A Spanish friend from our previous visit here came round the other afternoon with her two children. We gave them something to drink and M prepared a small dish with some almonds and dried figs for them to eat. The younger of the two was about Orlando’s age and very calm. He played on the rooftop with a couple of nylon hoops that had come as stiffeners with a shower hat and a stick, bowling the hoops around with quiet concentration. The older, aged seven, started out very studiously, arranging and rearranging some geometric puzzles M had made.
Intermittently, they reached out and ate a fig or almond. At some point, I noticed one of the marzipan logs we had brought back from England. Thinking they might enjoy a bite of something different, I sliced off a few morsels and put them in the bowl with the fruit and nuts. The younger boy tried one but spat it out; the older got stuck in and soon polished them off.
By then, he had found M’s skipping rope and was trying it out on the roof terrace. We all demonstrated our prowess and he got fairly excited trying to do five skips in a row. Then he started going slightly wild, attaching one end of the rope to the washing line and swinging it about violently, cackling as he did so, while leaping manically, before falling over backwards. The more often he fell, the more excited he got. His mother tried to restrain him, but he shrugged her off. He began leaping about like some sort of dervish, banging into the walls.
At one point, he launched himself into the air, and almost sailed over the modest parapet that kept people from toppling off the roof terrace onto the ground below. This seemed to ignite his passions even more. I started getting worried; I might end the day trying to explain his death to the authorities. Encircling him in my arms and herding him indoors was like trying to contain a torrent. He easily slipped my grasp and started prising water and gas pipes off the wall. Leaping away as I approached, he ran to the parapet and hopped along it. I grabbed him and bundled him inside.
Eventually, they left, and we considered what could have turned him from a reasonable being of some studiousness into a raving lunatic in a matter of minutes. Smoothing out the wrapping from the marzipan log, all was revealed. It contained a trivial percentage of almonds, an abundance of sugar and sundry other highly enervating additives.
Be warned!