My Story # 25

As if it were a contest or something, the men made sure our wine glasses were never empty. I remembered one of the warnings I got back in Wuerzburg at the army barracks, about traveling in Spain and meeting up with the ‘locals’, “ if you ever get to Spain, and those guys get you to drinking with them, and they offer you more wine, and you don’t take it…watch out! That makes ‘em mad as hell. They’ll think you’re too good for them, and they’re just liable to take you outside and beat you to death with rocks!”

I hadn’t noticed anything uncomfortable about drinking their wine so far, and I was in no mood to refuse any wine either, the country outdoors was mighty rocky.

I did refuse the cigarettes. Each new person that introduced himself wanted to offer me one. They all returned the same expression, “Everyone smokes, why not you?” I tried to smile it away.

The thick smoke in the room didn’t bother me anymore after a few more glasses of local wine. When I had to take a leak, I just about needed a chainsaw to cut my way through the smoke to the outdoor latrine. Ah! What clean fresh Spanish air! Ah! What bladder relief!

While I was outside I saw someone carrying a guitar that sure looked like Rudi’s. “Hey! That’s mine!” I yelled to the guy while running to him, waving my arm while zipping up my pants.”

I went up to this big 6-foot 4” 300-lb. bruiser who was now going in the front door. He could’ve been a Saturday Night wrestler on local TV or something.

“That’s our guitar!” He stopped and looked down at me, and didn’t say anything - just smiled at me as if I were a flea or something. Then he grumbled and pushed the front door open with his foot and inside raised the guitar high, one-handed over his head, and twirled it around as the room exploded with “Guitar! Guitar”!
Rudi saw that it was his guitar and tried to grab it from the fellow who held on to it a little bit to tease Rudi who was not happy with someone treating his guitar like a play toy. Rudi gave him one of his famous sneers but the guy just turned his back, handed the guitar over to Rudi and began a conversation with some nearby men.

I looked at little Miguel, our new friend, who was still sticking close by. He just shrugged his shoulders, smiled a tipsy smile, and repeated the chant, “Guitar! Guitar!.

As Rudi and I struck up a song, I wondered what other objects from our scooter would be passing around the village. “Maybe I should take a look?” I whispered to Rudi.

“Don’t raise suspicion, “ he said. “We are guests here.”

He was right. Besides, there wouldn’t be much we could do, if we did find anything missing. We sang another Spanish folksong (we knew three), and the crowd half-mumbled the melody along with us. After a few more exchanges of songs and wine glasses, the crowd began thinning out. Salvador, the thin-faced fellow, asked, “You like to dance with girls?” and we were again out in the fresh air.
I glanced over to see the motor scooter was still there, and everything looked like it was still intact. “Do you think I oughta move it into a shed or something?” I asked Miguel.
“Naw! It’s O.K. where it is, no one will borrow it. There’s no one around here that could drive one of those things.”
“I didn’t mean that. I thought maybe someone would steal something!” I said to Miguel.
“Ah, naw…you don’t have to worry about that, either,” Miguel said as we walked down in the direction of a barn. It was a June evening and summer was coming in Spain. We walked down the path in the direction of the music. A large barn was at the bottom of the hill, and an electric light flickering inside outlined couples as they danced by the large doorway. It was a country barn dance.

The music had stopped when we reached the entrance, and senoritas in broad-skirted dresses, some with pretty ruffled flowered material, others in only long dull-colored farm skirts, and young men in generation-old boleros and square beaver hats were returning to the sides of the barn to sit on barrels and log benches or just standing around to drink wine from their botas. Some posters of previous fiestas were pasted on one of the walls. Also a large photo of Franco was pasted next to a ‘no smoking’ sign which looked like it was being ignored by most. I didn’t mean Franco was being ignored because two of his ‘El Guardo Civil’ soldiers (or whatever they’re called) were roaming around the outside with their rifles strapped to their back and one other was inside roaming around.

On a small wooden podium at one end was the music- - two gray-haired men, one was re-tuning a well-weathered guitar, and the other had a mandolin placed between his knees while he lighted an intermission cigarette. Above them was the electric light – it was the only electric light in the barn.

A couple of small vigorously burning thick candles were at the other end. But it was early late spring and there was still a lot of light to go before sundown. The door of the barn was wide open; you could distinguish the faces pretty good.
During the intermission, Salvador, the guy we had met above on the hill at the bar jumped to the podium, and with his hands cupped to his face he shouted to the crowd, “We have a couple of tourists in our village tonight! And they want to play a tune for you!”

The crowd politely applauded. I knew it was too late to refuse Salvador’s invitation. The crowd lingering about the podium patted our backs as we mounted it and gave a repeat performance of the songs we had played up above the hill in the wine hut.
“Olé!” they politely shouted, encouraging us after each song. We even attempted some Rock ‘n’ roll. It was strange stuff for them. They weren’t as enthusiastic, but I guess it was ‘something different’ and they didn’t mind having some imported entertainment at their fiesta. When it was time again for dancing, we thanked the musicians, and jumped to the dirt floor amidst an appreciative crowd all wanting to offer us wine from their botas. Rudi and I were cheerfully pounded on the back after our songs. It’s here where I think I made a mistake by not accepting all the glasses of wine that were offered me. The music started up. We spilled a lot of wine on that dirt floor.

Not too long after that I felt a strong hand on my shoulder. I turned and it was the unshaven 300lb.dark-faced caballero, Big Bad Bernardo, as I had come to call him. I don’t know what his real name is.
He took me by the arm as the music began and shouted,
“Here, a señorita for you, dance!” and he pushed me up against a very timid girl. It turned out to be his 15 yr. old daughter. She was ugly as hell. He shoved us both into the revolving mass of dancers. As we danced counter-clockwise around the barn, I peered through the dancing couples to see him also leading Rudi to a girl. Another ugly-as-hell daughter.

My partner, Florentina, was as serious as a schoolmarm in her crispy-ironed, ruffled dress and coal-black hair all done up with knots at the top and little curlets that hung down over her forehead and ears. She didn’t choose to talk very much; or maybe she couldn’t understand my strange Spanish. We danced what I think was a lively fandango, that seemed more like a physical training exercise than a dance. During a lull in the music, she told me they had a fiesta in the barn every Catholic holiday, and at nighttime young people came by donkey and horse cart from miles around to attend. And that was about all she cared to say.

At the end of the set, I returned her to a long wooden bench where all the single girls were seated. “Gracias,” I thanked her, attempting a bow.
“De Nada,” she answered bashfully with her eyelashes, and quickly retreated to a huddle of whispering senoritas. They giggled, and I returned to the opposite side where young men were seated at several tables and chairs. At one table where I found a seat, the men were passing a basket-covered wine bottle.

“Have a drink!” one of them shouted to me, and I tilted the thick glass bottle to my mouth and grudgingly swallowed a couple mouthfuls.
“Can you drink wine from this bottle?” A young bumpkin in a white shirt with rolled-up sleeves asked me, and he reached to the floor behind him and brought up another, transparent, bottle that looked like a vase with a long stem. He raised the flask high above his head and a long stream of wine passed from the bottle directly to his open mouth. With a snap of his wrist, he ceased the stream and handed the bottle to me, smiling.

“Try it!” he said, wiping the wine from his mouth with the back of his shirtsleeve.
I picked up the bottle cautiously, and then raised it as he had done. The first squirt hit me squarely in the eye, and I brought the flask down, causing a long red stream to travel across my shirt. The other men standing around watching roared in laughter. I laughed with them, as someone lent me a handkerchief to wipe the wine out of my eyes.

“No, like this!” the shirt-sleeved fellow said, picking the bottle up again, “You start close to your mouth, then bring the flask away. And when you get better you can do this” - -and he allowed the wine to fall in the crease between his cheek and his nose, and then directed it higher to his forehead, causing a long stream of red wine to trickle from his forehead down over the side of his nose and into the corner of his mouth! Jeeze… I never saw anything like it.
“Olé! The group of men cried out, just as the musicians started up a lively Spanish dance in triple time. I looked up to see a woman with a pair of castanets and another guitar had been added to the orchestra.

“You dance the bolero?” one of the villagers asked me.
“No, I don’t know anything about it,” I smiled.
“How come you don’t and your partner does?” he said, pointing to Rudi, who had been corralled into dancing again, this time with someone else’s daughter. And much better-looking this time.

“I don’t know!” I said a tremor in my voice as I saw Big Bad Bernardo looking around the barn for me. He had his other daughter with him. I slipped into the shadows and he never found me. I saw her dancing with another guy, probably her cousin or someone.

The dancing couples formed a rhythmic, like a long snake as they paraded around in triple time beat to the jumpy heel-clicking music. I saw Rudi struggling to figure out the complicated step, as he whisked by with the tall señorita clinging to his arm. By the time he got the step routine down, the music changed to a slow rhythm and he stumbled by, bent over, watching his feet, as the señorita did the guiding. Like a soldier catching up in step with the others, he skipped and struggled on. Then the music halted a couple beats, and the couples stopped to do a crossover and some graceful turns and spinning. Rudi managed to make this look like a scuffle, and then a track meet when the music suddenly switched back to a triple time, came to a pitch in the finale, and then abruptly ended with the couples offering courtly bows and poses to each other. Rudi was caught a few bars behind in all his confusion and ended up bowing to the wrong señorita. By the time he raised his head, his señorita had already returned to the long wooden bench, a little disgusted with her German partner.

It didn’t seem to bother Rudi, I was watching from my shadowy hiding place. He was one of the first ones on the floor looking for a dancing mate when the music struck up for the next dance. I brought out my sketchbook and began doing quick sketches of the dancing couples.
“Hey! What’re you doing there?” My thin-faced friend, Salvador asked.
“I’m doing some sketches of the dance,” I answered.
“How about doing one of me?” he said, peering at the upside-down sketches as he blocked my view of the dancing figures.
“Sure, Salvador, sit over there!” I said, pointing to and empty chair.
I did a quick sketch of him, thin-faced, sleepy eyes, and gave it to him. “There you are!”
He looked at the sketch a few minutes, gave me a faint smile, and didn’t speak to me the rest of evening. It was about this moment Rudi came up to me and commented, “Have you noticed these people getting less friendly?”
“Yes, I have. Can’t figure it out.” I said.
“None of the girls want to dance anymore.” Rudi grumbled.
As the evening progressed, fewer and fewer people took an interest in us, until finally we found ourselves completely alone. It was an awkward situation. Miguel was nowhere to be seen. Salvador disappeared. Big Bad Bernardo mingled with his buddies and the Guardo Civil soldier. We were being ignored by all.
We didn’t know what we had done wrong, and it was certain no one was going to tell us. Maybe we had done nothing wrong; maybe they just didn’t find us interesting anymore.
The final dance of the evening was over and the peasants began leaving for home in the moonlight on their donkeys, horses, and by foot. I found Miguel, our good ol’ boy from earlier in the afternoon.

“How about that place to sleep, Miguel?”

He returned a look of irritation. That’s all the acknowledgment he gave me. Then he motioned for us to gather our belongings and follow him. Single file, we hiked up the path to a small white hut near the place where we had met Miguel and Salvador earlier that day. He knocked on the thick wooden door. We heard a stirring inside. We waited wordlessly in the moonlight. Miguel cleared his throat several times and then knocked again. Our stark black shadows in the moonlight folded against the whitewash walls of the hut. I should of made a sketch of it. Then we heard a click, and the turning latch broke the long silence.

An elderly woman in a shawl and apron appeared in the shadow of the doorway. A single burning candle on the table behind her showed a modest interior. A several religious and family pictures were on the wall. And one, of course, was Franco.
Miguel bent over and engaged her in some whispering for a few moments, occasionally looking back at us. Then he parted. No words. Just parted. She motioned for us to follow her around to the back of the hut where we helped her open the door of a big shed. Inside, she pointed to a large, two-wheeled wagon.
“You can sleep there tonight,” she said, returning wordless to her hut through the back door.
We muttered a quiet “Gracias,” and then, a bit baffled by the situation, we went about laying our sleeping bags out on the wagon next to some chickens that were nestled below.
“Can’t figure it out,” I said. “We probably did something wrong at that dance.
“ Don’t worry about it,” Rudi grumbled crawling atop the wagon.
“But I’d like to know what I did wrong.” I stood firm on my question.
“Well, if you ask me,” he said, spreading out his sleeping bag as a mattress, “They were mad that we stopped drinking their wine.” Rudi said.
“Yeah, that’s right. We did stop. You suppose that really got them mad?”
“Sure! These people got pride like anyone else. They take it as a personal offense. They think we didn’t approve of their wine.” Rudi said.
“We’ll how’re we supposed to know what their customs are?” I said. “By my standards, I’d had enough to drink. I was getting tipsy.”

“That’s just what you gotta be careful of, “ Rudi said. “If you want to be invited into someone’s house, you’ve got to expect it to be on their terms. You can’t expect them to adapt to your way of doing things.”
“I guess you’re right,” I said. “Besides, I wouldn’t want them to adapt to my customs. I’d feel as if I never left home.” I was still wobbly from all the wine and slurring my words.
“I’m just glad they didn’t start a fight with us.” Rudi said. “Some of these people are too proud to fight, and a lot of them are too proud not to fight.”
“Stop talking so loud.” I said. “They could be outside listening to us.”
“Who cares…” Rudi said. “Besides, they can’t speak any German, anyway.”

“Well maybe they can, or some of them can like that big bruiser, Big Bad Bernardo. You saw him ass-kissing that soldier with the rifle.” I said
“Who’s that?”
“You know, that big guy that brought your guitar to you.”
“Oh, that asshole!” Rudi said. “He couldn’t speak any German if you paid him.”
“Well you never know. The Germans were helping Franco during the civil war these people had here a couple dozen years ago. We don’t know if the Germans bombed this little town or not.
“The Germans bombing villages in Spain? No way. Why would they do that? He asked.
“Hitler was helping out Franco and his army of “Nationalists.” You were too young to hear about it. I learned it in school. There were a lot of Americans fighting on the other side, The Republicans, they were called the “Loyalists” –there were also a lot of international fighters helping out the Republicans, even the reds, and the communists. It was all mixed up, I don’t understand it, I just know a lot of people were killed on both sides, maybe even a million and they weren’t just shot down they were hanged, and tortured, stuff like that, some died in prison.
“Americans fighting here in Spain?” Rudi said.
“Yeah, They were volunteers.
“Well, there you have it. That’s the reason. They were mad at us because the word got around that you were an American and an American probably killed some of their family or neighbors.” Rudi started hollering again.
I retorted. “Or maybe they were pissed at us because you are a German, and some of the German planes machine gunned down their family or bombed their houses. I learned about that in art school. Picasso made a big wall-to-wall painting about it.”

“No way,” Rudi said.

“Well, anyway, I think their silent treatment is just as bad as a fight could’ve been. I don’t like to be lonely, and to be made lonely is even worse, especially for something we never did is worse.” I said as I threw my sleeping bag up on the cart beside Rudi.
“I dislike that in people.” I said.
“What?” Rudi mumbled, trying to get to sleep.
“Being like these people were tonight at the end. We just didn’t know where we stood. They were like weaklings - - unreliable, inconsistent weaklings.” I said. “Well they must’ve had their reasons,” I crawled on top of my sleeping bag and rolled over to one side.” Maybe they thought we were spies from Franco.
Rudi answered back, “Yeah, I agree. No one has a good reason to be unreliable. Give me a reliable fool, any day, than an undependable genius.”
I answered, “Yeah. But you can’t expect everyone to be dependable. Life would be boring as hell. I like unpredictable people. They make life interesting, just like inconsistency in nature makes the planet interesting.

“You just learned too much when you were in college.” Rudi snapped back. “Wait’ till you see more of the world before you start getting high ideas. You can have all the theories you want, but it’s the practice that really counts.” Rudi was mumbling now too.

I returned with, “Well, in a thousand years when politicians and scientists and psychiatrists have managed to make everyone dependable, and everything else that big brother wants us to be, you’ll see the world will be a boring place to live in, if you’re still living at that time.
“Why don’t you go to sleep?” Rudi said, and then, “By the way, who won that war?
“I guess you could say, Franco won that war. He calls himself ‘El Claudillo’. It means the ‘the leader’. Ever hear of someone calling himself the “Leader?”
That was a mean thing to say to Rudi. But he was smart. He knew not to light the fuse I had thrown him He knew he had nothing to do with Germany’s war anymore than the people we met tonight had any reason for the vengeful attitude they showed us at the fiesta.

And we both knew we were traveling through a country that reflected the same atmosphere and conditions that he had experienced as a child back in West Germany during the Hitler years.
I knew now Rudi and I had reached a new point of communication. Our trip began to be enlightened by these kinds of conversations - - he seeing things from a practical viewpoint, I from a theoretical, you might say. Either viewpoint alone would have added little to the success of our trip. Together they offered much. As our trip progressed, we began examining each other’s ideas with respect rather than he considering mine “too speculative”’ and I his, “lacking foresight.” We combined our ideas. We yielded. We began pausing before we shouted retorts to each other. “Do the pause,” we agreed. We gave the other a chance to finish what he was trying to say. What he meant. And it was usually the opposite of what the other could agree to or accept. But we yielded. And this yielding on the part of both of us began to improve both the trip and our relations.
Early the next morning the old woman opened the doors of the shed to let the chickens out that had been roosting above and under the wagon. When we re-entered the hut to say goodbye, we found she had a clean towel, bar of soap, and a large bowl of water prepared for us.
“Well, maybe we’re getting a change for the better!” I remarked to Rudi.
“Yes, this is real service.”
After washing, we prepared to leave, and in the doorway the aproned-woman was waiting for us, with some companions, probably neighbors. She didn’t seem to have a husband or any little children. She held out her hand as we began to pass, indicating she expected to be paid for her hotel services.
“What?” we both remarked, astonished, and we brushed by her, hoping she was playing a joke. But with two quiet men who turned out to be her sons, she followed us to the motor scooter.
She held out her hand again in a demanding gesture; seeing she was serious, I asked, “How much do you want?”
“Anything you can give,” she snapped.
“I would rather pay nothing for inhospitality and twice for hospitality,” I said, looking at Rudi, wondering what he would do in this situation.

“She’s a poor woman,” Rudi answered, “But I’ve seen poorer ones in India who would consider it beneath their pride to ask for money like this.
We had been traveling through one of the poorest sections of Spain. Many people were out of work. It looked like most of the people in the villages were out of work. The farms were failing. There was no way we could work anywhere in Spain like we had been able to in France.
"How much money do we have?” Rudi whispered.

I had to tell Rudi right then and there that my brother’s check for $25 was returned to him in Maryland that he had sent to General Delivery Avignon back in France. Addressee Unknown. A week later, in Zaragoza I had received a letter from him saying he wasn’t going to send any checks anymore, it was too risky. My parents agreed $25 was a lot to lose. I held off telling Rudi. The way things were going in France, it looked like we would have smooth sailing anyway. And then we got to Spain. I needed to tell him. Now was the time. So I did, right there and then.
“That’s the problem,” I said to Rudi. “We’re down to our last few pesetas, and we need that for gasoline to Madrid.” I turned to the woman and repeated diplomatically, “How much do you want?” She could see by my discussion with Rudi that things weren’t rosy with our own money situation.

“A hundred pesetas!” she demanded.

“To sleep in a wagon?” We chimed in together. One hundred pesetas were about a dollar and a half.
She nodded her head with a confidence in her expression that figured if we were able to travel the world in a vehicle, we must have money to pay for our lodging. Just then we saw the Guardo Civil guy with his usual rifle strapped to his back walking up the hill.
Rudi began to see the craziness in the whole situation and whispered to me, “Give her sixty pesetas, Rohn, before they throw us into the donkey slop.”
I gave her the money and bid her ‘adios’, and started up the scooter. She had some of the money she wanted and we had 120 pesetas left for gasoline and oil to make it to Madrid, about a hundred miles away to the west.
The group of dark figures nearby stood and watched motionlessly as the foreign visitors, the German and the American, climbed the dusty, winding road on their strange-looking vehicle to regain the main highway. We heard no shots from the military guy so I guess she didn’t put in a complaint about us. We’ll never know why our reception that night grew sour, but I suspect Big Bad Bernardo and his mouth had something to do with it.

As the little scooter labored up the steep mountain roads and then leveled out in this barren Aragon section of Spain, I thought about the hundred and twenty pesetas we had left. Would we make it to Madrid?
Granted, Rudi had traveled a long distance on his bicycle, and without much money. But a bicycle was different; it needed no gasoline once a day like our motor scooter. And it rarely had to be repaired.

We had not eaten that day, and our hunger added to our disgruntled mood. We finally reached a high plateau that stretched out ahead, for endless miles, and somewhere in the middle of this plateau was Madrid about 150 miles away. We would need about two gallons of gas to get that far.

In Spain, at least where we were traveling in Aragon, the gasoline stations are few, like the vehicles, there aren’t many cars or trucks on the roads. The people in this part of Spain were too poor to have a car. We had the highway all to ourselves except those guys and their rifles. They have those “Guardos” stationed on the roads usually five or ten miles a part and at all the crossroads. We never talked with one, just waved to them. I guess we didn’t want any questions from them. I can’t imagine why they would need to be stationed out there in that blazing sun if there were hardly any vehicles. Oh well.
Yep, barely a car anywhere. The peasants hardly have enough to feed their horses and oxen. At least we got water from peasants in the villages that we would pass through. And the Guardo guy was always there too, usually at the water well.

We always found it best to take an auxiliary can of gas along with us. The remaining contents that we had back in the village lasted to a pueblo near Cogolludo, where we found a station, or I should say, a shopkeeper who had gas and oil for sale among his other general-store items. We spent our last hundred and twenty pesetas and poured it into our tank - - enough to get us to Madrid now about a hundred miles away. Then at the little shop we inquired about a place to camp for the night.

“Why don’t you try the Padre?” the general-store owner suggested. “He probably has some extra rooms.”
“O.K. -- good idea!” Rudi said. The merchant sent a young boy to run along to show us where the padre lived.

NEXT:

The road to Madrid

Note about “My Story” by Rohn Engh. The travel years were 1957 to 1959. The first draft was written between 1960-’61 in Afton, MN but never published. The author has revived the manuscript. Drawings, sketches, and photos (Rolleicord/B&W) are by the author. For other stories and books by Rohn Engh:
“A Simple Garden Book” (1976) Look for it on E-Page or Amazon Books
“Somethingness” (2002) Horse Creek Press Look for it at LuLu.com
“PhotoSourceBOOK” (2000-2008) Look for it on Amazon
“Sell & ReSell Your Photos” (1982) Writers Digest Books (five editions)
“sellphotos.com” (1999) Writer’s Digest Books, (F&W Publishing)
Rohn Engh is the publisher of The PhotoLetter,
PhotoDaily, and PhotoStockNOTES.
Autographed 8x10 photos and drawings by the author are available
. Phone 715 248 3800, x21. Ask for Bruce Swenson.