We ended up speaking late into the evening, over one and then another bottle of white from Rias Baixas with the French family across from us there at the Mercado San Miguel. No joke finding a place to sit in there, we had to cobble together our chairs and our tapas slowly, methodically and my family was chatting with theirs when I returned with a last few plates of food. My daughters, the younger of whom’s French is pretty good, beat and early retreat. We were left with four adults and their unfortunate daughter who was lovely and had strong English, but wasn’t able to cut away home, like my kids did. I tried for a bit but ceded my fledgling French to their somewhat better English and agreed that Covid was a mess, and that Spain was great, and that Trump had been wretched.
This morning I lay in bed indulging in chapter after chapter of Giles Tremlett’s “Ghosts of Spain” which proved a much better read than I’d anticipated. My older daughter came and knocked around 8:00AM reminding me that we’d discussed heading to the Rostro market this morning, early, before it closed. The little one had already announced that she wasn’t interested. My wife groaned when asked and suggested she wasn’t going to make it either. I think this was the first time on the trip, well the second as it had happened with the pool in St. Vincente as well, someone else was pulling me on, asking me to join in on something. Tempted, certainly to demur and finish this book I suited up, made some coffee and headed out as a duet with my older one.
We followed a trickle of people which turned into a flow towards the Rostro Sunday market and soon found the beginnings of the long row of stalls. First, I’d need cash. We asked one of the many cops about and he directed us down the road. I got a shirt. My daughter got some earrings. But soon it became clear that we were progressing at different velocities. So, we agreed to meet back by the public fountain in forty-five minutes. The stalls started to look the same after the first hundred yards or so and I became interested in finding a gallery or perhaps some antiques in one of the stores along the side of the street stalls. I visited one and another which were not particularly inspiring, but further down the road I cut off the main strip and entered an alley that led to a courtyard of sorts with two dozen different antique shops. Here I could buy a twelve-foot watercolor of the Madonna with flying cherubs, or a life size statue of Augustus. Culling about for the next half hour I found many things I’d have loved to secure, but nothing practical for my purposes.
I returned to a simple acrylic painting I’d notice on the way in of some fishermen with their boat on the shore. I decided to ask about it and one gent found a lady who found another young gent with large forearms who told me it was a very special painting, a beautiful painting. It was probably of Valencia and it was €1,200.00 which was rather beyond what I wanted to spend for something I was lukewarm about. I thanked him and beat a hasty retreat, back to the rendezvous with my older daughter. I explained where I'd been and we returned. I asked her help to find a painting I could take home but we searched in vain. Nothing really made any sense until just at the end, as it often happens I saw a lovely water color of a moody urban shoreline. It had a large, ridiculous frame but I was able to look beyond that. I asked and he said it was of a town in Galicia. Much better answer. It seemed green and moody like Galicia. “How much is it?”, I asked the old gentleman who asked a younger gentleman who said €250.00. Much better answer. “Yo quiero.” I indicated. But can you take the frame off? It will be hard to travel with all that. He dropped the price to €220.00 sans-frame and we had a deal. But his credit card machine wasn’t working so I needed to a long trek up and around to find another ATM machine. Then, on the walk home, painting in hand we discussed just how we would pitch the story to my wife, who was bound to be skeptical about this new piece of art we'd just bought.
Sunday, 8/29/21
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