Chapter 6: Seriously Driven

We left the hotel in separate taxis, as required by the lockdown laws. The streets and sidewalks were eerily deserted. Under Spain’s national State of Alarm, one may travel only under limited exceptions. One such exception is “return to the place of habitual residence.” Our new landlords — María and Agustín, whom I’ve already taken to calling saints — have graciously allowed us to move in before the April 1 start of the lease, and we are meeting Agustín at noon. But technically we aren’t returning to a place of habitual residence; we don’t even have the keys yet.

The local police forces are now under the control of the central government’s Home Ministry, and they are stopping people at random to verify their reasons for travel. Because we don’t speak comprehensible Spanish or have a printer in our new country, I summoned up my neatest penmanship, and hand-wrote notes to present with our passports were it to become necessary. “Me llama Kathryn/Kathleen . . . Estoy viajando a mi residencia.”

And since we don’t yet have a physical copy of the lease, I add, “En mi teléfono móvil, puedo monstrarle el contrato de alquiler mi apartamento” — the lease is on my phone. No one wants to touch or get close to anyone’s smartphone these days, but I figured it showed good faith.

César, my cab driver, was all efficiency and business. He wore a large face mask with black trim and blue rubber gloves. He was fit and spry, and he darted to and from the sidewalk in front of the hotel putting all the bags in the back of his black minivan. No pleasantries were exchanged; this was a serious mission.

There was complete silence in the car — a silence I found reassuring as I glanced at César with his eyes trained on the road. It occurred to me that we could be in a James Bond movie — this was a Mercedes minivan, after all — for the only times I’d streets this empty in a major city were when New York streets were cleared for filming. But this was not fiction, and no chase scene was to follow.

César delivered me and the bags to the apartment building early. Of course, he did. The travel-time estimate in my mobile app was from before COVID-19 emptied the streets.

Kate’s taxi, however, was detained by the police, as they searched the trunk and looked behind the seats for other passengers. She reported that the police were friendly, but serious — not acting to intimidate, but to protect. She did not need to use my earnest note.

What Kate and I did experience contemporaneously, if not together, was how unnerving it was to view this great city — our newly-adopted city — lifeless. Watching from behind the car window did not soften the dreadful feeling. On the contrary, it magnified it. Barreling down Calle Atocha, around the Campo de Moro, and behind the royal palace (where, legend has it, camping soldiers were felled by a water-borne infection in the twelfth century), gave us a panoramic view and a sweeping sense of Madrid’s desolation.

©2020 Kay Diaz

Chapter 5: The Shining

Following the coronavirus lockdown in Spain last Sunday, Kate and I became the only tenants of our residential hotel. No other guests come or go. No host or clerk can be found at the front desk. No cleaning ladies sweep the hallways or change the towels. And yesterday, after the Spanish government decreed that all hotels must be emptied by next Tuesday, we realized that we seem to be the only ones standing between the hotel and full compliance with the law.

In our solitary confines, we have taken to walking up and down the hotel’s beautiful staircase for exercise. These are broad, marble stairs with wide treads and short risers. They are museum clean. There is a massive oak banister, which curves gracefully under the palm of one’s hand — though we dare not touch it because we are working on our core muscles . . . and exactly how long can COVID-19 live on a wooden surface, anyway?

The elegant stairs twist around an old-fashioned caged elevator that, when we first moved in, fascinated us with its exposed mechanics — weights and thickly-braided cables — serenading us with its clicks and gentle thuds as it moved up and down. Now, the elevator is nothing more than a stationary box.

Up and down we climb, one step at a time.

In Europe, the ground floor is 0, one story up is 1, and so on. Here, the walls are decoratively painted with the ordinals: Primero, Segundo, Tercero. We play games, first going all the way down, next doing a set of stairs twice on the same story. My mind wanders. I don’t hear a word Kate says from a landing above.

In the absence of maid service, I eventually head outside and make my way alone to the cleaning-supply aisles of the shop next door. They are a fastidious cleaner’s delight, and I am reminded of a thought I had when we were leaving New York City as the virus was advancing: We are going to a place where people clean like their lives depend on it — and now they do.

On our first day in our hotel room, my nostrils flared with the familiar smell coming from the soap dispenser in the kitchenette. It was the same soapy-piney substance I smelled rising up from the sidewalks on morning walks during our previous trips; the walks in which every Spaniard seemed to be outside cleaning walls, sidewalks, and door thresholds, and during which we felt bad about tip-toeing around the suds and interrupting their work, sheepishly repeating “con permiso” every six yards or so.

My mind returned to my task at hand. The diverse selection of brooms in the small store is heaven for the cleaning cognoscenti. I had my choice of flagged or unflagged trim, and thick-gauged to almost corn-silk soft bristles. Push or sweep. There were micro-fiber dust cloths of every texture and color. Even the generic garbage bags were superior to the name brands in the States.

As I made my way back to our residential hotel hauling three large, heavy bags with a five-foot broom handle sticking out, I glanced at the shiny marble stairs, considered walking up the three flights to our room . . . and then pressed the elevator button.

©2020 Kay Diaz

Chapter 4: New Neighbors

New Yorkers often say that small town life is alive and well in America — it just happens to exist in a city of 8.5 million people. In the week leading up to our move to Madrid, we sadly said goodbye to the dry cleaners, cobbler, nail salon ladies, fruit stand man, and coffee cart guy in our Greenwich Village neighborhood, all of whom we had befriended over the years. These people were as much a part of our daily lives as our closest friends, and we knew that we would sincerely miss them.

Happily, it was only a matter of days before we began to establish similar relationships in our new neighborhood in Madrid. Already we recognize the faces of the people nearby, and they recognize us in return.

There’s the proprietor of the cheese and sausage stall, a man roughly in his 50s wearing a flat cap, who patiently walks us through cow, goat, and sheep cheeses — vaca, cabra, oveja — and warmly thanks us for our purchases.

The owner of the bakery stall is a tall, handsome, elderly man with thinning, curly hair and kindly, angled eyes. Kate privately calls him “abuelo,” though — given that we are now in our late 50s ourselves — he is probably closer in age to an older brother than a grandfather.

At the produce stand, we are greeted by a smiling man in his late 30s with, “¡Hola también!” He already recognizes us, and he knows that we will need help learning the Spanish words for the items we want to buy. He is as happy to teach us his language as he is to make a sale, and Kate says, “Gracias y hasta luego, maestro” as we leave with our purchases.

Next door to our efficiency apartment is a large sundries store, not unlike the Woolworth’s of our childhoods. This has everything we need, from toilet paper and disinfectant, to a broom and dustpan, to 50-cent cans of local beer. The young man at the register and the middle-aged woman organizing the shelves and aisles are always there, seeming never to sleep. They are unflagging in their courtesy, and greet us with smiles every time we enter. Their store is called Super Bazar Vecino; vecino, meaning neighbor in English. It feels perfect.

And from the balcony of our efficiency, four flights up from the street below, we see our other neighbors from a distance. As we rest our forearms on the railing, heads cocked at an angle toward the sun or leaning down toward the street to see who is coming or going, we are heartened to see the arrival of delivery and street-cleaning trucks.

At eye level are our fellow personas confinadas. A woman, perhaps just a bit older than we, opens her massive shutters and shouts, “¡Hola, chicas!” We like to think that — if she assumes we are not Spaniards — it is only because of the hotel sign on our building, and not because we can’t even say the word “hola” without sounding like Americans.

And every evening at exactly 8:00 pm, the twenty-somethings in a nearby building step out on their terraces to lead everyone in the neighborhood — from old men on rooftops to small children on balconies — in applause, whistles, and shouts of gratitude to the countless healthcare workers who are risking their own lives to save the lives of others. Kate and I include the workers at the food market, pharmacy, and sundry shop in our shouts and pot-banging.

And then “Resistiré” by Dúo Dinámico blasts from someone’s stereo speakers, followed by Aretha Franklin and Gloria Gaynor’s own odes to resistance. We feel right at home. Súper, súper vecinos.

©2020 Kay Diaz