EXCERPT FROM SARA’S JOURNALFebruary 17, 1999
Calle Conde de Barajas, Seville
Shouting Match
Now I know how to lay cement on a brick wall.
Four men is dusty pants have chipped the old wall away from its
foundation. They talk in loud voices as they work. Now they stand on the scaffolding that
is just a foot from our tiny patio and throw wet cement at the old bricks. There’s a
man on the ground who makes the cement in a small mixer, attaches a bucket to a rope and
sends it up to the fourth storey. The cement goes up, gets flicked at the wall, flattened
out with a spatula, and then the empty bucket goes back down to the mixer man.
When the building across the street catches on fire the workmen stop.
Fire trucks pull up to the bar--the kitchen is filled with black smoke. The whole street
smells like burning grease. Now the proprietor is sweeping wet, black garbage and taking
it across the street in a wheelbarrow. He is dumping his burnt kitchen on top of a pile of
broken old wall.
A man with a dog has stepped into the alley with the scaffolding. He is
yelling at one of the men who has not left for comidas. The men are having a
shouting match. The man at the top is doing most of the listening. Something about the
police. The man with the dog is getting himself worked up. His voice is breaking. Now his
dog is barking, too. He is shouting over the barking and the man at the top is shouting
back and it’s as if they are in our studio.
Each night, after the construction has stopped, a woman mops her floor
in a room above ours. Each night she opens her window and dumps her washing water into the
alley. Each night a man waits for the sound of the emptying water bucket, opens his window
and begins to shout. His shouting goes on for a long while. The woman yells back at him.
They shout at each other about the bucket of water falling from three storeys.
