February 5, 2007--Monday On Mallorca: The Swordfish and the Internet

It felt as if it took forever to get here.

The “normal” eleven-hour journey stretched out to nearly fourteen. We were too conservative in booking the connecting flight from Madrid to Palma, Mallorca, pessimistically assuming that in spite of the fact that there has been so little snow in the Northeast this year, winter would extract its revenge on the day of our departure from New York and we would thus be delayed in getting to Madrid. So we booked a later than usual Air Europa flight from Madrid to Palma.

But since there was still no snow and the flight over from New York was so ahead of schedule that, jet-lagged as we were, we needed to camp out in Baraja Aeropuerto for nearly four hours to wait for the 50-minute Air Europa flight.

So when we finally arrived at our flat on Mallorca, where we come to seek peace and tranquility, we were so upset and cranky from the trip that we were predisposed to disappointment and unhappiness.

These expectations were immediately realized.

We found yet another house under noisy construction just down our calle; a neighboring flat in the early stages of an equally noisy gut-renovation; and most disturbing of all—we discovered our phone to be dead, which meant no Internet connection and thus no ability to telecommute and carry on this infernal blog!

How could we possibly find peace and tranquility if we couldn’t work?

Remembering that it took a full two years on this Mañana Island to get a phone line installed in the first place, rather than endure yet more frustration with Telefonica and the pounding of jack hammers gouging foundations for three-million euro villas out of the bed rock, we decided to call Continental to change our flight home so we could leave immediately, being sure to allow just the merest amount of time needed to contact a real estate agent to begin the process of putting our flat on the market—enough island serenity for us!

If we need an island, what’s so wrong with Manhattan?

But here it is, almost a week after our arrival, and though we were able to switch to an earlier flight, we cancelled that one too and are already beginning to wonder why we can’t stay here forever.

What happened in just those few hours to turn us around again?

The call to Continental on our one working phone, our Spanish cell phone was at 3:00 a.m. and was placed after hours of fretting and anxiousizing and thrashing about—Were we being impulsive? After all, hadn’t we spent many dreamy days here during the past seven years? Hadn’t there always been things to upset our desire for tranquilo? Floods? Infestations? Mechanical malfunctions? Struggles with the language? Isolation? Loneliness?

Maybe, we concluded, it was simply time to move on, that we had extracted all the goodness that was available to us here and we needed to seek more elsewhere. So we phoned the airline, sad, in a form of mourning, but also feeling we had been “emotionally honest,” had not spatted unduly, blaming each other about why-we-came-here-in-the-first-place. We were making not only the right decision but also a mature one.

After changing our return flight in the middle of the Mallorcan night, we did manage to get some rest; and when we awoke, we dragged ourselves down to the port, wondering if we should go for coffee to our usual café—wouldn’t it be too heart-wrenchingly difficult to be there knowing it was to be our last morning ever at a place that in the past had given us so much comfort and such a strong sense of community among the “regulars,” even though we could barely speak their language?

Rona, always the realist, said that no matter what we did after the decisions of the night before it would be sad and difficult, and since at La Consigna they make the best cortados in town, why deprive ourselves.

So, with heads down to protect us from witnessing yet another glorious sunrise over the mountains and the sea, thus evoking too much painful nostalgia, we found our way there and were as pleased as we were capable of being to see that “our” table was unoccupied, the one against the back wall, near the heat lamp, with the best view of the port and fishing fleet.

And we were even more reluctantly pleased to find that, in spite of having not been there for nearly seven months, Juan, the morning waiter, was not only there but literally embraced us as if we were long-lost members of his family. “Bon dia, bon dia,” he said in Mallorquin no less; and without asking for our order, scampered inside and in a moment returned with a cortado for me, a café au lait for Rona, my usual zumo de naranja, our aqua sin gas, Rona’s dos croissants pequeño, and my baguette tostada con mantequilla.

And after a first sip of the cortado, I was already beginning to think—Who needs the Internet, forget this blog, and do we have the telephone number for Continental with us?

I stole a glance at Rona, imagining what she might be thinking. I was afraid to ask after all we had been through the night before but, I wondered, did I see tears forming in her eyes? Or was it just her morning allergies?

Then appeared Karen and Werner Thomas, friends from Mallorca who we hadn’t seen in almost a year. From excitement, Karen, who even at 60 retained the youthful exuberance of the Swissair stewardess she had been, literally leaped off her feet as she danced through the café tables to embrace us; and the more restrained Werner was not far behind. He threw his heavy arms around me and pulled me into an embrace.

A moment later there was Jennie Summerfield, an English expat who manages flats for absentee owners—ours included. With her was her two-year-old buster of a son, Lucas, squirming in the seat belt that confined him in his carriage seat. He was clearly hungry and wanted out and away from us and all the tumult of our reunion that was delaying his breakfast. But then when Jennie needed to bolt away for a moment to talk with another client just inside the door, he reached up to me and, when I bent to lift him, he at first cried, missing mum, and then clung to me, nuzzling his tow-head against my chest, gurgling in a contented porridge of English and Spanish.

I didn’t even need my usual second cortado.

Back at the flat we found two men who were unfamiliar impatiently pacing our terrace. In a mix of Spanish and halting English they told us they were there to see if they could fix our telephone. They had installed a new air conditioner the week before and thought that perhaps they had in the process accidentally severed the line. Would it be all right, they asked, for them to take a look?

And without waiting for permission, which we were in the process of gladly offering, one hopped up on a stool, snapped open the door of the junction box through which various wires and tubes passed from the compressor outside the apartment to the diffuser inside. With a quick snip here and a probe there he found both ends of the cut telephone wire and with a new piece bridged the two ends, pushed everything back into the wall, reaffixed the plastic door of the box, and from a tube of Spackle-like material resealed everything so carefully that it was impossible to tell they had ever been digging in the wall.

All in ten minutes on this Mañana Island!

After they scampered up the 76 steps up the face of the cliff to the street, we noticed that the jack-hammering had subsided and there were no sounds emanating from the renovation next door—perhaps both the result of the mayor of Andratx and his henchmen having just been tossed in jail for accepting too much in bribes, rather than the appropriate amount, so that building construction could proceed unregulated. Who knows? Who cares?

Once inside the flat, Rona and I took out our phone book and opened it to the C page where we had the international number for Continental Airlines. Though the phone was working, we resisted using it, wanting to be sure we were still being rational and mature.

At 8:00 that evening, after in effect an all-day siesta, now adjusted to the new time, realizing we had skipped lunch, we drove into town for a simple dinner at La Gallega, a fish joint on a back street patronized mainly by Mallorquins who care more about the seafood than a view of the harbor.

Again we were greeted warmly by the staff as if we had returned from a long journey; and before we knew it a jug of local vino had arrived and a bowl of olives from a grove on the slopes of the nearby mountains. And quickly after that a dish of pimentos padron, young green peppers lightly fried in olive oil covered generously with Balearic sea salt. Then a platter of mixed bone and shell fish hot from la plancha—merluzo, dorade, cigalles, lubina, with grilled tomatoes on the side, all covered with a scattering of sweet cibollas frito. Perfecto!

A third carafe of vino followed the second and then the postre, a succulent almond torta Santiago with a scoop of vainilla helado, both homemade.

Just as Rona was about to say, “How can we never come back here,” shortly before 9:30, the time the fishermen traditionally arrive all the way from Galicia with boxes of their day's catch, a signal to the Mallorquins that it is time to arrive for dinner so that they can have first choice of what is freshest, this evening, rather than boxes of coquilles and such, we saw two men, each with a huge gaffing hook, out on the street, dodging between the cars, carrying an enormous fish—it looked to be at least six-feet long.

One behind the other, in step, they marched through the door, as proud as if on dress parade; strode into the restaurant; threaded their way among the table so everyone could have a close look; and then after we all did, they looped around the refrigerator case in which La Gallega displays its fish, and plopped their behemoth onto the wooden counter where the chef immediately began to slice it, a swordfish we were informed, into thick steaks.

Of course we ordered one a la plancha and, of course again, required a fourth carafe of the young vino bianco.

Much later, much, we drove home, very carefully, very, up the twisting, rutted road to the top of La Mola, The Rock, where we live.

And before we went to sleep, which was deeper than the sea thrashing just outside our bedroom door, we moved the telephone book right next to the now working phone which we planned to use, first thing in the morning, to call Continental—

We will be home, I mean to our New York home, March 2nd.

Maybe . . .