Café Iruña

May 1937

The two men sat in a booth in a dark corner of the Café Iruña in Pamplona. The half-booth was next to a window overlooking the Plaza del Castillo. One man sat in the bench seat with his back to the wall, he was brooding and handsome. The other man sat opposite him in a wooden chair. His back to the rest of the cafe, he spoke with words and hand gestures. He interrupted his speech with occasional scribbles on the tabletop.

On the table between them were three empty bottles of Riojan wine, the best in the world. Another bottle, half full, was held by the man on the bench seat. This wine was the fuel of their passionate conversation.

The bench seat wobbled with every movement of the man perched atop. He finally exclaimed:

"This goddamn wobbling bench! It is impossible to conduct a civil discourse."

The other man howled in laughter. Then the brooding, handsome man slammed the bottle to the table and pushed the table away from him. Grabbing something from the tabletop, he went down to the floor under the table. He aimed to fix the unbalanced bench on which he had previously and unsatisfactorily sat.

He fiddled and finagled for two minutes, then rose triumphantly. He repositioned himself on the seat and tested his work. After grunting in satisfaction, he moved the table back to its place, regained his composure, and said:

"Now, where were we?"

Summer of 2017

I decided to reward myself after three weeks of hiking in Spain. The first 3 days in Galicia on the Camino Ingles. The next 7 roaming around the Picos de Europa in Asturias. And the next 9 days exploring the Pyrenees of Navarre. The reward, a trip to Pamplona for the Festival of San Fermin!

The first day at the festival was a wild sensory overload. Sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch, all pushed to their limits. It was a stark contrast to my previous nineteen days in the wilderness.

I adjusted my plans for Day Two of the festival. Stay on the perimeter of the festivities and enjoy quieter pursuits. If the desire struck, I could ease towards the crowds of San Fermin. If not feeling it, I'd spend the rest of the day browsing the Basque bookstores.

By mid-afternoon, the fiesta drew me like a magnet, and I decided to walk to the Plaza del Castillo for a meal. The Plaza wasn't as crowded as yesterday. Many were at the bullfight, most were sleeping off last night, preparing for this night. Still, table space was scant.

After walking the plaza, I asked for a table at the Café Iruña. There was nothing available outside, but they did have one table inside. The host led me through the labyrinth of tables to a booth in a dark corner. They used this corner for storage but could create a table if the need arose. The half-booth was next to a window looking out on the plaza. Beams of lights drifted in through the spaces between the posters and people leaned against it.

My host left a carafe of red wine and placed the menu on the corner of the table. She returned a few minutes later with pinchos. I ordered a tortilla de patata and croqueta de langostino.

The small, wobbly table was barely suitable for what I needed today - a workspace so I could catch up on my journaling. I cleared the table as best I could, pinchos and carafe to the left side next to the window. Wine and water glasses to the right. I took the Moleskine journal out of my daypack, placed it on the table, and opened it to the next blank page. The black book was ready to receive my story. Then I stared out the window between the handbills and patrons into the Plaza. Fifteen minutes later the waitress interrupted my gaze.

"Are you writing?"

"Yes. Well, mostly looking out the window."

"I love to write. What is in your journal?"

"Notes about my travels, I've been hiking for three weeks."

She placed my tortilla and croquetas in the middle of the table on top of my Moleskine.

"Eat now, and when you finish, stop staring and put your words on the page."

She had disrupted my arrangement. I pulled my journal from underneath the plate and cleaned the opened pages with a napkin. The journal would go back in my pack until after my meal. When I reached over to open my pack, the phone slid off the backpack and into the abyss between the bench seat and the wall. Its fall ended with a bump, two thuds, and a clunk. The abyss was the mouth of an unknown cavern underneath the bench seat.

"Goddamn crowded table!"

I pushed the table away from me, almost toppling the wine carafe perched on the corner. Under the table, I went in search of my phone. The seat was 4 feet wide and had a false front covering the base. I felt around the side into the abyss and found there was no side panel. My phone must have fallen into the abyss and then tumbled into a void beneath the bench. I reached my hand deeper in and tried to feel my way around. No phone.

A built-in half-wall next to the bench prevented me from moving the seat away from the wall. The only other option was to lift the bench up. This easier said than done. I wedged my left shoulder against the half-inch lip between the cushion and false front. My beginner yoga class was already paying off. I started in a quasi-Cow Pose and transitioned to a quasi-Cat Pose. With this move, I was able to raise the bench 6 inches off the floor. Using my left forearm as a wedge, I kept the bench raised. And with another quasi-yoga move, reached into the void with my right arm. My hand found an object and withdrew.

"Shit."

It was a dusty black rectangle covered in cobwebs, but not my phone. I left the mystery object on the floor under the table. My right-hand dove back into the void for its second exploration. Fumbling around in the dark and 18" from the wall and abyss, it struck on something.

"How in the hell did it get this far from the wall?"

It was my phone; it had the general dimensions and the feel of my flip case. I withdrew my right arm and its bounty.

"Success!"

I removed my left arm and lowered the bench back into place. Clambering up from the floor, I slid the table back into place and resumed a normal dining position as if nothing had happened. I poured a fresh glass of wine.

Two sips into the wine, I remembered the mystery object. It was still on the floor under the table. Finding the object with my foot, I gave it a flick towards the outer edge of the table. From there I was able to reach down and pick it up. It was a small black notebook, a little smaller than the Moleskine Hard Cover in my backpack. I wiped the dust and cobwebs off the book and opened it. The pages were yellowed and moisture-warped but the marks in the little book were still clear.

Inside the front cover were the initials EMH. The first page had a few scribbled notes. The most prominent scribble:

Follow up to Farewell - what about?

The next 30 pages contained hardly legible sentences. Tiny letters and single-spaced as if the writer had to pay by the line for its use. The 31st page was blank. The 32nd page contained the cryptic message:

5-16-37 - PP - Iruna - 2pm

The 33rd page had a strange abstract sketch on it. The remaining pages were blank.

I put the journal in my backpack. It was a novelty to me but a treasure for a friend of mine back in Houston. He owns a used bookstore and collects personal journals. This old book was right up his alley.

Now it was back to my wine and food. I nibbled as I stared through the slivers of light in the window near my dark corner of the Café Iruña. The Riojan wine gave me a nice buzz and I didn't add any words to the pages of my journal.

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I drove to Houston a few weeks after my return to Texas. There was business to attend to there and I needed to deliver the Café Iruña notebook to my buddy.

After looking it over, he decided to list it on eBay, thinking we could get a few hundred dollars for it. The key, he thought, would be to tell the funny story of its recovery on the auction page. I left it in his hands and drove back home to Corpus Christi.

One month later he called:

"David, guess what happened?"

"I'm not even going to try. Tell me."

"I put your journal on eBay and told the story of how you dropped your phone and found it. And I put a bunch of pics of the little book on there, too."

"Yeah, like you said you were going to do."

"A man called me this morning. He told me to remove the auction because he wanted to buy it. He said he is going to FedEx a cashier's check for $25,000. It'll be here tomorrow."

"No shit?!"

"None, I think. If the check doesn't come in, I'll create another auction. If it does come in, we'll make a lot more than the $200 we thought.

"Unbelievable."

"I told you so. Here's the deal, I'll take $5,000 for my effort and you can keep $20,000 since it's your book."

--------------------

The check arrived the next day as promised. My friend transferred $20,000 into my bank account a few days later. One month later, a man picked up the journal from the bookstore in Houston. A perfect transaction.

December 2017

Five months later while reading the news in a local coffee shop, I saw this headline on Google News:

"Hemingway Journal from Private Collection Fetches $5.1 Million at Sotheby's Auction."

I clicked the link and read the story.

"A journal believed to have belonged to Ernest Hemingway sold at a Sotheby's Auction for $5.1 million. An undisclosed buyer purchased the small black notebook yesterday in New York City.

Experts cite the initials and the content as proof the book belonged to Hemingway. The initials EMH, Ernest Miller Hemingway, are scrawled on the inside cover of the journal. The first thirty pages contain what appear to be draft notes for his novel, "To Have and Have Not," published in 1940.

Of greater interest is a sketch found on the last used page of the journal. Preceding the sketch is a scribbled note in Hemingway's hand that reads:

5-16-37 - PP - Iruna - 2pm

It is believed this cryptic entry refers to a meeting between Hemingway and Pablo Picasso at the Cafe Iruna in Pamplona. The cafe was a known haunt of Hemingway. The sketch appears to be a rough draft of Pablo Picasso's "Guernica." The now famous painting debuted weeks later at the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne in Paris.

The future of the journal is unknown."

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I scrolled down past ads for IPhones and Cialis. Beneath the Cialis ad was a picture of a little black book. It was one and the same as what I retrieved from under the corner booth at the Café Iruña.

"I'll be damned. Private collection, huh? It was a shim for a wobbly seat."

I put my phone on the table and took a sip of my black coffee. The table wobbled as I returned my cup to it.