Deborah Levy - Hot Milk

He waved his hand and asked the waitress for a bottle of a particular mineral water which he told Rose was bottled in Milan then exported to Singapore and then exported to Spain.

‘Ah, Singapore!’ He clapped his hands, presumably to signal that he required more attention. ‘I was very agitated at a conference in Singapore last month. I was advised to calm down by feeding the carp in the hotel fountain at breakfast and to look out at the South China Sea in the afternoon. Are those not beautiful words … “South China Sea”?’

Rose winced, as if the idea of anything beautiful was personally hurtful.

Gómez leaned back in his chair. ‘In the rooftop pool of this hotel, the British tourists drank beer. They were up to their bellies in the water and they were drinking beer but they did not look out once on the South China Sea.’

‘Drinking beer in a swimming pool sounds very nice to me,’ Rose said sharply, as if to remind him that she was not a great fan of drinking water with lunch.

His gold teeth were like flames. ‘You are sitting in the sunshine, Mrs Papastergiadis. The vitamin D is good for your bones. You must drink water. Now, I have a serious question. Tell me why you English say “wi-fi” and in Spain we say “wee-fee”?’

Rose sipped her water as if she had been asked to drink her own urine. ‘Obviously, it’s about a different emphasis on the vowel, Mr Gómez.’

A plastic boat was being inflated in the middle of the square by a thin boy of about twelve. His Mohican had been dyed green and he had his foot pressed against a plastic pump while he devoured an ice cream. Every now and again his five-year-old sister ran to the crumpled plastic to check the progress of its metamorphosis into something seaworthy.

The waiter brought out the salad and bean soup, each plate balanced on the curve of his arm. He leaned over Gómez’s shoulder to theatrically place a vast dish of purple-tentacled pulpo alla griglia on his paper mat.

‘Oh yes, gracias,’ Gómez said in his American Spanish accent. ‘I cannot get enough of these creatures!’ They place a vast dish of purple-tentacled pulpo on his paper mat. ‘The marinade is its crowning glory … the chillis, the lemon juice, the paprika! I give thanks to this ancient inhabitant of the deep. Gracias, polpo, for your intelligence, mystery and remarkable defence mechanisms.’

Rose now had two red welts on her left cheek.

‘Did you know, Mrs Papastergiadis, the octopus can change the colour of its skin to camouflage itself? As an American, I still find the polpo mysterious, a little monstruo , but the Spanish part of me finds it a very familiar monster.’

He picked up his knife and cut a blistered livid tentacle off the octopus. Instead of eating it, he threw it on to the ground, which was a blatant invitation to the cats in the village to join him for lunch. They started to circle his shoes under the table, coming from all directions to fight each other for a piece of the sea monster. He delicately sawed into the rubbery flesh of the polpo and pushed it into his mouth with relish. After a while he saw no reason not to drop three more tentacles into their paws.

My mother had become quiet and shockingly still. Not still like a tree or a leaf or a log. Still like a corpse.

‘We were talking about Wi-Fi,’ Gómez continued. ‘I will tell you the answer to my riddle. I say “wee-fee” to rhyme with “Francis of Assisi”.’

Three thin cats were now sitting on his shoes.

Rose must have been breathing after all, because she turned on him. The whites of her eyes were pink and swollen. ‘Where did you go to medical school?’

‘Johns Hopkins, Mrs Papastergiadis. In Baltimore.’

‘Think he jests,’ Rose whispered loudly.

I stabbed a tomato with my fork and did not respond. All the same, I was concerned about the way her left eye was closing up.

Gómez asked if she was enjoying her bean soup.

‘“Enjoying” is too strong a word. It is wet but tasteless.’

‘How is “enjoyment” too strong a word?’

‘It is not an accurate word to describe my attitude to the soup.’

‘I hope your appetite for enjoyment will get its strength back,’ he said.

Rose rested her pink eyes on my eyes. I removed my gaze like a traitor.

‘Mrs Papastergiadis,’ said Gómez. ‘You have some enemies to discuss with me?’

She leaned back in her chair and sighed.

What is a sigh? That would be another good subject for a field study. Is it just a long, deep, audible exhalation of breath? Rose’s sigh was intense but not subdued. It was frustrated but not yet sad. A sigh resets the respiratory system so it was possible that my mother had been holding her breath, which suggests she was more nervous than she appeared to be. A sigh is an emotional response to being set a difficult task.

I knew she had been thinking about her enemies because she had written a list. Perhaps I am on that list?

To my surprise, her voice was calm and her tone almost friendly.

‘My parents were my first adversaries, of course. They did not like foreigners so, naturally, I married a Greek man.’

When Gómez smiled his lips were black from the octopus ink.

He gestured to my mother to continue.

‘Both my parents breathed their last holding the kindly dark-skinned hands of the nurses who tended them. But it seems churlish to have a go at them now. I will, anyway. To my parents on the Other Side. Remind me to spell for you the names of the hospital staff who sat with you on the day you died.’

Gómez rested his knife and fork on the edge of the plate. ‘You are talking about your National Health Service. But I note that you have chosen some private care?’

‘That is true and I feel a little ashamed. But Sofia researched your clinic and encouraged me to give it a go. We were at the end of the road. Weren’t we, Fia?’

I gazed at the boat being pumped up in the square. It was blue with a yellow stripe across its side.

‘So, you married your Greek man?’

‘Yes, for eleven years we waited for a child. And when we at last conceived and our daughter was five, Christos was summoned by the voice of God to find a younger woman in Athens.’

‘I am myself of the Catholic faith.’

Gómez shovelled more extraterrestrial octopus into his mouth. ‘By the way, Mrs Papastergiadis, “Gómez” is pronounced “Gómeth”.’

‘I respect your beliefs, Mr Gómeth. When you get to heaven, may the pearly gates be draped in an octopus drying for your welcome dinner.’

He seemed up for everything she threw at him and had lost the chiding tone of their first meeting. Her eyes were no longer pink and the welts on her left cheek had subsided. ‘’Twas a long wait for my only.’

Gómez reached for the silk handkerchief arranged in a puff in his jacket pocket and passed it to her. ‘God and walking. Maybe they are your enemies?’

Rose dabbed her eyes. ‘It is not walking. It is walking out.’

I stared miserably at the cigarette butts on the floor. It was such a relief to be mute.

Gómez was gentle but persistent. ‘This business with names. It’s tricky.’ He pronounced ‘tricky’ to rhyme with ‘wee-fee’. ‘In fact, I have two surnames. Gómez is my father’s name, and my last name is my mother’s name, Lucas. I have made a shorter name for myself but my formal name is Gómez Lucas. Your daughter calls you Rose but your formal name is Mama. It is uncomfortable, is it not, this to-ing and fro-ing between “Rose” and “Mrs Papastergiadis” and “Mother”?’

‘It is very sentimental what you are saying,’ Rose said, holding on tight to his handkerchief.

My phone pinged.

You now have car