The View from a Drawbridge

Location: Some Nameless Godforsaken Village in Northwest Spain

Year: 1986

So I’m with a friend, sitting in a café that overlooks a green slimy swamp. To say we were in the middle of nowhere would be generous. You couldn’t even see nowhere from where we were sitting. I had no freakin’ clue how this restaurant survived. There weren’t even houses anywhere in sight.

It was all my fault, really. I got it into my head that since we were in this part of Spain, we should go somewhere where we could at least look into Portugal. So, trusting my guidebook, we hopped on a bus. Sadly we’d have to change buses. Even more sadly, the layover was 5 hours. On the side of road. Next to a swamp. This was something I had somehow overlooked.

So we’re sitting there, trying not to snipe at each other, when along the road comes this little old Gypsy woman, straight out of central casting. Black dress. Humped back. Grey hair in a bun. Patch over one eye. She asks us if we’d like her to tell us our fortunes. I say, “No, thank you.” My friend says, “Sure! Why not?” I’m thinking, “Oh, God…”

So the fortune was told, with me acting as translator. Nothing exciting, nothing dramatic. Until she asks for her fee, and my friend takes exception to the outrageous amount. My friend hands her about 1/10^th of the asking price. Oh, God…

The lady, predictably, freaks out and starts speaking more rapidly than my Spanish skills allow. She may not even have been speaking Spanish, for all I knew. And then she lifts her eye patch, fixes her cold blue (and in retrospect, perfectly functional) eye on us, lifts her hand, extending two fingers and…I swear to you…hisses.

Then she walks away.

I don’t believe in the evil eye. But when things aren’t going well for me, I sometimes wonder.

(Copyright maxidus)