Tapas on the Ramblas (4 page)

I had to remind myself where I was in my study of the extensive Wiser dynasty. There were three sisters, Faith, Hope and Charity. Charity is my client with the longtime female companion, Dottie (read lesbian lover), with whom she raised granddaughter Flora. Sister Faith is the errant nun with two full-grown children of her own which she had with errant priest, Thomas Kincaid. Now it was Hope's turn, the middle Wiser sister.

According to Charity's tome, sister Hope married a man named James McNichol. It was a joyful union while it lasted but, in the end, begot a tragic legacy. A legacy that seems prepared to perpetuate itself indefinitely. It began when Hope gave birth to a daughter, Helen. Up to then James and Hope, with the help of the Wiser money Hope received from Charity, had had a fun and lively marriage, full of laughter and adventure, but sadly short on time. Three days after Helen's birth, suffering from complications, Hope suddenly and unexpectedly died. James, a successful salesman, was a jovial, handsome and athletic man and although nearly inconsolable over the loss of his young wife, gladly raised his daughter alone with little outside help.

Helen grew up to be a quiet girl, slight and pretty. She knew nothing of her mother but cherished her father. She stayed with James in the family home until she met and married Patrick Halburton, a stolid young man training to become a police officer. Nine months into the marriage, Helen died during the birth of their daughter. Unlike his father-in-law, Patrick felt wholly unprepared to handle a baby. He moved in with his widowed mother, named the child Hyacinth after her, and left most of the parental duties with her. Patrick was grief-stricken by his wife's early demise and never fully recovered. He was mentally and physically unfit to continue in the police academy and eventually found a job as a security guard on a university campus-a position he would keep for the rest of his working life, happiest within the predictable confines of routine.

Hyacinth was nothing like her mother...or her father. She was hefty and healthy and most decidedly vigorous. A tomboy as a girl, reckless and mischievous as a teenager, and sultry as a young woman, Hyacinth loved her paternal grandmother and father dearly but was desperate to escape the stifling confines of their tiny home. She eventually met an equally free-spirited mate, Jackson Delmonico, an aspiring jazz and blues musician. She found herself pregnant long before she wanted to be. Although Hyacinth had never met her mother or maternal grandmother, she knew that they'd both died in childbirth but suspected that, unlike her big-boned, wide-hipped self, they were probably weak and fragile. She was confident she could give birth to her baby in between Jackson's sets and would barely need a sip of water to do it. So they got married and continued with their tempestuous, bohemian lifestyle. Except for Hyacinth's expanding girth they mostly forgot about the baby until the day it arrived. They were happy.

They were carefree. They were wrong.

Hyacinth Delmonico died giving birth to a daughter, Harriet.

At first everyone, Jackson included, assumed he'd give the baby to someone else to raise, maybe even give it up for adoption. But as soon as he laid eyes upon her, he became a proud daddy who wasn't about to let anybody take away his baby girl with the beautiful cinnamon skin that blended his dark with her mother's light. This didn't stop him from pursuing his musician's life; it simply meant that baby Harriet was now part of the entourage, moving from city to city, missing school, more often in the company of adults and drugs and alcohol than children and toys and candy.

The Wiser curse, as some referred to it, had left in its horrible wake a family of men-none related by blood, James, Patrick and Jackson, each with a doomed wife and daughter-and one female, Harriet, affectionately known as Harry.

On that sad note I closed the book on the Wiser family history. I'd had enough. I'd wait until I met the real people aboard The Dorothy. Until then I'd plan, pack and lose a pound or two. Now, where
did I put my ruby red slippers?

An unexpected heat wave engulfed the city the day Errall and I left Saskatoon. It was Tuesday, September fourteenth. At not yet noon, the on-the-street temperature had risen to just shy of forty degrees Celsius and people were digging out shorts and tank tops they'd already mothballed for the season. It amazes me how a superbly clear blue sky, such as we had that day, can provide a less stable flying environment-especially for the zippy, jazzy but small propeller planes used for many of the short-haul flights out of Saskatoon-than say, full-on winter blizzard conditions. It has something to do with air currents, highs meeting lows, warm meeting cold. But we were lucky that day and enjoyed a bump-free ride.

We connected through Calgary to Vancouver where we spent a pleasant and thankfully rain-free afternoon and evening shopping on Robson and Davie streets. We imbibed and ingested at Delilah's-a favourite of mine with its plush red banquettes, soft rose lighting, hand-painted ceilings, eclectic mood music and sassy martini menu-and ended the night in the cozy comfort of the Pacific Palisades hotel. The next day we did the fresh-seafood-starved, prairie landlubber migration to a ridiculously cheap sushi joint I know of and fell upon the tasty fare like gophers on oats. Having eaten our fill, we headed to the airport in plenty of time to catch our 4 p.m. Lufthansa flight. Eight-and-a-half hours later, we arrived at 10:30

a.m. Thursday morning (1:30 a.m. Saskatchewan time) in Frankfurt, Germany. After a short layover we
hopped a ninety-minute flight to Barcelona .
O
la
Spain.

By the time we dumped ourselves into a taxicab headed for the AC Diplomatic Hotel in downtown Barcelona, we were rags. I thought it a particularly good sign that neither of us, so far, had killed the other, nor even made an attempt. Errall, as am I, is a logical, matter-of-fact traveller. She calmly accepts the numerous delays and personal indecencies regularly visited upon travellers as an unavoidable consequence of peregrination. Travelling the world is a big deal and should be respected. To get the goods, sometimes you gotta put up with the crap. Now it was time for some of the goods. We tried hard to play the worldly wayfarers, but couldn't help gawking at the scenes passing by the windows of our cab.

Every so often the reality of our good fortune overtook us and we giggled like schoolgirls. I am a self-admitted simpleton when it comes to knowledge of great art and architecture, but that could not dull my awe at the sight of the massive bell towers of the Temple de la Sagrada Familia and other masterpiece buildings that highlighted our route, many the inspired creations of Antoni Gaudf, a name even I had heard of. We'd only be in Barcelona for a day and I became overwhelmed by the realization that there was too much to see. I glanced at Errall and could see her eyes doing the same wild dance as mine, feasting on buildings, people, cafes, shops, fashion, markets, statues...oh my. I knew that in the time we did have, we'd have to try our best to avoid a common downfall of tourists in this situation: trying to see too much, you end up spinning in circles and seeing nothing at all.

The AC Diplomatic Hotel is a fairly unremarkable eleven-storey structure on the corner of Pau Claris and Consell de Cent in the L'Eixample district. Often with European buildings, exteriors and interiors don't match; sometimes they are centuries apart in age and appearance. And this was certainly the case here. The AC is an ultra-modern, style-and-service kind of place with minimalist furniture and decor and cleverly arranged seating areas in the lobby for those who want to be seen and those who don't. Outside the glass-fronted foyer is the typical hectic, dusty, noisy European street corner, yet inside is all peace, beauty and harmony: fresh-scented air, the babble of trickling water, elaborately displayed works of art.

Tucked into a discreet corner of the lobby is an inviting lounge of alternating dark and light woods with low-slung, high-back armchairs in matching browns, the perfect respite from a busy world-all quite lovely.

Since we knew we'd have to get used to sharing even smaller quarters on the ship, Errall and I had booked ourselves into one room. Just as hip as the lobby, our suite was very small and equipped with Japanese-style closets with sliding doors. With enough luggage to see us well togged from the Mediterranean to Tuscany, one of us a gay man, the other a stylish woman, we were hopelessly short of space with only our toiletry kits unpacked. On the brighter side, on a gilt-edged writing table squeezed into one corner of the room was an elaborately wrapped basket filled with goodies: chocolate, a bottle of wine, crumbly cookies and paper-thin wafers, jams and crackers, along with maps of the area and a picture book of Barcelona. Feeling a bit peckish, we demolished a few cookies and read the accompanying note:
Russell and Errall,

Barcelona welcomes you. Meet us at 7 at Mikel Etxea for tapas on the
Ramblas.

C&D
 

We looked at each other and blinked, and then studied the words on the note more closely. Mikel Etxea? Tapas? Ramblas? We scurried to unearth our Spanish to English dictionary from our mountain of luggage.

A good concierge is a hotel guest's best friend. And it was our new best friend, Juan Antonio, who helpfully translated Charity Wiser's note and drew us a map for how best to get to where we were going.

In Canadian jargon, Charity had invited us for snacks at a restaurant named Mikel Etxea on a street called Las Ramblas. Carelessly ignorant of what we were getting ourselves into, Errall and I, freshened up and wearing the first of our "We have fashion in Canada too" outfits, strolled out the AC's front doors, into the lovely twenty-degree plus weather, with style, panache and about as much smarts as Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz.

We found our way easily enough to a street called Passeig de Gracia. Juan Antonio told us this was the Eixample's main avenue, home to charming Modernista buildings, stylish shops and graceful street lamps created by some guy named Pere Falqués. Okey dokey. What he failed to mention were the throngs of people. If I didn't know better, I'd swear all of them were scrambling to get away from some Catalonian version of King Kong...with Errall and me the only ones heading in the wrong direction.

Fortunately we only had four blocks of battling our way against the tide before we came upon Fontanella, the cross street to Plaça de Catalunya, a large plaza area that is reputedly the centre of life in Barcelona. Here we found more street lamps, statues, fountains, pigeons galore and, best of all, some much-needed personal space. You never know how much you miss it until it's gone. And there, like astronauts who've just realized, "Hey, those NASA guys weren't kidding-we really are on the moon!" we came face-to-face with the most famous of all streets in Spain: Las Ramblas. From our vantage point on Placa de Catalunya, the street seemed to go on forever; and it pretty much does, only coming to an end dozens of blocks away at the toes of Christopher Columbus where his massive statue towers above Port Veil and the sparkling Mediterranean.

Although just as busy as Passeig de Gratia, there was something distinctly different about Las Ramblas.

Instead of the whirlwind atmosphere, here the wide, tree-shaded central walkway seemed home to a more elegant, old world type of living, still active but appreciably more sedate and genteel. There was certainly much hustling and bustling, selling and buying, hawking and gawking but, unlike Passeig de Gratia where commerce and trade look just as they do in any other big city, Las Ramblas is truly a Spanish original. For many moments we held our spot, resisting the urge to jump into the melee, to be a part of the picture postcard. We hesitated, not wanting to lose that first delicious moment, beholding from our relatively peaceful perch next to the Fountain of Canaletes, one of the most beautiful and oldest great streets of the world. It was a picture I stored in my mind, knowing that, even years later, whenever I heard someone talking about Spain, this would be the scene I'd recall.

But eventually we could stand it no longer. Each taking a deep breath, we stepped away from our place by the nineteenth-century fountain and joined the horde. As we strolled down the canvas-ready corridor in search of Mikel Etxea, we passed by bustling shops and cafes, hotels and food markets, honest-to-goodness palaces, sloppy but sturdy newsstands, and collections of vendor stalls selling everything from caged birds to books and fresh-cut flowers. There were tarot card readers, musicians and the most accomplished mime artists I had ever seen. A tender, warm breeze floated through Las Ramblas that day carrying with it a pleasant old-world odour, a smell that mingled the scent of ancient buildings, fermented fruit and the sea. We moved sluggishly as if drugged by our intoxicating surroundings, taking in the exotic sights and sounds until, at last, the spell was broken when I heard someone calling my name. "Russell Quant!" the voice trumpeted. I turned in its direction and Ohmygawdit'sKatharineHepburn!

Well, Katharine Hepburn fifteen years ago.

A lithe creature, all angles and bristling intensity, was calling out to me from beneath a once-white umbrella made dirty by pollution and time. She was perched on a carmine-cushioned metal chair, one long, trouser-clad leg crossed over the other (ankle on knee, not knee on knee). Her hair, a bundle of washed out sunshine, was pulled back into an odd doughnut-like shape, which, along with the upturned collar of her starched, white, man's shirt, is what first made me think Kate was alive and well and living in Barcelona. She was tanned a healthy-looking light caramel with an abundance of freckles dotting the bridge of her thin nose. Her skin was pulled tight on her face, not from a surgeon's scalpel, but rather because it had no choice, what with the patrician nose, sharp cheek bones and razor-edged chin. Her eyes were pale green beneath pale lashes that matched her hair. Although she'd called out my name in its entirety, I doubted this woman, obviously a doyenne of the world, could truly be seeking me out. There had to be another Russell Quant nearby, some sophisticated esquire who would surely be a better match for this fascinating creature. But then I saw next to her someone I recognized, beneath a floppy, fabric hat, at colourless, faded replica. Flora Wiser.

Errall followed me hesitantly towards the table where these two, plus one more woman, had set up temporary camp at the outdoor pavilion of Mikel Etxea.

"And what of my Flora? Isn't she marvellous? Isn't she a lovely?" Katharine Hepburn demanded to know, exclamation mark, question mark, exclamation mark. Without allowing me opportunity to answer, she threw out a hand, as brown and freckled as her face and proceeded to introduce herself...and us. "I'm Charity Wiser. You're Russell Quant, my sleuth, and Errall Strane, the severe, intelligent and I see, very beautiful, legal eagle. You of course know my most wonderful granddaughter, Flora and next to her..."

and here she extended a hand to the plump cheek of an aged, square of a woman with thinning beige hair and a pile of knitting resting on her doughy lap, "...is the most desirable of all, my Ms. Dottie Blocka!"

I truly felt, as did several nearby tables, as if I should applaud. And nearly did. The one thing I knew right off about my new client was that she was all about the performance.

"Sit, sit, sit, oh my goodness, you must sit! Jose, my darling, another chair!" she called out into the cosmos. And the cosmos complied. Once we were settled around the table, Charity clasped the handle of a plastic pitcher that was sitting there and raised it into the air as though it were the little lion at the end of
The Lion King,
and called once more upon Jose, who appeared as if out of nowhere. "Another pitcher of sangria, you wonderful boy, but none of that piss you serve the regular customers! I don't want a litre of cheap red wine mixed with sugar. I want the good stuff, with brandy and a splash of Amaretto! And light on the soda water. Pour favour."

Flora leaned over and attempted to correct her grandmother's pronunciation. For her efforts she received the most loving gaze a heifer ever gave her freshly born calf (despite what was about to come out of her mouth). "Oh my good Lord, you are a lovely! You know absolutely everything! Everything! From now on, you will order! Oh my dear, I feel the weight lifting from my scrawny boned shoulders already."

Ouch, I thought to myself. That was a backhanded compliment that had to smart a bit. But instead, Flora smiled indulgently at her grandmother before allowing her gaze to drift aimlessly into the pother of the street. I turned to look at Charity and found that her blazing eyes had fallen upon me like a sledgehammer on an anvil. The time had arrived for me to audition for a part in the movie that is her life. I was gratuitously relieved, however, from making my debut when a frumpy character, somewhere in her forties and sitting at the table next to ours, laid a hand on Charity's forearm.

She said in a lilting English accent, "I couldn't help but overhearing, dear, but is there something wrong with
our
sangria?" She gesticulated toward the pitcher on her table as if there could be some doubt as to exactly which sangria she was referring.

Charity turned on her like a kindly mongoose on prey, then ever so briefly on the prey's companion, a husband likely, a chunky, silent sort of bloke given to inane grins. She addressed the woman, "Oh you fabulous you, wherever did you get that bonnet?"

After swallowing a perplexed frown and fingering an unfortunate piece of tartan on her head that looked a bit like a beret with wings she replied, "Devon, we're from Devon."

"Of course you are. My, I love Devonshire, and the creeeeeeeeeeeeammmmm. Jose, more of the same sangria for my friends Gwendolyn and Fred!"