Golden Earrings (20 page)

Salazar signalled to the guests to make room so I could dance. He pulled a pistol from his jacket before sitting down in an armchair.

‘Oh God,’ whispered señor Montoya again. ‘Can you dance an
alegrías
?’

I glanced at him. ‘Yes.’

Most flamenco dancers specialised in two or three musical forms, devoting their lives to mastering every detail of that rhythm. But I was obsessed by dance in all its forms. I could have performed the Argentine tango or the American cakewalk if
señor Montoya had asked me to; or, at least, my interpretations of them.

Señor Montoya seemed dubious but began to play.

I did my best to ignore the pistol in Salazar’s lap and the stern expression on his face and began my
paseo
. Luckily for me, I could tell by the way the crowd shouted their encouragement that they appreciated gypsy flamenco. I raised my arms and arched my wrists, letting the dark angel take me. I felt myself transform. My torso grew heavy and solid. Horns sprouted from my head and my shoulders bulked up with muscle. I caught sight of myself in the wall mirror. My skin was black and my head was enormous. I had turned into one of Salazar’s bulls …

My blood on fire, I rushed from the dark
toril
into the arena. I was dazzled by the light. The crowd roared. My heart thumped with fury and fear. The matador in his suit of lights was waiting for me along with his
banderilleros
. The matador raised his satin cape, testing my courage. A
picador
on a horse stabbed me in the neck. A searing pain burned through me and I could no longer hold up my proud head. Warm blood trickled down my legs into the sand …

I danced with ferocity, my anger burning up my insides. I wanted to live but I hated life. Injustice was all I had known. I must kill those who had hurt my family …

The spectators were a sea of brilliant colours. Women in lace mantillas waved their handkerchiefs. I could not win but I knew I must fight … I spun like a whip. Not once but twice. My hair flew from its pins. My feet beat the floor like war drums … I ran at my tormentors. My triumph was the glimmer of fear in the matador’s eyes, even though it lasted only a moment and all was stacked against me …

The Villa Rosa’s glamorous guests jumped from their seats, screaming and shouting. Salazar fired shots into the ceiling …

The barbed spears they jabbed into my shoulders drained my strength. I was outnumbered and alone. But I charged with all
the courage I had left. An agonising pain ripped through my shoulder blades. The matador’s sword had pierced my heart. I collapsed to my knees. My vision blurred. The spectators cheered. My last view of the world was thousands of white handkerchiefs being waved in victory as my life ran out of me …

I ended the dance with my right arm raised and my eyes cast down. Sweat poured down my face and back. My lungs pulsed, desperately trying to suck in air. There was stunned silence for a few seconds, before a man lifted his chair and threw it against the wall. Another picked up one of the splintered legs and smashed it into a mirror. The women sobbed hysterically. One of them tore her scarf from around her neck and shredded it in her hands. Her companion broke his wine glass and thrust the jagged vessel into his shoulder. My legs were trembling and the room was turning white around me. The people in the audience were demonstrating how deeply I had moved them.

Señor Montoya struck up another
alegrías
but I had nothing more to give. I looked from señor Montoya to Diego, and then fainted.

When I regained consciousness, señor Montoya and Diego were leaning over me. ‘
Alegrías
means “joys”,’ señor Montoya said to me, a scowl on his face. ‘Wherever you went with that one, it was troubling.’

Diego, however, was beaming. It was clear from the loud voices around me and the murmurs of ‘spectacular’ that I had been well received.

The men helped me to my feet and I found myself face to face with Salazar. He took my hand and pushed a wad of notes into it. It was more money than I had ever earned in my life. Disoriented and confused, I turned to go.

He grabbed my arm and yanked me towards him. ‘I warn the matadors who fight my bulls that it is dangerous to turn their backs on them.’

Salazar’s grip was painful. At first I averted my eyes from his cruel face. I sensed his darkness was deep. But then I thought of the bull I had become during my dance and courage returned to me. I locked eyes with him. A smile curled his lips. My defiance seemed to please him. He laughed loudly and leaned his face towards mine.

‘
Encaste
,
nobleza
,
bravura
,’ he said. ‘The most important quality I look for in my bulls is courage in the face of pain.’

He released his grip and I stumbled backwards. I kept my eyes on him as I backed out of the room. It was obvious that Salazar had the devil in him. I did not know then just how much pain he would one day cause me.

Señor Borrull had invited me and Diego to return the next night to the Villa Rosa. Although I was excited to be in the company of the finest flamenco artists, I was afraid Salazar would pick me again for a fiesta. At least Diego had decided to spend some money on me, ‘as an investment’, and had purchased an elegant black dress with a ruffled skirt and white piping for me to wear.

I breathed a sigh of relief when Salazar wasn’t at the club. Instead, I danced for some English and American tourists. The Englishmen said nothing, although they paid me generously, but the Americans were exuberant. ‘Darling, you should go to New York,’ a man in a white suit told me. ‘Americans are having a love affair with Spanish dancers. You’ll make millions!’

As well as dancing at the Villa Rosa, Diego and I were invited to other famous clubs in Barcelona: la Taurina; el Manquet; la Criolla. If a club wasn’t busy on a particular night, the flamenco artists would perform for each other. No dance academy could have given me what I learned from watching the masters up close.

One evening the following year, a month after my nineteenth birthday, I was demonstrating my ability to do two or three turns and stop precisely on the spot when I sensed someone watching me. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a man in a
double-breasted suit sitting at a table in the corner. He had broad shoulders and his hands, which were clasped in front of him, were large and square. He wore a gold signet ring on one and a diamond ring on the other. The man gave the impression that he could crush someone in his grasp, but was too suave to do so.

I finished my dance, and was waiting at the bar for some iced water when the man approached me.

‘You dance very well,’ he said, in an accent that wasn’t Spanish. What was it? French? German? He had the sleek brown hair and strong jaw of a younger man, but the droop of his hooded eyes and the grooves around his mouth made me guess his age to be about fifty.

‘Do you want me to dance for a fiesta?’ I asked him, hoping for an engagement for the evening. The man looked like he had money. Another epidemic of the Spanish flu was keeping the tourists away and I had an entire gypsy clan to support.

He shook his head. ‘No, I’d like you to dance in my cabaret.’

The memory of the insipid acts Manuel and I had performed in variety shows when we were low on money didn’t make me jump at the offer. If I ever danced in one of those places again, it was going to be on my terms.

‘If you’re looking for a “flamenco act”,’ I told him, ‘you’ve got the wrong dancer.’

The man shook his head. It was hard not to be mesmerised by his eyes. They were the same cobalt blue as the water bottles the waiters placed on the tables.

‘I’m not looking for a dancer,’ he said. ‘I’m looking for a
star.
’

The word made me think of great beauties like la Argentina: women who had four or five costume changes a show. Not poor girls like me, who borrowed their clothes.

‘You think I could be a star?’ I asked with a laugh.

The man shifted on his feet. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘You’re a bit of a rough diamond. I don’t know what I’ll get when I polish you.’

‘Polish me?’ I cried, lifting my chin defiantly. ‘What if you can’t polish me?’

‘We’ll see,’ he replied, reaching into his jacket and taking out a card. He passed it to me.

The Samovar Club, las Ramblas, Barcelona

I had heard of the club. The best international acts performed there. So this man was serious. He turned to go.

‘Excuse me, senyor,’ I called after him. ‘You didn’t tell me your name.’

The man looked over his shoulder. A half-smile danced on his lips and his eyes shone brighter. ‘My name is Maxim Tarasov,’ he said. ‘But in Barcelona they call me “el Ruso”.’

That was how I met the impresario el Ruso: the Russian. The man who would change everything.

I
t was both wonderful and daunting to be back at the School of the Opera Ballet. When I exited the Métro at the place de l’Opéra and stood before the rose marble columns of the Paris Opera House, a thousand memories flooded back to me. The first time I had seen the Beaux Arts building, considered to be one of the most beautiful in the world, I had been with my mother. I was only three years old at the time and I’d gaped in awe at the gilded statues representing poetry and music, and the bronze busts of the famous composers. When Mama showed me the stage where she had danced, I felt as though I had stepped into a world of magic and fantasy. I’d craned my neck to admire the grand chandelier suspended above the auditorium and to take in the Baroque opulence of the gold-leafed cherubs and nymphs that decorated the walls. When I entered the ballet school, it was the dream of dancing on the Paris Opera’s stage that gave me the strength to endure the gruelling dance classes and brutal competition. On the occasions when ballet school life became overwhelming, all it required for me to pick myself up again was to imagine gazing out at the audience from that stage and taking my final curtain call to the sound of thunderous applause.

The entrance to the Ballet School was through a courtyard. When I crossed it, I suddenly remembered that Mama had once
told me about a ghost she had seen one evening when she was hurrying from her dressing room to the wings. The apparition was of a dark-haired woman and it had rushed towards her from a door in the corridor. Mama had stopped in her tracks to avoid a collision with what she thought was another performer. Then, to her surprise, the woman had vanished into thin air. I wished I had asked her more about that encounter when she told me about it, but ghost stories were frequently exchanged among the ballet students — after all, the Paris Opera House was the setting for Gaston Leroux’s Gothic novel
The Phantom of the Opera
— and the associated practical jokes of missing ballet shoes and moved pictures had made me cynical. Despite Marcel’s assertion that all Spaniards see ghosts, I had never believed in their existence until la Rusa.

I made my way to the dressing room, where I changed into my leotard and tights and did some preliminary stretching before applying full stage make-up, including two sets of false eyelashes. The students of the Ballet School were expected to maintain a high level of grooming, but Mademoiselle Louvet, who would be helping me prepare for the examination, had standards that were even more exacting. She was from the glamour era of the ballet, when
étoiles
had the same status as film stars and took their roles very seriously. They always had to be beautiful and conduct themselves with decorum whether they were performing or not.

‘You are not just dancers,’ I remembered Mademoiselle Louvet telling my class one day. ‘You are muses … you must inspire the human race to appreciate and live for beauty.’

I did have to smile though when I recalled Mama once telling me that Mademoiselle Louvet had been temporarily suspended from the Ballet in the 1930s for dancing in a Monaco nightclub like a ‘common music-hall star’.

I was walking to the rehearsal room when a group of
petits rats
, as the young students of the school were known, passed
me on their way to their afternoon dance class. The sight of them in their maroon wraps and leggings made me smile. They were about nine years old and the worst of the competition and strain hadn’t yet begun. Ballet was still magic, beauty and fantasy to them. I envied them their innocence — and pitied them because I knew they would soon lose it.

Mademoiselle Louvet was waiting for me in the rehearsal room, with the pianist, Monsieur Clary. As to be expected, she was wearing full make-up with dramatically shaded eyes and elongated eyeliner and was looking chic in a shirtwaister dress and low-heeled pumps. I patted my hair to make sure it was perfect.

‘Ah,
bonjour
, Paloma,’ Mademoiselle Louvet said when she saw me. She kissed me. ‘How lovely it is to see you again. I’ve missed your pretty face.’

Mademoiselle Louvet was my favourite teacher. There was nothing insincere about her. If she welcomed you with kisses, you could be sure that she was not going to turn on you later in a fit of bad temper.

‘Are you warmed up? Are you ready to start?’ she asked, guiding me to the barre.

I took my place, and Monsieur Clary began to play so I could commence my
tendus
and
glissés
. For an institution that stuck rigidly to the rules, the Ballet School was making an exception for me, and pulling out all stops by assigning one of its most highly regarded teachers as my coach. Although it was permissible for me to attempt the audition for the
corps de ballet
again externally, I was past the age where I could officially return for classes at the school or take the examination from there. Perhaps the school was helping me out of respect for the memory of my mother, who had been a popular student and who had gone on to be a star of the ballet, or maybe it was because they were angered that their best student should have been rejected from joining the Ballet because of unfair
prejudices. Perhaps they believed that if I took the examination again, the judging panel, including Arielle Marineau, would have to concede to my determination.

After my barre and floor-work exercises, Mademoiselle Louvet had me perform
sauts de chats
across the room.

‘Use the whole room, Paloma!’ she called out. ‘You are the queen of the stage!’

The two-hour lesson flew by. When it finished, I was left with the familiar feeling of exhaustion and exhilaration that made me love ballet.

‘You’ve done well,’ Mademoiselle Louvet told me, after we had thanked Monsieur Clary for playing for us and were alone again in the room. ‘I expected that we might have some catching up to do … but if anything you’ve improved.’ She took a step back and regarded me fondly. ‘There’s something different about you … Paloma, have you fallen in love?’

I felt myself blush. Had I fallen in love? Was that why whenever I thought of Jaime I couldn’t concentrate on anything else?

‘I’ve had a couple of flamenco lessons,’ I said. ‘The teacher invited me to stay for dinner one evening and the whole family danced. It was inspiring! But I think I’m going to have to give up the flamenco lessons to train for the audition.’

Mademoiselle Louvet shook her head. ‘I don’t know at what point ballerinas became elite athletes with no room for a life outside rehearsals. Of course in my day we worked very hard, but we also socialised with other artists and in that way fed each other’s creativity.’

She smiled whimsically and began performing a gypsy dance from
Les Deux Pigeons
. Mademoiselle Louvet was in her sixties but she moved with expressiveness and grace. Her slim body and stately beauty had never turned to fat. I thought she characterised a gypsy convincingly. She curtseyed and I applauded her presentation.

‘That was an enjoyable ballet to do,’ she said. ‘I modelled myself on the flamenco dancer la Rusa for that one.’

The sound of the name made my blood freeze. I had never heard of la Rusa until a couple of weeks ago. Now I sensed that I was being drawn into her life, and that she had intended it to be so. But why?

‘I’ve heard a lot about la Rusa lately,’ I said.

Mademoiselle Louvet drew in a breath. ‘Oh, what a dancer!’ she said. ‘She was formidable! So regal and so proud! At the end of her performance she had people eating out of her hands.’

‘Did you know her personally?’ I asked, hoping to learn something about la Rusa from someone who had seen her in the flesh.

Mademoiselle Louvet shook her head. ‘I watched her perform in authentic flamenco bars when I travelled to the United States, but she was not someone who taught students, or gave interviews, or mingled in society. It’s remarkable, isn’t it? She would appear on stage where she completely dominated her audience and had everyone at her feet, and then she would disappear. She was incredibly seductive, but there was something dark in her eyes too. A lot of Spaniards had that look about them. So many of them had seen things — or done things — during the Civil War that made it impossible for them to enjoy life again.’

I probed a bit more, but it was clear that Mademoiselle Louvet didn’t know much more about la Rusa than I had already discovered.

‘Anyway,’ she said, rubbing my arm, ‘do you have to rush off somewhere or do you have some time to come to my office? I have something I want you to hear.’

Mademoiselle Louvet’s office had a view over the rooftops of Paris, and the late afternoon light streaming through the windows gave everything an ethereal glow.

‘Here,’ she said, placing two chairs near her record player and offering one of them to me. ‘Being a dancer is not just about being in time to music,’ she said. ‘You have to feel the music with the essence of your being. It must circulate in your veins.’ She placed the needle on the record and slipped her hand into mine before sitting next to me. ‘Now close your eyes.’

The beautiful, nostalgic notes of Brahms’s ‘Intermezzo in A Op 118 No 2’ filled the room. It was one of those pieces that made me see life as a crystal glass: so beautiful and yet so fragile.

Mademoiselle Louvet let go of my hand, and I opened my eyes to see that she had lifted her arms to the ceiling as if the music had become drops of rain and she was relishing their cool freshness on her skin. I thought of Xavier and the way Mamie had described him. I thought about Avi too. I was sorry that I had not known my grandfather as he had been when he was younger.

The music finished and Mademoiselle Louvet opened her eyes. A smile came to her face. ‘I was sitting in my office listening to this very piece of music, when your mother came rushing in to tell me that her pregnancy had been confirmed.’ She laughed at the recollection. ‘Julieta was so happy, so full of life. She wanted you so much. Of course, everyone at the Opera was shocked when she resigned. “But your career, Julieta! Your career! You’ve only just been made an
étoile
!” they all cried.’

Mademoiselle Louvet stood up and gazed out the window for a moment before turning back to me. ‘Do you know what your mother replied? She told them, “But mothers are the greatest artists of all. They create lives.”’ She sat down next to me again. ‘Your mother was so happy, Paloma. As soon as your father found out, he proposed. Julieta had not one doubt that what she wanted most in the world was to be a mother to you.’

I stared at my hands. I knew that Mama had loved me deeply. I only hoped that she had been too sick to suspect Papa’s betrayal of her — that she didn’t die with regrets about him.

‘Thank you,’ I said to Mademoiselle Louvet. ‘Thank you for telling me that.’

Although she was smiling, Mademoiselle Louvet had tears in her eyes. I was sure that there must have been many men who had loved her, yet she had never married nor had children. The retirement age of
étoiles
at the Opera Ballet was forty, but people were still coming to see Mademoiselle Louvet perform when she was in her fifties. They would probably still have been coming if she herself had not decided to retire and devote herself to teaching.

‘You are truly one of the grand ballerinas,’ I told her. ‘But did you ever regret not getting married and having children?’

She touched my cheek. ‘Never, darling. I made the right decision for me. To devote my entire life to ballet was what I was meant to do. Exactly as your mother knew that she was born to be a mother to you. We are not all the same. We must make the decisions that our hearts cry out for.’

My heart was crying out for something. But what? Ballet — or something else?

‘Listen,’ said Mademoiselle Louvet, ‘let me tell you something. I’ve performed with the greatest ballet dancers of all time — people like Danilova and Chauviré. They were not great people because they were great dancers. They were great dancers because they were great people.’ She took my hand and placed it on my heart. ‘Strive to be a great person first, Paloma. Then you will succeed at whatever it is your heart tells you to do.’

I left Mademoiselle Louvet’s office in a swirl of emotions, my thoughts alternating between Mama and la Rusa. I felt as if I were on the verge of solving some grand puzzle. The pieces were coming to me, but I had no idea where they all fitted.

I went to the administration office to pay for the private classes and to sign up for the final examination. After completing the paperwork, I was looking forward to going home. I was
meeting Jaime for dinner and then we were going to see the flamenco guitarist who had known la Rusa. I needed a soak in a bathtub and a catnap first.

On my way out of the office, I ran into Madame Genet, who had been one of my teachers when I was a
petit rat
. If Mademoiselle Louvet was the type of ballerina I dreamed of being, then Madame Genet was the one I feared I’d become. Instead of being lithe, every sinew of her body seemed to be stretched tight. She was tense in her movements, not fluid, and even being around her made me feel anxious.

I curtseyed to her, but from the way she stared at me I thought she mustn’t have recognised me. ‘
Bonjour
, Madame Genet,’ I said. ‘It’s me, Paloma.’

The corners of her mouth turned down and she moved towards me. I instinctively stepped back. I’d received a few whacks from her in my time for not lifting my leg high enough. Madame Genet was overstrung and you never knew when she was going to lose her temper. She had been one of the most brilliant dancers with the Ballet, but her nerves had cracked during the opening night of
Swan Lake
. Odette had been the role she had always aspired to dance. She’d had to retire to teaching after that, and seemed never to have recovered from the bitterness of her disappointment.

Madame Genet brought her face close to mine. Her breath was a mix of stale smells — coffee, cigarettes and ham. ‘I don’t believe the school should let you take the examination again,’ she said. ‘Do you really think that after you have devoted another six months to practising and taken up Mademoiselle Louvet’s precious time, you are going to succeed in a second examination?’