, by culture, and as any two strangers are separated.
The city smelled like a tobacco pipe. He kept the hashish in his jacket pocket but what he smelled was the tobacco pipe of Madrid and the robust flavors of wine and love. The plazas were becoming more crowded. What began as a trickle after 9 o’clock had turned into a buzzing stream from all directions. But Lethe avoided the popular hangouts.
At the end of the Senora’s block, he noticed a crumbling wall he hadn’t seen before. The wall seemed out of place and presented an ugly contrast to the pretty boutique shops a couple feet away. As he came closer to the wall, he saw a little dirt trail that wrapped around it. He climbed the trail, ducking under some bushes and hoisting himself to the top.
Lethe liked exploring and tonight was no exception. Whereas some adolescents might back away from trespassing in a foreign city, Lethe went forward with feverish curiosity. Three and four story houses burrowed under massy branches and stood silent behind stucco walls. He glimpsed fancy driveways through wrought-iron gates but saw nothing more.
After walking up the hill for a while, Lethe sat down on the curb to smoke some more hashish. The houses behind the stucco wall now seemed to have a presence. He ignored the eyes in the darkness which were really lights on in the houses.
From another direction, a gaggle of voices became audible and Lethe hid his pipe in his pocket. Stepping away from the curb to see what was happening, he approached the voices until he was ten feet away. A gang of university students, all male, were gathered in a circle, telling stories. They had drinks in their hands and were smoking cigarettes under a glowing street lamp.
Lethe, the outsider, was touched by their genial spirits. The Spaniards seemed to have a unique and powerful bond to each other. Just by watching them, Lethe grew passionate and interested in their revels.
It became a nightly ritual, slipping out of the Senora’s apartment after she had gone to bed . . .
The damp metro station. Dirty air; sooty, humid. A creaky turnstile with a single homeless person sleeping on the granite. The solitary tram car. Loud, metallic vibrations through cavernous tunnels.
Two police officers usually stood at the top of the stairs when he came out of the Metro. It seemed as if they were guarding the empty plaza with four trees and a couple stone benches. Tall cups of coffee in their hands, each with a cigarette burning, the officers barely noticed him. They were having their nightly conversation.
Above the officers, the sky was rounded, black and studded with stars. The palpable air woke him out of his slumber and filled him with a subtle appreciation for the universe. He passed the officers nonchalantly, trying not to make eye contact. He remembered to take a different train on the way home.
The Senora must be sleeping now. In fact, most of the city must be sleeping. It was a week night, after all.
There were some voices from the bars; a couple strolling arm in arm, half-drunk.
The comfort of being alone contrasted with the comfort of having a lover, or even a friend to pass the time. Lethe looked at the lovers jealously. The female was French and extremely attractive. Her boyfriend looked Austrian and aristocratic, like he belonged to the Hapsburg family. Lethe strolled through the plazas, swinging between moods, swinging between his subtle, giddy appreciation, and his resentment of others.
The Reggae bar, a hot spot on the weekends, had the shutters open and a few tables under a canopy. But the bar stools were empty and shadows crossed in the center of the room. Jamaican beats filtered a laid-back rhythm through the speakers, and the high pitch of the steel drum rang out. Lethe sat in the front of the bar, beside the sidewalk and the street and bobbed his head as he waited for the delinquent waitress.
The waitress was some post-punk chick with green and blue dreadlocks and a stud in her chin. Lethe ordered a drink and waited for her to disappear so he could lite up his pipe. He was sitting in a sort of cubbyhole, where the shadows still crossed the tables and disguised him in patches of darkness. Occasionally, he turned his head to blow smoke into the streets.
Lee “Scratch” Perry came on through the 70’s speakers mounted in the corners of the room. The sound quality was horrible but it heightened his sense of detachment. The bartender wore hemp bracelets and stacked boxes off to the side. The post-punk waitress smoked a cigarette at a table by herself, occasionally throwing bitter glances at the bartender. There was nobody except these three, until a Moroccan sauntered in.
He was gangly and slightly emaciated but he held himself like a king and stood proud in a jeans jacket slightly torn at the arms. From the moment he appeared in the bar, he seemed to set his eyes on Lethe and walk toward him. He kept staring, until finally he sat down at Lethe’s table. There was a cigarette hanging vertically from his mouth.
“Do you like this place?” he said, his cigarette flapping up and down. “It seems kind of empty to me.” Then he moved closer toward Lethe and whispered, “I can get you whatever you want.”
“I’m cool,” Lethe replied. “But thanks.”
Senorita Lorenzo, Lethe’s psychiatrist, was encamped in her office all day long. She rarely left for lunch, preferring instead the red-chambered privacy of the British-American clinic. She savored the time that she had alone and usually allowed herself to relax and forget about her patients.
It was a narrow window of pleasure, and she had to be careful not to impinge on the delicacy of these moments with her mundane, daily preoccupations. She was not a particularly indulgent woman, but she knew how to indulge herself and was precise about it.
She could give herself a small piece of chocolate, a single glass of wine, or a few crackers with goat cheese, and she was happy. Without this ritual of self-gratification, she was likely to pay less attention to her patients. Her patients demanded her full sympathy and this was an exhausting practice, listening to someone tell you about their problems. She only required a small portion of the day for herself; the rest she could charge for.
She knocked off her shoes underneath the desk, and dropped a fresh cherry into her mouth. The juice spilled down the sides of her chin, and she laughed at herself for being so messy.
She thought of an older man who she’d been spending some time with lately. She went back and forth on whether this was a good idea. The man was recently divorced. Moreover, he worked in the same clinic.
The soft, fresh goat cheese coated the outsides of her teeth. Before she brought the wine glass to her lips, she savored the bitty chives with self-abandon. The minutes were ticking away and soon she’d be working with a client (she glanced at her schedule). At least she had her fifteen minutes of pleasure. In the right frame of mind, fifteen minutes could seem longer, like in a dream.
She rubbed her feet anxiously against the carpet. Perhaps the dream was ending soon.
Lethe frantically ran though the underground metro, sweat soaking his underarms; a continuous huffing threw him into an athletic trance. Finally, he arrived, bursting into Senorita Lorenzo’s red chamber with lackluster appearance.
The psychiatrist stashed a couple things into her bottom drawer. Her shoes went back on. She straightened her collar.
“It smells like alcohol in here–” Lethe remarked.
“Sometimes I have a glass of wine with my lunch.”
Lethe situated himself in his chair, looking around suspiciously. “What do you do in here all day?”
“I talk to patients like you.”
“Don’t you get bored listening to strangers all the time?”
“No, I actually find it quite interesting. I want to learn more about my patients.”
“That sounds so scripted. What do you really think about me?” Lethe flashed a look of provocation.
“I think you have a lot of potential, Lethe. I’ve read your writings. You’re a talented young man.”
“Then what’s my problem? Why can’t I connect with anyone?”
“You can connect. Look at your relationship to the Senora, it’s strong.”
The darkness and red silk upholstery inside the psychiatrist’s office attracted Lethe’s attention; the office lulled him into a fantasy. He pictured his doctor giving him presents on top of her bed. The lavish Italian bed had soaring columns and a gauzy veil hanging over a canopy.
“I spoke to your father.” Senorita Lorenzo announced.
“Did he send you my allowance?”
“He says he won’t send you a dime until you find a job.”
“But that wasn’t part of the deal. And anyways I’m in Spain. How am I supposed to find a job in a place where there’s thirty-five per cent unemployment?”
“You won’t find one if you never leave the apartment.”
“But wait, that’s not true anymore. I leave the apartment. I leave the apartment every night.”
Lethe thought of the Moroccans.
“Have you been taking those pills I gave you?” She moved her scarf around her neck.
“Yes, I think they’re working. I’m much calmer than I was before. Can’t you tell?”
“You seem a little calmer . . . maybe.”
“I’m reading a mammoth book. Of course you’ve heard of it, you’re Spanish.”
“No, actually, I was born in Italy.”
“Huh, that’s funny. You look like a Spaniard.”
“Roma.” The Senorita squinted her eyes and smiled. Then she looked at the clock on her desk. “You know you have a lot of talents, Lethe. I’ve read your writing, it’s excellent.”
He changed his tone, “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I am talented. I’m not just going to sit around the apartment anymore. I’m going to do something!”
A broad smile appeared on Senorita Lorenzo’s face. She wanted to hug Lethe, but then she dismissed this impulse and stayed close to her desk as he was leaving.
A long, long time ago in an artificial suburban hamlet called Barclay Park,
beside a high stucco wall covered with ivy,
behind a flowering bush (Calochortus nudus),
Lethe smoked his first cigarette.
Tasting the harsh fumes of death, Lethe grew hardened and ambitious to continue smoking each week. He slipped out of the house when his parents weren’t looking and he ran to the end of his street to smoke. He knew the family who lived in the house at the end of the cul de sac, he played soccer with their son. Nevertheless he pretended they couldn’t see him going into their backyard and hiding behind their flowering bushes.
He was born into a gated community. Smoking, being the great rebellious act of any adolescent, instilled him with a sense of expansive liberty. He was saving a corner of himself for misdeeds, a part of himself which his father couldn’t influence.
The dark deed of smoking was repeated over and over like a ritual. When he entered high school, he could say that he smoked, not once, but often.
The shadow of his youth became like his double. When he wasn’t studying to get good grades to earn his father’s approval, the shadow took full possession of him. At times, the shadow felt more real than anything else.
The neighbors never did see him scurrying into their backyard. They never ran out of the house to evict him from the flowering bush, the site of his early transgressions. And if he wanted to jump the stucco wall, he did so fearlessly. He threw his bicycle over it and rode across the highway where there was a hotel and a golf course.
Sometimes he spent whole afternoons wandering through the hotel. Like a gentrified dandy, he sat on the couches and drew in his sketchbook. He was mimicking his mother, who used to do the same. She would sit for hours in expensive hotels with her sketchbook, capturing the faces of the crowd. He made doodles and comic strips only he could decipher. He pretended to be a guest in the hotel. If anyone asked him what he was doing there, he would say he was the son of a wealthy politician.
His father was a doctor. A prescriptive man by nature who communicated to his son mainly through lectures. His father never understood his mother’s inclination toward art, and he appreciated Rose the artist only in the sense that this calling was alien to him. Because Lethe took after his mother, he tended to develop in opposition to his father.
Cigarettes tasted like the harsh fumes of death. Lethe grew used to the taste, but never completely. There was always the residue of something bitter and coarse.
During his senior year he smoked every morning while driving to school. He drove his father’s Oldsmobile; he was never given a car of his own. In the neighborhood where he grew up this was unusual.
If he wanted to escape Barclay Park, which he often did, he had to climb the stucco wall. When he was able to drive, he roamed the leafy suburb at night, smoking cigarettes one after the other.
On the balcony of the Senora’s apartment, Lethe removed the tobacco from one of his cigarettes. He kept the paper. It was three o’clock in the morning. The night air had a wavy, moist feel. The stars in the sky fell under the horizon like lost buttons and pins. You had to search for them. Directly above him there was nothing. Only a gulf of darkness.
He filled the cigarette with the hashish he had just purchased. A Moroccan sold it to him. You could find Moroccans in almost any park after 11:00 pm. They clustered around benches and stone steps, drinking whiskey and shouting gleefully. You simply had to approach them and they understood what you wanted. Lethe learned these things from living in Spain.
The leader stepped up to Lethe. He pressed his body against Lethe’s and took his cash. Then he removed a little piece of clay wrapped in plastic and tore it in half between his teeth. Muttering something in Spanish, he put the hashish into Lethe’s hand.
Lethe caught sight of the Moroccan’s mouth. It was the dirtiest mouth he had ever seen in his life. The Moroccan was missing all but four of his teeth, and those teeth were yellow and stumpy.
The rest of the Moroccans had pockmarked faces and greasy hands. They grinned whenever you were communicating with them. They couldn’t stop grinning.
The joint tasted like his first cigarette: overpowering, dirty, coarse. But he sucked on the end of it until his head was full, and his senses lazily unstrung. It was like slipping out of the house and running to the end of the street. It was like hiding beside the flowering bush and taking those first drags off a half-smoked cigarette. It was like jumping the stucco wall.
The neighbors wouldn’t notice a thing.
The early morning pleased him in a disorienting way. It was somewhere between morning and night and for Lethe this was a comfortable place to be. He liked how the trees below the Senora’s apartment grew out of their little concrete squares. He liked how the storefronts gleamed in the oily moonlight. He noticed the fruit seller’s wooden cart which had fallen on its side from the wind.
Hashish was weird. It didn’t fill him with ecstatic energy. It just sort of dulled his senses and dropped him onto plateaus of vacant emotion. There was nothing immediately pleasurable in the effects. But having spent so much time in the Senora’s apartment, doing practically nothing, the slightest difference in his well-being greatly satisfied him.
“What are you doing out here?” The Senora asked suddenly.
Lethe looked at his watch; it was almost 4:30 in the morning.
“Oh, I came outside to have a cigarette . . . I must have fallen asleep.”
“When Don Quixote fell asleep, he was attacked by highway men.”
Lethe smiled. “Are you a highway man?”
“Not tonight.”
They laughed together. “Go to bed, nino.”
The voices of the Senora’s relatives rumbled through the thin walls of the apartment. Outbursts of laughter. He could hear them cracking pistachio nuts and the children running in the halls. The men were playing cards and accusing each other of cheating. The women were helping in the kitchen and gossiping. Juanita lurked in the hallway with her patched eye. She was probably looking for him.
The poster said not to wish for happiness. But that was impossible. Lethe expected the Senora to take care of him. Now she was ignoring him. And yet, he didn’t want to go home either.
The children were screaming in the living room. Their little feet padded up and down the hall. Later the Senora would clean the hallway with her dust mop. She would go over the same spot where those children played. It would calm her to do this.
Yesterday he felt so comfortable and secure with his situation. Yesterday he wrote the first pages of a short story about his childhood. He described the ponds around his home, the Canadian geese covering the lawns. He recalled the ease and fluidity of that day. How he seemingly floated through it without a single irritation.
He came in from the balcony and sat down at his desk. Then, there was a knock on his door.
“Lethe, it’s me.”
“What do you want Donte? I’m busy in here.”
“The Senora wants you to come out for the meal. Her relatives want to meet you. You know, Lethe, the Spanish people, they’re social. They don’t understand it when somebody is hiding in their room.”
“I’m not hiding, Donte. I’m just not hungry.” Lethe slammed the door and cursed under his breath.
“Lethe?”
“What Donte?”
“Remember the night you tried to kill yourself?
“No, I don’t. Please remind me.”
“You felt much better once you came out of your room. Even though you didn’t want to, you were glad you did it.”
“I did it to appease you. I really didn’t feel much better.”
Lethe heard some more voices in the hallway. Two people were arguing with each other.
Somebody turned a key.
Two well-built men in their early forties stepped into Lethe’s room. They had full beards and autumnal, hand-knitted sweaters. Their large presence in the room dramatically altered the mood.
What happened to Donte? Lethe thought.
The two men were roused by each other’s speech. Lethe couldn’t make out what they were arguing about but it sounded serious. Finally, realizing they had stepped into the wrong room, one of them said,”This doesn’t look like the guest room.”
“No, it’s not. This is my room.” Lethe shot a look of confusion at the brothers.
“My brother here was telling me that Americans watch futbol. Is that true? Or are they mainly obsessed with baseball?”
“Some Americans like soccer. But they tend to be the ones who play soccer.” Lethe reached for an unlit cigarette on the dresser.
“We just had a bet about what sports Americans are least likely to watch. I said ’soccer’. My brother said ‘handball’.”
“I don’t think we even have handball in the US,” Lethe answered.
“By the way, I’m Roberto. We’re the Senora’s sons. You won’t see us very often but once in awhile we take the train with our families and come here for a big meal. You know how good mama’s chorizo is.”
“Yes,” Lethe replied. “Her food is delicious.”
Although the Senora tried to conceal her emotions, she was a nervous woman who thought a great deal about her responsibilities. Her biggest responsibility was to the study abroad program that paid her a monthly income. For the most part, the students who stayed in her apartment could take care of themselves. In the first couple weeks of having a new boarder the Senora was always a little nervous. Then she got to know the college kids and there were fewer and fewer concerns. Generally speaking she found that American students were well-behaved and self-sufficient. In the last ten years, only two or three students were totally incapable of adapting to the Spanish culture. Typically these students went home.
She could remember a Chinese girl one summer who after the first week began to have nightmares. The incident passed over rather quietly, but the Senora understood that living in a foreign country could produce great strain on an adolescent.
The fact that Lethe did not want to return home made his situation all the more complicated. On the one hand, the Senora wanted to accommodate him. He repeatedly declared that he loved living with her, and he loved Spain. So why should he have to go home? On the other hand, she was not exactly enthusiastic about him staying home from school. When Lethe first came to her about his problems she told him a story about her childhood. Now she regretted it. With a teenager sitting around her house, doing nothing all day, she was tense.
Although her initial reaction to Lethe’s suffering was one of empathy, now she was having some reservations. She disliked how he woke up late every morning, waited until four o’clock to take a shower, and never left the apartment. She disliked how he flirted with Catalin and tried to make conversation with the young maid, even when the Senora expressed her disapproval of their relations. To counteract her anxiety, she busied herself with the housecleaning.
Lethe saw her in the hallways pushing dust into piles. The same patch of floor again and again. She pushed the mop with a cigarette hanging from her mouth. There was no more dust, but she kept dragging the mop. This was the Senora’s form of meditation. Was she thinking? No, she was trying not to think.
She needed to clean the ash trays. He smoked just as much as she did and it annoyed her. He reminded her of herself, his compulsiveness, his nervousness.
Catalin was a good maid. She wouldn’t let Lethe bother her. The Senora watched Catalin turn a cold shoulder to Lethe. Even though the Senora didn’t want Lethe’s feelings hurt, there were some things he just didn’t understand. Such as work. Lethe was incapable of understanding the concept of “work”. All he wanted to do was lounge around her apartment and read Don Quixote. Fine if that was his choice, but then he shouldn’t disturb the others. And about his illness, maybe he really was sick. But in Spain, a person attempts to get well. Lethe, on the other hand, showed pleasure in being sick. Sickness was a vacation for him.
If the youth hadn’t doted on her so much, then it would have been easier to kick him out of her apartment. But no, she couldn’t be so severe with him. His favorite tactic was to ask if she wanted to have a cigarette and a cup of coffee. How could she say no to that? So they would sit down on the couch together and he’d begin to ask her all these questions about her sons and daughters in Portugal or her late husband. He seemed genuinely interested in knowing about her life. He was a curious young man, and sweet too, but she always felt herself being sucked into his gloomy, lethargic world. And she fought against it. She tried to sympathize–but never too much.
He flattered her with his blind attachment. It was like he needed an old woman to comfort him. She tried to resist giving too much of herself, but she enjoyed the attention, it was true. So they both helped each other in unhealthy ways, and thus became entangled.
During the week the Senora was busy cleaning the apartment and preparing meals. She had a maid come in the mornings to help out. Usually, at about nine o’clock, when Lethe was having his coffee, he saw Catalin and engaged her in a conversation she didn’t quite feel comfortable having. For example, Lethe wanted to know whether she had a boyfriend or not.
“No, I’m single.”
“Good, then you’ll come with me to el museo del Prado tomorrow.”
“El museo. Oh no, I can’t. I have an appointment with my girlfriend.”
“An appointment. That sounds so formal. Why don’t you bring your girlfriend along? We’ll all go together.”
The maid smiled under her green eyes. She had a fresh, young-looking face with auburn hair. Lethe had always been attracted to her, but now he felt confident to talk and ask her questions.
The Senora however was not happy with their intermingling, and she sought to separate them by asking Lethe to leave the apartment during the day.
People had jobs to do and schedules to keep. Lethe would never understand this. The Senora worried about what would happen to the student with too much time on his hands. Now Catalin shied away from Lethe in the mornings and applied blank concentration to the task at hand. She feared losing her job.
Lethe waited for the maid and her girlfriend, Rosa, to show up at el Plaza del Sol. He waited for a half an hour and then went into a sandwich shop to sit down. He blamed the Senora for making it hard for him to get to know Catalin. Maybe Catalin didn’t like him after all. Maybe it had nothing to do with the Senora. Maybe it was his acne.
After these events, Lethe returned to the Senora’s apartment and kept himself in his room. The view from his balcony was magnificent, the rooftops, the church spires, the mountains in the background, but all he could think about was how he was alone here in Spain. He smoked nearly a pack of cigarettes thinking of Catalin. She had already left for the day, and he pictured her meeting another guy and going with him to el museo del Prado.
The balcony was his only refuge, the sharp, cool air and the mountains in the distance.
He looked into people’s apartments as he was sitting on the balcony. In one apartment, a little boy was practicing piano. Lethe was reminded of himself as a child, reading from the Classics with his father. The blond curls of the little boy bounced up and down as he violently struck the keys.
On the balcony, there was no sense of time. Or endless reams of it, so endless time had no meaning. Lethe was living in Spain without a job, without a social life, without a girlfriend. He hated living in this vacuum and yet he couldn’t escape it. He didn’t have the motivation to escape it. He tried talking to Catalin but she rejected him, and so meeting new people, he figured, wasn’t worth the effort. He had always been left on his own, to play by himself, as it were.
Now he pictured his hero, Don Quixote, the gangly, emaciated body, the tattered clothing, the smell of antique books in his ramshackle house, and friends who complained that he spent too much time reading.
His bed slipped forward and his butt fell into the gap between the wall and the bed. Pulling himself up, he noticed the poster on the wall:
To wish for too big of a happiness makes it difficult for that same happiness.
“Perdon,” she said abruptly.
“Lo siento. I was only looking–”
She gave him a snooty expression and moved away from the display case.
Chocolate pies were laid out on a silver platter. Bemused salesgirls in white aprons walked around offering samples of miniature pastries. And the older Spanish wives mostly cheating on their husbands this afternoon watched the shiny casements with a kind of inappropriate quiver. The pastries looked more like works of art than edible foodstuffs. The women had bronze highlights in their hair and deep red lipstick, lipstick they never wore for their husbands. Colorful jellies oozed out of puffy morsels and rich glazes dripped onto white doilies. And how many of these women really had lovers? Maybe three or four. The rest preferred almond cake, brandy truffles, flan, tiramisu, and crème-filled rolls.
Lethe meandered from the pastry shop to a bookstore down the lane.
Lemon-scented air. Lethe awoke from his dreams of seducing the women in the pastry shop. The bookstore was like the den where his father retreated to; it was cloistered and dry, it smelled of leather and wood. Lethe felt a nostalgia for home even though home was the last place he wanted to be.
He climbed a small ladder to get to the top where he contorted his body and balanced on a plank of wood. It was a challenging position. Scanning the titles from Dickens to Dostoevsky, Lethe realized that most of the books were in Spanish. The Senora had recommended Don Quixote a couple weeks ago and had told him to read it in Spanish. Now was his chance. He reached for the holy grail of literature . . .
The fall caused a great clap on the floor and to top it all off, the book whacked our hero good, drawing attention from the entire room, the shopkeeper included. Words were shouted and exchanged; words meant to be compassionate.
A hoard of beguiling faces peered into his eyes, studying him, asking all sorts of questions in Spanish. Next to the crowd, the shopkeeper cradled the enormous tome, Don Quixote. With a sullen and aggrieved expression, it looked like he wanted to charge Lethe for damaging the corners of the book. That’s why he had put it on the top level, to keep it from the hands of dangerous American tourists.
Instead of taking a cab, Lethe decided to take the metro. The metro was an underground subway system with echoing platforms and moist tunnels. Crowds plodded through the cavernous walkways as street performers shouted and played their rickety instruments. Mostly, the flowing masses ignored the animated faces of vendors and winos. Gypsies vied for the attention of the commuters as well, crouched against walls, begging for change, but nobody noticed them.
The Senora was surprised that morning when Lethe told her he wanted to take the metro. It was a bold move for Lethe to re-enter the city, and he felt proud of himself as he sat in the waiting room and looked at the faces of the patients in the British American clinic. They didn’t seem as hopeless anymore, or perhaps it was Lethe who felt more confident.
During Lethe’s session with the psychiatrist, Senorita Lorenzo told him that she had spoken to his father over the weekend. “I was able to convince your father that you’re better off in Spain.”
Lethe was beginning to notice Senorita Lorenzo’s good looks. She had a chin that tapered off into a perfect ball, and eyes that glowed fiercely when she communicated “important matters”. Beyond that her tannish skin and dark eyeliner combined to put a sort of spell on him. To him, she was adult, exotic, and intelligent. He pictured what was underneath that olive suit she wore. He pictured her without her gold jewelry, without her ornaments and earrings.
“Your father and I have come up with a contract. This is so we all agree on the same thing. All the contract says is that you will come to see me twice a week. In exchange you will receive five-hundred dollars as an allowance.”
“My father?” Lethe said.
“Yes, your father. We need his permission to do this. You know Lethe you’re only nineteen years old. You can’t just decide to live in Spain and forget about everything else. You’re going to need me to help you work out the details. And the good news is you father has agreed. He says he actually preferred if you lived her for awhile.”
“Divorce. I almost forgot.”
Senorita Lorenzo ran her long finger down the contract. “Here it says, ‘each month you will receive an allowance’. In addition, your father wants me to send him monthly reports on your improvement.”
I wonder what it would be like taking a shower with Senorita Lorenzo.
“You don’t have to stay here, Lethe. It’s just easier on your family if you do. They love you, but they need this time to figure things out.”
She probably has a C-cup–no B, no definitely C.
“Lethe, it’s okay. You can stay here. I can contact the director of the study abroad program if you want. Do you want me to tell him that you’re staying here in Spain?”
“No, I’ll talk to him myself. It’s not necessary.”
“Are you sure?”
Her breasts are so perfect.
After their session, Lethe decided to walk to the end of the block. Once he got to the corner, he turned down another street and once he got to that corner, he turned down another. These Spanish streets were infinite; and Senorita Lorenzo was beautiful.
That night Lethe called his parents to tell them what was going on. He went into the Senora’s bedroom because it was the only place where he could have any privacy on the phone.
“Mom?”
He heard his mother’s wail on the other end. She always had to breathe deeply before mustering the energy to speak. Her sighs were pained and lugubrious. She sounded like a muffled, bleating lamb.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” Lethe said. “I’ve been having panic attacks. I don’t think I can go to class anymore.”
As he waited for his mother to form a response, he looked around the Senora’s bedroom. There was a bag of eucalyptus leaves on the floor near the dresser. The whole room reeked of the invigorating plant. He pictured the Senora falling asleep each night in a cloud of eucalyptus.
His mother wailed deeper on the phone and he knew she was about to speak. At last she uttered, “I want you to come home Lethe–”
“But no, Mom, I’m alright here. I met the psychiatrist today and she said she can help me. Really, things might be better if I stay here in Spain. I can get some help.”
His mother sighed loudly into the receiver. “Your father wants a divorce.”
“What?”
“A divorce.” She sighed, and then her voice dropped off.
“How could he?”
Lethe felt a sting in his eyes. The eucalyptus thickened all around him. He felt as though he was suffocating in the rawness of its scent.
“I don’t understand. When did this happen?”
“Last night.” Her voice was barely audible. She couldn’t talk anymore.
“No, I’m not coming home. I’m definitely not coming home then.”
He sat on the edge of the Senora’s bed. The coolness of the eucalyptus was rising from the bag and dissolving all around. Images of his mother and her illness swam through his mind. But the aroma of the intoxicating plant was strong enough for him to relax forgetfully, obliviously. His father was not an evil man. He didn’t want to think about the kind of man his father was.
Hung over the Senora’s tall dressers, lace spread like tiny baby clothes. The comforter had the softness of an aged, worn blanket used for decades and the pillows were hand embroidered. She kept no religious imagery on the walls, but then again, she was not a religious woman. Only a stern woman who believed in herself, who believed in her decisions and did not complain about life.
After he had been sitting on the bed for some time, the Senora came into the room.
“I don’t know if I can go to class anymore.” He said.
The old woman rubbed her hands together. Her eyes were clear and moist.
“Do you mind if I live here with you?”
“You can stay here, nino. You can live with me.”
It was decided that Lethe would see a psychiatrist. The Senora recommended the British-American clinic in the historic district of Madrid.
As the cab sped around a circular street, Lethe looked out at the mist hanging over the fountains. Few people were in the streets. It felt strange not to be going to school this morning; he felt torn from his routine, alienated by this emergency. He stared at the moist, grey streets, thinking about his parents and their problems, and his false suicide attempt.
At last he was dropped off at a Gothic building on a narrow side street. He climbed the stone steps and entered a dark foyer. The door to the clinic was made of glass. A secretary directed him to a salon-like waiting room with a fireplace.
Patients, old and young, sat in chairs against the walls. Lethe picked up a magazine and retreated into a corner. With the magazine in his lap, he looked up at the patients’ faces, imagining their problems. A nurse appeared, holding a clipboard. She called his name.
She held his wrist loosely, counting to sixty.
“Do you smoke?”
“A pack a day.”
The nurse wrote down a couple numbers on the board and led Lethe out of the room.
A poised, elegant woman greeted Lethe at the door. Hanging loosely around her neck was a red silk scarf. A polished copper belt adorned her slender waist.
Lethe sat down in the armchair across from her desk. He turned around to see the expanse of the office behind him; giant curtains folded against the back windows, and the carpet was emerald green.
“I spoke to your father on the phone. I’m going to need your permission for a couple things.”
Lethe remained silent, holding his hands in his lap and looking around the room curiously.
“Your permission, Lethe. Before I can tell your father any more information about our sessions.”
Lethe’s eyes lit up as if the psychiatrist had made some tantalizing remark.
“That’s fine. Tell my father whatever. I don’t care.”
“Are you sure now?”
“Oh yeah, I don’t care about that stuff.”
Senorita Lorenzo was a woman in her early thirties. Her age beguiled Lethe because he couldn’t guess it right away. Her intelligence, her quick alertness captured his attention, while the possibility of her being much older, gave him a sense of maternal comfort. He settled into his chair. Maybe she could help him.
“No, it’s okay, tell my Dad whatever he wants to know.”
“I’ll give your father a full report the next time I speak to him.”
“A full report?” Lethe jumped up.
“That just means I report to your father about our conversations.”
“I think I’d prefer if you just told him I don’t want to go to school anymore. That’s the main thing.”
“I see.” The psychiatrist took out a pad of clinical stationary.
“So tell me about your situation here in Spain.”
“Can I have some of that water over there?”
“Sure, go ahead.”
Lethe got up from the armchair and poured himself a class of water. “Thanks”
The psychiatrist waited for him to finish drinking, but each time he seemed like he was done he would get up and fill himself another cup.
“I’m here because I’ve been having panic attacks in school.”
“Yes, tell me about these panic attacks.”
“They’re real–more real than anything you can imagine. It just happens. I’ll be sitting in class and bang! I freak out. I can’t look at anyone. I have to leave the room.”
“You’re missing your classes then?”
“Some of them, yeah. I’m late or I just don’t show up at all.”
He began to feel more comfortable. He liked how serene she was when he told her about his problems. It was reassuring to have someone as beautiful as Senorita Lorenzo listening with moist, full lips and perfect skin. He projected many things onto her as he was telling her his stories.
“What about the Institute makes you nervous?”
“It’s the students. They’re everywhere.”
She arched her left eyebrow. “Are you afraid of them?”
“No, well, not exactly. I despise them. They’re like herds of cattle or something.”
“I thought you didn’t want people looking at you. Because of your face.”
Lethe hesitated.
“I’m sorry. I don’t see any acne on your face.”
“You wouldn’t be able to see it in this office anyways. It’s too dark.”
“But is your acne causing these panic attacks?”
“I’m not sure.”
Senorita Lorenzo glanced down at the clock on her desk. “I’m going to prescribe you some pills for anxiety.”
“Is there a dermatologist at the clinic? I would like to get a prescription for Accutane.”
“I can see what I can do.”
“Please don’t forget,” Lethe lowered his eyes. “It’s very important.”
The next day Lethe stayed in bed. Every couple hours the Senora would come to his room with a glass of orange juice or a plate of crackers. In the evening, Lethe was feeling strong enough to get out of bed. Covered in a blanket, he sat in the kitchen as the Senora cooked dinner. He was like a frail cat that sits by the window of a well-lit home, waiting to be let inside. He gazed at the Senora in admiration.
She handled the cooking with a singular dexterity. Zipping from from one side of the kitchen to the other, slicing vegetables, opening cans, washing potatoes, she was immersed in an energetic flow and guided by purposefulness. Her cigarettes were constantly burning which imbued her face with a glowing intensity. Either she had a cigarette between her lips, or one that was burning nearby, on the edge of the counter top as she rushed to empty the trash can.
Both of them smoked. Lethe watched her and wanted to smoke more himself. She chided him for smoking so much, especially when he wasn’t feeling well; but it was hard to lecture the adolescent for something she also indulged in. Smoking bonded them; they were both addicts. Due to the inordinate amount of smoking that went on in the Senora’s apartment, the rooms became hazy and she frequently complained about their nasty habit. But it was all for naught, because the next day the two of them would smoke just as much, which generally came out to a pack a day each.
Lethe regarded the Senora with a sort of divine authority. When she recommended Don Quixote to him for a second time, he vowed to read the book and “master every sentence”.
“If the Senora considers it to be the Spanish Bible,” he thought, “then this book should become my life.”
Meanwhile, the Senora told lots of stories to Lethe, some from the novels she had read, some from the tales of Don Quixote; but mostly it was her deep, gravely voice which moved Lethe. He admired her stern wisdom, her stoic sensibility, and equally, her light, frivolous chatter. After dinner she handed him the dishes to dry, and they did other household duties together, becoming like a pair.
One time Lethe blurted out some thoughts while they were cleaning. “I don’t want you to think I’m lazy,” he said.
“I don’t think you’re lazy,” the Senora replied.
“Donte seems to get more done than I do. I mean if I help you it’s not that big of a deal because I’m not going to class. But Donte is taking four classes, reading six books, and he still helps around the apartment.”
“Donte likes to help out. That’s his personality. Don’t begrudge yourself for another person’s character.”
“But I like to help too!”
“I know you do, nino. So if you want to help, then help. Nobody is stopping you. But don’t compare yourself to others. You have a different personality. Just be yourself.”
Lethe felt confused.
After dinner, she invited him to sit with her on the couch. Rain had just fallen on the tin gutters and with the balcony doors open, a sweet breeze was circulating inside the room. Both of them lit cigarettes.
“Are you afraid to go back to school?” The Senora asked.
“No, not really. I just don’t like the building.”
She could tell that he was lying to her. That was one of her abilities.
“I’m lost in the building. It’s cold inside and I don’t know where to go.”
“Don’t you know where your classes are?”
“I do, but . . . I’m in the bathroom a lot.”
“Why the bathroom?”
“That’s just where I go. I can’t think in class. It’s hard for me to sit still and listen to the professor. There are too many people I’ve never seen before.”
The Senora cupped her cigarette to her face. The ash accumulated loosely on the end.
Lethe continued to tell the story about the bathroom. He talked about it with mixed regard. The bathroom itself was unsettling to him. He looked down at his knees, averting the Senora’s eyes. But he also wanted to be free from his compulsions and so he talked brazenly, blaming his attachment to the bathroom on his mother.
“My mother used to spend a lot of time in the bathroom,” he said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with her. She has some sort of problem. She says she wants her privacy.”
“I’m sorry nino.”
“No, it’s fine. I don’t even believe her when she says she’s sick. Either does my father.”
The corners of the Senora’s mouth grew taut. She was listening to Lethe while tilting her head, turning it slightly, as if she were thinking very hard about what Lethe was saying. What was she thinking? He wanted to know but he continued talking because he was nervous and afraid. She said nothing, only listened and smoked. She could be so secretive sometimes, the Senora.
“You’re sensitive, that’s all. Lots of people . . . are sensitive. I remember when I was a little girl my mother had to take me out of school. This was very traumatic for me. I remember feeling afraid, like I had done something wrong. If you showed me where the bathroom was I probably would have hid myself there. You have no reason to feel ashamed. Living in a foreign country is a great challenge not only for a young person, but for a person of any age. It forces you to look at yourself in ways you wouldn’t normally have to. I was lucky that my mother didn’t punish me for my fears; instead she whisked me out of the classroom and came up with a plan to teach me the lessons herself.”
Lethe paused, reflecting on her words.
“What if you had a broken leg? Would you go to school?”
“No Senora Angeles, I would stay home.”
“You’re home early.” The Senora said.
Lethe hung his head, looking sickly and pale.
“Nino, go lay down. I’ll make you some leche con mile.”
She brought the warm milk to his bedroom. He climbed into his bed with only a thin pair of underwear to cover him.
He sat up, drinking the milk. His head was still reeling from the scene in the classroom. The surrealist images repeated in his mind, and for a moment, the bedroom shrunk. Was he looking at the Senora or just an endless trace of images?
The Senora loomed over him–a halo of garlic radiating off her arms. She stood and watched him as he sipped the warm, sweet milk. Flecks of garlic seemed to tumble off her shoulders like rocks in an avalanche.
“I’ve prepared a meal,” she said. “Why don’t you eat something with us later?”
When later came, Donte was setting the table like a Christian saint. He lived in his own perfect world, giving emphatic attention to the household chores, his homework, his incessant reading of the Spanish classics.
Lethe went out onto the balcony to have a cigarette. He smoked two puffs when the Senora called him back inside.
Donte carried the creamy garlic potatoes to the table and the Senora followed closely behind with a bowl of spicy gazpacho.
“I made your favorite soup,” she said to Lethe.
“I can’t eat anything.”
“What about bread? You love bread.”
She was right. Bread was the only thing that Lethe ate in Spain. Such a basic food and yet one that has nourished civilizations for centuries. Bread was Lethe’s sole salvation.
“I’m going to Valencia this weekend,” Donte announced.
“And with whom would this be?” The Senora replied.
“Some friends of mine.”
It was miraculous how it happened, but once Donte uttered this news, Lethe felt better. Donte would be gone for a whole weekend. Lethe felt a tinge of pleasure and suddenly desired some soup to go with his bread.
One minute after six o’clock, he stepped into his classroom on the eighth floor. “Sit down,” the professora ordered him, “We’re about to begin.”
An old film projector was perched on a wooden stand in front of the room. Students were whispering to each other and sharing cell phone numbers. Someone had pulled down the window shades and a darkness settled over the plastic chairs and desks. There was a hushed silence and the students glanced at each other mischievously, expecting the machine in the front of the class to break down. But the machine began clicking and grainy images sputtered onto the white screen. It was a relief for Lethe to be submerged in darkness. He knew that if the lights were off, nobody was looking at him. The credits ran for a short time and then the title, “Un Chien Andalou” appeared on the screen.
Nobody in the room knew what to expect. Of course they’d heard the name “Salvador Dali” before and most of them had seen his surrealist paintings. But this movie they were watching seemed more like a crappy home video. And some of them jeered at the film, as if to say “What’s this old-fashioned crap you’re showing us?” The professora told these students to be quiet. She said the movie was made in 1929.
The first scene showed a man sharpening a blade in hotel room.
He walks out onto the balcony, smoke from his cigarette pouring from his nostrils. He walks back inside the hotel room. There is a woman sitting in a chair. He lifts the razor blade up to the woman’s eyeball and slices. Tango music is playing the background.
It turned out that the “old-fashioned” film was powerfully disturbing, and those students who had been mocking it were now watching with rapt attention. The short film caused a riot of emotion in the class. The scenes didn’t connect. Why were ants are crawling out of a human hand?
And then, presumably the same hand rests in the middle of a city street. Nothing happens; the hand is just sitting there as if it has a mind of its own. Out of nowhere, an old woman comes across the street with her cane and pokes at the severed hand, attempting to move it. Another second goes by and she is hit by an oncoming car.
He could hear his professora saying that this short surrealist film was a piece of “historia cultural”. But the movie made him angry and he didn’t want to look at it anymore. Meaningless absurdity.
“Lethe, what’s wrong? Where are you going?”
“I’m going to the bathroom to sit in the stall and stare at the tiles until I’m ready to vomit.” But he stopped himself from saying this.
“What’s the reason for this unusual behavior?” The professora asked him in the hallway.
Lethe could hear the students murmuring on the other side of the door.
“You also haven’t handed in any of your assignments? Is there some sort of private revolt I don’t know about? ”
Revolt. What was she talking about?
He looked to the end of the hall. There was nobody around. “I don’t feel well, that’s all.”
Once a week, in the evenings, Lethe saw a friend at the Institute. Her name was Veronica and they’d met during the first week of the foreign exchange program when their college sponsored a ten-day excursion through the Pyrenees Mountains. The idea of the trip was to do a little sight-seeing before the students came to Madrid. A group of over fifty students stayed in small hotels and inns along the way. They visited picturesque villages and hiked through green mountains. They relaxed on beaches and saw old churches.
Veronica was a short brunette with a puckered mouth. Lethe had slept with her in that first week of the study abroad program. He captured her with his silliness and outgoing personality and she seemed to grow attached to him in a short amount of time. She had a cutesy aspect about her and he teased her a lot in a playful and exuberant manner. But something about Lethe didn’t sit well with Veronica. She sometimes acted stern and stoic towards him.
At the old rural Inn, in the village of St. Jean Pied de Port, their playfulness resulted in her coming up to his room one night and them having sex. Lethe buttered her up and their kisses had a fierce, wild intensity which made everything seem worth it. The room was small and had a low ceiling; the wooden floor had a hump. This quaint setting stoked their animal affection and the young, exuberant Lethe caressed Veronica’s pot-belly with the charm of a great lover. While the other students were downstairs, drinking from a punch bowl filled with sangria, Lethe and Veronica were having their little fun. Nobody knew and that’s what made it so exciting.
Veronica understood implicitly that Lethe didn’t really want anything more than this. He was practically manic when they were together and seemed to only enjoy a good rush. He played his part in a very juvenile way, and with a sort of cockiness too; in retrospect, she regretted falling for him at the Inn.
After not having spoken to each other for two weeks, they met again at the International Institute. The basement level had a cafe where students went to buy pastries, drink coffee, and hang out. Students sat in chairs around a table and talked about the weekend. Lethe never talked to anyone, however, not since his episodes in the classroom. Down in the cafe, he found a place in the semi-darkness where he waited for the five minutes before class started.
When Veronica saw Lethe in the cafe, she recognized instantly that he’d lost his mania, his exuberant self. Now he almost appeared catatonic and forlorn, staring at the stone walls and nibbling absentmindedly on a chocolate bar. She walked over to him, against her best judgment, and sat down.
Before they said anything, she smirked. She was the type of woman who takes pleasure in watching ex-lovers suffer. She wanted him to feel the pain that she had gone through in dealing with him. But his pain seemed to come from somewhere else, having nothing to do with her.
“What are you smiling at?” Lethe asked.
“You. You’re pouting and I think it’s funny.”
“I wasn’t trying to be funny and anyways you pout all the time. You pucker your mouth.”
“Hey, that’s not nice.”
She was wearing a blue, second-hand sweater. Lethe noticed this because she wore it all the time.
“I don’t have the energy to be nice. This place is making me go insane. I tried to kill myself last night.”
“You what?”
“Let’s not talk about it. Tell me about your wonderful life here in Madrid.”
“Actually things have gotten much better since we stopped hanging out . . .”
“Oh yeah, that’s great.”
“It is great because now I don’t have to deal with your bullshit.” She said this in a teasing manner.
“Listen I’m sorry if I ignored you after we slept together but I really hit a wall. You don’t understand I’m frustrated here. I hate this institute, or institution, whatever they call it.”
Lethe hung his head over the coffee table, and threw away his chocolate bar, half-eaten.
“The International Institute–”
“Yes, I hate it.”
“All these kids, these Americans. Where do they come from? This is supposed to be a ’study abroad’ not a ’study-at-home’.”
“What do you want to do Lethe? Run the streets with the Spaniards?”
“Yes, actually that sounds like a good idea. I’d learn more from them. Americans suck. I’m so self-conscious here. And I can’t stand my roommate. I’m pretty sure he’s gay.”
“Okay, that’s enough Lethe. I’ve got to go to class and so do you. Do you want to see me again?”
“Maybe.”
Donte sat in the living room with the Senora. They were watching NASCAR on television. The Senora deeply enjoyed motorcar racing and she chain-smoked whenever a big race was on.
The engines revved in the TV speakers. The living room was full of these sounds and the Senora and Donte sat at the edge of the couch.
“Where’s Lethe?” The Senora asked.
“Not sure, I think he’s in his bedroom.” Donte answered.
“Tell him he should come in here and watch the races with us. This is the best series . . . he should watch it.”
“But I don’t think Lethe likes racing, Senora.” Donte stood up, hesitantly.
“Please, go find Lethe and tell him to come. It’s important.”
Donte walked to the end of the hallway. He heard a noise like a thump.
Standing before the door, he listened for a moment and then knocked.
“I’m busy–”
“Maria Angeles wants you to watch motorcar racing.” Donte leaned against the door.
“I hate NASCAR. Leave me alone.”
Donte was taken aback by Lethe’s angry response. “I don’t want to interrupt you or anything–”
“Then go away.”
Now the noises in Lethe’s bedroom were loud and clunky, like he was moving furniture. Donte was about to give up when he heard another thump.
“What’s going on in there Lethe? Are you moving your bed around?”
“Aggghhh . . . that’s none of your business, Donte. Beat it.”
“I’m going to have to tell the Senora about this . . .”
“Go ahead tell the damn town. See if I care. Just leave me alone.”
“Lethe?”
“What!?!”
“Are you on drugs?”
“No, I’m not on drugs.” Then the door opened slightly and Lethe jammed his body in the crack. “I tried to hang myself tonight. I hung the sheets on the ceiling fan and moved the desk to get up there.”
Donte looked at Lethe in disapproval. “I don’t believe you.” He stepped forward into Lethe’s room. “What’s this? Have you lost your mind?”
A bed sheet was tied loosely to the ceiling fan, hanging down to the floor. There were some pieces of stucco from the ceiling scattered on the floor.
“Relax, it didn’t work anyways. The fan almost came out of the ceiling. I’m worthless. I can’t even kill myself properly.”
Around two o’clock Lethe and Donte came home from school and the Senora served lunch. Her sister, Juanita, lived on the floor above them. The two sisters were nothing alike. To begin with, Juanita was much older. She had a small, elderly person’s body and a large, egg-shaped head with puffy gray hair. Her right eye had some sort of problem; it no longer opened. For this reason, she squinted at everything with her left. She was constantly squinting and leering.
From the moment that Lethe met Juanita, he could tell that she didn’t like him. It was almost as if she had some information about him. That was the way she looked at him. Like “I know who you are. I know what you’re up to.” He tried to be friendly to her, many times he started conversations with her, but she kept looking at him askance with her ominous left eye.
Despite the fact that Juanita seemed to want nothing to do with Lethe, she insisted on sitting next to him at the table. After deeply pondering the old woman’s strange motives, Lethe concluded that the only reason she would want to sit next to him was because of the break basket.
She guarded the bread basket with all her life. The leering, one-eyed woman had lived through the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, and she cautiously watched over the bread supply as if they were living in 1938. The Senora took amusement to her sister’s frugality, but did nothing to soften it. And so, eating lunch with Juanita regularly felt like the four of them were prisoners sharing a meal. All the meals were silent and Juanita was constantly looking over Lethe’s shoulder to see if he had finished everything on his plate.
“Nino, have some more food.” The Senora would say.
Lethe glanced at Juanita, who came embarrassingly close to his face. “No, really, I’m fine. I’m not that hungry today.”
“Is that why you rummage through my refrigerator at night? You don’t think I can hear you. I hear your stomach growling too!”
Juanita squinted and leered, studying Lethe like a mysterious coin.
“I don’t rummage through the refrigerator at night, Senora.”
The Senora bowed her head; she knew there was no point in arguing, especially with her sister here.
Donte wiped the corners of his mouth with a napkin. “I’ll have another helping of the rice. Muchas gracias, por favor.”
In all her years of housing students, the Senora never had a boarder who refused to eat her meals. But Lethe . . . Lethe was different. He was picky like a girl and stubborn like a boy. So he filled up on bread, what could you do? That was his way.
The next day at the International Institute Lethe sat in the back of a classroom. There were twenty four desks crammed into the room and the windows appeared to be stuck, or permanently closed.
The professora, a confident woman in a narrow cut black dress, seemed more like a lawyer than a teacher. She spoke in crisp, declarative sentences about deadlines and duties and tasks and assignments. The class could barely write everything down, they were writing furiously under the fire of her sharp Spanish declarations. Point-by-point she gave the guidelines for the end-of-the-semester project. Something about interviews. Something about “the Spanish culture.” Did the other students know what she was talking about? Because none of it made any sense to Lethe. And there was no sign that she would stop her constant fire of Spanish syllables. The class took down notes obediently, like trained dogs. But Lethe, well, Lethe was lost.
And then . . . his anxiety caused him to daydream. He was swept away into the Spanish park with the old gentlemen. He remembered how peaceful it was sitting there in the park and he remembered the dog that the Spanish gentlemen thought was funny because of the way it slept under one of the chairs with its maw on the brick pavement. The old men laughed at the dog. “What a life! What a life!” Then the professora’s crazy Spanish broke into his daydream. Her loud, aggressive voice reminded him of all of the commotion in the city on his way to school. The buzzing jackhammers, the bustling pedestrians, the swarming traffic, all of it was inside her voice.
The professora called out: “Todo esta bien alli?”
Lethe looked down, pretending to take notes.
The native Spaniard looked mildly irritated. She straightened her shoulders and carried on with her lecture, “La cultura Espanola tiene una riqueza de personalidades y tradiciones. No hay un trabajo a encontrarlos . . .”
Going to classes would become a real torture for him, he could see it already. He wanted the day to end before it had even begun. He dreamed of the lazy refuge of the Senora’s apartment.
The Senora cooked a delicious meal that night. The three of them sat down together at nine o’clock.
The basket of fresh bread went around the table. The bread in Spain was baked just right. Lethe lingered over the crust in his mouth as if he’d never tasted bread before. Steam rose from the soupy bowl of creamed broccoli. The thick potato-and-egg tortilla shimmered with blotches of oil. The Senora had left open the balcony door and cool air was coming in, mingling with the heat from the oven.
At an unexpected moment, the Senora projected her voice across the table. The great curio cabinet seemed to tremble nervously behind her.
“I’m reading a wonderful book right now. It’s called The Alchemist. A young man goes to seek a buried treasure in Egypt. I would imagine he’s the same age as you two.”
The Senora and Donte exchanged quotations they had memorized from the book. The Senora chuckled while Donte’s eyes sparkled like polished gems.
“This stupid book is actually bonding them together,” Lethe thought.
And then Donte brought up that old book by Cervantes . . .
“The true Spanish bible!” The Senora exclaimed.
“My favorite part, Chapter 26, I’ve read it hundreds of times, when the Sorrowful Knight kills the puppets because he thinks they’re real people!”
“Master Peter’s Puppet Show. Master Peter’s Puppet Show . . .”
“Don Quixote wants to save the damsel, that’s why he destroys the puppet theater. He’s gone completely mad!”
Donte, the old professor, praised Cervantes to the heavens, and his perfect poof of hair bounced energetically.
“Ingenio, ingenio . . .” Donte uttered.
Lethe observed them tensely, his hands balled into fists under his chair. He couldn’t understand why the Senora had picked Donte as her favorite and not him. That sounded so juvenile to think in terms of favorites, but it was true! Donte was the Senora’s favorite surrogate son. And Lethe, well Lethe was just a boarder–
“I can tell you haven’t read it,” the Senora said to Lethe conspiratorially. “Here, use my copy.” She shoved the big book in front of him.
Lethe shamefully thumbed through the dry, yellow pages. He glanced at the little black sketches at the beginning of each chapter.
“There’s a bookstore on la calle de Felipe. Go buy yourself a copy in English. Nobody can figure out exactly what the novel is about and it deserves your attention. Maybe you’ll be the first one to decipher it, Lethe.”
She brushed some crumbs into her hand and smiled at her two boarders. “Now it’s time to go to bed.”
Lethe met Donte at the airport where they split a taxi to get into the city. They dragged their suitcases up eight flights of stairs. A masculine-looking older woman greeted them at the door.
Lethe scanned the floor of the entry hall. Where to put his suitcase? He held his luggage for a long time and felt the choke of not being able to express himself in Spanish.
Donte put his suitcase down and sized up the apartment. The Senora’s daughter, a woman in her early thirties, rushed over with a spasm of energy. She had a flighty voice that took off around the corners.
You had to follow her around when she was talking, and this was no easy task. She said that while she didn’t live here anymore, she wanted to help her mother out with the new guests, it was in her nature to make sure things ran smoothly and now her mother was getting a bit older in years. They followed her into the kitchen. She’d just gotten married a few weeks ago, the wedding was beautiful, done with such taste! Another burst of energy, more garrulous speech, she bustled between rooms. She had to make sure there was clean linen on the beds and fresh towels on the racks . . .
The Senora stood off to the side, watching her daughter with the silence of a statue. The old woman had a tentative glare that seemed to catch onto you with hooks.
“Would you like some coffee?” The Senora’s daughter called from the kitchen.
Side tables and chairs filled the Senora’s dim living room. Little metal ashtrays were scattered throughout and the residue of tobacco smoke lingered in the air. The nervous daughter rushed in with their cups of coffee.
“There are two bedrooms in my mother’s apartment. One room has a balcony and the other . . . well, the other has a slightly longer bed.”
“You can have the room with the balcony.” Donte said.
The old woman glared at Lethe.
“That’s fine. I like balconies.”
The Senora lit a cigarette, which surprised Lethe. He didn’t expect a woman her age to be smoking. But she lit the cigarette without even appearing to do so.
Lethe was a smoker. If the lady of the house was smoking, then obviously there could be no problem if he smoked. So he lit up a cigarette with a foolish grin, like he had nothing to hide.
Donte talked to the Senora about a half-dozen things. Listening to Donte talk was like listening to a professor give a lecture. Lethe regretted that he’d been studying Spanish his entire life, now he was living in Spain, and still he couldn’t understand a single word.
Donte’s perfectly-molded jet black hair drew Lethe’s earnest attention. The hair was a work of art worthy of display in a national museum if it could only be torn from his head. It bounced, oh, how it bounced with a sort of dalliance over Donte’s remarkably high forehead. From Donte’s superb hair, Lethe’s eyes wandered to his dark complexion. Was Donte a Spaniard in disguise?
The Senora’s daughter took Lethe and Donte to their separate rooms. Small and square but clean. The Senora’s daughter walked away and Lethe stepped out onto the balcony.
Pastel-colored, stucco buildings leaned over narrow, brick alleyways, a very picturesque setting. And directly across from his room were flower-filled patios with shiny white railings.
A couple pretty young maids danced in front of the windows. Lethe laughed.
Donte appeared in the hallway, wearing a heavy serape sweater and a hemp purse slung around his right shoulder. He looked like an Eskimo. “Do you want to go for a walk?” He asked.
“Sure. Why not?” Lethe joined him.
You should have seen the souvenir shops and the stony-eyed vendors. Cross-legged gypsies on heaps of fabrics, and scrawny, emerald-eyed children. The city itself was in a hurry. Chic, well-dressed Spaniards were darting this way and that.
Grille windows, and narrow, labyrinthine streets. The cloying smell of fried pastries and the occasional whiff of trash bags.
Sign, signs, signs. You saw them in the States of course, but in a foreign language everything looked so cryptic. National banks, telephone companies, fresh vegetables, cigarettes, it was all written in a cipher.
Lethe was smitten by the provocatively elegant clothing of the Spanish women. They showed their naked asses in transparent summer dresses.
“I’m in love!” Lethe shouted.
“With who?” Donte replied, pulling his hemp purse closer to his chest.
“I’m in love with this fucking place and I’ve only been here two hours.”
“I think it’s kind of hot and sticky.”
“I’m just happy to be away from home . . .” Lethe said, and they continued down the narrow, cobbled street.
On the morning of September 5th, 2001, instead of going to class, a student panicked and ran into the bathroom on the first floor of the International Institute in Madrid, Spain. As the clock struck eight, a monastery silence reigned over the building.
Staring so deep and hard at his reflection drew an excessive amount of strength and soon the student was overwhelmed and needed to sit down. He pressed the stall door, which opened like a confession booth.
“What’s wrong with me?” He asked.
As he waited for an answer, he stared up at the birds walking along the parapet.
“I’m living in a city without a single person who speaks my language. I’m ignored by the world, overlooked by millions. I can’t change my appearance. I can’t miraculously communicate with these people. I don’t have one Spanish word I can whip off my tongue to convince these people I’m real, I exist.”
But it wasn’t true what he was saying. There were plenty of people in Madrid who spoke English. His roommate spoke English. The students in his classes spoke English. Even his Senora spoke English.
The walk from the Senora’s apartment to the International Institute took approximately thirty-five minutes. It was not uncommon for this walk to produce great strain on Lethe’s delicate emotions. A tide of anxiety swelled up inside him and threatened to drown his face in sweat. Obstacles grew out of the empty air. The large flank of a church nearly pushed him off the curb. A cavity in the road suddenly appeared underneath him.
Construction workers swarmed the sidewalk, suffocating him with their dusty looks and manly shoulders. Cigarettes burned in between their teeth as they shouted orders back and forth. Then came the jackhammers with the crescendo of shrill intensity.
Lethe followed a winding footpath into a wide-open plaza. Set apart from the whirlwind of city madness, a cluster of old men sat with their legs crossed, reading the morning newspaper under the blue fresco dome of the sky. A lazy dog slept underneath one of the chairs.
Lethe stood next to the fountain, debating whether he should go to class this morning. The taut underbelly of the lazy dog rose with each difficult breath.
“What’s wrong with me?” He repeated.
One of the Spanish gentlemen smiled wistfully, as if recalling his own foolish youth.
Lethe glanced at the dog and saw how perfectly content it was. Stupid dog. Lazy dog.
“Que Vida! Que Vida!” The old man proclaimed.
The other men in the plaza hardly moved; they were like figures in a block of marble.
“Que Vida! Que Vida!”
It was too late to make it to his next class. He decided to stay here until the dog woke up.
