You haven't heard from us in a while--for various reasons, obviously, such as slosh, long covid, more slosh induced by long covid, plus the painters that arrived to redo the house who forced us into temporary retirement in Switzerland. But they finally left (the painters), so we could return to Alcobaça and put the house back in order. And here we are with a new view of the entrance hall:
Note the difference? You don't? This is how our entrance looked before:
And the difference? Well, the colors, but also the metallic print on the wall. Here it is enlarged:
"Tata, the Beatles also survived," it says, and it's a quote from our second GREEN-EYES book, where John's neighbor Joe instigates John's friends to face/ignore the exalted crowd outside and exit the building urgently (the Beatles, remember, the first boy band, facing exalted crows all the time during the exalted part of their career).
Here's a brief fragment of the episode:
The bell rings again. I walk to the buzzer, and there’s commotion on the parking lot below, thrilled voices on the intercom asking for Ben. And now it arrives from the other side, a mid-level pitch of cheers and shouts traveling around the condo and through the windows on the canal side. Ben, holding on to a window catch, peers nervously at the sound waves.
There’s a knock on the main door. I peek through the peephole, but it’s not a groupie (if there was one there would be all), it’s a middle-aged man with no trace of fandom on his face—-my neighbor Joe. He looks upset even though he lives in the duplex penthouse above and owns the latest model of my jalopy. I open the door.
“This is you, right?” he says with an abstracted gesture while staring past me at the girl on the couch. “What is this?”
“That’s Juliette,” I answer. “She’s just back from visiting her sister at the hospital. The festival, you know, yesterday. The doomsday, the storm. Professor Bienpensant.”
He shakes his head. “Not her. The hullabaloo below.”
“It’s not us,” I say.
“It’s hem,” he replies, and points a finger at the nervous Ben near the window.
“Ben is a friend,” I say, “he’s staying with me because he was working for the festival.”
“Working, ha! It was on TV, this woman with her name like ice cream.”
“What can we do? It’s not our fault.”
“Look,” he says, “I ain’t no nigga-haitin’ redneck, and your Ben, with his third leg, that’s what it is all about, ain’t it—-I’m from the South too, from Louisiana, I’ve seen guys like him in the locker room. You must get him out of here. This is a quiet, unspoiled neighborhood. We want to keep it that way. Now!”
The doorbell shrills—-amped-up electrons working their way into everybody’s nerves.
“How do we get him out of here?” I ask.
The shrilling has ceased, and the jeers below segue into a sing-song: “Happy Birthday to you...”
“They’ll storm the building before you know it,” Joe says. “This structure is way less solid than it looks. Five floors of pure timber. If these hoi polloi get up here to your floor, God help us.” Meanwhile, the singsong has disintegrated into high-pitched shouts, “Ben, Ben, Ben.”
“We can’t leave, they’ll tear us to pieces,” I say.
“Tut-tut,” Joe shakes his head. “The Beatles also survived.”
Stay tuned...
