FURTHERMORE
By Gerry Moran
You can’t drown the shamrock in sake. Believe me – I tried. It doesn’t work. I tried it with two American friends, Jack and Diane, in a Sushi Bar in Barcelona many years ago. I don’t remember the name of the Sushi Bar but what I do remember, however, is raising our little mugs of sake around 10pm. and toasting Saint Patrick.
And then, just as Saint Paul saw the light on the road to Damascus, I saw the light in the Sushi Bar in Barcelona. “Folks,” I said, “I’ve had my belly-full of raw fish and luke-warm sake, let’s go to an Irish bar.”
After a short taxi drive we found ourselves outside The Quiet Man, which was anything but quiet. In fact it was positively buzzing with young Spaniards, mostly students we reckoned. We couldn’t even get in. The luck of the Irish was with us, however, as just around the corner was a bar called La Mariella. Now La Mariella had seen better days and, as we peered through the window, Jack, my American friend, flicked through his quite substantial Guide To Barcelona. “The Mariella Bar,” he announced excitedly, “is the only bar in Spain allowed to sell absinthe.”
Absinthe we were familiar with. Oscar Wilde drank it when he was in Paris as did most poets and artists but it was later banned, the guide informed us, as it was considered an hallucinogenic drink that brought madness and ruin to drinkers. However, what was good enough for Oscar Wilde was good enough for me, my wife, and our American friends, so in we went.
The Mariella was every bit as “quaint”, shall we say, inside as out. However, compared to the pseudo-traditional bars of today, the off-green walls, the weather-beaten linoleum and the brown timber bar gave it an authenticity and charm that were uniquely its own. This uniqueness was all the more enhanced by the presence of a statue of the Virgin Mary (La Mariella, the Little Mary) perched high on a ledge in the corner.
The few drinkers at the bar, elderly men for the most part, turned to stare as we entered – they didn’t seem too used to tourists and the demand for absinthe was nonexistent. Jack marched to the bar and bravely ordered: “Quatro absinthe.” After a wee tete-a-tete with the barman, he returned to our table with four glasses, a greenish, viscous liquid in their bottom, four spoons, four sugar cubes, four bottles of water and a box of matches. Already this absinthe, known appropriately, especially for the day that was in it, as the Green Fairy, had a mystique all of its own.
Though never a drinking man, Jack was in his element here in the Mariella Bar in a side-street in Barcelona demonstrating how to imbibe absinthe. He gently laid a spoon across the mouth of his glass, placed a sugar cube on it, struck a match and lit the cube, allowing the sugar to slowly melt. He then carefully poured the water on to the melted sugar allowing both to subside into the absinthe. We watched the drink slowly change colour from viscous green to a milky, cloudy white. Jack took a sip. He didn’t hallucinate. He didn’t go mad. We followed suit.
It tasted like Pernod. Like aniseed. I didn’t particularly like it but I drank it anyway. It was Patrick’s Day after all and if I couldn’t drown the shamrock in sake then I’d surely drown it in absinthe – with the help of a few beers.
La Mariella slowly filled up thanks to the overflow from The Quiet Man and Jack ended up showing anyone who was interested how to drink absinthe. As it happened, I spied a chap in a t-shirt with ‘Tá Gaeilge Agam’ on the back. He was from Waterford, and working over here, I introduced myself and we started spouting the odd cúpla focail over absinthe and beer about iománaiocht (hurling) and An Trá Mór (Tramore) mostly.
Unless I was hallucinating, it was a most memorable way to drown the shamrock.
