Little Brothers of the Road

I was driving a pale blue Citroen 2CV that belonged to a friend who would not mind at all that I’d scraped up a fender after trying to back out of cornfield. The car got stuck and I had to go to a nearby cafe where, in very bad Spanish, I  asked two ruddy faced farmers to help me. They scooped up the car as though it were a toy, setting it on the road, shaking their heads, and laughing with good nature at my idiocy. The canvas roof was rolled back, the back seats had been removed so I could sleep diagonally across floor of this little tin can if I had to. I had a tent and a tiny camp stove and a box of paints and a big roll of paper. I had taken a wrong turn while trying to find Altamira, the site of Spain’s famous cave paintings. I was not quite 30 and I was not quite divorced, though I would be both of those things not long after the trip was over. One of those things I knew about, the other I did not. Thinking myself quite married, I did not expect to find my company in such demand by young men.

It was the summer after I’d graduated from college with a fine arts degree in painting. I was serious about art. I was in Europe to paint, to live out a fantasy. I had been staying in a villa in Portugal, in the walled city of Beja. A serendipitous introduction to a big-hearted family landed me in the white stucco home. “Don’t be silly, we’re not using it except on the weekends. You will stay there.” I had the good sense to say “Thank you.” I accepted keys and directions and drove south.

Thrill ride in a 2CV by KTylerConk via Flickr (Creative Commons).

During the week I would wake up early and paint under the lime tree in the courtyard. I would sleep in the hot afternoons, and in the evenings, when the sun started to drop, two cousins would stop by and fetch me for dinner or drinks or once, to go out all night dancing and to stop at the bakery backdoor to collect the first loaves of the day, still hot from the ovens. I had a car; the boys did not. They spoke excellent English and were kind so I was game for whatever adventure they proposed. They were good company and had impeccable manners — they gave me gas money and often bought my one drink of the night.

Sometimes, the extended family would come down from Lisbon and there would be great sardine grilling nights in the courtyard, and lots of beer. Once, the day before the family appeared, the maid — I did not know there was a maid — came to prepare the house and stepped right in to a white field on a painting I’d laid out to dry in the entry way. She apologized profusely, one hand over her heart, the other holding mine, but I genuinely did not care.

Later, the gypsies came to town, ringing doorbells for handouts. I said goodbye to the boys and packed the car. I headed north and drove into a ditch and was lifted out by sturdy Spanish farmers. But a week or so before that happened, I was sucked in to Seville, near the Portuguese border. I wanted to stop, the houses were so pretty and the streets were lined with orange trees and everywhere there was beautiful painted tile. But stopping was impossible, there was something about the traffic. My little blue toy car, which I had named Sebastian after the Little Mermaid’s sidekick in the animated Disney version of the story, had been dropped on to some kind of track over which I had no control. Seville flew by past my windows and there was nothing I could do about it. It was as if I had taken my hands off the wheel and been pulled, by sheer force of the city’s will, along the Seville ring road and then, spit out the other side, next to two fellow travelers who were laughing as hard as I was about the whole experience.

We had somehow made friends during that drive, so we stopped for coffee and then, continued on to our shared destination, the nearest campground. We got neighboring campsites and drank cold beer from the camp store and fussed with our belongings. My new companions were both 20 something guys, one American hitchhiker, one German on a road trip. I don’t remember their names, but I remember the American was an utter cliche of a hippie, on his way back from the Rainbow Gathering in Poland. The German was dead tired of his passenger but didn’t know how to get rid of him. “When he asked me if he could use my toothbrush, I’d had enough.” We went to dinner together, the German and I, and sat outdoors at a cafe and ate grilled seafood. We walked to town on very dark streets, and past those little altars that are everywhere in Catholic countries.The American didn’t come along because he had no money, and as a result, he missed the charm of a small Portuguese village dressed up and promenading on a hot summer night.

In the morning, the German asked me if I could swim. I said yes, I was quite a good swimmer, and we fetched our suits and headed to the water. There was an island, it was about a mile away. I was a nervous, a mile was a long swim, but at the time, I had been swimming a lot, I was very fit. The water was brown and we stood on the muddy beach, I’m sure I had devised a solution for my passport and my car keys. But the pull of the tide was too much, and we both gave up very early in, as I was worried not that I could make it there, but with the effort of fighting the  tide, I would not be able to make it back. We went back to camp and I took a shower and the German told the American he would take him no further. The American cast his eyes at my passenger seat, but I had been warned and told him that I was expected, alone, and would not impose further on my hosts by showing up with a stranger. He disappeared not too long after, probably for the roadside in hopes of finding a ride with someone less fussy about dental hygiene.

But before any of that happened, I had to avoid voleurs et Arabes. “Thieves and Arabs.” That was what the man behind the counter told me I would find upon leaving the sanctity of France. “Spain is full of them.”  I hoped I had misunderstood. I eyed the swimming pool and the slide and the neat French camper vans and went to pitch my tiny tent beside a stout family who stared in my direction as I worked. Later, while I was making tea on my single burner camp stove, a boy of 12, maybe 14, tops,  sat down across the flames from me, lit up a cigarette, and introduced himself. He asked me if I wanted a smoke, and I said no thank you. He asked about my tent and why I was alone and what I was doing in France. I had to walk around the far edges of my language skills, but he was not  the least bit deterred. I was mystified by his attentions. I was there for two or three days, there was something nearby to see and I spent my days seeing it, but I don’t remember what it was. I remember more this precocious boy who would seat himself across from me while I read my book, while I drank cheap supermarket wine, every evening in camp, wanting to ask me question after question, undeterred by my bad vocabulary.

A few days later, I packed up my tent and drove into a ditch and ate the first bread of the day and a maid stepped onto one of my paintings, her footprint is still there in light gray dust. I cut short a swim and watched some Portuguese people promenade around a town in their finest. There was a lime tree and grilled shrimp and a roller coaster of a drive through a beautiful Spanish city that I really can not say I have seen. There were no thieves, only a panhandling lost American with no toothbrush. And there were all these little brothers of the road, all of a sudden like family, almost, all of them younger than me, but proprietary in the best possible way. They didn’t want anything, not really. Just some company on a summer evening, or to be spared from swimming alone,  or to make me practice my rusted French and then, to send me on my way.

I’m reading Lonely Planet’s The Kindness of Strangers, edited by Don George. You should get yourself a copy, either from the library, like I did, or on Amazon.It will remind you of all the times people were nice to you while you traveled.