A Guide for the Perplexed Read online

  Sandor and Bach. And what Bach! Perhaps, as in the bad days of the early nineteenth century, Bach unplayed, Bach that had been lying dormant, ruminating at a barely viable temperature in its fugal sac. A German Bach and a Spanish Bach. A Brandenburg Bach and a post-Holocaust Bach. The Mathematical Bach of the Six-Part Fugue, the Acrobatical Bach of the sixteen children. The dark poetry of the Allemande, the insistent tussle of the Courante, the stately striptease of the Sarabande, the breathless Gigue around the four-poster, and finally 272 relentless bars of Chaconne—a theme repeated and a theme repeated, sometimes solitary and self-satisfied, sometimes layered in an orgy of quadruple stops, the melody soaring on top, pounding below, squeezed by the staff, tickled by arpeggios into lacy underthings, throbbing, gasping, squeaking, mewling, a brief pause in D major for a smoke, and then six more variations in search of a climax.

  Hungry?

  LA ROSA NÁUTICA

  La Rosa Náutica is properly approached on foot by a narrow pier leading from the parking lot on the beach of El Palo, approximately 4 km (2.5 miles) east of town. (There is also a small landing for private boats on the seaward side.) The building is constructed in the octagonal shape of its namesake, the Compass Rose, with the pier providing the traditional extra length of the Due North leg. A circular bar, reputed to feature the widest selection of Spanish brandies in the country, fills the middle of the restaurant. A spiral staircase at the bull’s-eye leads down to the subterranean kitchen, a structure that dates from at least the end of 1491, when, legend reports, Columbus huddled with ten advisers to plan his final assault on the purse of Ferdinand and Isabella.

  Sixteen tables ring the restaurant. Ask Abbas, the Moorish maître d’, for West-Southwest with its mixed view of the Mediterranean, the port, and the gardens of the Gibalfaro above the city. The decor is early nautical slum, designed to bring nostalgic tears to the heavy-lidded eyes of the Piraean shipbuilders and Saudi arms dealers who are the restaurant’s most dedicated patrons. Planked tables (white linen optional), pewter flatware, leaded glassware. Nets, antique spyglasses, and astrolabes hang from the conical ceiling next to worm-eaten chandeliers ripped timely from some galleon graveyard. And everywhere snailshells and musselshells, bits of lobster and saffroned rice, swept up every half hour or so by a posse of flamenco-playing gypsies.

  My companion had a five o’clock plane to New York, and my appetite suggested only a light lunch before my own flight a few hours later. We ordered the Zambra de Mariscos, a fresh assortment of lightly fried shellfish. A basket arrived that must have held two kilos of cockles and mussels, starfish and winkles, squid, octopus, sea urchin, crayfish, crab, lobster, scallops, and giant sardines the size of bread knives, all fried in an olive oil that smelled of wood smoke and sherry. With time to waste on a bright December afternoon, Mediterranean finger food can be masticated at leisure. The basket faded slowly, as did two bottles of brightly chilled Campo Viejo.

  Expect to stay at least two hours and to pay what you would a high-class masseur. Cash only, credit cards not accepted.

  Submitted by H.

  A little note—don’t include this, Ben—but Sandor introduced me to the owner, Santángel, a tall, soft-eyed greybeard (couldn’t possibly be Spanish!). He intimated there was a documentary in the history of the Rosa Náutica, but with a certain forceful nonchalance (is that really possible or am I just a sucker for soft eyes?) that reined in my Ugh-Reflex—something about Columbus and the Expulsion of the Jews. I told him, ever so politely, that we had all the footage we needed on that particular subject, care of a Sephardic filmmaker in Kentucky. Of course, he said. He himself was an amateur historian, and was preparing “something modest” for the Sephardic Pavilion at the ’92 World’s Fair in Sevilla. If only I had more time, I said, demurring like a bitch. But Santángel was all manners, and sent over Abbas with a bottomless plate of alas de mariposas, butterfly wings—exquisite crescent-shaped hazelnut biscuits.

  Superb restaurants, Ben, throughout Andalusia. But, of course, you know. Why do you value my retelling? Which one of us is preacher, which one convert? What’s in it for you?

  Three hours later, Ben Darling.

  A Question: Why do I always buy Carlos III when in Spain?

  An Answer: Because all other Spanish brandies are named after useless battles and royal shits.

  •

  “Cardenal Mendoza”—Yenta of Spain. Hooked Isabella with Ferdinand, Columbus with his boats, the Church with the Inquisition. ¡Muchas gracias, Mendy!

  •

  “Gran Duque d’Alba”—Cut off every towhead in the Netherlands. ¡Qué tal macho!

  •

  “Lepanto”—Picture it. October 7, 1571. A fine, cloudless, mezzotinto Thursday of a morning. Philip II of Spain (and half the longitudes of the known World) and Pius V, Pope of the Catholics (and the Jews and the Lutherans and the bloody Jehovah’s Witnesses for all I know), send the floating, leaking Christian might of Europe to drive the Ottoman fleet from Cyprus. Cyprus, for bloody-sake! They sit around bobbing on the Med like Bush and Gorbachev in a Maltese bathtub, hundreds of men drown, thousands are maimed, including the author of Don Quixote—although not badly enough to keep the lifts of the twentieth century from playing endless nasal oboe passacaglias of “The Impossible Dream”—collectors of Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese make a mint on oil and canvas Lepantos, and then two years later the Venetians give the greasy little olive grove back to the Turk!

  That’s why I stick to my Carlos—Carlos Tres of Spain. Son of Philip V and Isabella of Parma. A truly enlightened despot. A man of Faith within Reason. Swapped Florida for Havana, put the Inquisition in its place, helped negotiate American independence from Mad George. All that and less than ten quid a litre, Duty Free.

  My flight is late, Ben. Very, very, late.

  I could have stayed in Mariposa. Sandor offered me the run of his villa. But all those years at the BBC trained me to view every story as having a beginning, middle, and end in that order. It would have broken every rule to return to the set for a retake.

  While I’ve enjoyed making friends with Conchita, who has kept coffee in my cup and roving businessmen from my table, the steady stream of happy travellers—shop clerks to Tangier, secretaries to Palma, curious girls on convent trips to Tenerife, none of them quite the right age—has dwindled to a trickle. I have finished my Fay Weldon. I have finished the Fay Weldon I was saving for the plane.

  Step Four of my System for Dealing with Delays is to locate the Ladies’, which is normally adjacent to Duty Free, as if the architects who specialize in the mechanical design of Waiting have practised the sport with greater concentration than we mere commercial travel-lerettes—and thank God for the cosmopole who created the universal symbols for peeing, the only successful use of Esperanto south of Finland.

  Of course, the Spanish Señoras is only this side of two footprints and a hole, even in the freshly unwrapped Aeropuerto Cristóbal Colón, so brand-spanking new that when I saw two sinks were stopped up and a third bled brown water, I attributed it more to the surprise of opening than to sabotage—the five seats in a state of wide-mouthed astonishment that their doors had not yet arrived. I generally don’t care whether my habits are witnessed, but I still have enough of a social conscience that I prefer to transfer Carlos III from flask to thermos in the private confines of a stall.

  It must have been well on to 8.00 p.m.—I was in the Ladies’ for the third or fourth time, adjusting my lipstick in preparation for boarding—when the Tannoy crackled on. Three flights were called to board, two charter and another regularly scheduled British Armadan direct to Stanstead, all leaving after my 8.45 departure.

  Out in the corridor, the video screens were no more helpful. British Armadan Flight 802 had disappeared. I wasn’t immediately concerned, veteran of the infamous Stanstead-Isle of Wight connection that I am. But I felt one of those five-cup-o’-coffee sweats coming on, until an immensely cheerful modern Spanish woman—no doubt rewarded with a job at Coló
n after eight years of refuelling Piper Cubs in the Estremadura—popped up from behind an unlit Information sign. She plugged my question into her chic little Minitik terminal and ten seconds later handed me a chic little printout.

  “ ‘Flight 802—Weather Delay at Destination’?” I asked her. “Then why is Flight 41 scheduled to depart on time to Heathrow?” Another slip of paper—“Flight 41—On Time.”

  “You are now going to ask me, Señora, when Flight 802 is scheduled to depart,” she said to me in prettily accented English. “I am afraid I have to tell you I do not know. But do not fear, when it is known, it will be announced.” I trudged back to the coffee shop. Efficiency is disarming.

  At 10.00 p.m., when I should have been gazing down at the lights of Bristol, Conchita brought me a note with a cup of coffee: “Flight 802 delayed until 11.00 p.m. Intermittent weather. Apologies. Srta. Alicia Zacuto.”

  “Intermittent weather,” Conchita asked me, “is it very bad?” At 10.45 I returned to the counter. Duty Free was deserted. The shop hawking Seiko watches and Hermès scarves was shuttered and dark. A pair of businessmen took the final dive of the day into the Encyclopedia of Booze. The whiskey clerk flicked off the lights in her stall. Señorita Zacuto had disappeared. In her place, a man in a military uniform.

  “Are you Information?” I asked him.

  “What do you need to know?” He sighed, looking around my shoulder with the nonchalance of a Spaniard who is not attracted to the woman he is attending.

  “British Armadan, Flight 802. Can you please tell me its rescheduled time of departure?” He pecked at the keyboard, all the time his eyes on some distant point. The Minitik terminal beeped. He sighed.

  “Flight 802?” he asked. I nodded. “Perhaps the Señora has made a mistake. Please check your ticket.” I did. I had not. He punched Minitik again, another beep, another little white slip. “British Armadan Flight 802—No Such Flight.”

  I looked up sharply. There was something about this military man that looked familiar and out of place—Spanish but not quite, military but in uniform alone—like Rod Steiger playing the Mexican bandito in A Fistful of Dynamite.

  “Where is Señorita Zacuto?”

  “I do not give out such information.”

  “She told me an hour ago that Flight 802 not only existed but was delayed by weather conditions.”

  “Then you are certainly better informed than I.” He smiled, all oil and no more questions.

  “Please.” I smiled back, with no need to win, only to fly home to the gas fire of Kensington Gore. “Could you check Flight 41?”

  “Whatever you wish, Señora.” He pushed. It spat. I took the slip. The flight was leaving in ten minutes.

  “Please”—I smiled again—“can you change my ticket, give me credit, whatever, and get me on Flight 41?”

  “But, Señora … Holland?”

  “Holland, sí,” I answered, with the all-purpose matter-of-factness I employ when I have no wish to defend my singularity of name.

  “Señora Holland,” he apologized with the merest whiff of sincerity, “how could I possibly change a ticket for a flight that does not exist?”

  “Fine.” I pulled out my wallet in defeat. “Give me a seat on Flight 41. First Class.” There is a rule I learned in my assistant days called the Law of Jammed Film. If there is anything wrong when you sign out a camera, Do Not Attempt to Fix It. Get a new camera. Get a new cameraman. Leave the country.

  “Ah, Señora, it is our fault,” he said with his Rod Steiger smile, “but the airport is not yet equipped to handle credit cards. Perhaps you have traveller’s cheques?” I looked at my watch, turned around, and ran to Duty Free.

  Armed with another demi of Carlos—paid for with my unravelling ball of toy money—I wandered in search of unjammed Information. Fifteen minutes later, and none the wiser, I was back at the Ladies’ doing my flask.

  I was puzzled, not cursing you, not yet. I have relied on your travel suggestions for what, almost fifteen years, and have always been pleasantly surprised by the small serendipities, the upgrades, the complimentary champagne and caviar, the side trip to the diamond merchant, the room with the best view of the old Moorish Quarter. But this delay was out of character, perfectly understandable with any other travel agent, but for you, as rare as a decent cup of airport coffee. I took an unladylike, uncoffeed swig in front of the painted tile. I wondered whether the man in the military uniform was correct, that Flight 802 was No Such Flight. I apologize, Ben. I doubted.

  “¿Qué lindo, no?” Conchita was standing at my shoulder, appreciating the mural across from the mirrors.

  “Sí,” I said, for want of any better response to the surprise.

  “I am very proud of this picture, Señora Holland,” she said. “The artist copied it from a painting in my home.”

  “Really?” Again, I was at a loss. There was, in fact, a mural painted on the tile, reflected in the long lipstick mirror. I hadn’t noticed it before, but then, the picture was not particularly beautiful. A seascape, three boats, three women on the shore waving handkerchiefs, a few shacks. The blue was dull, the red crosses on the sails garish, and the focal point of the mural a smouldering ruin on a hill, charred and frankly hideous.

  “It is Colón, who you call Columbus, the discoverer of your country, no?”

  “No,” I said, “I am from England.” But now, at least, the picture made a certain amount of sense. “What is the ruin, Conchita?”

  “I am sorry, Señora, but I do not know. That part was not in my picture.” She picked up her bag. She had changed out of her waitress uniform into a rather striking black sheath, with a reasonable slit up the outside of one thigh. Her hair had fallen out of the elastic waitress net and been caught up by a palm-sized emerald comb. Otherwise, she was all black and red. I hadn’t realized how truly attractive.

  “Your work is finished, Conchita?”

  “Sí, I must hurry to meet my novio. We have a meeting, and then a concert. Would you like to join us?”

  “That is very kind of you, Conchita,” I said, “but you forget. I am here to catch a flight.”

  “Oh no, Señora, there are no more flights tonight. Everything is closed.” Conchita looked at me and my flask.

  “You must be mistaken,” I said, and then the Tannoy crackled on.

  “We regret to announce that British Armadan Flight 802 has been unavoidably delayed due to weather at the destination. The new departure time is seven o’clock tomorrow morning, December 31.”

  “You come with me. You like flamenco?”

  “Thank you, Conchita,” I said, “but I think I will try to get some sleep. You never know with these flights. Sometimes they take off as soon as the weather lifts.”

  “As you wish, Señora.” Conchita shrugged. “But there are no sofas in this section of the airport. You must return through Passport Control. Good night.” An attractive girl, I thought, as she turned and her skirt rode up to show a bit of Iberian peninsula.

  The trickle of remaining passengers shuffling through Passport Control bore out Conchita’s message. All seemed hassled, tired, confused. One older woman struck me as less perturbed. I followed her towards an unmarked door.

  “Excuse me,” I called, “Flight 802?”

  “Yes?” Luminous blue eyes, round, whites as bright as the halogen lighting, a face as wrinkled and soft as a chamois cloth, surrounded by wayward strands of stone-white hair. “If you want to claim your baggage,” she said, without waiting for any further questions, “come with me.” It was a rough voice, brusque, impatient, filled with the gravel of unfiltered cigarettes and travel. It was an American voice with a hint of something else behind it—more than the stray foreignness that many solitary travellers cultivate. The hurry, the strangeness, the familiarity, the luminosity—of course, Alice’s White Rabbit!

  “Do you know what happened to Flight 802?” I asked her.

  “No!” she said, and I expected some mollifying hypothesis instead of the minut
e investigation of my hair, my ears, my scarf, my blouse.

  “Then what makes you think …” I began, adjusting this and that about my person. But just at that moment, a flicker of light shot behind the scraggle of the woman’s hair, from the second level of terrorproof glass on the Spanish side of the balcony overhanging the Duty Free Lounge.

  It was the silver tip of a violin bow, a Torte perhaps—although I never acquired the same ability to identify instruments as I did music—attached to a slender hand, attached to a solitary violin player. She was not a tall girl, but had a full-arm vibrato, very Russian school, and laid her cheek on the chin rest, one eye peering over the bridge up the strings to her left hand, down through the glass to my gaze, only twenty feet away. With the slope of her cheek just disappearing around the dark side of the fiddle, with her brown hair long, the way we all wish we could wear it, dipping below the floor from my vantage point, with her picador nose and single eye, she was the reason Picasso was born in this quarter of Andalusian gypsy country.

  My own violin studies never survived adolescence. But in preparation for the film on Sandor, I watched so many hours, so many weeks of footage of Heifetz, Milstein, Elman, and, of course, Sandor, that I developed, at first, a kind of perfect pitch, where I could hear a note on the violin merely by seeing the position of the left hand on the neck and the angle of the bow on the string. Later, as my knowledge of the repertoire expanded, given fifteen seconds of videotape with the sound turned off I could beat all but the greatest fiddlephiles at Name That Tune. There were exceptions, of course. Itzhak Perlman, with a mitt as big as Muhammad Ali’s, reaching and stretching and groping for every note like a wolf spider from an eternal third position in the middle of his web. And then the prodigies, the five-year-olds with the full-size Amatis, playing impossible stratospheric exercises because their tiny arms couldn’t reach past the f-holes.