Michael Lederer - Cadaqués

Also by this author

The Great Game:
Berlin-Warsaw Express and other Stories

Nothing Lasts Forever Anymore

Mundo Overloadus

Michael Lederer

Cadaqués

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in
der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten
sind im Internet über http://www.d-nb.de abrufbar.

The characters in this book are fictitious.
Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

ISBN: 978-3-941524-40-8
ISBN (E-BOOK): 978-3-941524-55-2

All rights reserved. First Edition 2014
©Michael Lederer, 2014
©PalmArtPress, 2014

German Edition, 2014, ISBN: 978-3-941524-34-7
German Edition eBook, 2014, ISBN: 978-3-941524-41-5
Editor: Catharine J. Nicely
Front cover: Genia Chef, Emerald Grotto, oil on panel, 1994
Back cover: Photo by Katarina Knitter-Lederer
Printed in Germany

PalmArtPress
Pfalzburger Str. 69, 10719 Berlin

www.palmartpress.com

For my wife Katarina
and my friend Genia Chef,
and the memory of David Marti

“…and gave them wine saying, ‘This is my blood.’”

- Matthew 26: 27-28

Breakfast in a bottle

Mama said three meals a day

And I’m such a good boy

I like to do as Mamas say

- From the song, Breakfast in a Bottle

“No Lost Generation here, darling. This is Cadaqués.
We are finding ourselves!”

- Robert, a character in the book

NO LOST GENERATION HERE

Prologue

The electric buzz, the multi-tasking, the breathless pace that could keep one an arm’s distance from one’s own thoughts. The high-octane rush of every this and that coming at you at once, 24/7. Cadaqués was not the place for such things. A slower pace here. One step at a time. Where a mother finding a condom in a teenager’s nightstand could still constitute high drama. No car chases or shady corporate mergers, or bombs exploding or bullets flying. No billion-dollar heists or shiny shoes in the corridors of power. Here, bare feet on the beach already a thrill. And having time to think. It’s what they had come for, Picasso and the others. Not that bigger things didn’t happen also. Death, for instance, visited this village too. The winding road couldn’t keep that horseman from his rounds. But for the most part the dramas here were on the slower order of a chess game, versus the clackety-clack of checkers. A little sex, a little wine, a little fighting, the company of friends. In Cadaqués it was enough.

Chapter I

“Sex and drugs and rock and ROLLLL, darling. And vio-lence. That’s what they want. The world they know. Can’t give them beauty anymore. It’s passé. Beauty is yesteryear, darling. GET…OVER…IT!”

“He’s drunk.”

“DRUNK, Madam? I…I…” he took a deep breath. The head hung forward, the eyes closed, but only for a moment. The batteries recharged almost instantly. The eyes pried themselves back open. The head lifted itself.

“We are all drunk, on the elixir of L-I-F-E.”

He stretched out the word life as if doing so could lengthen the thing itself. As he said it, his hand shot up in the air in the most gallant gesture, thrust high to a point like an Olympic flame. Then the fingers wound their way back down with slow intent to his breast. All his soul was in the moment. A few centuries earlier and he’d have been tipping his feathered hat to the lady.

Baudelaire, Byron, Robert. Of a kind. Falstaff, Cyrano, Churchill. The whole lot of them together at last in this clay lump of a man. Robert Breyer. Brighton born and bred. At twenty he had followed the grapes south. Thirty years later he was still reaping the rewards of having found them.

“Have a sip of LIFE, darling. It’s D-E-LLL-I-C-I-O-U-S.”

The “L” sound, played more than spoken, hung in the air forever. Long lingering English vowels rose like a slow river from the depths of his soul, rolling over consonants that stood out like sharp pebbles in the stream. This was language as God, drunk on wine, might speak it. Every “T” a tambour, every “V” a violin.

“Oh for God’s sake, can we please…”

“Can we please what? Have some L-O-V-E, darling. That’s what we really want, isn’t it? Can we please have some love, hmm?”

In front of him, through the haze of so much Spanish wine, like visions seen through simmering desert heat, the elegant older couple stood at the wooden bar. Lady Ratkins was pulling at her husband’s elbow. She wanted to go immediately and not order, but Lord Ratkins wasn’t budging. There was something about this drunk man he found intriguing.

“Just one drink, darling.”

“JUST ONE DRINK, DARLING,” echoed Robert. “Words of a poet! And a fine one at that! ‘Just one drink, darling.’ Well said! Touché!”

Lord Ratkins signaled to the barman. Miguel stepped over.

“Sí?”

“Two glasses of white wine please. And for my friend here, what’s your wish?”

“My wish…my wish is for love, darling,” growled Robert.

The head drooped again. Again a deep breath. Then the eyes flared wide in their sockets. Red, knowing.

“Spain, darling, is the temple of love. And you are in the temple now. Welcome to it.” Again, that final ‘t’ tapping home the point.

Robert looked at Lady Ratkins. She wasn’t sure what to do except hold to her husband’s arm. The drinks came. Two white wines as ordered, and a red wine for Robert. The barman knew.

“Well then,” said Lord Ratkins, holding his glass up to propose a toast. “To the temple of love.”

“To LOVE!” agreed Robert, as pleased and pickled as he had ever been. Lady Ratkins said nothing, just took a sip.

“Where are you from? The south, is it?”

“Exactly. Brighton. And you?”

“London.”

An excited gasp. “What a MAGNNNIFICENT city, hmm?” He called out. “Miguel!”

“Sí, Robert?”

“Estos son mis compatriotas. These are my countrymen. It’s a British invasion, darling. Gibraltar all over again. Man the ramparts!”

“Sí, Robert?”

“Except the thing is, we thought we’d civilize you. Miguel?”

“Sí?”

“Turns out it’s the other way around. You’re civilizing us. Teaching us the wayyys of loooove.”

Robert eyed Lady Ratkins as he said it. The vision was blurred, not too many details, but he could make out it was a woman, and a fine one at that.

The hands, brown from the sun, unwrapped a pouch of rolling tobacco. The ritual repeated every twenty or so minutes: against the bar, pinch of tobacco into the paper, the filter added, rolled, wetted tongue pressed to the glue. Nearly ready. But first, point of style, its end squeezed into a black cigarette holder and only then the fire. The curling smoke into the lungs and out again, and the sheer, obvious, delicious contentment of it. No matter how red the eyes, how stained the shirt, how unsteady the feet, the elegance of that holder and the man holding it proclaimed: This, darling, is something!

“This is your local, is it?” asked Lord Ratkins. He had the confident casual air of one who, since the day of birth, had viewed life from the pinnacle.

“One drinks where one is liked, hmm? Where one is welcome, and where one can get credit. How is it for you in London? They give credit for a glass of wine, do they?”

Lord Ratkins smiled. “If I need it.”

“Well then, to credit! And to Adam Smith, hmm? Adam.”

Tipping back the glass, not a drop spilling, Robert drank.

“To whommm, darling, have I the pleasure of speaking?”

“George Ratkins. My wife, Rebecca.”

“REBECCA! How wonderful that, to be named from the Bible.”

“I think so, yes,” said Lady Ratkins.

“Well, don’t doubt it. Be proud, darling. To be named from the Bible, that’s something!” The glass again aloft. “Well then, to the Good Book. And to the good names it begets.”

Another sip. And another. Once, twice, thrice.

“Borrrracho.”

The word for drunk. A little Spanish lesson thrown in.

She was put off, still intrigued at the same time. Despite the hairspray and the polished nails there was a rugged curiosity, the reason she followed her husband to places like this. Africa, Rio, Mustique, Spain…prepared for the wilds she, so long as there was a hot bath and room service at day’s end.

“What brought you to Cadaqués, Mister…?”

“Robert, darling. Just Robert.”

“What brought you to Cadaqués, Robert?”

“Dali.”

“You knew him?”

He nodded. “We all knew him. Man of the village. Man of the world and the village. One as important as the other.”

“Is that right?”

“Well, take either away and he wouldn’t be Dali, would he? The flower has ROOTS, darling! Without those…” He didn’t finish the sentence.

“So you just went over to his house, did you? Knocked on the door?”

“Met him in Paris, my brother and I. Hotel Meurice. He invited us here. As models.”

“How wonderful. And that was…?”

“Long time ago. Thirty years, mas o menos. We were all young and beautiful then.”

Robert and his identical twin brother Richard had been living in London. Cecil Beaton, the young Mick Jagger, Twiggy, Donyale Luna, Patti Smith, Bowie, they’d “known them all!” The swinging sixties. A quick spin around the globe then to India, Africa, the Caribbean, Paris, before Dali brought the brothers to his house in Portlligat on the outskirts of Cadaqués. To model, to play, and as importantly perhaps to share the so-called normal times when “Salvador” as they called him, was a man at work, a man of the village, and not only the mad genius celebrity. After the great painter had died the brothers had stayed on, like the hot glow of the wick after the flame is out. Though in their case it turned out there were other fires.

Two children played on the floor nearby while their mother argued with their father. A group of old men played cards at one table. Smoke everywhere in those days. Outside the front door of the Casino, a young man with a guitar sat playing on one of the wide window ledges while two pretty girls sat close to him listening. Across the road near the beach some people were smoking marijuana, the sweet smell of it wafting toward the village.

Except for the old men in the back, this was not a gambling casino. Back to the older meaning of the word: “A noisy environment, a building or large room used for meetings, a place of pleasure.” The sign high above the front read: Societat L’Amistat. Society of friends. Inside, two big rooms with high ceilings, a long bar, tables, most people from the village, some tourists, and in one corner an old TV for the games.

Robert finished his wine. “Miguel?”

“Sí, Robert?”

“Another round for my friends here.”

“No, really, a bit late for us I’m afraid. Time we’re off. But it’s been a great pleasure.”

“The pleasure is OURS, darling.”

Another deep sigh, the eyes again closed. Lord Ratkins led Lady Ratkins toward the door. Before stepping outside both looked back over their shoulders. Robert was leaning against the bar, unmoving. Around him men stood talking, taking no notice of him. The television was on in the corner. Football game. One side scored a goal. A great cheer went up in the room.

Chapter II

The bus from Barcelona to Cadaqués first stopped in Roses. Most passengers got off, a few others boarded. Sitting at a window toward the back, Cal watched them. An old woman with a straw shopping basket climbed on and sat behind the driver. There were two girls with backpacks. The tall one had a big tattoo of a butterfly on her shoulder. A young guy with dreads carrying a guitar came down the aisle and sat across from the two girls.

Outside in the hot sun there were some tired looking palm trees covered with dust. A dog lay drooped in a shadow. The buildings here looked no different than in many other towns along the coast of Spain, built of inexpensive materials with shuttered windows and light colors to reflect the sun. After the collapse of fascism and the rise of tourism, many had been built in the mad rush to catch up with the twentieth century before the twenty-first would arrive. They had just made it. Only half a year left now until the century’s, even the millennium’s, end. That would be it then, final score for an age, as much and as little as a thousand years would accomplish.

Cal had a bottle of red wine in his pack. He took it out and looked at it. Rioja! Already opened, he pulled the cork out and took a sip. Then he took another, longer sip and waited. A moment later it came, that warm sweet glow stretching from the stomach to the brain. He loved how that felt, everything inside and outside softening. One more sip to be sure he had it. He did.

The door closed and the bus started to move. Across the street, two men sat smoking and drinking at a table on the sidewalk. There was a small bar behind them with a beaded curtain in the door to keep the flies out. As the bus pulled away the men watched it.

Roses, like many other towns and cities along the coast of Spain, was still sprawling upward and outward in those heady days. Another Miami wanna-be. When you were inside it, in the little corners like this one, it could still feel slow. But when you looked at it from a distance or were at its center you felt the change happening. Building cranes everywhere, men and money moving, an ejaculation of development. A bank going up here, apartments there, shopping centers, beauty salons, travel agencies…all of it pedal-to-the-metal, like the fitful day when a teenager first gets his hands on the car keys, full of self-confidence and not a worry in the world. Spain was modernizing itself now and it seemed there would be no holding it back.

Somewhere hidden behind all that stucco and the cranes and the big plans was the heart still of the old Roses that had been there forever. The 11th century monastery of Santa Maria de Roses, and the Roman ruins and even earlier Greek ruins. From the bus, the town’s more distant past could be best seen in the 16th century Castell de la Trinitat high on a hill overlooking it all. Reminder of bygone days when Barbarossa, fearsome Ottoman admiral of the fleet, and pirates and privateers, would attack and pillage. Good storybook stuff. Later came newer and bigger wars, but without the torchlight and galloping horses and the silk-turbaned cutthroats, they were less fun to think about.

The bus pulled away from the buildings and soon they were out in the open again, with fields of olive trees on either side. There were no people now except for a lone bicyclist, and at one roundabout there were two prostitutes in tight skirts who stood waiting. There were more roundabouts after that, but no more hookers. That disappointed Cal. Once you begin expecting to see prostitutes along the side of a road the whole experience of travel changes. No hookers there…no hookers there…no hookers there…

A few minutes more and finally they began to climb over the mountain that had stood through the ages like a natural wall defending Cadaqués. Against Visigoths, against Napoleon’s armies, and now in probably its most enduring battle, against bloated hoards of tourists eating, photographing and trampling their way through anything that could fit onto a four-color brochure.

Until only a hundred years before, main access to the village had been by sea. Even after the little road had been paved, and cars and buses had taken the place of horses and carriages, still it was faster, easier and more comfortable to get to so many other towns along the coast, with their sandy beaches and big hotels, and their English and German menus. Cadaqués still had only a few small hotels, not sand but rocky beaches, and the fierce tramuntana wind that would sweep down the mountain like a wild child running toward the sea. Most tourists couldn’t be bothered. Cadaqués, still and forever, was for a particular kind of visitor.

Nose glued to the window, Cal watched the great cork oaks and endless terraces of flat gray stones roll by. To be an American writer in Spain on a bus to Cadaqués, with a bag of marijuana in one’s pack, a bottle of wine, some money in one’s pocket…this was about as good as it gets.

Cadaqués, the village of Dali the great masturbator, and so many others who had seized time away from the crazy cities to marshal their powers: Duchamp, Magritte, Man Ray, Picasso, Cage, Buñuel, Miro, Garcia Lorca, André Breton…all of them mixing so happily and long ago among the fisherfolk, the gnarled olive trees, and rocks that looked like they could spring alive at any moment or else had once lived. Here on the easternmost point of Iberia, where the great Pyrenees begin their descent toward and into the Mediterranean sea, the little village of Cadaqués had helped tip the twentieth century off its comfortable ass and set it on course for uncharted territories. Slitting an eyeball with a razor? Art! A urinal? Art! Gravity? Optional. Cubism. Dadaism. Surrealism. Younameitism. Post-Freudian dreams painted, sculpted, written and, yes, sold here. With one great leap of faithlessness in established order, the village had gone from exporting anchovies and wine to exporting the modern world.

Left curve, right curve, left curve…up through the maze. In the distance below, Roses, the fertile plains, and all the rest of the world were drawing further away.

Chapter III

This would be Cal’s second visit to Cadaqués. He had spent one month in the village the summer before.

Peering out the window of the bus now, his mind drifted back to the night in New York City, two years earlier, when he had first heard the name Cadaqués.

Cal was celebrating his 38th birthday. He, his good friend the Russian painter Grisha Yermiloff, and a small group of fellow artists and writers were at some restaurant on the Avenue of the Americas somewhere in the 50s. It was late and they were all drunk. Everyone was dressed casually, except for this one fat American lawyer named Clark who wore a tuxedo. Nobody seemed to like him. He just appeared suddenly among them. Apparently he knew Grisha from some gallery opening and spotted him at the table. Then he just invited himself over. And once he had joined them he wouldn’t shut up, as if it was his birthday party. He kept talking about how most artists were poor because they thought of themselves as lovers when really they were whores. He said that romance was dead, and art and literature were going to die with it unless writers and artists started to think of themselves as whores, and would let him be their pimp. Then they could all be rich. Rich whores. He wore patent leather shoes and a cummerbund that looked like it was going to explode he was so fat. And even though he looked rich, and talked a great deal about getting even richer, the only thing he ordered for dinner that night was French fries. Cal could still remember the greasy fingers hard at work, and the lawyer asking the waitress to bring another bottle of ketchup.

Later, when everyone had finished their dinner and they were all standing outside on the sidewalk deciding where to go next, Clark said that wherever it was he would be happy to go along. But nobody else wanted that. So Grisha, thinking faster than the others, got down on his hands and knees on the sidewalk and started barking and growling like a dog. He kept trying to bite Clark on his legs. The lawyer kept backing away, confused and frightened.

“Grisha, stop it! What are you doing? Stop it! Please, don’t bite me!”

“Arf! Woof! Grrrgh!”

“Grisha, stop this! What’s gotten into you?”

“Woof, woof! Grrgh! Arggh!”

“All right, that’s it. I’m afraid I have to leave you now.”

The lawyer turned and hurried down the Avenue of the Americas, looking over his shoulder to make sure he wasn’t being chased or followed.

“Clark, come back!” Grisha shouted, still on his hands and knees. “Woof! Woof! Come back! Grrgh!”

It was the funniest thing, and quite unexpected because normally Grisha was so polite and so gentle. As soon as the lawyer was about a block away, and there was no real chance of him coming back, Grisha calmly stood up, dusted the dirt off his hands, and looked around. There was a horse-drawn carriage making its way slowly up Sixth toward the Park. Grisha waved to it.

“Taxi! Oh, taxi! Horse taxi!”

The horse and carriage rolled to a stop.

“Cal! Raya! Come, let’s go!”

Then Grisha and Cal and Raya, a beautiful Russian journalist who was a friend of theirs, climbed into the carriage.

“See you later, guys,” said Grisha to the rest of their group. “Driver, through the Park…please.” It was the gentle, polite Grisha again.

Their friends waved and shouted good-bye as the driver flicked his reins and the horse led them up Sixth, across 59th Street into the Park. As soon as they were in among the trees, Raya scrambled up over the front of the carriage to sit next to the coachman. She put her arm around his shoulders and asked if she could steer the horse. Because she was so beautiful the driver didn’t seem to mind and handed her the reins. It was hard to say no to Raya.

In the back of the carriage, Grisha and Cal settled back for a slow comfortable ride. Grisha had a briefcase with him and now he opened it. He pulled out a package wrapped in nice paper.

“Here Cal, your birthday present. Happy birthday.”

It was heavy and big. Cal unwrapped it. It was a bottle of J. Dupeyron Napoleon Armagnac, Hors d’Age.

“Grisha, how fantastic! Alcohol! You couldn’t have chosen better.”

“You can save it. Open it one day for some special occasion.”

“Well, no occasion will ever be more special than this.”

Grisha laughed. “Perfect!”

Cal peeled off the dull gold foil and pulled loose the cork. He smelled from the bottle. There was no moon that night and it was dark in the carriage.

“Grisha, does that say ‘Napoleon’ or ‘Aladdin,’ because I think I just let the genie out.”

“Well then fast, you must make a wish.”

Cal thought for a moment, then said, “It’s already coming true.”

“Fantastic!”

“Raya!” called Cal.

The Russian beauty turned to look over her shoulder. “Yes? What? I have a new friend here. His name is John.”

“Hi John!”

The driver cocked his head toward his passengers in back and tipped his top hat. Cal reached the bottle up to them.

“Raya, you have to have the first sip, because a woman’s lips will make the rest of it even sweeter for us.”

Raya pressed her big lips to the bottle and drank. Then she tried handing the bottle to John.

“I can’t. Sorry. I’m driving.”

She insisted.

“I could lose my job.”

“Or you could break my heart. Don’t break my heart, John. You mean too much to me.”

She was so beautiful. John took the bottle and drank. Then Raya took another sip and handed the bottle back to Grisha.

“Hors d’Age, Cal. Beyond the time!”

The bottle made the rounds a few more times. Then they all sang happy birthday to Cal. As it turned out John had the best voice, a strong graceful tenor.

Cal had a joint in his pocket. He took it out and lit it, the light from the flame flickering against his face. Leaning back in the carriage then, with the sound of horse hooves on the pavement, and the yellow light from streetlamps falling through the trees, for some moments it felt like they were a world away from the modern city with its lights sparkling in the distance. But then suddenly there was a booming voice from a loudspeaker.

“PUT THE JOINT OUT!”

Cal looked over his shoulder. A police car was crawling along behind them at the same speed as the horse. Reluctantly, Cal began to tap the joint out on the floor of the carriage. It was the only joint he had. He figured he would put it back into his pocket, then light it again as soon as the police car was gone.

“NO! THROW THE JOINT ONTO THE STREET! NOW!”

Cal tossed the joint, still so much more than a roach, onto the pavement. He looked around trying to spot a landmark so that he could retrieve it later, but there were only trees beside the road, and in the darkness all the trees looked the same. So as the horse clippety-clopped its way along, leaving the joint further and further behind, Cal resigned himself to the loss. The police car accelerated and pulled up alongside the driver. Again, one of two officers spoke over the car’s loudspeaker:

“DRIVER, YOU COULD LOSE YOUR LICENSE IF YOU LET HER TAKE THOSE REINS AGAIN.”

John tipped his hat. “I understand, officer. I’m sorry. I’m very sorry.”

Satisfied he had restored public order, the policeman behind the wheel pressed on the gas and the car accelerated again, disappearing into the night ahead.

“Nice guys,” said Grisha sincerely as he leaned back. “In Russia they would have asked for money. I love New York!”

They rode through the trees and drank from the old bottle, and nobody spoke for some time. Cal could feel what smoke he had taken in and it was something. Genie or no genie, it all seemed magical.

They clip-clopped past the Tavern on the Green with its year-round Christmas lights on the trees, then past Sheep Meadow where sheep once grazed. They rolled past Strawberry Fields where the spirit of John Lennon joined them. They sang Imagine. And then, after the real thing, they started to invent their own lyrics: “Imagine there are no French fries…Imagine there are no lawyers…Imagine all the horses…” They kept that going for quite a while until John began to circle back toward Fifty-ninth.

“John,” asked Grisha, “can you take us down Fifth Avenue to Twenty-ninth Street?”

In those days, Cal and Grisha were both living on East Twenty-ninth, between Fifth and Madison, in the neo-gothic rectory of The Little Church Around the Corner.

“I can take you as far as Thirty-fourth. The law won’t let me go any further than that. That’s our limit.”

“Okay then, Thirty-fourth Street,” said Grisha. “Like Gagarin told, “Πoexaл!” Let’s do it!”

John pulled the horse to a stop in front of the Plaza hotel so Raya could get off. But not before kissing John three times on his cheeks.

“Good bye, John. I love you.”

“I love you too, Raya.”

“But you must understand, I have a husband waiting at home and I love him too.”

“I understand.”

Cal and Grisha hopped down from the carriage. They also wanted to give and get their three kisses on the cheeks.

“Do you love me too?” asked Cal.

“Of course. I love everyone.”

Cal and Grisha climbed back into the carriage. The horse started down Fifth Avenue while Raya stood beside the fountain outside the Plaza blowing kisses after them.

“Life as it should be, Grisha!”

“Absolutely, Cal. Fantastic!”

Both leaned back in the carriage, Grisha with his small frame, big beard and even bigger smile, Cal with his eyes from the smoke and brandy as red as the taillights rushing past. Across the street to their left was F.A.O. Schwarz. A few moments later they would be passing Tiffany’s. Toys for all ages.

With John in his top hat, and the horse poking along slowly, they said nothing for some moments. It was after midnight. Still, being Manhattan there were cars and people walking everywhere. Yellow taxis, long black or white limousines, police cars, young people jostling on the sidewalks. And above it all now, the sound of hooves against the black pavement.

“Incredible,” said Grisha, “really Cal, like from the nineteenth century.”

“Because it’s not a horse and carriage, Grisha. This is a time machine.”

“Hors d’Age!” said the Russian, lifting high the now almost-empty bottle. “To time machines, Cal!”

“Go on, pick a century. John, can you get us to any century we want?”

“Of course.”

“Well then, backward or forward, what should it be?”

“We must think,” said Grisha. “We must think very carefully. Because always the wishes can come true.”

“Seventeenth century? London, to see Shakespeare?”

“Or maybe Antwerp, to see Rubens?

Both thought about it, as if it was a serious choice that would have consequences.

“Or maybe…Paris in the twenties?”

“Faster to get there.”

“Hemingway, Joyce, Fitzgerald…”

“Dali, Diaghilev, Stravinsky…”

“Or…or…”

“Yes?”

“Look at this,” said Cal, gesturing toward Fifth Avenue stretching ahead of them. There were lights everywhere; above them towering, left, right, cars racing by.

“Maybe we just stay here, Grisha. I suggest we just stay right here, and now. This century, this place. Because it won’t get any better than this.”

“You know something? You are right.”

“You know something else?”

“What something else? Tell me.”

“This is our time, Grisha. Our place. And one day, maybe some young artist and some young writer they will think, ‘How wonderful it was, New York, when Grisha Yermiloff and Cal Zander were here with their Hors d’Age.”

Alcohol filled one with confidence.

“Everything else disappears, Cal. But there will always be the here and now. God gives to everyone their own here and now.”

As they rolled past Fifty-fifth Street, Grisha glimpsed the elegant St. Regis Hotel to their left.

“Look, Cal, it’s where Dali stayed every winter.”

As a boy in the then-still Soviet Union, rare glimpses of Dali had shown the young Grisha a view of the West so different than the one the Communists painted. A West full of fantasy, beauty, sex, and a tradition of invention. Those last two not in conflict, but inseparable. A tradition of invention.

“This century has destroyed tradition, Cal. Invention without tradition is the great profanation. But Dali, he used the tradition to move us forward. It’s like the difference between the real woman and its doll. He kept the woman, while the others they played with the doll.”

“And he lived like he painted, yes, Grisha? Beautifully?”

“Absolutely! For him, was no difference. He said always, ‘Life, it is the greatest art.’ In the fall he would go to Paris, then here to New York, and in the spring back to Cadaqués.”

“Cadaqués?”

“You know it?”

“No.”

“Oh, Cal, you must know it. You will enjoy it so much.”

And then Grisha told him…about Portlligat and the fishing boats and the nets along the beach. And about the whitewashed walls of the village, with its stone-paved alleyways and great rocks sticking through every this and that. Cal had spent nine months once living in a fishing village in the south of Spain, but he had never heard of Cadaqués up north in Catalonia near the French border.

“God and man built Cadaqués together, Cal. They did not fight each other to do it. They did not destroy the rocks to build. They built around them. And with them. Together, man and God together.”

As he said it they were rolling past Saint Patrick’s cathedral on their left.

“And everyone was there, Cal! You can’t believe it! Dali, Buñuel, everyone. Even Walt Disney, he was there later. Yul Brynner. George Harrison. Everyone was there.”

Now they were passing the carcass of the Charles Scribner and Sons bookshop. Cal pointed to it, that one-time literary lion’s den that recently had become a United Colors of Benetton shop.

“Dali led you to Spain, Grisha. The first time I went to Spain was because of Hemingway. And now look!”

He explained how the publisher Charles Scribner had sold the building, and though it still looked the same on the outside it was something very different on the inside.

“Hemingway, Fitzgerald, now multi-colored underwear. Bastards.”

“It is the story of this century, Cal. The selling of the soul. This is why we survive on the memories. More important, it’s why we must make the new memories. A new Renaissance.”

Up again with the bottle.

“What do you think, Cal? What will be after the clothing store? Because for sure it will not survive.”

“Who knows? Maybe…a circumcision shop?”

“Hmm, interesting idea.”

“Can you picture it? ‘Christmas specials, fifty percent off!’”

“Maybe to word it differently.”

They both exploded in laughter. And then they couldn’t stop laughing.

“Maybe not Christmas specials, Cal. Maybe Hanukkah specials.”

“No, Grisha, this is America. Here, we all love to get the ends of our penises cut off.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely. It’s very popular. We can’t do it fast enough.”

“Interesting.”

“I can see it now, mothers lined up around the block with their babies in their arms. Jews, Muslims, other Americans, all coming together. It could be the beginning of the new age.”

“The age of circumcision?”

“Why not? Less painful than some other ages.”

At Thirty-fourth Street John brought the horse and carriage to a stop. Cal tried to pay for it but Grisha insisted.

“It’s your birthday.”

“No it’s not, it’s after midnight.”

“It’s your birthday until the sun comes up.”

“I never heard that rule.”

“It’s famous. Everyone knows it. It’s the second most important birthday rule, Cal.”

“What’s the first rule?”

“You have to be happy, like the song says.”

Grisha paid John and gave him a fifty-dollar tip. As he was doing it the horse shit on the street.

“Oh, John,” said Grisha, impressed, “she functionizes very good. What is the name of the horse?”

“Chanel Number Five.”

“Nice name.”

Cal and Grisha stood waving as the carriage pulled away.

“Good-bye, John!”

“Good-bye, Chanel Number Five!”

The Empire State Building was across the street. Cal and Grisha stumbled past it. They made it five blocks down Fifth Avenue, then veered left on Twenty-ninth Street. In a minute they were through the black iron gate and inside the garden of The Little Church Around the Corner.

The rector and his wife were friends of Cal’s father. A few summers before Cal had housesit the rectory for them. When they returned he had arranged to stay on, renting the top floor. For some months now Grisha had been staying with him. Grisha’s wife had stayed behind in Berlin where they lived, and the two guys had turned that upper floor of the rectory into a kind of neo-gothic La Bohéme. Surrounded by Grisha’s paintings and Cal’s books, they would throw not-very-church-like-parties up there. Artists and writer friends, actors, candles everywhere, Led Zeppelin or Paco de Lucia wailing through the speakers, a little wine, a little vodka…

Still standing outside the rectory door, keys in hand, they were laughing so hard. Suddenly Grisha stopped laughing and became serious.

“Cal, one day we drink a brandy in Cadaqués, yes?”

They shook hands, promising to do it.

The following summer, Cal, Grisha, and Grisha’s wife Elsa had spent a magical month in Cadaqués. And now one year later Cal was already heading back for a second visit.

Chapter IV

The bus was starting down the mountain through the Parafita pass. Looking across the aisle and out the window to his left, Cal could see the little fishing village of El Port de la Selva on the edge of the sea below. The border with France was just twenty kilometers beyond that.

They kept moving, and a few minutes and few curves later there it was, the first glimpse of Cadaqués ahead in the distance. Still about a thousand olive trees away, beside the deep blue of the sea and beneath the blue of the sky, was a line of low white buildings. Small cubes stacked next to each other. From here the village looked like something organic, not imposed on the landscape like so many other towns along the coast, but as if it had grown there, a bed of white quartz crystals with people living among them.

The biggest building was the church, Santa Maria, with its bell tower. Color of milk. Beyond it lay the little bay where white dots that were boats seemed to stretch the village out into the water. At the entrance of the bay the tiny island of Es Cucurucuc, a gray triangle-shaped rock, looked like a dolphin’s fin rising out of the sea. Like all islands it was a mountaintop really, the tip of the last of the Pyrenees that could still be seen by man. The rest of the range descended under the water, a world of starfish, sea urchins, dolphins and every-colored fish that in their way were as much a part of the village as the rest of it. People also belong to the animal kingdom. Many forget or deny it. In Cadaqués they remember, some accept it, some even embrace it.

The bus kept moving. More curves in the road, and for a few moments the village disappeared again. When it reappeared they were almost in it. Something to celebrate. Cal finished what was left of his wine.

Chapter V

The bus stopped on the westward edge of the village. Close by was a copy of Bertholdi’s Statue of Liberty, with two arms aloft hoisting two flames, as if promising twice as much liberty here as greets the visitor to New York.

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

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Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

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Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!