Asturian Hospitality, Pt. 2

The following entry is a work of fiction.

I wish I could tell the events that unfolded next as a humorous, coming-of-age adventure, yet despite elements of awkwardness, passion, and sex, the story I am about to reveal is essentially a devastating fugue on loneliness.

I never boarded the FEVE train at the Cadavedo station. I can't remember if it was Franco or Mussolini who supposedly made the trains run on time, but somehow modern democracy was incapable of achieving such a feat. So I wait for nearly fifty minutes on the platform, envisioning a number of improbable derailments, like one in which the sleek, modern beast of a train careens into one of those old stables and spooks an entire herd of noble Asturian cows into producing sour milk. Eventually I get bored of writing these whimsical scenarios in my journal and decide to see what advice Roxana can offer.

As I walk across the tracks she is poking her head out of the ticket window. She sticks enough of her squat torso over the counter to give me this universal shrug, and I nearly turn back in desperation. But I figure there's no point in waiting alone, so I walk right up there and lean my arms on the counter, like I'm ordering a drink at a bar.

It's ridiculous, I say, and she tells me that sometimes these things happen. I believe her; she has somewhat of a soothing, motherly effect on me and I think maybe I'd like to curl up and bury my face in her enormous breasts.

"If you want to, I can find you a hotel in Cadavedo. There's lots of tourists right now but I have a cousin who works in tourism, she might know of a place." I tell Roxana that she's been too kind already, and at this point what I really want is to get back to Gijón, since all my stuff is there in a hostel with my Australian roommate, who I've known for less than twenty-four hours. Like my earlier attempts to shrug off her hospitality, this one is met with resistance; she stares at me stone-faced, intimating her unwillingness to budge.

This woman is an enigma to me; I don't understand how someone can be so outwardly unfriendly, yet so willing to go to great lengths to entertain a complete stranger. I am even more shocked when on the ride back into town she takes a sharp left off the main road and pulls under her apartment building, the bottom floor of which is a small parking area. The building is made of white stucco, and cuts precariously into a hill, so that the second floor entrance on the side opposite us is actually the front door.

We go inside like it's nothing, but I am starting to feel a burning nervousness in my stomach, and all my muscles are tightly clenched. The walls of the apartment are blank except for one framed picture, a tacky sunset with reds and oranges that seems so foreign to Cadavedo's blue and green color scheme.

"I'm going to call my cousin now," says Roxana, the first words exchanged since we entered this place. She leaves me sitting awkwardly on the couch, my back erect in an attempt to boost my character through good posture (is that what I was taught?). I hear Roxana babbling on the phone in the kitchen, but it's difficult to understand since she's talking so fast, and because I always have trouble listening from the outside on a conversation between two native speakers. She hangs up, re-enters the living room, and says, "We're meeting her in two hours by the port, she found you a nice place, only 25 €."

"Two hours?" I ask. She sits down next to me and I get a good look at the tattoo on her right bicep, a flame alongside a tractor trailer.

"That's for my husband, the truck driver." She takes my hand and puts it on the tattoo. "Did it hurt?" I wonder out loud. She takes my hand again and moves it to her breast, and I lean forward to lay my cheek against her. Roxana squeezes me close to her chest, in a single motion unwrapping the tension building within me; she consoles away that awkward feeling. Under her shirt is folded-over, bulging skin, which somehow excites me, so she tows me to her bedroom and to her bed.

We spend nearly 20 minutes there together, and after, she asks me if I'll do something else. Naked, she throws off the bed sheet and goes to the dresser, pulling out a pair of weathered jeans and a plain, orange t-shirt.

"Will you put these on?" she asks timidly, her self-confidence finally fading away.

"Do what?" I cry, creeped-out, angry, and confused at the same time. No, I do not want to wear your husband's clothes.

"Before, at the station, you asked if there was something you could give. Well, now there's this." Despite her apparent moment of weakness, Roxana reveals nothing. I think she may be about to cry, but she successfully holds it in, like she's been practicing.

"What you're asking me to do...I don't understand," I say, trying to be soothing, but now feeling as distant from her as when I first stepped into her car this afternoon. She shakes her head, goes back to the drawer and digs for a while, finally coming up with a small, newspaper clipping, which she hands over to me. I feel how cold her fingers are compared to mine, and then unfold that square of newsprint.

Her husband, Álvaro, is dead, of course, and these, the clothes of a dead man. I tell her I'm sorry, that she should have told me before, but that I still can't do it.

"It doesn't change anything," she says to me, but I can tell she doesn't believe that. Her temporary job at the train station, her stone-faced hospitality, and this sad, empty apartment; it all weighs on me as I try to understand her all over again. In the face of her staggering loss, I am paralyzed; I know not how to act. What could I possibly say to this woman? Just say nothing and put on the damn clothes, I think to myself.

I get up from the bed, slip on my boxers, and walk over to where Roxana is standing. I shake my head. Her eyes are red now from holding back tears, and I can feel mine begin to water sympathetically. She murmurs something in Spanish, which I can't catch, and then tells me plainly to get out. I plead with her, not because I want to stay, but because I can't stand being forced to stare at death and welcome it and wear it.

"Just get out," she says again, so I honor that, gathering up my clothes and bag and heading for the door. Outside I put my clothes on and set off running until I find a taxi that agrees to drive me the half-hour back to Gijón. I don't say anything the whole ride back, despite the taxista's unrelenting hospitality.