Dear F.,
Samiluisa and I have colonized Madrid. These madrileños believe we are gods, given our uncanny resemblance to the twin beasts of heaven whose coming was foretold in their book of myths. But I think all the reverence is going to Samiluisa´s head. She´s falling under ever greater delusions of grandeur and yesterday she coerced a Spanish hidalgo to lick the ´tween parts of her toes. Today at breakfast she refused to sit on anything less than 33 velvet cushions stolen from Phillip II´s palace at El Escorial and she stirred her cafe con leche with the finger bone relic of Saint Jeronimo.
I´m not sure how much longer the natives will acquiesce to her wishes. Fortunately, there are many riches in Madrid-- the fruits of a similar historical encounter some centuries ago, I´m told-- so our fall from divinity is not yet imminent.
But, as for me, well, my disillusionment has come swiftly. It happened yesterday, when Samiluisa, in a fit of vanity, mistook my own godly countenance for one of the brutish native folk´s and shouted at me in a most appalling manner to attend to her. To which I replied, perhaps rashly, `No, I will not carry your golden chalice filled with this morning´s evacuations to dump out the window upon these simple life-loving people!´
Since then, I´ve have fled her narccistic tirades for the solace of Spanish letters. I have been granted asylum at the Fundacion Jose Ortega y Gasset, a most congenial institution housed in private home with ample gardens in the haute bourgeois Madrid neighborhood of Salamanca.
My keeper, one Sra. Uña, is a helpful grandmotherly sort, reassuringly dowdy yet no stranger to the afternoon beer. Not only does she track down documents, she has insisted that we researchers crash multiple receptions at the Fundacion to partake in free food and drink. The archives of Don Pepe Ortega are rich, but I hope not too rich, with sources for me to scrutinize. Yesterday I spent the day reading through Ortega´s correspondence with his German friend and philologue Ernst Robert Curtius. I find reading the letters of dead people a most rewarding endeavor, even with someone as lame as Curtius.
When Samiluisa does not bid me carry her feces, we remain on the best of terms and have spent the better part of the week strolling the gnarled and pulsating streets of Madrid, day and night. Madrid is a fine walking city, small in geographical size, packed with food, people, and the visible architectural strata of many centuries of trying to look powerful. Yet there are a few caveats to this claim, which seem to increase with the temperature. There are construction projects all over the city, trying to stimulate the economy, and at the very least, grinding up filth into the atmosphere. You would think the city is recovering from a recent carpet bombing attack.
We are staying in a room in R.´s old apartment on the plaza Tirso de Molina, in the Lavapies neighborhood, formerly the district of late 19th century urban misery, now with 21st century poor Chinese, Arabic, and African immigrants but not much misery. The location is ideal, with two outdoor cafe-bars on the plaza, one for our morning coffee and baguette with tomato, the other for our 1 am nightcap cerveza. The universe is in order.
We´ve settled more or less into a routine that is built around the archives for me and itinerant doodling for S. during the day, segueing into running, drinking, eating, eating, and more drinking at night, concluded with a nice sweaty read before bed in our shitbox room on a comically awful air mattress.
This morning we went on a long run in the parque de buen retiro (good rest park)- the much need lungs of Madrid, which, unfortunately, are filled with dust. Which means you can enjoy the post-run ritual of blowing black snot out your nose. We did.
Tomorrow we´re visiting the flee market called el Rastro (the trail), thus named for the trail of blood that the slaughtered animals used to leave on their cartride back from the abbatoir. Now I fear the the slaughtered animals have been replaced by pig-faced tourists, whose bulging fanny packs perhaps give off the same scent of fresh blood that once stained the cobblestones.
Yours,
P.
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