O Martini
I do not remember quite clearly how I got to Saffron Walden’s Bell College’s main entrance from the station of Audley End, nearest station to the college. Let’s say I took a taxi if an angelical lift didn’t take place. Perhaps I met up someone going to the college in the train and we got together to the college in a taxi. I had been told in Madrid some names of Spanish students going to Bell College for the autumn term. However it was, in coming to the college I went first to the registrar’s office and some membars of the college’s staff were introduced to me, and soon too some students, Spanish mostly, with different English level. Kevin, the warden, took me to my room, which was in another cross shaped building at an angle of a campus. In the same corridor I had my room there were several Spanish students. We soon became friendly.
One wing of the cross shaped building was destined to women, girls from 18 and some teachers too. Kevin the warden had advised all of us not to go to the women’s wing. It would be something immoral. I had gone to inspect all the corridors at the street level and later halted at the entrance door where the girls had to go by to come up the stairs to their corridor. A beautiful Danish girl happily came in and we said hello. She introduced herself to me and we kissed our cheeks. Do you want to come up to my room to listen to the music? I would be delighted. She spoke good English and my level was intermediate. We entered her room and sat down on the bed. She went to turn on the music, her favourite she said, sat down in front of her mirror and put lipstick delicately and came to sit down on the bed again. The volume of the music was intolerable even for me, but I had leant my head on the wall and she said shouting she liked a lot the music sounding and kissed me. Then we heard someone shouting in the corridor to turn off the music immediately and at once heavy knocking on my Danish girl friend’s door. She had turned down the volume and then went to the door and apologised to a very young teacher that had came out of her room covered only by a towel, for she was taking a shower and the noise had driven her crazy, she said. I’m sorry, said the Danish girl again. I invited her to dine in the village. We walked along the college’s campus and into the street. She had grabbed my arm and on our way we met up Javier Cortázar, Spanish student my classmate in the college. We three had a bottle of wine at a village’s restaurant.
Next day we started to follow the college’s main rules: breakfast, classroom for two hours, half an hour break for tea or coffe in the canteen, then another an hour and a half’s classroom and lunch after in the large dining room in the main building. I used to sit down with Enrique Belzuz for lucnh and diner. Enrique was another Spanish student with whom I did get on well. Others Spanish students were Javier Márquez, Carlos González, Francisco Barreras, Paul Ottone, and two more clearly lost in the abyss of appearance, a son of the Spanish ambassador in Denmark, of surname Abaroa, and Alejandro Mora, nephew of the queen of Belgium. During the break in the middle of the autumn term I went from Saffron Walden, which is Essex, north of London, to Cornwall, which is southwest of England, with Ricardo Rodríguez, a friend of Javier Márquez who had came to the college some days before the break, and my two Italian girl friends sisters Maria and Cristina, and we crossed Great London, Surrey, Hampshire, Dorset and Devon to get to Cornwall. In our way back to Saffron Walden we also crossed Somerset, Wiltshire and Berkshire. In Cornwall we visited places like Saint Michael’s Castle, Penzance, Land's End and Tintagel, where there is a ruined castle some people think was last Britons King Arthur’s castle.
At lunch I had told Enrique that Javier Cortázar had shared a bottle of wine with the Danish girl and I and that Javier had fallen in love with her. We couldn’t be but witness ourselves: in the dining room Javier had taken his tray to the table where she was and had sat down beside her, he had even waited for her to place on the queue to be served by the kitchen’s employees, and had been talking to her all the time, a machine, she smiled candidly, he explained everything. At diner Enrique and I had been speaking about our first day in the college. He told me he liked a college’s employee. I told him I liked Caroline, the teacher complaining about the thunderous sound of the Danish girl music. After diner we went to walk along the main building’s corridor. We were talking about some rich or known students in the college. There was an arab guy who used to buy one or two cars every week, mostly sports cars, there was a girl Martini, of the Italian alcohol company, we had our nephew of the Queen of Belgium to represent Spain, we laughed. Hey, Enrique said to me on seeing two girls coming to the hall, that is the Martini girl and her friend carbine. They halted and speak, look, I said, I think they are speaking about us. They were speaking and looking furtively. Let’s have a look to what happens, I said to Enrique, who came with me along the corridor. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Nice to meet you. What’s your name? My name is Leopoldo (smile). And yours? Mine is Claudia. My name is Teresa. Mine is Enrique. Then Teresa friend carbine asked us if we knew alcochol Martini brand mark. Yes, of course, I said. Claudia is a Martini, said Teresa. How could we Spanish people forget about the old song which nobody understands but sounds to us like... O when you say, O Martini, O when you say O Martini, O when you say O Matini, O when you say O Martini. I had been singing and gesticulating at the same time, looking at the three of them, especially to Enrique to share laughs with, and to Claudia and Teresa to see what their reaction was. They didn’t expect to listen a very well known song turning into an enjoyable melody with words especially chosen for that moment. Enrique laughed in a good mood. Claudia had come red in the face and later smiled forcedly and Teresa took Claudia by the arm and they went away somewhere else.
I had been watching once more my three enlarged pictures taken in Lanzarote, Canary Islands, exhibited in Butler Hall, this is how they call the hall between the entrance to the old main building and to the main room, of a dromedaries caravan marching through the dunes, of the Timanfaya Park completely covered by volcanos and of a dazzling sky that had a white cloud from where a fabulous white rain was falling on a place concrete on the sea. As I was walking along the corridor I saw a shadow at the end of the corridor that would become someone and I thought the shadow I was seeing would turn out the Martini girl. Yes indeed. I saw her turning into the corridor dressed like a posh girl, with a visible Gucci watch that was fashionable by then, and she was kind of becoming the clueless, hiding she had the intention of jumping over me and feigning she had fainted and later asking me to take her to her room to see if the faint passed. She was coming to me and I didn’t stop walking. When I saw her too near and just about to jump over me I stepped aside brusquely with no words and looked back to her to see what she did. Her head’s right side hit the wall, the opposite side to where she wanted to jump over, just not to be discovered of having tried to feign she had fainted. So she felt so ashamed she preferred to hit the wall. I went on along towards the way out of the main building to my cross shaped building in the campus.
Being it a college and most of students from 18 to 30 it was usual the flirting at parties, at the main room during speeches, meetings and recitals, at the dining room, at the TV room, the atmosphere was that also, so they were widely spread the news about Claudia when her parents came to the college in a Rolls Royce to take her back to I don’t know where, Italy I suppose, because she had been engaged with a nigger guy. We were in a room in the main building, Enrique, Lynn, Bell College’s employee that Enrique liked, Angus, son of a woman who worked at the Bell College registrar’s office and I when they told me and I laughed in a good mood and contagiated all them. I told them I could imagine Claudia’s father getting out of the car and coming to me and taking me by the elbow to say Leopoldo, my son, I want to have a word with you. Let’s see, I would say. Claudia’s father would emphasize himself then and pressing my elbow would say to me My daughter..., my daughter..., my daughter is a princess!
Angus, Lynn and Enrique had understood my Italian words from Claudia’s father lips and we were laughing openly. Later I said a friend of mine had told me a long time ago all British bands and musicians were communists. Angus told us he and his family detested the British Royal Family, Tories and Labours, he was a communist too. Enrique knew I was a communist, so he said we had the opportunity of planning Revolution.
In a big room passed the library where the parties usually took place they were performing Shakespeare’s comedy The timing of the shrew and I got bored and left the room and went to Butler Hall to wait for the people to come out from the big room used that day like theatre. Angus sister came along the corridor wearing a Gucci wrist-watch, like the Martini girl, but her right hand, and she was knuckling the right wall as she smiled and I said to her she was beautiful and she said thanks to me.
When back in Madrid I told my friends about the Martini girl and the way I sang the song most of Spanish people doesn’t understand, for nearly we all understand Martini. Very close in time a Martini TV spot was played on TV. An elegant woman dressed in black, with a large black hat and a made-up face covered with a veil black too, can be seen seated on an armchair. Then can be seen a guy with a light blue turtleneck and a deep blue jacket making his right thumb run along his lips and the woman is seen no more, but the name of the brand mark Martini in gross letters. Well, I suppose the Martini Company executives have approved the TV spot presumably on seeing the guy fitted in.
