The Bummer Summer

We landed in Madrid during high summer, the time of year that everyone advises never to arrive. The parched streets and plazas lacked any perceptible movement except for a policeman lazily shifting his cap and a bored waiter inching a cigarette towards his lips. In our neighbourhood alleyways we looked for signs of life, but the more we looked the less we saw, and for the rest of the afternoon we retreated to a friend's rooftop terrace to drink beer and watch for ground movement like snipers. "It's too hot," our friend sneered, "not even God would bother to move."
It's a tradition for los Madrileños to take an annual vacation somewhere cooler: the mountains, the sea, anywhere that doesn't bake like a bread oven, but this year the exodus of the city was more awkward than usual because of the smouldering eurocrisis.
Those locals lucky enough to still have a job had probably had their hours cut or had seen their pay slashed. Which meant that if you were still in the city in August you couldn't afford to escape the heat and dust and bedraggled tourists. In other words, you couldn't escape me.
When the beer ran out and we'd finished arguing with Javier about leftist politics (which is still a thing in Europe) we decided to take refuge at Piscina Del Lago, a public swimming pool surrounded by pine-clad terraces and swathes of freshly hosed grass.
On such a blistering day the lawns and benches and terracotta paths were jammed with semi-reclined locals, and the size of the crowd forced everyone to lay their towels fringe to fringe like a giant quilt, but no one seemed to mind.
If people were annoyed by their neighbours they tried their best to appear indifferent. No one blinked at a gay couple quietly sharing a joint with each other, but in the same moment a lifeguard came over to reprimand a young family for spreading their edibles across the pristine grass.
There was a yes and no for everything it seemed. Under the shade of an elm tree a young man strummed a guitar and people nodded approvingly, but when someone younger switched their  iTunes to speakerphone everyone winced and clicked their tongues.
When I walked to the edge of the pool I noticed a large sign with another rule: no sunglasses while swimming, no flippers allowed, and no nudity please.
That the last warning was necessary made me laugh, probably because the women were already treading a fine line with their bare breasts and tasselled g-strings, while some of the men wore Speedos only slightly larger than a condom.
The water was colder than I expected and I should have dived in and let the iciness pummel my skin, but instead I sat near the metal ladder and paddled my feet like a child. The pool was square-shaped, not something I was used to, and the equidistance of those in the water created a keener sense of acquaintance.
Strangers were laughing and chatting to each other, but thankfully not to me because the little Spanish that I knew seemed useless when faced with the challenge of aquatic small talk.
I kept wanting to jump in, to break the spell of indecision, and it struck me how fundamentally I'd changed since I was a boy. At the age of ten my only interest had been submerging myself for countless hours in our backyard pool, gyrating like a dolphin or diving more solemnly like a whale. Every summer my obsession with becoming a sea monkey would wear away the skin on my feet and I would start bleeding whenever I was forced back on dry land.
It was during one of these torpid summers that some unfamiliar children arrived to swim in our pool - friends of friends of friends - and I remember quite clearly the moment that an adult cried out, "he's gone under!" It was a young boy, pale and skinny and quiet, and nobody had noticed that he'd sunk to the bottom like an anchor.
A woman jumped in and managed to drag his limp body to the edge of the pool. Someone else turned him on his side and stuck their fingers down his mouth and that seemed to work. He coughed and spewed some chlorinated water and sat up with a dazed expression.
There was yelling afterwards, probably between his parents, and that was the only time I spent sitting on the edge of the pool that whole summer. No one was allowed back in. I was only permitted to sit and paddle my feet, something that I remember thinking was the worst thing that had ever happened in my life.