Doña Carlota almost seemed to expect my call. It was inevitable, probably, that I, the other spurned woman in Tomás’s life, would eventually find my way to her. On the drive north to Santa Fe, as the earth lifted toward a sky opening onto infinity, I remained oblivious to the beauty beyond my window. My entire concentration was on what I wanted to say and how I would say it. Of course Doña Carlota knew about me and Tomás. About Tomás and Didi. Everyone on the flamenco grapevine knew. That embarrassed me, though not enough to turn back.
The cottonwoods in Santa Fe, a few weeks behind their sisters to the south, had piled drifts of fluff at the base of the coyote fence made of saplings lashed together that ringed the Anaya compound. The gate was unlocked. A Black Forest of untended spruce and pines surrounded the house, casting it into deep shadows rare in the sun-blasted city. Old snow surviving in the shade glittered dully. The vintage Buick used to drive Doña Carlota to class was parked beside the house. Where the houses nearby turned faces brightened with ristras of scarlet chiles and turquoise blue lintels to passersby, Doña Carlota’s house was devoid of such public Land of Enchantment adornments. Unadorned, unkempt even, it turned in on itself, showing a blank facade to the outside world.
The front door was massive, made of dark wood and held together with black studs. I knocked and had ample time to study the figure of Saint James, patron saint of Spain, lance in hand atop a rearing stallion, guarding the house from his place tucked inside a nicho in the thick adobe wall. I was leaning in close to read what was painted on the tile behind the saint: SANTIAGO SEA CON NOSOTROS, Saint James be with us, when the door opened.
I recognized the elderly family retainer who had driven Doña Carlota. He found me examining the saint. He smiled, displaying a full set of very white teeth. In spite of the threadbare work khakis held up by suspenders and an old olive sweater frayed at the cuffs, the old man seemed as distinguished as he had when I’d caught a glimpse of him dressed in a suit and tie. He gave the saint a fond caress, then stuck his hand out to me and introduced himself. “Teófilo.” His hand was warm, the palm rough with calluses. “Pásele, pásele.” He waved me into the house.
I followed him down a dark hallway into a dark living room and took a seat on a mahogany chair big as throne. “I’ll tell La Doña you’re here.” He disappeared into the back of the house. Masses of velvet red roses in various stages of decay were bunched in vases throughout the room. Their cloying aroma combined with the scent of piñon from decades of fires to create a fragrance that defined flamenco in New Mexico. Retablos, máscaras, bultos, santos, and every other conceivable piece of art that could have been lifted from a church in northern New Mexico gave the room the feel of a museum. Then I noticed the contents of the shelves lining the large room on three sides and saw that the true focus of enshrinement was Tomás.
Every moment of his young life in flamenco was documented. Handsome professional photos of him lined the shelves. The photos were all framed, all in black and white, and in every single one of them, he held a guitar. There was not one photo of a grin with front teeth missing, not one in a Cub Scout uniform. No pictures of friends, classmates, teachers. No First Communion. No mortarboard. There weren’t even any photos of Doña Carlota or her husband, Ernesto, with Tomás. The only other thing with him in any of the photos was a guitar. From a solemn boy with a guitar, he grew, photo by photo, into a solemn young man with a guitar. The last one in the chronology was a photo that depicted Tomás in his mid-twenties, the age when I met him, the age when he had walked out of Doña Carlota’s life.
“She’s not feeling up to coming out.” I turned around. Teófilo was gesturing toward the back of the house. “You mind going back?” His voice was pleasant. I followed him down the dark hallway to a door at the end. He opened it and stepped aside as I entered. Doña Carlota’s bedroom was something out of a Gustav Klimt painting, with dozens of photos in glittering gilt frames, acres of ornate fabric covering every inch, and her, pale, emaciated yet made up like Sarah Bernhardt about to take the stage. Resting on a chaise longue, her feet propped up with a dozen pillows arranged just so, Doña Carlota wore a quilted pink robe, streaked with dribbles of orange and purple medicine. She seemed old and frail, a sugar sculpture of a human that would dissolve in a light shower. The real shock, however, were her feet, if the gnarled stumps at the ends of her legs could even be called feet. They were as misshapen as I imagine the bound feet of Chinese women might have been. The toes were welded into one striated claw gone violet from lack of circulation.
“La Metrónoma.” She held her hand up, and I didn’t know whether to shake it or kiss it. She decided for me by grabbing the hand I extended and drawing me to her so that I could kiss her powdered cheek. Up close, I saw that her scalp was permanently tattooed blue from decades of dying her hair jet black and that she was painted not like Sarah Bernhardt, but like herself. Like the silent-movie-vamp self she had been half a century ago when the portrait that greeted everyone who entered the Flamenco Academy had been created.
“Did you meet my brother-in-law?” she asked.
Teófilo grinned.
“Yes, we met at the door.” Brother-in-law? The brother of Ernesto, the man Tomás considered his father? I thought of Teófilo in the faculty parking lot behind the Flamenco Academy, opening the door of the old Buick. Her sitting in back, him in front like a chauffeur.
“Teófilo, could you bring me...” She pointed to a bottle of pills next to the bed and he fetched it.
“Is the pain bad?” he asked her in Spanish, shaking several capsules onto his callused palm.
She answered in Spanish. Her Castilian, all the vowels clacking as crisply as a good break in pool, was another language compared to Teófilo’s softly lyrical New Mexican version. I recognized the pills. Daddy had taken them toward the end when the pain had become unbearable. One had always been enough to knock him out. She swallowed three.
“I’m gonna take off now,” Teófilo said. “You need anything before I leave?”
She shook her head no.
“Bueno, I’ll take the ear then. Work on it at home.”
He shook my hand with a courtly warmth that made me want to cling to him. The room seemed much chillier after he left. With an effort, Doña Carlota swallowed the pills, then gathered herself and said, “Alma tells me you were sick.” So there it was. Cards on the table. She was acknowledging that she was plugged into the flamenco grapevine. That she knew everything. It was more humiliating than I’d expected it to be. “Are you well now?”
“Yes, how have you been?”
“Look at me. My feet are destroyed. I hope you wear good shoes. The feet, the feet take the punishment.”
I nodded. “Yes, Menkes.”
“A good shoe, but there are better.”
“Oh? Which ones do you like?”
Just as I was feeling grateful to Doña Carlota for saving me with this gift of small talk, she cut it off and asked, “Have you heard from Tomás?”
His name was a punch in the gut. I searched her eyes. Were they glassy? Had the drugs taken effect? “No, I haven’t heard from him for a while now.”
“They chatter. Everyone in flamenco chatters. It reaches me even here. What we both care about is Tomás. He cut me out of his life. He won’t speak to me. Tell me, why is he so unhappy with me?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you have ideas.”
“I have ideas.”
“Metrónoma, if you don’t know why he is unhappy, you will never make him happy.”
“We’re not together anymore.”
“I know. He’s with your gemela.”
“Didi? She’s not my twin.”
“You’re closer than that. You’re one coin. Two sides.”
“That’s not true either.”
“At first I was surprised that he picked you. But as I thought about you and him together, it made sense. Didi? No, that will never work. You, he will come back to you.”
“He will?”
“He needs to be worshipped, doesn’t he? Didi, the same but worse. Two gods together?” She shook her finger in front of her face. “This only works in mythology. I know. Why did you come?”
“I came because—” All the lines I’d rehearsed in the car on the drive north vanished. I couldn’t imagine why I had come. I certainly couldn’t imagine asking the questions I’d planned to ask. “I came to visit. To see how you are.”
“Metrónoma!” My spine stiffened at the snap of command in her voice. I expected to feel the grind of her knuckles in my back next, just as if we were back in class again. “You’re not a timid little girl anymore. You were always so good with time. Now is the time for the truth. Tell me what you want. Dame la verdad.”
“I want to know why he is unhappy so that I can be the one to make him happy.”
“Happiness comes from within.”
Her statement was so out of character, such a blatant lie, that I laughed. “Now who’s not telling the truth?”
She smiled. “I like you, Metrónoma. You are exactly what Tomás needs. Not this Didi-Ofelia person. Not La Tempesta. That will not end well. I would like to see you two together before I die.”
“You can.” The words rushed out of me. I knew what I needed from the old lady. I had used Tomás’s secret, the one Guitos had told me once before to make him choose me. Now I had to use it again to win him back. To take him from Didi. But first I had to make Doña Carlota dame la verdad. I had to make her give me the truth. “There was only one Delicata who lived on Sacromonte and was married to El Chino the blacksmith. Only one who was una bailaora. But this Delicata had dark skin. Dark as a Moor. And all her children were dark, as dark as the darkest Gypsy.”
For a moment, the air crackled with the electricity Doña Carlota had always been able to generate, and once again she was the fierce, intimidating lioness who had ruled the classroom. A second later that energy sagged and she slumped back onto her pillows. “Could you please massage my legs a bit? The blood has to be encouraged to move into my feet.”
I felt another shift in energy. Perhaps it was the pain pills taking effect. Perhaps we really did slip into the foggy zone where fairy tale met flamenco and those bewitched by love must meet impossible challenges in their quest for love. As I knelt beside her, my sleeve brushed the dragon’s claw of her foot. She winced in pain at even that touch. Gently, I rubbed the still-taut muscles and tendons of her calves until her feet pinked up from violet to lilac.
“Thank you,” she whispered. I sat down. I had passed one test.
Bit by bit, she uncoiled as the pills held pain at bay. Still, it was a long time before she spoke again. When she did, her voice had a dreamy quality, as if she were asking herself the questions she had spent her life answering. “Is flamenco in the blood? The feet? The throat? The fingers? Or is it in the soul?”
She nodded toward her own ruined extremities, a small part of the price she had paid for admission. She didn’t expect me to answer. She waited for the drugs to take full effect. When all the muscles in her face had gone slack and her breathing had settled into an even rhythm, she spoke. “Metrónoma, I have told you the story of one girl, a dancer, daughter of a Gypsy mother and a Gypsy father, themselves born of the blood of the pharaoh. Now I will tell you the story of another girl. It will be for you to decide what to do with the story. Perhaps it will lead you to love. Perhaps to knowledge. But what is flamenco except knowledge? Being in the know? Enterao?”
Her eyelids drifted shut and she suddenly seemed not just old and frail but, quite possibly, feeble as well. I waited several long moments before deciding to leave. The instant I started to stand, however, her eyes sprang open and she launched in as if there had been no interruption.
“Her name was Clementina, and if there is such a thing as blue blood, what ran through the little girl’s veins was as dark as ink. Clementina was the daughter of a duke and a duchess born of two of the most venerable houses in the entire Spanish aristocracy. Her ancestors fought beside Isabel and Fernando at Granada to beat the Muslims back into Africa and complete the Reconquest of Spain in 1492. They rode with the conquistadors to conquer the Incan and Aztec empires. At one time, you could travel from Granada to Cadiz without ever leaving the family estates. King Alfonso the Thirteenth and Queen Victoria Eugenia held the infant Clementina over the baptismal font.
“Clementina grew up on an estate in the very shadows of Granada’s Alhambra. The floors were laid with sixteenth-century tiles in strict accordance with the rules of heraldry as befits a member of the Andalusian aristocracy. The family patio was paved with Roman mosaics brought from the ruins of Italica four centuries before her birth. Galleries of Mudejar columns and arches. Rugs from the Alpujarras, Roman busts, plateresque railings, family portraits painted by Zuloaga, fans inscribed with personal dedications by Julio Romero de Torres himself.
“Clementina had everything a little princess needed except a queen, because her mother had died in childbirth. Her father adored his only child, a little girl who resembled her sainted mother more and more each day, and for this he guarded her. Perhaps, a bit too jealously. School, of course, was out of the question. Tía Rogelia, a maiden aunt with whiskers white as bean sprouts on her chin, taught Clementina to sew and embroider with stitches the width of a hair. She also taught her to read and write, which the duke considered superfluous. But mostly she taught the little girl to accept her sino, her fate, which was to guard her purity with her life until such time as she would be called upon to surrender it to the son of a suitably noble family whom the duke would select to be her husband.
“Clementina wondered exactly whom she was expected to guard her purity from, since the only time she was allowed to leave the family estate was on Sunday when she and her father and Tía Rogelia were driven in the duke’s first automobile, a recently acquired Hispano-Suiza, to the cathedral to attend Mass with all the other leading families of Granada. Other than that, the girl was little more than a prisoner in her home. She grew up without a single friend.
“And then, one day, the lonely little girl’s father employed a herrero, a blacksmith, a metalworker, to repair the extensive grillwork, the elaborate screens in front of the fireplaces, as well as rationing all the copper pans that had been handed down through the generations. The blacksmith, called El Chino for the tilt of his eyes, brought his daughter with him.
“But this was no ordinary metalworker, and his daughter was no ordinary little girl. They were gitanos from Sacromonte, gitanos puros who lived in the caves of the sacred mountain. The little girl, Rosa, had learned her compás by dancing to the beat of her father’s hammer as he sang his great Gypsy martinetes.
“Oh, this girl, this Rosa. Dark, dark as a Moor. Her clothes were rags; her hair was a mat of knots alive with lice; her hands and feet were black from the cinders from her father’s forge, from the dirt floor of the cave. The duke forbade Clementina from even speaking to Rosa, for everyone knew that Gypsies were thieves and cutthroats, that they stole babies and were in league with the devil. And the worst, the worst of all was their music, flamenco, the music of drunkards and prostitutes.
“Little Clementina was so lonely, she disobeyed her father and tried to speak with Rosa. Rosa, however, was as wild as a mountain goat and ran from her. So Clementina set a trap for the little girl in the patio and baited it with mantecaditos. Rosa, always starving, could actually sniff out the little cookies of almonds and olive oil and would gorge herself on the delicacies. Her hunger forced her to trust the young mistress of the house.
“Thus they became friends. Clementina, barely older than Rosa herself, took this creature under her wing. She bathed the wild Gypsy child, scrubbed her until the brown skin showed beneath the black. Washed her hair until the water ran clear and Rosa’s black Gypsy hair glinted blue in the sun. She fed the Gypsy girl all manner of delights: candied chestnuts in syrup with brandy, perfectly grilled sardines, tender marinated octopus. Clementina went to her own closet and took out her pink silk party frock embroidered with rosebuds, a delicate gown of English lawn trimmed with Belgian lace, her black velvet slippers, a mantilla blessed by the pope, and gave them all to Rosa.
“Rosita, overwhelmed by such kindness, had only one thing to give her generous benefactor in return. In secret, the wild Gypsy girl began to share her art with the highborn aristocrat. From the first, Clementina loved flamenco, for the rhythms that Rosa clapped out were not strange to her. She had heard these rhythms echoing through the lonely house late at night behind the locked doors of her father’s rooms. With these bewitching rhythms came other sounds she was forbidden to investigate, men’s hoarse voices, the furious stamping of heels on the heraldic tiles, women’s laughter. Clementina didn’t know what happened behind the locked doors, but she knew it spoke to her lonely soul. When she danced with Rosa, her spirit was set free.
“ ‘Un fenómeno’ is what Rosa called Clementina, for she had never seen anyone learn her people’s dance so quickly. For the first time in her life, Clementina was happy. Rosa was even happier. She had a friend, a friend who was desperate to hear everything about her life. So, as they danced, Rosa told her stories from Sacromonte. She told her about her mother, Delicata, how she would have reigned like a queen over Sevilla if her father had not stolen her away and imprisoned her in a cave. About the cuadro, La Sordita, Little Burro, Dried Wood, La Burriquita. About dancing for los suecos that El Bala brought to them. Rosa even told her friend she suspected that the fearsome El Bala was in love with Delicata because the pair spent a dangerous amount of time whispering to each other. Rosa’s stories came alive more vividly in Clementina’s mind than anything that had actually happened in her dull and confined life.
“For months the girls danced in secret until the inevitable day when the duke discovered them. He threw the nasty little Gypsy girl and her father out of the house and forbade Clementina to ever speak with her again or to ever dance another step of flamenco. The exalted gentleman told his daughter that he would kill her with his own hand before he would see her associate with such a tribe of degenerates.
“Clementina was desolate. She missed her friend and all the friends she had made in her imagination. Flamenco had opened the world to her and now she was in prison once again. Day and night, she roamed the grounds of the estate. When she was as far from her father’s prying eyes and from his spy, Tía Rogelia, as she could get, she would take off her shoes and dance. Over pebbles, over acorns, over thorns, burrs, she danced until her feet bled. It didn’t matter: once the spirit had captured her, she felt nothing.
“One day, Clementina returned to the house expecting her aunt to scold her for allowing the sun to burn her face. But she heard nothing from the old lady. Not when she returned. Not through the endless, silent evening. Not a word. Clementina was not surprised when she knocked at her aunt’s door and heard no answer. She was even less surprised to find her aunt lying atop the matelasse cover, her hands folded in prayer on her chest, her mouth gaping open.
“All of Granada came to the funeral. Clementina looked around at the funeral Mass and there were all the fine young men from the best families. One of them would be her husband. Would it be Esteban, with a bow tie and pimples on his chin? Would it be Arturo, pear-shaped heir to an almond fortune? Would it be Juan Pablo, with his hair parted in the middle and flattened with too much hair oil? It could be any of them. It would all end the same, locked away in the rooms of his family’s house until she was as old and shriveled and dead as Tía Rogelia. At that moment, Clementina envied her aunt because she had escaped. Only then did she weep. She wept so copiously for the utter pointlessness of her life that her sniffles turned to sobs. The assembled took Clementina’s grief as testament to the young girl’s devotion to her aunt. However, when the sobs turned to great heaving moans that caused el arzobispo to turn from the altar and shoot disapproving glances toward the source of the racket, Clementina’s father took his daughter outside. When she was unable to collect herself, he summoned a taxi, telling his daughter that important business would keep him in Granada that night and, most likely, for several nights to come. Then he ordered the driver to take her to the family estate.
“As the driver, approached the iron gates of the estate, Clementina felt she would die, literally suffocate, if she were to hear the lock click shut behind her one more time.
“ ‘Driver,’ Clementina asked politely, ‘could you, please, take me to Sacromonte?’
“The driver turned in his seat and looked at her. ‘Sacromonte is not a place for a fine young lady such as yourself. Your father told me to take you home.’
“Ahead of them the old caretaker was wheeling the gate open. Her heart pounded so furiously that the rush of blood past her ears prevented her from hearing her own words as she ordered, ‘Driver, the only location you will be paid to take me to is Sacromonte.’ This time her voice was as strong and sure as the stamp of her heels against the heraldic tiles when she danced.
“ ‘Ozu!’ the driver uttered a Gypsy curse and turned around, leaving the old caretaker to gape in puzzlement as the taxi disappeared.
“The driver delivered Clementina to the foot of Sacromonte and she stepped into a world she already knew in her imagination. A world where the inhabitants lived, not in tiled rooms, but in caves. Where children ran naked. Where the bathroom business was done outside just like a dog. Sacromonte had smelled much better in her imagination. For a moment, Clementina’s courage faltered. But she had only to think of Tía Rogelia dead without ever having lived to take her first step on the dusty path that wound through the human anthill. She asked for Rosa, daughter of the herrero, and was sent higher and higher up the hill.
“Night was falling and with each upward coil of the winding path, it grew darker and the caves became even more wretched. Flames from the blacksmiths’ forges leapt out of from the cave openings as if the very earth itself were on fire. As if she were in hell. Though gitanos of every description bustled past her, Clementina did not recognize any of the characters she knew so well from Rosa’s stories. Each time she stopped to ask for directions, the Gypsies would either shrug and pretend they couldn’t understand her or they would send her in the opposite direction from the last person who’d offered help.
“At the top of the hill, Clementina gazed down on Granada. Off in the distance, the Alhambra shone like a great ship cruising through the night, a ship that the superstitious gitanos believed to be filled with the ghosts of the Moors who had died clinging to the beauty they had created. Everyone she stopped claimed they had never heard of anyone named Rosa. No, never in their entire lives had they known anyone with the most common girl’s name in Spain. Clementina accepted that she would never find her friend. That she would be forced to return to her father’s house. That she would die without ever having lived. She was walking back down when Rosa sprang out from behind a tangle of prickly pear cacti.
“ ‘It’s true!’ Rosa exclaimed as she embraced her friend. ‘I didn’t believe it when the first three told me that there was a payo looking for me.’
“ ‘But I didn’t meet anyone who knew you.’
“ ‘Didn’t you listen to any of my stories?’ Rosa laughed. ‘A caló never tells a payo anything. Certainly not anything that has to do with el tribu. Come on.’
“As she followed her friend through a warren of paths, the magic of that word, tribe, settled over Clementina like a spell that dissipated all her lonely years. As they approached Rosa’s cave, the sound of an argument filtered out, so terrible that even the side of a mountain couldn’t silence it. Though the angry words alarmed Clementina, Rosa didn’t seem to notice. Hugging the shadows, she sneaked Clementina into the cave where her family lived.
“The cave, lighted by one candil, was almost as dark as the night outside. The girls slipped in unnoticed, though in truth Rosa’s parents, Delicata and El Chino, screaming and trading blows, wouldn’t have noticed if King Alfonso had walked in. For several seconds a few of the younger children stopped watching their parents and gaped at the little aristocrat hiding in the shadows. The next second, though, the impossible apparition of a payo was dismissed as a phantom, something that could not possibly exist in the stinking cave they inhabited, and the children turned their attention back to the fighters.
“Clementina feared she would pass out from the smell of goats and people, the heat of the cook fire, the forge, the shrieks of the mob of children crying for their parents to stop fighting. In spite of the stink and the heat and the noise, she was ecstatic. It was as if the characters from her favorite book had come to life in front of her eyes. She spotted Mono with his squashed nose. And El Chino was even fiercer than she’d imagined. But Delicata? Where was the dancing beauty with the flashing emerald eyes Rosa had spoken of? Delicata was the least delicate woman Clementina had ever seen. She was a dark troll of a woman with dull eyes the color of a dried cactus pad. Clementina could not imagine her enchanting anyone. While Clementina was still trying to identify the others, Rosa dragged her away. In a small room, dug into the mountain off to the side of the one large room the family lived in, Rosa tossed a long, red dress covered in white polka dots at her and told Clementina to put it on. Then Rosa made Clementina sit while she covered the girl’s light brown hair with olive oil mixed with soot until it was as black and greasy as Rosa’s own.
“ ‘Why are you doing this?’ Clementina demanded.
“ ‘You want to dance flamenco, right?’
“ ‘Of course.’
“ ‘Then you must look like a flamenca, so sit still and let me finish.
We’ve been called for a juerga tonight. The poet Lorca recommended us. He especially asked for my father to sing. Maybe when everyone is drunk enough, you can dance with us.’
“Clementina’s heart soared at these words, and she sat still as a stone while Rosa covered her face and arms with the soot mixture until her pale skin was even darker than Rosa’s. The fighting stopped and El Chino began warming his voice, tempering it with aguardiente. Hours later, when la voz was sufficiently ‘broken,’ when it sounded like a ruptured foghorn, Rosa’s father yelled, ‘Vamos ya!’ the signal that the time had come.
“Rosa and Clementina hid until everyone was outside in the dark night. Then they followed her father down the twisting path. At several caves, El Chino roared out his bear’s rasp, ‘Vamos ya!’ The curtains hanging over the front openings would part and another of the characters from Rosa’s fabulous stories would step out. A powerfully built mother-daughter pair with identical spit curls pasted onto their foreheads. Little Burro and her daughter, La Burriquita! A stick-thin widow with powder covering the dirt on her arms. Dried Wood! A sprite of a woman with deaf ears sticking out like an elf’s. La Sordita! In this way they assembled their cuadro and headed into the city.
“ ‘Stay with me in the back,’ Rosa whispered to Clementina. ‘And no one will even know you’re with us.’
“Clementina did not need to be asked. She could not keep up with the pack in the dark. Again and again, she tripped on a root growing across the path or was stabbed by the thorns of the cactus that hung overhead while the rest of the group scampered ahead, nimble as mountain goats.
“Rosa’s father passed around a bottle of aguardiente and with each switchback, the group grew more boisterous until, by the time they reached the bottom rung where caves had real doors and windows, where animals were penned outside instead of bedding down with the family, where some even had electric lights, neighbors were yelling at them to shut up or they would feel a knife in their livers. The only one who wasn’t boisterous was Delicata. Not a sound came from her as she followed the group down the twisting path.
“They all grew quiet as they came to the bottom of the hill and passed the bottle around one more time for a little courage before they stepped into the world of payos, all those pale-skinned outsiders who existed to either exploit the calé or to be exploited by them. And then they set off.
“The road flattened and they were in the city. The cobbled streets were silent and shuttered. Moonlight shimmered on the whitewashed walls as brilliant as a veiled sun.
“Clementina crept along with them, stunned by this first taste of freedom that had turned so unexpectedly into a banquet, a feast she was having increasing difficulty digesting. With each step, Clementina grew more certain that her father’s hard hand would reach out and trap her. Since he knew everyone in Granada, why was there any reason to think he wouldn’t find out? She walked in silence behind the others, who were moving now soundless as cats, and tried to imagine what her punishment would be when her father discovered what she had done. Since simply being born a girl had condemned her to a life of virtual cloister, she decided that tonight’s offense was certain to result in the real thing. In a narrow alley, filled with geraniums hanging from balconies, Clementina thought of spending the rest of her life behind the walls of a convent and stopped dead.
“ ‘Ándale!’ Rosa hissed back at her but Clementina was frozen on the spot. Rosa, cursing her Gypsy curses, ran back and grabbed Clementina’s hand and tried to drag her forward, but Clementina would not budge.
“ ‘I have to go home,’ she stammered.
“And Clementina would have, would have run all the way back to the safety of her gilded cage, except that, at that moment, El Chino began to sing. His voice made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end as it pierced the darkness, echoing off walls and summoning ghosts of the Moors and Jews who had loved Granada more than any of her citizens before or since. The cruel Christians had taken from them the city they had created, and lost love is always the deepest. The voices of the Moorish dead were in El Chino’s voice. Wailing, warbling, sobbing, they stabbed directly into Clementina’s heart. Perhaps it was the revenge of the exiled Moors and Jews who decided that they would enslave this pretty young Catholic girl. Who knows? But as powerful as the spell of the dance had been on Clementine, the magic of the cante was even stronger. In that instant, drunk on rapturous emotion and the fragrance of jasmine, a lifetime in the convent in exchange for having a sound that was the sound of all life pouring through her head seemed a fair trade.
“Though many of the words he sang, words from the language of Rosa’s people, Calé, were strange to Clementine, she understood enough to realize that the song was about a husband who has been betrayed and his plan to kill the treacherous wife. Clementine saw fear on Rosa’s face, fear for Delicate.
“ ‘Do you think he will?’ Clementine asked.
“ ‘Kill my mother? No one in el tribu would blame him. She has been seen many times with El Bala when no male member of our family was present. Husbands have killed wives for less than that.’
“ ‘Shouldn’t we do something? Call the guardia civil?’
“Rosa laughed a harsh laugh. ‘What a payo you are. La guardia looks for reasons to torture calós. We can never give them any.’ Rosa’s eyes flickered upward until she found the Alhambra, floating radiantly through the night, and Clementine remembered her friend’s Gypsy name, Miracielos, given for her habit of watching the sky, of finding the beauty that released her from the ugliness. Now it released her from fear. ‘Whatever happens,’ Rosa said, ‘my mother’s dance will live on in me. No man will steal me and trap me in a cave. I will go to Sevilla and dance in the cafés cantantes. The city will fall at my feet and I will wear the crown that should have been hers. Come on.’ Rosa grabbed Clementine’s hand and the two friends ran through the street, their heels clattering on the cobblestones, both ready to follow El Chino’s cante no matter where it might lead.
“They entered a maze of narrow streets that led to a pair of tall, weather-beaten oak doors, locked tight. El Chino rapped out a complicated rhythm on the thick planks and, with a rusty creak, a lock turned and the doors swung open. Clementine had lived her whole life seeing plain doors open into courtyards of unsuspected splendor whose beauty was all the greater for being hidden. Yet the courtyard she stepped into that night rivaled the Alhambra itself. She had no time to wonder which of the great families might own it for the old crone who’d opened the door was impatiently waving them inside. Filigreed columns looked like pillars of lace with moonlight filtering through. The scent of jasmine, rosemary, and sandalwood hung like a cloud above fountains that pattered silver coins of water into basins decorated with Roman maidens trailing diaphanous gowns.
“The sounds—clapping, heels hammering on tile floors—that drifted into the courtyard once the great doors were closed were the joyous sounds she’d learned from Rosa. The whole cuadro came to life once the doors shut behind them. They picked up the distant beat of the flamencos who were already performing and followed it to its source. With Rosa clapping beside Clementina just as if they were on the patio back home, Clementina’s fears melted away. Nothing bad could happen tonight. She clapped along with her friend as the whole group capered through the courtyard to a side entrance where they crowded together, walking up a flight of stairs to a room on the second floor. Clementina had never been as happy as she was at that moment. For the first time in her lonely life, she was part of a group laughing and making noise.
“The old woman opened the door at the top of the stairway. ‘Pásele! Pásele!’ she hissed. Delicata was the first to enter. She stepped into the private room as regally as a queen. Her entrance was hailed by a roomful of drunken Spanish aristocrats, señoritos, who pounded on the tables and yelled for the replacement dancers to enter.
“ ‘Pásele! Pásele!’ The old woman ordered the girls into a room that consciously tried to duplicate the caves Rosa’s people inhabited, right down to the odor of tobacco and unwashed bodies. The only light was from candiles, pots of oil with wicks in them. Their illumination flickered across the sweaty bodies of the exhausted dancers whom they had come to replace and threw shadows against the walls. As Clementina’s eyes adjusted to the room, which was darker than the moonlit courtyard, she saw that other than the dancers and the serving girls passing among tables, clearing away and replacing empty bottles of fino, dumping ashtrays, the room was filled with men. A head bobbing up just above a table caught Clementina’s eye. Its owner was a dwarf with a hunchback, holding a large serving platter containing small plates of ham, glasses of wine. As he passed, the revelers reached out and touched his hump for good luck.
An especially drunk carouser noticed the new girls and yelled out to the dwarf, ‘Those two look hungry! Bring those girls some fried eggs!’ A rumble of low chuckles greeted the request. The dwarf ducked behind a screen, then reappeared in front of Clementina and Rosa. He held the platter low and it was now covered by a napkin. The little man stared up at the girls and jiggled the platter anxiously.
“ ‘I don’t think he can talk,’ Rosa said.
“The dwarf bobbed his head toward the napkin until the girls understood that they were to remove it. Clementina glanced at Rosa. Rosa nodded for her to do what he wanted. Afraid of attracting even more attention, Clementina lifted the napkin and everyone in the room, including Rosa, exploded in bellowing laughter. Clementina dropped the napkin and turned away immediately, but not before seeing the dwarf’s testicles, swollen by disease to mammoth proportion, resting on the platter.
“Clementina bolted away, rushing to the darkest corner of the room. Rosa, still laughing, found and chided her, ‘Clementina, what’s wrong with you? Don’t you have any gracia? It was just a chiste.’
“Not having any sense of humor, not getting a joke, was the worst thing you could accuse an Andalusian of. It was so bad that Clementina tried to hide the shock that had made her feel faint.
“ ‘Ay! Mira!’ Rosa grabbed Clementina’s arm and pointed at a sad-eyed, slender man in a white suit like a cubano. ‘It’s him.’
“ ‘Who?’
“ ‘You know, Garcia Lorca, the poet who loves my dancing. I told you about him. He came to see our cuadro.’
“As Clementina followed Rosa’s finger pointing toward the poet, though, one familiar face after another began to pop out of the darkness at her. First, she saw Esteban, still wearing the bow tie he’d had on at Tía Rogelia’s funeral. His frog eyes goggled as he watched the dancers. Then she spotted Arturo, pear-shaped heir to the almond fortune, whose face suddenly disappeared as he leaned over to vomit. At another table, Juan Pablo and his father, they of the matching over-oiled haircuts parted in the middle, clinked glasses and tossed back a bolt of fino that caused the boy to sputter and cough. The other fathers laughed as Juan Pablo Senior pounded his son on the back, refilled both their glasses, and held his high, yelling out a toast to Clementina’s aunt above the clamor: ‘A la vieja!’
“Clementina was touched that, throughout the shadowy room, men held up their glasses and toasted her dead aunt. She’d always thought that the men of Granada either didn’t like or simply didn’t notice her aunt. It pleased her to discover that the old woman had actually been esteemed. Her pleasure ended abruptly when other toasts followed. These were composed mostly of filthy words she didn’t precisely understand. The brays of male laughter they incited made their meanings clear.
“ ‘Did your aunt really die of a dry cunt?’ Rosa asked, confirming Clementina’s worst suspicions about what the men were saying.
“Clementina turned away. This fiesta was nothing like she’d dreamed it would be. The dancers moved among the revelers and a few shadowy figures near the back grabbed the women and dragged them toward a door that opened into another room that couples disappeared into.
“ ‘Where are the dancers going?’ Clementina asked.
“ ‘Dancers? They’re not dancers. They’re just palomas torcaces.’
“ ‘Wild pigeons?’
“Rosa laughed at her friend’s ignorance. ‘Whores! Those women are whores and they’re going to do what whores do with men who have money. Don’t you know anything?’
“Clementina was beginning to understand that she didn’t know anything. She didn’t know anything at all.
“ ‘Miracielos!’ Delicata’s sharp voice cut through the uproar and Rosa rushed to her side. Clementina lifted the scarf up to hide even more of her face and joined Rosa at the front of the room in time to hear her mother say, ‘Lorca is the one who asked for our cuadro. He specifically asked for you. He told all his friends about you. Tonight, I will go first and you will go last’
“ ‘Oh, Mama, thank you.’ Rosa threw her arms around Delicata. To be the final dancer in a crowd of aficionados such as this was a great honor.
“Delicata pushed her daughter away. ‘Don’t thank me,’ she snapped, then added, her voice softer, sadder, ‘and don’t blame me either. Not for doing what a Gypsy woman has to do to keep her family alive.’
“Clementina and Rosa didn’t have time to wonder about Delicata’s strange words, for Mono, Rosa’s brother with the nose smashed in like a monkey, began to play. He bashed at the strings of his battered guitar, beating brutal rhythms. The poet was the most intent of the spectators. When someone behind him called out drunkenly, ‘Baila! Baila! Dance! Dance!’ Lorca shot the man the most withering of glances and the room fell silent. Delicata took her place at the edge of the area that had been cleared for the dancers.
“El Chino broke the intense silence with a wail even more unearthly than the one he had unloosed while the troupe had walked through Granada’s dark street. More scream than song, the cante of Rosa’s father evoked bewildering surges of despair and ecstasy in Clementina as he sang of his love for a woman that none could compare to except one and that one was on the wall of a church with the moon at her feet.
“Delicata raised her arm above her head and, in that gesture, transformed herself from a troll into a queen and left no doubt whom El Chino was singing about. Staring at the men with a defiance that bordered on disgust, she stamped her foot hard, sweeping her hand down with a decisive finality. She dropped her head and everyone in the room held their breath until, two, three compáses later, she slowly lifted it again, her arms rising along with it. They twisted like flames above her head.
“Rosa clapped the beat that brought her mother’s feet to life, stamping out an intricate counterrhythm. The poet’s face stood out from the crowd as he encouraged Delicata with nods and mutters of ‘Eso es! Eso es el flamenco puro!’ Delicata signaled for a silencio, a quiet place in the dance where El Chino’s cante could take over.
“Delicata stepped back and pushed her daughter forward. Rosa executed simple marcaje that kept the beat while El Chino sang. Clementina waited for El Chino to settle into one of the songs that Rosa had taught her. But he didn’t sing anything Clementina had heard before. She was puzzling over what manner of song he was singing when the door opened and a man strode in. Clementina knew instantly that it was El Bala. Just as Rosa had described, he looked like a bullet with his bald head and thick neck, all smooth except where a long scar puckered his face. Delicata and El Chino stared first at El Bala, then at each other, then together their gazes fell upon Rosa who, lost in the dance, didn’t notice their sudden attention. Clementina thought her friend had never been more beautiful. Even doing the marking steps, she was exquisite.
“El Chino’s song was so jondo, so filled with sangre negro, black blood, that even the señoritos were moved. Several had started to weep. So powerful were the emotions aroused by El Chino’s voice and the words he was making up on the spot that Juan Pablo’s father stood and ripped his shirt from his body. Possessed by the moment, El Chino sang on. He sang the story of his delirious love for a green-eyed dancer who stole his soul and forced him to steal her because, after all, how can a man live without his soul? He sang of how every man who saw his wife was as bewitched as he had been. He had hidden her from all except one, a killer who would put a bullet in the heart of his love. His woman loves the killer. Driven mad by jealousy and love, he put his hands around the neck of the only woman he would ever love. As his fingers tightened, her green eyes bulged, and his woman swore that it is not her that the killer loves but their daughter. The daughter is the one the killer wants.
“Heartbroken tears flowed from El China’s eyes as he sang his lament. He has two choices. He can either give his daughter in marriage or kill her mother. How, he asks, can his children live without their mother? How can he live without the soul that mother stole from him?
“Clementina knew that she had understood the strange words correctly when a look of horror spread across her friend’s face.
“El Chino’s cante was the catalyst the playboys, already half-mad from days of drinking and debauchery, required to reach a state of near-hysterical group catharsis. The aristocrats keened and wept. The old men lamented that life was too short. The young that it was too long. Juan Pablo’s father, driven into a frenzy, scratched his fingernails across his naked chest, drawing blood.
“In the clamor, Rosa, her face wet with tears, slipped back into the shadows and whispered to Clementina, ‘They can’t! They can’t marry me off to El Bala. He’s old. He’s ugly. I will kill myself.’
“Clementina stopped her friend. ‘Rosa, don’t even say that. We’ll run away.’ She remembered all of Rasa’s stories. ‘We’ll go to Sevilla, where there is laughter, gaiety, with enough to eat for everyone and more than enough for those with talent. Rosa, you will be queen of Sevilla like your grandmother La Leona. You will be queen of the cafés cantantes!’
“ ‘How?’ Rosa asked.
“El Bala guarded the door. There would be no escape. El Chino sang again and the men calmed themselves. Clementina felt that the whole world, since the world was run by men, wanted only to lock her away, her and Rosa and every other girl who would dance and sing. Cave or convent, mountain or mansion, it didn’t matter how fine the rugs might be, how ancient the heraldic tiles, a prison was a prison. With the barbarous El Bala guarding the door, there seemed to be no hope. Clementina realized they were both condemned. Then, his white suit shining like the moon in the darkness, one faint beacon of hope presented itself: the poet.
“Clapping out a staccato answer to her husband’s lament, Delicata stepped forward. The blood of her mother, La Leona, queen of the cafés cantantes, surged through her veins and when she danced, she became a whirlpool that sucked every man’s attention into its fathomless well. Thankfully, none was left for the two girls. In the dark, Clementina motioned for Rosa to follow her and they made their way to the table where a flickering candil lighted the face of the poet. Clementina knelt at his feet so that her features would not be caught in the illumination.
“ ‘What is it, bailaora?’ the poet asked, his voice soft with kindness.
“Clementina poured Rosa’s tale out and, in the telling, divulged a bit of her own as well. The poet was enraptured. ‘I shall write an ode,’ he exclaimed. ‘Your stories, your baile capture all that is flamenco puro.’
“Clementina ducked her head even lower, scared that the poet’s exclamations would call attention to her. When she lowered her head, she noticed to her alarm that the front of her borrowed dress was damp with sweat, darkened with soot. She touched her dripping face and found no soot on her finger when she looked at it. She had sweated her disguise away.
“Delicata finished and the thirsty crowd turned back to the wine. For a moment, the only sound was the clinking of bottles against the rims of glasses. Just then, a man stepped out of the back room. The wild pigeon he’d just finished with was hanging onto him. All the men hooted as he made a great show of buttoning his fly, tucking his shirt in, and pulling his suspenders up. ‘Ándale, muchachos, I warmed her up for you.’ He lowered the dancer’s blouse and kissed her nipple. The man was Clementina’s father.
“The poet, recognizing the duke, tried to hide Clementina. But it was too late. Smears of soot, a scarf covering all but her eyes, the darkness, the surprise of the setting, none of it mattered. The duke recognized his daughter instantly. His gaze fixed on her. In his look was not only recognition of who Clementina was but of who she would be for the rest of her days: a disgrace, a scandal that would have to be hidden. Marriage to even the lowest of families, internment in even the meanest of convents would no longer be enough. Clementina could not imagine her fate, but death was not out of the question since any life she had ever known ended the second her father set eyes on her.
“A hammering at the door threw everyone else in the room into a panic, but the duke remained frozen. He did not even register the shouted words, ‘Open up? Guardia civil!’ Without waiting, the guards began pounding the door down.
“Though the juerga was a traditional right of the playboys of the aristocracy, none of them knew if their immunity would stand up in the perilous political climate that had reigned since Franco had come to power. The military and the Church had put him in power and the Church hated flamenco. All the dukes and barons scrambled for a safe exit. And though every Gypsy was terrified of the state police who made their lives such torment, the most frightened person that night, for his own very singular reasons, was the poet Lorca. Candiles were extinguished. The room fell into darkness. Panic ensued as the men stampeded toward the door, all of them ready with bribes to thrust into the guards’ hands. Rosa screamed for her friend. Clementina ran to her side and, not knowing where else to turn, they followed the one spot of brightness they could distinguish, the luminescent white of the poet’s suit.
“While all the others churned futilely, the door was broken down and the guards entered carrying lanterns. The light reflected off the black patent leather of their hats, turning the uptilted corners into horns. They entered and demanded, ‘Where is the poet?’
“But the poet was gone. At that very moment he was helping Rosa and Clementina clamber out a window. He followed, climbing down the lattice that held up a bougainvillea and dropping into the alley below. The three of them set off running. Clementina kept turning back, expecting her father to appear behind her at any second. She fell behind and Rosa went back to hurry her along. Then they chased the waning moon of the poet’s white suit. They ran until they caught him. They ran until all three were out of breath and far from the site of the juerga.
“The first thing Lorca did when he caught his breath was laugh. ‘Franco, you idiot! What a terrible and tiny tyrant you must be to fear a poet. Well, girls, at least we all know what we’re up against, eh? We’ll go straight to my friend’s house, where I’m staying. Those apes don’t know where it is. I’ll send word to my sister, my mother. We’ll collect my papers, what money I have, and leave Granada tonight. My friends were right. I should never have returned. We’ll escape to Madrid, to some place not yet controlled by that bloodthirsty, sanctimonious monster. Some place where Spaniards are still Spaniards and still love poetry more than blood and dance more than murder.’
“Clementina and Rosa suddenly felt as if their lives, which had seemed over only moments before, were just beginning. Lorca hurried ahead of them through the quiet streets, his heels ringing against the wet cobblestones. The girls were barely able to suppress giggles born of hysteria, fear, and joy. Rosa and Clementina caught up to Lorca, and the rest of the way he talked even faster than he walked. He talked about the evil that gripped his beloved Spain. About his country’s demonic desire to kill what is best in herself. ‘She’s done it before,’ he ranted. ‘The Inquisition, driving out the Moors and Jews, persecuting the Gypsies, now this, this civil war. This is the most grievous act of cannibalism in all her bloody history.
“ ‘Politics? I don’t care about politics,’ he railed. ‘About Loyalists, Rebels. Republicans, Falangists. I hate all uniforms except el traje de luces!’ The thought of the bullfighter’s glittering suit of lights as a uniform made him laugh. ‘Not much farther, señoritas, my friend’s house is just around this corner. Then we are safe from those jackbooted—’
“Words and motion stopped dead when they turned the corner. Waiting along the street was a gauntlet of soldiers in dung-brown uniforms carrying rifles, standing in the murky light cast by a lone streetlamp. Rosa grabbed the poet and dragged him back into the shadows.
“ ‘They didn’t see you,’ she whispered. ‘We can sneak away. I have relatives in Sevilla. We’ll walk. Don’t worry about your papers, your money.’
“Lorca didn’t answer. He merely pulled a Turkish cigarette from the case in his pocket, lit it, and held it in that way he had, pinched between thumb and forefinger, his palm cupping his chin as he inhaled the smoke. He looked like the hero in a movie, his hair black as ink, his face, hands, suit, all white, the stuff of clouds in the mist swirling through the narrow street. They stood hidden in the darkness and listened to the tramp of the soldiers’ boots against the cobblestones, to the rattle of rifle barrels, the slap of a leather holster against a thigh. Lorca finished his cigarette and stared a long time at the butt before he tossed it away.
“ ‘Papers?’ he said. ‘Money? No, these I don’t worry about. I worry about honor, dignity, and art. Good luck, muchachas. I wish I had more than luck to give you. I wish I had more to give Spain.’
“ ‘No,’ Rosa whispered, but he had already stepped into the light. The soldiers seized him. The last they saw of the poet was the back of his white jacket before the sudden slam of a black car door, a moon being eclipsed by a dark cloud. They watched long after the car bore him away into the night.”