Alone in Galicia: Walking and Looking
That thing was happening again, where I was afraid that if I took another step I would disappear. I was on a wide path with a bicycle lane, but I couldn’t walk along the water for fear of falling in.
18 May 2019
The library was closed so I went to the Casares Quiroga House. Good thing I downloaded a photo or I would’ve missed it. It’s a building with a fairly unassuming façade, a big garden at the back that now faces other people’s hanging laundry, and a meeting hall on the second floor. The ground floor is an exhibition space. There is a working elevator.
Santiago Casares Quiroga, born in La Coruña to a Republican family (Republican as in anti-fascist not Trumpist), was on the city council and then the national government when the Second Republic was proclaimed. In 1936 he was named President and Minister of War. When Franco and the fascists seized power, he went into exile in France with his wife and their younger daughter, Maria. Their eldest daughter, Ester, was caught in the civil war, imprisoned and persecuted till 1954, when she was allowed to leave for Mexico.
I first saw Maria Casares in Children of Paradise or Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (sounds better than its English title, Ladies of the Park) in bootleg DVDs from the Quiapo cinematheque. She was arresting and fearsome. Then I saw her as Death in Cocteau’s Orpheus, where she was even more arresting and fearsome.
Maria Casares in Cocteau’s Orpheus: Death wears Schiaparelli
Later I read about her long affair with Albert Camus, whom she met in 1944 when she was acting in one of his plays. The story is that he was planning to go see her in Paris in January 1960. On January 4, he was killed in a car crash. In the wreckage rescuers retrieved his diary and the unfinished draft of his novel, The First Man.
19 May 2019
I wanted to go to the contemporary classical music concert at Fundacion Sioane, not because I am particularly enamoured of contemporary classical, but because I don’t know what it is. The concert was at 830pm. I went out at 7pm in case I got lost, because my internal GPS is faulty or nonexistent. True enough I took a wrong turn at the old church, but it was to avoid a group of extremely well-dressed people standing by the entrance. Was it a wedding, or do they really dress up for mass? I reoriented, then I spotted the first cat I’ve seen in Spain, a big black tabby perched on a second floor balcony railing. As I took out my camera to take a picture, another cat, black with tan markings, came out and sat next to him. I like to think of cats as my guides in unfamiliar surroundings (See the last chapter of The Age of Umbrage).
Fundacion Sioane is next to the Jardin San Carlos where Sir John Moore is buried. I found the garden, and the pub where I had coffee last week, and the hospital, and the park with the view of the control tower, but not the museum. I criss-crossed the streets but did not ask for directions— I had a lot of time. Finally it occurred to me to walk past the bus stop, and there it was.
The concert was held in the space under the stairs leading to the exhibits. There was a grand piano before a white screen, stackable chairs, and a console in the middle of the room. The usher began admitting viewers at 810—the room filled up quickly and extra chairs were produced. There was an Asian family sitting next to me, representing one of the featured composers, Hosokawa. (Later the lady sat at the console reading the sheets of music. What would she have done if the pianist had missed a note?)
The show began with a lecture in rapid Spanish—all I could catch was the part about silence being part of Hosokawa’s compositions. I googled Toshio Hosokawa: he drew on Japanese elements such as calligraphy and court music, and the notion of beauty from transience. When the pianist began to play I got what they meant about silence: he would play a few notes, then pause so you heard the notes die, then continue. It made me think of soundtracks for movies about paranoid conspiracy theories.
Next the lecturer introduced us to the work of Luigi Nono, a Venetian avant-garde composer influenced by Malipiero (the name of the last Venetian hotel I stayed in, where I was placed in what must’ve been the carriage house rather than the main house) and Schoenberg (his father-in-law). Nono was a staunch Marxist and anti-fascist whose work includes Prometeo, “a tragedy of listening” (the title of the concert, Traxedia da Escoita). He drew attention to the act of listening in contrast to all the political shouting in the world. This section sounded sadder and full of foreboding.
The final section was devoted to the Galician composer Enrique Macias. It was the longest section, and as close to melody as the concert got. When it was over the audience trooped to the courtyard for a Galician snack inspired by the music of Macias. The food was prepared by a famous chef, Xoan Crujeiras of the restaurant Bido. All the women had their photos taken with him. The food was great, it was like kinilaw.
But the high point of my evening was going out at 10pm—it was still light out—and finding my way back to Rua Riego de Agua with no trouble, as if I really lived there.
22 May 2019
Went to the Museum of Fine Arts. Interesting building, with an impressive collection for a smallish city, and free admission. There was a Fall of Icarus by Jacob Gowy from 1636, and next to it a small Rubens, a distinctly un-scary Minotaur. A lovely view of the Galician coast from 1917, and a couple of ceramics by Picasso, who lived here in his teens when his father taught at the local high school. But the real treasure, I think, is the complete set of Goya etchings—Caprichos, the works—in a nondescript room with barely any security or visitors. A heist movie in search of a writer.
I didn’t know it then, but I would name my second novel after another of Goya’s Caprichos.
Later I took the Avenida Marina with the intention of turning left at the Romanesque church and walking through the Old City. But then I ended up following the Paseo Maritimo along the sea, and the old fortress Castillo San Anton seemed so near. Margarita the tour guide said feral cats lived there, and I haven’t petted a cat in three weeks so I went.
That thing was happening again, where I was afraid that if I took another step I would disappear. I was on a wide path with a bicycle lane, but I couldn’t walk along the water for fear of falling in. It makes no sense, I know, but there it is. I fought it and made myself walk as close to the water as I could, and when I reached the narrow bridge leading to the fortress I ignored the feeling that I would fall through the stone. Why does this happen?
Obviously there was a colony of cats living there because cats love ancient piles and I could smell cat pee, but the cats wisely stayed out of sight. Maybe they were at the port where the fishing boats unload their catch, or sleeping under the slabs of stone dating back to the Roman Empire. There were tools from the Bronze Age, ornaments, a very ancient boat, and upstairs, arms and armor from more recent eras, including the armor worn by Legazpi’s men when they came to the Philippines and the swords they’d taken from Muslim warriors (They never really subjugated Mindanao).
I trudged back to Riego de Agua in the blazing sunshine at 7pm, stopped at a café for coffee and churros, and wrote this account. Then I went home and discovered that season 2 of Fleabag was on Amazon Prime Video, and it is a work of staggering genius, funny and moving and absolutely true.