Jazmine and Salt

How do memories bring us to the present? An older lady discovers in the rich beauty of La Fiesta Major in a small Spanish village.

At first glance, it would appear that Maria-Jose was talking to herself in a patter of murmurs and soft laughter. Sat at a walnut dressing table, she powdered her wrinkled face, combed her thin, wispy hair, and placed the same elaborate headpiece her mother had worn for La Fiesta Mayor so many years before.

Outside, the narrow streets were beginning to fill with villagers finely dressed. A hum of excitement drifted upward in a chorus of chatter, while dresses of vibrant colour were tamed by the growing shadows betokening night. A veneer of orange painted an edge upon the silhouette of buildings opposite Maria-Jose's apartment along Gran Via, from which it melted into the pink and purple hues of the summer's evening sky.

 

Maria-Jose daubed a pungent perfume against her loose neck and turned to leave as the last ray of sun spilled from the window. This thin strand, a last gossamer thread of gold struck a monochrome photograph of a young man's smiling portrait. The man seemed to watch Maria-Jose as she left, fixed with a smile of natural grace and honest beauty that shone against the darkening gloom.

 

Smoke wafted with a redolence of sardines and burning wood upon the breeze that cooled the hot streets. Maria-Jose drank a full chest of the sweet-fish air as a child in a polka-dot dress laughed and played among the legs of bystanders. Maria-Jose made her way towards the Bar Granja situated off Gran Via on the edge of the Plaza Mayor. As she made her way through the crowds, people waved with brief greetings, and salutations, all beaming with smiles and high spirits. Maria-Jose smiled, waved back, laughed with love at the spectacle of happiness. La Fiesta Mayor had always been a day of joy. Since she was a young child, the throng, the costume, the sounds, music, and food had enveloped her soul, her very being, such that it was this moment she felt most alive and free. It was a memory that repeated: how few chances to relive such moments, but for days like this she thought; as birds, high in the plane trees lining the avenue, sang and called in rejoinder to the celebrations below.

 

Today, she did not care about the sniggers and sly denigrations of women who welcomed her with saccharine smiles and barbed compliments. Those women had envied her swarthy complexion, dark hair, and gentle curves. Those once jealous at their husbands' pining and laughter for and with her. Husbands who would drink beyond their share, enjoying her company, or simple presence in the bars and terraces; returning home tumescent with drink. That she had never acted on their impulses, never led one of them astray; that she was simply beautiful had never been considered: nature's gift. But as a boat is hauled upon a beach to bleach and rot in the vicissitudes of the seasons, so this gift of nature through time is returned, until only from a distance, like memory, can the shape of what was be still seen, and what remains is but a crumbled husk. But through the years, Maria-Jose played to those fears with corporeal peccadilloes, harmless, but goading to her tormentors, such that she cultivated her reputation among these women as a harlot, and a woman not to be trusted with another's husband. Rumors, fueled by her behavior, had fueled gossip among the womenfolk for nigh half a century until now, aged as they had become, they no longer feared her beauty, sensuality, or charm, but merely scorned her as the brunt of their small and monotonous talk.

 

It was true they had been mostly kind following the death of her love, and for some time after they would visit her. Often they brought cazuelas of stew and fresh bread; on occasion a sea bream caught by their spouses, or some sweet treats. They would talk compassionately about how well she was doing, how strong she remained, and how in time her grief would ease and be forgotten. But as with all acts performed and pretended to, the visits became fewer and finally, when relieving herself of the burdensome attire of mourning, keen to relinquish her grief of public display, the whispers and titters had soon resounded in the narrow alleys and the visits had ceased. Hushed comments of: "It's not decent. What kind of woman is she? Dressed so, and so soon after a bereavement?" and "It makes you wonder: Did she really love him?" or "Gracias a Dios he did not have to suffer such a woman! Perhaps his death was a blessing." Fleeted looks, nods in unison, and subdued giggles followed these derisions and their like. Maria-Jose heard them all, whether they had intended for her to or not, and though the hot flush rose in her breast and her eyes moistened, she remained resolute with determination to show no weakness and preferred instead to add salt to their stock of hate.

 

The Plaza Mayor, bordered by rows of Cherry Plums, was lit by a contiguous line of white bulbs. They traced a route through the spindly branches of the young plants and reminded her of the fishing boats' lanterns that in her youth, glowed from the distant horizon and appeared to mark a border against the night's void.

"Maria-Jose. Maria!," came a warbled cry as Maria-Jose entered the plaza. A fat suet-faced lady waddled toward her from the crowd. "How nice to see you in that dress again. How well it's kept, and for so many years. I'd love to have one similar�" Oh well�" I had to buy a new one again this year�" They don't make them like they used to, hmmm? How have you been?"

"I'm well, thank you, Jacinta. And your dress is lovely, though it's true nothing is made as it once was, not even us. How's your family? And Juan?"

"Ah, well you know what it's like." she paused and smiled falsely "Well, busy, another Grandchild on the way�"" A group of adolescents moved past the two old ladies, laughing and joking, and for a fleeting moment Maria-Jose's old heart rose in her chest. Their lithe bodies ambled together interspersed by sudden bursts of laughter and movement, along a street of terraced houses, once home to the fisherman of the village, leading from plaza to seashore. Maria-Jose saw herself, as she had once been, in the luxuriant hair and lineaments of a girl full of merrymaking. But. The young man: bumping shoulders playfully, walking side-by-side with this girl, caused her almost to cry out, to call in an old woman's foolish hope. The name formed on her lips and she yearned to shout. To shout at history, her history, stood before her now; to see him turn, to see that same face brimming with life and youth that had filled her with warmth and love so long ago; to relive the memory so often repeated in her mind. Maria-Jose mouthed his name, a choke of anguish, silenced her, and an exhaustion coursed through her bones.

"Maria. Maria-Jose. Are you ok? You look like you've seen a ghost."

"I'm�" fine Jacinta. Fine. I thought I recognized someone." In Jacinta's beady black eyes, gazing from a cocked head, Maria-Jose saw that this tidbit would be shared as fish and loaves for the hungry gossip.

"As I was saying, Juan is�""

"I must be going Jacinta, have a lovely evening, and give my love to Juan." Maria-Jose strode away proudly despite a new sense of frailty that imbued her soul. Behind her, she heard the desultory tut-tut at her early departure.

 

A stink of vinegar, frying oil, and onion welcomed Maria-Jose as she entered the Bar Granja. Steadying herself at the counter with a shaking hand the stainless steel surface, cold against her touch reminded her of that day. She fought against the tide of images. "Today is a good day, a day of joy", she tried to force upon her thoughts. But the chatter and smells could not lead her to escape the flooding waters of grief and memory. There, upon the bar, as on the morgue table that cruel day, Maria-Jose saw his lifeless body. Blue, ugly lips that once kissed; flesh, once tanned and taught, now pale�" pallid; a sickly patina of green-blue, like dying kelp, under his pearlescent skin; hands that had touched and taken sins: swollen and grotesque. He was covered to the waist with a white sheet�"for dignity; to hide from her that which she knew carnally�" beautifully. She reached to touch the corpse and instead of lifeless cold felt her hand grasped with warmth.

"What can I get you guapa?" Jorge's small brown eyes peered from his great head and drew Maria-Jose back from her heartache with a deep smile. " A vermouth for madam?" He Turned for a bottle, and his girth bulged. Maria-Jose could only giggle as he rose on tip-toes for a bottle, her laughter at such an incongruous sight lightened her spirit, and as if on cue music from the plaza floated into the bar and joy stoked her heart once more.

 

A small man with liver-spotted hands that shook like the wings of a bee walked to the bar clasping a billet.

"How many years has it been Maria-Jose, that we put on our finest and watch the world change a little more? I barely recognize the faces any longer and there aren't many of the ones I do left."

"Oh, Diego. It's not the world that's changed, it's us. How old we've become!"

"Yes perhaps."

"How have you been since your wife...? How long is it now?"

"Eight months. I've been fine, not terrible, you get used to it, in

a way. My daughters have been very helpful. Truth be told, I never realized how much she did for me- the family. Even towards the end. And now, well, I am too old to learn for myself, or, perhaps not too old, just too tired." He smiled gently and looked at his withered hands. "I never said thank you, you know. I should have. I should have said many things more. I would if I could, but too late now I suppose?"

"I'm sure she knew Diego, a woman has an intuition for these things. She knew."

"Thank you." He gazed pensively a moment then laughed: "You know she never really liked you that much, or rather she didn't trust you 'Too beautiful,' she would say. Ha! If she'd known you were far too freer spirit for me, even if you'd given me the light of day. Do you remember you and the others used to call me Chupi? Funny how you dislike a name when you're young and feel nostalgia for it as an old man. I can't remember the last time someone called me that."

"Well Chupi," Maria-Jose's eyes shone with mischief "You'll always be Chupi to me, no matter our age."

"I'll drink to that. Jorge. A beer. No, make it a whisky. She can tell me off when I see her in heaven," he winked and it was as if time did not exist: young again. Jorge poured a generous libation.

"Salut!" They clinked the small glasses together hands trembling, and drunk.

 

Two empty glasses rested upon the zinc-coloured counter and refracted light from the plaza into a subtle gradient of rainbows. "Why did you never marry Maria? lord knows you had plenty of suitors."

"I just never fell in love again. Some things happen only once, and sometimes that's enough. Even if you would like more, it doesn't happen and I'm fortunate to have known love as I did."

"Do you not get lonely? I have my daughters, and friends (though fewer every year), but I suffer from such bouts of loneliness and the only grace is the knowledge that it will not be long before I too will reach the long sleep."

"Diego. Chupi. Don't speak like that. We must live while there is still life. Death will have the fair portion of our time and rightly it can wait."

"But do you get lonely?"

"Of course. At times. But there are many who are lonely even when surrounded by others. It is not loneliness you suffer, it's grief. You miss your wife and you will always miss her, as I have missed my love all these years. But the sun still rises and we still have days like today. The sardines still taste the same."

"Do you believe you will see him again?"

"I used to; now I'm not sure. It has been so long. But he remains in my memory, and here in this old heart, and I still hear his voice, after all these years, his laugh, the perfume of soap - do you remember those honey-colored bars we washed with as youngsters- that drifted from his skin when we would walk along the shore and sit in the sand, surrounded by a smell of salt coming off the sea and the jasmine scented air." Diego vacantly nodded, lost in his own memories.

 

A brief interlude of silence passed between them, how long they could not say, for though only a relative moment, it held within it the vast fabric upon which each stitch of their experience had been sewed; discolored as it may be, but forming the full tapestry of their long lives, now so brief in recompense.

 

"We must head out Chupi. We cannot stay here and sulk. It is a day for happiness."

"You're right, Maria, I have been a cantankerous companion. Where to?"

"Sardinas?"

"Oh yes, delicious," he said and licked his lips.

"Adios Jorge," they called in concert from the exit of the bar.

 

The Plaza Major remained a bustle of celebration and noise and Maria-Jose gladly took the offered arm of Diego. his countenance transformed by the contagious joy of the masses such that he regained some of the cheekiness that first endowed him with the name Chupi.

 

A thick fog billowed from the half-drum fire pits as tightly packed rows of skewered sardines sizzled and rained rich fat over the hot coals. Maria-Jose and Diego braved their way through choking fumes holding platefuls of roasted fish and tumblers of cool white wine to where the smoke had dissipated enough for them to breathe freely. Perched on a long bench both feasted greedily on the oily fare, smacking lips and murmuring satisfaction at the viand.

"So good!" Diego said.

"Oh yes, wonderful. Wonderful!" Maria-Jose sipped the cool wine, its acidity cut against the salty remnants and caused, in the way it always did, her lips to purse.

"Papa." A younger woman in a brilliant floral dress called from a distance, a child clinging to her hand.

"Diego it's your daughter, Lola," she said nudging Diego who continued the dislocation of fish from bone.

"Hmmm, what?,” fish morsels clung to his blue-purple mottled lips.

"Your daughter. Over there.” Maria-Jose pointed and daubed the corner of her lips with a small napkin in her free hand.

"Oh yes and little Izabella," Diego wiped his mouth clean and a broad smile corrugated his cheeks with deep crenelations. He rose keenly and stumbled, causing his approaching daughter to rush and catch him by the arm, her scolding face belied by bright, loving eyes. Lola kissed her father on his wrinkled cheeks who then stooped as if a crooked hunchback, to kiss his granddaughter.

The young girl began to tell of several events compressed as one long, disjointed sentence broken only by the stutters and gasps of breath required to maintain her volubility. Isabella rose on tiptoes and beamed with equally lifted excitement as her grandfather repeated back her narrations as questions, evoking delighted squeals of ‘Si!’

“Such a beauty,” Maria-Jose said as the young girl nodded ferociously with pride at her grandfather’s wide-eyed surprise at her exploits

“Guapa!” Diego said kissing Isabella’s forehead and playfully pinching her cheek.

“We have a table just off the square Papa. Lucilla and the rest are there,” she looked at Maria-Jose “I’m sorry Maria, how are you? You’re welcome to join us,”

“How similar your little one is to you when you were her age. Thank you, these sardines will be more than enough for tonight. But thank you for the offer you’re very kind.”

“Hmmpfff. Maria? Join us will you?”

“I’d love to but I worry if I sit any longer I’ll never rise again, I think a stroll is required, try to catch some sea air and get the blood flowing in these old legs again. But thank you for the offer, truly”

“Thank you for- well the company. Will you be okay?“

“Diego I have been OK these last seventy-eight years, I have no doubt I will manage fine for one more evening.” She smiled and stood.

Diego chuckled “Yes I’m sure you will be, well good evening.” He took Izabella’s hand.

“Adios. And you too little one.”

“Adios Maria-Jose,” Lola said taking Izabella’s free hand and beginning to walk away.

“Adios,” called Izabella who pulled her hand free from her Mother and waved rapidly.

 

You would think that the young would make you feel older - Maria-Jose thought as she plodded toward the shore - but no. Perhaps it was inevitable that youth made more explicit the frailty of age, but this was compensated by the lightness one felt after being so close to a soul so ingenuous and pure, untouched by the cynicism of life. But it was more than this, it was as if by falling into that joy of youth, as Chupi had echoed Izabella’s optimism, an ablution was performed. It removed, if only for a time, the disquieting thoughts the years leave as markers some would call experience, but Maria-Jose had always known were simple excuses for ego. The self-awareness dressed up as maturity, confining the inchoate potential for liberation, stifling the exuberance within with a masquerade of self-control; innocence, and happiness in deference to cynicism and suspicion: a foolish protection of the rarefied self, the pursuit of which sullies and cannibalizes the essence of the thing it wishes to defend. Oh! What hopeless fools we are!

 

The wind had picked up when Maria-Jose reached the sandy beach and a smell of distant rain was confirmed by the coolness that cut the humid air. Bracing herself against a verdigrised memorial, her eyes watered while the wash and suckered sounds of roiling waves betokened a storm. The cornflour sand and aquamarine waters had surrendered to a cobalt shroud of night, darkening as thick clouds suffocated the night sky and obscured the ancients. And yet, in the ominous gloom, Maria-Jose could see the light of life flicker in the movement of those same youngsters that had set her heart astir. The first large drops of rain began to fall ponderously until their percussive tap-tap increased to a torrent. The youths ran for cover, laughing in joyous rebuke to nature's fury. Lightning forked and illuminated the dark and despite the sodden clothes that clung to her frail body, Maria-Jose could not help but smile. She descried the beauty, pulled close by the young man, tentative to his overtures, he raw and impassioned, but meeting the barrier of her innocence, as she, Maria-Jose's own naivety had stood as the last bastion of her own youth when her own love had held her against the lashing rains. Do gods weep when innocence is lost, given up as a token to love? How this sight tugged her from the present, frissons shivering through her body as her lips tasted him, vicarious and yet real, but as with all love there is pain and the stinging cold sunk into her as she reached for him, hoping even for a ghost, or some other remnant she could call him, only met by the howling, empty wind.

 

Maria-Jose turned from the angry sea, her tears washed by the rain. "No!" she said between her chattering teeth as her shivering gave way to a vibration of rage. "No. You will not take him from me again!” She did not know who she shouted to, it was not God. Her God was not found in the great edifices of stone. How cold and bare these houses of God without their congregations. It is people�" life, that brings warmth to these stone behemoths. It is people that help; people that love; people that make you laugh and cry; people that color one’s life; No, it was not God she spoke to. Perhaps it was her own memory, perhaps the limit of reality, the suffering of thoughts, and the hopelessness of unattainable dreams. But, as he had fought for air before swallowed by the dark waters, so Maria-Jose now fought to give breath to the memories of him in life. She strode with preternatural strength, through the now empty, storm-washed streets. A primeval heat coursed from her throbbing heart and through her blurred eyes she saw her love, in every fragment and memory of this small village by sea: there, sitting and laughing at a bar; there again, on a bench showing an inquisitive child an ant perched on the tip of a twig; again in the square, trying to dance with a lady about the age of Maria-Jose's now and being angrily rebuked; there, nonchalantly strolling with pride at the thick ensemble of fish hanging from a rope in his hand; here, stood against a wall smiling, bougainvillea falling behind in heavy blankets of fuchsia; there in old Ramos's shop porch trying to light a cigarette against the blustering autumn winds, his coat's collar popped up to form a windbreaker and his bushy brows pulled together in a concentrated frown; there helping Pablo with repairs to the fascia of his house, covered in dust scoured by beads of sweat; and now, in the dark before dusk, pulling the nets into the boat, his strong, young sinews taut from the effort; returned, smiling at her from the bow, as his boat drifts across the millpond waters to dock, the evening sun dressing the tableau in golden light; there leaping from the boat to shore; here embracing her and kissing her with a deep resonating passion. Maria-Jose arrived from her odyssey of evocation to the place she called home and held that last recollection in her mind, fending off all thoughts and incursions against it. In her damp clothes, she unlatched the birdcage door and lay with exhaustion upon her consecrated bed and felt the weight of eternity next to her.

 

There, along that same shore, wave wracked by mercurial waters, waters painted nacre, by a same watchful moon, which as a beacon, through waning clouds, has thrown its pale fire upon all existence. There, where storms have traveled and travel still, unrelenting in sonorous lament, drifting to the undiscovered country; there, their bodies stand and stood, moving in unison with the earth through space and time, in spiraled orbits, returning always to that same place, yet somehow changed; and there under the mass of stars - from which they came and to which they would return - as if coming to first existence as storms passed and broken cloud revealed limpid patches of endless night, they kissed. And in that moment�"this time, it was both real and yet ephemeral, a memory of the past and a promise of the future, caught in the ever-shifting present: what was, what is, what will forever be. Maria-Jose gently sighed together with the relinquished breath of the girl, as her journey of love began and Maria-Jose's ended. In this final exhalation, her heart at last gave out as the others came to life. And if you were to listen closely, against the dying breath of the summer storm, you would hear spoken by two people separated by time, a time that never has and never will exist against the embrace of human memory and dreams, a single word:

“Carlos�"“

Reviews

[emmajoygreen]

This, sir, is more than a wonderful story, tis like a delicate biography written before life had even time to think of it finishing. You must know Spain, its sights and scents, celebrations and characters! Each mention glimmers, made me smile, almost feeling what was to be seen because your words were so visual, they offered themselves to this reader!! .. Reminds me of Marquez.. if allowed to say that, because writing has its own glories. As you know..