Home life
No laik
Alice Thomas Ellis
Iknow this, so I don't understand myself. When you emerge from an airport into the turmoil of a foreign city you go for a cab where the driver's sitting down, reading his paper. You don't go with the man who's running up and down importun- ing people. He's the mad one. So what did I do? I went with that one. 'Hotel Los ®
Galgos, por favor', I said — which repre- sents almost the sum total of my Spanish. He sat me in the seat beside him (always a bad sign), removed my hat, flung it into the back, ruffled my hair, pinched my cheek and put his foot down.
Slah, blah, blah calor blah, blah?' he remarked, wringing out his brow and swerving between a petrol tanker and a pantechnicon. From the body-language I gathered he was commenting on the temperature. 'Si', said I — which more or less used up the rest of my Spanish. `Blah, blah moreno blah', he observed, offering his forearm for my inspection and patting it, for added emphasis, with the other hand. Then he turned to peer into my face. `Blanco', he decided by way of compari- son. Well, of course I was blanco. He was practically halfway up the behind of the juggernaut in front and I was — as they say — ashen with terror.
A lorry drew alongside laden with four tiers of pigs, their poor little tails sticking out through the bars. He leaned across me to get a closer look at this phenomenon. `Cerdos', he informed me. 'In English peke. No?"Si', I agreed, determined not to get into any discussion of pronunciation. `Blah, blah, blah. Ha, ha. Ho, ho', he went on. Disappointed by my lack of response he resolved to clarify matters, dropping the wheel and bending down to find his handy phrase-book between the seats.
We sailed into Madrid with him riffling through this book with both hands and me with my eyes tight shut going through a few decades of the rosary. Finally he gave a cry of triumph and passed me the book, finger jabbing at a point halfway down the page. I took it gladly, already having toyed with the idea of seizing it to look up the Spanish for 'Watch the road you bloody maniac'. `No like (laik)', I read in the column devoted to English. With a great deal of mirth we established that if you didn't much care for a person you were liable to call him a pig.
Arrived — thank God — at Los Galgos, he handed me to the doorman with the words, 'Adios, Seriora Aleethia'. We had exchanged names, but, as he'd apparently been trying to drive under a milk lorry at the time, his had escaped me. I rather wanted to respond with the Spanish I'd learned at such expense to my nerves 'Adios, cerdo' — but I thought I'd better not. So I gave him a handsome tip and went to lie down in the cool comfort of a darkened room.
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