Saved the metropolis for the end of the trip. Driving across Saturday morning Madrid, with a driver named Lovely. I ask him something in broken Spanish and he replies clarifying that he's an English speaker. Lovely hails from Lagos and we shift and discuss the West African community in Madrid and that fact that Fela has a song bemoaning Lagos traffic. The moment of reckoning this morning, we’re off to a local clinic to get our antigen Covid tests. We won’t be able to board the flight if any of us are positive. I’ve already crafted out a special thank you to our younger daughter, should we all test negative. But the alternative is rather real, regardless of the fact that we’ve all been vaccinated. A happy ending where the risks were justified or a bitter lesson to reckon with, confronting the fact that they had not been?
A clinic full of buoyant young Spanish women are at the ready to help. We each fill out a form and wait, but not for long. Soon we are led down the hall. One, after the other we are escorted to the room off the hall where a nurse penetrates our noses, deeply, uncomfortably and with that we are on our way. “We’ll email you the results in less than thirty minutes.” Just like they said they would. I thank the staff and exit though before I do, I check one last time that they see plenty of Americans and that their test should be sufficient? The blond with glasses assures me that all will be fine. Out on the street we wait a bit beneath trees that look like walnuts but my Seek app suggests are Chinese Pistache. A lady at the nearby café asks me a question and I say: “Yes. It’s clear.” But I have no idea what she’s talking about and hope she directs her attention elsewhere.
The Uber driver on the way back is named Jose and it appears that Jose is from Madrid. But more importantly he is playing glorious Newyorican music from the early 70’s. One Fania All Star after another Pete Rodriguez, Ishmael Riviera and soon he and I are discussing whether salsa is popular or not, here in Spain. His phone suggests a name I don’t recognize but that voice could only be Hector Lavoe and Jose confirms. By the time we are approaching the Prado twenty minutes later I think to check my phone and the first result has already arrived. My older daughter has tested negative. Now, one after another the other results arrive and, after checking each one with some hesitation I exhale, confirming we’re all clear and there behind the Goya statue, in front of the Prado I make an elaborate gesture of thanks to my younger daughter, who’d been a strict disciplinarian about keeping masked the whole trip. I’d grumbled about wearing one when no one was around in 110 degree heat in Toledo and more than a few other places, but now the thanks belong to her.
We’re early and stand in a short line of people who also already have their tickets and soon I am standing before El Greco’s El Caballero de la mano al pecho; The man with his hand on his chest which has stared back at me from my virtual ticket receipt for weeks now. Here are the portraits that adorn the covers of all the biographies I’ve recently read. Hi Charles V, Hey there, Philip II. What a remarkable transition Goya makes from the La maja vestida in 1804 to the darkened, terrifying La romería de San Isidro in 1823. Early, at the beginning of Covid, we’d done a large puzzle of Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, and considered it all in great detail, and now, here alive before us. Wait, there’s some Albrecht Durer and wait, these are by Tintoretto! I pushed my kids for as much as they could take before the mood shifted and then acknowledged that it was time to go after an obligatory run through the gift shop. Yes. I do want a refrigerator magnet of that man with the long-fintered hand on his chest. Outside we marched past the Goya statue, up the stairs and this time hailed a cab with what turned out to be the first of many young, female Ecuadorean cab drivers we were to have here in the capital.
Saturday, 8/28/21
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