Andante con Moto

Andante con Moto

           The young lady seated three tables away was very pretty, with a delicate foreign fairness that precisely suited the sunny spring morning. In the heat of summer, the air of Barcelona frequently takes on the consistency of the café con leche the waiter had tried to tempt me with before I—much to his barely concealed disdain—ordered a pot of tea. Today, the Barcelona air more nearly resembled the bubbly glass of Perrier water from which the young lady took an occasional sip.

           She was seated there when I arrived. I noticed her right away. At my age, I am unlikely to have my head turned by pretty young things sitting alone. However, a street café is an excellent vantage point from which to observe life’s little dramas playing themselves out, without one’s being obliged to take part in them, and in the young lady—I imagined her to be English or French—I sensed an incipient drama.

She had attracted more eyes than mine. There was something special about the eagerness with which she looked about, observing everything that was happening on the busy boulevard with a kind of hopeful expectancy, as if a knight on a white palfrey would arrive at any moment to carry her away to his fairy castle. It would not be I who told her there were neither knights nor castles to be had in this unromantic age.

           There was, quite to the contrary, only a dark young man on a red motor-bicycle—one of those machines Spaniards call a moto. He had pulled up to the curb to speak to a friend who was passing with his nose in a copy of Le Figaro. Both young men lit cigarettes and talked with much movement of hands and shrugging of shoulders. The one with the moto faced the café and soon, like the rest of us, fixed upon the young lady, who was openly admiring his machine. Unlike the rest of us more circumspect voyeurs, however, he smiled at the lady and winked. She blushed prettily and looked away.

           Now, very few Spaniards are so easily dismissed. This one flicked his cigarette at a tree, pushed his friend aside, and approached the lady’s table. It was difficult to hear above the street noise, but I imagined the conversation to run somewhat as follows:

           “Bonjour, mademoiselle. Vous est etrangière? You are—turista, yes? Française? English?”

           The conversation was rather one-sided, as the lady merely looked into her Perrier glass and shook her head.

           “Americana, entonces? Okey-dokey!”

           She laughed at that and looked up. This was very encouraging to the young man.

           “You like mi moto, yes? You like to go for—como se dice?—una vuelta? Is very nice, very fun. Okey-dokey?”

           This seemed to exhaust the young man’s command of English, but there was little doubt that the lady understood him. Out of the corner of her eye, she looked longingly at the shiny red moto.

           Then entered the villain of the piece. I quite expected the couple at the table next to mine to hiss. To be sure, this villain came in a perfectly agreeable form—tall, blond, also obviously foreign, and undoubtedly well acquainted with the young lady. He sat down beside her and looked up at the young Spaniard in a manner that clearly invited him to complete his business and take himself off.

           The Spaniard looked at the lady, but she had withdrawn all signs of encouragement. He shrugged lightly, nodded to his lady’s protector, and drove away, his amused friend perched on the back of the moto. The pup-pup-pup of their passage took a long time to die away.

           That appeared to be the end of the little drama. The blond fellow obviously viewed it as such and proceeded to read from a pocket guidebook with the apparent object of enticing the young lady to explore the sights of Barcelona with him. The lady smiled and agreed to every suggestion, but it was clear—to me and the couple at the next table, certainly—that her heart was not in it.

           I ordered a fresh supply of hot water to extend my pot of tea a bit longer, and then saw, to my delight, that the entrance of the villain had not after all been the finale but merely an interval in the drama. With an aggressive pup-pup-pup, the red moto returned. Its owner leaned it carefully against a tree and parked himself at a table opposite the foreign couple, from which he observed them minutely. I could see that he was coming to the same conclusion I myself had just reached—that the couple, both slender and fair-skinned, were brother and sister. Furthermore, the brother, while perhaps overly protective of his young sister, was at the same time anxious to please her.

           The conversation this time proceeded along other lines:

           “Excuse me, please,” ventured the Spaniard, armed this time with additional vocabulary no doubt supplied by his cosmopolitan friend. “I am called Antonio Romero. How do you do?”

           He held his hand politely towards the brother, who was obliged to take it. He did not, however, offer the Spaniard a chair at their table.

           “I wish to ask su hermana—sister—if she like come on mi moto. Is not dangerous, I assure.”

           The brother shook his head. “I’m extremely sorry, Mr. Romero, but—”

           At that moment, his sister laid her hand on his and whispered something in his ear.

           “But are you quite sure, Kitten? We don’t know this person. And what if you were to fall?”

           “Oh, I don’t think I would, Harry. I’ve watched people going by on them all morning, and they seem quite safe.”

           Her brother hesitated, eying the vehicle in question doubtfully. Romero smiled hopefully. The couple at the next table held their breaths.

           “Very well, Kitten—if you promise to hold on tightly.”

           Romero leaped into action. “Is not dangerous, sir, you will see! I will have all care with su hermana.”

           “Just do not go farther than the square, please, Mr. Romero, so I may not lose sight of you.”

           Romero reached out to assist the young lady, but her brother was ahead of him, taking her arm firmly in his. It was only then that we saw what had been hidden behind the young lady’s chair—that which had aroused her brother’s somewhat aggressive protective instincts. There was a cane lying on the ground, abandoned now as she rose unsteadily to her feet and limped towards the edge of the pavement.

           A look of consternation flashed across Romero’s face, but to his credit, it vanished again as quickly. Effortlessly, he removed the brother’s arm, picked the lady up bodily, and seated her gently on the moto. Then he got on himself and pulled her hands firmly around his waist as he started the engine.

           He waved as the moto pup-pup-pupped into action. The young lady smiled happily. I raised my now-empty teacup in salute. The couple at the next table applauded.

           Finale.