A man, with well barbered gray hair, and a clipped and combed mustache hobbled while pushing his blue walker up the slight incline into the Cafe where I sit. I see him almost every day, either sitting on his walker in a cafe and sipping coffee or sitting in the shade on a street. I also see him with his halting pace working to get around.
I know nothing of his story other than what I can intuit: he is retired, somewhere in his mid-seventies, with legs that barely work. Yet, he refuses to leave it at that, and continues, day in and day out, to shuffle on a few block round that makes up his mornings.
Of course, I—a half year seventy-year old—walk much of the same round daily because my flat is on its edge and I too insist on walking. I have feet that have seen better days and sometimes just feel numb. But I work them, to keep what feeling and mobility I have—fortunately my mobility is good even if sensation is not quite there. Pre-diabetes and peripheral neuropathy along with intense chemo for leukemia of which, fortunately, I have been “cured”, have had their way with my feet to my frustration.
But that is life. My Grandmother on my mother’s side , who immigrated from West Yorkshire, had leg and feet problems that seemed so mysterious to me. They were always bothering her and mornings she would carefully wrap them. I did not understand until recently, my aunt who is in her nineties and suffering Alzheimer’s heard me state I had gout. She said “oh David, you have inherited mother’s gout.” Until that moment I did not know other people in the family had similar problems. I have recently learned of a cousin who also experiences this problem with processing uric acid.
Every time I see this gentleman, who looks right through me when I try to say hello, I pay attention. I learn about the details of troubled movement which I might face, and more than anything his courage and determination, carved like stone into his jaw, cheeks, and eyes.
Well, this is a strange theme, and not the one I had planned to write about on this sunny and hot, post-fiesta day in which I feel a little strange from taking a poison, colchicine, to stop a gout attack that was spiking itself into my foot.
That aside, I think of a warm and smiling Chinese woman who has almost no Spanish or English, though several kinds of Chinese, I think, grace her tongue. Even without the language, she came to Spain and runs a restaurant with delicious offerings cooked by her husband. If you know what you want on the menu and can signal it, there is no problem, but if your wishes require words, suddenly her face clouds with frustration and even shame. She holds up a finger and runs to find someone who can help.
I do not know how I would respond to running a business relying on words and not being able to understand them or make them myself. I do know I turn inside and work hard to figure out everything for myself and then have to just be patient when misunderstood.
That little restaurant has become one of my favorite places, and not just because of the delicious food. I also love the lady’s smile, the light that crosses her face when I try to say siè sie, thank you in Mandarin. In my few words, I try to, even if absolutely at a minimum, cross the boundary into her linguistic world.
In the last month or so, a different Chinese couple has opened a “chino” across the street from my building. It sells a variety of inexpensive merchandise for the home, from hardware to a bit of food. These are very useful stores.
After more than another month of rehabilitating that space that has been empty since I moved here, some green plants for sale outside marked the opening of their business. The youngish woman there also doesn’t speak much Spanish, kind of like all the foreign tourists who shop at the neighborhood supermarket in tourist season and often even lack hello or thank you. I resist the temptation to jump in every time they speak English—since most have at least some command of that language—to smooth things over.
Not being able to communicate can be as important an experience in a foreign country as trying to speak the native language with its thousands of years of practices and layered connotations that take a lifetime to really get.
Yes, I am speaking in part of my difficulties with the Spanish here. It is a language I have spoken almost my entire life and I often feel a fool here, though every day less so.
The woman in the “chino” looks too young to have a early twenties son, but there is a young man who is often there and does speak Spanish as does the upper forties man who also hangs out and carries a body and face that says simply “owner”.
To put together a store like this requires substantial capital, in inventory if nothing else. I get the sense that there my be several extended families who work together to open and manage these stores and possibly pool capital.
I have seen the owner-man in other "chinos", looking just as much the owner. However, a block away there is another chino and the people there are physically different and their Chinese sounds different, possibly being a different regional variety. That owner man is never there in my experience.
Spain has a substantial Chinese community and has had for a few generations. In this are family ties and business ties between this overseas community and the homelands as well as business centers in Spain and China. The stories of this community would fascinate me for a long time.
However, to continue with the theme of these musings, a week or so after the chino across from me opened I had the need to buy something and crossed over. I found it in the back of their crowded store and went to the register.
Here I have gotten used to paying with my phone through a debit card it holds. I seldom have cash because of the cost in time and money of getting it from an ATM. The card machine in the Chinese store did not function yet. Their bank had not yet finalized its use. So they asked me for cash or bizum. This latter is a way of paying money electronically directly into someone’s phone and hence their bank account. I had not activated that yet.
We looked at each other, merchandise between us, and realized we had no way of finalizing a transaction.
If language or legs can be a difficulty, so can something ostensibly simple like money. I will not describe the gyrations I have gone through before simplifying them in order to receive my retirement checks from the US and get Euros for daily needs.
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