Spain and the End of the Line

A translated extract from Krummels in my Koffer (Protea Books)

From Porto I take the night train to Madrid. Now I am a wanderer once more, backpack slung over my shoulders as I navigate the wide boulevards of Madrid, guided by my Let’s Go Europe guide to the youth hostel. Here in Spain, everything is larger, more bustling than in Portugal. Vast markets brim with fish and any other edible ocean creature, in shell and with tentacles. I see and smell vegetables, and fruits; cheeses and flowers and thirty different kinds of olives. And the flesh of the pig that Spain so dearly loves: the reddish-brown jamón, those hams that are salted and air-dried, cured for years in Spanish mountain caves. The red chourico sausages, coloured and flavoured with paprika.

But it is the Spanish countryside that calls to me. After a few days in Madrid, experiencing the splendours of the Prado Museum and drinking beer and eating ham and cheese sandwiches in bars with other wanderers from America, Canada, Australia, Germany, and Denmark, I head southward.

It was the beginning of summer, and the Spanish landscape reminds me of trips to the Karoo and Namaqualand with my parents. Red earth stretches across open plains, the rolling hills dotted with olive trees and endless green vineyards. The air is still, windless, dry, and warm. I hitchhike, catching rides with taciturn truck drivers and chatty holidaymakers on their way to the coast. Here and there, I take the train. I have a complete freedom, with no idea where I’m ultimately headed, except that I’m aiming for Seville. There’s work at Amorim’s Spanish cork factory.

Late one afternoon, I find myself on a train that stops at a station in the middle of absolutely nowhere. It’s just me and a handful of other passengers on the train; one dishevelled man in a loose-fitting cheap suit speak English and tells me the train stops here for the night and won’t continue until tomorrow. There is no reason, no alternative plan. Mañana is always another day. The  passengers disembark, I am alone.

At the isolated station there is, as at all Spanish train stations, a café. It’s cool inside, and the bartender and a few other men, who look like local farmers, are glued to a bullfight taking place on a large television-set. I order a beer and watch for a while as a large black bull is taunted and killed by a nimble matador in his tight golden suit. The bar counter is made of zinc, and the metal feels cool against my bare elbow.

After a while, that goes slowly, it is dusk outside, and the farmers leave one by one, the roars of their vehicles slicing through the silence. Now it’s just me and the bartender, and the bulls. And the stationary train by the platform. The bartender, a short, dark man in his sixties, asks me something I don’t understand. Seeing my puzzlement, he makes the universal eating gesture: moving his fists toward his mouth. I say “sí” and “por favor,” realising how hungry I am.

He disappears into a doorway behind the bar, and as another dead bull is dragged out of the dust of the bullfighting arena by two horses, I hear the sound of pots and pans and the sizzling sound of something frying in hot oil. And there is the smell of garlic, as is always the case when cooking is done in southern Europe.

About ten minutes later, the bartender emerges from the hidden kitchen. I turn away from the television to watch him place a plate on the zinc counter. On the plate lies a golden-yellow omelette, with pieces of golden-brown potato set in the egg. Beside the omelette lies a strip of meat with a slightly charred surface from which a watery red-pink juice oozes, too red to be pork. I thank the bartender and ask, in my rudimentary Spanish, for a glass of red wine: “vino tinto.” Mom and Dad would have enjoyed red wine with meat and eggs.

It is a thin beef steak, perfectly medium-rare, that has been fried in oil. Together with the robust, raw Spanish red wine, it is the best meat I have had since the Karoo lamb chops Dad grilled for Peter and me the day before we left South Africa to fly to Portugal. And I’m not surprised by the deliciousness of the omelette alongside the steak. Already in Madrid I had noticed that the Spaniards are friends of the egg, serving baked eggs under paprika and omelettes – called tortilla – everywhere. But out here in the sticks, this simple egg dish is simply heavenly to eat. The omelette is light in texture yet rich on the palate due to the orange farm eggs it has been cooked with. The cubes of potato break the richness slightly, bearing the flavours of earth and water, with a salty fried crust.

I eat everything and wash it down with two glasses of wine. Wipe my plate clean with a chunk of crusty bread. The bartender takes my plate away and returns with a cup of coffee and a small glass of brandy.

After the last bull has died and the television is turned off, I thank the bartender and pay. He closes the café and rides off on a noisy motorbike that sends plumes of white smoke and the hollow clatter of the engine into the still night air of Spain.

The station platform is now bathed in a dim yellow light, and the night cools slightly so that the scent of plants and earth rises, covering me in the cool and the fresh. I unroll my sleeping bag and lay it out on one of the benches. Far away in a strange land and alone, I close my eyes.

And I dream of bulls.