“It’s not the rats, it’s the thought of living two miles away from your sister. She’s… she’s…”
But what could she honestly say about Elsa? Elsa, who was the perfect hostess, feeding and entertaining them, even wanting to help buy them a house in the sun, and refusing any contribution towards their keep; Elsa with her jokes and stories and her great crushing bear hugs and her temper.
“Annie… Annie, are you there?” Now the summons brought her trotting, trit-trot along the passage towards the open door of Elsa’s room, and the furious rattling of clothes hangers. Elsa was having a clear-out.
“These are for you, madam. Try them on. I can’t wear them bloody all, and I hate waste!”
Flashing her amber eyes at Annie as if she suspected her of harbouring butter mountains, of compulsive shopping orgies. The dresses were like cosmic accidents: bright floral splodges, violent starbursts in gold and flame.
Annie held one against herself. She looked as if she were being swallowed whole by some gigantic jungle man-eating flower. “Thank you, Elsa.” What else could she say? Elsa’s generosity always disarmed her. “You’re too good to us, really. Thank you.”
They were supposed to be staying for a month. Mark was convalescing from a mild breakdown. Arriving in this country strained and jittery, now he seemed almost tranquil, lulled both by the heat and his sister’s motherly attentions.
Elsa was “motherly” in her way. Always up before them in the mornings, humming a strident flamenco as she stirred the porridge. Into the porridge she dripped a stream of golden honey, the precious Miel de Canna, produced exclusively in one of the white Moorish villages thereabouts. Then she would stand with her arms folded, watching until Mark had licked his spoon clean.
“He can’t go back to teaching, Annie, it will kill him,” Elsa told her. More of a proclamation, really. She had packed Mark off on a walk with map and picnic. From the terrace, they could see him, leaping goatlike on a distant hillside across the valley. No, not a hillside, a mountain. Annie could hardly bear to look. She held her breath as Mark ascended to a brittle precipice, crimped and fragile as pastry edging.
“He’ll fall,” she had whispered, “Oh my God! It makes me dizzy just watching.”
“Don’t be pathetic,” Elsa roared. “It’s only a pimple. We should all learn to live a little dangerously from time to time.”
With Mark packed off for the day, Annie had to accompany her sister-in-law to the market, where Elsa would haggle over vegetables, silk blouses, lace tablecloths, waving her fleshy arms about, exclaiming in her exuberant Spanish. Later, the market produce would reappear in a paella with everything thrown in: fish heads, or claws, or eyeballs goggling up at them from the plate. Elsa would tuck in heartily. There was not much that she considered inedible. Once, a guest joined them for dinner, a handsome Spaniard who flicked his napkin with a bullfighter’s grace. Elsa lowered her head and spoke to this guest in a throaty flirtatious whisper. Her amber eyes flickered dangerously. Elsa’s lover. Of this, Annie had no doubt. It was not surprising. After all, her sister-in-law was a woman of large appetities.
The paella did not agree with Annie. After frequent trips to the loo, she felt she must be growing thinner and frailer. Her body remained greenish white, sappy like a bluebell stalk; her head weighed heavy. Elsa’s very presence exhausted her. The energy radiating from the magnificent woman had sapped Annie’s own strength. She could only fidget listlessly on the terrace, viewing the distant figure of her husband as he cavorted about the hills, growing bronzer and fitter on mountain air and his sister’s honeyed porridge.
Strange how Annie felt most alive at siesta, when Elsa retired behind the great oak door of her room, curled up in her kaftan like some voluptuous beast. At these times, Annie felt like a bird who sees the cage door open and fidgets on its perch, uncertain whether to chance flying into the light.
Outside the light was dazzling. There were strange rustlings among the geraniums; lizards basked in the heat, crickets chirped.
Inside the house, Annie rustled in the cool of Elsa’s study, finding the book she wanted with its picture of the centipede, the thickness of a man’s two middle fingers. There it was with its waspy stripe. The book was written in Spanish. But she recognized the word muerte. Death. The centipede meant death. How could she come to live in a country where such things existed?
They were waiting for Elsa. The town was beginning to stir slowly into life after siesta. Men clustered in the bars. The abrupt gunfire of their conversation reached Annie as she sat with Mark at the fountain.
An old woman passed with that stoical waddle common to the locals, arms laden with gladioli. She was making her way toward the church where all about the crumbly stucco of the tower the swifts dived, darted endlessly. The men’s voices, the swifts, the smooth hiss of the fountain were soothing.
Annie was thinking that, yes, she could grow comfortable here; even perhaps live in Pepe’s cottage. It would please Mark. He sat now, twirling his sunglasses in his hands, gazing towards the abogado’s office for his sister. If only she could relax. If only she could give herself up to it, to the sweet drowsy heat… to Elsa… No, not to Elsa! At once Annie sat upright, grasped the rim of the fountain, for here she was, Elsa, crossing the plaza, bouncing toward them.
“Hola! Hola, Maria!” Elsa called gaily to the gladioli lady, who appeared startled and murmured something. Did Annie imagine it, or did the woman cross herself as Elsa passed? Elsa waved triumphantly at Annie and Mark, flourishing a wad of papers, then halted by Juan’s bar to call to the little lame dog which always skulked there: “Here, perro! Look, see what mummy’s got…” The mutt limped forward as Elsa crumbled stale blood sausage which she always kept for this purpose in her bag. Nervously it suffered her caress, her croonings, before shrinking back to the doorway.
Elsa rose, dazzling as a sunflower in her kaftan, her strings of amber beads, bronzed arms chinking with bangles. Annie could almost smell her from across the square. Or was it the acacia trees, releasing a fragrance so strong she almost swooned? She clutched harder at the fountain, feeling the lukewarm spray in her face. Elsa bounded toward them now, and it seemed the swifts dive-bombed the church tower in a kind of panic; some German tourists at one of the pavement tables seemed suddenly to flag in the heat beneath striped awnings.
“Darlings!” Elsa was upon them, thrusting her warm solid flesh between them both. “It’s all settled. Nothing for you two to worry about. I’ve signed the papers myself.” She beamed at them, “I’ve bought Pepe’s old place in my name, but God, what do I need of it? It’s for you two. A present.”
Annie could remember little after that, just Mark’s wittering gratitude. And being almost crushed by Elsa’s thigh next to her, the heavy scent of her, the energy… and she… Annie, clinging and clutching at the damp stone rim to stop from falling. The water gave off a rancid scent. It was evaporating in the heat. Soon there would be nothing left but a greenish vapour.
Annie’s first thought on waking was that she was in jail. But she was looking at the iron grille at her bedroom window. Mark was leaning over her: “Elsa says you’ve had a touch of sunstroke. She says with your fair colouring it’s madness to go out without a hat. And look… she found you one. She thinks of everything.”
The hat smelt of dog basket. The great flopping brim was wound about with a bronzy chiffon scarf. Turn it upside down and you could sail the Atlantic, across the choppy Bay of Biscay, all the way to Dover, safe from the sun and Elsa and centipedes… Annie’s eyes closed again.