By the time our train stopped at the border between Portugal and Spain to be checked by customs officers (a hassle no longer required when traveling between countries of the European Union), Bruce and I had learned a bit about Pedro and Alvaro, the two young men we had met at the Lisbon train station. Pedro was soon to enter medical school, and Alvaro was studying another field, I think business, or perhaps international relations. As our train began moving again and picking up speed, we four continued our enthusiastic blabber, speculating on what we might do in Madrid, swapping ideas, telling jokes, having no notion that trouble lay ahead.

Our new friends were better prepared for their stay than we were. They had made reservations in a boarding house, whereas Bruce and I were traveling wild, hoping to find a centrally located hotel with a room available. When we mentioned this, Pedro suggested there might be a room available for us in their boarding house, which he said was located close to the train station, and quite inexpensive. That sounded good to us.

We four were behaving like old friends by the time we reached Madrid. Pedro, who had better English than Alvaro, translated signs for us as we walked out of the train station and onto a broad street toward the boarding house, which was only minutes away. Luckily, the proprietor told us, he did have a double room available for, as he called us, Pedro and Alvaro’s friends. The price he quoted was so low that I did an fast estimate and quickly rechecked my math, thinking the rate could not be so unbelievably cheap. But it was. For our room and two meals daily, Bruce and I would pay the equivalent of $1.25. (Taking into account that the 2021 dollar is worth only about 10% of its 1953 value, our cost in today’s dollars would be $12.50 per day; still quite a bargain, wouldn’t you say?)

Our room was clean, the beds comfortable, and the food just what we needed. Good and plentiful! For breakfast we were provided mainly baked goods such as baguettes spread with olive oil and other toppings, or croissants, along with coffee and juices. Lunch was the big meal of the day. It started late by our standards, about mid-afternoon. We boarders, more than a dozen of us, gathered at a long table and ate family style through a number of courses, the second being either fish, chicken, pork, or beef. The entire meal was an experience. Never before nor after have I consumed midday meals in such a leisurely and convivial manner, each being a languid episode marked by savoring, listening, swallowing, smiling, observing, and occasionally talking, and spanning two or more hours every day.

It was during these meals that I learned to eat a banana Spanish style. Bananas were among the selections available for dessert, and on the first day I was about to pick mine up and peel it when I saw others lay their fruit across their plates and pick up their knives and forks in typical European style, fork in left hand, knife in right. Stabilizing their banana with their fork, they slit its peel lengthwise and pushed its edges back to expose the full length of the fruit. Then they stuck their forks into the left tip of their bananas and neatly sliced off bite-sized morsels before left-handing them into their mouths. This sequence was repeated for the life of each banana, diners snipping off their delicate bites until only peels remained.

This trick was a cinch for me to pick up because I had eaten that way since childhood. When I was very young I constantly transferred my fork while eating, moving it from my left hand to right and back again, eating ambidextrously. One day my father, somehow exasperated by all this switching, told me with some emphasis, “Stop moving your fork from hand to hand.” Being suitably obedient at that tender age, I complied, my fork at that moment located in my left hand. From that time forward I have consistently curled my left fingers around forks, freeing my right hand for knife work. Only when I arrived in Europe at age 20 did I discover that an entire continent had copied my manner of eating.

On our second full day in Madrid, we four invaded the Prado museum, a fabulous attraction with a huge collection of Spanish paintings, these combined with a good inventory of works of other famed artists. As we wandered through the rooms, I was wowed by works by Rubens, Raphael, Durer, Titian, and Rembrandt, among others. But the painting that struck me with the greatest force was none of these. Nor was it notable for elegant brush strokes, or other forms of artistic prettiness; it just froze my blood. It was Goya’s The Third of May 1808 that held my attention like no other in that museum. In that huge canvas (it is something like nine feet tall and eleven wide) Goya depicts Napoleon’s soldiers executing Spanish patriots who had rebelled against the French occupation just one day earlier, a huge lamp lighting the bloody scene. Its impact on me was enormous, a picture of killing in cold blood.

I downloaded an image of the painting from www.museodelprado.es to show it here. Even now it grabs my attention.

Goya painted a companion canvas, The Second of May 1808, which illustrates the reason for the executions shown above; this image depicting Spaniards rioting in Madrid and being attacked by Mamelukes of the French Imperial Guard. It is a painting of equal size to the one above, with perhaps even more carnage, but for me it wields less power, maybe because its savagery is more balanced, both Spaniards and Guardsmen are slaughtering and being slaughtered, their deaths not as one-sided as in the execution scene where the firing squad massacres unarmed men. Should you be interested, you can find this second work at the above website.

This post is getting a bit long, so rather than wear you out, I’ll stop here and continue our Madrid adventures next time, finally confessing my arrest, and subsequent incarceration, in that fine city.