Cabo de Gata by Eugen Ruge

Author:Eugen Ruge [Ruge, Eugen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-55597-952-2
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Published: 2016-11-08T05:00:00+00:00

4

I may have spent two weeks, no more but not much less, writing opening sentences in the morning on pages that I tore out in the afternoon; anyway, this went on so long that, as I still remember, I had used all the paper in my blue ring-bound exercise book and had just begun writing in the green one when the Englishman arrived.

I remember the backfiring noise of the huge motorbike, gleaming with chrome, that was coming toward me from the other end of the beach promenade. A figure clad in black leather dismounted, his head in a motorbike helmet like an astronaut’s, beneath which a run-of-the-mill, almost childlike face came into view, indeed what might be described as the face from a casting call, and the young man whose face it was asked me where you could spend the night here.

I remember being rather put out when the man—I’ve forgotten his name—sat down on the bench beside me without more ado and, although it was obvious I was busy with something else, began telling me, unasked, where he had come from (I think it was Granada) and where he planned to go next (I think it was Malaga); however, I asked politely where his home was and was surprised to hear him say England. I had immediately assumed he was American because of his crass behavior (or perhaps because he reminded me of the film Easy Rider).

I remember that we ate together. The big-bottomed young woman served us, but oddly enough her manner was less chilly than usual when the Englishman joined me at my table. He actually managed to get her to speak, although his Spanish was even worse than mine. And when she turned away from us, her pumpkin-like buttocks wobbling, the Englishman rolled his eyes and made a barely audible sound, clicking his rolled-up tongue a couple of times suggestively, putting me off yet making me wonder whether that incredibly fat but taut, jutting bottom, always presented in skintight and often bright red pants by the woman, who otherwise was not unattractive nor even fat—making me wonder, as I say, whether that rear end might hold any erotic attraction for me, in defiance of my more northern ideas of the physical ideal.

I remember that after lunch the Englishman was bent on going to look at the flamingos. I remember the large camera with which, constantly pressing the shutter release, he approached the banks of the flamingos’ lake. I remember my annoyance at the way he ignored all the notices forbidding tourists to do this or that, put up to protect the birds. But I also remember that to my surprise—for I hadn’t known they could fly—the birds stalking along the bank suddenly rose into the air in a beautiful pink formation.

After that we played billiards. Although the Englishman had only just arrived he knew that in the center of Cabo de Gata, right beside the palm-fringed square, there was a bar with a billiards table. It

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