As he sat on the docks with the trumpet-laden pasadoble sharp in the heavy afternoon heat, Robert Cohen had the unfamiliar sensation of feeling at the center of the world. He could not justify this sentiment, that it was his name on the lips of the young couple, his presence the cause of awe in the children’s eyes and of the energy in the crowd trampling around them, but as he indulged in the pleasant breeze across his broad back, the plate of prawns in front of him and the crisp Macabeo he washed each down with, he was empowered by the idea and, in the euphoria, allowed himself to look ahead to tomorrow, the day he had been furtively anticipating, and what it held for him: the bullfights.

He had been in Barcelona for nearly a month, having left his Tribeca loft for a small room in the Sarria region of the city with an elderly senora. Even now the impetuousness surprised him, but a sublime logic soothed his anxiety. It had not been his choice at all, but the influence of some innate force that had drawn him to the city, a force that seemed to grow with each day. He was assured by the fact that he felt no regret. No yearning for his career or his family or the girlfriend who had said she would wait. If he was honest, he knew he had, in just this short time away, already grown accustomed to their absence, to this new lifestyle which agreed with him in all the ways it diverged from what he had left.

His days followed a simple cadence.

He woke early to walk the narrow streets and labyrinth alleyways lined with red bougainvillea. Breathing in the honeysuckle air, he would wander the renascent markets and indulge in the private gift of tawny schoolgirls on their way to class, returning home always to fresh bread with jam and café con leche warm on the stove. The afternoons he spent like a Spaniard, reposing in his room after lunch or when the temperature allowed, riding the funicular up Tibidabo to take in the expanse of the city laid out before him like the Promised Land. During the evenings, he mostly lingered in nearby antros, reading and drinking too much, and on a few occasions venturing down to the waterfront and La Rambla with the tourists to sate his desires on a Chinese graphic designer from San Francisco or a Korean student from New York.

But it had not all been as he had expected. There was not the sense of camaraderie that Hemingway had experienced. There was instead a miasma of tension that seemed to trail him through the streets, in the stores and trains, as if all were holding their breath in unison, the impression an unwanted guest might intuit. This was no more evident than with his senora. He did not know her name. She was introduced as senora and nothing more. In his time with her, she had not spoken a word to him, not taken any interest in the details of his life or offered any of her own. On the occasion that he attempted to speak to her, she would shake down his broken Spanish, busying herself with some spontaneous chore. It seemed their only interaction came at lunchtime, when for a few hours the stout woman would reveal herself, donning a purple and gold apron, to cook the midday meal.

Robert could see that she took great care in her work. He would watch as she pored over the day’s ingredients with an exacting energy, rapt until the last scale was removed from fish or feather from bird. Each meal, whether rabbit stew or grilled quail or whole fish, of which she never ate in his company, a product of method, a sum of movements. But despite her reticence, he still felt the weight of her presence. If not a coddling mother, she was assuredly a keeper of some sort, seeming always to be on the edge of his periphery like the ever-observing eye of an assassin. He imagined her idling in the stairwell or kneeling in the next room, a Catholic ear pressed against the thin walls hoping to glean some evidence, some trifle of information, for whose purpose he wondered if even she knew.

It unnerved Robert. That he should speculate what her thoughts were as she skinned a rabbit was troubling, planted a seed of paranoia in his mind so that every action was preceded by a flash of doubt. But she was an old woman, he told himself, a widower in fact. Such diminishing people developed strange ways; they injure those around them without knowing. He could not blame her for that.

Robert Cohen was exultant by the time he finished his meal. He was overtaken by a desire to walk the streets. Venturing away from the blue of the marina and its swelling crowds, he made his way to the Roman passages in the shadow of the Cathedral of Santa Eulalia, whose bells were ringing dolefully. There, after misreading a street sign, he soon found himself lost down a cobblestone alley, alone less a group of boys. There were six of them, age twelve or so, with one much younger, idling in a storefront. He feared they might try to pickpocket him and so, in a futile attempt to escape their attention, diverted his focus to some indefinite point ahead.

As he passed, one boy said under his breath, “Chino.” The other boys laughed.
Robert stopped and looked at them. Their skin was tanned to a shade darker than his own. “Korean,” he said, surprised by the conviction in his own voice.

“You Chino,” the boy said in a bewildered tone. Robert said nothing, his silence quickly casting umbrage over the awkward congregation.

“Chino. Chino,” another boy broke in.

Robert stood his ground.

Soon another joined in, then another. “Chino, Chino,” they yelled, each boy gaining confidence from the one before in the way a mob proliferates. The words fell on him like blades, each sapping his strength. His shoulders lurched forward and he began to sweat. A sick lather bled through his shirt as the sun cleaved down upon him.

The little one joined in last. Looking up at his companions with a toothy smile, he raised his small hands to his face and spread his eyes like a Chinaman as the others giggled and shouted on.

The gesture was simple, honest, unveiled by pretense. It came from a place unaware of its own meaning, its motive incongruent with its effect. Robert knew it was not a racist gesture but rather one of observation. Nonetheless, it transported him back to his own days as a boy on the playground and a latent rage that had been building since that time all at once resurfaced.

He charged the boy, who crumpled like a fell cape, and shook him by his shirt collar. The other boys, paralyzed, did nothing but stare down at the heaving black back that had eclipsed their brother. Underneath, the little one whose face had gone dumb at the moment of impact could not hold back his tears and a thin line of red trickled from his nose. Robert released him with a tiny thud. He could feel tears in his own eyes as he walked away and all the while back on the long trip home to Sarria.  

The sun had fallen long ago by the time Robert Cohen woke again. The scene from the afternoon remained, lingering like a sunspot. They were just children, he thought.

Outside, it seemed the city had woken up without him. He could hear the sounds of its youth flooding down to the coastline, the sweet toll of the girls’ voices and their companions’ confident replies, and music echoing from somewhere beyond. He felt an ache in his chest, a stifling pain that pulled the walls of his room around him. He retrieved the bottle of whiskey he kept beneath his pillow and determined to wash it away.

Robert could feel a strong swelling in his head and a tinge of nausea from the rapid drinking as he arrived at the marina. Standing in view of where he had sat earlier that day, the distances he had traveled since then amazed him. He felt haggard and foolish. The people surrounding him held no solace. He bought a can of beer from one of the Chinese who sold them loose along the streets and stumbled down a nearby alleyway.

The passage was occupied by drunks and prostitutes. When he was a younger man, Robert had visited a prostitute. She was Vietnamese and older than he, with the softest skin he had ever felt — skin his fingers remembered in the most nostalgic way, the most carnal, like a memory of first love. The prostitutes that he passed now, wasted and forlorn, held no resemblance to his own, but like a landmark of his past brought back details of her long receded from his thoughts, inlets to a reservoir of feeling that strengthened him. He continued down the passage, a new purpose to his wandering, until he came to an antro.

The room was dim and smoky. There was a dilapidated bar on one side with a cracked mirror back and bookshelves fat with neglected trinkets lining the walls. The tables were occupied by young men and women. Robert sat at one recently vacated, the warmth still on the chair, and waited for the server.

All around him, Robert could hear the mirthful conversation of students speaking Spanish or mangled English. He no longer believed himself the center of their attention but rather an afterthought, if anything. He ordered a drink, an absinthe. He sipped until his nerves calmed, until the room took on a familiar quality and a scene caught his gaze.

There were three men and a girl. The men were vineyard-faced and one had a scar that navigated the length of his cheek. They were discoursing in Catalan while the girl quietly looked on smoking a cigarette. She was much younger, perhaps only eighteen, but of a much older disposition than her age suggested. He was intrigued by her, dually so, for he could not quite place her country of origin. South Asia, he guessed, maybe the Philippines. She possessed that mongrel beauty that only a people so habitually conquered can manifest.   
           
Their eyes met. There was no surprise in her expression, not a hint of flirtation or glimmer of malice. There was only an unwavering focus like the glass stare of a doe that sent a shock through him. 
           
He looked away from her, and when his eyes returned, she was already up and striding across the room.

“You were looking at me,” she said.
           
“I was looking at you,” he managed.
           
She stood in front of him with a posture that was more a question.

“Please sit,” he said.
           
She hesitated for a moment and he watched as she looked inward, then behind to the men who had stopped their discussion. “OK,” she said, drawing close enough that he could smell the licorice on her breath.

The server came over and looked at Robert with a rueful expression.

“Another,” Robert said. “And one for her as well.” As he said this, he could see from the corner of his eye the three men approaching. He readied himself, planting his foot firmly into the wood floor and gripping tight the frail absinthe glass. Their only action was a crooked sneer from the scarred man as they passed.
           
The girl, looking a bit unsettled said, “Do not mind them. They just do not like outsiders.”
           
“Is that what I am?” Robert said.
           
“Yes,” the girl said. “As I am too. But these are things beyond our control.”
           
She looked very lovely then. She was lithe and dark and exotic. On her neck, there was an archipelago of moles that stretched down over the valley of her collar bone. He wondered what circumstances had brought her here. 
           
“Were you born in this country?” he asked.
           
“No,” she said. “I came when I was very young.”
           
Robert knew that she must have lived a difficult life. He could not help but speculate what terrible forces had driven her from home. What she had needed to do in the many years since to survive.

“Where is your home?” the girl asked.
           
“Philadelphia,” Robert replied.

The girl echoed the word: “Pill-a-del-phi-a.” The syllables rolled off her tongue in a way that made the place sound imaginary.

He asked, “Have you ever been outside of Spain?”

“It is a silly question,” she said, running a crimson fingernail through the sweat of their drinks. Then she asked, “Why did you come to Spain?”

“For many reasons,” he replied.

“Your job?”

“No.”

“A woman then?”

“No.”

“Then why come,” she said, lighting a cigarette. “The romance of Spain?”

He looked down.

“This is romantic?” she said.
           
The question annoyed Robert. He thought that she had become very severe. He thought that she was foolish and callow for not appreciating her country and had the urge to slap her. But this was not her country, he thought, and softened. 
           
“It’s not a matter of romance,” he said. “I came for the bullfights.”

“You know about the bulls?”

“I do,” he said.

“Tell me.”

Robert collected himself. “There are three stages. In the first, the matador comes and assesses the bull, learns its tendencies and tests its courage after the Picador has injured him. Next, in the second stage, the banderilleros come to place their barbs into the weakened part of the bull so that in the terco de muerte…”

At this the girl let out a small laugh. “Very good,” she said. “Very impressive.”
           
Robert’s face became flushed. His mouth grew dry and a stinging sweat overtook him. “It’s not a funny matter,” he told her.

She gathered herself. “Do not get upset,” she said. “It is just that only old men with bellies and moustaches attend the matches these days. I did not mean anything by it.” She placed her hand on his so that he could feel the softness. “It is something not of our concern.”

He looked into the girl’s Filipina eyes; they were so different than his own. “You have somewhere to take me?”

They had walked for a long time, long enough that the walls around him had taken on an unfamiliar character. He had followed the girl out of the bar, past the trinkets and the students and the server with the rueful expression. In the warm night air, he had matched her brisk pace down foreign alleyways and strange passages. Every now and then she would turn back to him and say, “Come, hermano, it is not much further,” and he would comply, despite his suspicions, trailing the smooth rhythm of her gait wherever it led.
           
It should seem foolish now to have trusted her so blindly—she who had disappeared around an innocuous curve, she who had lured him into the trap of three men. Still, he believes in her hiding place, she is contrite.   

The men say nothing. They show no expression, no pleasure in what they are carrying out. They are silent for a long time, Robert too, motionless except for the sweat on their brows. One of the men has a knife that he is holding like an estoque, hilt eye-level and hand tilted forward, the point fixed like a bayonet ready to strike. But there is no panic in Robert Cohen, nothing surging through his veins or pumping in his lungs. The sun is rising. Everything is slow.



 


Sam Katz was born in Korea and came to the US at the age of 2. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Good Men Project, Per Contra, REAL, and Southern Humanities Review.