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BARCELONA The capelin season of 1983 had ended and I flew to Amsterdam. Perhaps since I was strange because of the marijuana I had smoked all the time, I thought like this: going south was good to have fun compared to the north. The north was cold. People were honest, hard working and boring. Drugs were few and prohibited. It was because in cold countries, if you were stuck on drugs, you had to die easily. In contrast to the north, the more south you went, the more the people would become open and bright. You didn't have to work so hard to earn a living because natural resources were plentiful. Drugs must have been popular. At the Amsterdam Airport counter, a flight to Barcelona was available, so I left most of my luggage at a deposit counter and got on the flight. The Iberia Airline's flight flew at a low altitude by the seaside when it came close to Barcelona. I could see colourful sights of a very popular resort of the Mediterranean Sea from the window. I got in a taxi at the airport of Barcelona. The taxi drove by the strange building of Gaudi and got into the city part of Barcelona. English wasn't spoken so much. I asked the driver by moving my body to take me to a hotel: not too expensive, not too cheap. He took me to Gaudi Hotel in the middle of the town. The doorman and front staff of the hotel were young men too friendly for the senses of a Japanese. Evening came and I went out to town. There was a fish market in the middle of the town. They were selling fresh fish, shrimp, octopus and Atlantic squid that I had seen before in Japan. I walked to the bay, and the Santa Maria that had taken Columbus to America was anchored there. People were sightseeing, eating food and being together with their families. Night came and I ate a hot dog alone. I also drank a cheap wine which made me feel a bit good, and I stood on the corner of the town. An old prostitute came and talked to me in English. I don't remember exactly, but she said something like, "You wanna fuck me?" I answered, "No thanks." The prostitute didn't waste her time and turned around. But I thought twice and stopped her. "Can you take me somewhere for a couple of drinks?" I asked her. "Well, yes," she said. We fooled around town for quite a while. We walked narrow brick roads where the same red coloured tall buildings hid the skies above. Here and there in the alleys children were still playing, handicapped people staying together in a bunch and old people playing cards outside. The prostitute and I got really drunk after checking several bars, and the wine and beer they had. I thought that I've had enough, so I tried to pay money to the prostitute. In the middle of the crowded town, the prostitute suddenly kissed me on the cheek and started crying. She was absolutely drunk. She fell down in a load of garbage. The garbage was all packed in black polythene bags, the same as in Japan. Somebody whistled at me. I picked the prostitute up. I believe she was about the same age as my mother. I cleaned her face, which was covered with pieces of garbage, with my hand. "Muchos, I leave," said her and stood on her feet by herself. I searched for an appropriate word to say. "Well, it surely was fun tonight," said I. The next day was a Sunday and there was a marathon race in town. I waited until night came again and I searched for the "hottest" playing spots in town. There, I asked all the Negros I saw if I could get marijuana. The black men took me around the streets. They whistled many times, continuously for a reason I didn't know. Maybe, they were messages. In a long, narrow and lonely alley, there was no one in sight, and I was passed a small piece of hashish. The price the Negro offered me was unreasonably expensive. I bought the hashish. I got tired and went to a square in town to rest for a while. Another Negro came. He asked me to buy what he had in his hands. I looked at it and it was a polythene bag with some marijuana leaves in it. It seemed to contain lots of stems and didn't look good. It was cheap, though. The Negro looked up at me and I decided to buy it. I went back to my hotel room. l decided to keep the expensive hashish to take back to Japan, and I rolled and lit up the cheap marijuana. It was the beginning of the "bad trip." Maybe it was a so-called "flash back" since I hadn't done marijuana for quite a while, or maybe it was because of the something like "speed" mixed in it. It was hard to explain, but first, I became super sensitive to the sounds in the hotel. I heard the breathing of people staying in other rooms, footsteps in the hallway. It was so clear that I knew, it couldn't have been real. What followed the sounds were attacks of unreason- able fear. This seemed to never end but grew stronger and stronger. It must have been only my imagination but, the fear was like going insane; heart beat stopping without cause; desire of suicide without any reason. Those things appeared one after another and I broke into a cold sweat trying to bear and fight those feelings. I was frozen on the bed and I screamed unconsciously. I didn't know how long it had lasted. It might have been 5 minutes or 3 hours. I guess now that it was about 30 minutes. When the fear eased a little, I got out of bed in a hurry to my weary feet. I picked up the bag of marijuana and the piece of hashish from the side table and went out of the room. I ran down the stairs to the front where two young clerks were reading the same newspaper together. Without any remarks, I shouted, "Get rid of this stuff, will you!? Please! I almost killed myself!" I didn't wait for the two clerks to react and put the marijuana and hashish on the counter. The two clerks were surprised at having this excited Japanese appear so suddenly, shouting about drugs. The two clerks looked at each other and then looked at what I had put on the counter just in front of them. They seemed to have understood roughly what kind of thing had happened, and before I could say another word, quickly put away the items off the counter. "Okay, no problem, okay," said one of the clerks shuffling his hands left from right. There were no other people in the lobby. I finally seemed to have dissolved my fear. The next day, the two clerks were smiling. "Oh ye-eees. What you did was all right, sir. You get killed by Cosa Nortra. Si, si." But I didn't like the words the clerk added. "That hashish was goo-oood, sir. Hah-ha." I felt like I had missed something really good. Anyway, I decided to quit marijuana. It was because the fear I had met. It took a little more time to forget the stuff even mentally. |