One afternoon in May 2008, Joan Valent called his friend Biel March. The call (“Biel, are you coming down to Palma, are we going to an opening and have dinner?”), a normal call, almost obligatory at the weekend, the typical call that is forgotten with the next one a few days later, unleashed such a storm in March’s life that, 16 years later, he finds himself on this July evening in Pollença, his town, telling a journalist about it.
Biel March, painter and artist, was 41 years old at the time. He remembers the details of the night he went to dinner with his friend, the musician Joan Valent, in the astonishing way we recover details destined to be lost before a great event occurs; in proportion to the gap left by the meteorite in your life, you remember with extraordinary detail what you did before and after.
For example, the place where they went to have some wine and a snack, its layout, even the atmosphere. They drank, he explains, a Pago de los Capellanes and a Les Terrasses Priorat, and he remembers how much they paid for the two bottles. “We are both from the village, Valent and I: it affected it, but not too much.” March was single, he had just gotten out of a relationship. Afterwards, the two of them went to the Gibson Bar in Palma. When they got there, they sat on the terrace. Joan ordered a MaCallan, Biel a Barceló rum with cola. Then, at that moment, the waiter made a mistake. He didn’t hear well, or he didn’t pay attention, but the fact is that when he came back he brought the MaCallan for Joan and a Coca-Cola, nothing more, for Biel.
“Have you ever seen me drink Coca-Cola?” said Biel March, smiling, touched by the wine.
And as soon as he finished saying that sentence, a girl who was at the next table with her friends turned around laughing and saying yes, she looked like she was drinking Coca-Cola alone. She started talking to both of them. The girl was then 29 years old, she is Dutch from Groningen and her name is Sylvia Wolterman. And now he also details the details of that night, and of the following 16 years, with the journalist in Pollença, where they both live and raise their daughter. They talked, drank, laughed and exchanged phone numbers. Wolterman had a business card. An artist like March, he had won a prize and among the gifts was a card. He gave it to the boy from the Barceló with a tail, who still has it.
Sylvia Wolterman worked in Palma and had been in Spain for a year. She had studied Fine Arts, but at that time she had a job in a law firm. “It was a good job, but I was looking at options to return to Holland, that job was just to get by”: the Mallorcan capital was a great opportunity to find work. But she wanted something more related to her education. And that was when she decided to leave Spain.
“I remember,” says Sylvia, “that night we talked from table to table, but we were sitting down the whole time. He didn’t go to the bathroom. And I didn’t know if he was going to be tall enough! I like tall men, I’m tall.” When Biel March finally got up, she, who is 1.80 m tall, could see his 1.89 m. “I was wearing a hat,” Biel remembers, “I always wear a hat.” “We said goodbye,” says Sylvia, “and the next day he invited me to a concert.” Joan Valent had arranged the music for a Sara Baras show, and gave him two tickets so that he could invite “the Dutch girl.” And Biel March called Sylvia Wolterman’s phone for the first time. Once, twice. Three times. She didn’t pick up. And Biel went to the show alone. “I sat in one seat and put the hat in the other.”
Two days later, she sent him a message, Biel recalls, saying that she barely knew him, but that she thought he was a “cool guy.” Encouraged, he called her to invite her to a party at Valent’s estate, where Valent, March and their friends would be pruning the vines all day. When he finished work, he went to pick her up. The situation was not entirely comfortable, March recalls. “We had seen each other for an hour, surrounded by people, drunk, at night…” he says. Would they remember each other well? To make light of it, they both looked surprised to find themselves sober, in the daytime, to go to the party together. “I was going to go with a friend, but she went to Ibiza,” Sylvia recalls.
March’s friends were waiting for “Biel’s friend” that night. With a very Mallorcan meal: goat and porcella (pig). And with everyone sitting at the table to eat the menu, Sylvia introduced herself: “I’m a vegetarian.” An older man quickly stood up: “Well, there’s no problem, I’ll go to a restaurant and bring some vegetables.” They drove back together. And she, when saying goodbye, said to him: “Can I give you a kiss?” “I’m not proactive at all,” he says. “I like that,” she says. And this story began.
A few weeks later, Sylvia Woldemart called home to say she was not coming back. Now the two of them live with their daughter in Pollença, where March has been around for 800 years. “All the Marchs, all the branches, come from Pollença,” says Biel.
–If it’s a boy, you name it. If it’s a girl, I’ll name it, Biel suggested when, three years after they met, Sylvia became pregnant.
But he says he already knew it would be a girl. He is not entirely joking, nor is he very serious, when he says that when he sees a pregnant woman he knows perfectly well whether it will be a boy or a girl. He has always guessed, although there is a considerable success rate. The girl is called Francesca Joana, named after Biel’s mother and godmother.
Sylvia had a grandfather who was a mathematician and very lucid, and who died at almost 100 years of age. His surname was Donker, a very rare surname in Holland. One day, Biel, president of the Pollença Club, a club that stirs up the cultural life of this historic municipality bathed by the Mediterranean, was waiting at the Town Hall for an appointment with the mayor and noticed a map of the Mediterranean from the 17th or 16th century. It was a donation made by a German doctor. The map had been made in Amsterdam by Hendrick Doncker. As soon as he got home, Biel called Sylvia’s mother to ask Grandfather Donker, without the ‘c’, if it could have anything to do with it. He told him that he couldn’t know, but that Hendrick was the most common name of his ancestors.
“What would have become of our lives if they had brought that rum and coke back?” they sum up as they leave.
#Sylvia #Biel #love #misunderstanding