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The Group

Kim Farleigh

    The curving road disappeared behind converging walls, swallowed up by facades. Lights glowed gold under turquoise heavens. Black panes lined the road.
    Twenty-five people were on the street, wearing the same dark-blue shirt.
    “We’re a group,” a man said, “so saving beds and seats in pensions and restaurants is out. We’re a group and we have rules.”
    “What are the rules?” someone asked.
    “You know what they are.”
    “No, I don’t!”
    “You know that saving beds is out. It’s obvious in a group.”
    “I saved a bed because I was asked to do it.”
    “Don’t do it.”
    “I’ll decide if I want to do it or not.”
    Stiff index fingers got pointed at angry faces.
    A man said: “Juan – look at this.”

*


    Down the road a man in a pension’s doorway said: “There would be a disaster here if there was a fire. The fire-escape door’s too narrow.”
    This man’s girlfriend was in the walking group. He had shown up unexpectedly to see her. The girlfriend was beside him, wearing the blue shirt. The man’s son was awkwardly quiet beside the girlfriend. The son looked like he was cemented to the spot. His facial features were frozen; but his eyes were glowing with an uncomfortable glint as if all his repressed energy was being fired out through those strangely shining irises.
    The manager opened the pension’s emergency exit and said: “With this door, and the two main doors, there’s enough space.”
    “No there isn’t,” the boyfriend said. “There’d be a crush.”
    The silent girlfriend, holding bags, was leaving the pension to move to her boyfriend’s hotel.
    “That’s enough!” someone screamed, down the road.
    “I’m going to ring the police,” the manager said. “You’ve got me worried now.”
    “The police could close this place down,” the boyfriend said. “It’s a death trap.”

    A man was waiting to speak to the manager. He just wanted his passport back. He thought it was the nicest pension he’d ever stayed in.
    The manager looked at the boyfriend and said: “Why should I listen to you!? You’re not even staying here! What right have you got to tell me what to do?! Get out of here!”
    “This is the last place,” the boyfriend said, “that I’d want my son to stay in.”
    The son had been dragged off under obligation. He just wanted to be with his friends. His arms hung down like stiff, unmoveable appendages. And now he was having to listen to this – this nonsense about his father being concerned.
    “This is unbelievable!” the manager said. “You’re not even staying here!”
    “Yes,” the boyfriend said, “but I know people who are!”
    “ENOUGH!” someone screamed, down the street.
    The finger-pointers had stuck their foreheads together. Juan and Carlos were chuckling.
    “Pack your bags up in the morning,” the group organiser yelled, “and leave!”
    “I wouldn’t be surprised,” the boyfriend said, “if I read in the press that everyone staying in this place has died in a fire.”
    The manager’s eyes blazed with disbelief.
    “Get out of here now!” she screamed.
    “I’m on the street,” the boyfriend replied, “not in your death trap. I can stand on the street as long as I like.”
    “I’m closing the door,” the manager said. “You’re mad!”
    “Stick your door up your arse,” the boyfriend said.
    The things one has to endure to get one’s passport back, the other man thought.
    The girlfriend disappeared with the boyfriend and the son. She had had no idea that her boyfriend was going to show up. The boyfriend wrapped his arm around her as they went up the street. He hadn’t been going out with his girlfriend for very long. The son trailed behind them.
    “Unbelievable!” the manager said, to the man who just wanted his passport back.
    She was now speaking in English. The foreigner who wanted his passport back was happy with English because he didn’t want the other people in the reception area to understand.
    “He told me to fuck off,” she said. “This group is mad!”
    The foreigner wasn’t wearing the blue shirt. He had anticipated a ridiculous argument about rules so he didn’t want to be associated with the group.
    “That guy isn’t with our group,” he said, “and he shouldn’t have been here complaining about a place he’s not staying in.”
    “In three years of managing this place,” the manager said, “I’ve never had this. He told me to fuck off!”
    “I’m sorry about that,” the foreigner said.
    Diplomacy gets passports back.
    “In three and a half years I’ve had nothing like this,” the manager re-iterated. “He had me so worried that I was even going to ring the police to get them to examine the door.”
    The manager went back behind her desk.
    “Incredible,” she said. “And he’s not even staying here!”
    “It was none of his business,” the foreigner agreed.
    The foreigner stood before the desk. He heard the organiser’s name get shouted out down the street: “Chema! For God’s sake – that’s enough. Enough!”
    Juan and Carlos gritted their teeth together to stop their laughter from breaking free and reaching the street. They didn’t want the entertainment to stop.
    “I was wondering,” the foreigner asked, “if you’re finished with my passport?”
    “I’ve given it to a member of your group – Fran.”
    “Okay, thanks,” the foreigner said.
    He went outside. The group were silent – except for the woman who was shouting: “ENOUGH!”
    The foreigner approached Fran and whispered: “Fran – have you got my passport?”
    “I’ve given it to Toni.”
    “Okay.”
    Toni was standing with his arms folded, looking at the woman who had just shouted: “ENOUGH!”
    “Toni – have you got my passport?”
    “Yes.”
    “Okay. I’ll be in the reception. I’m going to read a newspaper.”
    The foreigner controlled his bewilderment. He’s left it in the pension! he thought. Oh, my God! Oh, well....
    “Okay, I’ll bring it to you.”
    “Thanks.”
    The foreigner was also uneasy about his passport being handed from person to person. It wasn’t one of those things that you wanted other people to touch. There was something intimate about it, as if it could produce undisclosed threats.
    Two beautiful women were sitting on armchairs in the reception. The foreigner sat down on a sofa beside them and started reading a newspaper. His passport’s fate was out of his hands through no fault of his own.
    “You’re not telling me what to do!” he heard, coming from outside.
    “Leave!!”
    Juan and Carlos were giggling. Beneath them they could see a bald man, who looked like a bulldog, pointing a finger at another man whose hair, standing up, resembled an angry bird’s plume. A woman, with dark, furious eyes, was standing between them, screaming: “ENOUGH!”
    “This outclasses cinema,” Carlos whispered.
    “This movie,” Juan replied, “should be called Pilgrim’s Lack of Progress.”
    The foreigner buried his face in the newspaper. The two beautiful women showed no reaction to the fight. They seemed above passionate indiscretions. Their skin shone with translucent purity.
    The same petulant lack of co-operation and trivial brutality, that had underpinned the events that night on that street, was underpinning the news stories that the foreigner was reading. But there wasn’t any association between those stories and him; hence those greed-ridden stories were entertaining.
    Carlos said: “Juan – enough!” every time Juan did something.
    “Juan,” he kept saying, “enough! Juan! Enough! Juan! ENOUGH!”
    Juan’s laughter caused Carlos to say: “Juan – stop laughing! JUAN! ENOUGH!”
    Juan returned to his newspaper. He loved idiocy; therefore he loved the news. The news gave him a feeling of light-hearted superiority.
    “Hey,” he said, “listen to this.”
    He read a story about a family decimated by lottery money.
    “They all wanted more from the winner,” he laughed, “including the distant cousins twenty-six thousand times removed. One threw a rock through a window in the winner’s new home. Another one stole his car! Another one broke into his house and stole his furniture when he was in Vegas.”

    Juan and Carlos chuckled.
    The foreigner was reading the same story. Imagine the embarrassment, he thought, if you were the only normal one in that family.
    He smiled, fleetingly, glad he wasn’t wearing the blue shirt.
    The girlfriend felt the strong arm of her newly-acquired boyfriend around her as she went into the hotel. That arm represented her boyfriend’s “comforting, masculine, protective concern.”
    The son knew exactly what it really represented; and he just couldn’t wait to escape as his mother had done.



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