ARROW - 23. Chapter 23

Walking into the museum, we were given a brochure to guide us to the various exhibits. I saw a few students. I didn’t expect to see the crowd we had seen in Paris.

We were standing in front of a painting by Goya titled Saturn Devouring his Son. “Armand, that is a horrible painting.”

“It is unusual, and Goya was inspired by Rueben’s painting of the same theme.”

“I’m not sure I would like that painting. It is grotesque.”

“A Greek myth inspired this painting. Saturn was told that one of his sons would overthrow him. He had overthrown his father, so he wanted to prevent this. What he did was to eat his children as they were born. In Greek mythology, the names of these children were Vesta, Juno, Neptune, Dis, and Ceres. It wasn’t unusual for artists to use myths to inspire their painting.”

After explaining this to Colin, he tapped me on my shoulder, moving his head to indicate what was behind me. Looking, there were three girls with sketch pads. As I expected, questions. One of the girls wanted to know how I knew about this painting. I explained how I had studied paintings by the masters when I was a student, and one of those masters was Goya. I told her I preferred the painting style of Goya as compared to Picasso. I should’ve stopped talking earlier because, over the next two hours, I discussed my thoughts on several different artists. I could see Colin becoming anxious as our discussions were in Spanish.

“Colin, I’ll explain what we were discussing later.”

For the rest of the morning, as we moved from painting to painting, my entourage followed us. I made sure I explained the painting to Colin before answering any questions from the group. Occasionally, I would tell Colin what they asked and my answer before answering their questions. I was surprised that they were patient once I explained that Colin didn’t understand Spanish. A few of them asked their question in English, and I answered in English and Spanish in those cases.

It was close to 1 pm when we took a lunch break. I told the students that we had to leave, and I wasn’t sure when we would return.

“I’m sorry that I seem to draw a crowd when I try to explain to you a little about the paintings we see. If the art schools were smart, they would hold their classes in the museum rather than a sterile classroom. Let’s have lunch in that cafe.

Walking in, I recognized it as a tapa cafe. “Armand, there are no tables.”

“In these restaurants, you stand at the bar. You’ll enjoy this.”

Walking to the bar, a man came and asked what we would like to drink. We ordered wine, although most of the clientele that afternoon were drinking flutes of beer. Bringing our wine, I told him my friend had never been to a tapa bar. He told me not to worry, and I knew Colin was in for a treat.

The man brought us an empty plate and a plate with three sauces. I could see the confusion on Colin’s face. He took out grilled potatoes, and I whispered to Colin they are called Potatas Bravos. As the man passed in front of the patrons, he added some to their plates. When he added some to Colin and my plate, I took a spoon and added some of the spicy tomato sauce to our dish. Then I watched Colin as he took his first bite.

You would think that eating the small servings, you would still be hungry when you left the cafe. But that isn’t true. The dishes are small, but since you are eating slowly, your appetite is satisfied.

“Well, what do you think of the Tapa Bar?”

“I thought it was great, and I think we could do something like that at the club.”

“Did you enjoy all of the food we ate?”

“Yes, why?”

“Have you had squid before?”

“No, was that one of the dishes we had?”

“Yes, it was the fried dish that we put lemon juice on. In a restaurant, it’s called Calamare.”

“Ok, what else did we eat?”

“We had Spanish ham, Spanish sausage, and croquettes.”

Colin became quiet as we walked back to the museum. We were standing in front of another Goya painting, “Armand, if we are here tomorrow, I would like to go back to that cafe, and I want to see how they prepared those foods.”

“They have those foods in a lot of different places. I’ll bet they prepare them at the bar at our hotel.” I knew I hadn’t heard the last of tapas.

The museum was quiet as we walked in. Then I remembered siesta in Spain was typical. So for the rest of the afternoon, we saw paintings by El Greco. I explained to Colin they called him El Greco because he came from Greece. His real name was Domenikos Theotokopoulos. He signed his paintings with his full name in Greek.

We saw paintings by Raphael, Titan, Rueben, and Tintoretto. The painting that made the biggest impression on Colin was La Maja by Goya,

and I wasn’t sure if it was the woman’s size or the fact she was nude.

On the walk back to our hotel, I tied to explain that women at that time were considered desirable. But he would disagree. “If, I said if, I liked women, I’d never pick a woman of that size.”

“Then you are lucky you like me instead.” That got a smile and a daring kiss on the cheek.

We had time for a rest before getting dressed for dinner. Tonight I had arranged for dinner at the Corral de la Moreria. They have a 4-star restaurant followed by an award-winning flamenco tableau. I knew that this would be exciting for Colin.