The Constorium of Greater Minds

In Madrid he met an American girl. They stayed at the same hotel. It was on calle de canizares. Each morning they would walk down the narrow street and onto calle de antocha. Up calle de antocha one block was plaza de santa ana and a good café. He would start the day with an orange juice and they would share a plate of churos dipped in chocolate and he would finish with a coffee. In the center of the plaza was a statue commemorating the war. A single soldier, bronze, the rising sun casting a sharp light on the helmet upon which his left foot rested. At the base of the statue was a plaque that spoke of peace and the cessation of wars. On the opposite side of the plaza a street broke off and if you walked long enough you would eventually come to the shopping street calle montera. Walk due east for five blocks and you would find yourself exiting a small side street onto paseo del prado. Like the streets that gave it life, Madrid was a wonderful intricacy that summer.
This morning the two Americans found themselves sitting in the plaza de espana. The plaza was still quiet in the early morning. In front of them thirty feet away don Quixote sat regally upon his bronze mount, his right hand raised as if greeting the people of Madrid on the return from his fantastic journey and next to him his squire Sancho, steadfast and resolute. Towering above them Miguel de Cervantes sat majestically looking out over his creations. It was very hot in the morning.
“What do you think,” she asked.
He looked at her face. It was the end of the summer and she was tanned, she looked right at home in Madrid. Her skin was a smooth golden brown, her blonde hair was cut short and grew beautifully away from her forehead.
“About what?”
“About this, about Madrid? It’s lovely, isn’t it?”
“I’m in love,” he replied. “In love with the city and in love with a girl in the city. That is the perfect way to be in a city such as Madrid. Any other place and to not be in love is the fashion. Berlin and Copenhagen, these are places to be with friends or alone, not to be in love, but Madrid, this is a city where one must be in love with a girl. That’s what I think, anyway.”
“What is it like to leave a city like Madrid, then?”
“It is surely the most terrible fate a man can endure,” he replied.
“Why are you smiling, then? If it’s so terrible what is the smile that shows on the edge of your lips?”
“A thought, that’s all.”
The girl looked out across the plaza.
“A thought about what?”
“I am thinking of what it will be like to remember this day, here in the plaza with you, having this conversation. I can see that the thought will remind me of the beauty that was Madrid during this summer. I smile because I can see myself remembering this summer as one without equal. It is a sad smile, though, to be sure.”
“I cannot smile, I will never smile again.”
“Oh, you will, you will have the same thought and it will come with the same half smile and that half smile, given a month or so will turn into a full smile and later, eventually, it will become a complete grin that stretches at the corners of your lips– when you can grin at the thought, that’s when you know the worst is over.”
“No, I will never smile again,” she said.
Later that afternoon with the city full of life as it can only be at the height of the day they had lunch at a small café off calle Serrano. The sun was hot and they sat in the shade of an umbrella and drank sangria and were slightly drunk and they talked a lot about the last two months together and found things funny that they had not found funny before and the things they thought funny before were now funny in a different way. They also recalled the fights they had and these stung them each again and each in the same way and they agreed never to fight again and they made each other promise only to say nice things and not ever hurt the other as had happened early on in their time together, which was ironic, but they did not see the irony for the wine.
Then even later in the afternoon when he realized they were late to meet friends at the plaza mayor and they had to run, laughing, still drunk through the sun baked streets he understood – in one of those abstemious moments that only comes when you are careening through narrow, quiet streets hand in hand with a beautiful girl – that the day was just a memory he was collecting to keep him company during the first few weeks without her.