Old Hands, part 3

Another entertainment we saw early in the fall was Circo Internacional, a little traveling circus that came to set up shop in Aravaca for a few days. We had seen the posters around town, and we decided to go on a Sunday afternoon.

This circus was way, way beyond the concept of small-time. They had set up a tent in a plaza, and inside were about 200 bleacher seats and a single ring. The first act was some tigers who—get ready—sat on pedestals! We were less than thrilled.

It took about ten minutes for a half-dozen slow-moving roustabouts to dismantle the tiger cage for the next act, which was—hula hoops! We were surprised to see one of the ushers transformed into a hula hoop artist, but she was actually pretty good, twirling about 35 hula hoops at a time.

Next was a dog act, starring chihuahuas. They jumped over things, they pushed strollers, and then they began to appear in costumes—for instance, bride and groom dogs, a Napoleon dog firing a cannon, a bullfighter dog, and a bull dog with horns tied on his head. By this time we were screaming with laughter.

Then we had the Elastic Woman, a decent contortionist act performed by the other usher. After this came the big finish for the first half of the show: a man and a lady in costume, the man doing a preliminary bit of fire eating, followed by the meat of the act: taking reptiles out of boxes and putting them back in.

There were a bunch of large wooden boxes onstage, and they would open one and lift out, for instance, a very large crocodile, and put it on the ground, and leave it there. Then they would open another box and take out an even larger crocodile, and put it on the ground, and leave it there. There were several huge crocs, some big gators, and some gigantic snakes. After everything came out, everything had to go back in—and there was one big croc that did not want to go back in his box! So the guy hit him on the snout a few times, and kind of shoved him with his foot, and eventually the croc let himself be picked up and put away. Man, I thought, that’s entertainment!

Then we had intermission, during which the tiger guy came back with his two sons and a camel and took Polaroids of kids from the audience sitting on the camel.

For the second act opener the tiger guy and his sons brought out several camels and made them trot around the ring for a while. Then they brought out what looked like African cattle and made them run around the ring, and then they brought out a llama and made it jump over some hurdles.

The final, interminable bit was a clown act featuring the lady from the dog act and some guys who played saxophones. Though the Spaniards loved this, I could find no discernible humor in it, and it seemed to go on forever.

We stumbled out of the dark tent into the sunshine, laughing at what an experience it had been. “And only 900 pesetas!” Mike added. “That’s like seven bucks!”

On the way out of the circus Lisa spotted someone she knew. “Hey,” she said, “I think that’s Laura.”

“Who’s Laura?” I asked.

“She’s a new girl in my class,” Lisa said. “She’s nice.”

Just a couple days later Lisa was invited to Laura’s house, a townhouse not far from us in Pozuelo. I met her mom, Christiane, who was pregnant.

“We’re just coming from Tokyo,” she said. “My husband Ramón is Spanish, but he’s worked most of his life overseas.”

“What kind of work does he do?” I asked.

“He’s a journalist with EFE, the official Spanish news agency,” she said. “We met when he was working in Austria—that’s where I’m from. But we spent the last six years in Japan.”

“How’d you like it?” I asked, feeling comfortable in her warm kitchen.

“Oh, we loved it. You don’t get very integrated into the local population, but the international community was a lot of fun. And myself, I did make some good Japanese friends. I got started taking classes in ikebana—do you know what that is?”

I knew that ikebana was a Japanese form of flower arranging—there was a well-known Japanese florist in Stamford who did it. It turned out that Christiane had become so accomplished at ikebana that one of the major Tokyo hotels had commissioned her to do a weekly arrangement for their lobby.

The Santaularias quickly became part of our group of friends. Ramón, a Catalan, was a most unusual Spaniard from those we knew—he was jovial and outgoing, he spoke numerous languages, and he loved traveling and experiencing other cultures. Most Spaniards, we agreed, turned up their noses at everything not Spanish. One of Mike’s business acquaintances had spoken truthfully about this once. “What do Spanish people really think of Americans?” Mike asked.

“We think they have no sense of history, they dress badly, they’re fat, and they’re loud,” he said.

And I remembered Ana’s sister Maricarmen, who had taken a tour to Thailand. Her verdict upon her return was that the shopping was good, the beaches were nice, but the food wasn’t as good as Spanish food.

Laura Santaularia got along well with Lisa, Gaby Scarritt and Claire Liepmann, and we all began to look forward to the arrival of the new baby in May.