THIS is last week in the square of a village, there is a pink town hall and a pink library but it is better to imagine than to know which, at a peppering of tables over grouting full of dead cigarettes where there is a man down from Castile sweating through nylon with a woman in a half pound of makeup hanging out the little there is of her dress.
He’s saying we come here every year the weekend after Lady of Sorrows because it’s dry from then until Christmas and the hotels bend themselves over to cut you a deal. Spread ass. His hands are like they hold a loaf of bread. Then they tear it apart.
He takes a big fit of wine like blackcurrant syrup. Yes he likes it round here for vacations, bang for your buck, though it’s better for business in London, in London people like business, they like money, they’re not ashamed and they’ll work for it, but now the way things are there, the English, so he had to come back, to Madrid, ha, he spits it, Madrid, no one knows money, they’re bureaucrats or they work the espresso machine, or fuck, politicians, I don’t know what happened to them, when I was young politicians were big men, old men, in suits with wide lapels, and when they fucked you they thought about Spain, now they’re spoiled brats in skinny pants, and Spain’s an old whore who’s got kids to feed, he pinches her and she squeals as she might give change from a five-euro note, they go to Brussels, well if they’re lil Marys, ha, the smart ones go to America, where every man can rule the world if he dreams of nothing else.
She watches him eat shrimp with his fingers. She watches olive oil on his chin. On either side of her eyes the crows have got their claws in deep. Then of course, you know, Entrevias, the blacks, Moroccans, not their fault but they are born where life isn’t worth living, so what does the future mean? and people complain they’re lazy but really, what’s easier, working or to steal? and what feels better, waking at dawn to drag yourself to some kiosk in Centro to sell thirty-euro USB cables to scared Germans and stupid housewives for 2% of the take or to sleep late and blow whatever’s in your pocket on swill wine and pussy that’s had it so bad it makes you feel like a saint?
Pardon my French, he says and she giggles precisely which makes all the lines jump out of her face until the time is up and they go down again to their tenements of clay.
In fact, he licks oil from the shrimp bowl in a fat-bellied spoon, it’s how the brats think too, which is maybe why you see them swaggering in their gangs round the Prado dressed like the blacks, only what the brats don’t get is they haven’t earned it, to swagger, which you can’t say for the blacks.
So I don’t fault the blacks. I don’t like them. They should stay home, but if they stay home how can they live, so they must come, but still I don’t like it, but they get it, and I understand.
You see, and now he is very serious, he is very close to her and his breath must be irredeemable, garlic and the sugar of nameless blended grapes, I can tell you because I know: nobody says he’s wrong, he says no until the truth is self-evident, then he pretends it was his idea all along, and good luck trying to nail him down too, he knows damn well what he’s doing and it’s going to be done, he’ll wrench himself round any way he needs to get his head up his ass so far he can’t see how twisted he was to go that deep.
He leans over his chair and he is drunk, he is reaching in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes that is not there. It is the same here. It is the same in Andalusia. Why are you all so poor. Because you have been rich, the richest in the world, and either way you have suffered, and it is hot enough, so why not save yourselves the sweat? And you are Arabs too, God help you.
His fingers have not come out of his pocket and he is leaning very far back to look at the sky from which the droning of the sun has drowned out all but the faintest tone. He is smiling though no one can see it, but there are all the folds of his chin, so it’s easy to believe.
There is a poem, he says, I wish I could remember it. ‘The innocent singing of never-ending things.’ Innocently, singing innocently—innocent singing? Singing things? Fuck it. It’s a good one though. Believe me.
He shakes his head though it is hung behind him and it is unnatural to do this but he does it all the same. The corruption of this world. It is rotten like a rabbit in the heather. And it is like sunlight. I devour it with my skin.
She checks her phone. Has it been an hour already, he says. She nods. Okay. A hundred right? Okay, another one. But we will go to my room.
Okay, he says. His eyes are closed. But you have to believe me. It is a good poem. Singing, children singing. Never-ending. Innocently.