Any thoughts? It's 2,900 words long, so a 'longer' short story. It's set in Barcelona, Spain.
Thanks for your time
Barrio
Pepe’s butifarra sausage fingers slapped a euro on the bar of Salge. He wiped away the coffee brandy kiss that lingered in his moustache. Conversations competed for attention with clattering cutlery in the noisy room.
“Still paying the peseta price I see.” the barman offered, the bags under his eyes serviette soft and friendly. Pepe coughed up a laugh, a rattle of tappets in his pre-civil war engine.
“But I’m not sure two carajillos before ten would’ve pleased Maria though, eh Pepe?.”
Pepe’s cough was instantly cut off. Blood filled his already meat-coloured face. He caught a glimpse of his speckled chorizo-skin in the bar mirror and felt shame as he thought about his dead wife.
Maria and Pepe had retired from their fruit and veg stall at Santa Caterina a decade ago. The market had been refitted, and modernity sliced up their half-century of gothic barrio life. Retirement had meant leaving their flat in Carrer Sant Pere Mes Baix every morning and heading to what the locals called ‘Rey del Bocata’ – King of the Sandwich. They’d each order a café con leche and a cheese and ham toastie, and hold hands.
But now the bridge of Pepe’s nose was sweating under his glasses and mixing the grease of his skin with that of the bar grill. If the brandy didn’t get you, the butter or the bacon fat in this place would. As an aching heart inexorably recovers, so Pepe slowly recovered from this memory of Maria. He leaned heavily on the stick that had gone from accessory to appendage.
“Maria nor you ever knew I was putting brandy in all those years,” Pepe joked, lying to save face.
The barman replied with a laugh. Pepe donned his beret, took his parked shopping trolley and stepped out into Carrer del General Álvarez de Castro. A sticky wind tried to tickle some movement from the many Catalan flags draped from balconies. A lonely Spanish flag was motionless.
He watched the traffic lanes of the narrow street. Neighbours his age with their small dogs and map-checking visitors made the slowest progress. An African man pushed a supermarket trolley while looking for scrap metal destined for a lock up on Ramon Turró. An Asian bakery worker weaved his bread-laden bike through the melee of shoppers and talkers.
Pepe loved the early and sultry October in Barcelona, all furious electrical storms then warming rays.
A 12-foot tall papier-mâché gigante tottered past. It was of some king and was tottering back to its home on Carrer de Beates after a September La Mercè festival appearance somewhere.
“Bravo!” Pepe cried out at the gigante. The hidden operator indulged him and did a quick twirl. “Bravo! Venga!”
Pepe wanted people to look at him, he enjoyed being the old guy that didn’t care. The brandy was repeating on him, the fumes giving him acidic cognac burps that dissipated into the muggy heat of the day. Those carajillos were recovery drinks, covering drinks. The bravo faded from his throat and dissipated bitterly in his taut, alcohol-inflated belly.
He’d been more that bitter man since Maria died.
A flock of rental bike tourists, Mariaveling at the barrio yet heedless that their numbers were eroding its very heart, rushed past and startled Pepe from his torpor.
Pepe shuffled to the other side of the street and bought two scratch cards from Enrique’s ONCE lottery kiosk, propped up around Enrique’s wheelchair.
“Nope. I’ve not won. Tripe for dinner, and not steak.” A familiar refrain of 15 years, albeit garnished with the occasional steak.
His moustache, straggling white roots dangling over his upper lip, had beads of sweat on it as the midday sun now arched overhead and shone directly onto his body. He ached for a beer, more for Maria. They’d met at a tango night in a local bar. He noticed her dark skin and elegant ankles, she his broad shoulders and blazing green eyes. He led strongly with his hip, his earthy Asturian character combining with her fiery Mediterranean style.
Pepe still wore a white shirt, waistcoat, cravat and trousers, despite the heat. Maria had liked him to make an effort. Now, he could see his clothes were not as clean as they should be. Nowadays, he never touched his black-and-white tango shoes, nor looked at her preferred suede heels.
“Try this.” A voice close by.
Had he been here a moment? Or half-an-hour? He wasn’t sure.
Octogenarian Anna was talking to Pepe and forced a slice of mandarin into his mouth, the season’s first. Sweet and juicy. In summer, Anna would wear four cherries as earrings – direct marketing. In winter she’d fed fresh strawberries into his face, or a slice of orange. Summer brought cherries, melons and apricots. Summer. When Anna and Maria had met in the street just before starting school together, growing up together. When Pepe met them both soon after arriving here. Anna the outgoing one.
That orange taste and Pepe was back the Santa Caterina market stall with Maria, before the council reformed the market, before they reformed the rents upwards.
They hadn’t liked the new market. There were no live animals, the creamery was gone, the produce was brought in by from who-knew-where on huge trucks. And the fish!
‘Barcelona will sell its soul one day. They’ve already rented it out.’ Maria had said.
They’d had to retire with their flat and a small pension. The flat’s electricity supply was stolen from the street supply, they got water from the neighbourhood’s many communal taps, and they’d never had a phone.
For a glorious retirement year, they sat in El Born and watched kids playing football and basketball and admired the canaries people brought down and kept for shows. They’d tangoed to Melodia de Arrabal on the kitchen floor, on the terrace, in community centres. Money was squirelled away – the occasional menú aside – to save for South America.
But too soon the deft slides atrophied to slower drags of limbs that would never skip to Buenos Aires as Maria’s cancer took a rapier toll. Just a year, they’d had. Pepe cursed his constant insistence that there wasn’t enough money to buy the plane tickets to the Americas. He could’ve splashed out, just once.
Towards the end, she’d sit out on the terrace with its fantastic view of the rooftops. “Barcelona’s second city,” she’d say. A city of swooping gulls and TV aerials, sunbathers and late-night barbecues; demanding sunsets and skies that would bleed from orange to red to purples back to a dying red.
“Look – Palau, and the cranes working on Sagrada Familia. And there’s Tibidabo. We can do our tours from here, love, no need to dress you for the street. You see it much better from here.”
Maria had passed away that long decade ago, looking at a slice of the sea, sat in her deck chair that was squeezed next to Pepe’s. He had shared one final glass of cava with his dead wife before he went down to the street to ask for help.
A parrot screeched loudly as it flew overhead and Pepe snapped to. He saw his reflection in the windows of the latest gadget shop to open. He saw how his large Asturian mountain frame had shrunk. The Mediterranean Sea had lapped away at his sturdy foundation and warmed him, those lapping waves salting his self away as pebbles.
“Like two different people, but the same one,” he offered to anyone who might listen.
A passing woman frowned at Pepe. He looked for the watch Maria had given him for their 40th wedding anniversary, but he had forgotten to put it on. He winced and looked down the street towards Santa Caterina.
He could hear the lentil boiler – as always - singing 1980s pop music in the tiny kitchen, for his own amusement and that of the queue.
“Whatcha feeeeeelin. Whatcha heee-nin. You can ha na na na, na na na hanna danceeen een na niiiiit.”
A voice said: “You know you don’t need half a kilo Pepe. Here, take these, we cooked too many earlier.”
Pepe nodded thanks but couldn’t remember the woman’s name, though her voice he knew. He headed back to Mes Baix, and his trolley felt heavier than it should, so he stopped for a breather. Time passed.
His trolley fell over. “¡Puta!” It had been atop the retractable street bollards that were slowly moving up to block traffic into Mes Baix. Picking up his trolley, Pepe shuffled towards Maestrago bodega. Towards Arc de Triomf. He’d proposed to Maria under that striking arch, three months after that first tango. He put his life’s energies into loving Maria, working alongside her, dancing with her, singing her songs. But they’d never been blessed with children.
He’d been a calmer man with her.
He’d avoided Spain’s troubles by keeping his head down. “I’m from the land, Asturian land. The land is honest enough to kill you face on.” was his stock reply when debates turned political.
It was unseasonably hot in the street and the early afternoon sun had turned and had him in its scope. Only a beer would cool the cognac flames boiling Pepe’s firepot belly.
Maestrago Bodega wasn’t so honest, Pepe ruminated in a vinegar vein, as he watched Sergi fill the 8-litre water bottle with red table wine. The huge bodega barrels were hunter’s trophies now, attracting chattering tourists with their bucolic charms. Wine selling had been replaced by wine tasting at Maestrago. The tourists shrilled and hummed then dutifully bought their bottles for 15 euros or more. Locals scraped about in dusty corners, still looking in vain for the cheap bottles that Sergi’s dad had once stocked.
Still, Pepe accepted his free caña, the beer slaking his thirst. Paid and loaded up, he stepped back on to Mes Baix. It was impossible to see the end of the winding road, the curved buildings leaning and relying on each other. Older facades were crumbling off in parts, revealing their souls to those who pay heed.
Propping heavily on his stick and coughing again, this time a few flecks of red blood landed in Pepe’s kerchief. It was early for lunch– half-past one – but the cognac had burnt a hole in his taut, melon-shaped belly while the beer had made him a little light-headed. Some of the creamy milk from a churn, from the old stalls in Santa Catarina, that would’ve helped him. The old times would’ve helped him.
But they were gone.
He walked back towards Asorey on Carrer dels Mestres Casals i Mariatorell and pushed open the Galician restaurant’s glass door.
“Hombre! Usual place? Usual to eat?”
Pepe took a good two hours to eat the lentil starter and then the chicken main, because he knew he could get away with drinking the whole bottle of table wine in that time.
“Carajillo.”, another coffee brandy.
“To digest,” he explained, paid and tottered out into the warm afternoon, made heavy by intermittent wafts of sewer air.
Pepe stopped and sat in a chair, leaning his stick on his knee in the calm afternoon. There were two seats, but set in the concrete of the street and at such an angle that friends and lovers could not sit next to each other.
Day people were having a siesta, the night people were just waking, leaving lonely souls to make their journeys to see people, or not.
“Un dia es un dia” a passerby remarked to their friend. This day right here, thought Pepe, this is the day. A life with someone, and then one day, they’re gone. And this is my day now. Always this same day. Always this day without Maria.
He belched bitterly. He looked at the new cobbles that had replaced the tarmac, a smooth surface, a perfect tango area, they could have danced all night, they could have…
***
“Butano! Butano!” A butane gas salesman was vigorously clanking his keys against his cylinders.
Pepe’s head was split in half with the noise, the sweet memories of Maria on one side fighting against the hot afternoon hangover on the other. His pulse was running high.
“Pepe, Pepe.”. It was Angela, from the perfume shop, her face all folds of concern. She handed him his stick. He’d dribbled and there were traces of blood on his white shirt. Angela had sold Maria creams to soften her rough tango heels or protect against the chapping of winter stall work.
“At least Franco gave us benches to sit next to each other on,” he shouted at Angela, at everyone.
Pepe felt like slaying the dragon in his belly. It was rampaging into his mind these days, burning away the memories of Maria, leaving charred memories where once she danced. Had she led some tangoes? Was it the cinema on Fridays, or Saturdays?
Angela took Pepe’s hand. “She loved you the same way Pepe, cariño. She did. You were both very lucky. I’ll come and get you later, Pepe.”
He shuffled along to Argenters i Mitja Baix. The usual panoply of languages and people made the junction resonate. Alex, a street drinker who soothed his thirst outside Asian shops after the police kept moving him on from the now well-at-heel Sant Pere plaza, handed Pepe a can of Estrella. Pepe slowly lowered himself to sit on an upside-down crate that the shopowner was happy to lend to foment trade.
Fellow al fresco drinking friends Quique, Luis and Oscar were there, too, standing with beers and cigarettes in hand, shouting over each other in a mix of Catalan and Spanish. Everyone smoked and joined in the football talk and inevitable heated discussions about Catalan independence.
“You’ve lived here 60 years Pep, why don’t you speak in Catalan?” Lluis teased.
Pepe paused: “A coño is always a coño, whatever language the **** speaks.”
The group erupted together into laughter at that one and spent the next two hours calling Pepe a **** whenever he spoke.
The shadowy junction got darker as the daily church bells started their distinct twenty-five past peeling.
Pepe had drunk more of the strong beer than he needed to. He now needed to get home and see over the city from his balcony, so set off home. He felt an arm interlock with his as he rejoined Mes Baix opposite Angela’s perfumery.
Angela helped him push open the heavy front door. His shopping trolley was there, behind the front door.
“I thought…” he tailed off. Everything was still in it, plus some potatoes, oranges and a handful of cherries that he couldn’t remember buying.
Pepe was nodding and coughing as the lift doors slid closed, Maria’s smiling face disappearing as the door’s closed on the tiny, coffin-like lift.
He opened the stair door, which led directly onto the terrace of his and Maria’s attic flat. Ché, a small mongrel dog that lived walking from terrace to terrace via the rooftops, was there to greet him. They fussed over each other.
Pepe’d forgotten to get water. He opened the terrace to flat door and went to the tiny kitchen. He pulled out a glass and filled it to the brim with his table wine, and fished out a can of dog food for Ché, who ate greedily then bounded off at the sound of another terrace door opening.
Since Maria’s death, Pepe had set a place for one on the terrace table and kept the red plastic table cover with white polka dots that Maria had insisted upon. He’d kept the cacti plants she liked as well as some cuttings they’d grown from plants taken on their honeymoon in Fuertaventura. He preferred to keep flowers, but knew he’d never water them without her to remind him.
Pepe sat down in the deckchair and looked right, to Maria’s empty deckchair, still snuggled next to his, and raised his glass.
A memory susurrated in the breeze and stirred the aerials, sweeping the cinders of his day into the embers of his sunset.
“Look at that sunset Pepe, give me a kiss.”
“Look at the full moon Pepe, give me a kiss.”
“No star or moon will ever beat you, gorgeous. Give me a kiss.”
As he drank more, his skin changed to flushed red, like the sky. His face looked like a glass filling itself up with cheap wine. His heart beat faster, his tongue got drier and his chest ached.
Pepe turned the tocadiscos on, placed the worn Melodia de Arrabal vinyl on and turned the stereo up to full.
He threw away his stick, tottered and regained balance, then approached Maria’s chair as a gentleman would. He bowed, and asked for this dance.
‘Barrio! Barrio!’ Susana Rinaldi’s voice boomed into his ears. He looked out over Barcelona, to the egg dome of Palau, the spires of Sagrada Familia.
Pepe’s Japanese neighbour shouted ‘Callate!’ but Pepe wouldn’t shut it. He put the song on again, and again, and coughed and sang.
‘Barrio! Barrio!’
He stumbled his solitary tango. This was his neighbourhood with its restless sparrow of a soul, this coquettish place.
‘Barrio! Barrio!’
Pepe cradled a trumpet-shaped flower in his hand. It opened just once a year and had chosen to flower today. A proud white flower, as lovely had Maria been, as white as the salty white patches that were drying on the white shirt he was still wearing for her.
Pepe slumped into his chair and sat next to Maria.
