Last week I was in Santiago de Compostela, a city so overrun by visitors since the Middle Ages (literally, tourism there is only now achieving the volume it had pre-Renaissance) that it's a little daunting for someone like me. But I feel a certain responsibility to get to know the place a little, it being a city of enormous historical significance and one of the most visited pilgrimage sites in the world. Yes, I know, poor me. I survived, and managed to make some real contact while I was there.
The landscapes in Galicia are smooth and soft, rather than bright and bold, like Andalucia, or elegant, like Catalonia. Streams and rivers in Galicia gurgle quietly, wildflowers are smaller, more delicate, and rarer than where I've been spending most of my time. Even the grand Cathedral in Santiago has a quiet humility inside, as opposed to the gaudy, gold-dipped cathedrals of Sevilla and Malaga, which inspire respect through their power suits. They impose their spiritual authority by making everything else in the world look puny and 'less gold' - but Santiago feels very personal, despite being one of the most visited churches in the world. The hush inside is soothing, and the priests holding mass while tourists roam freely into every corner of the cathedral seem unfazed by the constant movement during mass. Somehow the immense Cathedral feels intimate. What does not feel intimate is talking with people in the center of Santiago - that's where you can really feel the effects of the endless rush of visitors in restaurants, bars, and cafes. Efficiency has overridden hospitality. I've never been served so quickly, efficiently, or impersonally in Spain. So I walked out of the old part of the city into the newer, less picturesque part, where people smile and say good morning on the street. I was sitting on a bench, listening to a fast stream running through the perfect morning in a park carpeted with unbelievably soft grass and tiny white and pink wildflowers speckling the expanse of green.
An old man appears at the far end of my field of vision walking slowly, leaning on a cane, down the path toward where I'm sitting working on my computer. He walks past me, looking down, but I look up. We don't say anything, but I let my gaze follow him for a moment before turning my attention back to my laptop. A few minutes later, after having reached the end of the path and turned around to go back, he passes by me again. This time he slows down before he reaches my bench, I look up again and say good morning, and he says he's going to sit down and rest for a moment. He sits, with some difficulty, but after a careful manoeuvre leveraging his weight against gravity he's sitting comfortably and looking out at the lawn with me. I remark on what a beautiful morning it is and he agrees, saying it's warm for this time of year. I can't resist - I start asking him questions, starting with if he is from Santiago. He's still sharing my view rather than looking at me as he explains that he used to live here but now he and his close family live out by the airport. It's hard for me to pin down just what it is I like so much about how really old men talk - every little thing is treated as an important subject - like his saying he doesn't live downtown anymore. He doesn't just declare it, neutrally. His whole being responds - his expression says "How outlandish! How could that be! Living here! No, no, no!" His body expresses an energy when he talks that adds volumes of detail and information to his words. And everything
is important - we talk with conviction about the benefits of living outside the congested city, about how much better it is to live in a house with a garden as opposed to in an apartment. He doesn't like apartments because there's no space and you're living underneath and over people. After 3 months in Spain I have to agree with him - and with as much passion as he displays. Spanish people are incredibly noisy and are the worst adapted people for apartment living I've ever known. Quiet is just not a thing here. The reason he moved out there initially was that his sister had a lung condition and her doctor recommended it for her health. So she and her husband moved out to the country (maybe 10 km away) and he also moved, buying a house. She and her husband bought an apartment, which he qualified as, "un buen piso, aunque no hay buen pisos el suyo era bien." Apartments are all lousy but hers was nice. Now that's a good brother. You can have something he can't stand, but yours is good, because it's yours. Love. He was telling me about his work - he worked in a factory that made car parts - telling me how they used to have 3 shifts and the men would work around the clock for days on end and then get a few days off in a row. The women worked a regular shift and had two days off per week. He told me the women worked in an area separated from the men's section of the factory floor by a glass wall and they would be there, working in a line that stretched from where we were sitting all the way to the street - a line of women that long.
He was proud of his job and proud that he never got fired. He said they used to fire people at the drop of a hat. But he was a good worker and behaved well (his words) and was given the opportunity to work in Holland at another of the company's factories and spent four years there, making his Spanish wage plus an extra wage for being in Holland. He was smart and saved his money. When his sister wrote him that their mother was very sick here in Santiago he got permission to go home for a few days to see her. He was especially proud that his boss offered to loan him the money for the trip if he didn't have it, but he didn't need it because he had saved so well. He was trustworthy and smart, and proud of it. I was proud of him, too. His eyes lit up as he talked about how responsible he'd been in his work and his pride was infectious. He was half turned toward me now, looking out past me, but at one point he turned his face to me and his eyes were so lit up with excitement and memory it transformed his face into that of a man 30 years younger.
It took him 4 trains to get home to see his mother, traveling all day and night. When he got home he described her lying in her bed, head propped up on her pillow, looking pretty. She was always very pretty, my mother, he said. She died an hour and a half after he got there.
He had intended to give his savings to his mother, but now that she had passed he offered it to his sister. She refused it and told him to put it in the bank. There was one bank there in the town where they lived, he said, and he did just that - he put his money away. He was supposed to head right back to work but wanted to stay with his family a few days and was mourning his mother intensely - his doctor wrote him a letter to say he was exhausted and needed four days to rest before going back to work.
Later on when he was back in Spain working again, his sister's husband's sister died, leaving a young daughter. His sister and her husband didn't have any children and they adopted the little girl, loving her as if she were their own daughter. They inherited the sister's apartment, so now they had two apartments, one right over the other, and plenty of space. He also told me his sister was transferred to Madrid by the company once, but she turned it down, telling them they could either leave her with her husband here or fire her. They kept her. She was also a good worker, and had the use of her boss' company car as her own.
At one point the old man realized how long he'd been talking and exclaimed "It must be almost noon! I have to go!" But before he did he told me about his thrombosis, explaining that was why he now "walked like a spider". I said I thought he was walking rather well, considering, but he showed me the difference in mobility between the right and left sides, in his arms and his legs. He was right, of course, and I was moved by his insistence that his current physical state was not one that he accepted as normal. He walks a couple of kilometers per day minimum to keep his circulation good.
As I read through the story he told me in the park, I can't help but see how insufficiently it translates his warmth, presence, animation and sincerity. Hopefully you've known a great old man like him, and maybe he was even in your family. My mother's father died before my parents met, and my other grandfather was someone I could never warm up to, having beaten my father throughout his childhood and essentially killing my grandmother by refusing to stop getting her pregnant. She was told after her 3rd child was born that she would be risking her life going through another pregnancy. She died after delivering her seventh child, from internal hemorrhaging. And that's the Twitter version of the story. Don't ask, for I might tell.
When I get old, please, God, make me an old Spanish man. Every morning here the cafes and bars fill up with old men drinking coffee, fresh orange juice, and eating toasted rolls with tomato puree and olive oil. There is no hurry, as they're retired, and in Europe being old still looks fun, as opposed to old age in the U.S., where it looks terrifying. A big part of the old Spanish man awesomeness comes from their ability to connect with others without hesitation or separation. A big part of that, of course, is their generation, and sadly, this generation is passing away. There have been quite a few lovely old men in my world these days, and I'll be adding to this with more stories about them.
