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Published: October 8th 2006
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Kay’s invited a few of her students for lunch. They arrive in a flurry of handshakes and kisses: three middle-aged Spaniards with bottles of wine tucked under their arms, speaking a mile a minute. Kay’s been busy in the kitchen, turning the chicken in the oven and keeping an eye on the rice cooker. She comes out to greet them and disappears again, a faint, aromatic cloud hanging behind her. Bianca’s getting dressed. Ana’s nowhere to be found. I’m standing in the dining room, grinning dumbly with my hands in my pockets, mindful of how I need to roll my R’s.
They’re a friendly, boisterous bunch, though it’s quickly becoming clear that these three English students will be speaking very little English. I sit at Kay’s elbow while we eat, trying to follow along. Ignacio - handsome and square-jawed - speaks rapidly into his chest; his partner, Ana, chatters away so quickly her lips hardly seem to move. Lucio, a tall, balding banker with eyes a shade between gray and pale blue, swallows his words with an indecipherable accent. When everyone laughs, I, too, laugh heartily. When we sit through a brief spell of silence, I suspect I
won’t be the one who rouses himself to break it.
Kay is in her element, dishing out rice and receiving our compliments with something like subdued rapture. She turns to me now and then, translating when my brow is curled up in a question mark. The others want to know my impressions of Spain. I talk about the simple pleasures of strolling through the country’s plazas at night, the sight of the elegant old
viejos sipping their wine. Even here, in the capital, I suggest, there’s a pace to life that Americans would find hard to grasp. I talk about the daily grind in New York, where most of my friends work 40, 50 or 60 hours.
“
Cada semana?” asks Lucio, distraught. He finds it hard to believe we squeeze 40 hours of work into a single week. I can tell as the conversation winds down that I’m not the only one feeling grateful to be in Spain.
Kay’s beaming as they leave. She’s managed to introduce me to her students, her cooking and the protracted pleasures of the Spanish lunch in a single afternoon. That night the girls want to send me off
in a flourish, saving the pandemonium of a Saturday in Malasaña for last. I get the feeling that those other nights were just a drunken preamble - a petite little
caña to the 40-oz. of whoop-ass served up in Malasaña. From the second we step out of the Metro station, pushing our way through a crowd of teens drinking heavily in the plaza, I wonder just why on earth I’d ever leave a place like Madrid.
There’s no better place to get a feel for the Spanish ritual of the
botellon than Malasaña. In the plazas and on the streets, sitting on steps or cross-legged on the curb, kids are pouring out stiff ones into little plastic cups. Beers are being hawked by
chino vendors for €1 a pop; there are empty cans and bottles everywhere. If the Apocalypse were to wake up one morning with a nasty hangover, it would only have to turn to the streets of Malasaña to know exactly where its bender began.
We stop in a smoky indie-rock bar and then move to an English pub. There’s a peristaltic push through the streets, but these tipsy young
madrileños take it all
in good humor. Outside La VÃa Láctea we meet some of Kay’s friends, a mostly-English group who have found a second home in Madrid. There’s a debate over which bar to choose; the music is loud and inviting and spilling out of every door. In an apartment above us, two young kids in togas are leaning drunkenly over a balcony. They’ve got plastic laurels on their heads and goofy grins on their faces, but I can’t imagine why anyone would rather be up there than in the rowdy rabble below. Girls in short skirts and tall heels are tottering all around us, guys can’t seem to find enough buttons on their shirts to undo. People plop down on the sidewalk or in the middle of the street, they stumble out of bars and into the plazas, and everyone seems a bit too drunk and good-humored to point out how many guys are pissing everywhere in sight.
We wake up to an afternoon of silver light and unseasonable warmth. These nights in Madrid are mercifully coming to an end. Kay shuffles out of her room at half-past twelve, her face scrunched up and sleepy. The others won’t make it
out of bed for hours. We drink a few gallons of water, trying to wash the ashy taste from our mouths. My stomach is making animal noises, somersaulting and pitching around like a ship on a stormy sea.
I’ve been looking forward to this day all week. Sunday is when the
corrida de toros is held in Madrid’s famous stadium at Las Ventas. With the season coming to an end, it’s probably the only chance I’ll have to see a bullfight in Spain. Around town you see colorful posters splashed up on the walls, the brash
toreros beaming down from thumbnail pics.
Twice I’ve visited Las Ventas’ website, but with Kay and Bianca non-committal for much of the week, I’ve held off on buying tickets. There’s a growing crowd as we walk down Alcalá, bottlenecking by the time Las Ventas comes into sight. Madrid’s temple to the
toro is a part of Spanish bullfighting lore: you haven’t arrived as a
torero until you’ve shimmied and whirled and done fancy little side-steps in front of the discerning
madrileños. The Plaza de Los Toros outside - a colorful, clamorous carnival - whirls with energy. As we get closer, there
are hang-dog faces heading our way; these crowds are a bad omen. Sure enough, the
taquillas are shuttered when we battle to the front of a long, restless line. “
No hay billetes por el festivo hoy,” a sign flatly informs us. You can see disappointed tourists milling around, at least one of whom is giving himself a mental kick in the pants for not buying his tickets a week ago.
Not surprisingly, most of those who get turned back are foreigners. The
madrileños move with confidence through the crowd, their shoulders squared in pink and salmon-colored shirts. You get the feeling that half of these swaggering men have, at one point or another, felt the hot flaring nostrils of a rampaging bull bearing down on them. Some wear white belts and white, pointy loafers, their shirts unbuttoned and stretched tight across their chests. I have the sinking suspicion that a grand human spectacle is about to be played out behind Las Ventas’ forbidding walls. We search fruitlessly for tickets. A pug-nosed man is offering a pair for €80 a piece. Across the plaza they’re being sold for 50.
“
Cincuenta por arriba,” says a dour old woman, making
a face that’s some sort of Spanish equivalent for “the nosebleeds.”
I’m cranky as we head back home, and Kay - bless her heart - is decidedly walking on eggshells. It takes a few hours for the disappointment to fade, but after a few coffees on a quiet
terraza I finally, begrudgingly manage to let a little bird of peace flutter in my chest. And by the end of the night, when I find Kay and Bianca sitting cross-legged in front of the TV, it’s all I can do to remember just why I was so upset to begin with.
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