It is morning before I wake. I am sprawled half under a table and half under a chair. I have the worst headache I have ever experienced in my life. Every slight movement of my body brings an excruciating stab of pain like someone sticking a knife in me. My head feels as if it is splitting open and hanging out as if on a hinge.
I crawl a few paces in agony to get clear of the table. Someone is sweeping the pavement outside the bar. The door is wide open. I prop myself up against a wall and stare at a swirl of objects that wont keep still. The pain in my head is so bad I am convinced I will never be able to stand up.
Someone comes in and stands over me. I don't recognise him. "You need a coffee."
"Do you have a bucket?" I ask in a hoarse whisper. The noise from my voice shakes the pain about in my head.
"You want to be sick?"
"No. Please can I have a bucket filled with water."
It seems like ten years later that I see this bucket of water standing beside me. I lean forward, prop myself up on my hands, and stick my head right in. The water slops over the edge. It is amazingly, beautifully cold. I lift my head back out. Streams of water pour off my chin and my hair. I breath deeply, and plunge my head back into the bucket.
I sit staring at the floor, feeling decidedly queasy. I feel seriously ill. I am in pain. I cannot think, and my sight is blurred. Oh fuck, what have I done?
The guy with the broom helps me to my feet and into a chair on the pavement, and gets me a black coffee, which I slowly trickle down my throat. When it is all gone he brings me another, and I sit for an hour before I can manage to get up and hobble around.
I walk uncertainly and gloomily towards the station.
"Hotel, hotel, sleep." The little man in front of me puts his hands together and pops them under his tilting head. "Very cheap, fifty-five pesetas."
I laugh and sit down on a bench. He pesters me about this bed for fifty-five pesetas. I realise I cannot spend the rest of the day in this state. I need to lie down. I follow him round the corner to a big tall place that looks decidedly seedy. I am allocated a room on the third floor, and given a key. "Seventy pesetas please," says the man behind the desk.
I laugh and throw down the key, pick up my bag and start walking to the door. At the door I turn. "This guy said fifty-five, so I pay fifty-five or I sleep somewhere else.
There is a short silence. "All right. Sixty pesetas.
"He said fifty-five."
There is an argument. The big man behind the counter tells the little man who brought me in that he's a fool. "You know there are no rooms for fifty-five pesetas, the cheapest is sixty. But those rooms are taken. I have to use one that is seventy-five because it has a double bed." He turns to me. "Sixty."
Heck, what's five pesetas anyway? I can hardly stand, let alone argue about five pesky pesetas. I crawl up the stairs on my hands and knees, clutching the steps in front of me. Eventually I reach the right landing and crawl along the corridor to my door. It takes several minutes to get the key in the key-hole, but at last I can roll into bed.
Evening comes around before I finally emerge from my drunken slumber to the sound of children shouting across the back yards.
I sit up, staring bleakly at the opposite wall. My words are slow and deliberate as I address the world in general, and the wall in particular, "I will never ever do that again." I have scarcely finished the words before I crash back into a deep sleep.
It is dark by the time I get up and go outside. It has been raining. Everywhere is soaking wet. A little boy is standing on the pavement piddling into a vast puddle. I walk into a bar for another coffee. The barman comes across and looks at me, goes pink, and bellows at me that my hair is too long and I had better get out of his bar.
I stand stock still. Mother had cut my hair only the week before. It was about half an inch long all round. The Spanish norm is quarter of an inch at the front and virtually nothing at the sides and back. I am a bit confused. This sudden aggression for no apparent reason is strange. I lean on one of the tables and stare at the bloke. "You must be a really miserable old man. I don't know what things are like in Spain, but in Catalonia they say that happiness makes the hair grow long. Is that why you are completely bald?"
There are five soldiers sitting at a nearby table. They burst into gales of laughter. The man behind the counter has gone every shade of red to purple. He leans over the bar and points at me. "In Spain we know how to go about. We are not like the decadent English who don't know their head from their arse."
This is a very unfortunate comparison, and I don't really have to make the point. In fact my Spanish gets a bit lost as I try to say that his head looks like a baby's bottom without the nappy as I have no idea what the Spanish for nappy is, but the soldiers are well ahead of me, and are rolling about in laughter as I make for the door, followed by a stream of purple abuse.
I walk to another cafe. The rain is coming down again. Who cares? I open my mouth and look up. I am greeting the night; that dark whore who plays treacherous games with you.
I do a bit of skipping along the pavement. When the whore is Barcelona I can take it.