Marchena
By Andrew Edwards
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The bus took a half hour winding through the crowded streets before we could
see the Estacion Santa Justa across its wide parking lot, glimmering like a
mirage in the warming sun. I still had hope. As soon as I got out I ran, albeit
halfheartedly, to the station, but to no avail. I had missed the train to Granada,
and the next train was at 5 p.m., six hours away.
Six hours. The day was heating up outside, and my backpack and sleeping bag
were strapped to my back like something out of "Pilgrim's Progress."
There was no way I was going to carry that around all day. The last time I had
done that was in Amsterdam a few weeks before, and had learned an expensive
lesson: nothing attracts muggers like a tired tourist trudging along with all
of his worldly possessions strapped to his back. I scanned around the large,
white, station interior looking for something to do, or at least somewhere to
put my bags.
The interior of the station was large and a dusky off-white color. Glowing
sunlight streamed in through large plate-glass windows, onto rows of blue curved
metal benches. Travelers were sitting scattered out among them, reading newspapers,
chatting among themselves, or merely staring at the large black display that
announced arrivals and departures. There were money changers and a cafeteria-style
restaurant next to the long rows of ticket windows. Off in the far right corner
was an Internet kiosk… an Internet kiosk! It is the chapel of the lonely
traveler. I sauntered over to pay my respects.
Only
one person was standing, typing next to what looked like three free screens.
Unfortunately, it soon became apparent that his was the only screen that worked
and that he was chatting, listening to a Discman, and had no intention of leaving
anytime soon. I sat down, my pack still on my back, to wait.
A young woman with a duffel bag slung across her back came up to try one of
the screens.
"It doesn't work," I said in Spanish. "He's got the only one."
She mimed a kick at the computer and smiled. "Thanks," she said,
and came over, sitting across from me to wait. She was lovely in the Spanish
way, a small face, tan, with long curly brown hair and sparkling blue eyes.
She said something quickly in Spanish.
"I'm sorry. I don't understand," I said, holding my little blue Oxford
Spanish phrase book.
"You're English?" she said slowly.
"No, I'm American, Californian," I said. "Sorry, I don't speak
Spanish very well."
"That's OK," she answered in heavily accented English. "I don't
speak English very well."
She smiled, her teeth shining pearly. It turned out that she was an orthodontics
student at the University of Seville. As the headphoned man chatted away in
front of us, we talked, neither of us particularly understanding each other
very well. She showed me molds of her teeth, and I made her pronounce English
passages out of the phrasebook that were translated into Spanish phonetics.
An hour and a half passed.
"I have to go," she said in Spanish. "Which train are you waiting
for? Madrid?"
"No, I'm going to Granada at 5," I replied, pointing to the listing
on the arrivals/departures board.
"I'm going to Marchena," she said. A beautiful name for a town, Marchena.
"You should come. It's on the way. It is a very pretty town."
I checked my Europass rail map and it wasn't even mentioned.
"Sure," I replied.
We
got on the train at 3 p.m. She ran into some friends from home and started talking
with them. I stared out the window as the scenery rolled by in the late afternoon
sun. The land was rolling and warm. Farms and grain silos, orange groves and
low, flowing hills sailed past, stretching into the horizon.
Marchena arrived, a little less than an hour later. A little stop, just a small
wooden platform and one room station on the edge of the tracks. An old man with
a railway uniform ushered us off the train. Her family was waiting and she ran
to them. She waved goodbye and shouted something in Spanish I didn't catch.
I went over to the ticket window to check when the train to Granada was coming
through, and when I looked back she was gone. The station emptied, the people
got into cars and drove away. I thanked the station master for his help, and
walked outside.
The soft, warm wind was blowing with the kind of late afternoon dry heat that
warms you from the inside out, leaving your skin tingling. A stray dog, a mottled
greyhound, long and morbidly thin, looked up at me longingly and returned to
digging in the gutter. The smell of dry earth was in the air. I turned right
on the mosaic sidewalk and started toward Marchena. It was beautiful, shining
white on two hills, which must have been the tallest for miles around, crowned
by ancient Moorish battlements and studded with reaching church towers.
The street stretched on long and straight up into the town. As I drew closer,
the detail started to appear. On the outside of the village, somewhat closer
to me, were more modern-looking buildings, their painted walls dulled by the
dust. I passed a couple of small apartments, a school and a playground. They
seemed to be poorer housing, which struck me as odd. It always seems that at
home in California the richer people lived in the new houses. The only sound
was the wind as the sun inched toward the horizon behind me.
The road faded to pavement as I approached what looked to be the town square,
quiet except for a few teenagers lounging in front of a small cafe. The road
branched here and I headed up to the right, toward castle walls.
The town that stretched up the hill in front me as I hiked looked like something
out of an M.C. Escher drawing. Stone steps, patios and houses were all interwoven
with an uncalculated grace. A whitewashed stone wall, occasionally breached
by steps, lined the street I ascended. Above me, on a beautiful wrought-iron
bench, an old couple watched as I passed by.
At
the crest of the road, the walls loomed at the top of a dirt embankment. They
were a deep brown, pitted from what could have been bullet holes or just pockmarks
worn by the sands of time. A set of rough steps carved out of the dirt led up
the embankment to a small, open gate in the wall. I climbed up about halfway
and looked back over the plain. The land seemed to go on forever into the setting
sun. The hills shimmered and glistened in the fading light, the wind whipping
it into rolling waves of sun-bleached grass. What could it have been like hundreds
of years before, when this castle was first built? Swarms of Castillian knights,
shining in plate mail, mounted on snorting chargers, clashing with the Moslems,
whose home this land had become. Longswords and Scimitars flash in this same
dying sun, their banners streaming in the same wind that was now warming my
face, dying for the same crumbling, brown earth on which I was standing.
I walked up through the gateway and emerged into a walled courtyard. The main
tower of the fortress had been turned into a chapel. Its thick, polished, wooden
doors were wreathed in palm fronds interwoven with flowers.
I continued across the flagstone yard and out a larger double-arched stone
portal on the other side. As I passed through it and onto the street, I happened
to look back, and above the gate was an intricately worked mosaic in the Moslem
style. Its white tiles were fading to pink. The sun was setting. I had to get
back to the station.
I wound down the hill on the narrow cobblestone streets, which wouldn't have
been wide enough for decent sidewalks back home. The houses were beautiful but
packed together as if they were one communal space. Their ornately carved wooden
doors all opened directly on the street. There were no yards, but I could see
plants leaning down from what must be gardens on the rooftops.
The walk back was achingly beautiful and empty. Besides a few children playing
on one street corner, I didn't see another soul. Left alone with my imaginings,
it was possible to believe that I had been whisked back to another time. In
these steep, winding streets, the echoes of history resonated powerfully, the
legacy of generations that had lived and died and fought and laughed in this
place.
As the train pulled up and the mustached conductor waved me aboard, I realized
why. It was because this place wasn't for sale. These people had not preserved
the beauty of their town and the monuments to its past out of a desire for tourist
dollars, but out of their own love.
In this world, which is getting smaller and smaller as the years pass by, fewer and fewer places like Marchena will remain. Perhaps someday, like so many other towns, Marchena will bow to the lowest common denominator, turn its lovely hillsides into vacation homes, casinos and curio shops. But we, the lonely travelers who stumble upon it, will be the poorer for it.