This
week we shall be taking a look at Ibiza’s legendary bars as well as a
rather special local beverage, but to start with a word on the person
who first made book-collecting fashionable. According to Lionel Casson,
author of the groundbreaking Libraries in the Ancient World
(2001), the first properly-attested bibliomaniac was none other than
Aristotle. So extraordinary was his collection that when Ptolemy of
Alexandria decided to add a little cultural gloss to his upstart
dynasty, the learned Stagyrite’s library provided the blueprint.
Aristotle’s scrolls were eventually inherited by some distant relatives
in Asia Minor, who resorted to hiding them in a cave when the ruler of
neighbouring Pergamum took up book-collecting. 200,000 of the Pergamum
scrolls (mostly of parchment, which derives from this place-name) were
later purloined by Mark Anthony and presented to Cleopatra in rival
Alexandria as a special token of affection. Back to Aristotle’s pride
and joy, it was the bibliophile Apellicon who brought the collection
back to Athens, but not for long. He couldn’t resist showing some choice
items off in Rome - with the result that after seizing Athens in 86 BC,
Sulla swiped the lot and hauled them off to the Eternal City. The
priceless bequest disappeared from the face of the earth when the
dictator’s spendthrift son Faustus disposed of it to pay some debts.
Tempus edax rerum. Time, the devourer of all things.
Van Gogh,
Still Life with
Absinthe
(1887)
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Although Aristotle never wrote about Ibiza, he did have something
to say about the alcoholic muse: “Men who have been intoxicated
with wine fall down face foremost, whereas they who have drunk
barley beer lie outstretched on their backs.” What would he
have made of absinthe, one wonders? It was known to the ancient
Greeks as apsinthion (‘undrinkable’, the wormwood herb
making it very bitter), an elixir and cure for bad breath. To
Parisian bohemians it was la fée verte - ‘the green
fairy’ - as the viridescent spirit, a veritable muse, was said to
stimulate the creative juices. For Ibicenco peasants, however, the
cocktail had a different name. In a travel piece originally
written for The New Yorker, Norman Lewis singled it out for
special mention: |
The
proper drink, though, of Ibiza, is suisse - pronounced as if the
final ‘e’ were accented. This is absinth mixed with lemon juice, and
costs one peseta a glass. At the colmado of San Carlos - a
village once famous for classing as ‘foreigners’ all persons not born in
the village - you can see the customers on Sundays line up, a glass of
suisse in hand, to receive an injection of vitamin B in the left
arm, administered by the proprietress, Anita. The injection costs 5
pesetas, and is supposed to ensure success in all undertakings,
especially those of the heart, during the ensuing week.
Norman
Lewis, The Changing Sky (1959), p. 213
This
Ibicenco term (suissé or, more correctly, suïsser) may
derive from the fact that the modern form of absinthe was created in
Switzerland by a doctor fleeing the French Revolution. Alternatively, it
may derive from ‘Suisse La Bleue’ - the most sought-after brand in the
world today, straight from the foothills of the Alps. In a later article
Lewis wrote that absinthe was drunk in such quantities that it caused
the peasant women’s hair to fall out. Be this as it may, as the
preferred local tipple - after vi pagés - it was highly
appropriate that when Peter Kinsley decided to write a book about
bar-life in Ibiza, The Green Fairy became its working title. This
book has just appeared in print as part of a larger work, Bogged Down
in County Lyric, whose title derives from a passing comment by
American writer and absinthe-connoisseur Stephen Seley: ‘We’re bogged
down in County Lyric. All I ever wanted to do was write something that
would sing down the centuries.’ Barely three decades down the
chronological highway, Seley’s last published work, The End of Mercy
(1969) is well off-key. Here is its final page - a fairly typical sample
- to dispel any doubts:
MERCY
AROSE
or:
‘To
what do you attribute your success, Mr Seley?’
‘Failure.’ *
* this asterisk’s for fun*
* so is this one *
* and this? *
* simply rhymes with parenthesis, now) closed *
* and that alors? left lying on the floor of Mercy’s ...
mind? *
* it (Mercy, too) WILL arise in Volume Two, when
we’ll try again *
* alors ...
Stephen
Seley, The End of Mercy, p. 222
Yes - the
leaden wand of the green fairy. Published in Amsterdam, double Dutch is
the prevailing idiom of this strange curio from Bibliomaniac’s Corner.
No such
charge can be levelled at Bogged Down, although the first third
has a touch of Joycean stream-of-consciousness, which encourages
speed-reading up to the Ibiza chapters (pp. 135-351). It forms the third
volume of a projected tetralogy, the narrative being taken up where the
author left off in Volume Two, Don’t Tell My Mother I’m a
Newspaperman... Kinsley, who styles himself ‘McGinn’ and
writes in the third person throughout, arrives in New York on the eve of
the American launch of his first novel, Three Cheers for Nothing.
We follow some breathless globe-hopping for eleven chapters before
eventually coming to rest in Ibiza’s Calle Mayor. The year is 1969,
inland from Murcia people are just coming to grips with forks, and off
the Ibizan waterfront, Seley is expounding the principal advantage of
life on the White Island: ‘You can get a litre of gin for nothing. Of
course, you have to eat the occasional orange for your health.’
The
reader can tell it’s Ibiza because of the names: not Seley, but Steve
Primero; the supporting cast include Far Out Phyllis,
Jumping Susan (who cured a fit of depression by jumping from a
five-storey apartment, hitting each balcony on then way down),
Nescafé Jack, Crazy Hans, Finnish Dora, Sin Zapatos (a Swede who
always walked barefoot), Cherokee Frank, Pot Peggy (whose
children thought their surname was Pot), Peter the Book, Anna Banana,
Rick the Prick, Kamikaze Schmidt, Too Much Tommy, Gordon the Flute,
Hairy Pat, Charlie 103, Mad Mike, Wanted John (on the run from the
law, he became Unwanted John when the authorities dropped the
charge). Even the dogs have original labels - Sir Edward, Stroppy
and No-Name. Kinsley often uses these sobriquets to brilliant
effect:
‘Jill the Pill’s back,’ said George as he held the door.
‘Yes, and guess who’s with her? Chelsea Elsie.’
‘What? Randy Mandy’s friend?’
Bogged Down in County Lyric,
p. 221
George
Llewellyn was master of ceremonies at the George & Dragon, a bar in the
Calle Mayor, nearby Wauna’s being owned by a large and formidable
Anglo-American (Wauna Paul) who played up the fire-breathing beast for
passing trade. Many of the best one-liners come from this amazing duo,
and the present writer takes off his hat to Peter Kinsley for having the
presence of mind and journalistic savvy to record them for posterity.
It is
quite a line-up: Steve Primero, the archetypal alcoholic writer,
penniless, perennially plastered, quick to take offence and
unrelentingly rude; Tristan Jones, an old salt with a wicked sense of
humour; George and Wauna with their rapier-like repartee; Doreen on her
perch in the corner (‘I’m half Irish and half pissed and I came to Spain
to get away from twats like you.’); and Dora and Lena from Helsinki,
trying to raise the tone just a little:
‘They’re at it again,’ said the British tourist to his wife. ‘I won’t
’ave it.’ He stood up and walked over to Dora, a rotund and formidable
blonde even more amply proportioned than Doreen.
‘Would
you mind watching your language,’ said the tourist.
‘What
are you talking about?’
‘I said
‘watch your language,’ - there’s women and children present ’ere.’ He
pointed to
his wife and children.
‘But what has that got to do with me?’
‘We’ve had enough of it. That feller there -’ he pointed to Mad Mike,
‘was ’effing and
blindin’ last night when we were in ’ere. You should moderate your
language when women and children are present and stop swearing.’
‘But I wasn’t swearing.’
‘It sounded very much like it to me.’
‘We are speaking the Finnish language together. Urpa, Lena and I are
from Helsinki.
Urpa is a painter, Lena is a journalist and I teach music and art.’
‘Oooh, I’m very very sorry, Madam, I’m sure. I do apologise. Can I get
you a drink to
make up for my mistake?’
‘Three vodkas and a whisky for Mike.’
Bogged
Down in County Lyric,
pp. 158-9
Just
another day in a soggy corner of La Marina. Tristan Jones, as mentioned
in the previous article, was a prolific and highly-successful author of
yachting tales, among which Yarns
(1990) includes a chapter on Ibiza. When not eyeing up local
talent (including one of Abel Matutes’s daughters: ‘she’s twenty-three
and even now she has to be in by nine o’clock at night.’) his main hobby
seems to have been picking scraps with other ‘boaties’:
Jones caught him with a right hook that sent the
fisherman flying into the doorway of a souvenir shop. The gorgeous Miss
Matutes took the opportunity to use her discretion and hurry off,
consulting the minuscule white gold wrist watch that her father had
given her for staying a virgin, and wondering if she would dare to
accept the little Welsh captain’s invitation to - what had he called it?
‘Tea and crumpet’ - aboard his little yacht…
Bogged
Down in County Lyric,
pp. 299
The
reviewer is spoiled by the sheer number of anecdotes in this marvellous
book - the lynching of the municipal dog-catcher by a pack of beatnik
women, the mounted Guardia routing a barfull of hippies, the chair
thrown through the Post Office window by Steve Seley and the clerk’s
immediate response (‘Thank you Señor Esteve, we need some fresh air in
here’). But to end we will return to our fairy theme, used here by
Kinsley to christen a gay bar up in Dalt Vila, based on a real
establishment which opened (under a different name) near present-day
Anfora. Run by an English-Spanish couple it managed against all
expectations to survive for two whole months in the early 1970s. In the
book though, it is closed down the following day. Here we are on opening
night:
At the door, Doris Karloff clanked as he greeted the
guests with chain-mailed gauntlet. Ewald came as a Green Fairy, to the
titters of the assembled throng.
‘He’s misunderstood again,’ someone
said. ‘It’s the name of the drink they’re serving -
that mind-blowing stuff that tastes like licorice.’
‘No,’ said Youssef, ‘Doris wants to call the bar The Green Fairy. His English is
not very
good.'
‘That Cockney barman, George … I asked him for a shandy and
he said ‘Do you want it
in a straight glass or a gay glass’, the cheeky sod.
Two municipal policemen, in their navy blue uniforms
with the green piping, stopped suddenly at the packed throng in the
entrance to the new bar where men could dance with men. They pushed
their way through until they could see what was going on inside and
their faces turned the colour of the whitewash on the bar walls.
Breaking, unusually, into a trot, they hastened towards Headquarters
with the news that either the foreigners had gone mad or there had been
an invasion from Mars. They had seen Ewald dancing with Gordon the
Flute, Doris Karloff doing the rumba with Youssef wearing Wauna’s
curtains as a shirt, and the waiter from Es Quinques in full bridal
dress with a bouquet of fake orange blossom trying to get in to ask
Doris Karloff for a dance.
Bogged
Down in County Lyric,
pp. 324-327
Bogged
Down in County Lyric
can be obtained directly
(25 €uro + postage) from Peter Kinsley, tel. 0044 (UK) 207 652 2587
or from Island
Books in Santa Eulalia. Ibiza’s prize-winning producer, Marí Mayans (‘by
far one of the finest absinthes in the world’ according to an American
specialist) has an absinthe page at
http://www.marimayans.com/absinthe_e.htm
A recommended website for the drink’s literary-artistic reputation is
http://www.eabsinthe.com/past/ halloffame/
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Picasso,
Absinthe Drinker |
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