Cats on IBIZA 2

by
Elia Taniguchi

Table of Contents in this issue

Story 6：Pobre and Hanna
Story 7：El Ray del Oriente and Salvador
Story 8：Barco and Margarita
Story 9：Bonita and Jean-Michel
Story 10：Manet and Elmyr
Story 11：Churo and Carlos

Story 6
Pobre and Hanna

Believe it or not, there is a stray cat on Ibiza, that is made to slowly and carefully listen to the words of a kind local woman for just 5 minutes, before he is given a saucer of milk with a little bread everyday. He’s reminded that he needs to be thankful for the day; that the sun has risen, the morning has come as usual, sunlight fills our world, he has food to eat, and also about how wonderful it is that he can go anywhere anytime he likes.

If he does not listen to her until the end, he won’t get his milk! So, the stray cat looks directly into her face and listens attentively to Hanna as she speaks gently to him in her didactic tone everyday.

“Well, Pobre, do you understand? It’s great that morning has come today as usual! If the sun got up late, or became grumpy and neglected to show up, we wouldn’t be able to enjoy the bright morning sunshine. Listen to me, Pobre! You can see the flowers along the road, can’t you? I can again give you milk as you like this morning. You can have it, and it will keep you active the whole day today. You can walk all around the place as you like, and bathe in the sun”.

Hanna does not own the stray cat, called Pobre, specifically. Hanna doesn’t think Pobre is her cat. When Hanna opened the door of her house one day she just found Pobre there, and gave him some milk because he looked hungry. Since then, he has come to her house everyday, and it’s been that way for some time. In this way, Hanna has become good friends with Pobre, and hopes to maintain the friendship as long as she can.

Pobre means poverty in Spanish, and this word has the nuance of something miserable. Hanna also has the most simple and austere lifestyle of any foreigner living on Ibiza. Is the cat called Pobre, the companion of such a poor woman really miserable? No, not at all!

Pobre leads an easy life as a stray cat. No matter what he is called, he is happy because he is given milk everyday. Hanna is also poor, but she is not unhappy at all.

Hanna came to Ibiza from Copenhagen in Denmark about 10 years ago. She is not tall or particularly beautiful, but she has charming face with a nose that turns up slightly at the end as is frequently seen in Danish girls. Although she is short, she has perfect body proportion. In Copenhagen, she often attracted the attentions of the young boys.

In Demark everybody lives quietly but in comfort, as income inequality is the least in the world, and ranks highest in well-being levels and social welfare levels. School fees are free until students graduate from college. In such a country as Denmark, even Hanna, who lost her father when she was very young, could graduate from college.

She was not a particularly brilliant student, so she did not develop any expertise. However, she graduated from college without a problem. In college, she most enjoyed spending time relaxing in the library reading “Little Mermaid” by Hans Christian Andersen.

Her mother was a public facilities cleaning lady. She had a brother two years senior to her, and they used to live in a small public housing unit together with their mother. Their house was always kept tidy, with her mother’s hand-made lace curtains hung over the windows to keep out the bright sunshine.

Not only Hanna’s house, but also most of the houses in Denmark are dimly lit. In autumn outside, the light from the sun is also dim. I don’t know whether or not this is the reason, but Danish people are generally quiet and reserved. Hanna and her mother did not often chat with each other in the house. Actually, her brother spent most of his time away from home, so she didn’t have much experience talking with her brother either.

However, she was never uncomfortable at home. Danish men are sometimes quite lively, drinking beer and having a good time, but the women are generally modest and live quietly. They have modest needs and content themselves decorating windows with flowers for example, with a feeling of satisfaction like a faintly glowing candle flame somewhere in their hearts.

Their way of living is rather far from typical American self-assertiveness, for example. They all live quietly, but healthily.

Her brother was quite robust physically, as Danish people generally are. It is said that this is because they have the blood of the brave and daring Vikings who were once the terror of the icy seas. However, Hanna does not want to believe it. She thinks that it’s impossible that the Danish kings and queens, with such gentle faces, could be the descendants of Vikings. Instead, she believes that Hans Christian Andersen must be the descendant of a mermaid who left the water, but never of Vikings.

Hanna’s mother goes to church every Sunday, as all the Danish women do. Hanna only goes to church occasionally now. When she sees her mother kneeling down on the church floor, she feels like she’s looking at Eleanor Rigby from the Beatles.

This song is about a woman who worked hard, and died quietly and alone in a church. Hanna sometimes thought that the song is somehow about her mother. She herself does not want to die like Eleanor Rigby.

They say that the first people to fall in love with the Beatles were the Danish. Of course, Hanna does not know the reason why.

When Hanna came to Ibiza for the first time for a summer vacation about 10 years ago, she could not believe that such a paradise existed in this world. It was because the sun was ten times more brilliant than in Denmark, and without doubt quite different than in Denmark. The color of the bougainvillea flowers was much brighter on Ibiza, and when she went to the beach she was astonished that all the people bathed naked! On Ibiza, nobody says anything when she swims in the nude like a little mermaid.

During one of her swims, Esteban’s Three Musketeers must have noticed her, and she soon after became a model for some of Esteban’s paintings. Esteban liked her, and so she decided to live on Ibiza. They said that she had a perfect body. However, she did not care about it, but she loved to see herself slowly appearing on the canvas as Esteban’s drew, and felt like a princess in a fairy-tale.

At first, she lived as a lodger on the third floor of Esteban’s house. Soon after that, she found a small semi-basement room that was used for storage in an old apartment building with the wonderful name, “House of Carmen”. This is just 30 minutes walk from Dalt Vila in the old town. The owner was an old woman, and when she kindly accepted a discounted rental fee, Hanna started living there.