He realized the word the employee had kept on saying was “car”, whereas in a state of logical confusion and perplexity he had understood “cow”. This misunderstanding almost made him laugh. That said, this didn’t make him think any better of the employee. Perhaps the main, or only, task he was given was to guard the station and surrounding area at night. Perhaps, before deciding to show his face, he’d been watching him for a while, in hiding. According to this hypothesis, his behaviour no longer struck him as so harsh because in truth, from his point of view, a subject like him must have seemed utterly strange, standing there, wandering about from time to time, apparently planning to spend the night there – a subject who’d already been told there wasn’t another train until six in the morning.
He started walking along the street in the direction of London. Although the thought this might be the way to London was a bit of a joke. All he knew for sure was that, going in the opposite direction, he would arrive back where he started. Where was London, anyway? Which direction was north, south, east or west?
When he reached the first crossroads, he ground to a halt because he really didn’t know which way to go. Shame it wasn’t summer, he thought, a warm summer’s night, because then he could have slept in a field, on the grass, without any worries.
Finally, a car came. He raised his arm. It ignored him completely. There wasn’t much traffic, and any cars there were whistled straight past. No doubt his figure, at that time and in that weather, must have seemed a bit surprising. It wasn’t like when someone hitchhikes properly, in comfortable clothes, with a rucksack on their back, even waving the flag of their country of origin.
The snow didn’t let up, but fortunately it didn’t get any worse. He noticed the innumerable snowflakes sometimes glistened, standing out against the black backdrop of night. Watching them fall one after the other made him feel dizzy. He kept glancing at his shoulders, in case the snow began to settle, but all he ever came across was a small amount that had almost melted. He couldn’t detect any indications on the ground that the snow was going to settle there either. It was probably snowing much less than he imagined, exposed to the elements as he was. At least he wasn’t cold.
He recalled a story a friend had told him. It was during the Spanish Civil War, on a snowy night with temperatures well below zero. His friend was due to go on sentry duty but had managed, in return for a few pesetas, to get somebody else to do it. Time passed, and his replacement kept laughing all the time; his friend, watching him in the distance, kept laughing too, by way of reply. When it was his turn to be relieved, they discovered the sentry was almost frozen. When they finally got him to react, he almost cried out in pain. It wasn’t that he’d been laughing earlier on, his friend said, it’s just that when somebody starts to freeze, they adopt this expression that makes it look as if they’re laughing their head off, like a madman. Could that be true?
When he’d been waiting for at least half an hour, a vaguely suitable car turned up.
He must have surmised, or completely invented, what the driver of the car said, and yet he was convinced he’d comprehended the situation.
In short, the situation was this: the car wasn’t going to London, so he would have to get out somewhere that would do for continuing to London, wherever that might be. The driver was young and spoke as if apologizing for not being able to fulfil his wish. Perhaps as a way of making up for this disappointment, he’d come up with a kind of intermediary solution – if that was really what he’d suggested – thinking the other would be unlikely to accept. But he hadn’t hesitated. Even if getting into that car had meant going away from his destination, he would still have got in, in order to be comfortable for a while and to interrupt the monotony of all that waiting.
All he had to do was get out when the driver told him. The car was old, third or fourth hand. But never had he felt so well inside a car before.
The driver braked when he was least expecting – or else he’d already braked by the time he realized. It was like waking up from a pleasant dream. He said “thank you very much” twice and got out of the car without heeding the words the kind young man whispered to him and without turning his head. He closed the door, which banged a little emphatically. The car drove away and immediately disappeared down a side street. He carried on walking calmly.
He was out in the countryside. It would have been difficult to work out how many kilometres he’d travelled in that car. Very few, perhaps.
It seemed to him that on either side of the road vast, level forests spread out and merged with the shadows. He walked along one side of the road. He felt like the only living creature, as if he’d recently landed on a new planet. Now he really didn’t have a clue where he was. A little further on, at another crossroads, he came across a sign that said “Croydon”. He’d heard that name before, because of the airport.
He carried on walking.
He had to have the button of his white jacket sewed on again.
Elvira, the Portuguese maid, had told him he needed a white jacket. It was better to prepare all these details as early as possible, even if he wasn’t admitted and it turned out to be a waste of time. He had an appointment at the Embassy for half past five the following afternoon.
Elvira had been optimistic, she thought they would take him in and said the work wasn’t too hard, anybody could do it. The last butler, a half-crazy Pole, had been dismissed, but that was a different case entirely.
He wasn’t afraid of hard work or of the difficulties that might arise, were he to be accepted in the Embassy. He had never been a cook before, and yet with that cookery book he’d been given in Buenos Aires, just by following the recipes word for word, he had produced some fairly discreet dishes, for which he had been congratulated by distinguished guests. Besides, that Embassy belonged to a semi-barbaric country, what refinements could they demand in a place like that? He would add the fact that he spoke some French. French was considered highly important in such surroundings.
At least another half hour had passed before a second car stopped. It was occupied by two young men. They weren’t going to London either. All they could suggest…
He got in at once. It was partly a repeat of the first car. He had clung to the offer of being taken a few kilometres – a few miles, they would have said – but there was probably a slight difference in that this wasn’t an offer dictated by mere courtesy, rather it was a real wish on their part to get him out of that grim wasteland. One of them, the one who wasn’t driving, held out a pack of cigarettes. He didn’t refuse: a Navy Cut, that would do nicely… Having lit the cigarette, and crossed his legs, and leaned back in his seat, he felt as if he were imitating the sybaritic life.
Curves, uphill and downhill slopes, fell behind them. He soon took up the interrupted thread of his thoughts.
The work Paco, the kitchen assistant from Cádiz in the Baltimore Hotel, had suggested sounded absurd. He was, like all good Andalusians, a little fantastical. That said, he admired and respected him. Without having bothered anybody, without having wanted or deserved it, he had endured the whole Spanish Civil War on the front line, on the Republican side, suffered all the hardships of the French concentration camps, fought in the World War against Hitler and then, always as a result of circumstances, almost lost his life in Indochina during the colonial war. And he was just a happy-go-lucky peasant farmer from the province of Cádiz: thickset, bald, with a good-natured expression. It was funny how well he could speak both English and French. Trouble was he couldn’t read or write. He must have been earning twenty pounds a week and was content, but not completely, because he longed for his native land. “I’m missing something,” he would say, thumping his chest.
He may have been missing something, and yet at least he had indefinite leave to remain in the United Kingdom…
