KAIN WITH A C, by Alicia Llarena, translated by Alice Banks
Part of La Española’s focus on literature from Las Islas Canarias
Everything was going well until Tuesday. I met Kain on First Dates, that program for singles on Channel Four that livened up my afternoons of procrastination and laziness, and made me laugh out loud. You get to see just how many freaks there are in the world, and that always, like my grandmother used to say, there’s someone out there for everyone. Until I began to watch it, I always thought I had quite a solid understanding of human nature, but no way, this gallery of colourful characters so moved by such different love interests would never have occurred to me. Some were as old fashioned as ancient trunks lost in time – characters that one thought no longer existed or were extinguished with the last tub of Brylcreem. There were men, women, and those who identified as non-binary; they were quirky, funny, forward thinking, submissive, young, cheeky, naïve, loose cannons, soft, mature, tough, smart arses, shy, self-assured, inexperienced, and they were all so well mixed by casting, so gracefully portrayed by whomever was doing the production.
I bet my friend Maca that it was all set-up, but she disagreed, said that people write into the program and what we see is real. So, bold as brass, I wrote them a WhatsApp, registered on the page, answered some questions, and after three months was buying Maca dinner and catching a plane to sit down in front of a British guy who’d lived in Móstoles for a year and wanted to fall in love with a Spanish woman. A full-on blind date that I’d said yes to for a laugh – and to take advantage of the plane ticket to the mainland along with two free nights in a hotel.
Kain wanted to get away from his family and learn Spanish and had ended up serving drinks in a bar from Tuesday to Sunday and sharing a flat with a North African, a Korean, and a young bull-fighter’s apprentice who had recently arrived from Ecuador. It was going well for him until he began to feel lonelier and lonelier, and one Monday, tired as a dog, he threw himself down onto the sofa for the entire afternoon and just so happened to put on Channel Four at the same time I was watching and betting Maca a dinner at the best Japanese in town. He searched Google until he came across the sign-up page, and three months later he was matched with me on First Dates. The boy didn’t displease me, he was a good listener, and though he spoke slightly broken Spanish, he was so funny that the camera didn’t take its focus off us. I made myself interesting, played the game and laughed along with him, and him with me, because I told him I was from the Canary Islands and he had always wanted to see them. One thing led to another, and when they asked us if we wanted a second date, we said yes, and went on to Puerta del Sol to carry on chatting and getting to know each other.
But how can you be called Cain and be so hot? That’s the question I remember asking him the most that night; I almost never drank but was feeling bold having sunk back beer followed by wine. It made me very sloppy, and I was on the verge of ruining everything until he told me, it’s Kain, Kain with a K, and taught me how to spell it correctly. Finally, I understood. I like you, Cain with a K, I like you a lot I told him. Of course, as you know, I only signed up to First Dates to mess about a bit and because I’d made a bet with my friend – to tell you the truth I had no intention of finding a partner. But then Kain touched his lips to mine and we kissed – wow what a kiss it was – and the next morning, whilst he was still sleeping and I was asking myself how I’d got there, how I’d ended up getting into a stranger’s bed on the first night, I sent a WhatsApp to Maca. First of all, I asked her not to make fun of me, then I told her that as unbelievable as it was, the guy on First Dates turned out to be a very handsome Brit called Cain – spelt with a K – and I liked him. We went out for wine and now I’m at the hotel and he’s about to wake up, and I don’t know whether to stay a few days in Madrid or bring him to the island. What would you do if you were me Maca? What would you do? Maca, who knows me better than my mother and has a certain poise that I lack, asked me so calmly to bring back one of those bottles of wine that turns toads into princes and told me that I should go back to sleep, it was really early, and did I not give a shit that back there in Gran Canaria she was an hour behind?
For the next two weeks I swept all the bars and restaurants in the south of Gran Canaria, from Arguineguín to Veneguera, looking for a job for Kain. He told me over the phone that he didn’t care whether he served drinks here or there and that learning Spanish on the mainland or the island was exactly the same. In fact, he would prefer to learn it in Las Palmas because it was more like the Spanish he spoke with the bullfighter’s apprentice from Ecuador, and the Ecuadorian had told him that with that accent he’d be able to understand Latin Americans better, and after all they make up the biggest majority of Spanish speakers. I didn’t care for this linguistic debate, all I wanted was to be with Kain and take advantage of his enthusiasm about coming to the island. I wanted to help him find his feet here and anchor him to a bar where he could serve drinks and earn a living along with some decent tips that we could survive on until I’d finished my degree. The arguments that all of this caused between myself, my parents and Maca – who did nothing to hide her disbelief as she accompanied me day after day to bars, pubs, hotels, night clubs, cafeterias, and restaurants – were completely forgotten when Kain arrived at the airport and began working at the Puerto Rico Shopping Centre within a few hours. In short, a cousin of a cousin of a cousin did me a favour and got him serving at the Shamrock Bar there, where every night tourists would listen to live music whilst drinking cocktails and beers until they lost consciousness. Kain was fascinated, it was like being at home he said, surrounded by Brits and drinking Guinness to cool off from the heat. Maca let us stay at hers until we found our feet, and a few weeks later the same cousin of the cousin of the cousin rented us a studio in Mogán town, and that’s where the good stuff began.
Independent, though scarce in resources, Kain and I managed to amuse ourselves as our relationship and experience progressed. To begin with, I had to teach him the difference between Las Palmas and Gran Canaria, one of them is the capital, and the other the island. Yes, Kain, it’s called Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, but that’s just the city. And there’s a difference between Mogán town and Mogán beach. Yes, Kain, it’s the same town, but we distinguish between those who live up here and those that live on the coast. I had to teach him how to pronounce Arguineguín; no, Kain, it’s not Argwinegwin, can’t you see there’s no ‘w’? Just when I was laughing out loud, explaining these basic survival codes, I got a call from First Dates to find out how we were doing, to see if we were still together and if we gave them permission to make the success of our blind date public on their website.
Curiously, it soon became clear that Kain wasn’t the only foreigner on the island, as next to him, I also felt like an outsider. At his side, I learnt to travel and look at my homeland in a different way. As he began his shift at the Shamrock Bar, I walked through the shopping centre and felt a kind of nostalgia for what, until a few decades ago, had been a very lively place. There were once first-rate leisure activities on the first level where the youth of the south could rub shoulders with the rest of Europe, but today it needs a comprehensive facelift. The almost heroic resistance of some of its stores is clear, and I can’t imagine how they’re still standing. The contrast between the Shamrock Bar and the Mamá Pino restaurant occasionally made me smile and even gave me the idea for a future investigation of this curious coexistence of cosmopolitan and traditional places; the Steak House and the town taberna, the English breakfast and the Pinito Bar. They say they’re going to build a new shopping centre next to this one and call it Mogán Mall, which sounds a bit more up to date and has that American glamour. I feel as if they’re going to bury the memory of my generation in its new foundations, or that they’ll simply let it die, just like La Bolera where we had spent so many happy and memorable nights.
When Kain is free, two days a week, the island turns into a party. He loves to go out and meet people, the pupils of his eyes become drenched in exoticism and he finds everything wonderful. I jump on this bandwagon of excitement and it takes me straight back to childhood – I rediscover this forgotten land. That’s something he doesn’t understand, that when we live in Las Palmas the south is like another galaxy that is visited in the summer, and that when we live in the south, Las Palmas is the city we visit to buy the presents for the Three Kings celebration and get papers in order. You’ll soon understand, I tell him. Until we started touring the island, we’d only been in Vecindario, which is where Maca has the apartment that she carried on living in after her and her Cuban broke up. We’d also been to the capital a couple of times to see my parents, that is until I got tired of their slaps on the wrist after I dropped out of law school and started studying anthropology online so I could move from club to club with Kain. But boy I don’t regret it, not one thing or the other, what’s more, the heart of the island has opened up to me like a ripe fruit inviting me to explore its character from this new academic perspective. There’s so much to analyse that I no longer get bored, and in everything I see an opportunity and an incredible source of knowledge.
Our first excursion was exploring the town we lived in, a novelty for him, and a return to the womb for me. My great-grandparents, my grandparents and my parents were born here. And I was born here too. Never in my dreams did I imagine living in Mogán again after becoming a city girl, my parents uprooting me to move to Las Palmas when I was just a few months old. And look at me now, just one more neighbour who potters around like a little old lady, explaining to Kain that where you see this thing today, when I was a girl it was something else, that before, the ravine ran to the beach, that it was like this and like that, and that the church and the kiosk in the square are almost still the same, that the town still retains a certain beauty, that the ravine – crossed by the road that runs from the first neighbourhoods of the town to the Veneguera canyon – is beautiful thanks to its primitive and remote landscape. I explain that when you ask in supermarkets across the islands, ‘where are these mangoes from?’ and ‘where are these avocados from?’ they always deceive you by saying they’re from Mogán, and I laugh openly and ask them if there’s really such a prodigious land that produces more than it sows? Kain still cannot distinguish the taste of real avocados or tell the difference between a mango and a manga, but I can, I know that there are none quite like the ones you can find here, which is why they’re so famous and desired by everyone. When I told Kain that until recently Mogán was the end of the world, he looked at me as if thinking ‘what an exaggeration.’ But it’s true, I told him, there were people that were starting to arrive when they’d only just inaugurated the last section of the highway, and then, yes, an avalanche of people with a good nose for business suddenly landed in Puerto de Mogán, so pretty. But hey, at least they built it with care and didn’t haphazardly throw it up like other tourist areas that are painful to look at. Given the choice, I would have preferred they left my childhood beach as it was, which is to say that I wish they didn’t touch a single pebble. I was distraught when I learnt that it was going to be buried by tons of blonde sand, such mania there is now for building artificial paradises and Caribbean scenes on every corner – turquoise waters and all – just like Playa de Amadores.
Did you know, Kain, that Mogán was one of the poorest towns in the south of this island and now it’s the one with the golden mile? And he stares as if I were pulling his leg or as if he were in front of a Replicant from Blade Runner. Of course, it’s true that the past only matters to those who experienced it, and what difference does it make what the old south was like before this south, if now all that matters is enjoying a beer in front of Arguineguín beach; or some papas con mojo and a plate of calamari in en El Boya; or listening to the sound of the water against the pebbles of El Pajar beach as you glance at the cement factory that looks like a space station planted in the middle of Santa Águeda Bay; or the memorable sunsets in Amadores, the open waves churning on the black sand of Taurito; or the bougainvillea that climb the white walls of Little Venice, whose tiny corners Kain loves. He arrived on the island looking for paradise and he found it right in front of him, toasted by the sunshine that mercilessly beats down onto the mass of hotels and tourist developments. His eyes, eager for exoticism, see joy where I saw a loss and well-being and placidity where I see only greed. I don’t know it if was love, but life with Kain made me realise all of my little privileges: you don’t know what it’s like to bathe in the sea all year round, have it right there at your fingertips; you don’t know what it’s like to get up with this sun every day, slip into the water and forget everything, bask in this beautiful nature, change scenery in half an hour, go from the ocean to the summit in the time it takes to make a stew. Forget about cement, woman, and focus on what’s important.
I did, and I’ll continue to do so until I die. I’ll never be able to thank him enough for that, and perhaps that’s why, even though I’m dying of rage, I’m helping him pack his suitcase and am even going to accompany him to the airport. Piece of shit! We were so good, I tell him as I shove his boxers into the bottom of the suitcase and tightly curl his socks inside his shoes. Look at you, hooking up with the first German woman to hit on you at the Shamrock Bar, what did you think? That I wasn’t going to find out? I ask him as I pass him his folded shirts. And she’s not the first, is she, Kain? Say something. Since Tuesday the island has soured and the sun falling on my head is as heavy as lead. My tongue has become coarse and I accompany my breakfast sandwich with every single swear word that comes to mind, he doesn’t understand most of them, but I don’t care, he can go and learn Spanish somewhere else. I glare at him with distrust and resentment and shove my anger into the toilet bag that he’ll take back to Móstoles where the Ecuadorian bullfighter’s apprentice is waiting for him. And don’t get your hopes up, Kain with a C, I don’t want you back, this is the Last Date.
Maca drives slower than usual and I can’t wait to get to the check-in desk and say goodbye to him as soon as possible. I don’t know why the hell she’s taken the old road and is prolonging this agony instead of getting on straight on the highway. Kain with a C doesn’t say anything, he’s immersed in his own silence, simply looking out of the window and reviewing every inch of sea and landscape, his pupils charged with exoticism and his heart beating melancholically. I can’t remember the last time I came this way either. Such a pretty road, I tell myself, carved out of a primitive, centuries-old cliff face on the very edge of the ocean. A beauty.
By Alicia LLarena
Translated by Alice Banks
This short story first appeared in An Island of Stories: An Anthology to Travel Through Gran Canaria, published by the Biblioteca Insular de Gran Canaria.
You can read the full anthology here.
Born in Mogán in 1964, Alicia Llarena is a Doctor in Spanish Philology at ULPGC, (University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria) where she has been a professor of Hispano-American Literature since 2003. As a researcher and critic, her studies focus on Cuban poetry from the 80s, magical realism and prominent writers such as Pino Betancor and Mercedes Pinto. Her studies of Mercedes Pinto won her the Premio Especial de Investigación Canarias-América.
Alice Banks is a creative and literary translator from French and Spanish based in Madrid. After studying the MA in Literary Translation at the University of East Anglia, Alice began working with the European Literature Network as an Editorial Assistant. She also volunteers as a copy editor for Asymptote Journal and is a publishing assistant at Fum d’Estampa Press.
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