Maria ...
Her name is Maria. She’s about 200 years old with a gold rimmed tooth, leathery skin, a serious limp, horny old hands, dressed in a representative sample of rag-picker’s discards. Some tell me she’s ‘Romana’ but she’s ‘gitana’ – maybe the same thing but she is, to my mind, Romany.
She stands outside the Majorca, Madrid’s most upmarket delicatessen, at the corner of Don Ramon de la Cruz and Velazquez. As you leave that old hand is stretched up as high as she can reach, right into you face and the cadence is high and plaintive – ‘una moneda, por favor, una moneda’.
Sometimes I meet Maria and that intrusive hand on my street, a couple of blocks from her normal stand in front of the Majorca, sometimes on Ortega y Gasset, lined with tony shops like Chanel, Hermes, Tods and Lora Piano, that hand still up and in my face.
A few weeks ago Maria and I reached an accord, for 2 euros a week she would be happy and I would be free of that hand. If she could convince a hundred of us to do that, she’d be okay.
This arrangement worked well, for the first several weeks we ran into each other and I gave her my protection money. One week she wasn’t at her usual spot for a day or two and I felt a bit guilty until I saw her one day across the street. For some reason I had to walk her down and give her my 2 euros. I felt better. Damn, Maria is good at this.
One morning, walking the dog, I saw a 10 euro bill on the street outside Chanel. I picked it up and looked around, maybe the owner had just dropped it. There was no one on my side of the street and across the road there was only another dog walker, this one being pulled determinedly up the sidewalk by an 80 pound German Shepherd. I stuck the bill into my pocket and went back home.
On Friday I was peckish around 2 PM. Too lazy to fix myself something, I strolled over the Majorca, greeting Maria on my way in, picking up a couple of their exquisite ‘ingleses’ – Jamon iberico, queso de Burgos, a slice of tomato all stuffed into a soft, golden-brown roll.
I passed Maria again on my way out. She smiled through a mass of brown wrinkles. Something tweaked and I stopped and asked her if she had a relative in the area? Yes, her sister Anna worked in front of Corte Ingles (the department store) on Serrano. Since I’d put a name to that hand and her creased old face, I had finally noted the similarity.
We spoke for a minute or two and I recall asking her how she was feeling. In answer she pulled open her bag and pulled out a handful of prescriptions from the government clinic, explaining they were for her leg, pulling up her long skirt to the knee and showing me an ugly, swollen joint.
I gave Maria that 10 euro note which wasn’t mine. Before I could protest, she had grabbed my hand and ...she kissed it.
I’m embarrassed and moved and saddened. We were players in a Dickensian drama but it’s the third millennium!
Next time I think I’ll find out more about that leg and see if I can give some of my money rather than just return a 10 euro note I found on the street, which is hers.
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