T O D A Y Is the expat life a rewarding experience or a lonely existence? Share your experiences living abroad in Table Talk's Wanderlust area. R E C E N T L Y From Python to Pacific By Don George Former Monty Python star Michael Palin discusses his new PBS series and book, "Full Circle" (11/18/97) Full Circle By Michael Palin An excerpt that traces five days in his 245-day odyssey (11/18/97) Road Warrior Chris Gulker (11/17/97) The Surreal Gourmet By Bob Blumer Dinner and a video with a tasty trout recipe (11/14/97) The Surreal Gourmet By Bob Blumer Dinner and a video with a tasty trout recipe (11/14/97) Mondo Weirdo By Andrew Brown A charming -- and cheap! -- French château (11/14/97) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Wanderlust archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Your virtual travel agency - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -		Scenes from a passionate stay in Granada. BY CURT HOPKINS | Some years ago a friend and I were all suited up and, with business plan and letters of introduction in hand, were a day away from flying to Los Angeles to chew the ears off half a dozen weasel-headed entertainment executives in the hopes of scoring some backing for an "entertainment property" we had created. Walking down the street in the Oregon city we lived in, blind with planning and stress, one of us turned to the other out of the blue and said: "Fuck this, let's go to Spain and live with the Gypsies." And we did. RATÓN - - - - - - - - - - - - Ian and I sat on a stone bench in Granada's Plaza Nueva, shaded from the sun by the spring leaves of a fig tree. It was, with the cool wind of the still-snowy Sierra Nevada blowing up the Darro, like sitting still inside a lime. Outside the light was liquid. Like mercury. Ian was stabbing away at some difficult run of notes in soleá on his guitar, a beautiful old flamenco guitar made in Valencia in the '30s by the Ricardo Sanchez family, cypress wood, slanted pegboard, ivory bridge. Each note struck hung ringing in a doorway or window. This was our soundtrack: Ian's ceaseless playing, my ceaseless smoking and incantatory mumbling trying to chip out some stubborn line or phrase: "I shall climb through the silence of cypress ..." A Gypsy stopped in front of us, the sun behind him, Mephistophelean silhouette, long black hair, black pointed beard, leaning on a knobby cane wrapped in maroon leather and studded with carpet tacks. He looked like the devil. Or a king. "That tree has a great deal of wisdom." "What?" "That tree you are sitting under has much wisdom." "Yeah?" "Can I see your guitar?" He sat down on the bench next to Ian and took the guitar gently, like handling another man's child. He strummed the strings lightly with his thumb, lurching quietly, awkwardly through soleá, then handed it back to Ian. "Can you play for a singer?" "I don't know." "Play soleá." The wind blew leaves in skirls along the polished paving stones of the streets, over bridges, along dirt roads, past empty cisterns ... "Now move. No, here. Now here. See? Eso. That's it." Ratón sang, low, in a voice between a sob and the rasp of a wood lathe: The limbs of cypress trees stretched out over graveyard walls at night, the limbs of olive trees like dancers ... That was the first time we met Ratón. In his youth, Ratón toured, as do many Gypsies, with a flamenco troupe. He toured Austria, which he loved with its magnificent Gothic edifices; Belgium with its canals; France with its strong wine and women. But flamenco falls in and out of fashion -- which drugs, largely, do not. So, with a wife and son to feed, Ratón became Granada's on-street hash connection. To watch him operate was a marvel. He would stand in the Plaza Nueva and one of his lieutenants, either Miguel or the Guy with the Long Hair or the Guy Who Does Palmas, would saunter up, avert his mouth and whisper something. Ratón would nod and the lieutenant would disappear again. And with this he had new shoes, a car and an apartment with two bedrooms. Hash was not illegal to smoke in Spain, just to sell. So after the Arab sheiks in Marbella or the Castellano businessmen in Madrid got off the phone with Syria, they called up a Gypsy to do their dirty work for them. Evening, and clouds had turned Granada the blue-gray of the sea. The torn sky shuddered and the rain ran cold in streams down the air. An hour previous it had been hot enough for shirtsleeves, and Susan, Ian and I had walked down the Cuesta del Chapiz from the Sacromonte, where we were staying in a huge house on the Camino del Sacromonte. We walked down the narrow street where all the old whores sat against the ancient walls in short cane chairs, their doors open onto tiny, threadbare and extremely tidy rooms filled almost entirely by a large bed and night table. Susan always tightened her grip on my arm when we hit Conception, the cross street whose blue and white enamel sign marked the beginning of this silent gauntlet. I'd hoist up my artificial smile and the three of us would take a deep breath. There was really no reason for apprehension, but there was something so sad in the little rooms and the silence that we never became inured to. This string of chairs and doors ended at the equally ironically named cross street, Calle del Aire. We wandered around the so-called Muslim district, past the Saseteria with its Castellano convert tailor, the Al Faguara Teteria, or teashop, the "Arabic" Teteria. We passed the Restaurant Boabdil and La Bodega, coming out opposite the Cathedral, where Ferdinand and Isabella are interred, down from the Banco Santander on the Via Colón, where Gypsies were murdered by the hundreds when fascist forces took Granada from the loyalists. We spent our last money on ice cream and started back up. ("Vais a subir?" came the constant call. Yes, we are ascending.) When the rain broke it fell in blue-black sheets and our shirts sucked around our backs and our hair fell down our heads like running ink. Shaking and hooting, we rounded a corner. Standing beneath the veranda outside a cafeteria stood Ratón, the Guy with the Long Hair and Ratón's son. He shouted to us. "Come here! Get over here and get out of the rain, you fools!" He ushered us in to the steamy cafeteria where they gave us bar towels to dry off with. "You want coffees? I'm buying." We drank sweet cafe con leche in the warm cafe and chatted while the rain poured blue into black outside the large glass windows. The dark smell of cheap cigarettes coiled up in blue smoke. Everything was blue. N E X T+P A G E +| The dark brilliance of Case del Puchero - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ILLUSTRATION BY SUSAN JACOBSON-HOPKINS