That fearsome man was merely a policeman! I suppressed my amazement, and my fear, because of the driver. I wanted to suggest we leave this country immediately. I would have much preferred to be in Cuba, fearing the arrival of hostile forces, than to scurry between the legs of the Guardia Civil. And my father, as I observed while we were driven to the hotel, was apparently right. The Guardia Civil were not only the regular cops, they were plentiful. I saw more than twenty on our drive. We’d have to be constantly on the alert. And they were scary, the scariest sight on the streets, in fact the only scary sight on those peaceful Madrid streets. Their tailored uniforms and patent leather boots were set off by a dramatic cape and a strange three-cornered hat: a combination of streamlined Nazi terror and the romance of medieval chivalry.
Carmelita had rented two rooms in a modest pension. She left us to get some food. We took the tiny, manually operated lift to the third floor. Francisco let me hold the lever with him; I was thrilled that we stopped the car almost flush with the landing on our first try. My father led the way to a single room with a washbasin and no toilet. It was charming but had the narrowness of a closet, hardly relieved by its one window. Next door was a room only a bit larger, sufficient to squeeze in a double bed. He said that was for him and Carmelita. “You get your very own room. You can pretend you’re a grown-up, staying on your own in Madrid, Spain’s capital, one of the world’s great capitals. Of course I’m right on the other side of that wall, but you can pretend that tomorrow morning you’ll get up, buy a ticket to the bullfights—”
“Can we go to a bullfight?” I asked.
“Well, it’s winter. They don’t fight in Madrid in the winter.”
“Oh shit.”
“Rafael!” Francisco scolded my language, but with a tolerant smile. “We’ll have to go south to Cádiz to see a bullfight. You really want to see a bullfight?”
“Yes!” I insisted, more with annoyance than enthusiasm.
“Aren’t you scared of—?”
“No! When can we go to Cá—” I hesitated.
“Cádiz. If you want to sound like a true madrileño, say it like this — KA-DEE-T.” He pronounced it with the aristocratic Castilian lisp.
“KA-DEE-TH,” I said, so well that my father applauded. “When can we go there? Is it warm there?” It was cold in Madrid, a much bitterer cold than New York’s.
“I don’t know. I have no idea where we will go tomorrow. First I have to have dinner tonight with my Spanish publisher. I should say, the man who I hope will be my Spanish publisher.”
“Tonight?” It was past eight in the evening. Carmelita had gone to buy sandwiches. I assumed they were for all of us and we would then go to bed.
“Oh, Spaniards think eating dinner at ten o’clock is early. In fact, we’re not supposed to meet until eleven. You’ll be asleep—”
“I’m not tired!” I probably shrieked this. Certainly my father reacted as if I were in the grip of a panic. He hugged me, awkwardly pushing my head into his chest and thumping me on the back. That made a hollow sound. No surprise there — I felt as if there was nothing inside me. Being in a foreign country with Carmelita and a father I had known only as a mythic figure for over a year, seemed to have taken the me out of me. Everything flowed out. I couldn’t properly process the new sights. I stared at the bed, the sink, the window — banal and familiar objects — as if in this setting, with these people, they were fundamentally altered. Everything was strange, including me.
I did enjoy my father’s comfort and was encouraged to make an effort. “Where’s the toilet?” I asked after a while in his arms. I knew I couldn’t stop him from leaving me; my worry was that he wouldn’t come back. I believed I had to master my fear so that returning to me would be a pleasant prospect. I certainly didn’t take for granted that the mere fact of my existence was a sufficient incentive.
“In the hall!” he said as if that were the most brilliant fact he had yet encountered in life.
“In the hall?” I said with as heavy and dubious tone as a nine-year-old can muster.
He took me into the corridor where, at the end farthest from our rooms, there was a bathroom for the floor. This facility was no larger than what we had in Washington Heights, yet my father presented the rather ordinary fixtures as if they were spectacular. Did he really think they were special or was that for my benefit? I believe, in his enthusiasm, in his mania (he had triumphed over Bernie and international borders; he was about to make a book deal), he actually thought that the normal-sized porcelain tub was “big enough to be a swimming pool,” that the chain flush box toilet was “elegant,” that the scented soap not only cleaned but “deodorized,” and that the dulled mirror over the sink was “made out of a special glass to give ladies a more youthful look.” My father wasn’t a fool; but out of hope, he was often foolish.
Anyway, I didn’t care how grand the hall bathroom was; I wanted privacy. Once my father confirmed that any guest might and would use it, I decided not to go to the toilet until we moved to a real hotel. I asked when that would be.
“What do you mean?” my father laughed. “Don’t you think this is a real hotel?”
“You know …” I trailed off.
“I guess living with your uncle has spoiled you for anything but the Carlyle.”
“No it hasn’t!” Francisco had spoken in a neutral tone; but I heard a damning judgment underneath and wished I could retrieve my complaint.
“It’s not your fault. It’s what you’re used to.”
“No, I’m not. I don’t even know what the Carlyle is.”
Francisco must have been dismayed — he didn’t laugh. “The Carlyle is a hotel for rich people in New York. You know, this is really a perfectly charming place. Your uncle’s standard of living is — well, way beyond most Americans, let alone what people are used to in Europe. Even in the best hotel in Spain, although the bathroom would be in your room, it wouldn’t be any better than this one.”
Of course, if the bathroom were in my room, especially because it would have at least doubled its size, that would have made quite a difference. “Oh, it’s great,” I said.
“Okay,” Francisco said. But I had hurt his feelings. We walked back to my little room. My father said he was going to unpack and he left me alone.
I sat on my bed. The springs creaked with age. I looked at the close-by wall opposite and felt abandoned. Outside I heard an ominous clacking on the pavement; I thought it was the tread of an enormous horse. I went to the window and peered through a gap in the wooden Venetian blinds.
They were the footsteps of a Guardia Civil. He was dreadful. He was overweight, but that made him no less scary. In the uniform, moving inexorably under his cape and patent leather hat, like a sort of man-eating turtle, he was as terrible as any of his leaner and more fit brothers. I watched him go up the street, a slow patrol that I found as fascinating and as awful as King Kong’s destructive progress through a peaceful city and I imagined what it would be like to sleep there, alone, listening to the footsteps of the fat Guardia Civil.