EXCERPT FROM SARA’S JOURNALMay 7, 1999
Calle Conde de Barajas, Seville
The Best Burger of My Life
"Is there a Burger King nearby?" Matt’s got a couple of
wrinkled-up caterpillars where his eyebrows should be. "I had the best burger of my
life in Málaga."
After some loose directions he leaves the Conservatory. For the first
time David and I are alone. There’s a communal sigh as he finishes his chapter and I
scuffle through a few more pages of editing. At 9:30 we step out into the balmy city.
San Marco is a small door on Calle Cuna. Cuna runs parallel to Sierpes,
and is another tightly packed and colourful pedestrian shopping street. Behind the doors
is an elegant dining room, hand-painted and dribbling with frescoes and slipcovers and
black-tied waiters. It looks fancy, but really the atmosphere is casual, the prices are
reasonable, and most importantly it’s a break from the jamon and the fried potatoes
and other Andalusian standards. We enter in our cargos and hush puppies, and the maitre
d’ seats us immediately.
San Marco’s menu is a broad range of fresh Italian items –
salad with Gorgonzola, mozzarella and tomatoes, anti pasta, a myriad of pates, homemade
pastas with pesto and spinach and stuffed with seafood, small pizzas and fish and meat
dishes. A delight of ice-cream-stuffed crepes and homemade butter cookies and morrocan
mint tea await for dessert.
It’s late and we’re walking, stuffed and full of love for
each other, back towards the Conservatory. On the stoop sits Matt, checking his watch as
we round the corner.
"How was you burger?" The question is sincere.
"Great until I had to share it with a twelve year-old waving a
switchblade in my face!" Matt’s voice is booming, as always, and slightly
distressed, as always, but gaining confidence now that he’s blurted the gory news.
"What?!" We go through the expected "I can’t
believe it"s. My experience has been that Seville’s hungry are gentle creatures
with pennywhistles and dancing dogs.
"I was sitting in the Plaza San Francisco. Well, first I went to
get my burger. Then I walked to San Francisco and sat on the steps of the Ayuntamiento
(City Hall). It was empty.
So I was sitting there and this kid…" "Was he
grubby?" "…yeah he was a little gruff…this gruff little kid comes up
to me. His mother’s with him. He comes up to me sitting on the steps and says,
‘blah blah blah blah’ like he wants some money or something. He’s got his
hand in his pocket. I’m sitting there eating my burger so I look at him and say
(expletive here). He says, ‘(expletive here?)’ and pulls a switchblade out of
his pocket. All the while his mom is standing behind him…"
"How old is he?" "…Yeah, he’s about twelve.
Anyway I look at him like he just made one big huge mistake because where I come from you
don’t pull a knife on somebody unless you’re planning to use it. And I
wasn’t going to kill this twelve year-old. So I broke off half of my burger and
handed it to him.
I think he realized that he had just got away with something because he
took the burger and ran off."
"And his mom?"
"She ran off too!"
