Aborted Fiesta

The morning of the 4th day in Pamplona, there was confusion.  Brando had not come back, it seemed.  He was nowhere to be found. Then it was discovered that he had taken one of the cars.  Everyone just looked at one another after that.  We had come in four cars full of people.  Now we were down to two.  Everyone was dragging and nobody thinking too well, so we decided to head off to run with the bulls one more time, more of an obligation than anything else, I think, that and the lack of knowing what else to do.  But we were slow and behind schedule, and we got to town just a little too late.  We could see the bulls running by in the street as we approached.  A new crowd had taken over for the old, it seemed.  This was not our crowd any more.  And so, having missed the thing itself, we slowly made our way to breakfast.

The table was quiet, though the crowd around us was louder than ever.  It had doubled, it seemed, since we'd first arrived.  As with everything, this party was working toward a crescendo.  People would rather stay late than come early. But we would not see the final madness.  We would pack up the cars as best we could and head back for Madrid today.

It was impossible, but we managed to stuff everyone and their luggage into the remaining automobiles.  We sat two deep, women in men's laps, legs draped across legs, arms and shoulders hanging from windows.  And thusly we headed out of town into the heat of the dry Spanish summer, looking back on the insanity that had overrun the little town of Pamplona that surely was unremarkable but for that.

The dry heat and wind that blew through the open windows conspired with our own exhaustion to still everyone to silence.  On and on over the dry, golden earth and through the sun baked hills we travelled, my dry eyes closing again and again as I drove.  We stopped in a tiny town to get gas and stretch our legs and buy cans of sardines and fresh olives and cheese, and we sat awhile and drank beer and wine until we were stretched out in the dry, rough grass, everyone seemingly lost in his or her own reveries and memories of what had just occurred, that, and of course what had happened before, the weeks of travel through Spain, from Madrid where we began through ancient Roman towns, on to Seville and Granada and Valencia and Barcelona and many smaller towns and villages, of all the tapas bars and restaurants and of eating lunches in abandoned castles sitting on high hill tops.  There had been that, but now there was the other thing, too.  Where was Brando?  Where were Dick and Rachel?

We entered Madrid and tried to find the hotel we had reserved, not the Palace this time but something far less elegant and grand, the place where the group would split up, some going home, others going on.  But for us, the festival was over.  It was done.

"Take a right here," Heath said, and he was right.  We had found the hotel.  We knew it instantly for sitting out front at a sidewalk table with a glass of wine was Brando.  He waved and smiled as we pulled up as if it was all as planned.  Everything was O.K. his countenance suggested.  No one was dead, not even injured.  It had been an adventure, and it had been of his making he seemed to say.  And now as was always the case, there was the silent resentments that gave way to the verbal relief.

"Come.  Your rooms are ready," he said.  "There is a wonderful courtyard restaurant just around the corner where we can have dinner.  There is much going on this weekend.  We've gotten here at a very good time."

And that night, the crowd of us were reunited once again, and sitting at a huge table made of many, we ate and drank outside in the big square like returning heros with much waving of hands and recounting of tales, and the wine kept us there late into the night.  And then, like that, there was the settling of the bill, someone getting screwed, someone else coming up light, but like the blowing out of a lamp, the trip was over and done and we would not see one another again, not, at least as a single organism, for in the morning there were separate trains to catch and cabs to hail and airports to negotiate.

I, for my part, was on to San Sebastian where I, in the manner of Jake Barnes, would rest and recover.  I was foolish that way.  It was part of my great, romantic charm.