Crap. The water is shut off here every day between 7pm and 7am. What a time to get my period! I had an entirely sleepless night, worrying about the sheets, but the morning and a warm bath brought more equilibrium, as did a bowl of thick, dark hot chocolate. Toledo’s cathedral is unexpectedly imposing and impressive for a relatively small town. I went early, then stayed to see what a Roman Catholic mass is like. Conducted entirely in Spanish of course, I didn’t get a huge amount of inspiration from the words, but the surroundings offered much in their place.It’s a wonderful country for gilding: there are dozens of lanky statues dressed in gold from far away places stretching up towards the small circular stained glass windows. I tried to shut out the image of how the gold got here, but then fell into imagining what it must have been like to be an Incan princess or an Aztec jeweller. There are several enormous oil paintings with little clutches of flickering white candles at their bases, which only highlight how darkly painted the oils are; moody blacks, greens, indigos and maroons. Jesus hanging, head down, blood dripping from his wounds. Mary holding her dead son, a broken man splayed out on her blue mantle. Even the tender mother and baby, usually a scene of optimism and hope, was tempered with foreboding; sadness filling Mary’s eyes. I wandered back and forth among the portraits, seeing something new in ones I’d passed a half hour before. Churches in Europe contain everything galleries and museums do, with the added benefit of providing a place to just sit in silence. I don’t have to make any decisions or ask any questions. The doors are always open and I am always welcome.
At lunch my limited language skills picked out ‘soup of egg yolk’. Aptly named. My bowl arrived with a lone egg yolk perfectly intact floating in a hot, milky broth. It looked horrible. And with little bullets of ham that were pretty well inedible lurking in the bottom of the bowl, I soon gave it up as a bad job and left almost in tears. These days even a small thing as bad soup makes me feel awful.
In the afternoon I visited El Greco’s house and museum. I never really knew his art before. Now I’d know it anywhere. His paintings, mostly large - the Spanish have a penchant for the conspicuous - are filled with subjects that seem pensive, even vacant, and with elongated, almost feminine hands that mesmerize me. He puts light into dark corners. I wandered around the house where he lived and painted, returning to some rooms and staying longer in others. How wonderful it must be to have a talent like this, to put in tangible form ones thoughts and feelings.
I have found stirring places in Toledo, most unexpectedly around corners. My favourite is Santa Maria’s grove of quiet trees. There is a bench there, of grey stone that undulates after centuries of bodies have sat and worn it down in places. I would sometimes pick a soft dip to sit on, mirroring bottoms from yore, and other times I would choose a part of the bench less favoured. The trees would whisper in the soft breeze and drizzly rain, their leaves that metallic colour leaves get before falling at the end of Autumn. No one else was ever around and I could sit alone and feel the centuries seep up through my body, and indulge in memories. I can choose which memory to bring up, what memories of you to remember. Spain is a romantic place and romance is constantly in my mind thinking of you so far away. All the times we spent together spring to life in my mind as I pace the streets and sit on benches. I can’t believe we only knew each other just a year.
It was a Thursday. The day we met. I remember it was a Thursday because that was the opening night of “Carousel” and our shows always opened on a Thursday. You came to the party after with our costume maker Janelle, and I thought you were the handsomest man and Janelle’s boyfriend. You read me some of your poems, then asked me to dance and dipped me, which was so romantic. The room seemed too hot and we went to sit out on the back steps and talked for an hour and a half. Four years older than me which seemed a lot at the time. And with the most wonderful smile I’d ever seen.
You came to the show every night after that and went out with all of us afterwards, sometimes with Janelle but mostly on your own. A flicker of hope. I loved it when sometimes you sat next to me. You made me laugh. I tried not to be too obvious about how much I liked being with you because I’d look so ridiculous if you didn’t feel the same way. When the show’s run finished we both stayed at the closing night party until it shut down, then watched the sun rise from the roof. I didn’t want to leave in case I never saw you again, but I’d never asked a guy out before.
“Would you maybe want to meet up sometime, you know, for a drink or a movie?”
“Yes, I would.”
“If you have time, of course.”
A quizzical look, given you’d already answered my question. “Yes, I will have time.”
My face went hot, now back to improvising. “Really? Um, that’s good. I’d like that, too.”
I felt like a nine year old, stumbling over my words, my mouth dry with excitement. And then we talked some more and you told me that you thought I hadn’t been interested in you, and so tried to hide your own disappointment by acting uninterested in me! How many love affairs have been curtailed by mistaken assumptions and emotional cover-ups? I am blushing now just remembering it!
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