Tonight, Everybody in the Street!

In 1976, it was a good time in Madrid. Franco was dead. The city, the whole country was coming out from underneath his heavy hand. I was nineteen, full of energy, full of desire. Like so many others, so many other young people, I had fled to the capital from the small town in which I’d grown up, from the sun and the seasons and the sheep on the dry, rocky hills. I had come hungry for my life to begin, to explode. And it did.

In those days, in Madrid, every night there were parties on the streets. We used to say to one another, me and my generation—it was the catch-cry of our time—“Tonight, everybody in the street!” We used to shout, “Madrid, you kill me!” and at the top of our lungs, “Madrid never sleeps!”

It was a time of freedom. And I was like a little bird. I flew here, I flew there on a whim. I had no ties, no invisible strings tied to my feet to keep me from moving. I flitted. And flitting, I fell in at one time with some punk-rockers on the east side. At another, I stayed with a group of flamboyant transvestites who I adored and who adored me—the only one amongst them with real breasts, they said. They adored them too, painting them in intricate designs before the parties we went to.

Then, when I was bored of that, I crashed for a month on the mattress that belonged to the girl—she was away somewhere else—who had famously taken off her clothes earlier that year, just for fun, on top of the statues of the old heroes Daoíz and Velarde in the main square. How the crowd of us had cheered her on when, inch by inch and with great humour, she had revealed her proud, beautiful body. How we had screamed in our joy.

Like this. Madrid was like this.

And at the end of my first year there I met a troupe of street performers who, though I did not know it then, would change the line of my life. I joined them, an apprentice, learning to juggle and clown, to paint my face like a ghoul or a doll, a waif, a wolf or a fire spirit—to embody the characters I played. I was also learning to walk on stilts.

There was one boy in the group—an aerial acrobat who danced with ribbons and silk. His name was Felo. He was like a flower for me. Fragrant and fragile and sweet, almost not of this world. He had shy, cupid lips and a trail of pretty boyfriends always behind him. I also fell a little in love with him.

So when he, along with some of the others, decided to go to Amsterdam, to busk, to perform, to see the world—which under Franco none of us had seen much of before—I too wanted to go. I wanted to see the world which I believed in my heart could only be as wonderful and colourful and as kind to me as Madrid had been, if not more.

“Come, Maria,” Felo said, touching my face, my cheek.

And so I went. I followed soon after he left. I hitchhiked through France with the famous stripteaser, strangely enough, whose bed I had slept in for a month. In Paris, she left me to dance in some bars. And then I went on alone, for the first time in a long time, through Belgium and into the Netherlands. And I was not afraid once.

I was a little bird flying free.

When I got to Amsterdam I landed with a thump. I was hungry, I had no money —no money worth much. I was lost. In my poor English I tried to ask some Dutch passers-by for directions to the squat, the old abandoned building where Felo had said he would be waiting for me. Its whereabouts, it was becoming clear, had been as vaguely described to me as to him. It took me all day of losing my way along the canals and bridges, but in the end, miraculously, I found the place.

Along the derelict corridors and up the stairs, I asked after him, after Felo, my friend, wanting to know if anybody knew who he was, where he was, painting his features for them. But all I got from the smoke-clouded Moroccans, the Algerians, and hippies on their trails, along with my fellow Spanish, was the shaking of heads. No one could help.

Part of me believed that I would never find Felo again, that he had simply vanished into thin air, so ephemeral as he was in his character.

So when I did come upon him, eventually, later that evening on my search, in one of the rooms on the sixth floor, I was happy. My heart leapt. He was lying lazily naked on a mattress in the arms of a boy who was playing with a curl in his hair.

They were such a picture of youth and beauty, too, gazing into each other’s eyes. My breath was taken away, for I was a lover of all things beautiful.

I said his name.

“Felo,” I said.

But it took him too long a languid moment to turn his head and look my way; and when he did I could see from his shining face and his shining eyes that he was in love, entranced with the boy in his arms, or with the drugs they were taking, or both. I was naive but I knew that much.

I did not mind. I was happy to have found my friend. I was happy for Felo, if he was in love, if he was having a good time, because I liked, even loved Felo. I really did. I thought of him as my brother in spirit. And I wanted everything that was good for him.

But his happiness and my happiness for his, and even happiness itself as an abstract feeling, form or idea, did not solve the problem that my belly was empty and rumbling; and that I did not know where the rest of the troupe were and neither did Felo. Happiness also did not change the fact that Felo was not interested much, if at all, in doing the busking, the performing we had planned to do to make the money that would keep us, as well as to enjoy our time in the world which we did not know yet but wanted to.

The next morning, in the squat’s bare kitchen, Felo made his position clear. He handed me a chipped cup of grainy coffee—he had carried the coffee all the way from Spain. Then he held and caressed my chin. He said he was sorry. His plans, for that moment, had changed. He too was a little bird, after all, who was free to change his destination. We were one, the same, me and him.

I began to cry. The tears fell down my cheeks.

I said, “But, Felo, what will I do?”

I wasn’t experienced enough or confident enough to perform on my own. I was a novice, after all.

I told him, “I don’t want to go back to Madrid. Not yet.”

And beautiful Felo, who I so liked so much, who was my friend, my brother in spirit, embraced me warmly. He wiped my eyes. He kissed them even though he did not look so well himself just then. He looked distracted and distant if I looked closely into his face, as if he had already decided he was going to leave me for a long time.

His lover, who stood quietly with us, looked the same way.

But still, Felo kept telling me not to worry. He told me, he promised that soon, one day, one day, we would find the other members of our troupe; we would be as we had been, here in Amsterdam or some place else. We would light up the streets with our shows just as we had done in Madrid, soon, soon.

Maybe, his lover would join us, too?

The lover nodded.

“Wouldn’t that be good?”

Felo spoke to me as if I were a child.

In the meantime he said he would ask around, ask some people he knew in Amsterdam for any jobs I could do.

And then he kissed me on the cheek and on the lips. And his lover kissed me, too, on the cheek and on the lips. They said that all they had they would share with me—Spanish coffee. What else did they have?

We laughed about that.

And they told me both, again, not to worry.

I said I would try.

Then we all held each other, all three of us, in a tight embrace. We held each other for a long time not letting go, as if we were all very afraid but did not want to admit it—to each other or ourselves.

So it was a surprise, then, when later in the afternoon, Felo came back with the news that he had found a job for me. Not acting or performing or anything like that. Menial work. Cleaning, he said. Did I mind? It was for a friend of a friend. This friend of a friend needed his apartment cleaned. It could become a regular thing if I wanted it to be.

Of course, I told Felo I didn’t mind. I was grateful. I was humble and happy. I hugged him, I kissed him. I thanked him endlessly.

And then Felo went back to lie in the bed with his lover for the rest of the day and the night, to be beautiful and to make beauty; and this, what he did, was right.

The next day, then, early in the morning after I had drunk some of Felo’s Spanish coffee and eaten some English biscuits, which some kind travellers had given to me, I left the squat. I carried with me the little piece of paper with the address of where I was supposed to go along with some directions.

Following them, I made my way. I walked by the canals, over bridges. I took in the Dutch facades and edifices, the bicycles, everywhere, everyone riding them. I didn’t see any prostitutes for which, I had been told, Amsterdam was famous—just like Madrid. But I wasn’t looking for them. I was looking inside the little shop windows along the boulevards, into the cafes, the sausage shops, the bakeries. I was thinking of the cheese and bread, and maybe even cake, I would buy to share with the boys when I got my money in my hand.

And then, dreaming of just that, I was there—in an obviously wealthier part of the city, outside the building I was looking for. I went into a lobby that had a concierge, and took a lift with a cage door. I walked down a plush carpeted corridor—so different to the squat. And then I knocked on the door on which I was supposed to knock. There was no answer. I knocked louder a second time.

A young man in a light blue, well-fitted suit opened up. He stood in the frame, tall and lean, muscular underneath the suit’s fine fabric. He had blonde hair that was shaven close to the scalp and, like some of the Dutch, ice-blue eyes. He looked at me with them, coolly, as if he were waiting for instructions first, from someone else or for me to explain myself.

I said, “I am Maria. I am here to clean.”

And then a male voice from inside, behind the door, said, “Ah, yes. I forgot. Let her in.”

The young man in the blue suit moved aside and opened the door wider so that I could enter and see the man that belonged to the voice. He was older than the first, thicker, bulkier and also in a suit—but with the jacket off and the cuffs of the shirt rolled up to show his wide forearms. He looked relaxed, in charge, sitting on a large, white leather lounge with one leg crossing the other. One arm was draped over the shoulder of the lounge. With his other hand he held a tumbler full of gold-coloured liquid, probably whiskey. He cocked his head to see me and as he did he tilted his tumbler so that the ice inside made clinking sounds, like little glass bells.

Then the door closed behind me.

“You can start in here,” said the man on the lounge, signalling around the living room with his drink. My eyes followed, taking in the rich furnishings: the wall-to-wall carpet, the glass tables and bar, the crystal, the ornate lamps and large pictures in frames on the walls. A series of old Dutch ships with their billowing sails, at sea or resting in harbours, grey ones, in times past.

“You can start with the dusting,” the man said and directed me vaguely as to where I could find the rags and things. In the kitchen somewhere.

I found them, returned, and began to polish a wooden cabinet in a corner, and the beautiful green glass bowl on top of it. As I did, the two men, who were now both seated on the white leather lounge, drank, smoked and spoke in English and then in Dutch and then English again with each other. After a while, as if I were not there, they spoke of me.

The older, bulkier one said, “Well, what do you think? Is she Spanish? Or Italian?”

“I don’t know. Maybe Italian.”

“Why don’t you ask her.”

The younger man did.

“I-tal-i-a-no?” he said, speaking to me in a slow, loud voice as if I were stupid.

“No”, I said, quietly, “I am from Spain.”

“You are from Spain?”

“She is from Spain.”

“A Spanish woman.”

“She is a Spanish woman.”

“Just a Spanish woman.”

They laughed then. I wasn’t sure why—completely. But I did know that they were trying to let me know that for them I was not important. Of course, this was not true; I was important for myself.

“So you are here in Amsterdam for a little holiday, then?” said the older man.

“A cleaning holiday,” the younger one said as he puffed at a cigarette he had just lit.

“I am an actress. A street performer,” I said, weakly.

They laughed, again, smugly, at this new information.

Only a Spanish woman in their eyes, I cleaned the glass protecting the pictures of the Dutch ships, thinking that we too had once explored the world and tried to conquer it, to own it, as the Dutch had tried to do—as if anyone really could. But I kept this opinion to myself. I thought: I will clean for these ignorant people. Then I will take my money and go.

While I cleaned, the two men continued to talk between themselves in English and Dutch and English again, again. They left me alone for a while. Then the older man addressed me directly.

“Come and clean this coffee table,” he said.

It was dirty, he said.

Was it? Yes. The coffee table was big and square and made of glass and sitting in the centre of the room. Around it the two men sat smoking and drinking some more. And I realised I had been avoiding it, the table, them; skirting the edges, the perimeters, the walls of the interior of the apartment. I was on edge.

Nevertheless, I did what was asked of me.

I came. I polished, I dusted. I did not look at their faces or notice anything more about them. Without passion, I did my job.

The older man, then, did something that made me take notice, made me stop.

It was meant to, of course.

From around his waist he took out a gun. It was small but chunky, heavy-looking in his hands. He studied it for a moment. And I studied him studying it, the gun. From where I stood, my breath and heart slowed down. You’d think it would’ve been the other way, but it was not. I was calm beyond calm.

And then the man placed the gun on the table and pushed it, quickly, so that it slid across the freshly cleaned glass. It did not go off, though I thought it would, should have, must. Fast, the younger man caught the thing and picked it up. He began to play with it, to spin the cartridge around as if it was a toy, as if he was a boy, which he was not.

The older man—I didn’t even know his name, I realised, I didn’t know either of their names—looked up to see my response. I didn’t show one, I don’t think. I was in shock. To tell you the truth, I was scared out of my mind. But I tried to act, to pretend that it was all normal, what was happening, that there was nothing unordinary about any of it, nothing wrong with the gun.

The older man seemed to want to test, to push my resolve. He said, unblinking, “No more cleaning. Now take off your clothes.”

My heart then totally stopped. I looked up at his face and saw that he was smiling. It was a bent, crooked smile made to cut me in half. And I felt, then, knowing that I was worthless in his eyes that I had reason to be afraid for my life. I knew that. If I didn’t do what he asked they would kill me, I was sure. With the gun and no one would know. Not my mother or father. I would never return to them or see again my hometown’s dusty hills. Felo. He wouldn’t know their names either. He would have forgotten by now. For he was in love with his lover. That was why. But I was in love too. With my life. I had only just found it. I had never loved anything more. And I wanted to keep it, this life that I loved. I would do what the man whose name I did not know told me. But, again, as if it was an ordinary request. I did not want to give him—them—the satisfaction of my fear.

So without question and with a bowed head, I took off my shirt and skirt, my underwear—the man told me I should. Everything. I folded everything—just as he said. Neatly, I arranged it onto the top of a chair. With great attention to the angles, the folds, I made the perfect creases, smoothing them over with the palms of my hands. I had never folded my clothes, or anything, more neatly in all of my life. Like this, I tried to stretch out time, not knowing what would happen next.

The man told me what.

He said to the boy who was not a boy, casually, “Do you want to fuck her?”

The boy, who was still playing with the gun, said, “I don’t know. Who? The Spanish woman? I suppose.”

They spoke as if I was now deaf.

Then to me. More instructions.

The man told me to lie down. On the floor.

What could I do? I lay down on the floor.

And as the younger man, the boy in the blue suit did what he did, I stared at the ceiling and then at the walls and, on them, the paintings of ships on journeys to somewhere else. I looked at the door which was a white rectangle, far away, with a knob on it that I tried to imagine I could turn and make a clear space to escape through. I tried to imagine, to think, of how I could get out of there at all. Maybe I could make myself become a genie, turn myself into smoke, and hide inside that vase over there, just there, I thought.

When the younger man, whose name I did not know, finished with a jerking motion, I sat up. Then I stood. The younger man tucked himself into his pants and sat down again on the white leather lounge.

Nothing seemed to happen for a long time, except for the semen that ran down my legs.

Out of that infinity, I told the older man, “Now you.”

It was my idea. It had to be my idea. Somehow I had to take control. That was the extent of my plan—and after that I didn’t know what would come.

The older man, after I spoke, looked at me surprised, his mouth in the shape of an O.

“Alright,” he said, nodding, willing, softer-seeming, almost.

I took the opportunity to take control some more.

I said, “But not here. Not in front of him.” I couldn’t even look at him—the boy. “In the bedroom,” I said. “Just the two of us. Alone.”

The older man, to my surprise again, agreed to this as well. He got up. He didn’t even bring the gun, thinking, I supposed, that he wouldn’t need it now. He led the way down the hall into a room that had a bed, that had blinds and shutters that were pulled, closed to the street outside. The street that was in Amsterdam. Yes, that is where I was. I had almost forgotten. It was far away. That place. The street, the world. Outside.

Inside, I said, “Lie down.”

The man lay down. He did what I said now. On the bed, he unbuckled. He unzipped. I put myself on top of him and did what I had to do, what I had said I would.

Soon it was over.

And then in the half-dark of the room, underneath me, the man closed his eyes. As he did, some choking, chortling noises came up from his throat and out through his mouth. I thought it was laughter at first, uncontrolled, but then I realised he was crying.

I did not know what to do or say.

Did he expect me to comfort him?

I said, “Are you happy now?”

Obviously, he was not.

In answer he tried to cover his face with one of his thick, bare arms. To hide. Then, hidden, he really started sobbing.

This only made me cold, colder. It gave me permission, a position from which to show I was angry, to show my strength.

I said, “Why are you crying? I am the one who should be crying. I came to clean your apartment and this is what you do? What is the matter with you? Why do you do these ugly things?”

I was spitting at him now.

The man kept sobbing. He said, “I am sorry, I am sorry,” over and over again. He said, “My wife left me this morning.”

Involuntarily, my body exhaled, gasped. His reasoning was ludicrous.

I said, “I am not surprised that your wife left you if this is the way you treat women.”

He sat up. He said, “I know, I know. I did not treat my wife properly. And I have not treated you in a right way.” He said, “Forgive me. What can I give you? I have money. Take this money.”

He pulled a wallet out from the pocket of his trousers. He opened it and fished out a wad of notes that he presented to me in a fan. I pushed his hand, the money away. I didn’t want any of it, I said.

The man got up, still begging for my forgiveness. He opened one of the wardrobes. It was full of a woman’s clothes. Gowns, sequins, chiffon, silk—his wife’s, obviously—his ex-wife’s—and endless boxes of shoes. She must have left in a hurry not to have taken them with her.

The man said, “Whatever you want. It’s yours. She’s not coming back.”

He yanked an armful of dresses off their hangers and laid them out before me.

I said, “I don’t want your wife’s clothes. I only want my own. I want to go.”

Still sobbing, he said, “Yes. Go. Go.”

I did not wait for him to change his mind.

I left him sinking to his knees.

I didn’t look behind.

I walked down the hall.

I walked to the chair.

I picked up my clothes.

Quickly, I dressed.

I didn’t see the boy. If I did, I didn’t register him.

I went out the door. I had not thought that I would.

I closed that door behind me and caught the caged lift down.

It was slow, too slow. Faster, I told it.

In the foyer, I passed the concierge.

He nodded at me. Maybe, I nodded back.

And then I was out on the street, in Amsterdam—that was where I was—here I was—here it was—the world I had almost forgotten I had wanted to know. Did I still want to know it? I wasn’t sure. And there, leaning against the building on the street, in Amsterdam, I vomited coffee, biscuits and bile onto the footpath.

Back at the squat, I scrubbed myself in the concrete shower block. I stood under the nozzles of water that streamed onto my head, trying to make myself clean, to cleanse myself of them.

I had already shouted at Felo—but what good had that done? I’d barged into his and his lover’s room where they’d lain together and beautiful since the morning, since I’d left, I was sure. For a moment I’d wanted to blame them, to kill them both. Instead, I’d thrown my temporarily murderous hands up into the air and asked Felo why in the hell he’d sent me there, to that place.

Seeing my clear distress, he hadn’t even bothered or was not able to get up. He’d answered my question with another question. Bleary-eyed, he’d wondered if I hadn’t been paid. I shouted at him then, “Who were those people, Felo?” I needed to know. And then Felo told me, squinting, confused, that the apartment had belonged to the Senior Sergeant of Police.

I thought about that now under the shower, the water pelting down my back—the Senior Sergeant of Police. How, why did Felo even know him, this friend of a friend?

Oh, I didn’t care. What good would caring do?

I was crying. It felt like crying but no tears were coming out of my eyes. There was just a weird wailing from my throat; anguished singing, almost. It was all I could do to hold myself upright; to hold onto all the pieces that wanted to be sucked down the drain, along with the dirtied water, fast, in a swirl and gone for always.

That is how it felt. It was a physical sensation. I don’t know how else to describe it. Like some bodily consciousness was trying to evacuate, to leave my flesh. I watched it, felt this consciousness collapse like an avalanche of my core; a sudden breaking away.

And then an incredible thing happened. I don’t know how or why or what. But a sudden strength in me spoke—not in words—but in feelings, physical feelings. A steel rod in my back. It was there. I sensed it. Like a bright solidness that could also bend. It was scintillating and alive like a galaxy of stars compressed. And I just knew that I could not let what had happened to me in the apartment that day fix the course of my life. I would not let it. I wanted to continue to be beautiful and free and alive, in love with my life.

And that night and the next and the next day and the day after that, I went out onto the street—into the square—to the corner—wherever it was that I could find an audience. I performed. I did what I had come to do. Alone, I sang a little song. Determined, I danced. With no other tools, I told stories with my hands. Or I juggled pieces of rotting fruit. Whatever I had. I made the people laugh. I did not care. I let them see my mistakes. I got better and better. And I was not afraid.

Soon, I met others like me. Other street performers, buskers from Spain and other places, new friends. I don’t know what happened to Felo but I wished him all the best. With my new friends, constellations that came together and apart, I toured through Europe, most of it. Or I went alone. I went across the Middle East as far as India. I did not look back. And I did not return to Madrid—not for a long, long time. But I carried her, my city, and all that my generation, my people, my time had awakened in me. I carried optimism and celebration, a festival of hope.

And I continued to shout, “Tonight, everybody in the street!”

As I do now