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La madrugada: To a random rhythm, my fingers strum the mattress, limbs jerking intermittently and, as always during the restless hours before sunrise, my mind focuses on anything other than sleep.
The relentless heat that accumulates throughout the day in this city of stone is transformed into a nervous energy that makes the muscles of my legs twitch. I fumble my way out from under the mosquito netting and tiptoe into the living room. Dragging a chair to the balcony, I sit down and rest my elbows on the railing. Everything in the small square beneath me seems to sigh for what it once held.
When we first came here seeking the cheapest rental in town, it appeared to be a beating heart in an otherwise comatose Castillian setting. In the morning the plaza is a focus for those in search of previous inhabitants: El Greco, Bequer, and Garcilaso. By mid-afternoon it settles back into silence. Flanked by convents and churches, the steep walls of the square are broken only by a few ruins that surround a crumbling corner 18th century building. It was here that we had just been shown the top floor flat, an arid and abandoned apartment. A deposit had been hastily exchanged for some old rusty keys. We had believed the house to be empty apart from us, but as we emerged from the doorway into that lazy siesta sunshine, we were assaulted by the sound of approaching flamenco. A rusted, clanking overloaded Nissen-Trade van appeared over the brow of the hill leading up to the square, emitting at deafening decibels, the sound of 'Radio Olé'. In front of us, the van halted and out tumbled a small frisky white dog and numerous Portuguese gypsy family.
We recognised the driver, a dark skinned burly and sweaty man of around 30 years of age. We had watched him when we first came here working as an unofficial car parking attendant in the plaza, heaving double-parked cars with hand brakes off, back and forth to allow one to leave or another to enter. Stepping into the shade of a tree he shouted to us above the music.
‘Hola, I'm Albino,’ and then threw his head back and laughed, sure that we would appreciate the irony of his name. He was only about five foot eight, but must have weighed nearly 16 stone. A giant with sparkling eyes and a boyish grin. The few clothes he clung on precariously. Albino thrust a twisted hand towards me.
‘And this’, he said calling over a smaller version of himself, ‘little Albino, wife Cristina, daughters, Tamara, Rosio…’ Then the others were introduced: visiting cousins that wore mostly nylon with an array of hats perched at awkward angles. Despite the strength of the late afternoon sun, no-one wore sunglasses. I removed mine.
His eyes flickered above my head, ‘You take flat over us?’
I jangled the keys. The children giggled and pulled at our clothes and the dog bounced in front of us.
‘And this is Miki,’ added Tamara, a beautiful seven year old princess who was clutching a bundle of curly fur to her chest, ‘do you want to kiss him?’

‘Tsk, Tamara’ scolded Christina and approached us with her smile. ‘Too long, no neighbours’. Then she kissed us and the children bounced this time and the dog pulled at our clothes. Albino shook my hand again, cousins slapped our backs and I felt obliged to kiss the dog.

La madrugada: The meeting hour for itinerant spirits. Have we met somewhere before? Did we know each other back then? History catches up on us. It seeps out from cobbled patio floors, sliding under warped balcony doors, until it finds us, nestled in our insular disconnected world. The nuns in the convent come from a small village in India. The forefathers of Albino and the nomadic hats left Asia for North Africa before entering Europe. And we, who delight in demarcation, are we any different from our ancestors who left Africa, settled later in India before heading north? We all are cousins here.

Over time, I found in Albino a sumo-like grace in his shifting of vehicles, the slapping of hands on metal and the grunts of exertion. And when he spoke the plaza listened. When Cristina’s mother came round in the morning, to pick up one of the children to join her, begging round the tourist bars, Albino would bawl from his bed-room to leave him in peace. When Miki barked frivolously at hapless cyclists crossing the square, Albino would bellow from some dark interior of his flat. He yelled from bedroom to kitchen, from patio to plaza, from driving seat to passenger seat and as he counted the coins his daughter had extracted from tourists that morning. But his was not the only voice I heard. My morning foray to the grocery shop would supply me with more than just bread and milk: ‘Heh, Ingles….keep my door shut…to keep flies out…and keep your doors locked. Gypsies they steal anything… what sort of loaf was it...? …kids don’t go to school … …beg in the streets with that witch... …anything else?’

Re-entering the plaza, I would stand and lean against one of the trees, sheltering from the early morning sun as it's warm rays played games of light on the sea of metal car roofs; the only sound, the dissonant chime of a distant church bell. And then Albino would emerge from the patio, cussing loudly, pulling down the ever-rising hem of his t-shirt. His bulky form, zigzagging through shadow until he reached the safety of his van. morning, with radio at full volume, he cranked open the doors and began to unload old bits of iron and coils of plastic coated copper wiring. From his back trouser pocket he produced a switchblade and began to peel away the soft outer skin of the wire with an accustomed and unnerving ease.
He looked over gesturing me towards him. ‘Ven, Pablo, ven.’
‘Buenos dias!’ He shouted.
‘Buenos dias Albino.’ I stepped into the shadow of his vehicle and removed my sunglasses. Peering over his shoulder into the back of the van I could see a large church bell, wedged between piles of magazines and newspapers.


He laughed. ‘Police say Albino no work plaza any more. Albino find own work.’
‘What sort of work?’
‘Madrugada work. Lead from roofs, copper from electricity poles, paper from big green bins’. A twisted finger pointed away from the recycle bins at the north end of the square. ‘Sell old furniture from city dump…. and other things.’ His eyes held mine. ‘You and me we go to dump later Pablo, when it is dark. We find you some chairs for your empty flat’
‘Actually, we quite like it empty Albino.’
‘No good Pablo’. He pointed the blade at my throat. ‘Neighbours will talk.’

After midnight the plaza awoke again and I could hear the nightime tours arrive. I was trying not to move as moving expended energy and expending energy made me sweat. But sleep evaded me. I took the chair to my usual spot. Below on the cobbled floor, tour-guides stepped around the slumbering forms of the visiting cousins and a discordant voice emerged from the van. Under the light of the chameleon lamp sat Albino trying to connect an electric keyboard to the van battery. Beside him, Cristina was peeling the skin from copper snakes. She looked up.
‘Buenos noches Pablo. You like Albino’s madrugada music?’
‘Buenas noches Christina, buenas noches Albino. It is difficult to appreciate his fine voice over the snoring of your cousins under my balcony window. Why not play inside the flat where there are better acoustics, electricity, and wall sockets’.
‘No light in flat,’ barked Albino, ‘no power. Cut off yesterday. Can’t see keyboard.’
‘No power! What will you do?’
‘Cousin on roof now. Soon have power again’.
I looked above me and saw movement. Then a cable swung down and one of the hats rose from the cobbles to drag it into a bedroom window.
‘Anyway, we go soon. Olive picking work.’
‘Go! For good?’
‘Two, maybe three months. First need to find school for kids.’
‘The locals don’t believe you send your kids to school?’
He shrugged and then laughed. ‘Hey Pablo, you know why I’m Albino?’
‘Because of your fair skin?’
He hurriedly looked into the van wing mirror and pointed at his cheek. ‘No, I’m dark Pablo. When I was baby, I cry every day in sun. Sun hurt eyes. So I only go out at night’
‘So where’s your pink eyes then?’

‘A kilo of pink grapefruit please’
‘This one. He Lives above them.’ The shop assistant was addressing the customer behind me. ‘I’ve warned him, keep your car doors locked, don’t lend them any money, look for another flat. Kilo of what was it? Hey Ingles, where you go?’
I left the door wedged open and walked away.

In the safety of twilight, Albino was in his element on the van roof, tying down mattresses, old doors, tarpaulins and kids bikes. Half a dozen assorted hats were piling essentials into the vehicle and the witch was herding the kids and Miki onto the back seats. I removed my sunglasses.
‘Albino, you are leaving us.’
‘Listen, I put cable from my flat to your window. Free power, Pablo.’ He clambered down and got into the driving seat. ‘Tell landlady, back soon with rent.’
‘But Albino, picking olives is sunlight work.’
He started up the van and began to back slowly out the plaza.
‘Albino,’ I shouted, ‘where will you find the shadow?’

La Madrugada: I’m twitching again. I look out into the plaza and for a moment I fancy I hear – cracking through the thick August air – a Portuguese ballad, sung to the accompaniment of an electronic organ; a strong sound to slice through the stifled staleness of this empty place.

© Paul Read

Beans on toast, frozen Mormons and the mysterious kidnapping of Baby Jesus.





Cherry and I had come to Toledo for just a day, to escape the hustle and bustle of Madrid where we had been seeking accommodation and work. Instead here we were, standing in the middle of this medieval town, surrounded by the hustle and bustle of a tourist industry in full swing, selling swords, suits of armor and marzipan. In desperation we escaped into an enticing alleyway that led us down to the encircling river Tagus and found ourselves pleasantly lost amongst secretive paths running along the tranquil waters edge. It was an unforgettable few hours of peace and serenity, bathed by an early December sunlight. Later, we reluctantly scrambled back up cobbled streets towards the town centre knowing we had to make the return trip to the capital before dark. On route we passed an advert for a flat rental crudely stapled to a wooden pole. ‘Why not?’ we thought. Within ten minutes we were knocking on an 8 foot tall pair of wooden barn like doors and listening to the sound of scurrying footsteps approach.

The house was about 350 years old. The patio tilted a bit, the old well in the centre had long since been cemented over and converted into a dry fountain, but we were told, Arab baths remained hidden in the basement giving us a fleeting reminder of Toledo's historical home to cultural harmony and its wide reputation in the12th century as the city of three cultures: Christian, Jew and Moor.

The flat was a little dark and musty and like many of the older houses in town, the internal balconies were open to the elements, which in effect meant that our living room was outside. The perfect place to spend our first Christmas in Spain.
The weekend we moved in a huge pine tree went up in one corner of the main square called Zocodover. Several of the lights on it weren’t working, but no-one seemed inclined to replace them. Around the base of the tree, council workers had slowly constructed a biblical nativity scene. Sand piles had been placed at different points, presumably depicting a Middle East landscape, whilst several plaster animals and a badly painted infant had been deposited inside what appeared to be a dog kennel. The Toledans seemed to either love it or laugh at it, and would spend many an hour in large family groups awing or yawning over the exhibition.

One frosty morning as I was about to leave our snow covered lounge, I heard the front door thunder to its characteristic close and, shortly after, the Venezuelan tenants – who occupied the flat across the patio from ours – ascend the stairs. Christian, the little boy, caught sight of me at the window and waved, jabbing his mother in the ribs to alert her to my presence.
.
.

The woman, Norma, was evidently still feeling the climatic change from the Caribbean to the Meseta and was bundled in an enormous red Parka-come-Anorak with a fur-trimmed hood that projected three feet in front of her face. She turned and waved, mouthing “¡Qué frío!” at me and rubbing her hands together. I descended the stairway, searching for the landlord. Our TV was only working on its side and even then the picture was all green. As I reached the bottom stair, Norma’s husband Livardo appeared, dressed smartly in a long camel-coloured coat.
“¡Que pasa amigo!” I said in a neighbourly fashion as he approached the staircase.
Livardo shook his head mournfully, his thick and lustrous black mustache drooping downward. He had been out of work for three months now, but last week had been offered a job in a local restaurant.
“I’m OK, and you Pablo, still writing?” he asked, searching my eyes for lost hopes. “Still hoping to be a writer?”
“Well, we must have goals Livardo, we must fight for our dreams”.
"Ah, we too used to have dreams like you once…" he sighed as he gazed off into the impossible distance of his youth, "…to have a bit of land…have my own business…¡Tonterías! What's the use in these crazy dreams?"
He pushed past me, snow tumbling from his wide shoulders and turned at the top of the stairs looking back down. “This city is too harsh on dreams Pablo”. And with that he disappeared into a shadow.
Xmas Eve came and we ate roast chestnuts and oranges in bed, watching a green film on the sideways TV, and felt very much in an alien land. The following morning we awoke cold but happy and celebrated the day by re-visiting the plaza to see how the nativity scene had progressed. As we approached we could see crowds standing around the base of the tree, that now sadly flashed with just one blue bulb.

People were pointing at the kennel and exclaiming wildly. As we shoved our way to the front we were shocked to find that the Baby Jesus had been kidnapped! Who would do such a thing? The plaster animals had also escaped leaving one sheep that had had its head knocked off and replaced by an upside-down polystyrene cup with a cold churros stuck in the end.

Back at the flat, a pipe had burst leaving us without water. We bravely thawed a little snow off one of the armchairs and brewed a pot of tea. For our Christmas meal we combined a jar of haricot beans with fried onions, tomate frito cumin and fresh lemon all served on loaf-size chunks of white bread to make Baked-beans-on-toast Toledan style. It was delicious. As we were finishing off there came a knock on our warped, damp door.
“Ay probrecitos hijos mios,” burst out Norma as soon as she had found out what we had just eaten. “You poor little things, so cold, so poor and so far from you're country. Come round for a little something, yes?” And with that exclamation she turned and skied back into her flat.
Livardo greeted us at the door, his thick Latin American mustache curled up towards the mouldy ceiling. As he spoke, frosted air gravitated upwards like drifting clouds and the fearful smell of serious damp besieged our nostrils.
“Adelante vecinos! How about a little whisky-cita, huh?” he pointed at a conveniently placed bottle in the corridor, “whilst we wait for Mami.”
“I'm just preparing a little something. Papi, take them into the living room!” Livardo;s eyebrows raised a little as he led us out of the snowy corridor and into what was evidently usually Christian’s bedroom, windowless and cramped with a sofa bed on one side and unpacked boxes on the other.
“Siéntense ustedes,” Livardo motioned towards the sofa. He sat awkwardly beside us on the floor next to his whisky bottle.
Now in his mid forties, Livardo had arrived the previous year intending to set up an export business from Madrid. Things hadn't quite worked out the way he’d planned and now Norma and Christian had flown over to join him just a short while ago.
“How's the new restaurant job Livardo?” I asked as he fidgeted stiffly on the cold uncarpeted floor. He remained looking at the floor as he answered: “The wages are awful but the work is not too bad. I have a lot of responsibility you know.”
Norma entered the room with little Christian huddled against her legs. She was wearing her parka again and chuffing out from one end of the hood, like a diesel exhaust pipe, I could see several small clouds of chilled air. In her gloved hands she was carrying a glass of wine, a plate of best Manchegan cheese swimming in olive oil and a bowl of olives.
“Ay pobrecitos Papi,” she intoned to Livardo, nodding at us, “their flat is so cold!” Livardo’s eyebrows wiggled a little in response, glad for the change in subject.
Norma had very few positive thoughts on our flat, the house, Toledo or even Spain. Instead, her eyes would flutter towards the ceiling, a far away smile breaking out from within the hood and she would hark back to their life in Venezuela. Her big house, the splendid climate, the marvelous music, and the wonderful food. To reinforce this love of their homeland, their small flat was covered with official tourist board posters of Venezuela showing bland photographs of green landscapes and waterfalls. Livardo caught my eyes wondering over his collection and immediately
plunged behind some crates in one corner of the room.
“Ay, life was so much better there, “ Norma bemoaned “and life here is so hard; so cold and the Toledans so unfriendly towards outsiders. Poor Papi forced to clean kitchens. A man of his background! Forced to scrub the scraps of food from the street bins at the back of the restaurant, forced to clean the drains and the toilets, forced to…. “
“Here it is”, shouted ‘Papi’ emerging from his grotto, his mustache whitened by a fine dust and in his arms a long tube of glossy white paper. As he unrolled the poster, it revealed a semi-naked woman washing her hair under a waterfall. Above her was the captivating phrase: 'Look… Venezuela!'
“Feliz Navidad vecinos,” beamed Livardo, There was a momentary silence as he gave Norma a serious mustache look. She withdrew into the hood and we all sat and collectively sighed. Suddenly the doorbell sounded and Norma’s hood shuffled towards the door.
She reappeared a few minutes later accompanied by five long-rain-coated, North American Mormons.
“Ho-Lar!”, they grinned in unison, shuffling closer together and clutching their bibles tightly to their chests. On their coat collars, they wore name badges, not unlike those you see on people trying to sell you strange diets.
“I'm Brother Harvey,” said the tallest, “Together with Brother Jacob, Brother Wayne, Sister Janet and Sister Hilary, I would like to bring the message of God here to you all on this joyous day of Christ. We would now like to sing a traditional Christmas carol and we would be very happy if you would all join in to glorify the Lord with us.”
“Brother Harvey” I asked, “ would you mind not standing on my ‘Look…Venezuela’ poster?”.
“Oh! lo siento señor” He replied and nudged everyone further back to the door, shoving Sister Hilary out into the hallway. Livardo. swiveled on the floor and poured himself another rather large whisky-cita, whilst Norma withdrew into the furthest recesses of her hood. Christian looked at me and giggled. I looked at Cherry and could see she was in danger of sharing Christian’s response. To me it was just another surreal event of the kind I’d come to expect in Toledo.
The Mormons sung badly that afternoon. Perhaps they always sung badly. Perhaps it was my mood, or perhaps it was the presence of a plaster Jesus poking out of Brother Harvey’s raincoat pocket that effected his tone? I nibbled a bit of cheese and we sat in silence.
Having at last completed their repertoire, they trundled frozen out from the flat in reverse order. Our laughter, finally surfacing, cruelly followed them out onto the cobbled streets of the icy city.
“Otra whisky-cita Pablo” Said Livardo with the same grinning eyes as that of his son. I pushed my glass towards him.
“Well, now that’s over we can all eat” came a voice from within the parka hood as Norma got up. “ I’ll bring in the turkey!” she exclaimed and bustled back into the kitchen leaving Cherry and I exchanging embarrassed vegetarian looks.

© Paul Read