Incompatible

by Mauricio R B Campos

  He completed the registration form and asked the receptionist to wake him up at nine in the morning. He went to his room, where the bellman waited for the tip. He gave a bill to the guy, who had left the suitcase inside the wardrobe. He said goodbye and closed the door. Looking around the room and thinking it to be of good taste, already acclimatized with a pleasant temperature, he put out his pants and tennis shoes and, getting inside the sheets, he closed his eyes and slept instantly.

  * * *

  When the phone rang at nine, he had his eyelids heavy and it was hard for him to answer:

  “Gracias por despertarme” — he thanked, in Spanish, and switched off the phone again with difficulty.

  He had himself sitting in the bed to prevent from sleeping again. His ground tour was programmed for the next day, so that today was for adaptation. He had already been to Madrid with his family during vacation and he knew the main tourist spots of the Spanish capital. He would take this day to make a different walk: he was fond of handmade beers and recently the fame of the Cardenal Cisneros beer community, the most brewing calle of the city, had had a boom.

  He took a quick shower, changed and went down for breakfast, that is, desayuno. In the way, he passed by the laundry and left his dirty clothes. Since everything he needed had to fit in the backpack he would carry, he had taken a few clothes to save space.

  The breakfast table was not the most luxurious he had seen, but there was a great variety of breads, fruits, cakes, and croissants, in the best style of Madrid. The delicious foods were placed in painted wooden boxes, in several colors and covered with newspaper sheets. Arthur found it strange that foods would be on paper sheets; and the sheets were all equal, with the impression that the paper was specially cleaned; he wondered whether it was so or if they would be only remains of some little newspaper itself. Two signs were in remark in the breakfast table:

  Home is where your heart is and K&O Bizcocho Casero.

  He took a little of everything and a good portion of Spanish ham, which he found delicious. He drank orange juice to help break the fats, and, after an espresso, he left to Street Goya. He needed to reach the subway station one block from there and take a train to cross five stations up to Bilbao, from where he could access the Calle del Cardenal Cisneros. It was still too early, he would go slowly to the brewing region, with time to appreciate the capital not with the eyes of a tourist, but with the eyes of a vagabond, those that best understand the real nature of the city.

  When he left to the sunny street, he looked at both sides of the avenue. The typical buildings of six to seven floors with large balcony windows formed a harmonious set from both sides of Goya Street. He followed observing the beautiful shop windows, thinking of how the kind of trip influenced the way we saw the city. When he traveled with his family through that Madrid of wonderful buildings like taken out of fairy-tales, like the sumptuous Royal Palace; and the other classic tourist spots like the Paseo Del Prado and the buildings in the Belle Époque style from the Gran Vía... His eyes now would see other things, without hurry, he could detain in the city’s lifestyle, in the small gestures of its inhabitants.

  He passed by the El Corte Inglés and dived to the belly of the city, going down the stairs that led to Goya Station. While he waited at the subway box office, he thought of how things could change so much in so little time. Weeks before he was finishing his course of administration in Stanford, and now he was in Madrid, in a self-knowledge trip. During the time he spent in the United States, he acquired much knowledge, but a few relationships. They say the world has become a global village, but there are cultural and linguistic factors that seem unbridgeable. The main friendships he made during college were with a Brazilian, Anderson, who followed the Way of Santiago, an Indian and a Chinese. NorthAmericans did not treat him bad, by any means, not even discriminated him; but he always noticed a polite distance by them.

  He went through the Madrid belly up to Bilbao station; he had to ask which the exit to Calle del Cardenal Cisneros was. He followed by the narrow street, with cars parked in both sides, only to find that the list of breweries he brought and wanted to visit were all closed and would open only at night. Except for one, Oldenburg, that would open at one p.m. He read his watch: eleven a.m. He decided to wander through the street, who knows what he could find by chance? He walked for some minutes and arrived at the crossroad with Calle de Hartzenbusch, where, in the first floor of a typical home building of five floors, the brewery that would welcome the beer lovers opened sooner. At the other corners there was a tobacco store, a restaurant and a drugstore. At the drugstore façade in green letter on the white bottom, he could read: Herboristería Farmacéutica, a name he found funny for Portuguese speakers. The corner restaurant was Samara and was specialized in Egyptian food. He imagined he could take a beer and have lunch there while he waited for the brewery to open; he went to the closed door of the restaurant only to confirm the Spanish habits were very different from Brazilians’; the working time for lunch was from one until four p.m.

  He remained at Calle de Hartzenbusch looking for some interesting spot. A rare second hand books store drew his attention, but not enough to have him cross the entry door. In the first corner he found a house of quick meals that drove his curiosity thanks to its name, Viena Capellanes. The Brazilian Viena restaurant he knew and liked. He resolved to bet in the apparent similarity and went in. Crossed the wooden floors, he sat in a bench along the counter. He asked for a beer and the menu, which had a great variety of options that seemed very tasty. The house was crowded and very cheerful, a prelude for a day that began joyful. He ate a

  Provençal focaccia with peppered salami, pesto sauce and arugula.

  Arthur was delighting his meal when two women drew his attention: they entered the establishment and sat in benches beside his. The brown-haired woman of short- and curly hair, athletic body, dressing a tight top, showed a golden piercing in her belly button that remarked in the muscular abdomen; the other was blond, slim and elegant, with deep blue eyes and Barbie legs. They caressed each other’s arms and the sexual tension between them was almost palpable.

  He tried to remain discreet as much as he could while he paid attention to what they were talking. From the conversation, he discovered the blonde woman was called Camila and the brown-haired woman, María. They looked Spanish and were discussing about a trip María would make on the next day; the blonde wanted her to cancel it, because she would arrange with a friend the lending of a house in SaintTropez. She promised hot afternoons with love and cold white wine by the beach. When María was returning the malicious look from her friend, her look crossed accidentally with Arthur’s, and he felt her pulsating heat.

  When she felt observed, she became more dramatic in her gestures, but she lowered the tone of conversation. He could not listen what they said anymore, but he imagined he could reach the sky in a round bed beside those blazes in the shape of woman. He decided to pay attention to the restaurant television, where a soccer match was being transmitted. It was the second division game: Real Oviedo and Numancia. He did not remind neither of these teams; actually, the sole team of the Spanish second league he knew was the Real Betis, which he did not even know was in this league.

  He felt there was something abnormal happening between the two: the blonde screamed and hid behind the brunet in a very disarranged manner, as if they were being threatened by something.

  “He’s here, it’s his car!” Camila said, louder than she wanted, and running lowered to the bottom of the restaurant, she disappeared behind some clients.

  The brown-haired girl turned to the TV set pretending interest, took her companion’s glass and put it on the other side of the counter, on the sink. Arthur pretended he did not notice.

  A strong individual soon came hurried scrolling the restaurant with his eyes. He approached María:

  “Where is she?”

  The girl tried to ignore him for a while, but he repeated his question.

  “
I don’t know where she is, I haven’t seen her since yesterday” she answered harshly.

  “If I find you are lying, Uruguayan, you’ll see me in hell” the individual threatened and lowered his voice as he came to the end of the phase.

  Arthur took a long drip of beer.

  The man that arrived there looking for the blonde woman went to the sidewalk and lit a cigarette, walking from one side to the other, melting under the Hispanic sun. María played the saint for some more minutes and then received a mobile call. She said something in as low a voice as she could, inaudible for Arthur. It was then that the traveler saw the blonde girl near the exit door of Viena Capellanes, disguised like a femme fatale of the forties. What stories must not she have told in the female toilet so that so many accessories had ended up on her face? A face that know disappeared surrounded by a green tissue, dark glasses and hat. María got out of her bench and went to the sidewalk for a cigarette from the bullyboy, clearly distracting the man while her friend left the environment by the side door and going out to the Calle Hartzenbusch.

  Apparently, only he realized the pantomime processed in the restaurant; this was the advantage of being a wanderer in the city. He could be as voyeur as one of those strange angels of the Win Wenders’s[22] film. He had already finished eating, took a last drip of his Estrella

  Damm, paid and went through the same street where the blonde woman had disappeared some moments ago. But she had already disappeared through the narrow streets of that part of Madrid.

  Whist he walked, he reminded another blonde woman that had enchanted him in the last days: the architect that involved him with strong thighs and moaned shamelessly in his ear three days ago, in the Big House. It should have been only a sex afternoon without commitment, but it was not the first time he found himself missing that scent, that skin, her taste in his tongue.

  CHAPTER 11

  Arthur Nunes de Mendonca left the hotel, after a strong breakfast, in an Uber car heading to the airport Madrid Barajas. The travel agency where he bought the package started the trip from the airport. From there, they would take a bus up to Ponferrada. In the taxi, he came reminding the previous day of intense flavors in the breweries he had been to.

  He walked by the several areas of the airport so that he came to the meeting point, where the employees of the tour agency waited for the group with flags a little ridiculous with the symbol of the company. He had a grateful surprise when he approached the heterogeneous group of pilgrims who waited to get on the bus: for one of these coincidences of the destiny, the brown-haired girl who had drawn his attention so much at Viena Capellanes was there, as elegant as before. However, he remained quiet, only sending her a recognition look, which she corresponded with a disguised smile.

  They did not wait much time, and they were soon on the bus going to Ponferrada, the first place of the French Way to Galicia. There were some Brazilians in his travel group, including Arturo Oliveira, a detective novel writer, who was traveling with his wife. In the way to the city at the rail bridge built a thousand years ago, he talked a little to a Brazilian woman who sat beside him. She said her name was Ana and that she lived in São Paulo. It was the third time she treaded the way. She had something that made Arthur remind his mother, although they had little in common. The similarities were in their age, their color of the eyes and in their body, with the same athletic shape of the runners. They had possibly taken part in the same competitions in São Paulo. He found funny a coincidence like this in the other side of the Atlantic. Things that only happen in the Way of Santiago, Ana guaranteed. She spent a long time of the trip speaking about synchronicity, of how the Universe finds a way to provide certain things by changing the tissue of reality so that a given number of elements converge for a given end.

  When they reached Ponferrada, she was talking about how the Universe conspired for her to find the spirit teaching. Arthur felt a kind of relief that their ways would end there, because, while he would stay in an inn in the bucolic Celtic village O Cebreiro, she would stay in a hotel in Vega del Valcarce. That was where each took a taxi for their respective destinations, beside other clients of the tour agency.

  At that night, Arthur slept in the inn Os Catro Arpones, which worked in an old stone house, so simple that, were not for the sign with the four crossed harpoons beside the entry door and the large letters informing it was an inn, it would not have been realized by the tourists and pilgrims.

  The first effective day as a pilgrim began very early, and after a strong breakfast, the entire group that came in the bus from Madrid gathered with many others who had come from several points. The first stop was the Capela dos Milagres, a place where they buried a monk and a follower who, according to the Church, witnessed during a mass the host become flesh and the wine become blood. A guide in the place stated that the calyx was very important for the religious men, because it is considered the miracle calyx, a Romanic jewel from the twelfth century that, in 1486, was donated by the Catholic Kings who went there to contemplate the miracle witnessed by the monk and the follower. Some compare this piece with the Holy Grail from the medieval legends.

  By contemplating the Romanic jewel, protected by a delicate crystal reliquary, constructed by the queen Isabel de Castela, he wondered which the possibilities would be for all that to be real. Despite his skepticism, there was an aura of sacred worshiping in that stone church that touched his soul. He did not consider himself a man of faith, but he had sensibility to feel that there was a different aura in that place, that gave it an unreal characteristic. Had Jesus materialized there? His blood? His flesh? He remembered the scene of the film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, in which the hero has to choose among several calyxes to survive: there was an iron calyx, a wooden calyx and a golden calyx. In the film, the hero chooses the wooden calyx, because Jesus was a carpenter. The miracle calyx was more similar to the calyx of one of the kings of the past than that of a preacher from Galilee.

  At last, his skepticism led him to see himself as a displaced man in that place of worshiping and left it.

  Outside of the church, several pilgrims prepared to start the journey. He looked for María among all the travelers holding a cane, but he did not manage to find her, although he had not reminded her inside the church. Ana, the old woman who had sat beside him during the bus travel noticed his presence. She came to him with a smile:

  “Apparently, you didn’t get too thrilled before the unique view of the Holy Grail.”

  He shouldered and returned the smile.

  “This church is amazing, don’t you think?” She asked.

  He stared at the stone church, it was not a cathedral; actually, he did not see anything amazing in it, and the nickname of chapel would match it perfectly. We’re not for the stone, it would have no enchantment.

  Before his silence, she kept on:

  “It’s been there for a thousand years.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Have you been to Jerusalem?”

  “Not yet. How about you?”

  “Yes, it’s amazing. I’ve been to Egypt too. I visited Memphis, which is over three thousand years old, and I confess I wasn’t as astonished as in Jerusalem. I think there’s a spiritual atmosphere incomparable in those places. It’s not in vain that so many people go crazy after visiting the

  Holy City.”

  Arthur stared at the walls of the monastery behind the chapel and looked at his watch, according to the information of the guide; today they would tread twenty-one kilometers. They should leave soon. He looked at his traveling companion, who was waiting for an answer about the mystic atmosphere of Jerusalem or something like. He did not feel particularly indicated for esoteric speculations at that moment. He smiled shyly in response and looked at the pavement. There was a stone in the floor with a shell delicately sculpted in high relief. It was a marking he would see during the whole way, the symbol of the Way of Santiago.

  It did not take too long for the people to begin
to leave the church. They were soon marching. The group of the travel agency followed a guide, a smiling individual with a face of idiot, in which they manage to stick a little flag with the symbol of the agency, in the suitcase, so that it became impossible to lose sight of him.

  They walked for about one hour, when he discovered what had happened to María. She apparently did not stop at the Capela dos Milagres and used this time to get ahead of the way. The group of pilgrims found her under the shadow of a leafy tree by the road. She had stretched a towel on the grass and was meditating immovable like a statue in lotus position. Behind her was the big red backpack and the trekking poles that were crossed.

  Arthur approached and contemplated that human statue admiring her musculature perfectly drawn under the sports clothes colorful and fit. She had a tattoo on her arm, which drew his attention: the yin-yang symbol in the center of an eight-tipped star, and the tips were shaped like arrows. He found the format of that symbol bizarre and even more bizarre was finding her in that yoga position.

  As if she guessed that she was being observed, she opened her eyes and began to move slowly, stretching her body.

  “How come it wouldn’t be my pet voyeur” she said, as if she spoke to herself, in Spanish. “What’s your name?”

  “Arthur de Mendonca, how about yours?” He asked, as if he didn’t know yet.

  “María Ruiz[23]. Arthur like the king?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think you’ve just passed by the Holy Grail in the last stop.”

  “It’s better to let it go, as long as I know, Avalon was destroyed because of that calyx.”