From “A Paradise in Madrid" – Camilo Jose’Cela, The Hive
The waste plot that is the morning playground or noisy, quarrelsome boys who throw stones at each other all day long, is, from the time that front doors are locked, a rather grubby Garden of Eden where one cannot dance smoothly to the music of a concealed, almost unnoticed radio set; where one cannot smoke a scented, delightful cigarette as a prelude; where no easy, candid endearments may be whispered in security, in complete security. After lunch time the waste ground is the resort of old people who come there to feed on the sunshine like lizards. But after the hour when the children and the middle aged couples go to bed, to sleep and dream, it is an uninhibited paradise with no room for evasion or subterfuge, where all know what they are after, where they make love nobly, almost harshly, on the soft ground which still retains the lines scratched in by the little girl who spent the morning playing hop-scotch, and the neat, perfectly round holes dug by the boy who greedily used all his spare time to play at marbles.
I’ve never heard the terms ‘waste ground’ or ‘waste plot’ mean anything other than a ‘trash dump’. Is something lost in the translation, or is this not necessarily *fresh air?
