Zahra smoothed her hands over the bodice of her new flamenco outfit. It was her favorite color, not Hermès orange, but brighter, and the skirt was white with big orange polka dots and three layers of ruffles.
This was her final fitting; in three days’ time both she and I would be sitting on airplanes that would propel us back to our homes. It was an odd coincidence that we were both flying home on the same day, and that it was the day after the opening of the Feria de Abril.
Zahra was lucky to have her dress finished in time as this was the busiest time of the year for dressmakers: everyone wanted a new outfit for the feria. The shop was packed and there was barely room for me to stand. Shopgirls were helping women into long ruffled dresses, taking note of last-minute alterations, and bringing out shawl after shawl to drape over the dresses.
Zahra was pushed away from the mirror by a woman in a bright red dress who wanted to see her own reflection. A stressed shopgirl followed her carrying a selection of combs; with an apologetic glance at Zahra, she held the different combs up above her customer’s head for her to pick one.
It looked like Saturday afternoon on Level Two. In a week I’d be back at work. I didn’t want to think about it. The saddest thing about leaving was that I had only recently begun to feel at home in Seville. Adapting to a new culture, especially one so different from my own, wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t until the end of my stay that I actually started to feel like I was in sync with the people around me. Everyday life was starting to feel like less of a struggle, and I’d accepted that searching for a smoke-free café and a supermarket open on a Sunday in Seville was as pointless as it would be to expect flamenco-singing police officers or a glass of red wine for a dollar fifty in Sydney. It just wasn’t gonna happen. And as soon as I let go of my ideas of how the world should be, I was able to enjoy all the Spanishisms I had come to love. I had learned that midday is a perfectly respectable time to have coffee in the sun, just as midnight is a perfectly good time for dinner. I’d even temporarily suspended my veganism. “Only in Spain,” I said to myself each time I indulged, knowing that when I got home I’d go back to brown rice and tofu.
I knew I had to return to Seville, and I dreamed of coming back to live. I imagined myself doing my weekly grocery shopping at the market, instead of Woolworths Metro. I pictured myself sitting in the café every morning, listening to the strum of a distant guitar, before swinging my dance bag over my shoulder and going off to class. But how was I going to do it? I racked my brains for a solution, but I couldn’t find one. I didn’t speak enough Spanish to get a good job, and the minimum wage in Spain was too low to permit me to live and dance. If I wanted to come back to Seville, I was going to need a plan.
• • •
That evening I went back to the school to practice. When I walked in, I could hear music coming from the studio. The door was closed, so I stood outside and listened, remembering how I had stood in that same doorway not so long ago watching the advanced class.
I could hear a singer, a guitarist, and a percussionist, as well as the sound of a dancer’s shoes on the floor. The dancer was in the middle of a fast and complex footwork pattern. The music dropped out, and just the percussionist kept going. The dancer was racing the beat, going faster and faster.
I closed my eyes and tried to imagine the dancer drilling his feet into the floor, not daring to break his concentration even to wipe the sweat from his brow. Then there was a triumphant stamp, stamp, stamp! and a pause where I could imagine the double or triple or quadruple turn, then the dancer cried out, “Ay!” and landed on the floor.
It was Enrique. I could tell from the sound of his voice. I wished I could look into the studio; I would have loved to see him dance. I thought about pressing on the door to see if it would spring open as I’d done once before, but I didn’t dare, so I went off to get changed.
But just as I was coming out of the changing room the door of the studio opened and there was Enrique, his eyes sparkling. “Australiana!” he said, seeing me. “Qué haces aquí?” What are you doing here? I told him I’d come to practice, and he said, “Ven.” Come.
As I followed Enrique into the studio, he told me that the dance he’d been rehearsing with the musicians was the same one that we were doing in class, and that he was adding a crazy footwork section to the end of it. He clapped and told the musicians to get ready to go again from the beginning. I looked around, confused. What? He wanted me to dance?
“Venga,” he said, telling me to get ready to start. The guitarist strummed the introduction, and I felt my arms lift up above my head as they had done countless times before. My wrists twirled and twisted, my fingers reaching out and curling back in, and then at a strum of the guitar, I grabbed the end of my long skirt and—ratatatatatatatatatata!—drilled my feet into the floor in the first section of the dance.
“Olé!” the singer said, but I was already moving on. The dance went so fast that I had to always be two steps ahead of myself. The singer began the verse, and I twisted and twirled to the music. Dancing with live flamenco musicians was something I’d only ever experienced from the back of the classroom, hiding behind a group of better dancers, hoping that no one would notice me. But this was a totally different experience. I could feel the guitarist’s eyes on my feet as he followed me, while I kept my ear cocked to the percussion to stay in time.
All those evenings alone in the studio paid off in those few minutes. When it came time to jump up and slam the floor with my shoes, I didn’t hesitate, and I knew just when to pause and linger over a roll of the shoulder and a flick of the hip.
“Que toma que toma!” the singer cried.
As I came to the end of the dance, Enrique came up and danced beside me. We went into those complicated steps that had so intimidated me when I had first seen Enrique performing them, and this time I nailed them. And when we went into the triple turn, I heard Enrique say, “Vamos, niña!” and I leaned in and threw myself around, one, two, three times!
“Olé!”
That one was me. I laughed with joy at the thrill of my first ever triple turn, landing perfectly on two feet at the same moment as Enrique. Our eyes met in the mirror as we clapped our hands, slapped our thighs, and skipped forward, one, two, three, threw one arm up in the air as if to tell the world to go to hell, and turned on our heels. I lifted up my skirt and swished it from side to side as we danced around in a circle.
“Olé, Australiana!” the singer said with a wink.
That was as much of the dance as I knew, so I took a step back and watched as Enrique went into his footwork solo. He stood in the middle of the room, his gaze fixed ahead of him, then slowly lifted his foot and went into the first rapid section.
“Olé!” the singer said as Enrique once again paused, clapping and listening to the compás. Then he threw himself into another complicated section, and then paused. After a couple of bars he started again, this time building up and building up until his feet were racing over the floor so quickly they were just a blur.
He stared straight ahead, his lips barely moving as he counted to himself. His boots hit the floor harder and harder and then he spun around once, twice, three, four, five times, landing with his arms outstretched and his head thrown back. “Olé!”
Enrique stood like this a moment as the singer jumped out of his chair and sang a verse. Then he opened his eyes and started to dance again. I joined him in the middle of the floor, swishing my skirt and twirling my wrists as we moved around the studio, waving good-bye to our imaginary audience and pretending to go offstage as the singer sang his last words and the guitarist strummed the final chords of the song.
• • •
The next day was my last class with Enrique. It was the Friday before I flew out, and it was the day before the Feria de Abril. I threw myself into the dance, reminding myself that it would be the last time.
But in spite of my determination to make my last class the best, I was out of compás. Perhaps it was because part of me was already on that plane over the Pacific. Though I tried to throw myself into the steps, I couldn’t recapture the joy I’d felt dancing alone with Enrique and the band.
When the class was over, I stayed behind and went through the dance again, trying to glue it into my memory so that I could take it home as a souvenir from Spain. As I was dancing, Enrique appeared in the doorway and asked me if today was my last class. I nodded, sadly, and told him it was.
“Cuando vuelves?”
I hesitated before answering this question. When was I coming back?
Enrique saw my hesitation and pressed me to come back soon. “Has aprendido mucho en poco tiempo.”
He was right. I had learned a lot in my short time in Seville. I remembered how he’d tried to speak to me before my first class and I’d just stared back at him like a stunned possum. Now I could understand him.
“Sí,” I said.
The only problem was I couldn’t speak Spanish, as he pointed out with a smile. “No sabes decir más que sí?” You don’t know how to say anything but “yes”?
“Claro,” I said, pulling out another of the words that Zahra and I had picked up on our nights out dancing.
“Claro?” he repeated.
“Sí,” I said.
“Sí? Sí qué?”
I laughed at the nonsensical exchange and said, “Toma que toma.”
He laughed, hooked one arm around my waist, and swung me into a dip so low that my head was only inches from the floor. “Toma que toma,” he said, and he kissed me.
And if a kiss was ever Hollywood, this was it. It was a kiss to build a dream on, suspended in the arms of a flamenco dancer with one red shoe pointing up toward the ceiling.
Perhaps before that moment I’d had a chance at going home and leading a normal life, but the moment he took me in his arms my fate was sealed.
“Vuelve,” he said. Come back.
Yes… Why don’t I?