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