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the beach? We haven’t had any chance to swim and it would be silly to have been here and not to swim. Where are we going to go when we leave here? Oh. We haven’t decided yet. We’ll probably decide tonight or in the morning. Where would you suggest?”
“I think anywhere would be fine,” David said.
“Well maybe that’s where we will go.” “It’s a big place.”
“It’s nice to be alone though and I’ll pack us nicely.”
“There’s nothing much to do except put in toilet things and close two bags.”
“We can leave in the morning if you want. Truly I don’t want to do anything to you or have any bad effect on you.
The waiter knocked on the door.
“There was no more Perrier-Jouet, Madame, so I brought the Lanson.”
She had stopped crying and David’s hand was still close on hers and he said, “I know.
Chapter Six
THEY had SPENT the morning at the Prado and now were sitting at a place in a building with thick stone walls. It was cool and very old. There were wine casks around the walls. The tables were old and thick and the chairs were worn. The light came from the door. The waiter brought them glasses of manzanilla from the lowland near Cadiz called the Marismas with thin slices of jam6n serrano, a smoky, hard cured ham from pigs that fed on acorns, and bright red spicy salchich6n, another even spicier dark sausage from a town called Vich and anchovies and garlic olives. They ate these and drank more of the manzanilla, which was light and nutty tasting.
Catherine had a Spanish-English Method book with a green cover on the table close to her hand and David had a stack of the morning papers. It was a hot day but cool in the old building and the waiter asked, “Do you want gazpacho?” He was an old man and he filled their glasses again.
“Do you think the sefiorita would like it?”
“Try her,” the waiter said gravely as though he were speaking of a mare.
It came in a large bowl with ice floating with the slices of crisp cucumber, tomato, garlic bread, green and red peppers, and the coarsely peppered liquid that tasted lightly of oil and vinegar.
“It’s a salad soup,” Catherine said. “It’s delicious.”
“Es gazpacho,” the waiter said.
They drank Valdepefias now from a big pitcher and it started to build with the foundation of the marismeiio only held back temporarily by the dilution of the gazpacho which it moved in on confidently. It built solidly.
“What is this wine?” Catherine asked.
“It’s an African wine,” David said.
“They always say that Africa begins at the Pyrenees,” Catherine said. “I remember how impressed I was when I first heard it.”
“That’s one of those easy sayings,” David said. “It’s more complicated than that. Just drink it.”
“But how can I tell about where Africa begins if I’ve never been there? People are always telling you tricky things.”
“Sure. You can tell.”
“The Basque country certainly wasn’t like Africa or anything I ever heard about Africa.”
“Neither is Asturias nor Galicia but once you’re in from the coast it gets to be Africa fast enough.”
“But why didn’t they ever paint that country?” Catherine asked. “In all the backgrounds it is always the mountains out by the Escorial.”
“The sierra,” David said. “Nobody wanted to buy pictures of Castilla the way you saw it. They never did have landscape painters. The painters painted what was ordered.”
“Except Greco’s Toledo. It’s terrible to have such a wonderful country and no good painters ever paint it,” Catherine said.
‘What should we eat after the gazpacho?” David said. The
proprietor, who was a short middle-aged man, heavily built and square faced, had come over. “He thinks we ought to have meat of some kind.”
“Hay solomillo muy bueno,” the owner insisted.
“No, please,” Catherine said. “Just a salad.”
“Well, at least drink a little wine,” the proprietor said and refilled the pitcher from the spigot of the cask behind the bar.
“I shouldn’t drink,” Catherine said. “I’m sorry I’m talking so much. I’m sorry if I talked stupidly. I usually do.”