SanFermin 1

By Jesse Graham

They come to run, to remind themselves they are alive, to exorcize the demons of the past twelve months, to show off, get laid, get drunk, play pranks, join the dance....
Each July where the old pilgrim road to Santiago descends from the Pyrenees, the Navarran town of Pamplona explodes into a nine-day fiesta unlike any other on earth. Yearly, hordes of unlikely characters from all corners of the globe dream of their rendezvous with San Fermin and its rite of encierro: eight mornings of running the fighting bulls of Spain.
A saga of great energy, color and sweep, SanFermin 1 (the first of a trilogy) sets the legendary fiesta made famous by Hemingway at the heart of a vast canvas ranging over world events across forty years and many countries. Through the eyes of a Tolstoyan cast of oilmen, philosophers, spies, lawyers, veterans, artists, reporters, flyboys, aid workers, backpackers and millionaires, the reader is drawn into an exhilarating and unpredictable world of quixotic personalities, mavericks and cockeyed oddballs from everywhere, all the lost boys of summer and their ladies chasing the mortal dream of passion, danger and fiesta – that heady drug unique to Spain.
This novel is their story. An epic of intertwined fortunes, friendships, romances and rivalries stretching over continents and generations from Nam to 9/11 and beyond. 1001 days and nights of tales, sacred and profane, woven into the tapestry of a place where people waltz with giants, race in company with primeval beasts and hunt the elusive spoor of Hemingway’s ghost and all the others who danced in these eternal streets.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jesse Graham
• Release date: Feb 18, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301741229

Jesse Graham

Jesse Graham was born and raised in the Far East. He has been variously an oil rig roughneck offshore, a stagehand in London, a tour/travel guide in the Western United States, a film maker and screenwriter (details on IMDb.com) and a bull runner (retired).

Book preview

SANFERMIN 1

by Jesse Graham

There are more days than luck (Gracian)

All writers are liars. Writers of fiction are merely self-avowed liars.

Copyright JK Graham 2012. Smashwords Edition.

Cover by Miren Loinaz. Glyph design by Felix Igartua.

Production help by Sushuma. Editorial work by Lucy Ridout

CHAPTER ONE: many ways, winding roads.

In the blind wound of dawn

They are waiting,

They are waiting…

(Old song of the encierro)

The first time? ’71. Harry. Harry was mi patrón. (Tib)

*****

First time? God, not sure I want to remember. ’68. (Kit)

*****

First time? 1974. I was with this guy from Boston. (Sally)

*****

The black puppy was whimpering in its eagerness to please. Each time it came near, crawling on its belly, the Chinaman kicked it into the water from where it floundered out again onto the sand, frightened and desperate to belong.

The white motor launch hung in the green water, easing around on the anchor. It was hard to look at the water with the noon glare on it. Mace’s sister had her hands cupped to shield her eyes as she watched the Chinaman on the beach kick at the pup. She turned away.

- They’re such bastards. -

- Not our business – Coleman, her husband, said – Hand this gin tonic to your mother and don’t look in that direction -

- That doesn’t do any good – she said, reaching as he asked – Why can’t somebody do something? -

Mace sat up where he had been lying on the hatch. He looked out over the water to the Chinaman and the dog then looked round blankly at the others as though he wasn’t sure he knew them.

- You want something done, sis? – he said – it’s simple -

He rolled, stretching to the bulkhead, unclipped the shark rifle from its sheepskin scabbard. He flicked the safety and sighted easily towards the beach.

- Goddamnit – his brother-in-law said – We know that you’re there, you don’t have to remind us. I thought you’d want to forget all that on an R&R -

- Tib! -

There was a flat report. And Mace’s mother and sister screamed together. Tib Mace could see the red from the now still dog spattering the Chinaman’s bare legs. He grinned across the distance at the terrified face. Then he turned to meet the stares of his frozen kin.

*****

He had ridden all night from a truck stop near the Belgian border. He was weary of hitching. The trucker had left him short of Munich in the pre-dawn by some dark gates bulking back off the road. Kit had stood with his thumb out. But for the first time in all his travelling across Germany no car would stop to pick him up.

Two hundred yards down the road a couple of other hikers were standing. One waved at him. Kit turned. In the gathering light he saw he was standing outside the gates of Dachau.

He walked down the road towards the others. They watched him as he came up. Two young American Jews in lumberjack check shirts, jeans and yarmulkas.

Tough to get a ride from there, the taller one said. He said it neutrally. We didn’t think anyone’d stop for you. That’s why we waved. Probably be better if we move further down the road.

The three of them started to walk along the verge. It was still only half light. They were brothers, seeing Europe for the summer. The younger stockier brother said they’d been in France before Germany. Kit said he’d come from England.

We were in London, the older brother said. Nice town. We’re aiming for Vienna and then as much of Italy as we can.

You been anywhere else? Kit asked.

Berlin. That’s a nutso set-up. The Wall is just bizarre, the younger brother said. How they can keep it going. Trains running through sealed stations and all. Seriously crazy.

No weirder than us holding onto a chunk of Cuba all through the Bay of Pigs and the missile crisis. The older brother turned to Kit. You guys, you’ve even got a couple.

We’re giving one back, Kit said. In about thirty years.

That’d be Hong Kong, right?

Right. He avoided voicing the name. It still had power to jab. He looked up. The sky was showing a tinge of blue.

The younger brother halted, turning to watch a couple of cars pass briskly by without slowing.

What time they open these beer halls in Munich, you think? he said. I’ve got visions of a big blonde pigtail Valkyrie coming in my direction with a dozen steins in each hand and love on her mind.

The older brother laughed shortly. I wouldn’t be so eager, he said. Half the foam on top would probably be her spit.

He looked to Kit again. I wouldn’t want you to think this trip hasn’t been a blast. It’s just not enough time to see everything that’s out there. We’re on the clock.

The younger one said, Any other year we’d stay through September. But we need to be in Chicago end of the month.

What’s in Chicago? Kit asked.

Democratic Convention, the elder brother said. Come August, Europe’s going to be thin on Yankee dollars. Most Americans over here under twenty-five plan on getting back.

A small green sedan drew up. The driver leaned over, indicated one with his finger. The brothers nodded Kit to take it. As the car pulled away, he raised his hand in salute. The taller brother waved back. The younger one was already looking down the road for the next car.

It took three rides before he got to Salzburg in the humid afternoon. The town was packed for a music festival. There were no rooms anywhere. The bag straps rubbed his shoulder blades, sticky with sweat, as he trudged into the forecourt of the youth hostel that seemed his last chance of a bed.

One glance told him he was too late. Already they were turning people away. The early arrivals were filing in, bent on showers and shedding their packs. Others stood around at a loss. He didn’t bother to go up to the clerk at the window. There was a stone bench against the wall. No one was sitting there except a lean blonde youth in shorts with a close-crop haircut, a jawline beard and an angry scar over his right eye. Kit nodded to him, slipped off his pack and sat down.

He fished out his L & M’s, held them out. The young man ducked his head and took one. They lit up. Kit leaned back, watched the milling of the modern vagabonds in the courtyard.

Like Middle Ages, ja? the other said. Pilgrims looking for shelter in monasteries. His English was good if stiff. Kit looked at him, surprised at the echo of his thought.

The young man held out his hand. Hans. I come from Graz. His handshake was a formal tug. And you?

Kit. I’m Irish.

Your accent is not Irish.

I live in England. Kit waved his hand at the crowd. You don’t seem too bothered about finding a bed.

The Austrian shrugged. I just finish my national service. They make you sleep in the snow. I find a bed to sleep, it’s no problem.

Kit hesitated. Any chance of another?

Hans nodded. But better we go now. It’s a walk yet.

Minutes later they were threading the streets aiming for the bridge across the river. Hans talked as he strode.

You know anything of the pilgrims?

Not much. They went to Jerusalem during the Crusades.

Those – they were called palmers, Hans said. Those that went to Rome were called romeros. But only the pilgrims walk to Santiago. That is the great pilgrimage – the road to Santiago in Spain. Are you a Catholic?

Altar boy at school, Kit said. I stopped about when they changed from doing the Mass in Latin.

In three years it is a Holy Year in the Church. I plan to walk to Santiago. It will take me two months.

That’s interesting, Kit said, thinking that Germans made pronouncements of plans as if they were already a fact. What’s the route you’ll take?

Across the Pyrenees then all the way west to Galicia.

Hans fell silent. They walked on. Kit amused himself by counting how many things in the shop windows had the name of Mozart attached. Cake. Chocolate. Ice cream. Guitars. Maybe you could buy a Mozartburger. Looking back later, he always marveled at how, unknowingly, in this exchange he had struck the turning point of his life.

They walked another half hour. It was dusk and they were out of the town proper. In the twilight before them loomed a schloss. Scattered lights showed in the vast stone facade. Hans pointed to it and they turned into the grounds.

Kit stared up, impressed. Friends of yours?

Hans shrugged. No. I do not know who is living here.

He veered to the lawn, avoiding the crunch of gravel in the drive. Kit followed, silent. The Austrian seemed to know what he was doing. He strode down a path by the side of the mansion as casually as if he were the son of the house.

A classical portico made up the face of the schloss on the far side. In the quick falling dark Kit saw it fronted onto a lake. A gravel path sloped down to a fountain and the lake shore. Hans indicated two wooden benches in the portico. He was already unrolling his sleeping bag.

Good enough, yes? If it rains, we will not be wet.

It was not what he expected. But it was good enough. He was amused by Han’s cool invasion of the castle. He laid out his own roll on the other bench. Hans was unpacking bread and salami. Kit dug into his bag to pull out a bottle of red wine. Hans nodded as he briskly set out a camping stove and mess tins. His army training showed in each move. He lit a candle in a jelly glass, set it on the balustrade. The air was still; the flame did not waver. Kit found plastic cups and uncorked the wine as Hans set to heating and stirring a can of lentil soup.

They sat on the steps to eat. The Austrian raised his cup to toast. He took a swallow and grunted approval.

So what do you do here in Austria?

A friend left a car in a garage here, Kit said. Detler was a friend, surely. I’m supposed to meet him with it in ten days in Amsterdam. Till then the car’s mine. I was going to drive around. Maybe Italy. I haven’t decided.

You have no plans?

Kit chewed on his bread before replying. No, he said.

Hans started spooning soup. They finished up without further talk and Hans went down to the fountain, ghostly now in the dark, to wash out the mess tins. Kit lit a cigarette, leaned his elbows back on the step, stared up at the night, imagining himself falling upward into the black.

A quarter hour later, lying in his bag, he listened to Hans snoring lightly and his mind turned back; two days – the ferry docking at Ostend, hitching on to Brussels, telling himself to press on, but knowing that he wouldn’t resist.

It had been easy to find the place. It was just a cafe with a rock poster or two in the windows and a bulletin board for the students it catered to. A couple of tables on the sidewalk. He walked across and sat down at one of the tables and ordered a coffee and stirred it with his spoon and stared in through the windows. But he did not go inside.

At the next table an American with a mustache and a jean jacket fingered a guitar, singing a Jim Kweskin song, Moving Day. He sang in a mournful practiced voice for himself. Then he played a song about Australia. Kit sat, listening.

I remember the stockman told me

Boy, you won’t catch no rain

When you ride across the Nullarbor

On the midnight train

The American had nodded to him as he got up and left.

He did not wake in the night. It was already light when he tried to open his eyes. At first his eyelids would not separate. He fumbled a hand-up out of the bag. The skin round his eyes was gummy, sore to the touch. He wiped harder. Matter came away on his fingertips.

His eyes strained open. It was congealed blood. He stared at it, stupid still with sleep. Then the rest of his body began to report. His whole face was puffy and tender to the touch. His fingers rubbed dried blood away. Still sleep dazed, he unzipped the bag and looked down. Swollen pink welts covered his skin. There were bites between his toes and bites on his scalp under the hair. As he touched them, each came awake as if on fire. This, surely this should happen only in the tropics. Here in the heart of Europe – he felt disbelief. He reared upright, winced with the movement.

Hans was still asleep. Kit slid on his jeans, clammy with dew. He rolled his feet to the ground. The flagstones were cold. He hobbled bare foot down the steps and along the gravel. At the fountain he dabbed water slowly on his face and neck and torso. Each movement hurt.

It was then the flash came. I have been here before.

He stopped, hands cupped over the fountain. Between the fog of sleep in his head and trying to reckon what his body had taken, he had not once glanced at his surroundings. And it had been too dark the night before, near moonless, to see clearly. Déjà vu, he decided, and bent and rubbed his face with cold water, expecting the sensation to pass.

It did not fade. A new thought came – sharp, certain.

If I look left, I’ll see a round summerhouse under the trees.

Maybe blood loss had made him light headed. He turned.

There was the summerhouse – sixty or seventy yards off, exactly, scarily mirroring the picture in his mind.

He closed his eyes. He breathed slowly. I have never been in Austria in my life. I will now look directly at the lake – and I will not recognize that. He raised his head and opened his eyes. He knew the lake. It too was familiar.

Kit squeezed his eyes shut, clutched the stone basin. Giddy. Absurd, terrifying, the idea of reincarnation rose. He thrust it away. Unprepared to accept the notion. Whatever the sensation was, he wanted it gone. He took a few breaths. Okay, he mouthed to himself, we’ll settle this thing. We didn’t see the schloss clearly in the dark last night. Do you know what it really looks like from this side?

The image was instant in his mind.

We’re going to turn around, he told himself, and see if it matches. Do it now. He turned. And it matched.

He was leaning on the fountain basin, face close to the water, staring at the grain of the stone as Hans came up.

Guten morgen. Hans was brisk, all awake. He splashed water on himself, shook his head and dropped to the ground. He started doing press ups. You have some bad bites there.

Kit risked a glance at him grunting out his exercises. The arms pumping like metronomes. The chest rising, sinking. Not a mark on his lean frame. The scar above his eye was a red pirate’s weal.

You didn’t get bitten.

Nein. Hans sprang up. He began lathering his face with soap. He waved his razor. What do you think of the schloss? It is a fine building, ja?

He was going to have to say something. It was mounting up inside him. A gabble waited on his tongue. He opened his mouth. But then Hans with perfect timing saved him.

Of course, he said, scraping carefully at his face, "you know – that this is where they film The Sound of Music".

Kit stared blankly at him – a long moment.

Then the relief flooded over him. He forgot the bites, the near ludicrous rocking of his universe as he saw, and started to laugh. Julie Andrews… Jesus Christ. He doubled, whooping as Hans stared at him in mild alarm.

You are okay, ja?

Kit managed to nod. He was sucking for breath.

It is good to laugh, Hans said with a shade of doubt.

Kit straightened. I’m fine, he said, and I’ll tell you something. I think I do have a plan now.

A plan? That is good.

A hot shower. Treat these bites. Breakfast. I’m buying. And then I’m going to go pick up that car and drive to Spain.

Spain? You go to Spain? Hans was trying to see the logic.

What you said last night. The pilgrim road to Santiago. I think I’m going to drive it. I’m going to Santiago.

He turned and gazed again at the so suddenly altered summerhouse.

*****

[Sally] Apart from a spring break trip in college to Mexico, it was my first time out of the country. I mean – Europe and Spain, they were the New World to me. Sally’s from Kansas. For real. Wichita. But I got out fast as I could and headed for New York. The Big Manzana pour moi. I was sharing down in the East Village and working in a midtown bookstore. This guy would come in. Barry. I don’t remember his last name now. That’s awful. He had a thing for me. I ducked it. I mean, he was okay. But there was no reason to get into anything.

One day in June he rings me up at the bookshop. We weren’t supposed to get personal calls there. The owner, old Gene was glaring at me. But it didn’t matter. Barry knew this travel broker, he’s telling me, and he could score two really cheap return tickets to Europe. He was planning to fly to Spain, go to Pamplona, the fiesta where they ran the bulls. Did I want to come along? I didn’t even have a passport. I did three things. I said yes; I hung up; I handed in my notice. Just like that.

*****

CMB really stood for Combat Medic Badge. But everybody used it to stand for Combat Marijuana Burns. The dope came ten to a pack – a deck of J’s. Long loose roll-ups with always a lot of seeds. To settle it down, tighten it, you’d have to shake it like a sugar sachet.

So you’re sitting in a dugout made of damp sandbags, bare chest and sweating and you light up one of those J’s and the damn seeds start popping and burning your chest and you’d be jumping up and slapping them out and cursing like a motherfucker. Combat Marijuana Burns. Hell, there was talk of putting in for Purple Hearts, except Mace figured those wounds sort of counted as self-inflicted.

*****

Eee-roon-yah, the old Basque said.

He repeated it, chuckling together with another old man sitting on the bench beside him. The cracked stumps of their teeth showed as they laughed, sitting in their black berets, hands propped on their canes.

The other old man pointed his stick down the road and smiled gummily. Iruña, he said. Kit smiled, nodded as he eased the Peugeot out, wondered what amused them.

The road wound down in slow spiraling arcs through the mountain passes, sinking through foothills. These were the Pyrenees. Green with pasture; gold with grain. White limestone outcrops. A blanched yellow in stubble fields where the haycocks stood in heaped mounds, tall stakes driven down through their hearts to anchor them. Beech trees rode away up the far slopes.

It was pretty country. But he did not take in much. His thoughts were of getting a map and maybe a guidebook to this old pilgrim road. Thinking of pilgrims led to expiation – and so to Annie. He was tired of trying not to think about her.

*****

[Sally] It was another country. The faces were different, the smells, the look of the buildings and streets. In the Madrid airport, they had bars and people were drinking coffee from espresso machines. They were standing at the bar with their cafes and smoking these strong black tobacco cigarettes and laughing and talking with each other. And they could all use a good American dentist. It was all just great. Barry kept getting impatient with me because I kept stopping and taking it all in with this dopey grin on my face.

We took the bus north. People were singing on the bus as we left Madrid. Barry fell asleep. That still felt like a tricky situation. I guessed I was going to have sleep with him. He’d get sulky otherwise and think I was some kind of cock teaser. But it wasn’t as though he was paying for me. We’d agreed to go Dutch. I’d paid for my own fare, even if he had arranged it. But the way he acted, you’d think he was paying for everything. It just felt awkward. Okay, I wouldn’t have been here if it wasn’t for him. I knew I knew nothing about travel abroad but I felt I’d figure it out. I was glad he was snoring, switched off, head against the window.

A woman across the aisle spoke some English. When I told her we were going to Pamplona, she smiled and told me Pamplona was on the Camino de Santiago, the pilgrim road. And people were coming from all over Spain and the rest of Europe and the world to be there for the Fiesta de San Fermin. It seemed to her that the modern peregrinos now made their journey to San Fermin and not to Santiago.

Antes Santiago – Ahora San Fermin, now San Fermin she said and laughed.

*****

Tumbling into the gully, pitching almost on top of the crouched figure below, he thought it was their Kit Carson. But then he saw it was an NVA. They shot each other at the same moment. Everything started to go in and out.

The round had gone into his chest. Very rapidly it was becoming harder and harder to breathe. He knew what was happening. The fluid was trapped in the pleural sac; since blood pressure was greater than lung pressure, with every exhalation, his lungs were being squeezed, were shrinking in volume, losing the war. He was going to suffocate to death and it hurt worse than anything ever in his life.

Then there was the noise from above and all around. The shrubbery getting shredded, the air getting gusted as the pilot broke all the rules and flew his dustoff into the hot LZ. A corpsman was on top of Mace He felt the blade saw across between his ribs and the tube being forced in. And the bloody pour came out in a gush. And the want to die pain went away. He was being lifted aboard. People screaming all around him and cursing in their fright.

As they rose up, clattering, thrashing branches, the corpsman shouted at him-

- Touch and go, my pilot says. Motherfucker, that was no touch’n go. You got your ticket out. I got to come back and do this shit all over again -

But he was grinning at Mace as he said it. Death was a personal competition. And the corpsman had just won another round.

*****

Kit had met Detler one night at the Arts Lab in London. Hendrix and Bach were playing simultaneously through the speakers, while a slide show of colored amoeba-like shapes projected over silent NASA footage. They agreed the marriage of harpsichords and electric guitar feedback was oddly seamless. They agreed the light show was nothing. They got onto the subject of phenomenology and became pleased with each other for the coincidence of their tastes.

Detler did not volunteer much about himself. He was Dutch, in his late twenties, with a neat mustache and chin beard. He spoke English fluently with only a slight accent. He imported antiques from the Near and Mid East.

One night in the kitchen of somebody’s party in St. Johns Wood, Detler passed the joint to Kit and said that he was in fact a smuggler of antiques and art, that there was money to be made and that Kit might consider coming along on a trip to see for himself. The only necessity was that he should have a valid driving license.

Why, Kit asked, did Detler think of him as being qualified.

Because, Detler said, taking the joint again, Kit had the right philosophical temperament. He was an Anti-Platonist.

If I need a change, Kit said, I’ll let you know.

Think about it, Detler said. No hurry.

Neither spoke of it again. But Kit felt flattered, now feeling he was friends with an authentic elegant outlaw.

*****

The sign said AOIZ. He was entering a small village. How do you pronounce that, he said aloud.

It was too small to get lost in. One main street that doglegged between grey stone walls and whitewashed houses with iron balconies and red tiled roofs. Old women in black bombazine sack dresses. He waited for one to cross the road before him. She hesitated. He waved her on. Suspicious, head down, she scuttled across. Then she turned and smiled.

He was back on the main road. Hungry. He had only had a croissant and coffee for breakfast and it had been in France. The first big town, he thought. Iruña or whatever the old man called it. I’ll get some lunch there. He wasn’t bothering to scan the signs. There seemed to be only one road to take.

*****

Kit met Annie over dinner at a common friend’s house. She seemed more vivid than other people. Bright and alive in her eyes. A pure red-head in temperament. The quickness in her face made others around her, especially men, seem sluggish.

Everything was casual. It was late sixties London after all. People were around constantly. A joint passing. Music playing. She was a careless, efficient cook. Stories were entered on mid stream, thrown off and punctuated by bursts of infectious laughter. She had lived with a rock musician, a border Scot with a soulful voice and genuine reputation among other musicians. There had been bouts of luxury, limos and hotel suites, chaotic junkets whirling to odd corners of the globe. Bali. Morocco. Katmandu. The Greek Isles. Tales of near busts and outrageous incidents.

Things were always getting out of hand. Managers had mishandled accounts. Record company advances dried up. In the end the band had crashed and burned. As had the relationship. It was not Annie who left. She had a fierce code, took loyalty for granted. When things had turned tight, she had shoplifted to feed them, been caught and done thirty days in Holloway, the women’s prison. When she came out, the musician was gone. It was not in him to wait for anyone.

These and a clutch of other tales came out in shards and fragments usually with an appreciative audience ready to roar as Annie described the humiliations of life in prison.

So there’s some dyke patting up my bum, she’d say mock indignant, and when you’re spread-eagled split arse across a table with the curse… She would be drowned in laughter before she could continue.

She was as direct as a small child. She spoke about the green light under the trees on a picnic. She liked, she didn’t like – felt emotions without filters and voiced them, clear eyed. Kit wanted her badly.

They had little in common. She was older. Much older in experience. He lacked the easy street sense she and her friends wore like a birthright. He was a bright uncomfortable boy, living in his head, stiff from the long sentences of boarding school and university. None of his pieces fit.

When it happened, they had been to dinner in a Greek restaurant and caught a pub band at the Greyhound on the Fulham Road. No sooner had they come back to her flat when a dealer friend of hers dropped by with an ounce of grass. Such business was never hurried; it had the formal slowness of Mideastern hospitality. Kit set himself to outlasting the dealer. They sat on cushions on the floor as the cats prowled around and over them. A joint had to be rolled and passed for sampling. Coffee had to be made. Records sifted through. Each track played prompting an automatic Oh wait, this one you’ve got to hear, Unbelievable bass line.

The dealer was enjoying himself, in no hurry to go. He started rolling a new joint. Kit, unable to bear it, groaned aloud Oh no, not another. He rose to his feet, giving up. The dealer looked at him, startled, unaware of any agenda. Then Annie gave the first indication she understood.

Don’t go, she said. I don’t want you to go. It’s not too late. Kit sat happily down again.

Half an hour later, the dealer left. Annie saw him to the door. Kit stood up. Annie grinned and crossed to him.

Shall we go to bed then?

Please, Kit said. And she laughed at the look on his face. But she kissed him as solemnly as a little girl.

In bed he brushed her thick pubic moss, marveling at its springiness, buried his nose in her neck and inhaled her. He didn’t last long. She didn’t seem to mind, patted him matter-of-factly. The next time was better; he triggered sudden shudders from her.

They were a pair that autumn and winter. She tried to ruffle him up. She did not want seriousness in her bed or in her life. She was often impatient. Her moods shifted.

Relax. Stop thinking through stuff so much, she said. She told him he didn’t pay enough attention. Wounded, he defended his powers of observation. It was not what she meant.

Honestly, were you ever a kid? You don’t play. You need silly therapy. You live under glass.

There were times he could surprise her and himself. Once on the carpeted corridor between the bedroom and the living room. With the cats yowling around them, pressing his feet against the skirting, they had heaved and thrust down the length of the passageway. Raw, he understood. She was dreamy with him the rest of the day, cuddling up in the cinema, draping herself on his shoulder at the restaurant with friends, nibbling alternately at his ear and her salad.

He could not really believe it when she said it was over. She refused to analyze it. There was no one else. Something didn’t work for her any more. There were no scenes. She would not let that happen. It wasn’t that she was going to stop seeing him. It was just over, that was all.

The next few months they met at parties, saw each other at the houses of friends. Once she dropped by his bedsit in the afternoon, stayed for half an hour and made tea.

It was the week before Easter when she rang.

It’s Helene, she said. Helene was a Belgian girl whom Kit had met a few times and not paid much attention to. She was mousy and shy and Annie had adopted her, taken her in hand like a glamorous older sister.

She wants us to go over to Brussels for Easter, Annie said. I don’t know. She’s been wanting to show me the place. And I’ve never been. So we’re going to take the ferry.

Sounds fun, Kit said. Happy, listening to the bright voice.

So we’re having a girl’s weekend getting pissed on – what beer do they drink in Belgium?

Stella Artois.

That sounds right. Anyway, I wondered – says she in a wheedling pretty please voice – if you could be a doll, an angel, a pet and sleep over while we’re gone and look after the cats. So long as somebody’s there at night with them.

Sure, Kit said. He felt unreasonably happy.

It’s a lot to ask.

I’ll clear the calendar.

I’ll drop over the keys and leave you feeding instructions. You’re a love.

When he came home on the Saturday afternoon, the keys were in his letter box, in a folded sheet of instructions.

The flat had changed since last he’d been there. New paint. The bed moved by the window. A new white counterpane. He breathed in the scent of her. The cats followed him. The fat calico, the small smoky Siamese, underfoot, rubbing him.

Kit went into the kitchen and fed them. He poured himself a whiskey and water and sat down in an armchair. A pile of photo albums and scrapbooks lay under the coffee table. He picked one up and leafed through it.

There were scraps of verse and drawings pasted in among the photos. On one page was a large red folded paper heart. Letters above it warned – DO NOT OPEN. He peeled back the folds. Across the white inner heart a cracked red line zigzagged through the words – now you’ve broken my heart.

It took him a long time to get to sleep with the scent of her there. He drifted off, hugging the pillow, contending with the cats for his space.

Easter Sunday – the sun flooded the bedroom. He lay listening to the bells peal in the distance.

He went out to get the papers from the corner shop. He made pancakes and coffee and sat in the breakfast nook. The phone rang. He knew it was her.

She was in a phone booth. How are the cats treating you?

Making my life a misery.

Like their owner?

Only when she isn’t there.

There was a pause. Then, Funny. I miss you too.

You do? He tried to keep his voice reined in.

Don’t press. How she said it. The door was open again.

He shifted to lighter ground. How’s the pissing boy?

Small, darling, small. But a very forceful jet. Watching it reminded Helene of a good story. Want to hear it?

I’m all ears.

It seems there was this French honeymoon couple staring at the statue. And the bride gets an idea. She announces that she and the groom should have a pissing contest to see who’ll rule the roost. Points for distance and accuracy. Naturally the groom is delighted. So after sinking a few bières to prime the pump, they find a secluded spot where they won’t frighten the horses. The groom unbuttons and hauls out his pride and joy, ready to let go – when the bride stops him. Mais non, mais non, mon beau petit chou chou, she says, Sans les mains! Sans les mains!"

Her laugh came clearly down the line. Sweet, don’t you think? Well, we’re off to have oysters and beer in some colorful market and go gawking. Helene says to say Hi.

Hi back.

Back on Tuesday afternoon. Will I see you?

If you come back jingling Easter bells from head to toe.

Possibly on my slave bracelet, pet.

There was a silence. The sign-off felt delicate.

Tuesday then, Annie said.

Tuesday. I’ll find a dust covered bottle of wine.

He hung up. The cats were alert, looking at him. They sensed their mistress. Maybe they could make out her voice. He put the plate in the sink, put on his jacket, went for a walk in Hyde Park. It was windy. People had kites fluttering in the air. By Speakers Corner he listened to some of the soapbox orators. Most of them were railing on about Vietnam.

He was restless all day, wandered to call on friends, none of whom were in. He rang Detler but there was no reply. He ate in a small near deserted bistro in South Kensington, drank a carafe of red wine on his own, reading a magazine, the prop of the solitary diner. Then he walked back to the flat and the cats calling to be fed.

He was awake some moments before the phone rang. The cats were pacing on the bed, uttering cries, yowling softly, moving back and forth. He groped for it, held it to his ear.

Yes?

Silence – someone sobbing down the line. The cats were possessed now. They prowled around him, loud and restless.

Yes, hello.

More sobbing. Then – It’s Helene. Oh God. Annie’s dead.

*****

[Sally] We were lucky to find a room in town. I saw the woman look at our ring fingers. She didn’t approve but she wasn’t going to say anything. She gave us a key and showed us our room and the bathroom. The place was full of heavy furniture you saw through half open doors. But those two rooms were the only ones we were supposed to use. It could have been worse. We could have been like most of the backpackers worrying where to store their bags, where to find the public baths. I volunteered our room to store bags for a couple of school teachers from Ohio. Lil and Marcie. Barry was mad about my doing that. I was thinking how I would feel in their place.

But he wasn’t going to push too hard. Because, sitting at a sidewalk table in the square, he’d let it slip he was married. Answering some question, he’d said, Oh, yeah, I and my wife used to like skiing there. Then he’d realized what he’d said and shot me a look to see if I’d caught it. Anyway that balanced things out a bit.

We got programs and read that the whole show was going to begin with a rocket fired at noon on July 6th from the town hall. So we went to have a look. They called it the Ayuntamiento. It was an odd building that seemed angled funny with balconies and a big clock and two statues of Hercules with clubs standing guard each corner. And above them were what looked like a couple of lions with crowns and on top of all that an angel cherub blowing a trumpet. This small square in front of the town hall was where it was all going to start.

We walked around and drank in little bars and watched the town slowly getting ready. I saw the men opening post holes in the street and bedding in heavy wooden posts. They told us they were setting up the barricades for the encierro. The running of the bulls.

*****

The Pit was what they called it. The basement ward of Walter Reed where they kept the Vietnam crocks out of view. They were wild in the Pit. They didn’t care about much.

Mace had a friend in the next bed who married a girl from the Main Line. All the Pit were invited to the stag party. It got to weird shit. One guy took off his artificial legs, started into begging out in the street. Another fellow was showing