Duende

A LARGE WOMAN stands up at the back of the stage and approaches the audience as the guitars play on. Raising an arm above her head, she stamps her foot hard, sweeps her hand down sharply to the side and stares at us in defiance. The music stops and everyone falls silent.

Power emanates from her across the square. Breathing hard, legs rooted to the ground, chin raised, eyes bright, her face a vivid expression of pain. Everyone in the audience focuses on her as she stands motionless, leaning forward slightly, head thrust back, black hair falling loosely over her dark yellow dress. Stretching her arms down at her sides, she tenses her hands open, as though receiving or absorbing some invisible energy. For a moment I think she might never move, need never move even, so strong is the spell she has cast over us. Then, slowly, she lowers her head till it rests on her chest.

A sound begins from somewhere, low and deep: a human voice resonating with complex harmonies locked into a single note. I assume it is coming from the stage, but the song – if song it is – seems to be unprojected, effortlessly filling the space around us like water. It shocks me, as if some long-dormant, primitive, and troubled part of myself is being forced into wakefulness against its will. I have never felt anything like this before and struggle to comprehend as previously unfelt or forgotten emotions begin flowing through me, released by the trigger of the music. My eyes fixed ahead, I watch as the woman lifts her face once more, her mouth partly open, and I realise that the sound is coming from her.

She is singing. But there is no sweet voice, no pleasant melody, no recognisable tune at all. It is more like a scream, a cry, or a shout. Behind her the guitarists begin playing with short, rapid beats, fingers rippling over the strings in strange Moorish-sounding chords. The woman’s voice lilts like a muezzin’s call to prayer.

I am held by the music, as though any separation between myself and the rhythm has disappeared. A fat woman singing on stage, dancing in a way that seems as if she is barely moving, yet I feel she is stepping inside something and drawing me in with her. A chill, like a ripping sensation, moves up to my eyes. Tears begin to well up, while the cry from her lungs finds an echo within me, and makes me want to shout along with her. The hairs on my skin stand on end, blood drains to my feet. I am rooted to the spot, suspended between the emotion being drawn out of me, as though bypassing my mind, and the shame of what I am feeling.

The song continues and I become aware that others in the audience are experiencing the same. I can tell by the expressions on their faces, a certain look in their eyes, and simply feeling it sweep around us all in a second, like a trance. Then the cries begin as she finds the echo inside us: shouts of ‘Ole’, ‘Arsa’, ‘Eso es’. Some whisper under their breath, others shout, thick veins pulsating in their necks. The woman fills us, and the evening around us, with a sense of another space.

The song ends, and the audience breaks out into spontaneous, ecstatic applause. It is an emotional release, the greatest one might ever imagine. Pedro leans over to me.

‘Did you feel it?’ he asks.

The plane flew in over the dust-yellow land. Mountains like pieces of rock half-buried in the sand pushed their way up from the earth, casting long shadows over the landscape as the sun descended behind us. I stared down through the window at the empty space below: arid semi-desert banked by an azure sea, with a promise of balmy, jasmine-scented nights.

Pedro was my only contact in Spain and therefore, I reasoned, a natural starting point for my journey. A friend of a friend and a university lecturer in Arabic, he greeted me at the airport like a lost son, embracing me warmly in the arrivals hall, and quickly gave me a new name: Mi querido Watson. He said my surname reminded him of the old Sherlock Holmes films and the time he’d spent living on Baker Street as a youth. I couldn’t see the similarity myself.

‘Don’t worry. Be khappy,’ he laughed.

He took me to his house just to the north of Alicante. His father had built it in the Fifties: a white rectangular villa with bright green shutters, verandas and balconies. I was given the top floor and told I could stay as long as I needed. From the roof you could see the sea stretching across to Algeria. Africa seemed very close.

The garden was straight out of A Thousand and One Nights. Date palms stood next to pungent rosemary bushes in an oasis filled with fig trees, jasmine, delicate red and pink roses, pomegranate trees, and row upon row of lemon and orange trees. The jasmine had been trained over the years to create a covered sanctuary where we could sit away from the intense midday sun, half-intoxicated by the perfume circling around us. Pedro insisted we sit together, talking and drinking tea from bone china cups. At first I was happy to acclimatise in this leisurely fashion. After a few days, though, it was frustrating. I wanted to get going, to begin my flamenco adventure, but my host was a man who liked to take his time over any task at hand, always deliberate and careful in everything he did.

‘You can’t run away from your own feet,’ he said, determined to hold me down there in his garden, to stop me from rushing around before I knew where to look.

He would talk non-stop, one story flowing into another in a constant stream of tales and anecdotes. I could hardly get a word in, and when he let me, it was only to fill in some detail, the name of a town, or a person we both knew. At first our conversation centred on Arabic, which we had both studied, but it soon moved on to other subjects. He talked of his love of England, the folklore of Alicante, astronomy, and recipes for chicken broth. He told me everything I would ever want to know about the ancient Roman settlement over the road, and how one of his cousins had been a Fascist and the other a Republican, but they never let politics interfere in family life. He spoke of the haunting beauty of the ancient statue of a woman’s head that had been found in the nearby town of Elche.

‘No-one knows who made her! The Greeks? The Phoenicians? The Iberians? It’s a mystery.’

And of course, he talked about Arabic poetry, quoting verses of Ibn Hazm, Al-Russafi and Abu al-Hashash al-Munsafi. Dark would fall, the scent of the jasmine giving way to the galán de noche, the gentleman of the night, offering up its stronger more energetic scent, and we would still be there, tales of the Alhambra hanging in the night air.

‘You will go there one day,’ Pedro said, swapping in and out between English and Spanish as my ear grew used to his voice. ‘You will see Granada, and it will change you for ever.’ And he pursed his moustachioed lips momentarily before downing his camomile tea.

‘Don’t worry. Be khappy.’

The exact origins of flamenco are uncertain. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are often cited as the period when it started to take shape, but the Roman poet Juvenal referred to Cádiz girls in Rome – puellae gaditanae – who performed dances with bronze castanets in the time of the emperor Trajan. For the poet and flamencologist Domingo Manfredi, writing in the 1960s, this was evidence enough to date flamenco back to classical times. Others have suggested a multiple origin, pointing to the rich mixture of cultures – Iberian, Phoenician, Visigothic, Greek, Roman, Arabic – that have flourished in Spain over the centuries. The composer Manuel de Falla specified the Moorish invasion in 711, the Spanish Church’s adoption of the Byzantine liturgical chant, and the arrival of the Gypsies, bringing with them enharmonic influences from Indian songs, as the key factors in the development of flamenco.

The role of the Gypsies is crucial but perhaps the least understood. First, there is the question of when they actually arrived in Spain. There appear to have been at least two waves: one from North Africa during the Islamic period, and another from France in the years shortly before the fall of Granada in 1492. No-one doubts that they have played a major role in the development of flamenco; the question is, to what extent? Are they its sole creators? If so, why aren’t there more obvious echoes in Gypsy music from other countries? Did they just take already existing folk-songs and transform them by playing them with their own interpretation and style? Some have tried to divide palos – the different styles and songs within flamenco – into those of supposedly Gypsy and non-Gypsy origin. But then others place some palos outside flamenco altogether. Sevillanas, the essence for most foreigners of ‘typical Spanish’ flamenco, with clacking castanets and dancers in long frilly dresses, would be classified by many aficionados as ‘folklore’, not as flamenco.

For most flamencos, though, these things are intuited, if thought about at all. Moorish or Jewish, Gypsy or Andalusian, there is an instinctive feel for flamenco, making it easy to recognise, if difficult to pin down. Part of it is to do with being away from the mainstream, or on the outside. For the past two hundred years at least, flamenco has been the music and dance of outcasts, people on the margins of Spanish, and particularly Andalusian, society. From which, perhaps, stems the natural affinity with Gypsies, and accounts for the large number of songs about injustice or going to jail:

A las rejas de la cárcel

no me vengas a llorá.

Ya que no me quitas pena,

no me la vengas a dá.

Don’t come crying

to the prison bars.

Since you can’t ease my pain,

don’t come here making it worse.

The only certainty about flamenco is that it began in Andalusia and remains to this day Andalusian, despite spreading across Spain and around the world. Madrid, and to a lesser extent Barcelona, have recently become flamenco centres, but only by importing southern communities and culture. Andalusia, with its poverty, arid heat and proximity to Africa, remains the eternal reference point and true source.

‘Drink this, Watson. It will make you clean on the inside.’

We spent mornings at Pedro’s house picking ripe figs, oranges and pomegranates from his orchard to make exotic juices for breakfast.

He had managed to create on a small scale what I imagined the great Arab gardens of the past had been like. The Moorish conquerors had a desert people’s natural love of gardens and their irrigation systems had turned parts of the eastern coast into one of the most fertile areas in Europe. When Philip III had the last remaining Muslims thrown out of Valencia in a fit of pique at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the local economy collapsed, as the only people with the necessary gardening know-how – built up over nine hundred years – had been forced from their homes into exile. Some said the knowledge had never been fully recovered, but sitting in Pedro’s garden, I was prepared to believe they were wrong. Here you could rest, a deep rest that saturated the entire body. And slowly I began to feel myself falling under the spell of the place, days with no beginning or end, my mission almost forgotten.

But then with a jolt it would return, like a violent itch. There were things to be done. I must be on the move. I wanted to start learning flamenco. Alicante, the home of my only contact, had seemed the obvious place to start, but on my few walks around town I had found no flamenco bars, no guitarists idling in the shade, no dancers practising their steps on the street, nothing. At that time I had only a vague idea that flamenco was to be found in Andalusia, and looking at the map, Alicante hadn’t seemed that far away. Surely I would find evidence of it on every street corner? But as my limited searching led nowhere, I began to understand how ill-prepared I had been. I had no idea where to start or what to expect. Pedro would know what I needed to do.

No sooner had I found him, though, watering the date palms and feeding TV, his exquisite white-furred cat, than he distracted me with yet another story. The little local train – the trenet – passing next to the garden, jolted us out of our chatter as it thundered along its single track, belching out black diesel fumes.

‘Ah, mi querido Watson,’ said Pedro, as our lazy afternoon was shattered once again, ‘qu’est-ce qu’on peut faire?’ And he shrugged his shoulders and pouted in a Gallic manner, a hangover from his student days in France. He liked to remind me that it was back in Paris that he had been given a part in the film of What’s New Pussycat? – a token Spaniard at a fancy dress party.

‘Hombre, they wanted me to take a bigger role, but I wasn’t interested. I was too busy trying to get to know the girls at the Sorbonne.’ His eyes twinkled.

For an erstwhile movie star and seducer of Parisian women, Pedro hardly looked the part. Age had taken its toll. Take away the belly and the grey hair and . . . maybe. But it required a leap of the imagination. Perhaps the girls were big on moustaches back then.

And so I spent these first days at Pedro’s acclimatising as best I could to the new environment. Spanish was relatively easy to pick up – having already learned Italian and Arabic, it felt more like I was remembering it than learning it for the first time, and within a week English had all but disappeared. I learned how to cook tortilla de patatas and cocido (a type of stew), weeded the garden while Pedro gave his classes at the university, walked over dusty fields to the beach, and swam in the late summer sun. But all the while, at the back of my mind, a nagging, restless voice was pressing me to begin my search in earnest.

‘So you want to know about flamenco?’ Pedro asked one morning at breakfast. I heaved a sigh of relief. He stared into the sky and began to recite:

Empieza el llanto

de la guitarra.

Se rompen las copas

de la madrugada.

Empieza el llanto

de la guitarra.

Es inútil

callarla.

The cry of the guitar begins.

In the early morning,

wine glasses shatter.

The cry of the guitar begins.

Useless

to silence it.

It was Lorca, the flamenco poet. Pedro’s eyes moistened as he kept his gaze on the darkening clouds above.

‘Of course, I myself am also a poet. As we all are,’ he said.

‘Really?’ I asked. ‘I’d like to see some of your poetry.’

‘Hombre, what makes you think I’ve written any?’ There was a stern expression on his face. ‘You do not have to write poetry to call yourself a poet. The two things are entirely separate.’

‘I see,’ I said.

‘Flamenco,’ he said. ‘No-one even knows the origin of the word. Some say it was a term used by Spanish Jews for songs their relatives were allowed to sing after moving to Flanders, but which they themselves were forbidden by law to perform. Or perhaps you’d rather go for the Arabic version: that it comes from felah manju, or escaped peasant.’ He screwed up his nose sceptically. ‘If felah manju, why not felah manghum – melodious peasant? You can speculate for ever.’

I listened to him eagerly. I was finally getting somewhere.

‘I can’t help you much with flamenco, mi querido Watson,’ he said eventually. ‘I know nothing about it.’

My heart sank. I was relying on him. How could he not know anything about it? I felt sure he would be able to put me on the right track. He seemed to know so much about so many things. My mind raced forward, thinking about other opportunities, other places in Spain I could go to. I could even catch the bus tonight. No reason to stay here. I could manage on my own. Granada perhaps. Or Seville. Jerez?

Pedro’s voice interrupted my feverish plan-making.

‘Don’t worry. I’m sure something will come up when the time is right.’ And he smiled at me, a warm, genuine, childlike smile. For some reason I believed him.

‘There’s a performance this evening in the main square in town,’ Pedro told me three days later. From the expression on his face I knew exactly what he meant.

‘Dancing! Dancing!’ he cried, and skipped his way into the house, clacking his fingers above his head.

It was midnight by the time we arrived. I thought we might have missed it.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Pedro. ‘They won’t have started yet.’

I had already seen enough of Spaniards and their bizarre relationship with time to know he was right. The Spanish were Arab enough always to arrive late, but European enough to feel guilty about never being on time. It created a strange kind of neurosis.

We found the Plaza Mayor, an odd square with an elegant baroque town hall on one side, and ugly 1960s blocks on the other three. A stage had been set up in the middle of the square, and already the place was crowded. No seats, no tickets, everyone simply standing around waiting for it to start. Our late arrival meant we were unable to get a good view and it was impossible to squeeze through any closer to the stage. I stood on tiptoe, grateful that I was taller than most of the audience.

On the stage sat three men: two guitarists and an older man with a stick. Next to them sat three very large women. Were they going to dance? Without warning the music began. Simple chords at first, difficult to hear: there was no real attempt by the audience to quieten down. Women were chatting, children running around, babies crying.

One of the fat women stood up, the low hum-like song began, and the audience fell silent.

‘Did you feel it?’ Pedro asked again when the piece was over.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Did you really feel it?’

I couldn’t speak. The performance had filled me with something I had never felt before, and didn’t know how to describe.

‘That was duende,’ he said.

The word only half-registered. Duende. It sounded familiar. Perhaps I had heard it before somewhere.

When the concert seemed to be winding down, I gestured to Pedro that we should go.

‘Wait,’ he said, moving closer to the stage. ‘There’s more.’

I looked up and saw a man helping up a fourth dancer: a younger, slimmer woman with a head of wavy, dark red hair. She seemed reluctant to dance at first, as though needing encouragement from her friends. I watched her as she held back, using her weight against the numerous arms and hands that were pulling and pushing her onto the stage, while at the same time the expression on her face revealed she was glad of their attentions and had been expecting this. Finally she conceded, and gracefully walked to the centre of the stage, a long-fringed black silk shawl thrown over her raised shoulders, the blood-red dress swaying from side to side with each step, her hands held on her waist. I tried to see her face, but she had lowered her head, and wisps of red hair masked her eyes.

She began to dance, both arms raised, wrists arched, fingers extended and crooked, like flames. The guitars came in, and an old man started to sing in a high-pitched, strangely feminine voice. But something was wrong. She was dancing in rhythm, her body moving well with the music, but there was a confidence missing, as if she couldn’t quite find her feet, as if she didn’t belong there. The other dancers behind her could sense it, and began shouting encouragement, egging her on. She danced harder, beating the floor until the sweat shone on her brow, her arms rising and circling like storm clouds. As she danced, her hair came loose from the knot at the back of her head until it was flying in all directions, while her hips moved playfully and erotically from side to side.

But it was not to be. She slipped and fell forward, her feet folding beneath her. Her shoes couldn’t grip the temporary stage and she almost crashed to the floor, just managing to save herself from falling flat on her face at the last minute. Recovering, she raised her arms defiantly with a flourish and stormed off in disgust. The guitarists quickly nose-dived to conclude the piece, and the concert ended abruptly.

There were cries from the audience, cheers, some jeering. Everyone seemed confused. There was a sense of anticlimax, but eventually the crowds began to move. Pedro and I looked at each other and shrugged. It was time to go.

‘Pedro,’ I asked as we walked back to the car, the narrow streets crawling with people as they headed off, ‘what is duende?’

He didn’t reply at first, but waited until we had emerged onto the esplanade.

‘Duende,’ he said. ‘Duende is duende. More than this you will have to find out for yourself, mi querido Watson. That is, after all, what you are here for.’

I urgently needed to earn some money, and the only simple way was to teach English. The Yellow Pages listed dozens of language schools with grandiose-sounding names like the Big Ben Academy, or the Cambridge College for English. After a few calls I quickly established that most of them had either gone bust, never existed in the first place, or had plenty of teachers, thank you, but would I like to re-apply next autumn? Pedro tried to help, but none of his contacts within the Spanish equivalent of the old-boy network – Augustinians, the Jesuits, or the Franciscans – managed to produce anything. Inwardly, I heaved a sigh of relief, not relishing the thought of working for monks. I went back to the Yellow Pages and did some more phoning. A couple of schools eventually invited me to come and look around, but they weren’t promising anything.

First I went to the London School. It was opposite the old tobacco factory – a nineteenth-century building like a military barracks that exuded a terrific, all-pervading stink of cigars. I made my way up the stairwell. The ‘school’ was just a spare room in a flat. A small, fat, middle-aged man with greased-back greying hair and a moustache welcomed me with a yellow smile. Would I like a seat? A cigarette? I sat down. It was a small, dark room, with a few chairs and tables, and a blackboard on one wall. In the back of my mind I had already decided not to work here, but felt I should stay and hear him out for courtesy’s sake. He said nothing, though, and simply looked at me with an uncomfortably intense gaze, a grin stuck to his face as though it had been cut out of card and glued there. Finally he lowered his head and began studying my CV.

‘Of course, it is always an honour to be able to welcome someone from Oxford. But, you know, times are bad. These politicians are just thieves. Under Franco this never happened.’

I was thrown by this opening gambit and hesitated for a moment as I tried to work out what an English teaching job had to do with the odd little dictator. Close on two decades had passed since his death in 1975, and the country had made its successful leap into democracy, thanks largely to the king, Juan Carlos. But even after just a short time in Spain I had the strong sensation that you only had to scratch a little below the surface to find Franco staring you in the face. Frustrated-looking men in their fifties always seemed to be the most nostalgic for the good old days of Fascist rule.

‘What never happened?’ I asked, still trying to fathom his logic.

‘All this! Corruption! These Socialists are syphoning off billions! Billions! Spain could be a great country with all its wealth, like Great Britain, or France.’ There was a touch of hysteria in his voice. ‘But instead these villains are holding us down in the Third World. We need a new Franco. A strong man who would make us great again. Not the bunch of criminals in charge at the moment. You wait, though. Our time will come!’

I looked at the man in front of me: the thin moustache, the stout build, small, mean eyes. He wasn’t too dissimilar to the Generalísimo himself. He would probably do well as a small bureaucrat in a dictatorship, seated at an oversized desk, little legs swinging underneath his chair.

‘You never saw any beggars on the streets in his time . . .’ He was off again, but seemed to realise he was losing his audience.

‘So, as you can see, things are tight,’ he concluded. I began to feel annoyed. Had I come all this way just for a lecture on right-wing politics from a man who, before I’d even taught a single class, was trying to lower my salary?

‘Of course, we can always come to an arrangement,’ he added hurriedly. I was confused. He clicked his fingers like a character in a Bond film. The door behind him opened and a woman with peroxide blond hair and a low-cut, revealing dress appeared. She walked forward and stood next to the smiling man, rocking her hips suggestively and looking at me with a sweet, sickly smile of her own.

‘If you help us,’ said the man, ‘we can help you. You understand me?’ I looked in astonishment. The woman lifted her index finger, ending with a false red nail, to her over-painted lips and began sucking and nibbling at it. My forehead knotted as her eyes ran up and down me like a snake. I looked back at the man. He was still smiling. I was smiling, but feeling sick. At the other end of the room a fly was buzzing at the window, desperately trying to get out.

‘My wife is very . . . er, demanding.’

I stood up suddenly. I was sure his wife was lots of things, but I didn’t want to find out about any of them.

‘You know, it has been lovely coming here and seeing your lovely school,’ I stammered, walking backwards towards the door. ‘And I hope you do find the teachers you need. But I don’t think Alicante is the place for me. I think I really want to live in, er, Greece. Yes, Greece.’ I reached behind me and found the doorknob.

‘But señor,’ the man interjected. The smile was fading now, on its way to a scowl of disappointment.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, and ‘Goodbye,’ as I hurriedly passed through the door.

I stumbled down the stairs and out into the tobacco-thick air. Pedro was waiting for me, and seemed to have some intuition of what had happened.

‘Come with me.’ He grabbed my arm and dragged me quickly into a church on the other side of the road. We sat down on a pew and he made me repeat an Arabic verse.

‘This is very good. It will cleanse you,’ he said.

My head was spinning. Maybe I should go somewhere else after all. The only things Alicante had for me so far were unreconstructed Fascists who liked watching foreign men satisfying their wives, and romantics who recommended reciting Islamic prayers in Catholic churches. But there was still the other school to visit, a long way from here, on the other side of town.

They offered me two classes a week, starting at the end of the month. Things were not looking good. As I was leaving, one of the staff suggested another school in the centre of town: Escuela Uno. I had been told it was the best language centre in the city. This had put me off, as they were sure to be flush with teachers. But at this point there was nothing to lose.

The school was situated in a sidestreet. I climbed the bare, institutional stairs. The door was open and the lights were on, but it looked empty. A noise came from behind the tall desk in the reception area. I turned and a woman stood up. I noticed her dark red hair, engaging eyes, a look of defiance about her. It was the dancer who had nearly fallen at the flamenco performance a few nights before. The night of my first experience of duende.

She caught my hesitation. ‘Well,’ she snapped, ‘I suppose you’ve come here looking for a job.’

‘Yes,’ I hit back. ‘As a matter of fact I have.’

‘Oh,’ she responded, more softly. ‘Well, you might be in luck then. One of the girls we hired has dropped out, so there’s a vacancy. But you’ll have to see my husband Vicente.’ She spoke rapidly, pushing the words out forcefully. ‘Where’s your CV?’

I handed it over and she stared at it, looking down her long nose, her head poised, nostrils flared. There was a powerful energy about her that seemed out of place in the surroundings of a school. The silence was broken by the sound of footsteps. I turned to see a man with an air of authority striding over towards us. He looked like a thousand other moderately successful Spaniards in their forties: neat beard with a few white hairs sprouting, combed-back, straight black hair, a thick aquiline nose, sports jacket and black trousers. The only difference was that instead of wearing Spanish shoes, he was sporting a pair of highly polished English brogues.

‘Vicente, this young man wants a job,’ the woman said coolly. He smiled and shook my hand, then placing his fingers in the small of my back, he propelled me towards an empty classroom.

‘Providence has obviously brought you here.’ He spoke in English in a deep, clipped voice. ‘One of our teachers left us suddenly. She was pregnant.’ There was only a hint of Spanish in his near-perfect accent, and I could tell from his reaction the moment I opened my mouth that I had made an impression. Vicente seemed to have a love for ‘old-fashioned’ England, and my accent was enough for me to fit in with his world view straight away. He gave me the job on the spot.

‘Welcome,’ he said warmly. ‘Glad to have you aboard. Lola, my wife, will sort out the paperwork.’ He steered me back to reception, but Lola had gone. For a moment Vicente’s suave manner gave way to extreme irritation, and he swore under his breath. Then he turned around, smiling. Would I mind coming back tomorrow?

Pedro was not at home when I arrived at the house, so I went to the beach to pass the time. Children were splashing in the light-speckled, late-afternoon water, while men with felt hats read newspapers in the shade of palm trees. Three elderly women walked topless along the shore, their pendulous, darkened breasts heavy on their swollen bellies. No self-consciousness, no attempts to change or hide their shape. Not showy, either. What would Franco have thought of this, I wondered.

Pedro came past, skipping like a boy on the hot sand to avoid burning his feet.

‘Pedro, I’ve got a job!’ I called out. He stopped, smiled, then put his finger to his pursed lips and walked away behind the rocks. A few moments later he returned, dripping wet. In the midday heat, the need for a swim had obviously been the most pressing thing on his mind.

‘Come along, Watson,’ he said. ‘Let’s go and celebrate.’

Within a week I had moved into an empty flat of Pedro’s in the centre of the city. Palm trees caressed the bay windows, which looked out onto a wide open boulevard below. There was a curious Heath Robinson device used to open the main door, involving ropes and pulleys, which took half a day to master. I was on the second floor above a photography shop run by a skinny Algerian pied noir with bad eczema, a nagging Italian wife, and two enormous sons who helped him with the business. Their shop was dark and dingy and seemed to have virtually no customers.

‘One day I’ll open up an Italian restaurant here,’ he would say. ‘Or at least that’s what she wants,’ he added, gesturing towards his wife and smiling ruefully.

Next to our building was a café permanently inhabited by workmen knocking back enormous brandies, and beyond that, the city’s main lottery shop. The place was always full, mostly with middle-aged housewives with harsh memories of the past, hoping that today they would strike lucky. On the other side of the flat was an optician’s fluorescent, flashing thermometer, which made patterns on my living-room wall – except when it rained, when the water invariably blew its circuits. Across the road was a tobacco shop run by an old woman; a left-over from the dictatorship, when Franco allocated these jobs to the nation’s war widows.

The money earned from the school was just enough for me to live on. It turned out to be a friendly and lively place and, as I had suspected, was the best and most successful English school in the city. Classes were usually held in the late afternoons and evenings, leaving me the rest of the day free to wander. Most mornings I would walk down to the esplanade for breakfast, read the paper, and watch the sailboats come and go from the harbour. Then it was off to explore the castle, the old town, the beach, the red-light area, the Gypsy quarter, always looking in vain for some sign of flamenco: a bar, a concert hall, or even someone just playing it from an open window. There was nothing.

Ever since the night of the performance in the main square, I had been puzzling over the powerful experience it had produced in me. Duende. The dictionary merely defined it as ‘goblin’ or ‘earth spirit’, or, in a flamenco context, as ‘soul’. But this was like nothing I had ever felt before, and far more intense than anything I had ever experienced listening to jazz or the blues. There was something mysterious about it too; Pedro’s reluctance to tell me any more about it had made me curious, and I wanted to find out more. But I had yet to make any progress. The obvious option was to talk to the dancer at the school, to Lola. But the problem was how to approach her. Her sharp manner made conversation difficult. What should I say? ‘Magnificent performance. Is your ankle better now?’ She would probably never speak to me again. Most of the staff were daunted or even frightened by her no-nonsense, abrupt attitude. She appeared to be slightly less aggressive with me, but even so, her manner did not invite small-talk. I planned various strategies, determined not to lose this opportunity, waiting for the right moment. But as I prevaricated, I realised I was beginning to find her spiky aloofness attractive. She was fiery and passionate underneath, I convinced myself, and very flamenca. She possessed an intense spirit and an air of suppressed energy. I had seen it in her dance. Some of the looks she gave her husband would have destroyed a lesser man. I had to talk to her.

I spent a week procrastinating, thinking of ways of bringing up the topic in general conversation, but in the end it simply happened. It was late, the school was closing, and the other teachers had already left. Lola was alone in reception. Sensing that this was it, I grabbed my chance.

‘You’re a dancer, aren’t you?’ I said. ‘Flamenco.’

She looked up from her desk and gave me a scrutinising look.

‘Te gusta el flamenco? You like flamenco?’ she asked.

Ten minutes later we were in the bar below the school. I told her of my interest, how I’d come to Spain looking to find out more. She sat listening, smoke from a Ducados cigarette curling up from her lips, and for the first time I saw the beginnings of a smile.

‘Tell me, though,’ she said. ‘How did you know?’

‘Know what?’

‘How did you know about me, and flamenco . . .?’

I wanted to be able to say something about seeing it in her eyes, her hands, her body, but the courage escaped me.

‘I saw you dance in the Plaza Mayor a few weeks ago,’ I said nervously.

She burst out laughing, a low, rich, belly laugh rushing through her wide open mouth.

‘Then you must know what a great dancer I am,’ she said. She was smiling, her brown eyes now shining and warm. ‘But what makes a guiri like you come all the way from England? Just flamenco? Or is there something else? I bet you’ve got yourself a nice little María tucked away somewhere. Eh?’

She was on the offensive again, and the way she called me guiri – a derogatory word for foreigner – had jarred.

‘No. There’s no-one. I only came here for flamenco.’

‘Then why, for the love of God, did you come here? Alicante? It’s hardly the place to be. You should be in Madrid, or Seville. Not here. There’s nothing here. Nothing.’ She spat the words out.

‘You’re here,’ I said quietly.

She looked at me sharply. I realised the mistake.

‘I mean, you love flamenco, and you seem to manage here,’ I said.

‘That’s different. It’s not the same for me. You’re free.’

‘But what about the concert,’ I said. ‘It was magnificent. How can you say . . .’

‘It was a one off. You don’t think we have that sort of thing here every night, do you? They aren’t from around here. They’re friends from Murcia. It’s the first time in years we’ve had anything. You were lucky, that’s all.’

‘It was the best thing I’ve ever seen.’

‘Really?’ She was genuinely surprised. ‘The best concert?’ She laughed and looked away. ‘You’ll see better. This is only the beginning, remember? You wait. You’ll see some of the greats: Cristina Hoyos, Paco de Lucía, Enrique Morente . . .’ Her voice tailed off.

‘And I thought you danced very well.’

‘What?’

‘No, really. There was tremendous spirit there. It was just unfortunate . . .’

‘It was a cheap stage. The town hall paid for it. What can you expect? It was unfortunate. But – thank you.’

We were silent for a few moments. Remembering the fall seemed to annoy her. I wished I had never brought it up.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘You won’t find any big flamenco scene here. No tablaos, no flamenco bars. This is not Andalusia, or Madrid. People here don’t like flamenco. It doesn’t belong to them.’

I looked away.

‘Listen to me.’ She lowered her voice. ‘I have a small group of friends – aficionados. Some of them play. We meet up every now and again to fool around, but it’s nothing serious. It’s all I can offer you. But you’d be better off leaving tomorrow and going somewhere else.’

It seemed she wanted me gone. But I already felt half-settled. I didn’t want to be moving on again. Not now.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m staying.’

She smiled and placed her hand on my arm. ‘Wait for me after class finishes tomorrow. I’ll introduce you to the others.’

We drove out of the city in the failing autumn light, heading inland past olive groves planted in red earth and sharp-sweet smelling eucalyptus trees. The landscape was different here: greener, lusher, less barren than the area around the city. Blue-tiled church domes dotted the countryside like islands of water in a sea of dark, heavy green.

We wound up the deserted road then turned off onto a dirt track that seemed to lead us into a field. It was darker now, and I could see some lights ahead. We arrived at what seemed to be a small barn in the middle of nowhere. About a dozen people were milling around, carrying food and glasses inside.

The ‘barn’ was in fact some kind of house, like a shepherd’s cottage. It was much colder here than down on the coast and a fire was burning in the hearth. On seeing Lola, there were genuine cries of delight, warm embraces, and a spontaneous and friendly energy filled the room. I was introduced as a new member of the club. Everyone came over to greet me with kisses and handshakes. They seemed like a very ordinary group of people. Not many of them were actually flamencos; most were simply there because of the company and to hear performances by those who could dance or play the guitar. I was taken to one side by a small, intense, wiry woman with bulging eyes, called Pilar. As she led me away, I turned back and saw Lola already surrounded by a group of men by the fire.

Pilar was firing off questions like an artillery barrage. How did I become interested in flamenco, where was I from, when did I arrive, how did I know Lola, what was I doing here in Alicante?

I told her I was looking for a guitar teacher.

‘Oh! Then you must talk to Juan,’ she said.

‘Juan! Juan!’ she called across the room, gripping my arm. A man seated by the table looked up from his beer.

‘Juan,’ Pilar said, ‘he wants to learn to play.’

Juan lifted his arm and, with a simple flick of the fingers, beckoned me over. Pilar tagged along behind.

‘Juan,’ she panted, ‘he said he likes the guitar. He’s looking for a teacher.’ Then to me she said, ‘Juan used to teach the guitar, but he hasn’t done so for years. Isn’t that right?’

Juan nodded and then pointed to an empty chair next to him. There was no room for Pilar.

I looked at him. He was small, with white skin, black hair, and brilliant light blue eyes. There was something serious and melancholy about him.

The music had begun. A man on the other side of the room was playing a guitar, while four or five people clapped out a complicated rhythm. Lola began to dance.

‘You know what this is?’ Juan asked, turning to face me. I had the impression he didn’t want to watch.

‘No. I don’t.’

‘This is called Bulerías. It’s one of the most difficult palos in flamenco. It’s fast and frenetic. They say nobody can work it out unless it is explained to them. Only Gypsies used to know it. Now it’s common property.’

‘I feel I want to clap along,’ I said. ‘But I don’t know how. Every time I try, it comes out wrong.’

‘That’s normal . . . at the beginning.’

‘Can you teach me?’

He screwed his face up for a moment, eyes squinting, scrutinising me. ‘I haven’t taught for years.’

‘I know, but . . .’ I had to think of something. ‘Everyone’s told me what a wonderful guitarist you are.’

‘Really?’ He was suspicious. ‘Who?’

‘Oh, Pilar. Lola . . .’

‘Lola?’

‘Yes.’

He went silent for a while, turning his gaze back to the throng. Lola and another man were dancing together in the centre amid the rising din. She lifted her skirt in a handful at her waist, flirting with her eyes.

Juan took in a deep breath, and then without looking at me, beckoned me to copy him as he clapped.

‘Twelve-beat rhythm,’ he said. ‘Listen to the stresses. Follow me.’

Some time later Lola came and bent over me, so that I could hear what she was saying. Her skin was damp with sweat, her face radiant.

‘Are you enjoying it, guiri?’ she asked breathlessly. I nodded.

‘I see you’ve found yourself a teacher.’ She flicked her head towards Juan. He didn’t respond.

‘Well, I hope so.’

‘Good,’ she said. ‘Juan’s the best there is.’

Juan stood up and went to get himself another drink. I looked around quickly. Pilar was nowhere to be seen.

‘I hardly got a chance to speak to Juan,’ I said. ‘Your friend Pilar . . .’

‘Oh, Pilar. You have to watch out for her. Doesn’t know when to stop.’

And she walked back into the middle of the room, clapping her hands and shouting to one of the other dancers.

The music continued as the evening wore on. Juan returned and began to explain to me the different palos: Tangos, Alegrías, Rumbas, each with a different rhythm and feeling. And then later, as the drinking continued, other pieces: Soleá, Seguiriya, slow at first but often speeding up towards the end in a dramatic climax.

‘Compás – rhythm,’ he said, ‘is the most important thing. Flamenco begins and ends with compás. Or at least most of it does. It depends.’

I was confused.

‘I’m sure you’ll get on fine,’ Juan said. ‘Fine.’

The guitar began again. Lola was back in the middle. She is beautiful, I thought. I leaned over to Juan.

‘Duende,’ I asked. ‘What is duende?’ He laughed.

‘Have you ever been in love?’ he asked.

I didn’t reply.

‘Duende is love,’ he said. ‘Duende is being in love. It is being with people you love and care for.’ He paused. ‘Like now.’