Running, jumping, climbing trees…

Mercado El Rastro by Sylvain Bourdois

A version of this was first published in In Madrid, December 2006

This Man Won’t Haggle!

“Dios mio hijo” she wined with her eyes gazing towards the sky. Her face wrinkled up like a dehydrated prune and the one tooth in her head jagged out of her mouth, accusing me like a witch’s finger.

I was at The Rastro and I was bargaining. From the tips of my toes to the hair on my head I was tingling with a snug pang of satisfaction. I was there at last. Merciless hangovers, expert procrastination, sleep deprivation and a flurry of prior engagements always seemed to conspire against me each Sunday. Now on a bright morning in October, with the Spanish summer heaving a final sigh, I had finally made it.

Each week the jumbled, intersecting streets around the La Latina/Tirso de Molina are jammed tightly with market stalls, peddlers and hucksters, all spilling over one another for recognition. They tug at sleeves, flit between stalls; bellow the latest ‘you-won’t-believe-what-price-THIS-is-going-for!’, all the time playing their crowd with the guile and calculation of a poker player. It’s good cop, bad cop for them. For us it is definitely the time to shove the hands deeply into the pockets.

Anyway, I was there with a purpose. On a special mission. Elevated above the chattering tourists and the marauding locals. In Madrid had sent me along to see what I could get for my money.

I had prepared myself for the assignment by re-watching the haggling scene in Monty Python’s ‘The Life of Brian’, and practicing the imperative in Spanish. I was only just recently back from China where bargaining is the national sport and I had once bought a Massai spear in Tanzania for $1. In short, I was quite confident.

So, I had wandered up from Tirso de Molina metro looking for something suitable. There were t-shirts swinging from various stalls of the anti-Bush variety, lots of uncomfortable looking underwear and a man who had swallowed a toy that made him sound like a canary. I even had a sniff of some men’s aftershave. It smelt as if it had come directly from Beelzebub’s bottom.

I finally set my sights upon a little stall swallowed up by the colour green. It could have been a bird-watching hut, I pondered. Here they sold military paraphernalia, ‘Che’- t-shirts , tin helmet, bottle green gas masks and NAZI armbands. Not politically correct but unquestionably scandalous. Perfect. I soon opted for a 1970s issue Communist police hat, odd I know, but my mind was made up. It had a shiny badge on top.

The fear a Latin woman can strike into a man’s heart

Two people were scuttling to-and-fro behind a tall trestle table that was cluttered with money boxes, more t-shirts and a few disquieting knuckledusters. It was like the Berlin Wall, stacked solidly between us and them. The first of the two people was a wild, Harley Davidson type, whose muscles were scarred with offensive tattoos and stretched up his arms. The other, a woman, was the epitome of Spanish stern. The type who spat and snarled and wouldn’t mind chopping the rest of the market down with an UZI if she only had the chance and the weaponry.

I beckoned the women over with a quivering finger, trying to look ponderous, interested, disinterested, mean, generous and approachable all in one spoonful.

This was the bit I had practiced earlier.

“This hat, I mean – it’s ok. What would you say would be a reasonable price? Not that I’m at all fussed either way to be honest with you. “

Well, that is how it went in my head. Meanwhile back on planet earth, my mouth opened a fraction and I wittered in diluted Castellano, ‘Cuanto vale?’ – whilst jabbing my finger into the air, vaguely in the direction of the hat.

“Diecisiete” she barked at me as if I was getting in the way of the weather.

Here we go: “Te doy ocho”

She gave out a loud snort and then went into the “dios mio hijo” speech that I started off this piece with. I was quite enjoying this by now.

I explained to her that I only had ten euros clattering around in my pocket, and I could not see why a hat should cost sixteen when at the stall opposite they were selling trench coats for less. I had a good point and she knew it. It was time for the counterattack. She went for the tourist angle. “Where are you from?” she demanded.

Sniffing victory

I decided to humour her a little. “I am from Salamanca, but I’ve lost the accent.” This, however, only served to confuse the situation, and she merely pulled the hat off its hook and thrust it into my hands, gazed to the heavens and muttered dejectedly, “Vale, once.”

I was sniffing victory but I thought for the hell of it I’d keep on going: I was seeing the next big In Madrid headline: “Englishman buys hat for five euros from miserable Spanish women!”

“Come on. I’ve only got ten euros and I want to buy my girlfriend (who I had recently invented) a present. I tell you what I’ll give you six right now,” the adrenalin was chasing itself in excited spurts around my veins. I fetched six euros out of my pocket and displayed it alluringly.

She could not have looked more disgusted if I had just asked her to take her clothes off and run around The Rastro singing the French national anthem. Her eyes opened up like plates, the corners of her mouth curled like burnt matches and I felt the kind of fear that only Latino women can strike into the soul of a man. She grabbed the hat out of my hands and threw it back onto a hook. All of a sudden I was invisible. A shadow of her commercial past.

Beaten and defeated

“I’ll give her a couple of minutes”, I thought, as I retreated. Then I’ll skip back and offer her the ten euros that was bouncing around in my pocket. That, I reasoned would still be a modest success. I made my way over to a café and bought myself a drink. The streets were full of people enjoying the last of the year’s sun and I cast my eye gently across the scene. There was that familiar musty pang in the Madrid air; tourists buried their heads in guide books, fingering their maps with intent. A pigeon sauntered along the street with a swagger, a lump on bread clamped in its beak. It was pure, idyllic, Spanish bliss.

I lit a cigarette and wandered back towards the stall whilst the heat of the ash hummed between my fingers. There were more people there than before, all bunched around the trestle table sifting through the piles of tack. Then, horror!

A stocky New Yorker was stood, sporting a rum grin and holding my hat. “Hey, Donna. Look what I’ve just gone got ourselves for the front room. A real Communist Hat! And only twenty bucks!”

My nemesis, the arch-market sales woman of Madrid, smirked at me from behind.