Settling In, part 7

The other thing that I added to my roster of activities was a Spanish art history class that Christine Lotto had told me about. I had called the number she’d given me and spoken to Everett Rice, an American who taught the subject to both American and Spanish students at the University of St. Louis’s Madrid branch, as well as to groups of expatriates. Everett said I should be at St. George’s Church, the English church, at 11a.m. on Tuesday, and he told me which subway stop was nearby. He also said to bring a check for 12,000 pesetas—about $100.

In a spirit of experimentation, I dressed nicely—not in the leggings and tunic I’d probably have worn at home, but in good-looking slacks, a blouse and a blazer, like what I thought a Spanish woman would have worn. I took a bus and then the subway to St. George’s, which was in a fairly fancy neighborhood of shops and apartments called Serrano. Everett said he’d leave the church’s gate partway open so his students could get in, but when I got there it was locked. I took a short walk up the street, past a shoe store and a shop with fancy lingerie, and when I came back the church’s gate was ajar.

I walked across the courtyard and up a few steps to a big meeting room. A tall, thin, gray-haired man was darting about, setting up chairs auditorium-style. “Are you Everett Rice?” I asked.

“Yes, I am,” he said. “And you are . . .?”

“I’m Susie Haubenstock,” I said. “I spoke to you on the phone a few days ago—I got your name from Christine Lotto.”

“Oh, yes,” he said, continuing to set up. “I’m glad you’re joining us. We’ll be a nice group this year, I think. You’ll see we’ll start right from the beginning, with cave paintings. Then we go into architecture for quite a while, and then on to the Golden Age of Spanish painting.” By now he was beginning to set up a slide projector and a screen. I saw several carousels of slides up at the front of the room.

Other women were beginning to arrive. Most were my age or older, and most were dressed quite nicely, though some were in more casual clothes. I heard some English accents mixed in with the American chatter. I didn’t see anyone I knew, but I said hello to a couple of women sitting nearby, just to be sociable.

Finally Everett got the twenty or so women sitting and ready to start, and he was just about to turn off the lights when Amy Levine, the mother of Julie’s friend Anna, came in and took a seat in the front row. I was happy to see a familiar face.

As promised, Everett began his lecture and slide show with the cave paintings from Altamira in northern Spain. “Notice how the artist uses the contour of the stone to give dimension to his work,” he said—and I could see on the screen the bulge in the cave wall that had become the muscle of a boldly painted bull. The colors were astonishingly bright and well preserved, and I began to catch Everett’s enthusiasm for this ancient work.

My professor, I learned, was Kentucky-born and had been living in Spain for about thirty-five years, having first come as a college student. “I fell in love with the place, and I just stayed,” he said. His knowledge of Spanish art was encyclopedic, and he often used his vacations to travel to see Spanish paintings in museums in the U.S., London or Paris. His arsenal of carousels was a real treasure, because he had gathered slides of Spanish works through all these trips. But he often apologized for their quality: “If you could only see the true colors of this painting,” he’d lament. “This slide doesn’t do it justice.” Both current and former students were enlisted to acquire replacements for faded slides during their own travels.

The class ended at 12:45, and I caught up with Amy as the group broke up. She was asking Everett some questions, and I waited for them to finish their conversation. I was amazed at the level of detail at which Amy was quizzing him, though. It seemed that she already knew plenty about Spanish art.

“Hey, how are you?” I asked as she finished up with Everett.

“Oh, hello, I didn’t see you before!” she said. “I didn’t know you were taking this class.”

“Yeah, I was so excited to find out about it,” I said.

“I just ran and sat up in front because my vision is not too good,” she explained. “I never saw who else was in the room. Are you running home now? Do you have time to get some lunch?”

I was delighted to be asked. “No, I’m in no hurry,” I said. “But it’s a little early for lunch. Do you know something that’s open?”

“Well, there’s a California right on Calle Serrano,” she said. California was a chain of food shops with restaurants inside. “I think they start serving early.”

“That’s fine with me,” I said, and we walked a block to the place.

Inside we saw a sign that pointed to an autoservicio—cafeteria—in the basement. “Is that okay with you?” Amy asked. “I don’t care about having a fancy meal.”

“No, that’s perfect with me,” I said, and we went down to see what they had.

We took a walk down the serving line first, to see what was available. There was a central island with bowls of salad wrapped in plastic. There were rolls. There were a couple of soups. And there were steam tables with several choices of fish, meats, and vegetables. “Looks fine to me,” I said, and Amy agreed.

I took a salad and chose one of the grilled fish dishes. Amy took a different fish and asked for a tinto—a glass of red wine—which was the normal lunchtime beverage. We chose a table among the red laminate tops and sat down.

“How is it?” Amy asked me once I tasted my fish.

“It’s really perfect,” I said, amazed. “I don’t even order fish in restaurants at home anymore, because it’s always overdone. But here’s cafeteria fish, steam table fish, and it’s completely wonderful! How do they do that?”

“Mine is fabulous, too,” she said. “Why can’t they do this in New York?” With her Boston accent, it sounded like “cahn’t”.

“This country is pretty amazing,” I said. “The food isn’t fancy, but it’s always perfectly cooked.”

“Maybe it has to do with the freshness,” she said. “I’m no cook, I don’t know anything about it, but I know that the transportation system for fish here is much better than anything we have at home. The Spaniards are very exacting. They have to have all their pescados y mariscos”—fish and seafood—“very fresh.”

As we ate Amy told me that she was taking private Spanish lessons from a teacher who came to her apartment in the city. “My teacher has taught me a lot about the cultural differences here,” she explained. “She’s been a terrific help to me. Last week we found out that Anna needed glasses, so we arranged the optometrist appointment at the same time as my Spanish lesson, and we used the lesson time to have Maria interpret for us.”

“Mike’s doing private Berlitz lessons in his office,” I told her.

“Eric is, too,” she said. “But it was almost impossible to get the bank to pay for it. We had to make a big deal out of it for them to pay for my lessons, too. They haven’t been helpful at all—no help in finding an apartment, no invitations to dinner, nothing.”

I saw again how lucky we had been in the welcome we’d received from Price Waterhouse.

We continued to talk, and Amy told me about the summer months she’d spent in Madrid with her girls. “There weren’t many Americans around,” she said. “But there was a group from an American fertilizer company that’s doing some work with the Spanish government. Most of the women were very nice, but all they wanted to do was shop! I’m not much of a shopper, so I got bored right away.”

“I’m not a shopper either,” I said, and at that moment we bonded.

“Why don’t we all get together for dinner next Saturday night?” she suggested. I accepted gladly.