The Moors Last Sigh

‘May you stay lost in this infernal maze, in this village of the damned, for a thousand nights and a night.’
    I went into La Gobernadora to ask directions. My eyes, which had been squinting against the razor-sharp brilliance of the light bouncing off Benengeli’s white walls, took a moment to adjust to the darkness inside the bar. A barman with a white apron was polishing a glass. There were a few shapes of old men near the back of the narrow, deep room. ‘Does anyone speak English?’ I asked. It was as if I had not spoken. ‘Excuse me,’ I said, going up to the bartender. He looked right through me and turned away. Had I become invisible? But no, obviously not, I had been visible enough to bad-tempered Vivar, and so had my money. I became irritable, and reached across the bar to tap the barman on the back. ‘House of Señor Miranda,’ I enunciated carefully. ‘What road?’
    The man, a thick-waisted fellow sporting a white shirt, green waistcoat and slicked-back black hair, gave a sort of groan – contempt? laziness? disgust? – and came out from behind his bar. He stood in the doorway and pointed. Now I could see, opposite the bar’s entrance, a narrow lane passing between two houses, and, at the far end of the lane, many people moving quickly to and fro. That must be the throng I had been hearing; but how had I failed to notice this lane before? I was evidently in even worse shape than I had thought.
    With my suitcase increasing in weight all the time, and pulling Jawaharlal along by his lead (his wheels clattering and bouncing over the uneven cobbles) I made my way down the little lane and found myself in a most un-Spanish thoroughfare, a ‘pedestrianised’ street full of non-Spaniards – the majority being somewhat elderly, though immaculately turned-out, and the minority young and calculatedly scruffy in the manner of the fashion-conscious classes – who plainly had no interest in the siesta or any other local customs. This thoroughfare, which, as I would discover, was known by the locals as the Street of Parasites, was flanked by a large number of expensive boutiques – Gucci, Hermès, Aquascutum, Cardin, Paloma Picasso – and also by eating-places ranging from Scandinavian meatball-vendors to a Stars-and-Stripes-liveried Chicago Rib Shack. I stood in the midst of a crowd that pushed past me in both directions, ignoring my presence completely in the manner of city-dwellers rather than village folk. I heard people speaking English, American, French, German, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and what might have been either Dutch or Afrikaans. But these were not visitors; they carried no cameras, and behaved as people do on their own territory. This denatured part of Benengeli had become theirs. There was not a single Spaniard to be seen. ‘Perhaps these expatriates are the new Moors,’ I thought. ‘And I am one of them, after all, arriving here in search of something that matters to nobody but myself, and staying, perhaps, to die. Perhaps, in another street, the locals are planning a reconquest, and it will all finish when, like our precursors, we are driven into ships at the port of Cádiz.’
    ‘Notice that, although the street is crowded, the eyes of those crowding it are empty,’ said a voice at my shoulder. ‘It may be hard for you to pity these lost souls in alligator shoes and sports-shirts with crocodiles over their nipples, but compassion is what is required here. Forgive them their sins, for these blood-suckers are already in Hell.’
    The speaker was a tall, elegant, silver-haired gentleman wearing a cream linen suit and a permanently sardonic expression. The first thing I noticed about him was his enormous tongue, which his mouth seemed unable to contain. It was forever licking at his lips in a suspiciously satirical way. He had beautiful twinkling blue eyes that were certainly not empty; indeed, they seemed replete with all manner of knowledge and mischief. ‘You seem tired, sir,’ he said, formally. ‘Allow me to buy you a coffee and act, should you desire it, as your interlocutor and guide.’ His name was Gottfried Helsing, he spoke twelve languages – ‘oh, the usual dozen,’ he said airily, as if they were oysters – and though he had the manners of a German grandee I noted that he lacked the resources to have the stains cleaned off his suit. Wearily, I accepted his invitation.
    ‘It is hard to forgive life for the force with which the great machines of what-is bear