Espresso Tales

“And when you went out in the streets or the plaza, you saw these bands of little dogs walking around with such good spirit.

They were not really strays – they all had owners – and all of them were loved by somebody. In other cities, you would expect to see collarless dogs persecuted. Rounded up. Taken to pounds.

And then executed by lethal injection. These dogs just wandered about perfectly happily.

“And in a way I thought of it as a metaphor for the society.

These cheerful small dogs, these perritos, all getting by in the face of terrible material privation. And putting up with it in such good spirit, just as the people about them seem to do. All of them, dogs and people, smiling in the face of constant, grinding poverty.

“Which may be part of the problem, of course. Communism has failed miserably in Cuba, just as it seems to have failed elsewhere. It just does not seem to have been able to provide for the material needs of people. It has only survived through the denial of freedom – there are many charges one can levy against it. And if the people weren’t so nice about it, then they would have risen in anger and demanded their freedom, demanded some more effective response to material needs, just as they did in Eastern Europe. But they haven’t. They’ve continued to dance and play music and keep their sense of humour. It’s quite A Great Sense of Purity

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remarkable, and really rather sad – sad to think that there must have been many people who genuinely wanted to create a decent society, people who believed they were doing the right thing, and then they found that everything went so wrong, the whole thing involved lies and distortion and repression, and had become so utterly shabby. And that happened. Even the signs that claim victory are falling down. And if people are given half a chance, they flee, out of sheer desperation, braving no matter what dangers.

“And waiting in the wings are those who are rubbing their hands and saying that it’s only a question of time before the whole place is covered in fast-food restaurants, the ports crowded with the cruise ships full of spoiled tourists, the prostitutes and the pimps triumphant, and that charming, beautiful culture crushed in the deluge.

“Globalisation, my dear. And in this way, is our wide and entrancing world, our vivid world of songs and music and cultural difference, brought to an end by the crude, the false, the mindless, the imposed.”

Domenica became silent. She was looking down at the floor now. Pat had not even begun to tell her what she wanted to tell her, but could not now, after a story of such sadness. So she finished her coffee in silence and asked Domenica to excuse her until another moment, another day. Domenica understood.

82. A Great Sense of Purity

Pat reflected, in private, over what had happened. Peter had left a note that afternoon, pushed through the letter-box at the flat, with her name written on the outside of the folded paper. That picnic – remember? – it’s on! I’ll come and collect you at five. If you can’t make it, give me a call at this number.

She had retired to her room – there was no sign of Bruce –

and re-read the note. When he had issued the invitation she had certainly not accepted it there and then. After she had overcome 270 A Great Sense of Purity

her initial surprise – it was not every day that one was invited to a nudist picnic, and in Moray Place Gardens too – she had said that she would think about it. That was all. And she had thought about it, and although she might have decided to go, she had not yet told him that.

She looked out of the window. It was a warm enough day –

much warmer than one would expect for early September – and this must have encouraged the nudists to go ahead with their picnic. But the weather in Edinburgh was notoriously change-able and sunlight could within minutes become deep gloom, empty skies become heavy with rain, snow give way to warm breezes. There was simply no telling.

By five that afternoon, when the bell rang, she was in a state of renewed indecision, although, if anything, she was now marginally more inclined to decline the invitation. She would tell Peter that she did not feel ready to go to a nudist picnic just yet. Though when would one be ready for such an event?

How did one prepare oneself ? Perhaps nudists had a coming-out process in which they gradually came to terms with the fact that they felt more comfortable without any clothes. Or it could be a road to Damascus conversion, when the restric-tiveness of clothes suddenly came home to one with blinding clarity.

She went to the door and was just about to open it when the thought occurred to her: would Peter be clad or unclad on the doorstep? It was an absurd thought, and she dismissed it immediately. And when she opened the door, there he was, dressed quite normally in a tee-shirt and jeans. But he was carrying a small bag with him, and that, she assumed, would be for the abandoned clothes.

He greeted her quite normally, as if he had come to collect her for the cinema or a restaurant rather than a nudist picnic.

“We should be getting along there soon,” he said, looking at his watch. “Things begin quite promptly.”

And what, she wondered, were these things?

“I’m not quite . . .” she began. But he did not seem to have heard her. He asked her instead whether she had a bag which A Great Sense of Purity

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she could bring. “Or you can share mine,” he said, pointing to his bag. “There’s enough room in there for both of us.”

“But . . .”

“No, that’s fine. This bag is big enough. You don’t have to bring anything else. That’s fine.”

“But I was . . .”