Unrequited love
The morning has progressed, it’s around noon and the heat is sweltering. Not a drop of rain has fallen in months, shrubbery and trees are covered under a layer of gray dust and the earth is cracked in many places, giving the appearance of a desolate moonscape. The shimmering air is visible in wavy movements, heat emanating from heat.
People have come and gone all morning; local Spaniards and foreigners but also tourists, the ones who didn’t come on a package-deal trip but who rented cars to explore the interior of what is called in travel-brochures La Isla Blanca..
Whitewashed adobe houses dotted throughout the countryside, almond-trees in full bloom in February when fluttering white and soft pink blossoms turn the whole island into a fairytale. White-crested waves turning over on fine white sand beaches, the glistening salt field piles near San Francisco; the magic of the white is in evidence everywhere.
Loes and Wilma, two Dutch girls in their early twenties, heave themselves out of the jeep; sluggish from the heat, rumpled shorts and sweat-patches on T-shirts, hair in strings hanging limp alongside sunburned, drawn faces, dragging their feet into the tienda.
‘Jesus, it’s hot. I’m dying of thirst.’ says Wilma, having come in from the glaring sun outside; she squints to see in the sudden dark.
‘Hector viene con pez hoy, Pilar. ¿Vas a preparar los légumbres?’ squeaks the old woman, turning halfway ‘round on her kitchen chair; getting up laboriously she wobbles inside the store.
‘Es Miercoles, abuela, viene Sabado,’ Pilar answers with a sigh, thinking how the old woman gets everything mixed up, how her mind is deteriorating. The neighbor, a fisherman, always brings fish on Saturdays.
‘Angelina no puede cocinar, es floja, tu lo haces, Pilar.’ The old woman continues in an accusing manner and a sad shadow passes over Pilar’s features upon hearing her mother’s name mentioned. The grandmother regularly mingles past and present; her daughter-in-law, Angelina, sickly all of her life, yet worked to death by the domineering old woman and her son, passed away years ago. Ever since then Pilar has to take the brunt of her grandmother’s, her father’s and her brother’s abuse. These days old José all but ignores her but Jaime’s favorite pursuit seems to be to ridicule Pilar’s status of old maid.
Over the years Pilar has acquired a kind of stoical equilibrium that surrounds her like an impenetrable fortress; none of her selfish, insensitive relatives can’t touch her anymore it appears.
Jaime, with his low forehead and ape-like posture, has never managed to ensnare a woman to become his wife. She could nettle him about it if she wanted to but such behavior is not in Pilar’s nature. She suffers in silence, living out her life in the daily drudgery of keeping the store and the Clabet household going.
She stops her adding to wait on the two young women who just came in.
‘Un Fanta, por favor. What do you want?’
Loes has stopped to examine the postcards on the stand near the store’s cash register.
‘Yeah, me too.’ She calls out without looking up or turning her head.
“We should’ve gone to the beach.’ Wilma wipes her face with a napkin she took off the stack laying on the bar.
‘We have gone to the beach every day. I want to see something too, you know.’ Loes answers in disinterested tone of voice.
‘It’s too hot to drive…and all that sightseeing. Now you still want to go to the old town and you have to climb it because cars can only go so far. We could’ve done this on another day.’
‘Yes? When? It’s blistering hot every day; we’ve been putting it off and we’re leaving the day after tomorrow.’
‘I can live without having seen the old town. We can do it the next time. Never again in August.’
Wilma waves herself air with part of a newspaper that was lying on the bar. Inside the store it is pleasantly cool but Wilma has other problems to heat her up; subcutaneous craving is beginning to wear her down. Having been so close this week, seeing her walking around half naked in their beach apartment, hearing her go on and on about this number and that one she’s spotted in bars and discos. Wilma lets out a heavy sigh.
‘Look, these are real nice. They’re by different artists.’ Loes walks over to her and hands her a couple of postcards. She sits down sideways on a barstool and crosses her legs in such a way that Wilma catches a glimpse of the dark curly hairs of the forbidden fruit through the wide shorts legs.
If I want to do something, it’s got to be today or tomorrow, Wilma muses while looking at the postcards and, realizing she lacks the guts to act upon her naughty fantasies, she sighs again, unaware of the deep wrinkle that has appeared on her forehead between the troubled eyes.
‘Yes, nice, but not particularly specific for this holiday.’ She says listlessly while handing the cards back to Loes who’s sucking Fanta full force through a straw.
Glaring in morose despair, Wilma marvels at the silken beauty of her friend’s skin.
‘I wish you wouldn’t be so moody all the time! What is the matter with you?’
When Loes gets angry Wilma finds her even more attractive. She would like to hold her arms when she’s like that so that she can’t move and then….
‘Look, this one. Who does that look like?’
Loes holds out the postcard of an acryl painting of an old colorful woman with cigarette in long holder between gracious fingers.
Wilma examines the card.
‘That’s Sarah. Sarah from Hoppe Café on the Spui, that nutty old bat. Ha!’ A smile breaks through on Wilma’s face. She turns the card around and reads: ‘Dunya Willeman, Sarah – acryl paint on panel. Yes, it’s her. Well done.’
‘She was such a character; a big mouth with a heart to match.’ Loes remarks while taking back the card from Wilma and studying it some more.
‘She died of a heart-attack, sitting on the Hoppe terrace, did you know?’
But Loes has lost interest already placing the cards back on the stand.
‘Now we’re in the neighborhood of the highest point of the island and we also still have to see that rock, what was it called again? It rises a few hundred meters straight out of the sea. ¿Señora?’ Loes addresses Pilar who is busy mopping the bar counter.
Pilar tells her in ill-treated English that the rock, Es Vedra, is indeed a sight not to be missed, especially magical at puesta del sol.
‘Sunset?’ Loes squints while trying to figure out their itinerary now that the plans have to be changed somewhat.
‘Well, the rock, Es Vedra, and the highest point are on this part of the island so…we should probably go the other way now and see the old town and the archaeological museum and the Cathedral first. Then we can come this way again and…’
‘How about lunch?’ Wilma sounds distinctly crabby but Loes is not affected.
‘Yes, I know, I was just going to say. I know, those guys yesterday told us about this nice Spanish peasant-restaurant along the road, remember? Let’s go!’
Full of new energy and bubbling anticipation Loes jumps off the barstool.
I have got to make her understand somehow, I can’t go on like this, Wilma ponders while following her bouncy friend in less exuberant manner out of the tienda.
~