One of them had finished a good run. He shrugged off the last miss generously and walking to a table by the windows reached for his bottle. It was empty and he called for another.
The bartender did not bother to disturb the barmaid who was perched on a stool reading a tabloid paper. Instead he reached ponderously behind and sent a bottle across the room at the man. He did not throw it holding it by the neck, but against the palm of his hand as a football player might throw a pass, and it sailed beautifully, smoothly and true. Whether it is in a free-for-all with intentions of mayhem, or simply as a friendly serve as in this case, this is the approved Spanish fashion of propelling a bottle and the only one that will yield consistent good results.
The man caught it in his left hand and with the same flowing motion, set it on the table. He tucked the cue under his arm and uncorked the bottle himself. Then he began to drink with long, thirsty swallows, the bottle pointing at the ceiling, his neck going like that of a gobbler. Most extraordinary drinking capacity and technique: El Telescopio in its glory.
His opponent, a swarthy, heavy-set man with sharp features and a sharp mustache, was squinting at the balls on the table, figuring his shot, a cigarette delicately held not in his lips but between his teeth. He poised his cue, concentrated and then, as if he had eyes on the back of his neck, he said as he struck the ball, to the barmaid: “Que piernas, Nescacha, que piernas.!”
The girl looked up from her paper and hastily pulled her skirt over her knees: “You attend to your game. If your wife ever hears you. ”
A couple of kids looked in through a window and one of them called at his father to come home for supper.
It was getting late and I spoke to Garcia: “I’ll have to be going. ”
Garcia did not hear me. He seemed transfixed and, although his eyes were on the billard table, I knew that he was not following the game. He was looking beyond. He had been transported to the past and I knew what he was remembering.
I said “so long” as a formality and left Garcia there, staring into space and looking into time.
Vacation time is the time to do as one likes but the two kids did not know what they liked to do. Maybe they wanted to do nothing but they were too young to know that and so they wandered aimlessly through the quiet of the village and Vizcaitia was very quiet that afternoon. Little Garcia, the one with the soulful eyes, took out a top and spun it. Then he picked it up as it died out. The other kid produced a sling and lazily slung a pebble against a distant tree. The pebble banked and struck the tree but he was already looking in another direction and pocketing the sling. They walked on through the afternoon toward the village park. The two kids had all the time in the world to play and they never had to go back to school and therefore they were happy to walk like that.
When they entered the park, everything was cool and tranquil under the oak and chestnut trees with their trunks submerged in pools of shadow with floating patches of sunlight. The kids heard on the other side of the park the irregular crack of the pelota against the frontón. Little Garcia borrowed the sling from the other kid, slung another pebble high and far over the treetops and he watched it go and saw it shine like a gem in the sun against the blue sky. They approached the handball court and continued to hear the crack of leather-covered ball against granite wall and this made them walk faster.
The two kids never tired of the handball game. Besides there were always a few ball players drinking in the tavern of the Gorriti who also owned the frontón and it was good to listen to their talk about the game as the kids admired the players very much. Perhaps they would be allowed to play ball at one end of the frontón against the side wall. If the Nescacha said so, they would be allowed to play. They liked the Nescacha and she was their friend. She waited on the customers of the Gorriti and she always gave the two kids wine and anis biscuits to dip and she also gave them balls to play. Once she even had the Gorriti himself make a ball exactly like the big regulation ones, but smaller for the two kids. She was nice, la Nescacha.
When they arrived at the tavern, there were several men in there. The Gorriti was sitting in his chair against the wall, but he was always there anyway. He was fat, with a big stomach and his face was purple red. He sat there all day with a very small boina on top of his head and a porrón of chacolí next to him on the floor and he had to lean over laboriously to reach it. The kids liked the way he drank out of the porrón. He held it high and the red stream dropped straight into his open mouth and into his big storehouse and his throat did not move and he did not even say “Ahhh!” like other people when they finish drinking and did not have to wipe his mouth because the chacolí never touched his lips. He sat like that all day and he looked like a wineskin propped up in the chair against the wall, and he was a regular wineskin, this Gorriti. He did not speak much but when he spoke it sounded very final, except sometimes when it sounded as if he did not speak to anyone in particular. Sometimes one could see him sewing the leather cover on a ball. During the right season the porrón held cizarra instead of chacolí.
There was the Nescacha sitting at a table with Begoña. She had very red hair and the upper half of her face and arms was laden with freckles and she had vivid green eyes, but her mouth was fresh and she showed strong white teeth when she smiled or laughed and this she did often. She was very young still, probably fifteen or sixteen years only, but she was very womanly, with fine broad hips and shoulders and full round breasts. Begoña was a professional ball player and a great one too, everybody said. The kids admired Begoña and his very easy and graceful style of playing. They tried to imitate him when they played ball holding their arm poised after striking but when little Garcia did it, he looked as if he were endeavoring to express some difficult idea and when the other kid did it, he looked as if he were thumbing his nose and the two kids were as different as that, but they never could get the gestures of Begoña just right. He intrigued the kids, this Begoña. He drank all the time like the Gorriti, but he drank out of a regular bottle. He had massive shoulders and a thick neck. He looked congested and had steel gray eyes that were always bloodshot and also a black mustache with ends turned up. He looked like a good bull of lidia.
What made Begoña more important than the others was that he had been in the army and had fought in Morocco for which he could show decorations and he had also traveled to America, to Cuba, to play the handball there, but now he had come to roost in his native Vizcaitia and he picked up some extra money here and there in the neighboring towns, particularly in Bilbao, playing ball. He never spoke about himself, however, and all the women liked him so well that once the kids heard the Gorriti speak to him like this:
“One of these days some husband will kill you. Maybe your wife will kill you.”
Begoña shrugged his wide shoulders: “And what can one do? That is life.”
“Yes, so it is,” and the Gorriti said no more and he went back to his porrón of cizarra because this was during the season of the cizarra.
Gorriti meant that when Begoña returned from Cuba he married la Euscarra who owned the house and the heredad behind the frontón and she had many gold and silver coins in a chest and had given the key to Begoña after their marriage so he did not have to play the pelota if he did not feel like it, although he still played now and then, and la Euscarra was a very jealous woman who was always quarreling with Begoña and making trouble for him and she had so violent a temper that when they quarreled she tried to strike him, but he held her and said in his gruff voice: