Falls the Shadow

The Boss has just been over to tell us its time for the spring clean - in exactly one month we will be joined by the big attractions for the annual fair and we need to be able to compete. The helter-skelter, octopus, big-dipper; lotteries, ghost-trains, chair rides, mad, twisting coiling rides full of swirling lights and fears. There will be bumper cars on vast surfaces that will make Antonio's arena seem like the service pool, games with darts, basket-balls, fishing rods, wooden skittles, hot dogs, beer, fried chicken, cheese rolls and popcorn. It is a fantastic spectacle, ten days of whirling machines bathed in multi-coloured light, slapped between great slices of music that each attraction belts out from huge speaker systems. And above everything, serene and majestic, the largest cog of all - La Noria - the big wheel. From there look down upon the scene, less menacing at that distance, on the jumble of lights, across into the park where the large tents are placed in neat rows or out onto the oil painting sea which seems to try and catch the colours in its waving arms. The whole town will come, to dance and spend and push and shout, out-matched only by the moths in their eagerness to feel the heat of the bulbs on their skin.

  For me, though, it's work. Touch up the paintwork, wash the heavy canvas, a total mechanical overhaul, change dud lights, replace broken slots or dodgy joins - a hundred little jobs that tend to be left until this time of year through a mixture of laziness and economy. But it's something I enjoy doing, in theory at least. I'd hate to think that this ride, despite its insignificance, should be left to decline, to rot, to fade away, when with just a little care I can maintain it. By modern engineering standards I suppose its not up to much, but I sometimes wonder about those who first put it together, the men and women who designed and constructed it, and I think I'm glad they did. They may just as well not have done, but they did, and for that to die now through neglect would be to lose something, something that has given fun to thousands of children, and therefore to their parents too. It's simple, I know, and silly, and perhaps wouldn't even be missed at all, but I would feel the loss, and the guilt at having done nothing to avoid it.

  At that point, just before concluding the last thought, almost driving it out completely, the air is perforated by cheap miniaturised electronic music, a mangled, hesitant pasodoble piercing the tight air in loud stabs.

  Over by the park gates a gypsy woman is trying to stop the passers by, who in their turn try hard not to notice her presence. She's holding a cardboard box with a few coins inside, and this she shakes at them like a guilty conscience. But I still can't see where that awful row is coming from, it sounds like one of those organs people play in the shopping precincts, 'Jingle bells' or 'Michelle' plodding out in scale like simplicity. It cuts into your mind and jangles your nerves insistently, at once imposing and insulting, naked notes without rhythm, workaday and banal. It distracts you from your thoughts, from your actions even - Paco's grimacing over in his gallery and I can see the Boss frowning at the gypsy. As suddenly as it started it stops, leaving a silence that hangs for a few seconds in relief before letting the waves back, the birds and the traffic. Then we see it. It is ridiculous, an old pram frame with a loud speaker fixed on to it, a gypsy boy of about fourteen, a modern miniature organ in his hand, and a mess of dangling wires. I watch them wander off, followed by another gypsy boy of about six. They cross the street and disappear into the town. There is another, fainter burst of the same cracked tune, then nothing.

  Having successfully strangled my thought process (it's the lack of continuity that troubles me) I turn to work to avoid facing a familiar feeling that is creeping over me. The stage-coach could do with new seat covers, with new seat covers, with new seat covers, yes the stage-coach could do with new seat covers, all on a summer's day. Not far from the park, past the hotel and a residential block, following the coast, there is a small beach called La Cala del Sol. It's dirty, littered with broken glass and ice cream wrappers, and is used more as a harbour than as a suitable place for sun bathing. The water here is brown and sluggish and drains back slowly over the grimy sand like oil. In the middle of the tiny cove, the Balneario rots away, a tattered reminder of summers past and a splendour long since dead. It's a curious semi-circular building whose two extremes are built into the water itself, raised upon concrete stilts much like an English pier. It must once have been a beautiful sight, and it is easy to imagine hot July days with not a murmur from the palm trees that screen it from the town, elegant men and women taking the sun on the pagoda like balconies, or children playing between the pilings at low tide. A little off shore the gaily painted fishing boats still weave gentle patterns of motion which reflect the lazy undulating serenity of the scene. To this day it retains a derelict charm that makes it a favourite spot for the evening stroll, and of course the sunset, oblivious of man's comings and goings, never fails to impress.

  But it is nonetheless a ruin. At night it is home to poor travellers, drunken sailors, stray dogs, lovers with no better place to go, youths with outlawed vices who find a sense of protection in its decaying darkness, lonely people who come to stare at the sea seeking solace or self-pity. Parties are held here sometimes and occasionally you can hear the sound of guitars and singing as they compete with the smell of piss and shit for control of your senses. Now and again the police turn up, clearly announcing their presence with a slamming of doors and a flashing of lights. Slowly they saunter along the by now empty beach or thrust torches into the rank smelling darkness of the balneario. Very rarely do they stop anyone - possibly a youth sound asleep in his sleeping bag or someone too drunk or indifferent to run off. Arrests are even fewer and confined to drug addicts or knife carriers. Two or three stabbings a year add to the atmosphere that surrounds the site. Every year the town pleads with the council to renovate the place, but nothing ever seems to get done.

  Maybe they secretly like it as it is, maybe if it were turned into a respectable, well lit area people would cease to love it. It's possible that it stands as a reminder that what is daily taken for granted can so rapidly be lost, converted to ruins.

  Pablo had come to find me at the fair and was helping shut up for the day when the rain started. We'd seen it out at sea, a grey smudged cloud on the horizon dripping back into the agitated waters like wet paint. A wind came off the ocean to warm us and the birds screeched and fluttered in the trees of the park, rising in shattered formations and settling again incessantly as if worried or excited by the coming storm. We pulled the tarpaulin tight and found a place to sit - Pablo astride a camel and myself squeezed into a fire engine. Outside rain drumming on taut cloth, rhythmic slaps of wind, tremendous coughs from the sea. Here a moist warm silence of breathing. We smoked and talked a little of loves and weather and the state of things, waiting for it to ease off, snug in our easy friendship and the humidity of our shelter. It reminded me of when I was a boy, how I'd sit in a cardboard box in the shed in the rain, my brothers and sisters or neighbours nearby, cosy and curled up, talking freely about any nonsense that occurred to me, happy and secure as the rain beat down. I was thinking of raindrops on roses, the soggy smell of damp dust, worms on the lawn and condensation when Pablo suggested we go to the Cala and watch the storm from there, we could get a bottle and stand on one of the balconies above the water and see the elements at work. He leant across and rang the bell of my fire engine,

  'Come on, if we stay here any longer we'll fall asleep. Let's go.'

  We darted along the streets from doorway to doorway, hugging the walls and searching out the overhanging balconies. Still we were getting soaked and water dripped off our hair onto our faces, crept down our necks and into our shoes, searching and penetrating its way to our skin. We dashed along the wall of the army barracks, no shelter there, and dodging puddles and people with umbrellas we made it to the balneario, panting and dripping, as exhilarated as the weather. Darkness slipped over the town, dowsing the lights and noises of a usually active night, pulling heavy curtains across the open spaces of sky and sea. We picked our way through the debris until we reac
hed the balcony at the extreme end of the balneario. It was open to the sea on three sides, the fourth side giving back into the main building, and although it had no wall or rail, it had stout pillars upon which sat a pointed roof like a Chinese hat. The tide was in and below us the sea eddied and swirled around the pilings the colour of ink. The lighthouse winked repeatedly from the barracks throwing a sickly light over the bay and the myriad boats which creaked and strained at their moorings.

  Rain slashed down, thrusting at us as we hid below the roof clutching our beers and trying vainly to dry out a little. It seemed angry, this rain, but its wrath was lost on the sea where it fell silently, unnoticed, and lost too on the sand which sucked it up tolerantly, absorbing its sting. For this was not the true storm, it was merely the fringe of a greater tussle out at sea.

  The waters of the bay were tempered too; sheltered by ancient walls and benevolent geography they echoed the storm we sensed further off, but could not claim its grand name.

  I walked towards the edge of the balcony and looked down. Now, in retrospect, I see again that cliff face, the gulls far below, the vomiting mass of sea retching against the trembling land, her death, my faith or my cowardice, my ultimate fear of death. But it was not like that. Here I was in a new time, with Pablo behind me, marooned at the end of the world in an unexpected paradise waiting for the wind to drop and the Boss's cold to go away. Linda was far out at sea somewhere I imagine, wrapped up in her own time, doing without me as I have to do without her. This is not her story, it's ours. And this storm? Call it a heavy shower, there was no drama, no cracking of cheeks, only the dying sound of something distant. I stared into the veiled depths of night and sea and listened for that remote chaos, dim thunder muted by waves and wind, glimpses of lightening that taunt you in their brevity, but I felt it come no closer. Would it roll on past, skimming us by with no more than a soft splash, or would it coil up and whip out across the oceanic wastes to burst upon us with unprecedented violence? I know one day it will strike, drop out of blue skies to shatter my comfort and ease of mind. As it has done before, as it always will.

  Not tonight though. Tonight it only scratches the surface, roars but does not pounce. I counted the seconds between the lightning and the thunder. Close, looming, threatening; but keeping its distance.

  It was something Pablo said that made me fill this spring storm with symbolism, a symbolism as chaotic and confused as the turbulent waters squirming around the pilings. Something he said which now stands alone, all connections lost. When I was young I used to ramble on to my brother at night - long, shifting conversations that would twist and u-turn from subject to subject. Sometimes we'd try to retrace the steps of our dialogue, unravel the knots of association that led to our final statements, but it was usually impossible, memory and logic failing to repeat themselves. So it was with Pablo. I'm left only with this one line. Where did it come from? What was the context? Why does it stand out, illuminated by the lighthouse and cracks of lightning? 'It depends who's side you're on', and I remember he shrugged at the same time, disappointed but resigned, as if it were something he'd rather not have said, or felt obliged to have said.