Memories from Mallorca

My Mallorcan bread, la ensaïmada, was flaky and wonderful and perfect with strong, black coffee this morning.

When I was very young, my family and I spent some time on the island of Mallorca in the Mediterranean. Later on, Mallorca was invaded by tourists, but in those days it was still quite untouched. Mallorca was my first visit to Europe outside of Scandinavia. It was my first taste of the Mediterranean, and an encounter of warmer latitudes that later far more exotic and tropical destinations have failed to live up to.

My mother claims that I was never actually inside the cathedral in Palma, known as La Seu, but I think she remembers incorrectly. I feel like I must have been there. La Seu sits sand-colored and majestic on top of a hill, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. It’s a splendid building, one that commands respect. I imagine the insides now, smoky of incense and heavy with prayers, and that a soft rustle of rosaries can be heard as well as an endless stream of Ave Marias, going up, up.

My memories from Mallorca are few but intense: I remember Chopin’s piano, a Pleyel, in the village of Valldemossa. I recall a finger pointing and a voice saying it had belonged to Chopin, and that he had been very sick on Mallorca. He had coughed blood. Later on, much later on, I traced Chopin’s heart to Warsaw where it had been smuggled in a jar of cognac, and where it still rests, enshrined in a pillar in the Holy Cross Church on Krakowskie Przedmieście in Warsaw. Chopin had come to Mallorca with his flamboyant mistress George Sand in hopes of finding a cure in the warm sun. Instead they found an island enveloped in wintery gloom. It was in Palma de Mallorca that Chopin got his death sentence: The TB diagnosis. But it was also on Mallorca, on that Pleyel in Valldemossa, that he managed to finish composing his famous Raindrop Prelude.

I remember Sa Foradada, a rock formation that shoots out into the sea and the crashing waves, and in which a dramatic 10 meter (or 32 feet) diameter hole can be seen from far away. I stood and looked down at it and someone, probably a guide, said:

“A truck could drive through it.”

I remember Geraldine Chaplin eating at a table close to ours in a fish restaurant by the harbor. Well, I remember the fish restaurant with its wet floor and high ceiling and I recall the enormous fish tank from which you would choose your dinner. My parents remember Geraldine Chaplin, a big star in those days, and I have created a memory of her from them telling me. I see her in my mind’s eye, sitting alone in the blue light, her face a pale oval: Sad and beautiful. And a flock of waiters criss-crossing around.

My last memory of Mallorca has to do with the preparations for the feast of Santa Catalina: Les Festes de la Beata. Catalina Thomàs was a Mallorcan  in the 16^th century, who at an early age had conversations with God. She was canonized in 1930. I’d never heard of saints before nor had I ever heard of any hagiographies, and I was very moved by her story, which I prompted my mother to repeat over and over again.

In an effort to tease out more memories from Mallorca, I decided to bake a traditional Mallorcan bread last night, called la ensaïmada llisa. The real recipe calls for lard, but I substituted it for butter. I also cut corners in how I made it, as traditional ensaïmadas are quite time-consuming to bake. In the end what I did, was this:

Ingredients

6 oz lukewarm milk

2 teaspoons dry yeast

3 cups flour

2/3 of a cup superfine sugar

2 eggs and 1 egg yolk

150 gram butter

Confectioner’s sugar

1. Stir milk and yeast in a small bowl until the yeast has dissolved. Wait for it to foam (4- minutes).
2. Combine flour, sugar, eggs and yolk with the yeast mixture. Knead the dough until soft and elastic. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise for 45 minutes.
3. Roll out the dough on a well-floured table. Make a large rectangle out of it, as thin as you can. On top of this, spread the softened butter. I used my hands to spread the butter. Then roll into a long, narrow cylinder. I pulled it a bit to thin it out. Coil it. Place a large upturned bowl on top and set aside to rise for another 1.5-2 hours.
4. Pre-heat to 356F. Bake until golden (I had to put some aluminum foil on top towards the end so as not to burn the ensaïmada) about 20-25 minutes. Dust with confectioner’s sugar.

Mallorca.

Kajsa

A surprisingly good breakfast: Half an avocado, half a banana, plain Greek yoghurt and some almond milk blended together and served with dried fruit.

You had brown hair and blue eyes. I had yellow hair and green eyes. We both had freckles. Your little sister, I remember her now, standing in the door to your room, where we were sitting on the floor coloring, singing in harmony. You stopped to say:

“ABBA is good.”

And your favorite crayon in your box of Crayola was the one called “maroon”.

And your sister stood there in the door. What did she want? A comic book. Tintin.

Kajsa, the back of your house faced a small, square yard, which was green. I have a photo of myself calling out something in that yard, and your mom is in the background. I wonder what it was I was calling? So long ago now. The words are gone. The only thing that remains is this: My open mouth in that photograph.

I remember your house: The light, bright hallway. The framed Magritte poster, the one with the feet morphing into shoes. Your father’s musical instruments. The piano, a black, upright, where he always sat playing. Your mother’s crispy macaroni, succulent ham and leek. You had a cousin in Switzerland whom you called Oskis. You had a cat – Tiger, was it? – and a hamster named Aurora. The hamster died. You were good at school, Kajsa. Always so good at everything.

It was you who told me about the rite of sheeting mirrors. The meaning of it.

“When a person dies, you put sheets over the mirrors,” you whispered. “So that you won’t see the ghost of the dead person.”

I held up for you to see the goose bumps on my arms when you told me that.

“She was only sixteen, only sixteen. But I loved her so-oh-oh.”

We sang along to Dr. Hook, your father’s album, and we wore headphones. The first time ever I wore headphones! Synthetic black, plush pillows over my ears.

“She was too young to fall in love, and I was too young to know.”
The lyrics were printed on the inner sleeve.

The day you moved I wore a green jersey dress with exposed red seams. Or perhaps I wore it at the graduation ceremony the year you moved. I can’t remember which. But I remember the green dress and that it had something to do with you moving. Did the green signal “go” for you? The red seams my heart – exposed? You left me behind.

Years later you found me. You had a grown daughter, you said. We both had small children. We exchanged information about our lives in a few messages, written during lunch breaks, or after dinner, or perhaps during your commute to your new job, or my commute. Busy, busy lives. So much had happened since our childhood years together. We had to cover it in a couple of sentences.

When I finally saw you again, when you finally came here, you were marked by death already. You knew it. I knew it. But you knew how to handle it and I didn’t.

We walked up and down Manhattan. And you were like you had always been. In a store I looked at a jacket. No, I didn’t look, I just touched it, and you said:
“Yes, that is you.”

And I thought it’s funny, how we could still tell such things about each other. That jacket was me.

You said: 
“You must come and visit me in summer.” 
Your daughter was five. My son four. And you said again: 
“You must come and visit me in summer.” 
And again. 
And I promised you.

It was raining when you left. We took the bus out to the airport. It was dark.

This is how I knew: At the airport, when you went through that final security check, you didn’t turn around. You’re supposed to do that. I always do. My mother always does. My husband. But you didn’t Kajsa. I waited for you to. I waited for you to turn around and wave at me, one last time, where I stood. Could you not feel me waiting? But you kept walking straight ahead – away, away – not once turning back. That’s when I knew I would never see you again.

Your husband and your sister told me that your trip to New York was something you leaned on during the difficult times towards the end. When you faced death's anxiety. They assured me: New York had meant something to you. Meeting me had meant something to you.

Many mornings I stood alone in my kitchen waiting for the coffee to be done. Talking to the ghost of you. Did you hear me then?

It seems to me now that those childhood years were the golden days, Kajsa, that shone all too briefly on our freckled faces. Way back when we were as thick as thieves.

Thick as thieves: Kajsa and I performing a song at school. Kajsa is the girl with the long hair and the guitar, and I am the one with a wig and pointe shoes. We were maybe 11 years old.