Golden Earrings (19 page)

I stared at her, not understanding her meaning.

She paused and then said, ‘It is important that you behave as a young lady of your position should behave.’ With a quick glance in Gaspar’s direction, she added, ‘And that you do not put ideas into the heads of young men who have absolutely no chance of ever attaining you.’

Mamie ended her story with a whimsical smile. I couldn’t believe she was going to leave me hanging there! The man Mamie had described was not the Avi I had known. While there were certain similarities — his attention to detail, his knowledge of a wide variety of topics, his enjoyment of sketching scenes and objects in his notebooks, and his kind manner — my Avi had been an introverted man whose love for pianos was limited to restoring and tuning them. I had rarely heard him play anything beyond a few phrases of this and that to check that all the parts of the instrument were working properly.

‘What happened to Avi’s music?’ I asked. ‘Was it the Civil War?’

Mamie shook her head. ‘It was not the war in Spain that killed Gaspar’s music. If anything, he endured that uprooting better than any of us. If it had not been for his sangfroid in those circumstances, I would not have survived. No, the loss of
Gaspar’s music happened here. You already know that during the German occupation he was interned in a concentration camp. Hitler was friends with Franco, and the Nazis persecuted the Spanish Republicans who had fled to France. Gaspar had sent me and Julieta out of Paris to protect us, but he stayed here to assist with a line of safe houses that were smuggling Jews and other people at risk out of the country — ironically, many of them into Spain. Being a Catalan who spoke perfect French, he’d been able to hide his identity. But he was betrayed by our concierge and sent to a camp with other Spanish refugees from Paris. The story of the incident I am about to share with you didn’t come from Gaspar: he never spoke of it. It was told to me by Curro Verger, who was interned with him. The superintendent of the camp, a sadistic man, learned that Gaspar was a virtuoso and had a particular liking for Liszt’s music. The superintendent had Gaspar brought before the assembly of prisoners onto a stage where a piano had been placed. He held a pistol to Gaspar’s head and ordered him to play Liszt’s “Transcendental Étude No 4 in D Minor” by sight while he turned the pages. He said that for every mistake Gaspar made, one of the Spanish prisoners would be shot, starting with the women.’

I held my breath and closed my eyes, trying to imagine what my grandfather must have felt in that situation. I knew from Papa that that
étude
was a notoriously difficult piece, even when you were not half-starved and exhausted out of your mind. A nauseating fear gripped my stomach. Papa had told me that every concert pianist dreaded a lapse of memory during a performance, but the truth was that even the best of them lapsed sometimes, even after months of practice and memorisation. They usually picked up the music again and carried on with nothing but their wounded pride to deal with. None would ever have faced the consequences that Avi faced that day, even if he had the sheet music in front of him.

I opened my eyes again, but it was a while before either Mamie or I could speak.

‘According to Curro, Gaspar did not make any mistakes,’ Mamie said eventually. ‘His lifelong attention to detail and technique as well as his familiarity with Liszt paid off. But the superintendent had the other prisoners shot anyway, except for Curro and Gaspar. After that day, your grandfather was never again able to approach the piano as a musician.’

‘Oh,’ I said, feeling nauseated. In some ways I was glad to be learning more of my Spanish heritage and my loved ones, but in other ways it disturbed me. Poor Avi! I never knew what he had suffered. If I had, I would have found some way to comfort him. Now it was too late.

‘I wanted to tell you about your grandfather tonight,’ said Mamie, brushing a tear from her cheek. ‘I wanted to tell you who he had once been. You know I loved him dearly, but the man the Germans returned to me was a ghost of the man I had known in Barcelona. For the Nazis had not only taken away Gaspar’s music, they had destroyed his faith in humankind. He no longer believed in people’s ability to progress to higher ideals. Unlike Xavier, who held on to that foolish notion until the end.’

B
y 1919, the
cafés cantantes
, where I danced and Manuel played for audiences that appreciated gypsy flamenco, had almost disappeared from Barcelona. The public had new enticements — cinemas, jazz clubs and ballroom dancing. Manuel would have been content to play only for private fiestas, but I couldn’t dance enough. I didn’t care where I performed or for whom as long as I was dancing. I was eighteen years old and for the past ten years I had lived and breathed flamenco. It consumed me. My fingers clicked of their own accord. My feet glided when I walked.

Manuel wanted to follow the other gypsy artists who had returned to Seville and take me with him, but Diego objected. The clan leader had a gambling habit, and losing the income I earned would cause Diego to miss out on his cock and dog fights.

‘Take her to that place on the waterfront,’ he told Manuel. ‘I hear the Americans tip well. Our little
paya
isn’t exactly pretty, but she has a certain charm.’

Manuel and I found ourselves auditioning for variety shows in dusty theatres alongside actors, comedians in top hats and jugglers dressed as clowns. The first booking we obtained was to perform after the Saturday evening film in a cinema in carre del Carme. We were shouted off the stage after three minutes.

‘You were meant to leave the audience on a high note!’ the furious manager screamed at us. ‘Not make them want to throw themselves off a cliff!’

I realised that we were going to have to adapt our style if I was to keep Diego flush with money. I gathered discarded flowers at the market and, disguising myself as a flower seller, snuck into theatres and cabarets so I could see the new flamenco acts. A great shift had indeed transpired: the beauty of the dancers and their costumes had become more important than talent, and none of the singers performed in the Andalusian dialect any more. Instead everyone sang in good Castilian Spanish. Flamenco was being absorbed into classical Spanish dance with its soft balletic postures and footwork. I didn’t tell Manuel, but hardly any of the new dancers were accompanied by a guitarists. Most of them performed to piano music. I absorbed everything — as I had when Manuel’s sisters had shown me their flamenco — from la Argentina’s Spanish folk dances to Raquel Meller’s crimped hairstyle. I realised that I had the best of both worlds: I was Andalusian with a gypsy upbringing and I intended to make the most of it.

The young woman I was at eighteen was not the same innocent child I had been at eight. I was a survivor with a survivor’s instinct for self-preservation. I forgot about the ‘dark angel’ when the theatre managers paid us with dinner as well as wages. If they wanted me to flounce around and swish my skirt, I would.

When I started dancing with a pair of castanets I had ‘acquired’ from a performer who had left her dressing room unlocked, Manuel thought things had gone too far.

‘Stop prancing around with those “clackers” in your hands. After all Francisca has taught you … You have no principles.’

I shrugged. I might not have had principles but, having gorged myself every night for the past month on noodle and rice dishes, I did have breasts and hips for the first time.

But while I grew stronger, Francisca grew weaker. Her attacks of vomiting and nausea were becoming worse. She no longer had the energy to go to the flower market to tell fortunes and spent her days sitting on the beach and contemplating the sea.

Manuel’s sister, Pastora, helped Francisca prepare the healing potions she needed. Francisca had been training Pastora since she was a child to take over as the clan’s
chovihani
when the time came. However, after blood appeared in Francisca’s urine, I kept back some of the money I earned — risking a black eye or a split earlobe from Diego for my deception — so I could buy modern medicine, which I slipped into Francisca’s tea. Francisca had told me that she was taking on the magical harm that was coming to the clan for having lost the
tacho Romano drom,
the true gypsy path, but the doctor I consulted with a list of her symptoms informed me that her kidneys were failing.

When Francisca started having trouble breathing and would no longer eat, Diego ordered that she be moved out of her shack and under a canopy, in keeping with the gypsy ritual that the dying should not pass away in their habitual place lest their spirit remain there. Gypsies from all over Spain came to pay their respects to Francisca. During that time, I did not dance. I busied myself finding places for the visitors to sleep.

One evening, when Francisca’s breath started to rattle, Pastora and I sent the visitors away so that we could wash Francisca and prepare her for the journey to the Otherworld. We would not be allowed to touch her after death. I gave her my flamenco dress to wear because it was the best outfit I owned.

Francisca turned to Pastora. ‘If the gypsies do not remember their true reason for existence … to help and heal the trees and animals and to be kind to the
payos
… I fear that a terrible fate awaits them. I see a sinister cloud swallowing Europe and taking them with it. Tell them that: warn them.’

Then she turned to me and touched my cheek. ‘Don’t let Diego bully you,’ she told me. ‘You are not a
paya
; you are one of us. You always have been. Remember you have the gypsy magic.’

A knowing smile came to her lips before she closed her eyes and took her final breath.

Francisca’s wand and her herbs were placed alongside her in the coffin. Then the men dismantled her shack and everything else was burned. As I watched the smoke rise to the sky, I remembered her words: ‘You have the gypsy magic.’ The problem was, I wasn’t sure if I believed in magic any more. Everyone I loved seemed to die before their time.

After Francisca passed away, I went to live with Manuel’s sisters in their mud hut. The move saved my life, because two days later a freak wave washed over the beach, destroying several dwellings. Manuel was swept out to sea, along with some dogs and chickens. The dogs swam back to shore and the chickens were retrieved. But Manuel and his guitar were never found.

‘It’s the bad luck you brought on him by doing those
payos
dances!’ Blanca accused me.

She and the other gypsies shunned me, until Diego decided to be my manager and announced that under his ‘guidance’ I would earn so much money that I’d soon be able to support the whole clan.

There was a club named the Villa Rosa where the best flamenco artists from around the country performed. The owner was a flamenco guitarist from Madrid, Miguel Borrull. The club soon became known as the ‘Cathedral of Flamenco’. It was rumoured that rich
señoritos
would hire artists from the Villa Rosa to perform at their fiestas, where vintage wine flowed and dancers were sometimes paid in diamonds. It was even said that the King was known to frequent the club in disguise whenever he was in Barcelona. Rather than send me to auditions for
the variety shows playing on las Ramblas, Diego set his sights straight on the Villa Rosa.

He took me there one chilly evening. I was wearing a dress loaned to me by Juanita: a typical gypsy frock in lime green with polka dots and ruffled elbow-length sleeves. It was a size too big for me and I had to keep pulling it back over my shoulders. Diego and I stood outside on the pavement, shivering. Despite his ignorance of the flamenco world, Diego had audacity and self-confidence. He had brought with him bags of mushrooms that the gypsy women had gathered that day, which he intended to use to bribe our way into the club by offering them to the flamenco artists who were performing there that night.

His first victim was a thin man whose bloodshot eyes and curly hair were the only things showing above the upturned lapels of his overcoat.

‘Excuse me, señor!’ Diego called out to him. ‘My niece is a talented
bailaora.
If you watch her dance for a minute or two I will give you these —’

The man walked past us without stopping.

Diego didn’t immediately recognise the woman who stepped out of a taxi and made her way towards the club, but I did. It was la Tanguera, whose impeccable sense of rhythm was admired by all who loved flamenco. She was famous for dancing the
farruca
, traditionally a male dance.

‘Excuse me, señorita, could you show my niece a step or two?’ Diego asked, affecting his most charming smile.

La Tanguera fixed her smouldering eyes on Diego and stretched herself to her full height. ‘Nobody can imitate me!’ she said, tossing her hair over her shoulders. ‘Nobody!’

‘Snob!’ Diego muttered when the woman entered the club. But he wasn’t to be deterred. His face lit up when a rotund man in a well-cut suit made his way along the pavement towards us. The man looked like a rich politician, not a flamenco artist, so Diego tried a different approach.

‘Excuse me, señor,’ he said, raising his clasped hands in a begging gesture, ‘I have with me perhaps the greatest
bailaora
this country will ever see. You will be doing the world a great favour if you speak to el señor Borrull and ask him to let my niece dance in his club tonight. She will not disappoint him — or you and your esteemed friends!’

The man turned to look at me. I realised it was the flamenco singer, Antonio Chacón. His tenor voice was said to be so powerful it could carry through a bullring without the aid of a microphone. He glanced at my gaudy dress and my callused feet, which were turning blue in the rope sandals I was wearing because I didn’t have proper dance shoes. I was expecting him to push us out of the way, but to my surprise, he smiled.

‘Yes, why don’t you come in and show don Miguel what she can do. We don’t want to deprive the world of talent.’

I followed señor Chacón and Diego into the Villa Rosa unable to believe that Diego’s scheme had worked. I was so overwhelmed to be in that esteemed place that I barely took in the Moorish tiles on the walls and the plaster arabesques on the ceiling. The club was crowded and I kept my eyes on the backs of señor Chacón and Diego so as not to get lost, but I did notice the polished bar stacked with wines and sherries in classy bottles. I gave a start when I recognised the matador Juan Belmonte speaking with the dashing film star Antonio Moreno, who had a successful career in the United States. The other lavishly dressed people were probably just as famous, but I had no idea who they were.

Señor Chacón led us to a room where the flamenco artists were sitting. The dancers were dressed in black with their hair elegantly pinned behind their ears. By comparison, I looked like some sort of strange sea urchin in my bright dress. My heart leaped to my throat at the sight of the guitarist Ramón Montoya holding his famous guitar, la Leona: the Lioness. The attractive dancer Concha la Chícharra was there that evening too. She
was known for a rather risqué dance called
El Crispin
, where she stripped off various layers of clothing, supposedly searching for a flea.

‘Don Miguel!’ señor Chacón called out to a man who was sitting next to señor Montoya. The man looked up and raised his thick eyebrows.

‘I have brought you a new talent!’ señor Chacón said.

If I had not been standing next to señor Chacón, I doubt that señor Borrull would have looked at me twice. He rose from his chair and nodded to señor Montoya, who started playing a
farruca
. My heart dropped to my feet. I could feel la Tanguera’s eyes boring into me. How could I dance something for which she was famous? But I knew this was my only chance to impress señor Borrull and the others, and I had to do my best.

I slipped off my sandals and placed them under a chair. I glanced once at Diego before lifting my chin and beginning to dance. I twirled my wrists, swung my arms and stamped my feet with all the passion I could muster. It was a long time since I had felt the dark angel, but something took me over when señor Montoya began to play faster and my feet moved with him. A surge of power and majesty ran through me. I was the mistress of this dance, not its slave. I forgot about impressing señor Borrull and danced with my full spirit.

When I finished, the effect on the room was electric. I held my proud stance as the artists shouted ‘
Olé!
’ for me. Señor Chacón smiled at señor Borrull, who nodded his approval. Diego, who didn’t know a
farruca
from a bowl of olives, folded his arms and smiled smugly, as if the victory had been his alone.

‘Her!’ a voice behind me said.

I turned to see a hollow-cheeked man with a hooked nose and red-rimmed eyes staring at me. His intense gaze gave me an eerie feeling, but it was clear from the excitement that ran through the room, and the two burly men standing on either side of him like guards, that the man was important.

‘Señor Salazar,’ señor Borrull said, putting his hand on the man’s shoulder. ‘This
señorita
has just started with us tonight. I don’t know what else she can dance. She may not be up to your standard. Ask la Tanguera instead.’

Salazar laughed through his yellow teeth. ‘You’ve forgotten that I am the best judge of what I want! That
señorita
burns with gypsy fire. Send her and Montoya for me.’

Señor Borrull looked worried but gestured for me to go with the men.

‘You’d better be as good as that first dance,’ señor Montoya whispered in my ear. ‘El señor Salazar doesn’t stand for games.’

‘Who is he?’ I asked.

Señor Montoya was shocked by my question. ‘Oh God!’ he muttered. ‘He is one of the most famous breeders of fighting bulls in Spain … and also something of a gangster.’

I glanced at Diego, who ran his hand through his hair nervously. We were out of our depth now.

We followed the men up a staircase to a room decorated with wrought-iron chandeliers and with tiled murals of Moorish castles on the walls. The air was thick with cigar smoke and the hazelnut scent of fine sherry. The audience was mostly men, as it had been in the cafés in the barri Xinès where Manuel used to take me to dance, only this time the few whores present were wearing Jeanne Lanvin dresses.