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The Gypsy's Curse

Bernie the mountain dog was leaving the fair with his new bride after an evening of carnival fun and gluttony when he bumped into a strangely dressed feline near the exit.

"Hey, watch where you're going." The former All-Star defensive tackle said as the elderly cat picked herself off the ground.

"You are a clumsy oaf." The feline, who was dressed like some sort of Gypsy, spat. "But is okay, Madam Lavinia will forgive you and allow you to have your fortune read. I see love and long life in both you and your mate's futures. That will be twenty dollars, please."

The old feline stood there with her paw out expectedly.

Bernie whipped his tail in annoyance. "I don't believe in that crap, besides, that is no way near worth twenty bucks."

The cat blinked. "You are correct, I have forgotten something." She dug in her bodice and pulled out a broken sprig of Rosemary. She pressed it into Bernie's paw. "There you are. Rosemary helps one remember. This one will help you remember to be kind to old ladies. Twenty dollars, please."

Bernie threw the herb to the ground and stomped on it.

The feline cried out in anguish, pulled the fur out from her ears and swung around as if Bernie had just killed her baby. Her gyrations were so varied and violent that even Bernie, who was three times her size, hesitated to shove past her to the exit. When her fit was done she spun around to face the dog and glared at him through one cloudy eye.

"I curse you, you mean, evil canine. I curse you forever!"

"Great. Thanks. Glad we got that settled. Now get the hell out of my way."

"Wait." Bernie's mate, a poodle from the cheerleading squad at his college, put a delicate paw on his bicep to stop him. Her eyes were wide with superstition. "What kind of curse do you put on him?"

"What you mean what kind of curse? A curse curse."

"No, that's not how it works. I read about it in the National Requirer. You have to make a specific cure, like 'You vill never sleep while the sun doth shine!' or 'You vill starve while surrounded by food!', you know? That kind of curse."

The old feline looked confused. She glanced left and right until her eyes finally lit on a poster for Antonio Banderas' new movie.

"Er, ah. Spaniard ...Spain? Yes, that's it." She stepped up to Bernie and gave him the evil eye again. "You shall never see Spain!"

Bernie looked stunned. "What? That's it? What kind of dumb curse is that supposed to be? I don't even want to see Spain."

The gypsy looked embarrassed for an instant but soon regained her composure. "It is the best kind of curse - one whose punishment you bring on yourself - and you better remember that!"

With that she turned, tail up haughtily, and strode off.

"Crazy old cat."

* * * * *

Years passed and Bernie prospered. He used his college football fame to secure a loan and opened an imported car lot. He often travelled to the countries where the cars he imported were made but there had not been a Spanish car of note since Hispano-Suiza closed its doors in nineteen forty-six, so he never had occasion to go there. Still, each time he flew near the country he remembered the old feline's curse and vowed to go there one day, just to prove her wrong.

But fate always seemed to intervene.

The first two times that he actually flew over a portion of the country were both night flights and coincidently ones with no moon. They flew too high to make out anything on the ground. The third time he flew over he deliberately choose a mid-day flight. To his chagrin an unseasonable storm came up and the plane was forced to climb above the cloud cover from the Pyrenees to Portugal.

Bernie wrote it off to coincidence. In fact, he did not let the thought that there might really be a curse bother him until a flight from Morocco to Switzerland was forced to land due to engine problems after crossing the narrow Mediterranean Sea near the Pillars of Hercules.

They landed in a thick fog. All the passengers had to disembark while the mechanics checked out the engine. Bernie looked around as they walked from the plane to the terminal. He could barely make out the building from twenty feet away.

"Hey, buddy!" He called to a collie lounging near the entrance. "This is Spain, right?" He said, pointing to the concrete of the taxiway.

"Blimy, no. You're in Gibraltar. British Territory."

"Gibraltar? Where's Spain?"

"A mile that way." The collie pointed to where the fog was thickest. "But you can't go there, passengers in transit is restricted to the terminal."

Bernie turned in the direction the collie had indicated and took two steps before several large, armed bulldogs in British army uniforms stepped out of the fog to block his path.

"Who wants to see some stupid old flamingo stomping country anyway." He mumbled as he turned back to the terminal.

But the thought of visiting Spain became an obsession after that.

The next year he planned a month of vacation for him and his mate. He booked a villa by the sea outside of Malaga and arranged to rent a car. He and the missus would see all of Andalusia - referred to as 'Old Spain' in the guidebooks - from Ronda to Toledo to Cordoba and Grenada. They would finish with a tour of the dessert south of the Sierra Nevada range where most of Clint Eastwood's Spaghetti Westerns were filmed.

But Bernie got sick a week before the trip. He needed his gall bladder removed and by the time he could move again the vacation had passed and his business was in disarray. He had to work twice as hard to save the car lot.

Two years later he planned another trip, after getting a full checkup. He was so happy when he got a clean bill of health that he went home and got his mate pregnant for the first time.

Two weeks before the trip she fainted on the stairs and took a bad fall. She had to be rushed to the hospital. Her doctor diagnosed her with placental abruption and forbade her to do housework, engage in sexual intercourse or travel until after the birth. She insisted that Bernie stay by her side throughout the remainder of the pregnancy. They missed their trip and Bernie's mood was made worse by a severe case of blue balls and dishpan paws.

Bernie became convinced that the old gypsy was somehow hacking into their lives, learning their plans and tampering with their health to make it look like the curse was working.

His mate pointed out that it was likely that the elderly feline had passed into the great beyond by now, and if she had not she would certainly be too frail and feeble minded to be mounting a cyber warfare campaign against them. Bernie was not convinced.

"These Gypsies age well." He mooted.

Bernie was now even more determined to visit Spain. As soon as his son was born and his mate was safely through the tricky postpartum period he began plotting how he could do it without creating a paper trail that some agent of the gypsy might intercept.

The next time he travelled to Europe on business he called the airline and booked a flight with an overnight connection in Madrid. When he arrived at the airport he was furious to discover that a clerk at his office, thinking that it had been made in error, had changed it to a direct flight.

The following trip he deliberately told the clerk to book a two-day layover in Barcelona for the assistant manager, then told him to switch the tickets to his name at the last minute.

"But sir," the clerk explained, "you told us years ago to always book at the cheapest rates, and we can't substitute travellers on those fares."

Bernie decided that the only way he was going to get to Spain was to book a last-minute flight himself.

He misled his mate and his staff into thinking that he was going to be working on a dealership franchise scheme with his lawyers in the city but instead slipped his passport into his jacket and, without luggage, drove to the airport and bought a ticket on the first direct flight to Madrid.

The plane developed engine trouble halfway across the Atlantic and was diverted to Heathrow.

Undeterred, Bernie found an African airline that flew out of a sketchy regional airport using short-haul aircraft that made refueling stops in Portugal. There were no immigration or security checks on the outbound flights so the lack of a visa for the final destination was not a problem. Bernie did not intend to go that far anyway. He cornered the pilot just before takeoff and used his Rolex and the last of his cash to convince him to divert to Malaga instead, emphasizing that they should not tell anybody.

The departure was delayed and it was dark by the time that they crossed over the coast of Spain.

"Why is it so dark down there?" Bernie asked his seatmate as he peered down thought he window, hoping to catch a glimpse of the landscape, a city, or even a dim farm.

"It's Earth Day today." The beagle beside him said without looking up from his tablet. "Everyone has turned off their lights to save the planet."

Bernie swore, but he was still hopeful. There was not enough fuel to make it to any other country by now; they had to land in Spain. It was a clear night and the airport at Malaga would have to leave its lights on for safety. They would be on the ground in less than an hour and then ... then he would finally see Spain!

What could go wrong?

Just after the Captain announced their descent into Malaga a burly pony with brown fur and a blond mane stood up at the front of the plane and began shouting in some language that was not Spanish, which Bernie had learned in anticipation of his first trip.

"The ETA!" his seatmate screamed, dropping his tablet.

"What the hell's the ETA?"

"Basque separatists. Terrorists! This one must think we are landing in Spain so they can arrest him!"

There was a struggle at the front of the plane. The pony had brought a thermos aboard through the rather lax security of the regional airport. He was twisting the cap as the steward tried to subdue him.

There was a dull boom. Fire and smoke filled the plane for a minute before being sucked out the hole where the pony had been standing. Debris was flying all about the cabin. Something hit Bernie in the head and he saw stars. More smoke must have filled the cabin as the pilot dove for lower altitudes because Bernie couldn't see a dammed thing through it. He faintly heard the pilot call for the passengers to assume the crash position ... and then everything went black.

* * * * *

Bernie came too to the sound of whispers. Whispers that he could recognize as Spanish despite some sort of regional accent he was not familiar with. The voices were young and female.

"Hey, Senoritas." He croaked through dry lips. "Don-duh Es-toy? Where am I?"

The whispering ceased.

"We speak English, Senor."

"Great. Good. Where am I?"

"Oh, Senor, you were in a terrible airplane crash. You are the only survivor but you have been badly burned. You are in the hospital, Senor."

"I KNOW I'm in a hospital." God but his head hurt, and these two were not helping. "WHERE is the hospital ... in which town, which country?"

"Malaga, Espana ... sorry, in Spain."

"Spain." Bernie sighed as if he had just met Jesus. "I'm in Spain."

"Si, Senor. You must stay here until your bandages are removed and perhaps for a period of convalescence before you can return to your homeland."

"Oh, I'm in no rush." He chuckled. Then he noticed that everything was still black. "When, uh, when will the bandages come off?"

"Those on your legs can come off in a few days. The ones on your arms and chest in two weeks, with God's blessing."

"What about the ones on my eyes?"

The nuns or nurses or doctors or whoever stayed silent for a dozen heartbeats.

"Senor ... the burns were contained to the area below your neck ..."

"What are you trying to say?" Bernie interrupted, fear creeping into his voice. "Spit it out, I want to know."

"There are no bandages on your eyes, Senor. A piece of shrapnel from the explosion ... it went through your temple, severing the optic nerves. You ... you are blind Senor, permanently."

Bernie felt the tears on his cheeks before he realized that he was crying. He could not even begin to comprehend what had happened, let alone whose fault it was. He sniffled back the tears and behind the scent of antiseptic and bloody bandages his sensitive canine nose detected another odour, a woody, herbal scent. He turned his nose to the side where the scent was strongest and it brushed against something tall and leafy that was probably on a side table he could not see.

"What is that smell?"

"Rosemary, Senor. The scent is supposed to help one with head injuries remember. The old Romani feline that cleans the rooms left it here, to aid in your recovery."