Turnips and a scapegoat - Chapter 5

By the time autumn had fully bathed Piornal in golds and reds, Sebastian and Oliver had carved out a niche for themselves in the village. The locals, initially wary of the two peculiar foreigners, had gradually come to accept them. Their integration had been a curious dance of chess and card games with toothless old men, strumming flamenco chords on borrowed guitars, and sampling booze made in cellars that could double as rocket fuel. They were, by all accounts, finding their feet in this strange, ancient land.

But as they nestled deeper into the rhythms of village life, the practicalities of living in the real world - one where rent doesn’t pay itself and dinners don’t magically appear on the table - began to creep in like a chill wind on a sunny day. With the local economy offering little more than olives and sheep, they looked beyond the rolling hills of Extremadura to the bustling streets of Cáceres for work.

Sebastian, ever the pragmatic one, found himself juggling two worlds: teaching English to bored teenagers by day and advising small businesses on their online presence by night. It was a gig that kept his mind sharp but his spirits weary. Plus, it wasn’t bringing in that much money. As a way of coping he had started drinking more heavily than before. Meanwhile, Oliver, with his charm and quick wit, landed a job in a local bar, mostly making up cortados, tintos de verano and simple aperitivos (bar snacks) to weary travellers and boisterous locals, his shifts stretching late into the night. They had thought this arrangement would give them the freedom to pursue their dream without financial ruin. What they hadn’t anticipated was how it would erode the very dream they were trying to preserve.

In the beginning, they’d make an effort to reconnect during the slivers of time they had together. They’d sit at their small kitchen table, a half-eaten tortilla between them, and talk about their day. But more often than not, the conversations veered towards the mundane - bills, schedules, the increasingly dire state of their savings account. The romance of their Spanish adventure was being overshadowed by the cold, hard reality of survival.

It wasn’t long before the cracks began to show. The things that had once endeared them to each other now seemed like irritations they could do without. Sebastian, with his constant need to plan and organise, started to feel like a nag. Oliver, whose spontaneity had always been a breath of fresh air, now seemed reckless and inconsiderate. They were drifting, and they both knew it, though neither wanted to admit it.

Then came the night when they barely spoke at all. Sebastian had just finished a long day of teaching and consulting, his brain fried from switching between languages and tasks. Oliver had stumbled in from another late shift at the bar, his shirt smelling of stale beer and cigarette smoke, eyes glazed over from exhaustion. They sat in silence, the tension between them as thick as the fog that rolled in from the mountains at dawn. Something had to change.

“We need to get away,” Oliver said suddenly, breaking the silence. “Just us. No work, no stress. Remember why we did this in the first place.”

Sebastian looked at him, really looked at him, for the first time in weeks. Oliver’s face was gaunt, shadows clinging to the edges of his eyes. But behind the weariness, there was still that spark, that mischievous glint that had drawn Sebastian to him in the first place. He nodded, slowly. “Yeah. We do.”

They decided on a weekend at a Parador, one of those grand, historic hotels that Spain does so well. This one was a former monastery, perched on a hill overlooking a valley that stretched out to the horizon like a green ocean. It was the kind of place that made you feel like a knight in shining armour might stroll past at any moment, even if the closest thing to a battle was fighting over who got the last piece of bread at breakfast.

The restaurant in the Parador was everything you’d expect - elegant, refined, and terrifyingly expensive. They decided to order for each other, a romantic gesture that felt a bit like Russian roulette. When the plates arrived, they exchanged them with a flourish, eager to see what culinary delight the other had chosen.

Oliver looked down at his plate. Something pale and squishy stared back at him. He poked it with his fork, a dubious expression on his face. “What...what is this?”

“Goat brain,” Sebastian said, trying to sound nonchalant, though he could barely suppress a grin. “Thought you’d appreciate something local.”

Oliver’s face paled. “You thought wrong.”

Sebastian lifted the lid on his own dish and was greeted by the unmistakable scent of tripe, simmered in some kind of viscous, unidentifiable sauce. His stomach turned. “And what’s this?”

“Tripe. Figured you’d like a taste of real Spain,” Oliver said, grinning back.

For a moment, they just stared at their plates, horrified by the gastronomic disasters in front of them. Then, as if on cue, they both burst into laughter. It was the kind of laughter that comes when the tension breaks, when the ridiculousness of a situation finally dawns on you. It was a reminder of why they were there, of why they were together.

Sebastian leaned back in his chair, still chuckling. “We’re idiots, you know that?”

“Yeah,” Oliver agreed, pushing his plate away. “But we’re idiots together.”

They didn’t eat the goat brain or the tripe. Instead, they ordered something safer - a bottle of wine, a basket of bread, and a couple of steaks that were as far from exotic as you could get. But the meal wasn’t what mattered. What mattered was that for the first time in weeks, they were sitting together, really together, and remembering why they had come to Spain in the first place.

As they clinked their glasses and drank to their foolishness, they knew they’d be okay.