Doña Carlota fell silent then. If she’d been younger, stronger, I might have questioned her a bit about this account of the night Lorca died. Since he was one of the major saints in flamenco’s pantheon, any student at the academy named for her could have told Doña Carlota what details were known about his death, that Lorca was hiding at his friend’s house when he was arrested by Franco’s Falangists on August 19 at three in the morning, handcuffed to a lame teacher, and taken by car to a holding camp for condemned prisoners. But I could see from her expression that she had told her truth: innocence and hope had disappeared from her life along with the white-suited poet.
I assumed the old woman regretted her candor and that her revelations were at an end. I stood to leave and her eyes, the white spotted brown like an old dog’s, found me.
“Are you tired of my story, Metrónoma?”
“No, I thought you were through.”
“I wish the story had ended that night, but it was just beginning. Siéntate. Sit, sit. This is the first and will be the last time I ever tell it all.”
I sat back down. Doña Carlota, her bony shoulders hiking up to her ears, edged a bit higher into the chaise longue, settled in, and began again.
“When the sun rose after both the happiest and saddest night of Clementina’s life, the girls were tramping along the high road to Sevilla. Rosa purposely bumped and jostled against the farmers coming into Granada to sell their produce. By the time they’d passed the vendors, Rosa’s blouse was as heavy as a black marketer’s with the apples, onions, carrots, and potatoes she’d filched from passing baskets. She even managed to pluck a small round of manchego cheese, which the girls devoured with the apples and vegetables. With food in her belly, the full horror of the previous night returned and tears commenced streaming down Clementina’s cheeks.
“ ‘Are you crying because you lost your father?’ Rosa asked.
“Clementina nodded dumbly.
“ ‘Are you crying because you have no money? No place to sleep? Because you might be killed by bandits on this mountain road? Because no decent man will ever marry you and we’ll probably starve to death? Or are you crying just because your feet hurt?’
“Clementina’s tears poured faster as she listened to this inventory of her miseries and realized how much worse off they were than she’d feared.
“Rosa slammed the back of her hand against Clementina’s sternum so hard that the air caught in her chest and she could not get enough breath to continue crying. ‘Well, look at me. Not only have all those things happened to me, but El Bala is going to hunt me down to drag me back to be his wife. Am I crying?’
“ ‘You’re made of much sturdier stuff than I am.’
“ ‘Oh, you poor little rich girl. Your suffering is so much more refined than mine, is that it?’
“ ‘No,’ Clementina said with her mouth while her mind said yes.
“ ‘Come on, we’re lucky. All I have to do is imagine being trapped in a cave with El Bala and I want to burst into song. Think of lying in bed with one of those boys from last night on top of you. How about that one with the head shaped like an almond and all the pimples?’
“Clementina shuddered at the thought and her tears fell faster.
“ ‘Do you like being sad?’ Rosa asked her friend.
“ ‘No.’
“ ‘Then don’t think sad thoughts.’
“ ‘It’s not that simple,’ Clementina said, but her words were lost in the growl of a truck laboring past, hardly traveling faster than they were walking. It required little more than a hop for Rosa to jump onto the back of the flatbed. She laughed as the truck rumbled away and Clementina ran to catch it, then jump up beside her friend. The vast, fertile Granada vega stretched out all around them, rust and golden and green, all the way to the Sierra Nevada frosted with snow. When Rosa started singing, Clementina joined her with palmas and pitos. Even though it was a sad song por soleares about never having a home again and wandering as Gypsies have wandered for hundreds of years, Clementina’s spirits soared.
“Every person they passed shouted greetings, for the road to Granada was the most sociable in Spain. It was clogged that day with goatherds, muleteers, washerwomen, horse-dealers, and hawkers of every description. A couple of the vendors heading into Granada even reversed their direction and walked swiftly enough to keep up with the lumbering truck so they could ask the girls how they could live without the needles or pans or bits of lace they were selling. Being with Rosa made Clementina bold, and she yelled back retorts so saucy that one merchant, a boy really, barely older than the girls, was inspired to fling a lady’s souvenir fan painted with a view of the Alhambra into the back of the truck. He shouted honeyed piropos comparing Clementina to a rose, a dove, a lily until he was out of breath and stood by the side of the road watching as the truck carrying the two girls, giggling madly at his compliments and fanning themselves with the fan, disappeared from sight.
“Clementina and Rosa watched the Alhambra that had stood invincible over their childhoods grow smaller as one terrace after another slipped from view until only the top spire was visible, a shimmering rose patch above Granada. Clementina remembered her aunt’s stories about Boabdil, the last Moorish ruler. In 1492, when he was driven out by the Catholic kings, he looked back at the paradise his people had created and he had lost and wept. His bitter tears at the thought of never again seeing his beloved Alhambra caused his mother to scorn him, saying, ‘Weep like a woman for what you have not defended like a man.’
“ ‘What do you think happened to Señor Lorca?’ Clementina asked Rosa. When she received no answer, she looked over and found Rosa fast asleep against a bag of wheat. Clementina already knew what Rosa would answer: ‘Do you want to be sad? No? Then don’t think sad thoughts.’ She lay back next to her friend, let the sun pour over her, and repeated those words until the rumble and sway of the truck rocked her to sleep.
“A horrible scything sound followed by sudden stillness woke the girls. Rosa ordered Clementina to hop with her off the back of the broken-down truck and hide before the driver could discover the stowaways. Cursing loudly, the driver turned the engine over again. It sputtered and caught. Unfortunately, the girls couldn’t scramble from their hiding place fast enough to catch the truck and it rumbled off without them. Looking around, they found themselves in a forbidding landscape of lunar starkness. Pinnacle upon pinnacle rose up on all sides. Sheer precipices careened down from the rocky road. Stunted pine trees, moss-covered boulders, and an occasional white house perched like a watchtower in the distance were all that broke the landscape. A solitary vulture carved lazy, black Vs across a nearly white sky.
“ ‘Have we landed on the moon?’ Rosa asked.
“They might as well have for all the idea Clementina had of where they could be. She wondered whether it might not have been better to die quickly back in Granada rather than slowly of thirst out there in such a desolate wasteland. ‘We’re certainly not on the road to Sevilla.’
“ ‘That’s good,’ Rosa said in a chirpy voice that made Clementina wonder if the heat had overtaken her friend.
“ ‘It’s good that we are in the middle of nowhere with no idea which way Sevilla is?’
“ ‘Claro! Where would I go if I ran away from Granada?’
“ ‘To Sevilla, of course. To dance in the cafés cantantes and rule over the city of charm like an empress.’
“ ‘Claro. So, the first place El Bala is going to search is the road to Sevilla, verdad? Your father has probably alerted every guardia already, and they’ll be watching the main roads. So this is perfect.’ Rosa gazed around at the desolation and smiled. ‘Yes, this is just where we want to be.’ She found a bit of shade cast by a rock outcropping and plopped herself down in it with a satisfied sigh as if pleased with how events had worked out. Clementina stood beside the sun-blasted road, baffled by Rosa’s insouciance.
“ ‘You better get out of the sun, payo.’
“Clementina started to join her friend when the low-throated rumble of a truck laboring up the winding hill stopped her and she ran back into the middle of the road, ready to flag the driver down.
“ ‘Someone’s coming!’ Clementina’s joyous shout was cut short when Rosa abruptly yanked her off the road and shoved her behind the rocks. A second later Clementina saw that the canvas covering the back of the truck was painted with red stripes at the top and bottom, with a yellow stripe in the middle where a black eagle with a red beak perched clutching the arrows and the yoke of Fernando and Isabel. She saw that the army truck was filled with soldiers wearing the same dung-colored uniforms as the ones who had taken the poet Lorca away.
“ ‘They might have given us water,’ Clementina said wistfully as the truck disappeared in the vast beige wasteland of rock and dust.
“ ‘The only thing men in uniforms give Gypsies is misery. Come on up here where there’s a breeze.’ Rosa clambered up the tallest rock, untucked her blouse, and lifted it out.
“Clementina perched next to her friend. ‘Tell me about the cafés cantantes,’ Clementina said.
“An updraft blew along the ridge. It filled the girls’ untucked blouses like wind in a sail and Rosa told Clementina again all the stories about the life they would have when they reigned as princesses of el baile in Sevilla.
“Hours later the screech of a wooden oxcart wheel axle interrupted Rosa’s stories. A farmer drove a two-wheeled cart up the mountain. He was a stoutly built fellow in worn, brown corduroy pants, an ancient cap perched jauntily on his head, bald except for a few silvery strands.
“Rosa stepped into the road weeping tears she summoned on the spot and sobbing sobs so piteous that they drowned out the shrieking of the cart. ‘Señor, señor, por favor.’ She held out a trembling hand and begged for him to stop, something the farmer, exhausted from a long day’s tramp and hungry for the supper waiting for him, was not inclined to do.
“ ‘We’re lost! My poor sister and I are lost! Our parents are dead. We’re going to our aunt in Sevilla. We have nothing. We’re lost.’
“With a gusty sigh of resignation, the farmer stopped and gestured for them to help themselves to his water barrel tied to the back of the cart.
“ ‘You don’t look like sisters,” he observed as pale Clementina sipped delicately out of the dipper and dark Rosa all but dunked her head, drinking directly from the barrel like a horse.
“Rosa laughed and shrugged. The farmer turned out to be a garrulous sort who accepted Rosa’s little subterfuge as a fine example of gracia, Andalusian wit. He was happy to join them in the shade where he passed around sausage and a flask of aguardiente.
“ ‘To kill the worms,’ he said, raising the aniseed brandy. Before the flask had gone around twice, the sun was slipping from the cloudless sky, coloring the bleak landscape with browns, hazels, reds, blues, and purples, and turning the distant olive groves bluish green. Far to the east, the delicately tapering peaks of the Sierra Nevada glowed pink in the fading light of day.
“Muttering about Long Steps, the most feared bandit ever to maraud the Sierra Nevada, the farmer heaved himself to his feet. He warned the girls that they shouldn’t stay out unprotected and offered to let them sleep in his barn, less than an hour’s walk away.
“ ‘Why should we tramp another hour to sleep where your ox shits?’ Rosa asked.
“The farmer roared with laughter. More gracia. ‘Take your chances with the bandits then.’ He whacked his ox until the creature moved and the wooden axle screeched.
“ ‘We have nothing to steal!’ Rosa shouted after him.
“ ‘Then Long Steps will steal you!’ the farmer yelled back.
“ ‘Only if he can find us!’ Rosa hurled back, already stealing away from the road. Beyond a stand of pines, dwarfed and twisted by the ceaseless wind, she found a perch at the very edge of the precipice. Clementina’s stomach lurched and panic clutched at her throat as she peered into the chasm below. Rosa, on the other hand, was as comfortable as a mountain goat bedding down for the night. Rosa, who’d never slept alone in her life, snuggled up to her friend like a puppy settling in with its littermates. Clementina, who’d never slept a night with another human beside her since her mother died, was comforted by Rosa’s presence.
“ ‘Guess what?’ Rosa asked Clementina. ‘I’ve picked a stage name. In Sevilla, I will be known as La Leona, the Lioness. Just like my grandmother. Clementina, you have to change your name so your father won’t find you. What’s it going to be?’
“While Clementina pondered what her new name would be, Rosa fell asleep.
“Night fell with a stunning velocity. In the darkness Clementina became terrified of falling into the void below and was certain she wouldn’t sleep a wink on the rocky earth. But as the pricks of light that were the farmhouses below blended with the stars blazing overhead, it seemed as if she were swimming through a dark sea with diamonds floating and glinting all around and Clementina relaxed. Whether it was the farmer’s aguardiente or the unaccustomed solace of a warm body, Clementina joined Rosa in a sleep lighted by dreams of the golden radiance of the gas lamps of the cafés cantantes.
“In the dream, she learned what her stage name would be and awoke eager to tell Rosa, but when she opened her eyes, the only creature she beheld was a lone eagle riding high above a pink dawn.
“ ‘Rosa. Rosa? Rosa!’ Her shouts grew louder when a search turned up nothing but a few lizards that skittered away, twitching their tails in the dust.
“The only evidence that Rosa had ever been there was the fan flung to them by the smitten young man on the road to Sevilla. Clementina found it crumpled behind a rock, near a dark spot still damp from where Rosa had relieved herself. The impression of a man’s boot heel was pressed into the small circle of mud. Long Steps. Rosa had been stolen by bandits. Tears flooded Clementina’s eyes. She opened Rosa’s fan. Each time she waved it in front of her hot face, it dried one tear and two more poured out. Soon all her tears had spilled and she regretted every single one because a thirst worse than any she had ever known burned in her throat. Shriveling like a chile drying in the early morning sun, Clementina was so thirsty that she forgot Rosa, she forgot her hunger, she forgot everything except water.
“When Clementine heard the rattle of an approaching vehicle, she didn’t care who it belonged to. If it was Franco’s soldiers, at least she’d have a quick death instead of dying of thirst. A car like her father’s, an Hispano-Suiza, approached in a cloud of dust. Unlike her father’s, however, this once-luxurious automobile was now an ancient rattletrap. She dragged herself into the middle of the road and the car stopped. Espectáculos Vedrines, the name of a famous variety show that toured the country, was written on the side. The man driving barely slowed down long enough for one door to fly open and a woman with dark red lipstick, her hair covered by a snood, to gesture to Clementina. ‘Come on! Come on! Get in or he will leave you here!’
“Clementina jumped in the back and wedged herself between trunks, hatboxes, and a guitar.
“ ‘Hurry, Gustavo!’ the woman yelled at the driver.
“ ‘Elena, you’re the one who told me to stop!’ Gustavo ground the car’s gears in his haste.
“ ‘Yes, well, you’re the one who couldn’t keep up with the rest of the company and now we’re lost in this godforsaken place!’
“ ‘I? I was the one? Was it I who made the tire on this pile of junk blow out? Was it I who lost the ration coupons so we couldn’t buy petrol? I know it was I who had to steal enough petrol to get us here! And we are not lost! Where else would this road go if not to Sevilla?’
“Clementina noticed that the handsome couple, though they yelled everything they said to each other, seemed to enjoy the yelling. At least they were going to Sevilla.
“ ‘And again, I ask you, was it I who insisted we stop for this, this, this—’ The man waved his hand in Clementina’s direction but could not decide exactly what to call her.
“ ‘And I suppose you were just going to leave her by the side of the road?’
“ ‘Why not? You’re too softhearted. If it was up to you this car would be filled with skinny dogs and’—he glanced at Clementina in the rearview mirror—‘skinny girls. Maybe she lives on a nearby farm.’
“ ‘Look at her. A farmer’s daughter? You must be insane.’
“ ‘I’m insane? Who’s standing in the middle of the road in the middle of nowhere?’
“Elena whispered to Gustavo. ‘Maybe she is a little...’ She tapped her temple.
“ ‘I’m not crazy,’ Clementina felt obliged to tell them. The couple blinked at each other as if surprised she could speak even though they had not given her a chance to do so.
“ ‘Good!’ Gustavo boomed. ‘Then maybe you can tell us if we are in rebel or Nationalist territory! We have to know which flag to put up so we won’t be killed!’
“ ‘I don’t know, but a truck filled with soldiers passed by yesterday.’
“ ‘Did you hear that?’ Elena yelled at Gustavo.
“ ‘I heard! Of course I heard! Do you think I’m deaf? An army truck, yes. But which army? The rebels? The loyalists? The Falangists? Which one?’
“ ‘I don’t know.’
“ ‘She doesn’t know!’ Elena shouted at Gustavo before asking Clementina. ‘The flag? What did the flag look like?’
“ ‘It had stripes.’
“ ‘Stripes!’ Gustavo bellowed. ‘They all have stripes! Elena, show her the flags!’
“ ‘But Gustavo, is it safe?’
“ ‘Is it safe to drive around flying the wrong flag? We can’t make a mistake! Show her!’
“Elena opened the glove box, dumped maps and documents onto her lap, then felt around until she dislodged a partition covering a secret compartment, and retrieved a handful of scarf-size flags. ‘Which one was on the truck?’ She showed Clementina a flag with red, yellow, and purple stripes and another with just red and yellow stripes. There were several others, but Clementina ignored them as she plucked out one with red stripes at the top and bottom and a yellow one in the middle where a black eagle with a red beak perched clutching the arrows and the yoke of Fernando and Isabel.
“ ‘Falangists!’ Gustavo yelled. ‘They’re the worst of them all! Get that flag up!’
“Elena leaned out of the window, the wind tore off her snood, and with her black, curly hair streaming behind, she tied the Falangist flag to the car antenna. When she’d finished, she packed the other flags back into their hiding place, shut the glove box, and turned to Clementina. ‘So what are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere waiting to get run down or shot by soldiers?’
“ ‘I was on my way to Sevilla with my friend, Rosa, and the bandits stole her. Her father back in Sacromonte promised her to El Bala and she was going to have to live the rest of her life in a cave with an ugly old man so we ran away.’
“ ‘Your “friend,” eh?’ Elena caught Gustavo’s eye and winked at him. ‘So Rosa was stolen by the bandits. I had a “friend” once myself whose parents wanted her to marry a rich old man, but my “friend” was stolen too.’ Elena nuzzled up next to Gustavo and nibbled his ear as she crooned in it, ‘Stolen by a handsome bandido. Don’t worry, Rosa, your “friend’s” secret is safe with us.’
“ ‘Do you have any water?’ Clementina was too thirsty to care that Elena thought she was lying.
“Elena handed her a jug of water that she drank dry.
“Then Gustavo asked, ‘Have you eaten today?’
“Clementina shook her head no, and Elena produced from a basket at her feet a yellow pear and she began to cut up. The smell of the perfectly ripe pear and the sight of juice dripping from Elena’s knife made Clementina’s mouth water.
“ ‘Do you like pear?’ This time Gustavo was the one who winked at Elena as he added, ‘Rosa?’
“All her life, Clementina had been taught to bow her head as if she had just taken Communion and accept her sino. Her father and Tía Rogelia had believed that her fate would arrive in the form of a young man from a venerable family. When Gustavo called Clementina by her vanished friend’s name, she realized what her true fate was. Elena reached around and handed Clementina a slice of pear with a kind and understanding smile. Clementina bowed her head and accepted the pear as politely as she had always accepted her fate.
“ ‘And what do you intend to do in Sevilla?’ Gustavo asked.
“ ‘I will find work as a flamenco dancer at a café cantante.’
“Gustavo studied her in the rearview mirror. ‘A café cantante?’
“ ‘Yes, maybe the Kursaal or Café Silverio. Or any of the cafés on the Alameda de Hércules.’
“ ‘The Kursaal? Café Silverio?’ After each name, Elena burst out with an eruption of laughter louder than the last.
“The well-brought-up Clementina simply blinked several times at Elena’s rudeness, causing Elena to explain kindly, ‘Oh, niña, the last café cantante in Sevilla closed more than ten years ago.’
“ ‘That’s not possible. I was going to be La Leona, the Lioness, like my grandmother.’ Somehow, the shock of learning that Rosa’s dream world had vanished made it seem all right to claim it as her own.
“Elena turned in her seat, holding a piece of pear in her hand. ‘You had a grandmother who danced in los cafés cantantes?’
“The juicy slice of pear glistened in the morning sunlight, slanting into the big car. Clementina nodded yes and Elena handed over the bit of fruit. Clementina told La Leona’s story and was rewarded with a slice of pear. The tale of El Chino and Delicata won her an even bigger slice. The first time Clementina told the story of Rosa’s life as her own, she was driven to it by hunger. But in the telling Rosa’s life became much more real to Clementina than the lonely, uneventful one she had led, so real that it truly did seem to be her own. Clementina didn’t think that she had stolen her friend’s name, her history, her life. She intended only to borrow them for a while. It would be much safer to be Rosa than Clementina. There were so many Rosas. Who would notice one more? A Clementina? Yes, a Clementina would be noticed and, eventually, her father would come. But a Rosa, una gitana? Even Rosa’s own family would not search for her since that would mean going to the enemies of the Gypsy people, the police, la guardia civil. No, no one would be looking for Rosa.
“Especially not now. Now that the country was at war with itself. Gustavo turned on the car radio and they listened to the warbly voice of Generalissimo Franco on Radio Zaragoza. He called Manuel Azaña, the president of the Republic, ‘a monster who seems more the absurd invention of a doubly insane Frankenstein than the fruit of the love of a woman. Azaña,’ Franco insisted, ‘must be caged up so that brain specialists can study perhaps the most interesting case of mental degeneration in history.’
“Elena and Gustavo burst out laughing. When Clementina asked if this meant they were on the side of Franco’s Nationalists, they laughed even harder.
“ ‘Side?’ Gustavo asked. ‘This damn war has more sides than you can count. The Carlists, the Falangists, the Communists, the Church, the aristocracy, the unions, the laborers, the miners. Everyone has a side. Now even the Germans who are flying Franco’s troops from Morocco in their Junkers and the Italians who aren’t doing anything except seducing our women have a side in this war. The only ones who don’t have a side in this unholy mess are us, the entertainers.’
“ ‘Oh yes, we do!’ Elena disagreed, then asked Clementina, ‘You know which side is our side, Rosita?’
“Clementina shrugged.
“ ‘The side that claps for us. The side that pays us. The side that puts bread in our mouths. That is our side. That is the only side entertainers ever have.’
“ ‘Shut up, you. Listen to this.’ Gustavo tuned in Radio Sevilla and the high-pitched voice of General Queipo de Llano came in very clearly. ‘We must kill the enemies of the Spanish nation, like the animals they are. We must kill the Reds. Kill the leftists. Kill the Republicans. Kill the Masons. Kill all those who would bring down Holy Mother Church and Spain herself.’
“ ‘Find some music!’ Elena cried out and was not happy until Gustavo tuned in La Bella Dorita chirping her syrupy songs about roses and butterflies. She asked Clementina to pass her the basket sitting atop the suitcases in the backseat. It was filled with costumes in the process of being either repaired or constructed. Clementina volunteered to help. Elena was so impressed with the precision of her needlework while mending a tear in the crotch of Gustavo’s clown costume that she declared, ‘We have found a new wardrobe mistress!’ and dumped the entire basket on Clementina’s lap. Clementina was delighted with her new title and stitched away happily as the barren landscape slid past her window.
“She woke that night with her head resting on the nest of ripped costumes as the Hispano-Suiza came to a halt in the alley behind the Teatro Olimpia Seventy years later, long after Clementina had forgotten everything she had to do to survive for all the years of the war when the starving country chewed itself to bits like a mad dog, Clementina would remember one thing about her first moment in the fabled city of Sevilla: the smell, an ineradicable combination of cement dust, death, and perfume.
“She would learn later that the smell of death hung over all of Sevilla and that it came from the plaza de toros where thousands of ‘Reds’ had been executed, labor leaders, teachers, leftists, students, anyone who opposed the Church or spoke out against the landowners. A few of the condemned were allowed to escape the massacre in the plaza so they could tell how Moorish soldiers, men dark as café solo, were encouraged to rape the victims before executions. It was August in the south of Spain and the mass graves could not be dug fast enough. The stench of the corpses mixed with the smell of cement dust from the Santa Marina and San Roque churches blown up by the Republicans. The odor of burning rubber from the trucks set on fire by the Nationalists and cordite from the rifles that fired sporadically through the day added to the stink that choked all of Sevilla.
“But the smell of perfume could be detected for only a few blocks around the Teatro Olimpia because just a few streets away the Perfumería Tena had been blown up, allowing the fragrances of jasmine, sandalwood, tea rose, musk, lily of the valley, lavender to pour out over the stink. Their sweetness tricked the nostrils into opening so that each inhalation was a fresh horror.
“Barely awake, frightened by the smell of death, Clementina clung to Elena and rushed with her into the safety of the theater. Elena and Gustavo were not surprised when Clementina confessed that she knew no one in Sevilla and had nowhere to go. And, also, Clementina added, she was starving.
“ ‘You want to eat?’ Gustavo demanded, adding in an aside to Elena, ‘She wants to eat!’
“ ‘Rosita,’ Elena yelled, ‘we all want to eat!’
“Gustavo tossed her a costume. ‘You’re a dancer, right? Okay, dance. Señor Vedrine pays after the show. Then we eat.’
“Clementina nodded dumbly.
“Elena explained, ‘Okay, you’re dancing La Pulga. Anyone with a nice pair of legs can dance La Pulga. Just watch me.’ In the hubbub backstage, with girls penciling their eyes in black and rouging their cheeks, with a plate-spinner rattling his china, with five poodles in bow ties and jackets yapping, Elena taught her La Pulga, a dance routine about a girl with a pesky flea in her clothes.
“That night, Espectáculos Vedrines put on a show for Generalissimo Franco’s troops. Clementina, now officially Rosa, did not dance in golden gaslight for an elegant crowd that revered flamenco and would crown una bailaora queen simply for the quality of her exquisite brazeo. No, Rosa was but one of many acts in a traveling variety show, each one coarser than the last.
“Just before Elena shoved Clementina onstage, she hissed at her, ‘Remember, Señor Vedrine only pays if the audience claps!’
“Clementina swatted at herself as Elena had shown her and danced faster and faster to the accelerating music. The theater ‘liberated’ by the Nationalists was filled with troops wearing the blue uniforms of the Italian army, the gray-green of the German. Their officers wore peaked caps and sat in the front row next to General Gonzalo Queipo de Llano, who was surrounded by the leaders of the Army of Africa and officers of the Spanish Legionnaires. Behind them were soldiers wearing the red berets of the Carlists, the dark blue shirts with yellow arrows of the Falangists. Germans with blond hair and big, square heads sat next to Italians with the soulful eyes of poets. Standing in the very back, allowed to enter yet not to sit, were Franco’s Moorish soldiers. Black as ink, they wore red fezzes on their heads and had dusty puttees wrapping their legs. All the men were different, yet to Clementina they were all the same. In her fear, their gaping mouths seemed to meld into one voracious maw poised to gobble her down.
“They watched with a hungry insatiability. But they didn’t clap.
“She danced more furiously, her footwork better that night than even Rosa’s had ever been. Yet not one man clapped. Perhaps they couldn’t see how her heels hammered like pistons? She raised her skirt the tiniest bit and a sprinkling of applause broke out. Offstage, Gustavo prompted her to raise her skirt higher. She did and the applause grew. Only Clementina could hear the growling of her stomach, but it told her what she had to do next. She had to do what Clementina could never have done. Only Rosa could do what was necessary to survive. She raised her skirt higher and the men clapped louder.
“Señor Vedrine, owner of several companies touring the country in his Espectáculos, resplendent that night in black evening cape, mustache waxed to fine points, dropped a few centimos into ‘Rosa’s’ hand. What he gave her was exactly enough to stay alive for one more day and to arrive back at Teatro Olimpia the next night hungry enough to do again whatever was necessary. He welcomed the newest addition to his company with these words, ‘More clapping, more centimos. Tomorrow, look a little harder for that flea.’
“ ‘Rosa’ didn’t begin her search for the flea in earnest the next night. No, she had to get much, much hungrier before she even removed her shawl. But when she did, oh the applause. Better still, Señor Vedrine parceled out a few extra centimos as a reward. Enough to buy a tomato to eat with her bread. The next night, off came her shoes and she earned enough applause to buy a small piece of cheese. So it went until ‘Rosa’ stood beneath the blinding lights wearing nothing but her corset, pink stockings, and a false Gypsy’s false smile plastered on her face.
“For this Señor Vedrine gave her a little more, but never enough. Never enough to fill her stomach. Perhaps, if Clementina had grown up like Rosa with an empty stomach growling her whole life, she would have been stronger. But she hadn’t and she wasn’t. So, when a German officer gestured for the pretty chica, light-skinned and delicate unlike her swarthy sisters, to join him at his table, a table piled with candied chestnuts in syrup with brandy, perfectly grilled sardines, tender marinated octopus, mantecaditos!—the little cookies of almonds and olive oil she had used to lure Rosa into friendship—was it any wonder she said yes?
“And that is how Clementina survived the war in which a million died. A million in a country of twenty-two million. She became the puta her father had cursed her for. She entertained in all the ways in which a half-starved young woman can entertain a man. She thought of all the men, German, Italian, Spanish, as señoritos, as the wealthy patrons who had always supported flamenco performers. She smiled at the German officers who told her how lucky she was to be a little Gypsy girl in Spain. Back in the Fatherland, they had been sterilizing people like her and putting them in concentration camps since 1932. She smiled when the Italians complimented her manners, saying she wasn’t a pig like most Spaniards. She smiled when Spanish officers joked about making the maricón poet Lorca dig his own grave—‘The only work that fairy did in his life!’—before they shot him in the back of the head.
“German bombs fell on Spain and anyone with enough influence or money left. Carmen Amaya, Sabicas, all gone to Paris, New York, Buenos Aires. In 1939, the Civil War ended. The Germans, the Italians, and the Moors left, but the memory of what they had done remained. Spaniards on the left and the right remembered the nineteen thousand Luftwaffe personnel who had rotated through the Condor Legions learning all they needed to know about bombing civilians in places like Guernica before they moved on to Poland, to Czechoslovakia, to France, to the rest of Europe. They remembered the tanks flying Italian flags that had bombarded their homes. They remembered what Franco had incited the Moors to do to their women. The foreigners left, but those who had danced and sang for them remained. And people remembered.
“Life after the Civil War ended was grimmer in many ways than it had been when guns were being fired. Franco tried not just to freeze time, but to turn back the hands of history. Spain became a prison camp secured by la guardia civil against dissent, against progress, against the outside world and the war sweeping the Continent, then the globe. While the rest of the world fought the Second World War—the war that Germany and Italy had rehearsed in Spain—the only blood Spain spilled was her own. Franco exacted a terrible revenge upon all who had opposed him. All who might oppose him still. Rumors that a person did not attend Mass regularly were enough for him to end up in front of a firing squad. Franco purged the country of ‘Reds,’ of anyone suspected of supporting the Republicans. Thousands starved in the years of poverty that followed.
“As the people grew hungrier, their memories grew sharper. They remembered the girl who’d searched for a flea, throwing her clothes off for Nazis, both on the stage and off. But no one dared say anything to Clementina. No one would castigate a girl who had entertained Franco’s generals and all the foreign generals who had aided him. Not when Franco was still executing prisoners by the thousands. In Sevilla alone eighty citizens a day were killed. In the light of day, no one dared whisper a word to Clementina. But in the safety of a dark theater, when the curtains parted and ‘Rosa’ went onstage, the whistles that are a Spaniard’s boo would shriek through the theater.
“Clementina knew that scores were being settled. A knife between the ribs in a dark alley, a piece of wire around the neck, a lead pipe to the back of the head, that was how the defeated, how ordinary Spaniards, retaliated against their conquerors. On moonless nights when even the wary slept, when even la guardia could not protect them, that was when revenge was exacted. Clementina, who had survived the war eating delicacies fed to her by Nazis, who had taken her clothes off for captains and done so much more for majors, who had lived when so many others had died, knew that her name was on the list of those scores waiting to be settled.
“Which is why on a night seven years after the war ended, when Clementina’s feet hurt so badly she could barely drag herself home, she was not surprised that a heavily built man stepped out of the shadows and blocked her path. She had been expecting him or someone like him for a long time. It was right that it should happen there, in an alley, with only the faintest glimmer of moonlight shining on the cobblestones slick from the damp night air, an alley just like the one where she and Rosa last saw the poet Lorca. What did surprise her, though, was that the man knew her name, her real name.
“ ‘Clementina.’
“Then she realized that, of course, it would be someone sent by her father who would kill her.
“ ‘You don’t recognize me, do you?’ He tilted his head up so that moonlight found the scar on his face and turned it into a silver pucker running from his scalp, over his whitened eye, down to his chin.
“ ‘El Bala.’
“ ‘Well, I barely recognize you either. You look like you’ve aged twenty years. Wait until I tell Rosa.’
“ ‘Rosa? Rosa is alive?’
“ ‘Rosa is my wife. The mother of my three children with another on the way. The woman whose name, whose very blood, you have taken and dishonored.’
“ ‘Rosa is alive?’
“ ‘Only because I rescued her from the side of that mountain you had led her to.’
“ ‘You stole her? Not Long Steps? You stole Rosa just like her father stole her mother?’ The weight of memory, of longing for her friend, pressed down upon Clementina so heavily that she could not draw a breath. ‘Is she happy? Does she still dance?’
“ ‘She is my wife.’ Those four words were the walls that imprisoned Clementine’s friend. They described the prison she had been sentenced to by her own parents. ‘I have come to collect what you owe us for stealing her name.’
“ ‘You are looking at everything I own in this world,’ Clementine answered.
“ ‘Then I will have to kill you for the shame you have brought upon my family.’ El Bala was used to speaking these words, then watching hard men turn into babies, crying, begging for their lives, soiling their pants. Clementine barely shrugged, and El Bala saw what the years of hunger and shame had taken from the little aristocrat: her fear of death. So he selected another weapon from his arsenal, blackmail. If regular sums were not sent to him, he would expose Clementine for the fraud she was.
“ ‘Send money to Rosa?’ The flicker that had been Clementine’s interest in staying alive flamed back to life. ‘Where? How much?’
“El Bala had never had such an eager extortion victim. He named an outrageous sum and Clementina agreed so eagerly that he doubled it.
“ ‘It will take me a few months. Let’s say six, no, three, at the most, to have the first payment. I assume you’ll expose me if the first payment is not made. Then find me and kill me if I miss the second.’
“ ‘Uh, yes.’
“ ‘Good, good. Fine. Oh, this is wonderful. Rosa is alive.’
“El Bale stood alone in the dark alley for several moments after his wife’s strange payo friend bounded off looking twenty years younger. Yet again he cursed his heart, his fate, for making him fall in love with Delicate. The daughter, Rosa, grown thin and silent, was nothing like her explosive, fiery mother and now, for the rest of his miserable life, he was trapped. A churro vendor pushing his cart to the plaza to sell his fritters to late-night revelers and early risers startled El Bala. He sheathed his knife and slipped into the shadows. It was a long trip back to Sacromonte.
“After that night, Clementina was reborn. She had a reason to live. To make money. Lots and lots of money to send Rosa. There was nothing but poverty, deprivation, and revenge in Spain. One of the companies of Espectáculos Vedrines was setting sail next week for a tour of Argentina and they needed a dancer. Just someone for the back row who could shake a ruffled skirt and do the tourist kind of flamenco that Franco had promoted since banishing the real thing. Clementina seduced the manager of the overseas companies and convinced him that since all the Nazis had fled to Argentina anyway, the old Luftwaffe pilots and Panzer commandants would be delighted to see the girl who had searched her clothes for a flea while they were training in Spain. She got the job. They gave her an advance on her salary. Clementina intended to send it all to Rosa, but somehow, when she passed the shops that sold candied chestnuts in syrup with brandy, perfectly grilled sardines, tender marinated octopus, mantecaditos!, the money flew out of her hand. She boarded the ship for Argentina without having sent one centimo to Rosa.
“Though Clementina felt guilty about abandoning her friend, Argentina was a new country where it was almost possible to forget old memories, old obligations. The streets were broad and clean, there was plenty to eat, and no one had scores to settle with her. No whistles of derision greeted her when she appeared onstage. She danced with the company at the Teatro Maravillas and the Teatro Mayor right on the broad, tree-lined Avenida Mayor in the middle of town. When their engagement was finished, the company moved on, but Clementina stayed. A woman as strong as she was en compás never had problems finding work. She danced in the chorus with La Argentinita and even the great Carmen Amaya herself. Though a sturdy and reliable dancer, she was known as someone who kept to herself. It was rumored that she was a lesbian, though she didn’t seem to have any more interest in women than she did in men.
“What did interest Clementina was forgetting. Unfortunately amnesia was expensive. Amnesia required dresses of silk, shoes of kid leather, sheets from Portugal. It required the finery of her girlhood. But mostly it required an absence of scent. Only when her body and hair had been scrubbed with the plainest of soaps to remove any possible fragrance, only when her tiny apartment was cleaned of every particle of matter that might rot, only when nothing remained to remind her of a bombed perfume factory, of corpses bloating in a bullring, of the things hunger could force a woman to do, only then could she forget who she’d had to become. Forgetting was essential. Forgetting took all her money so she had none left to send Rosa. Memories of her old friend, of all Clementina owed her, proved impossible to forget. Rosa came in her dreams, as sad and bedraggled as Delicata, to remind Clementina that she owed her her life.
“The years slid past, then the decades. In the beginning, when she was pretty and talented enough to have moved up from the back of the chorus line, she hadn’t wanted to for fear of calling attention to herself. When, at last, in a foreign country far from her father, from El Bala, from the passions of the Civil War, she felt it was safe to step into the spotlight, it was too late. She had already ruined her feet. It was a point of honor with Clementina that, though she might be in the last row, there would always be puffs of dust rising from her spot and no one else’s because she would be the one pounding dust a century old from the boards of the stage. Three decades of such stomping had taken their toll. When the pain became too great to ignore, she went to the best podiatrist in all of Buenos Aires. He gasped at her mangled toes and pronounced surgery the only answer.
“Clementina hobbled out on her battered feet. She had seen the results of foot surgery, big toes that stuck out at ninety-degree angles, feet that curled up like sultan’s shoes. No, she would not allow anyone to cut her feet. Instead, she did what most of the dancers did: she found ways to deal with the pain. Some drank, some smoked herbs. Clementina did both, along with taking any of the medications that floated through the dressing rooms. Paregoric, opium tincture, beneficial for everything from teething babies to chronic diarrhea, became a favorite.
“The orange syrup did relieve Clementina of her pain. Unfortunately, it also relieved her of her timing and the iron discipline that had kept her alive when so many others had perished. The orange syrup unlocked doors that had been closed thirty years before and Clementina wept for all she had lost. When her tears dried, she took stock. It was 1966. She was almost fifty, though she could pass for ten, fifteen, twenty years younger. Her body was firm, slender. Her feet would last another year doing three shows a day. Longer if she only had to teach. She had no savings since she’d spent every peso she’d earned pampering the horror of her life into submission. Clementina had to find a husband. A rich one. Preferably one very close to dying.
“She joined the first troupe heading north. They danced up the continent to Mexico City. From there, they followed the Camino Real, the same route Clementina’s distant ancestors had taken in their conquest of the New World. It led her to the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, a once-majestic vaudeville palace, now, like her, on its last legs. Still, with the right lighting, she and the old place could be magnificent. The lighting was right the night that Ernesto Anaya sat in the audience. A lawyer who had grown wealthy accepting land as payment for his services, a widower whose wife had died before they could have children, he was the answer to her prayer. Ernesto. Ernesto Anaya.”
Doña Carlota repeated her dead husband’s name as if it were the chant that broke a spell. Her voice grew weaker and weaker until it was the barest of whispers. Then she fell silent.
“Doña Carlota?” The sun long set, the last of the piñon logs burned down to smoldering embers, a gloomy chill had entered the room. “Doña Carlota?”
The old woman shivered and tugged the shawl more tightly around her shoulders. She nodded toward the fireplace and I placed another log on the hearth. Next she nodded toward the bottle of pain pills. I shook a couple out and handed them to her with a glass of water. She winced when she swallowed as if even that effort hurt. The new log caught fire with a crackling that was overly loud in the silent room.
“Should I leave?”
She held up one finger and I sat back down. As she waited for the pills to take effect, I studied the filigreed crucifixes, portraits of suffering saints, and beatific madonnas hanging on the wall. It took me a moment to realize that the dry scratching I heard was not leaves scraping against a window in a far corner of the big house; it was the old lady whispering.
“Please,” she said again, waving a skeletal finger toward the massive armoire. It took a few more languid waves before I understood that she wanted me to retrieve something from the ornate antique cabinet. She shook her head no until I retrieved a box carved of rosewood and inlaid with lapis lazuli. She beckoned for me to bring the box to her. With some effort, she removed a thin gold chain from around her neck and handed it to me. A small key was threaded onto the chain. She gestured and I used the key to open the box. All it held was a Certificado de Nacimiento, a birth certificate, from El Hospital Virgen de las Nieves in Granada dated twenty-nine years ago.
“Is this Tomás’s?”
She nodded.
The Nombre del Padre, father’s name, was left blank. In the space for Nombre del Madre a long name was carefully printed. Amid the ys and des was the name ROSA.
Doña Carlota’s eyes had drifted shut. I raised my voice to ask her, “Was your friend Rosa Tomás’s grandmother? Great-grandmother?” When she didn’t answer, I raised my voice higher and asked the only important question, “Is Tomás gitano?”
She screwed her eyes shut more tightly like a dreamer clinging to a dream, resisting being awakened. Though her eyes didn’t open, they relaxed. Doña Carlota sighed, nodded yes, then fell into a sleep heavy as death.