Veintiuno21

For those of you joining from the Fallas link, this blog is the continuing saga deconstructing the romance of Henry and X amongst the ruins of Las Fallas 2002.  Enjoy, albeit halfway through the movie.  (psst ... the previous blogs are just above.)

                                                               *

La Cremà: the last night of the festival truly is a bittersweet catharsis.

The finale described below is a series of giant bonfires that almost singe the eyebrows as they sting one's eyes; and there be people that literally do cry as the whole shebang burns down in a magnificent heap of flames signifying the end of the marathon known as Las Fallas.

All this, as X is still fuming at Henry for the runner he pulled the night before - and the secret no longer being a secreto.

Chapter 20:  Torrent.  La Cremà.
 

A quite uneasy feeling upon comfy couch in foreign land, the living room of casa de Eduardo y Francesca.  An opening of the first eye - and the next, blinking their way towards the perceived Tuesday shine of a light through the terrace doors that was to be too beyond desperta and into the realm of all that happens to follow secreto and secret.

Sleepy outfits shuffling about the household.  The odd mumbled blurt of that Spanish language; X entering the washroom, leaving the washroom.  I stretched for the remote and began to point it at the various of people at move within my eyes, its dot flashing red and doing not a thing aside from amusing the mid-morning that was me and my hangover.  Hung.  Because people began to speak to me, or at very least lean close and move focus from one eye to next.  Hung.  An examination of the me in front of television encased within grand armoire, turned to Off.

I had agreed to avoid the airport for a spell.

I had said that there was no need at the moment, explained my dreams of Spain, of Barcelona and the different.  I had stumbled out of a tiny elevator with tears in my say; felt pathetically lonely in a truly romantic sort of fashion.

In that morning that was the pounding of my mostly left temple; just waiting for nothing in particular to cure me of a feeling, far too lazy to move or avoid the soft looks that heralded that changing of previous night into next day way more than a big or little hand lapping a Spanish clock.

“I’m Ok, Frances.  Really.”  She smiled and almost bowed as she stepped away, and I was fucking the deck that was a trip to Spain and a chance for X to hug a close friend without need to look over shoulder.  “We’ve missed the last desperta, haven’t we?”  She leaned to the left and her soft, doe eyes agreed.  “Sorry, Frances.  Damn.  Sorry, sorry for Duardo, too.”  And yes, did my gaze move from hers down to polished terrazzo floor and eventual sweep made around their fashioned living room.  Yes, a modicum of muttering and a soft-swearing to fill in the blanks of an unfortunate situation.  A stop and listen for a minute that was but a few seconds behind my eye: Frances shoved fresh oranges of Valencia into a juicer and I remained on a very comfy couch, quite content to the grind and whirl of a piece of machinery turning ripe nature into liquid and bits of drinkable pulp.  Strange the manner with which Jesus was knelt before me that morn.  Absolutely wonderful what the mind is let to do and get away with on vacation, on tour, on business trip, in Different.  “Tonight is when you burn everything, is it not?  You take a match and some gas and then with tradition, you set it all on fire - that is what is to happen, yes no?”  I sat halfway up, the morning after the fact of me still in love with her, X.  The days and weeks before me searching for most of the good out of this thought to You.

I had slept in my clothes, covered myself with a nice wool blanket.

And that night was indeed to be la cremà - the burning of the fallas, the ninots big and small.  A say that struck me as slightly French of sound, but partial to character of America’s Burning Man Festival started by sorry soul wishing to exorcise the girlfriend from his fragile psyche: in San Francisco, I believe, he’d crept to the edge of the Pacific and erected a wooden effigy of said sorrow, lit it on fire and danced and cried - and an annual event was born, eventually moved to the desert out of word of mouth, popularity.  Sorry, I have a tendency to make up shit; but I was pretty sure I wanted to start me up my own sort of ritual to avoid the denial that was people walking circles around a guy snuggling a plush couch on the coast of Spain.  X and jeans and a simple T-shirt and a sleepy stare that had carried her through a strange night.  The married couple that was Eduardo y Francesca performing towards me in the light of a someone perceived as touched, slightly sick.  I craved my mother’s chicken noodle soup; paused and then pulled the blanket up tight and close to chin, raised my hand to mouth as I double-coughed the nicotine from myself.  Wonderful the manner with which Jesus was knelt before me that particular waking.  Absolutely strange what the mind will invent or lie about given half the maybe to do so.

Somebody really should have said something truthful: “I don’t want to talk about it, Henry.”  Fair enough, I told X, cuddling the remainder of the morn that was the mind on the last of a festival to be seen that night.  “It’s not worth it, is it?”  I begged to differ with this hot whisper of hers, but stopped short of the actual visual that the crowd called out for.  “It was for me to tell them; you should have let me tell them, Hen.”  She’s had many beautiful moments, and I should really describe many the more of them.

And then she tinkled bits and pieces of this from her mouth: “Take this, Henry.  And take this, too.”  All of this which makes no sense without the fingers flicking the bottom of her chin, the boosting of the one and the two of her breasts with the left and the right of her hands.

“Fuck it,” I had occasion to say, “I’m old … I’m cranky, I’m horny, I’m quite comfortable at the moment; I’m not gonna say a goddamn thing about it no more.”

She gave straight smile to melt me deeper into a very comfy couch.  I loved the nonetheless curled shape of soft lips that were once a kiss given to me by her; the toss of her auburn that she continued to do - because she loved me and was consciously unaware of any sort of ramifications to her hair play; a cheesy thought of mine that was the warmth of our within Spain together, even if apart. 

The me, with her in welcoming a distraction that was never asked for and only presented by our intervening hosts as an option to be considered by the two of us not saying anything anymore.

And so to tiny elevator, to the tiny car, to somewhere else in the suburb of Torrent, to a drive out into the hills that contained actual houses: an outer layer to this town that was a continuation of Valencia the metropolis, a local driving very fast around the serpentine streets wending a way through summer homes for the affluent and myriad of other reason why cities expand and hide or seek solace; a pause attained through the slamming of a peddle pushing dark fluid down a braided line connected to a pad around disk or shoe inside a drum - the pointing of finger and the peek of nose and an eye through wrought iron fence or over concrete wall.  Tourists, guests, and the time they force some to kill; there was money in them hills that approached the larger Sierras.  There was stuff to look out the window at, and details that I have perhaps left out.

Duardo continuing to look me square in the eye.

That gradual consensus that was four people slowly agreeing to climb into a car and not talk about something the size of a rather large ninot.  It was freedom riding shotgun, its host driving the car with hairy male hands: men in front, the girls in back.

The civilian clothes unmasked from beneath our blousons, checkered pañuelos.

There was scenery for the eye, the radio to the ear; there was the modernity of this certain set of large homes that were uninspired or rather failing to live up to a North American belief in a European sense - mostly concrete masquerading as style.

Sorry.  That was me sitting beside Duardo with a very many beliefs running the gauntlet of Jesus never coming up within the conversation.  The meanness that arises time after to time when love is left out of the discussion.

I suppose we avoided in the most available way - that being the hum of a car and four views of the same thing.  And the boys talking to the boys, girls talking to girls.  Duardo and I discussing the night to be.  The taking of torch to papier-mâché creation; people would be crying, he told me.  I could see that, was my response, grabbing the wheel and quite possibly saving four lives, as he is one to wander the car with the telling of a tale.  He smiled and we laughed and moved on with the diversion that was two couples browsing the countryside of homes built outside the suburb.

We fell into that rhythm, occasionally crossing the junior high dance floor for a question with the opposite sex or a shared feeling concerning a design of roof or take of Mediterranean vista; Duardo and Frances trying to confuse the giant ninot and ensure we all to survive until afternoon sun that would force us into shade, bring us back home towards magic of siesta. 

I raced around the opening of my car door, almost up and taking Duardo’s hand, staying his closest in the elevator, rubbing his side down the hallway, watching him unlock a door in the proper sequence.  He and I sitting on a terrace filled with plants with Latin names, beside a propane barbecue brought from Canada as a gift, under a table umbrella big enough for four but hiding just us two slow sipping a pitcher of sangria marinated and made different in every Spanish mind: I tasted brandy, recognized the orange lip of Grand Marnier, thanked Duardo for sitting beside me on such a winter’s day.  Sorry - it was March 19th, climbing into the upper 20’s as I spoke to this first Spanish person to know that a Canadian couple was calling it quits and moving out of sin and towards separate lives.

He listened to my sides of the story and nodded; he told me about his many fights and disagreements with the wife, and I apologized for ever stepping foot on Spanish soil and contaminating the festivities.  He heard my say for a woman that was the personality they had met and fallen in love with, witnessed me holding hands with at France’s former restaurant a long flight away.  My shirt was off with the warmth that was a tourist’s reaction to the ease of sangria, the sedation of a rather large ninot.  The return of numb that picked and chewed at pieces chosen from a platter of fresh melon and cantaloupe stepped out onto the terrace courtesy Francesca.  The boys talked to boys, the girls talked to girls in the kitchen.  Yes, whatever.  I could very well handle the things being said across the way that was a classroom divide; I took the mix of various juice suffused with liquors and wine, accepted the afternoon.

He listened to me realize what Frances had voiced towards two Canadians in a previous conversation as to the various ways to swim on either side of the Atlantic.

I remembered myself packing for the trip and explaining to X to tell Frances once we were there that I was not the one pulling the plug on our North American affair.

“Onray, man, you find her slipping before you guys … um … getting on plane and coming here?” 

“A lot,” I said, to him, leaving out the parts that did not seem to matter in the grand sense of things to come to me later on in a tiny apartment in Centretown.  This headache with You.  “A little, I suppose.  Yeah, we were breaking up … had broken up, but we were headed for Spain, Las Fallas.  We still lived together, amigo.”  I still hoped.  Avoided.  Kept it a secret.  “And she kept it a secret, amigo.  She told no one that I’m aware of.”

“Man, Onray - the woman do this the sometime.”  He sounded positive for our future.

“But, Duardo, these Jesus Years - are they supposed to be good or not so good to my life?  You lived through them, obviously.  You’re thirty-four, strong, happy.”

“I was in Canada, yes.  Surviving the cold with Frances.”  I recalled why they had left and returned to the Spain beneath my feet.  I had assumed career, family.

“Do you blame Jesus?”  I sipped my sangria and blew the man a kiss.

“Nothing is the fault of Jesus, Onray.  The Jesus Years are the bad and the good.”  A fairly large number of well-known rock stars have died at the age of twenty-seven.  “It just another year.”  I called him a damn liar, told him that he was holding out on a brother in need, grinned.  “The Years of Jesus will end, my friend.”  But was he still mad about my walk taken the previous night.  “We say it is the Jesus Years and we leave it as this - yes?”  I nodded, sipped, thanked Duardo kindly, and went inside and had me a Spanish nap on a single bed; slept with the thought of him possessing the ability of fully letting it go, woke up with a succession of petardos amusing someones a few public blocks away.  Their almost discernible conversations.

Myself up, down the hallway and into kitchen - them 3 sitting up on counter top or in wooden chair, eventually offering the series of greetings beginning the process of talking all over again.  The 900-pound ninot sat quietly in the corner beside the pilot switch for the hot water - across the room from X of the tired eyes, Frances the countenance of a host.  My friend Duardo still going strong after his personal Jesus Years, a trying night courtesy me.  Another evening still to come - this cremà and its time of fire and tears that sounded about perfect to me.  Burn it all, I wished.  Before the rest of a trip together that be apart.  Before the entire end of hope courtesy that secreto revealed.  Before I would encounter the inexorable need to go walkabout.  Before I would be looking back on it all, learning her new phone number just to hear the cold sound of her recognition; before the inevitable less and less that was to be the ensuing cliché.  Burn it all, I wished, before life got a chance to take it away.  Before the feeling of walking into that kitchen and having it go quiet left my blood.

Amazing.  A rather strange squirt of my life that I feel reluctant to repudiate.  “Your bed warmer than couch?” Duardo wondered.  Ask her, I reasoned, pointing to X and forcing her to picture us in bed together, me sawing wood - the past and all accoutrement. 

“He’s a furnace, Duardo: the heat that this man puts off is unreal.  He’ll sleep naked … in the dead of the coldest winter.”  And I had somehow created circumstance that made her imagine me buck nude - a small victory for the downtrodden.  Duardo cooed.  Frances covered her ears; and the awkward seconds were done.  We were all to return to the proper garb of a festival known as Las Fallas.

To the tiny elevator, boys scrunched in front, the girls sandwiched in behind.  To the laze that was the taking of the tiny Toyota car, and the different mores that be the Spanish drinking and driving laws.  To the old ladies dragging the wheels of their ubiquitous shopping hampers up and down the curbs of a late Tuesday afternoon in the suburb known as Torrent.  To the mere parking of a car, and the touching of a front bumper to another’s back bumper, the back end to the front of still another - softly and necessarily for the confluence of tiny roads and narrow alleys; Frances on the sidewalk guiding Duardo back, forward - metal and composites touching and kissing and coming to rest with the scream of her voice.  Wonderful the way we would absolutely need a can opener to escape such a magnificent parking job.  This was perhaps the Spain where I would leave my heart; between the sobering up and X peering over her shoulder to see if I was still there, for I was so very quiet and in danger of walking away.  Doing her a favour and a disservice.  On my best behaviour as we moved through the streets in the general vicinity of the casalet that was our daily arrival, the fallas and their big and tall ninots that awaited preconceived fire, bomberos - those necessary Spanish firemen on hand by law.

To a lie, maybe tell that we didn’t stop off at the tiny cerveceria and hang out with a few quintos and moments of televised soccer, leave with long pieces of bread sliced and filled with a little bit of this and something of that, wrapped in tin foil, twisted at its ends.  Great the style with which it fits neatly beneath the arm, tucks into the armpit and derives its Spanish name from just such an everyday act within Spanish people inviting a couple out for a glimpse of creation and the reasons for pouring gasoline and lighting it all up with a match.

The history of Las Fallas is perhaps a fishing story.  The Jesus Years a cause for celebration and dread.

“I cheer for the Real Madrid, Onray.  All the people of Valencia …  they are for our football team, and I don’t wanna be.”  I could not see why not, but clinked our tiny beer mugs together and stared at the big screen: a ball moving up and down a rather large field of grass, and me asking which team was what colour. 

And there be hours left in that night of the girls talking to the girls.  Boys talking to boys.  Couples making their way towards the casalet with the onset of that last evening of the festival.

My triumphant return to the scene of a crime.  I could lie and say that Spam tastes better than the jamón resting comfortably in my bocadillo that night, but I could never convince You that I was over the guilt.  Indeed, to say that Spam was not a necessity in time of Second World War and the feeding of people across the Atlantic would be the style of fib I no longer do tell.  Sorry.  But there was a reason why I almost grabbed Duardo’s hand in front of the casalet; and maybe this should be in his speak: “What you mean, man?  Everybody is cool, Onray.”  Perhaps it would be.  Perhaps I thought too much, think too much.

Frances and X walking arm in arm up the cobblestone way towards the front of casalet.

I might blame it on the alcohol already ingested within that certain night, but I’ve felt the similar fear riding an everyday bus taken to work since returning from that warm country known as Spain.  Alone, months after what I’ve impressed to You as that past, about Frances and X sharing a ciggie in front of people entering or leaving Ciudad, the back and forth passing of the tobacco torch woven seamlessly into their conversation.  A perfect edit.  The various of friends and family being encountered: Amelia and her Salvi, the youngest brother, perhaps unaware that the person shaking their hand and speaking very poor Spanish was the cause for some concern the previous night.  Perhaps they did know; and Salvi always made the effort to speak English to this guest of his older brother: family, but most likely a common occurrence of manners on his part.  And as I think this say to You directly, I wonder and wish about this young couple and their search for an apartment, their ability to marry and invite every one of the familiar people walking in and out of the bar over for a quinto and a seat to this ceremony I hope upon them.

At the bar christened Ciudad, standing beside Duardo, across from Frances: by myself, really.  Sophia of the actress countenance, special mix of freckles, and the fingers that were interlaced with the second eldest brother: think Brooklyn.  Sorry.  Sophia’s truly remarkable resemblance to the very first girl to ever kiss me open-mouthed slow smoothing the way that was she and Jacinto making their way towards me and the rest of that final night of a festival in a certain part of Spain.  The outer reaches of that Valencia-with-a-lisp.

An uneasy aspect in the lumbar region of my lean against a local bar in the early of an eve.  “On-ray!”  Hola and Bonjour did I say from the left to right of figuring out what had changed in the hours since the Incident a few doors over at the casalet.  A simple smile and the differences between a language barrier and the reading of a facial: partial puppy dog, mostly endearing Sophia was, that person with the fine Spanish ass below the sacroiliac that began a spine sending her body all kinds of messages as to how to react when an extremity touched a hot or cold, firm or soft.  “On-ray … my friend.”  And the eyes that are connected to a series of fibres that run to various of cortex within the brain of me and Jacinto that night I play for You now. Fears of people reaching for my throat and squeezing tight enough to near cut off the completion of the excuse that may or may not have been attempting to force a way out my skinny windpipe. 

But a greeting extended towards me.

I shook this right of hand connected to his index finger and smiled at his lovely wife with the beautiful face; but still, the guilt and the look in our eyes not so much more than those twelve hours on from the Incident.  I believe that I said I was sorry, in Spanish, trying to explain the impossible in the nine, ten words that I knew of his language; Jacinto waved his famous finger and Sophia bent her freckles my way.  “Why,” she translated in bits and bites of the French, “do you Canadians say sorry so much?” 

Frances grabbed my ear and told me that if I was heard apologizing for anything one more time Jacinto was going to smash my balls.  I willed her to tell him that I was indeed very sorry for the situation.  I smiled … and Frances had talked to me, for me; Jacinto’s wife had moved the tips of her lips up as she tried to explain.

And this the beginning of my night within the group of brothers, friends and wives.  Hopeful brides biding their time; big and hairy Chusko carrying his blonde girlfriend through the bar door and over the threshold.  He made very much noise, and very much cheering greeted this loudest person of an any party.

Frances had leaned away from X to do just what she does for a living on a daily basis.  She had heard the English, the French, the Spanish.  And she had broken from X and their whatever conversation next to me to offer an explanation of the different ways to act on either side of the Atlantic.  She understood and told me to nod when Jacinto looked back at me; this I did.  She spoke that Spanish of language to that husband and wife and made them pause, peek back at the me leaned against a bar in a foreign land with a former girlfriend repeatedly stroking the entire length of her wonderfully-highlighted auburn hair not more than five, six feet away from me and the What that I believe to You now.  X swayed, and I firmly wished for the wisdom that was the people before me being nicer than expected.

“Did you say sorry?” she asked of me.  I told her that they definitely do not appreciate it when one does that sort of thing - a sign of weakness is the kind of way that I presented it at that time.  “Henry!” she said in front of everyone involved with the previous night’s search party.  I told her that I definitely was not her boyfriend at the time of the incident in question.  “I waited for you last night, prick.  I walked around the dance floor, waited outside looking for you, and not that you care, but I stood in the crowd when the DJ dedicated a song to us - the Canadian couple.”  What song, I asked.  “It wasn’t Zeppelin, Henry: this is Spain.”  What song, I repeated.  “I don’t remember, Hen.  I don’t.fucking.remember.”  How could she not recall such a thing, I said; had it been by Abba.  “No, Hun, it was not by Abba.”  Stop calling me that, I reminded her.  “Hun?” she said.  And a Yes I did reply to her top button of denim jacket just enough visible above similar blouson upon myself at the time of being one half of the Canadian couple in the entertainment proceedings.

 “Hun - sorry - Henry.”  This be one of the ways with which I let her speak.  “I wanted to have that dance with you last night.”  Bullshit, I gave her.  “It was very sweet what they all did for us; that was the bad part, when you weren’t there.”  I was tired, I was drunk and I was smoked out - this I told person by the name of X.  “Hun, I know.”  No, she did not, I scolded.  “Really, Hun, I know.”  And the subsequent Cease and Desist order, me reminding her of that slip of slang and nickname whispered in queen-size bed or across apartment shared by two for not much longer … after the Spain that was the falla infintil and its tiny princess, its chubby prepubescent male counterpart striding up to the miniature display that I mentioned within the past and present this Now.

Each child with the ultimate decision of granting one individual ninot clemency before the setting of fire.  The elected children of the various fallas of Torrent to walk home with chosen ninot … and place it in keepsake closet after the obligatory stance in the corner of living room, kitchen, bedroom.  Puberty and outgrowing such things - and the fallero major choosing her very own grown-up ninot before putting match to fuse running to gas, overhead traca.  But fun and tears for the children first; the pyrotechnicèans deploying a lit glow stick to spend some more of the lottery winnings of the club, the falla: the row of metal tubes threw up sparked powders and the preliminary fireworks were off.  Me the someone from a nation’s capital accustomed to presentation fireworks, the display a flashback close-up: that touching of magic wand to large pieces of cut pipe witnessed for the purposes of the building of suspense for the little cucaracha and tiny princess about to set fire to a small bit of creation, celebrate an annual of the past with a spice of tradition the faint smell of saffron, gun powder and the shampoo that X and I smuggled along in her knapsack or mine.

But the two children did cry: a boy of about eleven, a girl perhaps slightly younger - both the centre of attention and changing their minds when forced to stare a ninot by the face and up and choose but just one.  Fun and tears.  The smaller falla less political to an adult mind, them eyes of mine standing no more than ten feet from the What that I think to You now that I am away from X.

“Oh … she doesn’t wanna pick, Frances.”  X and the tiny princess.  “She can’t pick, can she? - she can’t do just one.”

“They get over it, X,” said the bride of Eduardo.  The tiny children wavered and let go of the hand of an official, stepped through the security barrier; the girl, the boy eventually hugging chosen dwarfs of equal and splendid quality for camera, hand-held camcorder of mom, dad, friend of cousin.  X snapped a picture with our disposable and everyone stepped away and let a child strike a match that ignited a fuse that set in motion a traca placed above, fired gasoline placed at very points within the tiny statement known as falla infintil.  Honest, and I never lie no more - there were tears in them childs’ eyes as fire began to consume papier-mâché and its wooden skeleton, their reign as princess and semi-prince.  I remember the wonderful smell and recall the pause of adults observing children watching something burn down to its very core before we all joined towards the casalet and the eating of those bocadillos sandwiched in foil and carried in the pit of an arm, eaten every single goddamn day of a festival located in the province of Valencia, East Coast of Spain.  Wonderful.

The look on a face of a people speaking that Spanish, seated beside, across the long table from the me coming to grips and trying most hard to think beyond the first person.  The Sorry that I was, but somewhat in danger of getting smoked in the nuts for saying it out loud.  The hum of those people of a different language that is the din of the particular Oak on Bank Street, Ottawa, more specifically my Centretown: the collective noise of an any crowd that cajoles.  I tried, that night.  Made effort with face when passing along a tiny Coke bottle and was asked for an opener in the gesture of the universal; people were talking in my general direction in that Spanish of languages and I obliged or deferred to the Duardo beside.  Until.

X caught the brief eye of the man thinking to You, and I stopped trying at anything for awhile.

Went outside to have a cigarette bajo in nicotine, do absolutely nothing.  Very hard did I strive in this endeavour.  To this day very hard do I ponder stopping the smoking that was never there, the habit that now is mine.  The speaking in the first person that I cannot stop for more than the time it takes to puff long and hard on a borrowed ciggie and walk back inside a casalet full of me worrying too much or too little and the fact that I could never really decide.

I regained my place amongst the brothers, beside Duardo, near Jacinto and his blushing bride with the fantastic ass.  Salvi was on the far side of the table with his girlfriend of some time, and Piso, the third in the line of brothers Ruiz Colon - this quietly balding man sat across from me and that final night of festival, averaging between five-foot-six and five-foot-six-and-a-quarter in height and almost entirely of my invention, aside from the fact that I no longer lie no more.  He be of the story that is me making amends to Her now that She be gone and I try not to smoke so much - light another as I share with You the puff and the wonder that is the battlefield stare somewhat off into the distance between the past and the future.

Piso is married, and I am not entirely sure if I have accessed this fact; his then two-year bride Maria be in the range of five-foot-six-and-one-precise-quarter, as I mentally picture the round of her ass, go remembering cleft and utter poise of a Spanish behind of the female persuasion.  And while I am truly sorry for the potty mouth on the me doing stuff in the first person, I am nowhere near regret for X being of the approximate variety of the five-foot-nine type when viewed in full splendour of wearing a bikini on a beach in Grenada, a flora skirt in Ottawa, denim in Valencia, denim in Torrent.  That wondrous area of her anatomy that houses a Chinese tattoo and the specific other reasons to be back there and tickling the parts she must strain to reach … back in the day of me and her … and You just merely a figment on the horizon that I would come to know through invention and headache and bits and pieces of the definition of truth.

Forcing You to listen, hear me finish my bocadillo that night of the final burn; I licked my fingers and rolled the finished foil into a tight ball, imbued it with magical qualities that produced a complete understanding of an any situation it was thrown at, regardless of language or context.

Around eleven we adjourned to the outside, sneaking off to the rum-stocked garage of the bajo or making our way to local bar Ciudad: the hundred-foot circuit of the previous nights, and what I presume to be real and relate beyond the life of aluminum foil, turn into fireworks and the spend of lottery winnings; drunk and stoned the amongst us to stand in the cobblestone courtyard in front of the casalet and observe the pyros employing lime glow sticks to ignite contents of metal tubes with respect towards the lighting of Spanish sky hundreds of feet above our festive heads.  Wonderful the manner of brief forget when staring at a fire-worked above, crowd full of family and friends without precise measurements or exact hair colour or specific jobs or extended bios - merely poetry and all of its sufficient laze upon.

Somewhere around midnight they were supposed to strike a very big match and fire up the whole shebang of a main falla; the bomberos present, wetting down adjacent walls and keeping hoses at the ready.  Fair enough, it seemed.

In full tiara and satin regalia the fallero major and the bocadillo resting comfortably in the pit of her stomach made their way towards that main falla and the security barriers that surrounded.  Chusko and his camera yelled “foto, foto” and the lengths of film were clicked off.  She was to choose just one ninot, this lone person of the adult way tasked with doing what two children had agonized upon a few hours earlier.

“They always take the cute one, Onray.”  Duardo was speaking to me, and together we watched her tilt of head at dirty old men peering over the naked shoulders of silicon-filled women clad in nothing but; the look up of her chin for the giant young man dressed traditional and entirely twenty feet too large to fit into her living room, kitchen, or eventual closet of neglect and dust.

The theme, and the stuff made up and solidified into papier-mâché, placed over wood structure by skilled artisan; the Statue of Liberty fabricated by Bartholdi, supported from within by a metal guy named Eiffel - the specific part of his Paris that I never did see from the window seat on aeroplane travelling from Montreal to ultimate Valencia-with-the-lisp.  A very lack of sleep … a paranoia that was there to begin and see what it wanted to.

The girl’s eyes focused; she parted the barrier and thus stepped up to the preferred ninot in her mind: an animal, a donkey, a specific ass that sat amongst the hay and the evocation of past and old-fashioned garb on the sway of a new currency, new Union of disparate European countries.  “Man … Onray, they always picka the cute one.”  The fallero major cradling the imitation of life in her satin arms and posing for the modern cameras, camcorders.  Cheap disposable image-captors purchased in a Canadian airport.  Duardo, Chusko, Andamio, myself pulled into standing either side of this female in her early twenties - the all of us mugging for the development to happen later, picked up in an envelope with surname written upon.  These things that I remember, in English.

The neighbourhood, filled with the young and old and still awake for the witching hour of a Tuesday becoming early Wednesday in the country of Spain during a festival in the suburb of Torrent bereft of the tourists swarming the metropolis known as Valencia.  We were lucky and away from that beautiful, big old city and its core for the mass attraction; we were passing the beer, popping the bubbly Spanish cava and watching the fuse lit by that fallero major spell the final moments for a falla commissioned and paid for through yearly dues, lucky lottery win.

A twenty-foot trail of gun powder meeting its end destination.

Things began at the base of his feet, around the sandals of this traditional young man constructed of a mixture of paste and paper mashed together into some sort of thought for all the nearby blocks and blocks to consider within that span of a very long weekend.  We watched the overhead traca begin its manic thought in a speak that could very well have been transplanted to Mexicans or stolen from the Chinese.

“Do you think I should cry?” X asked of the person giving this All to You this now.  She was near to me at the time and perhaps vulnerable because of the burn, forgetful because of the alcohol in her system … in our time of night of that Spain, of that ability to romance for a brief because the two of us had once shared a queen-size bed and a comfortable belief at some point in the past: Us, the common-law man and woman amongst friends and foreigners speaking that Spanish of languages in front of our eyes.  The bomberos continued to wet the walls of the brick buildings, soak the electrical wires that formed a second-storey boxing ring above.  Wonderful.  The build of that smoke, the gradual melt of that satire into the shrug of my shoulders towards her question of emotion.

We moved back and yelled “foto, foto” with the Chuskos that peppered a crowd in the hundreds, that clogged the four corners of that niche of a suburb of Valencia known as Torrent.  I felt the slow and necessary massacre of the gift of an artist asked to express something of this part of their world.

“Should I snap one now?” X asked of Frances.  She was told to wait, that in this effect we had not seen everything yet.  The disposable read 22 on the forwarding dial as we sucked on the mini bottle of cava in the bask of a created man and his bare feet on fire to varying degrees; the occasional lick that spit and spat at us.  “Now?” she asked the little time later, and I of course leave out the in between that was a hoot and a holler and big Chusko shimmying up a lamppost, tall Andamio lending a shoulder and a “foto, foto, foto” grunt over the squint and scrunch of his horn-rimmed glasses.  Frances nudging the last of Spanish champagne into the side of the blouson she had presented to me only days before the smoky smell that was now a permanence of proper nouns and non-conjugated Spanish verbs moving in and out of the thoughts I remember and eventually present.

And so I try and let X speak, in the meter of that night.  I squeeze the kegel muscle that be the basis of a pelvis concerned with preventing or accentuating the matters of the heart with respect to the coupling of a man and a woman once in the throes of a considered passion; this big try a book of dirty sex positions stolen from an Oriental library - the thought of how to retain the magic after some time click its way off the clock in communal bed with East Indian-style of print as spread.  And so here I let her speak for herself … and this all that she can say at that spot in time in front of a roaring bonfire of a man nowhere near Ottawa or a desert in Nevada: “The fire is going right up his butt; oh oh, the big boobies on his girls are going going … going.”  Her personality, and my solemn swear towards someday soon revealing talk that be a true representation of the girl I walked away from in that suburb of Valencia known as Torrent; the female I travelled onto Barcelona with; the person which I represent with a letter from an alphabet that now welcomes an N with a squiggly noodle placed all above for the denoting of specific sound in Spanish of them languages, cultures of inner caches of gasoline placed ever so - ensuring that a papier-mâché man falls a certain desired way, a manner my brother might fell a tree.

In this centrepiece of a real man, he was surely dead by the time Duardo yelled at X, told her to snap a photo now that a wooden beam began to appear and show what Eiffel would have known and admired for its ability to support a comment.  We were fifty feet back, in the crowd feeling the heat and blinking from the smoke entering our eyes and giving some an excuse for crying.  Was this the thinking behind the pañuelos, I asked of the fair Francesca, and she shrugged and pulled hers up over her nose as I wiped my eyes yet again.

Let the fire bleed its re-enactment of plague containment, of people burning a pile of furniture because of an unknown disease or the start of one Middle Ages guild trying to outdo the other; a revival, in the name of tourism - monies for big city Valencia.  Whichever.

The fire continued it done did.  It did pretty much what a fire will inevitably do left to its own - and the bomberos on duty and told to contain but not stop, for this was one of many necessary fires.  I stare at the snapped picture for a spell, a development achieved from a cheap disposable camera purchased at Dorval Airport, Montreal.  Montréal.  This said photo reminds me the things that I perhaps forget or choose to invent because of that state of my ego standing in view of the ugly corpse that was to have its ashes gathered and swept up in the morning - and this I presume for I never saw and was asleep at time of day when clean up happened.  I was to be headed north to Barcelona with a girl who was then my ex.  Wonderful.  It was maybe two-in-the-A.M. by the time that the big burn petered out, a singed cross amongst detritus and formerly sneering Disney figures in various stages of undress.  Satire.

We began with the good-byes, because of a train to catch in the morning; for the following day was not a holiday and real life was to resume - Frances back to the teaching of French or English to those Spaniards wishing to do so, or the perhaps translation of documents one way or the other; Duardo having received that offer to do web design for a company in downtown Valencia, not far from the bull ring and the burning of the grand falla in the town plaza.

Brooklyn Jacinto offered me his right hand and I squeezed very hard, felt the slap of his other on my back; he grinned and left me with what was behind those soft, black eyes of his as the pretty Sophia stepped up and hugged me tenderly, almost whispered in my ear that she knew and understood, almost spoke French so as to disguise and yet allow me to decipher.  I nearly reached down and grabbed the round of her beautiful ass before thanking her in two languages and returning her to Jacinto.

The five-foot-six-and-roughly-one-quarter couple that was the fellow balding brother Piso and his lovely bride known as Maria - with them an awkward moment of not having grown so close, but still beyond defining it to a rote task; dos besos para ti, one kiss for each cheek of them.

Salvi and the wait that was involved in saying “I do” to his girlfriend - to them all of the luck in the world involved within a broken English, butchered Spanish.

Myself and the former someday soon Mrs. Deza, Francesca and her husband Eduardo climbed into the tiny Toyota and drove around the corner from said salutations.  The two or three seconds of acceleration, the rapid application of a brake peddle and the big Chusko with his hands on the hood of the car, the stubble that be the fallas on his face: a rear passenger door opening and allowing him to pick my little lady up and into his arms, against his chest.  Beautiful the scream hurled from the throat of X.  And then he came for me, his Andamio leaving me absolutely nowhere to run.  Wonderful the thought of how much of the whole story they had actually been apprised of - gossip and the whatnot; them speaking their Spanish and calling me On-ray, repeating the dirty words that I had learned them of the English language.  They were in their twenties and I have absolutely no clue what they really thought of me, but we shook hands and called each other gitano, a putdown or hug depending on the context of usage “gypsy” - this much I knew of the bandannas now worn over the drunken, tired heads of them, me.  That communal smell of smoke that I would notice once away and non-festival, stuffed within a knapsack on a train headed for Barcelona.

From a tiny car to a tiny elevator to a living room and four snifters filled with ice and a Spanish liqueur the flavour of a finish line.  From the grand terrace of Francesca y Eduardo we stared civilly out towards a night concealing the Bay of Valencia joining the Mediterranean Sea at some point on the compass.  Distant fireworks.  Las Fallas be so large that the various of fallas of the neighbourhoods from Torrent to Valencia wait in line for the necessary bomberos to make their way amongst the midnights that turn into the late nights involved with lighting everything on fire safely.

She turned to me and asked me if I was happy.

“Define happy, pretty baby.”

“Fallas – and then you die, Hun.”  People smiling and swallowing the last of, making their way towards the arrangements known as sleep.  Petardos, somewhere, near.