Hotel El Paso

HOTEL EL PASO

The huge brash sign Hotel El Paso reared above Javier’s head as he warily approached the entrance feeling like an astronaut on a hostile planet. His cautious steps paused briefly, surprised by the doors as they automatically slid apart. Emboldened by the ease of access he walked into the foyer and felt the instant chill of the air. The concierge glanced over questioningly but was too busy to intervene. Javier continued through the spacious lobby with its milling holidaymakers, gross sofas and cubist cairns of suitcases. He was unsure which way to go but then saw people passing purposefully through the open French windows out into a shrub filled courtyard. Unhesitatingly he followed them. Without taking his eyes off Javier the concierge radioed for security.

He crossed a courtyard with pristine hedges and fountains. Mingling with the hotel residents he climbed a flight of steps to another level. He was becoming conscious of his heavy jacket and his tie which contrasted with the scantily clad guests but he would not let this deter his curious and sombre pilgrimage. Javier emerged on the concrete footway between two high terracotta blocks of rooms. Before him was a bewildering sight, the hotel pool, a blinding patch shimmering in the sun filled with the energy of children and surrounded by sunbeds on which flopped indolent adults reddening, browning, smelling of suntan lotion. The air reverberated with the boom boom of dance music and a babel of voices. Confused, Javier stood apart just staring. He did not recognise any of it. Was this, he wondered, his border-land where his dilapidated farmhouse once stood, where his dogs and hens ran? Where he would wake in the mornings, set out his goats and dig the dry soil to tend his meagre crops?

Children with dripping ice-cream and parents hauling shaded buggies passed him by unheeded. Was this ever the place that was his? Where water was so hard to come by yet now they played and dived into its azure depths. But this was not the water he had known, and he started to doubt if this was real water at all but just a coloured confection. He scanned the walled-off area with its poolside bar and forest of coloured umbrellas. He tried to imagine where the road had been. The road where as a child his mother had watched the troops marching off to the river Ebro. She had not known whether to cheer or to cry. In the end she did neither. It hadn’t mattered anyway. The road which was bordered by a low drystone wall behind which his father had collapsed when his heart, so long a passenger in his body finally gave way. They hadn’t found him until the sun’s heat had lost its ferocity and bats were starting their dusk sorties. It had been too late by then.

The road where the men in tailored suits and sunglasses that reflected his poverty had come down twenty years before and offered him a fortune for his property. He shook his head to recall. So much money for poor acres of scrub and bone-dry dust. A farmer’s failure suddenly making him rich. He had moved to a town-house in Tarragona where he grew pale-skinned behind his shutters. Was this really his peaceful wasteland where the only noise had been the screaming swifts diving for invisible prey, the red-legged partridges croaking in the under-brush, and the desiccated foliage snapping in hot Augusts. A nothing place, avoided by traffic and people alike. Nothing that made it particular, nothing to make it special. More ordinary than a million other hectares of Spanish land; an apron of reed-beds and drab dust and stones that stretched from the low sierras to the coastal edge. Had this happened? Had this once all been his life? Where had it gone?

Then, as if drawn by instinct he looked up blinking to the vast blue sky that seemed to stretch out above him forever, and he realised that once he had been the millionaire owner of an empty blue heaven. A security guard laid a hand on his shoulder, not maliciously but firmly. Javier knew he was out of place, a relic out of his place. He wanted to explain to the guard but he didn’t have the words to convey his thoughts and would they understand anyway? So he kept his silence , and allowed himself to be led away with as much dignity as still remained.