Youth Hostel, Catalazete, Lisbon: still there!
We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.
- William Faulkner
- William Faulkner
McClain was there.
In the youth hostel at Catalazete, I mean.
Once more, we had a laugh over the toilets. They were the same as those we’d seen at Calais, just a ceramic concavity in the tiles of the floor, with a down pipe and hatched platforms to plant your feet on, but with one convenient enhancement. A water nozzle was located overhead, so that when you’d finished your discharge, you could turn your attention to the question of bodily cleanliness by dropping a wooden grate leaning against the opposite wall. You then stepped upon it, soaped yourself down for a shower and turned on the tap!
Next morning, McClain was gone again, apparently anxious to get Europe ‘done’, while I settled in for a spell of convalescence. As it
happened, I couldn’t have chosen a more favourable place. The hostel had once
been a fort and was sited strategically on a promontory of rock in the estuary
of the river. Outside, just above a stony seafront, there was a patio where
tables, chairs and sun umbrellas were furnished for the use of the guests. I
sat out there in a circle of shade for several days, just looking out at the breathing
sea and the azure sky, and sensing the gentle breeze in my face.
It was a very pleasant
- if listless - existence, as I never lacked for company, since people who
spoke English would regularly turn up. One day I met a fellow who had just
returned from Morocco Morocco
Before long, I could
move about with ease, though still unshod, as my shoes still refused to fit my
feet, and one day I met an English fellow who, it seems, wished me to know that
he was an ‘anarchist’. I had not the foggiest notion of what an anarchist was,
and told him so. He was pleased to enlighten me. An anarchist, he explained, was
someone who did not believe in governments.
Well, I took
that into my head, but could not make much of it. Unfortunately, he seemed
unable to provide further clues, so that I was more or less compelled to rely
on his appearance, which was chiefly distinguished by the baggy trousers he
wore, the bottoms of which flopped on his insteps and were trodden under his heels.
To this day, my idea of anarchy is wedded to an image of tousled trousers.
But although he
failed to interest me in anarchism, he did have a lasting influence on my diet,
for one day he took me to a nearby café to sample calamares and octopus. The golden rings of squid were surprisingly
tasty I decided, but though I couldn’t fault the taste of the second dish, the
sight of a grey suckered tentacle lying in my plate gave rise to a little billowing
in my gorge again.
As time went by,
my sunburn turned to tan as it always does and I exchanged my place in
the shade for one in the sun. I was savouring this new taste for sun-bathing one
day, when I fell into conversation with an English fellow and a girl seated under
a sun umbrella. He was a lanky, long-haired and pale-skinned individual, clad
in a threadbare denim jacket and jeans. The only reason I remember him at all is that every second word he said was ‘fuck’.
‘Fuck this, fuck
that, fuck the other,’ ran his jabber, just like the rat-tat-tat of a
woodpecker. That alone would not have put me off, for I was no stranger to the
word myself. What struck me as unusual here was his evident lack of scruple in dumping
his verbal rubbish in front of his girlfriend. In the culture I’d come from,
the males were foul-mouthed enough, but they would have been indignant to hear such
cursing used before a woman. That just wasn’t done.
Surveying his
pasty face, I asked him why he didn’t sit in the sun.
“What the fuck
for?” he wanted to know.
“Well, umm… to
get a tan?”
“What the fuck
do I want a tan for?”
Well, I didn’t strictly know. To feel good, to look good, I supposed, but I never said so. Casting a
glance again at his straggling mane and mangy jeans, I decided he wouldn’t give
a fuck about that either. This pair and the similar one I’d met in Birmingham
One evening, several
young Americans erupted onto the patio and desecrated the peace of the place. They
all wore grey short-sleeved sweatshirts, sneakers, white socks and the despised
Bermuda shorts. They were like a troop of baboons. But unlike baboons they
couldn’t stay still, appearing here, there and everywhere by turns, babbling fatuously.
“Hiya, baby!”
one of them burbles.
“Hiya, baby!
another parrots in reply.
“Watcha doin’,
baby?” a third empties his head of a question.
“Nothin’, baby,” is blathered back.
“Okay, baby!”
was traded with “Yeah, baby!” while “Wow, baby!” was bartered with “Right on,
baby! in a tedious exchange of linguistic scraps that would convince the most
unlearned listener of their essential mindlessness’.
They addressed
no-one but each other, simply oblivious to the grand panorama of sea and sky that served as setting for this impressive edifice, just as though they’d never left their humdrum
homes back in Boresville, U.S.A.
One night, a bit of a party got started on the beach with wine and a fire. I don’t know who inspired it, maybe those fatuous yanks – out of boredom. However that may be, I was lured out there by light and excitement, and found myself sitting in a patch of sand lamenting my rashness and bristling at the brainless babble of those baboons, until I was drawn into conversation with an exquisitely pretty Danish girl. She seemed friendly, as well as comely, and when the wine had heated my head sufficiently, I was ready to swim the estuary for her. But when she was sure my regard was firmly fixed on her, she switched from affability to abuse.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
When I told her, she said, “I’ll call you t’ickie!”
Like most Continentals she couldn’t pronounce ‘th’, but it was clear what she meant.
“My name’s Colin,” I enunciated, a bit annoyed.
“T’ickie! T’ickie!”
she taunted.
“Don’t call me
that!” I warned, as others were listening to this exchange.
“T’ickie! T’ickie!
T’ickie!” she shrieked gleefully.
“Stop it!” I growled.
Everyone on the
beach was probably conscious now of her crafty chaffing and my awkward
response. Goaded by this mockery from a perfect stranger, I advanced on her,
knees in the sand. I didn’t dare to touch her, but instead peered menacingly into
her flickering face.
“T’ickie! T’ickie! T’ickie!”
She was
beautiful. Such smooth, unblemished skin, such finely-formed features. With one
part of my being I adored; with the other, I despised. I wanted to lay hands on
her – in love – in rage. Why didn’t I just drag her off into the darkness? But
what would the baboons do? It’s unlikely they were very brave, but they
outnumbered me. More to the point, what would I do? In the light
of my past romantic disasters, I mean.
Hence, I abandoned
that asinine dispute to nurse what little dignity I had left, a move that proved
I was not so brave either.
For some time, I was bewildered why a girl would so rudely ridicule
an innocent and earnest lad such as myself, who showed such tender interest in
her, but finally ascribed it to deep feelings of boredom. First she hooked her
line with a morsel of love-bait and when the barb was pinned in the victim's lip she reeled him in and began whittling away at his pride, just to watch him squirm. How could
one so lovely be so loveless? But then what could love mean to one who
could be the mistress of many hearts? Instead of being a gem of priceless worth,
would it not be just a funny-looking stone to kick?
One day, a thin,
freckled fellow with a sparse, straggly moustache and a tan that made his eyes
look a liquid blue, came striding into the hostel with a rucksack on his back. He
was from Prince George , British Columbia
“What’s your
name?” I asked after several moments’ talk.
“People call me
Twan,” was the reply.
Twan? What kind
of a name was that? It was a title of respect out of old adventure films set in
the Far East , if I remembered correctly. How could I call him that?
“But isn’t that
just a nick-name?” I made so bold as to say. “It’s not your real name, is it?”
“That’s what
people call me,” he smiled.
They didn’t have
a lot of choice, as far as I could see, so Twan it was. Twan Daley. I never did find out what his real name was, but whatever it was, I dare say he didn’t like
it.
Twan had just
come up from Algeciras Morocco Morocco Italy Rome
I was easily
persuaded. Morocco Italy
Or – another idea – why didn’t we go down to the harbour and try to
find work on a ship that would take us to some place really far away? That idea
was suggested to us by talk with a fellow who had moved out of the hostel onto
the beach. He had gathered some stones together and built a wall under an
overhanging ledge of rock where he had installed his sleeping bag and rucksack
to make a makeshift home. He had run out of money, he told us, and was now
waiting for a ship to work his passage back to Argentina
We did go down
to the docks, and we did find a ship that wanted a couple of deck hands, but it
was going to St. Johns , Newfoundland
When the inflammation
in my feet vanished at last, I did not stop walking about barefoot, since my
soles were now as tough as shoe leather. I really had no need for shoes in that
climate, and as my skin was now as brown as walnut, rambling about barefoot
made me feel free and natural. But my shoelessness was something of a puzzle for
Portuguese people, I think, for one of the Lisbon street urchins who often
attached themselves to foreigners in the hope of selling them something –
anything – followed my refusal to buy shoes with the question:
“Why you wear no
shoes?”
“Because I don’t
want to,” I replied.
“In Portugal
However, I did
buy a pair of boots. Not from a street vendor, though − from Twan. For some inscrutable reason he was carrying a spare pair of boots he wished to sell cheaply for a
little extra cash. I would need some footwear eventually, I knew, and since my
own shoes were rather flimsy and had been wearing out fast till the day I’d
ceased to wear them, I closed the deal forthwith, and henceforth went about the
streets of Lisbon, still barefoot, but with a pair of maroon boots with soles
like tyre treads dangling from my rucksack by long, yellow laces.
Lisbon
But I did at
last put on my new pair of boots when, more than three weeks after leaving London Barcelona Zaragoza , for, taking a leaf from his own book, I told him that Madrid
Owing to the lack
of traffic along that remote artery of Extremadura that I was tramping once again, and to the
distance involved in that first leg of our journey, we finished the day in
darkness by laying out our beds in a region of vast grassland edging a hushed
and vacant highway.
Extremadura
My solitary recollection
of Zaragoza consists of a dusty thoroughfare baking under a blazing sun in an
industrial part of the town. The truth was that neither of us had the foggiest notion
of what to see in most of the towns we visited. We were less inspired by sights
to see than engagement in life experience. That difference of taste was symbolic
of a difference of class, for there was a social division on the road, just as
there was everywhere else. More about that later.
We passed the
night at the youth hostel, and next day rolled into Barcelona
I have mentioned
already that my mind was yet unblemished by any fleck of high culture in those
days – as was Twan’s. We lacked anything resembling a guide book, but more
often than not hostel common rooms and kitchens were the haunts of hostellers nursing
interests going a bit beyond beer and girls, so that we could often identify the
most common sights to see in any particular city or town we happened to be in.
Thus it was we went to inspect a colossal structure called ‘Gaudi’s Cathedral’.
But when we clapped eyes on it, I failed to recognise anything that matched my
concept of what a cathedral should look like. To me it seemed more like some
kind of huge, ornate fruitcake, oozing with tantalizing icings. Was this Gaudi
making gulls of us or what?
The Sagrada Familia Cathedral, Barcelona
Another excursion we made was maybe more symbolic of our true cultural level. Twan told me one day that some of the fellows in the hostel were planning that very evening to visit an establishment called Panam’s. It was a bar, apparently, where prostitutes gathered to ply their trade. Was I coming?
“I’m not going
with any prostitute!” I said indignantly.
“Neither am I,”
he said with a characteristic wrinkle of his nose. “We’re just going for a
laugh, to watch what goes on. In fact,” he added, “I’m only going to take
enough money for a beer. That way I won’t be tempted.”
This Panam’s
turned out to be no dingy little bar, but quite a plush, spacious place. Upon
entry, we promptly spotted the girls offering the product on sale seated like tasty-looking
displays on a dais, and sat ourselves down at one of the tables arranged for
viewing the items for hire. The girls sat separately from each other in silence,
well-groomed and powdered, and plainly on display. It was the first time I’d
ever seen prostitutes (or was conscious of that fact). How could they do this
for money? I strained my brain to understand. How could they just hire
out their own bodies for the purposes of total strangers? I was gullible enough
to believe they did it from free choice. I had no inkling of the things that
could drive a woman to prostitution.
But I was
fascinated too. All you had to do was pay a little money and you could take your
pick. And it was very little money too! Five hundred pesetas was the going rate
here, about two pounds sterling. And these women weren’t at all bad looking…
But I wouldn’t – I couldn’t! It wouldn’t be right to pay money for love!
But if I were willing… which one would I choose? I
mused. There was one, thinner than the others – I’ve always had a weakness for
thin women – sitting quietly with downcast eyes. She was making no attempt to
attract the notice of the customers, like some of the others, especially the one
who’d actually approached our table and taken a seat beside Twan, where she was
now giving him the come-on in Spanish. Yes! It would be the slender, modest one
I would choose. She looked unhappy. Maybe I could make her feel happy for a
little while…
Idiot! Blind,
romantic, idiot!
Twan’s new
companion now had her thighs spread wide and was pointing up her mini-skirt and
saying enthusiastically, “Fickie? Fickie? But she was probably the least
attractive of these girls – if the most forward – and when there was no
response from Twan she went away.
Several moments
later, my comrade turns to me and says, “Colin, can you lend me some money? I’ve
just got to go!”
“You’re joking!”
I said, “You said you didn’t bring any money so that you wouldn’t be tempted.”
“I know,” he
said, “but I just gotta. Will you lend me some?”
I got out some cash and handed him five
hundred pesetas, whereupon he got up and approached one of the girls. Next thing, she
got up and he followed her out of the room.
He was back
within half an hour.
“Well, was it
good?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah!” he
said,” handing me some change with a big grin, “and it only cost me three
hundred and fifty pesetas ‘cause she was pregnant!”
Panam’s, Barcelona, 1960
It’s still there!
Another of
Twan’s bright ideas was to move out of the hostel into a pension.
“What’s a
pension?” I asked.
“Well, it’s a kind
of cheap hotel,” he said. “Some of them only charge about thirty pesetas a
night.”
That was about
half what we were paying at the hostel. Still, I wasn’t keen. What would the
place be like? I wondered out loud.
“It’ll be all
right,” he said. “I’ve been in them before. What do you want for thirty
pesetas? It’s a bed for the night, isn’t it? Look at the money we’d save!”
In the end I
deferred to his more worldly judgement and we moved out of the hostel into a pension
in a seedy part of the town. We spent only one night there, for the reason that
the room wasn’t as cheap as expected and because there was no company there, as
there was at the youth hostel. I only mention the incident at all because it
led to another curious episode that took place in a bar that neighboured the
place.
There, a short, fat woman dressed in black, about sixty years of age, approached with her hand out, voicing something in Spanish. Naturally, I failed to understand what she said, but I did catch ‘cinco pesetas’, as I always made a habit of learning the numbers in the language of the nations I visited, mainly for the purpose of shopping. But what was this old woman saying about five pesetas?
There, a short, fat woman dressed in black, about sixty years of age, approached with her hand out, voicing something in Spanish. Naturally, I failed to understand what she said, but I did catch ‘cinco pesetas’, as I always made a habit of learning the numbers in the language of the nations I visited, mainly for the purpose of shopping. But what was this old woman saying about five pesetas?
I said, “Sorry,
I don’t speak Spanish.”
She spoke again, repeating the words ‘cinco pesetas’.
What did she
want five pesetas for? Surely she couldn’t be propositioning me. Was she just
begging or what?
I said again, “I
don’t speak Spanish,” and after a time she went away.
The meaning of
the encounter was a grand mystery to me until some twelve months later back in Canada Barcelona
“Surely women
that old aren’t prostitutes, are they?” I asked.
“Oh, no,” he
said, “dey are sockers.”
“What do you
mean?” I said.
“Dey are
prostitutes when dey are yong, but when dey get old dey jus’ ask a leetle mawney
for a sock.”
Oh…
We left Barcelona London France
Marseille 1960s
We spent three days in Marseille, but just what
we did there escapes recollection. Anyway, what is important to a developing
life has little to do with things you can see or do, and everything to do with thoughts
on the course your life is taking and resolutions to remake it, to prompt it to
evolve and thus put an end to the stagnation of a life that does not change,
because a life that does not change is not a truly human life. But if distinct recollections
of Marseille escape me, it does not mean our visit to the city played no part
in my life, for even minor memories can be critical to the fate of a man.
Thus it is that my old notes on this journey confirm
that in Marseille I met several young Americans who either possessed a
university degree, or were in the process of getting one. That brings me back
to an earlier assertion I made to the effect that there was class division on
the road, just as there was everywhere else. Division, to the extent that I’d
only ever known one person in my life who’d had the impulse, the means and the
backing of his parents to attend a university.
That was my good school friend, Len Bahry. Now, Len was known in our high-school parlance as a ‘brain’. That is because he got consistently high marks in every single examination that he sat, whereas I could muster 70% at the most on a lucky day in a subject that I liked. Generally my marks hovered about the high fifties and low sixties.
That was my good school friend, Len Bahry. Now, Len was known in our high-school parlance as a ‘brain’. That is because he got consistently high marks in every single examination that he sat, whereas I could muster 70% at the most on a lucky day in a subject that I liked. Generally my marks hovered about the high fifties and low sixties.
In my estimation of things, I was just not
the stuff of which university graduates could be made, a conviction, if I may
say so, that my parents, like other working class parents in dealing with their
kids, did nothing to change, for they could not afford to send them to
university. But what I sensed from conversations with these Americans in Marseille
was that I was no less intelligent than they were. From that time on, the idea
of attending a university began to take route in me.
Of course, none
of this explains why I acquired a new
thirst for learning. I suspect the reason was because I had finally made contact
with the culture of old Europe , however fragmentarily. Here it was real, not just explanations and illustrations in books. Why did
people flock to see cathedrals and sculptures and paintings after all? I
wondered. There must be something in them. I wanted to know about that.
Apart from that
experience, all I remember of Marseille was a lot of sailing boats in the
harbour. On leaving the city, we dawdled along the road east, doing God knows
what again – possibly goggling at the girls on the beach at St. Tropez – reaching
Nice after the hostel had closed, and sleeping on a slope in the grounds. What
embeds that event in my memory is that at first light a fine rain began falling
on my face.
We spent the
next night inside the hostel, and the following day we made for Monte Carlo
Casino at Monte Carlo, 1960s
But looks didn’t
matter anyway. Who could say what a thing looked like? What mattered was that
you could say you’d been there. Mind you, we weren’t as dense as most of the Americans
we met in this part of the world. Neither of us had a camera, for example. We used to say of
Americans that they came to Europe with a rucksack full of money and went back home with a rucksack
full of pictures. But again, my allusion is to class, rather than nationality.
A bit fatigued
after our journey, which had involved a lot of walking, we sat down on the steps to rest before being promptly dismissed by a doorman, in whose care resided
the good name of this classy establishment.
That afternoon
we crossed another frontier into Italy San Remo
Next morning, as
people were flocking all round us to sunbathe and swim, we simply stayed put and followed
suit. By the afternoon our bit of beach was as populated with people as any in Antarctica with penguins. The
problem was that the crowd was crammed between two high fences less than a
hundred yards apart. That was the width of the ‘public beach’. The remaining couple
of kilometres of beach on either side was reserved for the exclusive use of
hotel guests. How we missed Spain
In the afternoon
our empty bellies sent us off in search of food, and probably drink as well,
for we failed to return to our sleeping quarters until after the sun had gone
down and found the gate in the railing shut and locked. We could have scaled it
easily, for sure, but was that legal? Since we would not risk having to pay any kind
of fine, we went in search of sleeping quarters elsewhere. After scouring the
town for more than an hour, we’d found no refuge away from the public gaze, apart
from a patch of turf right beside a railway line. It was an awful spot
really, hard by some rubbish bins, but my repugnance was overcome by my fatigue
and I settled for sleep. Twan went off to look for somewhere better.
In the middle of
the night I was whipped into wakefulness by a sound of approaching thunder and
I rose on my elbows to behold a monstrous black shape with a dazzling light like
a giant white eye looming in the darkness. A second later it had blotted out
half the stars, and rolled by with a whit – whit – whit – whit sound, and then was gone into the night, rhythmically clicking and ticking.
A ghostly silence then came sailing into its wake.
A ghostly silence then came sailing into its wake.
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