The South Read Online Free PDF Page A

around the bar for a moment. The man with the yellow skin and cat-green eyes was staring at her and when she saw him he stood up and came towards her. He hada carrier-bag in his hand. She turned away from him towards the bar and emptied her bottle of beer into the glass. Miguel was still talking to the barman. “Do you speak English?” the man asked. The accent was Irish. She stiffened, Miguel also looked at the man.
    “Habla español?” she used the formal third person to ask if he spoke Spanish. She did not want to meet anyone from Ireland. He said that he spoke it but very badly. Miguel joined in and said that they were a pair then who spoke Spanish badly. The man said nothing. They both looked at him, waiting. He looked at both of them, taking them in, almost smiling at them. Miguel offered to buy him a beer and he accepted. After that no one spoke. Katherine stood uncomfortably at the bar, aware that Miguel was ignoring the man. She excused herself and went to the toilet. When she came back he was still there, self-possessed, quiet, watchful. She wanted him to go away.
    “Es irlandés como tú,” Miguel said. She told him she knew that already. The man listened to her.
    “There is no room at the inn,” he said. “I can find nowhere to stay tonight.” His hair was thick and cut very short like a grey cap around his head and he looked as if he might be short of money. His shoes were old and worn. He suddenly reminded Katherine of someone she might pass on the road while driving into Enniscorthy.
    “Do you know anywhere I can stay?” he asked her.
    “Ask him,” she pointed to Miguel who was paying for a porrón of mau-mau at the bar. Very hesitantly the man explained to Miguel that every hotel and pensión in Berga was full. Miguel shrugged his shoulders as though there was nothing he could do. Unless you want to come with us, he said.
    “Tell him yes I want to come with you,” the man looked at Katherine. “Tell him my name is Michael Graves. Tell him I am a painter like him.”
    “How do you know he is a painter?”
    “I heard you talking at lunch.”
    “I saw you watching us.”
    “I know.”
    “My name is Katherine. This is Miguel.” They shook hands. His hands were small and soft, like a child’s.
    As soon as they went out into the street Miguel started singing but she couldn’t understand the words of the songs. When a group of young people came towards them on the small sloping Ramblas which went down from the square, Miguel stopped them. “Ese galapaguito no tiene madre,” he said holding Michael Graves in front of him.
    They all laughed and Miguel sang the words again: “No tiene madre, ese galapaguito no tiene madre.” “What’s a galapaguito ?” Michael Graves asked. “I don’t know.” Katherine asked Miguel, who laughed and repeated the lines from the song. “Ese galapaguito no tiene madre.” He pointed once more at Michael Graves and handed him the porrón of mau-mau. Michael drank from the neck. Miguel indignantly insisted on showing him how to drink from the spout. Again Katherine asked Miguel to explain galapaguito but he spotted a middle-aged couple and began to sing for them. The couple laughed.
    “I have a dictionary in my bag. How do you spell galapaguito, ” Katherine asked Michael as she flicked through the tiny book trying to find the word. “Have it, have it! It means ‘tortoise.’ The song says, ‘This little tortoise has no mother.’”
    “I don’t see the joke,” Michael Graves said. By this time Miguel had his arm around a number of strangers, and was singing the song again and pointing at Michael. “No tiene madre, no tiene madre, no tiene madre.”
    Later they went back to the bar and found Jordi and a crowd of others sitting at a long table. Miguel ordered threebeers and made everyone push over to allow them room at the table. He had stopped singing about the galapaguito , but he told them all that Michael had no mother and nowhere to sleep and