A Year in the World Read Online Free PDF Page B

and a telephone in case anything is desired from the kitchen downstairs, and the lovely allure of tomorrow when a foreign city will reveal undreamed pleasures.
     
    We begin early. The harsh two syllables of
Seville
, once here, turn forever into
Sevilla
, because the -
ya
sound of the double
l
seems so natural to this place, the three-note syllables rising and falling like musical fountains in the green and flowering courtyards we glimpsed last night. Next to the hotel is the Royal Tobacco Factory, Prosper Mérimée’s imagined locale for
Carmen
. Later Bizet wrote the opera that is now the darling of classical music stations. The formation of cigars by
señoritas
rolling tobacco leaves over their thighs was apparently a major erotic focus of smokers in the nineteenth century. I love the act of art that transfers to a real place an imagined person or event, thereby transforming that place into an aspect of the work of art. Carmen lights this place with her lusty presence. Equally fantastic is the place itself. Who conceived of a factory with arcades and fountained courtyards and chapels and gardens? Oranges grow, not one by one as they do on orange trees at home, but in bunches, like a
grappolo
of grapes. I feel right at home as we walk through the arched stone portal. The complex, second largest building in Spain, forms part of the Universidad de Sevilla. Bicycles, gangsta pants, tight T-shirts, unkempt hair, political posters, smoke—I could be in the San Francisco State student union if this building were not so grand. We loop around the building and find the Guadalquiver River. The only line I recall from the letters of the Nicaraguan poet who read Lorca to me comes to mind:
a sky clean with light on the water
. Such a simple line. The whole perspective of town and river looks like an early photograph of itself—the timeless silhouette of the dome, and the cathedral crenelations, the sky in layers of pewter, silver, and pearl, with the Islamic minaret and tower cut out and inserted between water and sky.
    On the Isabella bridge, we stop at a
churrería
. Big coils dance in the hot oil. The men turn them with long sticks, then lift out the crisp pastries and hand the
churros
to us in napkins with a paper cup of chocolate for dipping. How does anyone eat a whole one? They’re huge. From the middle of the bridge, a good point for surveying Sevilla and indulging in this
churro
tradition, we see many bell towers, fragments of old walls, and boarded-up cafés surrounded by orange trees. Summer must be enchanting along the river, but winter is splendid, too. Sevilla feels much warmer than Madrid, crisp and fresh but not frigid. Soon we are carrying our jackets. The sky has turned cerulean, streaked with broad-brushstroke clouds.
    Over in the Triana section of town the streets turn lively. We crowd into an olive oil stand that sells bulk oil and about fifteen different kinds of olives. Down the block, the owner of a dark shop specializing in the national passion, the local
serrano
and
ibérico
hams, has hung hooved hunks from the ceiling. Little cups attached underneath catch stray drops of fat. The skin looks like an old saddle, but inside the ham resembles the color of a split blood orange. We’re given a taste of chewy, streaky, deeply flavorful meat from an
ibérico
, a black pig, then a taste of
serrano
, a white pig. Both taste wild and robust, quite unlike the refined taste of their cousin, Italian prosciutto. The Spanish love their
jamón
, and every province breeds a different variation of this noble Spanish pig. Some are fed only in the wild, others are fed only acorns, some are cross-bred, and some are cured for longer periods—an intricate world of pig. We buy slices to go of an
ibérico de Bellota
. This little pig has gained much of its weight from acorn feasting and is considered the most exquisite taste.
    We stumble upon a street of shops full of mantilla combs, fake roses, shawls, coral earrings, castanets,