The Year I Was Young

THE YEAR I WAS YOUNG / CW. Gusewelle IGOT STUCK FOR A WHILE at the rooming house at No. 15 Gravina Street in AUcante on the southern coast of Spain. On the table beside the bed I counted thirty-five pesetas remaining— about fifty-eight cents—which even in 1960 was no real money at aU. I guess I was about as broke as you can get anywhere without winding up in jaU. But, my God, I was Uving well! The room was big and airy, with high ceüings and a cool tile floor, and taU double-windows that opened onto an iron balcony. The balcony looked out through the crowns of date palms on the esplanade toward the blue sparkle of the Mediterranean a block away. A fresh sea breeze fluttered the curtains. There was a brass double bed, a wash stand with basin and pitcher of water, a great wooden desk to write at. The sign over the street doorway said Pension Verona, Frente al Mar—Facing the Sea. Entry was through a dismal foyer and up three unlighted flights of broken marble stairs, grooved by a century's scrape of shoes. The cUmb led past doorless cubicles occupied by noisy, desperate famUies, with old women sitting in broken chairs in the half-dark. Alicante had not yet become a spa, and most of Spain stiU was poor. The Perona's cUentele ran to threadbare clerks down from Madrid on pinched summer hoUday, and it was no wonder that many were regulars who came back year after year. Señora Carmen Cremada was a formidable cook. As soon as you ascended to the buüding's fourth floor, the level of the Perona, the pungency of cat urine on the ghastly stairway gave way to the rich perfume of oUve oU, and you knew the mistress of the place was at work in her kitchen. Two nights a week she served paella, oftener if her lodgers asked. The price of a room and two meals with wine—a full dinner at three in the afternoon, supper at nine—was a doUar twenty-five cents a day. Accounts were settled weekly in advance, unless you had no money. In that case, Señora Cremada would keep you on credit, on the promise, or at least the reasonable chance, your luck might take a better turn. Td gotten in my fix through pure stupidity, by lending fifty doUars to another traveler, a feUow American, who promptly vanished The Missouri Review · 9 into the world without a trace. I still had ten doUars left, which should have lasted until I received payment for some newspaper stories I'd written. The money was supposed to come any day, either in a money order to American Express or a wire transfer to the bank. It didn't, though. And Td already been waiting there almost a month. One morning I heard there'd been a crime in the pension. A large sum of cash—nearly a thousand pesetas, about fifteen dollars— had been taken from the trouser pocket of one of the lodgers whüe he slept. Such a scandal as that in a decent place like the Perona! Señora Cremada was outraged. That very afternoon, whüe I was writing, she knocked at the door of my room and walked sternly in. "How much money do you have?" she demanded to know. Look out, I told myself, because now there's big trouble. She already knows I'm broke. She probably thinks I took that man's money. Shell order me to pay up. And when I can't, she might actually call the police. The police in Franco's Spain, thirty years ago, were nothing to fool around with. I raked the few small coins off the table and held them out in my palm for her to see. "And that's reaUy aU?" "Just what you see." Her expression showed hurt and humiUation. She was humiUated for me. "It's not enough!" she said. From a fold of her dress she took out a worn, snap-top leather coin purse. "A man must have some money. To sit in...