Duende

TWO GYPSY SISTERS aged six and eight are taking turns to swing their little brother by the arms in a circle. Their clothes are cheap and dirty from rolling around in the dust. They laugh enthusiastically at their game, swinging the child, then changing places and swinging him once again. Their skin is dark – like Indians’ – and their ruffled, unwashed hair hangs about their eyes like overgrown ivy. They break from their playing to beg at the nearby bar. An old man with dyed black hair, streaked over a scalp dotted with liver spots, attracts most of their attention thanks to the yellow Labrador lying lazily under his table. The dog and the Gypsy kids get on well, but the man is uncomfortable and tries unsuccessfully to shoo them away. Eventually a barman emerges from inside and moves them on. They stare back at him in a playfully defiant way, denying him moral victory while obeying his order to leave.

They go back to the entrance of the ugly modern church, where a woman in a brightly coloured floral dress stands with a pram, holding out her hand expectantly to the exiting parishioners. She looks old enough to be a grandmother. The sisters start clapping a Bulería rhythm as the congregation, in their fine blouses and shirts, anxiously side-steps them. The lesson has ended. No charity today.

‘We’ve got a tour next month. I want you to join us.’

Carlos knocked back his brandy and indicated to the barman to bring another. The cigarette smoke caught in my throat.

‘You’ll be famous,’ he laughed. ‘El Niño Rubio – the Blond Kid. Great for the guiris.’

I was in.

‘Two, three gigs a night,’ Carlos continued. But I wasn’t listening. My mind had returned to the night with Jesús. I wondered if he had had a hand in this, if I’d passed the test. I was pleased, a great chance had finally come. But at what price? Even then, half-stupid as I was with my desire to be accepted, a voice of conscience could still be heard. ‘Car thief,’ it said. And a wave of guilt and fear would flood through me. ‘What if you get caught?’

The group wasn’t just about flamenco for me, though. It could give me something far more important. I had made virtually no friends in Madrid, insulated as I was against the world by my unhappiness, and I desperately needed the company of other people and a social life. With Carlos I thought I had found that. And so, I reasoned to myself that I hadn’t actually stolen the car: it was Jesús. I’d helped him drive, true, but I had no idea how he’d got it, or what he’d done with it afterwards. Didn’t that clear me?

Carlos continued speaking as my educated brain drew on years of intellectual training to justify what I’d done.

‘We’re hiring a villa near Valencia.’

Valencia. Just up the coast from Benidorm and Alicante. Not around Madrid. Not in Andalusia. I’d half-expected a tour to head down into the flamenco heartlands. No. Back to the coast. Back to the tourists. And worryingly close to a past I now wanted nothing to do with.

‘Oh, and there’ll be something in it for you.’

Nothing specific, but I was relieved. My money had almost run out, and I was only just managing to survive by starving and doing odd jobs for Carlota in lieu of rent. I’d lost almost a stone since coming to Madrid, and my clothes were beginning to hang loosely on my body.

‘There’s just one thing,’ Carlos added. ‘You need a new guitar – a proper one. We can’t have you on stage with that plank of wood you carry around.’

I needed at least 100,000 pesetas to buy a decent guitar. I couldn’t ask Carlos for an advance; I had no idea how much he was going to pay me. Besides, I was still definitely a payo, an outsider, even if I was on the fringes of the group now. It was clear from the body language.

I thought of Jesús. His attitude towards me had changed, but this would be too much. An important part of the code seemed to involve not being indebted to anyone, which meant not making requests of others. If I had asked, he would almost certainly have helped, but it would not have been right: the relationship would have changed.

Just to get something moving, I decided to advertise English classes. Language schools were out of the question. I was free, a flamenco, I told myself proudly. I couldn’t work for anyone but myself. A two-line advert appeared in the local rag, Anuntis, with the phone number of the flat. Then I waited.

Days passed without a call, not even a simple enquiry. I started to get angry with Carlota, convinced that she hadn’t been picking up the phone.

‘There’ve been no calls, I tell you. No calls.’

‘You should get an answering machine.’

‘Then you pay for it!’

Finally the phone rang. Did I teach German? The old man didn’t want English lessons. His daughter had gone to live in Hamburg and he thought he might go and see her one day, maybe next year, or the year after, when his hip was better. Anyway, he thought he might start learning now, because you can’t start learning a language too soon, and he wasn’t as sharp as he was when he was young, so he might take some time, but if I could be patient with him, and he didn’t have too much money either, he was saving for the air-fare, you see. But he’d heard that English and German were very similar, so perhaps . . .

Everything depended on me being able to make enough money to buy the guitar. Otherwise no tour, no flamenco. They would all leave and I would be stuck in a hell-hole of a flat with a mad landlady trying to disinfect cat wounds all day.

Another call. I rushed to the phone.

‘Sí?’

‘I was calling about the English classes. I need four hours a day, intensive tuition. Is your flat very private?’

‘Yes, I suppose so. Well – how do you mean?’

‘Will we be disturbed?’

‘No. We’ll have a room to ourselves.’

‘Good. And will anyone be able to hear us?’

‘Well . . . there may be some other people in the flat at the time, but they won’t mind.’

‘No, no. I need absolute privacy.’

‘OK.’

‘Good. I’m very looking forward to it. Will you provide all the necessary equipment?’

‘I have some text books we can work from.’

‘No, I mean other equipment.’ Silence. ‘You know, the other equipment.’

‘I’m sure I’ve got everything you need.’

‘Very good. Now, about payment.’

‘It’s 1,000 pesetas an—’

‘I was hoping I might do some house cleaning for you instead of payment.’

‘House cleaning?’

‘You see, I don’t have that much money. But I’m very well trained, sir.’

‘Look. I don’t really need—’

‘I can do wonders with my tongue.’

They all thought it was very funny when I told the story later on.

‘Ay! Sounds like you really hit it off with him,’ Javier said.

The laughter stopped. For a moment there was an uneasy silence, then Juanito started playing quietly from the corner, Jesús started singing, and we all took up the cue.

Javier’s homosexuality was one of many undercurrents in the group. It was rare for him to make such a slip.

* * *

The solution, when it arrived, came in the form of a Japanese car.

‘I needed something simple,’ Jesús said. He was almost apologetic it wasn’t a BMW or another ‘luxury’ car. I began to wonder how often he did this. He seemed to view cars as other people did apples on trees.

I drove him out to the western suburbs one night, past the illuminated Atlético stadium, over the Manzanares, and out into the character-free area of tower blocks that hugged the capital like a lifebelt. Jesús gave directions in a haphazard, strangely illogical, way. There was no grid of streets in his head, perhaps he searched for landmarks or memories. I couldn’t be sure. He was his more usual reticent self – not reeling out the mad, flowing monologue I had expected.

‘Stop!’ he cried. We had, quite unexpectedly, reached our destination. I saw a bar – dark, half-lit, as though just closing and in the process of cleaning up – and braked hard. We came to a sharp halt, skidded a little, and there was an almighty smash into the back of us: the car behind had been too slow to react. With a lurch, we shot forward several feet across the road and came to rest.

I lifted my hand to my neck – a pain from the jolt rang inside my skull. Jesús was already out of the car, storming down to the driver behind us.

The shouting began as I checked myself for any damage. Jesús, I was sure, would be inches away from murdering the other driver. But, to my surprise, as I got out I saw that the noise was coming, not from the Gypsy, but from the other man: a slight, thin-mouthed character with a moustache trimmed in bank-manager fashion.

‘You lot should be taken off the roads!’ he screamed. ‘You’re only fit to drive bloody donkeys!’

Jesús stood impassive.

‘Me cago en tu padre! You bastards drive worse than women,’ the man went on. He turned to look at me and was confused for a moment. What was a blond foreigner doing there? But he’d found his theme and wasn’t going to change.

‘You’re all bloody criminals . . .’

The door of the bar flew open with a tremendous roar. The man stopped. We all looked round. Four very wide, hairy men in vests stepped out and stood on the pavement opposite us. The leader tilted his chin up in Jesús’s direction to ask what was happening, flicking the ash from his cigar menacingly to the floor.

‘None of us can drive, he says.’

The men from the bar said nothing, but stood with their arms crossed. The leader sucked hard on the stub resting between his fingers.

‘Well, er, yes. That’s right!’ After a moment’s hesitation, the man foolishly decided to continue. ‘None of you can drive. I mean look at this. What do you call this? You can’t just stop in the middle of the road. Something like this is bound to happen. Don’t you think? I mean, really. Surely. N-no . . .?’

He gave up. The man with the cigar had stepped down, walked across and was now eyeballing him, the burning stub no more than an inch from the well-tended whiskers.

‘Get your papers,’ said the cigar-man.

‘Papers?’

‘Insurance.’

The man said nothing, but stared, petrified, into the eyes of the fat Gypsy who seemed about to smother him with his bulk.

‘Papers!’ the Gypsy whined.

‘Listen. I haven’t really got . . .’ The payo was struggling. He looked around him for a way out, but was trapped. It was clear he wasn’t completely on the right side of the law himself.

‘Look, could – could we . . .’ His voice was shaking with fear as he trailed off, his sentence unfinished.

‘That car’s worth four hundred thousand,’ the Gypsy said. It wasn’t worth even half that, but I managed to check my look of surprise in time. We couldn’t give anything away.

‘Look . . .’

The others from the bar began to pace towards the car. It was perfectly timed. Jesús placed his hands carefully into his jacket pockets.

The payo took one more look around him. Fear seemed to rise in him like a lava flow, slowly at first, and then with a sudden explosion. He panicked, and capitulated.

‘Yes, all right. Christ! I’ll have to . . . I’m not carrying that much.’

‘Give me your wallet!’

The man’s hand went down into his jacket automatically and fished out a leather wallet. The cigar-man took out a credit card and called to his two colleagues. ‘Take him to a cash machine.’

They moved off, two of them as though unused to walking, the other like an empty bag. Within a couple of minutes they had returned and a wad was passed over. Nothing was said. The man got back into his car, reversed from the pile of broken glass on the road, and drove away, a screeching noise coming from somewhere underneath the bonnet.

‘He won’t get far in that,’ the cigar-man said. ‘The radiator’s fucked.’ And he turned to go back inside. Jesús motioned for me to stay behind outside. I went to look at the back of our car. It was fine: the back bumper was dented, but it could still be driven.

An hour later Jesús returned. He took the keys from me and we headed back to the centre. Slow driving, not worth trying anything in this car, but there was still the usual disregard for traffic lights, one-way streets, pavements. Again, the pulsating, hypnotic effect of the streetlights passing over my eyes like waves.

‘One thing,’ I asked. ‘How did he know the driver of the car didn’t have any insurance?’

‘He didn’t. But then no-one does. Except rich kids and Cataláns.’

He dropped me off and I slid back inside the flat, screwing my eyes against the ammonia-filled air. I threw my jacket on the bed with a sigh, then looked down. Something had fallen out. Bending over to pick it up, I found an envelope with 150,000 pesetas stuffed inside.

I knew exactly where to go. Juanito and Antonio had both mentioned him. Alejandro, el Mallorquín. He had a flat somewhere behind the Plaza de España.

I walked up the narrow streets. There were chickens everywhere; strange, deformed creatures with small bodies and oversized feet. I found the house, walked in through wrought-iron gates, and up to the second floor.

A man with narrow shoulders and a tight-fitting nylon shirt opened the door.

‘Alejandro?’

He nodded.

I had imagined an old man with bad eyesight working obsessively over minute veneer carvings. But he was young, much younger than I had expected. I went to shake hands. He took mine limply, as though just to be polite, and beckoned me in.

We passed into a bare room. Hard wooden floors, white walls, a naked table, two chairs, and a kind of bench running down one wall. The air was filled with the most wonderful perfume of raw wood.

‘Would you like some tea? I have some mint tea, from Morocco.’ He passed into the kitchen and returned some minutes later with a teapot and two mugs. I hadn’t had tea made for me since living at Pedro’s.

‘Come about a guitar, I expect.’ His smile exposed crooked teeth.

‘Yes, I’m a friend of Juanito and Antonio. They both play with Carlos.’

‘Ah, Carlos. Is he still singing?’

We drank the tea. It tasted like sand.

‘You’d better come with me, then.’

The workshop was light, whitewashed, with guitars hanging neatly from the walls. I passed along the rows of instruments, eyes agog. It was hard to know where to start.

‘What sort of thing are you looking for?’ He looked at me sympathetically. I would be happy to buy a guitar from this man, I thought.

‘I’m looking for a negra,’ I said. ‘Rosewood back and spruce front.’

The traditional combination for a flamenco guitar – a blanca – is a back and sides made of cypress and a spruce top, with a shallow body to give a more percussive feel. Classical guitars, on the other hand, are deeper and often made of rosewood and cedar. The negra is a hybrid, with rosewood to give richness, but a spruce soundboard to produce the harsh, bright edge needed for flamenco. And you have to pay a lot to get a good cypress back.

‘Yes,’ said Alejandro, ‘I have a few of those.’ He pulled out five guitars from the rack and handed them to me one at a time.

‘How do you like the action?’

‘Low,’ I said. This made it easier to play, especially the picado technique, but you often paid by losing some of the higher notes: on cheaper guitars, the strings were so close to the board they would catch on the frets at a certain distance and you would not be able to distinguish between two, possibly three notes. But this also gave a buzzing sound, more like the style of players of the past, such as Sabicas or El Niño Ricardo. The last thing I wanted was for it to sound like a classical guitar. It was a sort of inverse snobbery I had picked up since coming to Spain. Classical guitarists were seen as lightweights; flamencos were the ‘real men’. While classical guitarists played in a relaxed way, hand over the hole to create a resonant sound, we strained into an unnatural, contorted position, fingers as far behind the soundhole as possible, to give a raw, meaty feel. Some even said that classical guitarists actually envied flamencos for their right-hand technique, and that we were the secret, unsung masters of the guitar world – a bit like the anonymous blues players in the Deep South living in their wooden shacks, from whom all the rock ’n’ roll greats were said to have stolen their ideas.

I tried the guitars, one by one. It was going to have to be a matter of feeling the right one. I remembered how Juan had always referred to the guitar as la novia – his fiancée. I now knew what he meant. In the end, I was restricted to a choice between two – the only ones in my price range. I played each guitar for half an hour. It was important to take my time, and Alejandro, to my relief, understood this. No pressure, no standing over me. He passed to and fro, smiling every so often in encouragement.

There was little between them, but finally I selected one: the richness of its bass notes was magical, and seemed to fill the room, and resonate through my entire body.

‘I am happy you chose this one,’ Alejandro said. ‘I didn’t want to say, but your playing was much more meaningful and stronger with it.’

I handed over the money.

‘Look after it,’ he laughed as I was leaving. ‘It’s special for me. I finished it the day my mother died. I made it for her, in her name.’

We arrived at the villa late one night. The place had the false, man-made smell of a recently constructed building: a mixture of cement dust and paint. It was dark, and we all scrambled out of the mini-bus with cases, bags, digs in the ribs, and sore heads. It was like a school outing. Antonio, ever the organiser, went in first to scout the place out while the rest of us stretched our legs in a more carefree manner and Carlos opened a fresh bottle of brandy. I knew immediately that I didn’t like the place; there was a superficial feel to it, as though a simple puff of wind might lift it from its foundations and blow it clean away. It was a summer house, built quickly as a simple shelter from the sun, with a patio and white, bare, square-walled rooms. Not enough rooms for all of us, though. Someone was going to have to share. Me, of course. The question was, with whom? In the end, despite all his running about, Antonio was ordered to join me in a boxroom round the back. He was incensed. It wasn’t big enough for him on his own, let alone with the guiri. I didn’t know it then, but he had a clear reason in his own mind why he didn’t want to share. The tour was about more than just playing gigs. A few words from Carlos, though, and he seemed to calm down. Again, I was surprised to see how complete Carlos’s grip over the group was.

In the bedroom, I unpacked my boots. As well as the new guitar, I had bought some camperas – Spanish cowboy boots. They were plain, flat, with only a single strip of leather running down the length of each side from the top to the heel as decoration. They were another symbol of becoming, and belonging, as far as I was concerned. I had built up an image of them as authentically Andalusian from photographs, TV, and people I’d seen walking in the street. They were heavy on my feet and I wanted them to give me a greater connection to the earth, to root me somehow. But when I tried them on, they were ridiculously uncomfortable, too narrow for my wide, Anglo-Saxon feet. I would break them in, I told myself. Spanish leather was supposedly the best in the world. A folk-singing uncle of mine had even sung a song about it – about the lady of the manor who was swept off her feet by the Gypsy Davy, and how her husband rode off to look for her and found her by a camp-fire:

Take off, take off your buckskin gloves

made of Spanish leather.

Give to me your lily-white hand

and back right home we’ll travel.

Back right home we’ll ride.

But she didn’t go back. The draw of the Gypsy way was too strong for her – and her husband returned to his sedentary life alone.

Jesús arrived later that night in another car. He had a double room to himself and called me in for a line of cocaine that was carefully drawn on a plastic table by the window. Before long, Carlos’s wife, María-José, poked her head round the door.

‘A jalar!’ she said. Jesús got up to go.

I didn’t understand and as we headed out to the patio, I asked Jesús what she’d said.

‘Eat. It’s Caló: Gypsy language. She’s telling us to eat.’

I had gathered that Carlos’s term for me – churumbel – was some sort of Gypsy word, but had assumed the phrases they used that I didn’t understand were simply Spanish words I had yet to learn. As it turned out, a lot of the colloquialisms I had already picked up were of Caló origin: sobar for sleep, chungo for bad, parné for money. But as I listened harder to their conversations, I discovered that all kinds of words and phrases in the flamenco songs we were listening to – particularly the more modern stuff from bands like Ketama – that previously I had been unable to understand began to make sense. Like the word camelar – to love.

Mira si yo te camelo, te camelo de verdad.

Every other song seemed to use it.

Few Gypsies seemed to speak pure Caló – it was more a source for their own slang, which they would interject amongst the ordinary Spanish they spoke every day. But it was a badge, a sign of belonging, and, more importantly, of not being a payo.

Jalar, jalar. I rolled the word over my tongue as we headed out for food on the patio.

After the meal we rehearsed. But it was more serious this time; the last opportunity before playing in front of an unknown audience.

‘Churumbel!’ Carlos called me over. ‘I want you to play the Alegría with Javier on your own.’ I knew the piece. It was short, a kind of filler, and we had been playing it as a group for weeks. But I was shocked to think I was going to be put in the spotlight like this. I nodded and the rest of them filed out of the room. We were left alone to practise together.

‘Just you and me, eh?’ Javier said under his breath and winked. He could joke with me, but there was a sharpness to his humour.

‘Venga. Let’s start. I’m sure you can do it.’ He stood with his back to me, waving his arm at his side in time.

‘Siete ocho nueve diez un DOS.’

I plunged in, but got no more than a few seconds into the piece.

‘No, no. For God’s sake! Keep in time!’ he shouted over his shoulder.

We tried again, and got slightly further.

‘Compás! Compás! Come on, Jason, do me a favour and keep time, will you.’ His lips turned down in a sulky frown of indignation.

I tapped my foot on the floor like a metronome to make sure of the rhythm. It wasn’t gelling, but I couldn’t feel where I was losing it either.

‘Jason!’ He stopped again. ‘Look, I’m sure you can do better than this. I’m quite sure. Carlos wouldn’t have asked you to come along otherwise. You must keep the compás.’

I snarled as he turned his back on me to start once more.

‘Now let’s take it from the solo de pie again, then come in with the Bulería at the end.’ I placed my hands ready to play. There was a tap on my shoulder. Turning, I saw Juanito at my side, a big smile on his face. He motioned for me to pass him the guitar. I handed it over quickly and he began to accompany Javier’s dancing behind his back. He kept it simple, even throwing in a couple of dud notes for authenticity’s sake. But it only lasted a few moments. Once again Javier came to a halt.

‘Me cago en la leche. I told . . .’ He turned, and with a look of horror saw Juanito there with the guitar in his hands.

‘B-but . . .’ He stood motionless, crestfallen for a moment, with a look of sheer disbelief. Then, with a rush, the blood and anger flooded his face. ‘Hijos de puta!’ he cried and stormed off.

Juanito and I just couldn’t stop laughing after that. For weeks all we had to say was ‘hijos de puta’ in a fake Javier voice and we’d be on the floor.

Javier hardly ever spoke to me after that.

What surprised me most about the tour was the speed at which it all happened. It was like our life in Madrid, but wound up like a spring and set off to run at three times the usual pace. We played two, usually three gigs a night, starting at ten in the evening and not finishing until four or five in the morning. Sound check, playing, packing up, dashing somewhere else, unpacking, playing, packing up . . . Most of the time, I had no idea where the venues were.

The first night was a shock. By the end of it, my hands were shaking from so much exposure in such a short period. I felt wrecked. But it simply carried on. This was work. Most of the time we were at small places: low-key brothels, bars, cafés, with the occasional concert hall, local festival, or wedding. The gigs themselves were fairly mechanical affairs. I had been expecting something else: real tension, of the kind I thought preceded all creative endeavours. But after the first couple of nights, I began to calm down, and understood that this was just a job, what they did for a living. You couldn’t worry about how well you were playing, or how much feeling there was. We weren’t artists, more like craftsmen, making ends meet. And once you had played and mastered a piece more than a certain number of times, it was difficult not to start switching off while on stage and going into autopilot. Antonio suffered the worst. He played with a look of utter boredom on his face.

At the end of the night we would return to the villa, change out of our black and white costumes – simple shirt and trousers – and stay up till at least ten or eleven in the morning, drinking, playing and singing. This was when the real music was made: a time for new pieces or the palos only we liked; the ones the audiences wouldn’t appreciate. Then we’d sleep till about four in the afternoon, have a shower, practise some more, eat, and it was time to go once again. It was hectic, pressured, non-stop. And what made it possible, I realised, was the constant supply of cocaine – always there, keeping me going like some sort of magic fuel. Jesús would provide the supply, and we would take it in his room or on the patio. I had thought that we were all on it, but was surprised when I later discovered that it was only really Jesús, Antonio, Javier and me – the younger ones. Juanito never touched it, and Carlos always stuck to brandy. As for La Andonda, she didn’t need it; she was manic enough. I felt foolish, in a way. Perhaps I’d only imagined the group pressure to take it. But I was hooked now, and life on tour dragged me deeper and deeper under the drug’s self-aggrandising influence.

Meanwhile, we all ate together, played together, woke up together, slept the same hours, turning ourselves into some sort of collective creature, a unit in which all individuality was lost. The thinking was done for us. We simply obeyed and fell into line. Back into the bus again, another hour’s drive to the next gig, unpacking, playing, packing up, and then moving on once again.

Occasionally something would break the routine. The real reason why Antonio was so upset about sharing a room became clearer one night when he managed to impress a girl in the audience with his fancy playing; he forgot all about the rest of us and went off on some musical tour of his own. She later showed him her appreciation in private – it turned out she had a room of her own they could use – but in the process, he provoked La Andonda’s fury for making her look a fool on stage. It was something she would never forget.

For the most part, though, there was almost no time to do anything else but play. Carlos would entertain us in the early mornings back at the villa, sitting on the balcony doing impressions of other singers: El Lebrijano, El Indio Gitano, or a high-pitched Pedro Pinto – voices from the past.

Antonio would complain. He wanted us to launch off into a more jazzy sound, in the way that guitarists such as Tomatito were doing.

‘Look, guys, like, we really need to be doing more, like, modern material. You know? I mean, look, we could be like Ketama, or Karakatamba.’

‘Karakatamba,’ Carlos snorted mockingly. It was taken for granted that Antonio was simply looking for a vehicle for his own, more elaborate, playing style.

‘Hey, listen. People like that are the future, you know?’

‘Play your modern material in your own time. But here, we play flamenco.’

Antonio went quiet at this point, then stormed out. We all carried on talking: this kind of thing happened every day.

‘It’s a shame they have to get so upset,’ Juanito said. ‘Carlos is right: Karakatamba – pfff.’ He shrugged. ‘But Ketama? Now they can play. They’re from the Carmona family. Granada Gypsies. Good flamencos.’

The sun was already high in the sky when I knocked back the last of my drink and went to find sanctuary in the darkness of my bedroom.

‘This is flamenco, churumbel.’ Carlos grabbed my arm as I passed him. His breath smelt like a distillery. ‘This. This life. Not all that shit you were up to in Alicante. You want to experience real flamenco? You want to know what duende is really about? It’s about this. It’s about living on the edge – a tope. It’s about singing so hard you can’t speak any more. Or playing until your fingers bleed. It’s about taking yourself as far as you can go, and then going one step further.’

At that point, I believed him.

Jesús continued much as he had in Madrid. The group’s travels around the country were further grist to his mill, supplying him with opportunities to pick up ‘prizes’. He was still cautious about the others knowing about my involvement, and his behaviour towards me when we were with them hadn’t changed from the beginning. Every so often, we would return from the gigs in a different car, and such was the curtain of silence surrounding his activities, there would be no comment. It was out of bounds.

The high-speed driving was exhilarating, and I further buried any doubts by pretending the cars weren’t stolen at all, or that Jesús would return them once we had finished. We were just joy-riding, having fun: a necessary distraction from the boredom of touring. Somewhere in the back of my mind, a voice questioning how I had fallen into all of this tried to make itself heard, but it stayed in the background, barely audible above all the noise.

One Sunday night we played a gig at a home for deaf people. We didn’t realise what was wrong at first. Then La Andonda noticed their hearing aids and the penny dropped. We cranked the amplifiers up to maximum and deafened ourselves in the process. When we finished, they all sat there stony-faced, not knowing when to clap, or even if the concert had come to an end. Javier took the initiative and stood in the middle of the stage, motioning to everyone to start the applause, and finally it came. But the rest of us were already packing up and getting ready to leave. It was our only show that night, and we wanted to enjoy an evening off.

As we were passing outside, Jesús motioned to me to follow him. I handed my guitar to Antonio and we left, walking away into the hot, dark streets. We usually cruised the quiet residential areas, looking for the best cars, but sometimes we’d find something right where you’d least expect it – a car outside a nightclub, where the owner had just popped inside, leaving the engine running. I was on watch-duty, scanning the streets, peering round corners, pricking up my ears for the sound of a car, a police patrol, anything. At which point I would give the coded whistle and vanish into a doorway until it was safe to reappear once again and continue the hunt. If there was ever any crisis of conscience, it would emerge in these seconds spent alone waiting for Jesús to appear. For a few moments, a moral anxiety would force itself upon me, strengthened by vivid images of getting caught by the police, but then it would vanish again as soon as we were inside the car. After all, we only took cars from rich people. They were insured or could afford the loss. There was no money in it for me. This was the price of my acceptance.

Jesús beckoned me over and I climbed into a BMW.

The streets were narrow here and too choked with other cars to drive fast. We headed away and out into the hilly countryside. Jesús accelerated along the empty, blackened roads, headlights streaming ahead as we reached up to 70, 80 miles an hour, bulleting down what were little more than windy, unmanageable tracks. Even in a car like this, it was a bumpy ride. He pushed the accelerator closer to the floor, throwing my head back. Through the window, I could see the full moon.

‘Dad died – a night like this, just like this, cold, the fucker, left us, my mother, me, two sisters, no money, spent it all on drink, fucker, had to go out and work, only thirteen, needed parné, always needing money, can’t get by in this puto mundo – this fucking world – without money, it’s what you need, to keep you going, you want some money, I can lend you 50,000 if you want, got it in my pocket, ha, ha, you’re not going to get me, you fuckers, I bet the fucker who had this car was a real fucker, bet he cheated on his wife, bet he had his mistress right there on the back seat, giving it to her, one-two, one-two, taking her por el culo, up the arse in the back of his BMW, ha, ha, gilipollas.’

‘Perhaps he was gay.’

‘You’re absolutely right, you’re absolutely right, he might have been gay – gay fucker, ha ha. Ugh! I’m driving a gay car! Ha ha. Joder! Fuck, this thing can move, look at the acceleration on that. Joder.’

We scraped a tree that was leaning partly over the edge of the road. Jesús looked round to the side it had hit.

‘Have to get that fixed up quick. Can’t sell the fucker with chipped paintwork.’

We drove on, speeding in the empty, white light of the moon.

Something appeared up ahead: lights, vehicles. It was a roadblock.

‘Slow down,’ I called.

‘It’s all right, I’ve already seen it.’ His voice was calm and professional again. We stopped several yards short, the headlights on full beam.

‘Quick. Change seats,’ he said. We crossed over clumsily, catching ourselves on the gear-stick. I could see someone approaching the car. It was the Guardia Civil; gorillas with machine-guns.

‘Talk guiri to him,’ Jesús ordered.

I felt a thudding in my throat as a heavily armed man in green uniform tapped on the window. My greatest fear was finally coming true.

‘Good evening, sir.’

‘Buenas noches,’ I said in my thickest English accent, looking up with a smile. He would want to ask questions, want to know why I was driving at this time of night, why I was in a Spanish registered car, would want to see my documents, had probably heard us scraping the tree up the road, and would probably want to know who my travelling companion was. But I also knew from my time at the Costa Gazette that they were probably on the lookout for ETA suspects. Not stupid Englishmen. I had to get in there quickly, it was our only chance.

‘We’re trying to find the Valencia road,’ I said before he could say anything. ‘I’ve been driving around for some time now and I can’t find it. Could you possibly point me in the right direction. My wife’s just had a baby.’

For a moment, I thought I might have given the game away. It was a stupid thing to say, but fear had made me blurt it out. The guard hesitated for a minute, as though it were the last thing he had expected to hear, then snapped to attention in honour of my new role in life as a father, and barked out the directions. I was going the wrong way, he said, would have to turn back in the opposite direction.

I spun the car around and set off, leaving just the slightest trace of rubber behind on the tarmac. The roadblock receded in the rear-view mirror. I could barely breathe for shock.

‘Nice work, Dad,’ Jesús said. ‘Good job they didn’t get me. Fine time they’d have with me. Driving for fifteen years and never had a licence. Ha! Fuckers . . .’

We drove up to an ordinary modern block of flats in a bland neighbourhood on the outskirts of Valencia. The flat was small and dim; there were no lights anywhere. Every room was lit with plain, white candles, with the odd red, blue, or twisted translucent one to break the monotony. The smoke made the air thick and heavy, and the walls looked grey and greasy in the haze.

The dealer was a skinny payo with a forked, scraggly beard and trembling hands. His black hair fell from a central parting down to his shoulders, making him look like a sort of walking pyramid. He and Jesús greeted each other in the twilight warmly, and we moved into the kitchen. A candelabra emitted a gloomy glow over a wooden table and chairs.

We sat at the table and snorted a line of cocaine each. I watched as the puddles of wax on the floor slowly grew with each drip from the candles, reflecting a distorted image of the candelabra.

The dealer brought out a plastic bag from another room.

‘It’s good,’ he said.

His trembling hands shook nervously as he passed it over. Jesús took it and laid it on the table, opening it as carefully as he could. He reached for a knife from his pocket, then flicked it open to fish out some of the white crystals. The dealer looked away, stood up suddenly, and walked over to the cupboard, fiddling with the cups and plates.

‘Hard to keep everything straight when you live on your own,’ he said unnecessarily.

Wax was now falling onto Jesús’s black hair, but he didn’t seem to notice. His attention was totally fixed on the little pile lying on the end of the blade. He lifted it up, brought it to his nose, then sniffed it lightly.

There was a smash. Three plates had fallen out of the dealer’s hands and were lying in pieces around the kitchen floor.

‘What the fuck are you playing at?’ Jesús screamed.

‘Sorry, Jesús, sorry.’

‘This is crap! You trying to fob me off with rubbish or something? Me cago en tus muertos, I shit on your ancestors . . .’ He leapt out of his chair, knife in hand, and began to lunge towards the dealer, who was cowering in the corner.

‘Jesús!’ I cried. In an instant I saw what was about to happen and had managed to hurdle the chair and grab his wrists from behind as the blade sliced forward.

The dealer collapsed into the corner. Jesús lunged again, his body taut, muscles like cords. I hauled him back, and he struggled to free himself from my grip, thrashing from side to side. I was taller than him, though, and the drugs had given me a nervous strength. I was more worried about the knife, about not getting caught on the end of it myself.

The dealer sat up and began crying.

‘Jesús, it’s me. For God’s sake, Jesús. It’s me.’ He quivered, white-faced, shaking with fear. ‘Jesús. You can’t do this to me. You don’t know what it’s like . . .’

‘You son of a whore! Me cago en tus muertos.’ Jesús bellowed the Gypsy curse, still wriggling to get free.

‘Come on Jesús. You can sell that on. Please, I really need the money.’

Jesús began shouting again and the dealer slid back into the corner, making himself small and sobbing violently.

Jesús seemed about to lunge again. With a final effort, I steered him out through the kitchen door and into the corridor, then threw him into the stairwell, shutting the door as he stumbled backwards, dizzy with rage.

I ran back inside. The dealer was still in the corner, crying.

‘You OK?’

He said nothing.

I checked around for blood to see if the knife had touched him. He was fine. I made to leave.

‘T-tell Jesús, please, tell him. I love him. He’s my best friend.’

I left some money on the table as I went out.

Jesús was outside in the street, waiting for me. He seemed calmer now, not the bloodthirsty lunatic of only a few moments ago.

‘You shouldn’t have done that.’

‘I did what I had to do.’ I was surprised at myself. I had never answered him like that.

We walked off, neither of us saying a word. Then, as we reached the car, I felt his hand on my shoulder. I turned and unexpectedly he put his arms around me and embraced me. I stood awkwardly for a moment – an Englishman once more, stiff with embarrassment, caught off my guard by a foreigner – until my arms relented and I returned the embrace. This was Jesús, who never seemed to need anyone. An independent Gypsy, weaving his way slyly through a strange, adverse world where he didn’t really belong – a world he rejected, and which, in its turn, rejected him. But all he wanted now was this.

We stood together, patting each other gently on the back, until at length, he pulled away.

‘You drive,’ he said. ‘I need to sleep.’