"The Flamenco Academy" (35 page)

“During the twentieth century in Spain,
General Franco continued the persecution of Gypsies, as did the
Nazis, who enacted laws twice as strict against Gypsies as against
Jews. By 1933 Hitler was already sterilizing Gypsies in Germany.
Eventually, a third of all Gypsies living in Europe, nearly one
million people, were annihilated. A proportion as great or greater
than the number of Jews murdered, yet not one single Gypsy was
called as a witness at the Nuremburg Trials. Not one single Gypsy
was ever compensated.”

Don Héctor summarized the story of
flamenco’s beginnings among the outcasts of Andalusia: Jews, Moors,
and Gypsies. He followed the trunk of his great tree to limbs
forking out to ever smaller branches to, finally, the farthest
extension, the one that bore the golden fruit that we were all
feasting upon, flamenco in Nuevo México.

“According to my sources, flamenco truly
took root in New Mexico in a club outside of Tesuque, a town on the
edge of Santa Fe. The name of this club was, appropriately enough,
El Nido, The Nest. Here, for a handful of
aficionados
, the
godfather of New Mexico flamenco, Vicente Romero, danced. He danced
his famous twenty-minute
escobilla
, the machine-gun footwork
that would eventually kill him when, overweight and trying to keep
up with a young Pepe Greco, Romero died onstage at the Joyce
Theater in New York.”

Didi turned to me, her eyes popping at this
fabulously dramatic bit of New Mexican flamenco history.

“But Romero left behind several talented
guitar-playing brothers and also inspired two dancers of seminal
importance. The first, of Chippewa/Puerto Rican heritage, María
Benítez, would go on to become one of the most acclaimed dancers in
America. The second is your own Señora Alma Hernandez-Luna.”

At this the tiny professor bowed his head
and extended his arm to Alma and the entire audience burst into
spontaneous applause for our beloved homegirl.

“But the real reason I have journeyed to
your state, to your
Tierra del Encanto
, the actual focus of
the book I will be writing, is—” The professor turned back to the
blackboard and drew one final branch. Beside this last branch he
chalked in the name
Doña Carlota Montenegro de Anaya,
bailaora.

Didi’s eyes popped open and she hissed in my
ear, “Yes!”

I waved my hand to silence her, terrified
that I might miss a single word.

“Not only was Doña Carlota the first to
bring
flamenco puro
to New Mexico, she gave
el arte
its first academic home in the New World. Doña Carlota has
established a dynasty of New Mexican dancers who are, even now,
forcing flamenco to evolve in directions both unexpected and, for
many traditionalists, unwelcome. But we shall save that controversy
for another time. For now, let us examine the reasons why flamenco
took root here in your majestic state as it did nowhere else in
America, or the world, for that matter. Why was
el arte
embraced by Hispano residents in a way that no other Latino
population in the New World has? The reason is contained in their
very preference for the designation ‘Hispano.’ Not Latino, not
Chicano, Hispano. Though it is not a popular contention in this
country, some would say that something in the blood of your
Hispanos, those descended from Spanish settlers, responds to
flamenco. They hear, in its ancient rhythms, songs of home.

“Let us leave, for now, the fascinating
question of why New Mexico, and turn to the other great gift that
Doña Carlota has given us.”

He picked up the chalk again and next to
Doña Carlota’s branch, drew one leaf. Beside it, he wrote
Tomás
Montenegro de Anaya, tocaor
.

The sight of his name written by another’s
hand had as powerful an effect upon me as if the phantasm I
constantly dreamed of had stepped into the classroom.

I didn’t realize until a loud buzzer
startled me that I had stopped breathing. Most of the class
vanished before the buzzer even finished sounding. Didi jumped up,
then waited for me so we could join the stampede. Instead, bereft,
I pointed frantically at the lone leaf trembling at the end of Doña
Carlota’s branch. “He didn’t get to—”

Didi pulled me to my feet before I could
finish. “Not a problem. We’ll just grab the old queen before he
escapes and pepper him with questions.”

“No, no, don’t say anything, okay?” I
hurried to wipe away such a possibility. After my humiliating
experience with Doña Carlota I was actually relieved that the old
lady wouldn’t be coming back to class. I couldn’t risk word getting
back to her through the professor of my interest.

“Come on,” Didi coaxed. “It’ll be great
reconnaissance. He knows a lot more than he’s telling. We can take
him to Cervantes and get him to spill the beans.”

Cervantes was a gloomy cocktail lounge
frequented by a midafternoon crowd of high-level defense
contractors who hung around Sandia Labs and used the bar to cheat
on their wives with their secretaries. Didi liked it for
intelligence-gathering because of the air of betrayed trust that
hung over the place. I grabbed her arm as she started toward the
professor. “No. Seriously. I don’t want you to talk to him. Or
anyone. It’s too early for direct contact.”

“ ‘Direct contact’? Rae, can you hear
yourself? We’re going to talk to some castanet-sniffer who’s
writing about his great-aunt. How much more indirect can you get?
And ‘too early’? Dude, it’s been”—she held up fingers as she ticked
off the months—“May—”

“Not all of May.”

She bent the finger in half. “Whatever.
June. July. August. September. October. November.”

I swatted her hand down to stop the count.
“I know how long it’s been.”

“You know I’m absolutely the last person in
the world to object to obsession, but even for me, this is getting
a little strange. I mean, you met the guy once.”

“Which is once more than you ever met most
of the guys you groupied.”

“Am I doing that now? Am I groupieing now?
That was always a means to an end. You know that. It was a way to
get to the life I’m supposed to have. This thing, what you’re
doing, it’s a way to completely avoid having a life.”

“I can’t believe this. I cannot believe that
you, Poster Girl for Fantasy, have the nerve to tell me shit like
that.”

I tried to walk away, but Didi planted
herself in front of me and wouldn’t let me pass. “Rae, I’m doing
it. I’m putting myself out there. I’m going for it. What are you
going for?”

“Like I really have to tell you.”

“I know what you
think
you’re going
for. You
think
you’re going for love, but you’ve got that
right in front of you.”

“Yeah, right.” I gave a dry snort of fake
laughter to dismiss her ridiculous claim.

“Okay, what about Will?”

“Will? What
about
Will?”

“He’s insanely in love with you.”

“What?”

“Please, please, please, don’t be the only
person who doesn’t know.” She studied my face. “God, you don’t. Oh
well, I guess you look in a mirror, you expect to see
yourself.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Will, he’s you. Hopeless, one-sided love
sublimated into flamenco. Sound familiar?”

“As a psychiatrist, Didi, you make a really
good poet. Move. I’m going home.”

“Look, you’re right, I shouldn’t criticize
anyone for living in a fantasy, but at some point you’ve got to
intersect with reality a tiny bit. At least on our missions, the
whole idea was to meet the band, right? If you’ve seriously got a
thing for this guy, let’s go to Doña Carlota and find out where he
is. Huh? That’s a start, right?”

“She doesn’t know where he is. I asked.”

“Okay, very good. I’m impressed. I’m not
sure I believe you, but I’m impressed.”

“Didi, I have to be ready, that’s all.
That’s all it comes down to. I’m not avoiding life or any of that
other horseshit. I will see him again. I know I will. But what is
the point of seeing him again while I’m still—”

I flapped my hands at myself to indicate my
total inadequacy and Didi filled in the blank, “You?” Her voice was
soft and concerned again. “Okay, Rae, what do they say in AA? I
can’t enable you anymore.”

“
You
enable
me
? You’re
kidding, right? You have got to be kidding. You, Miss Never Met a
Controlled Substance I Didn’t Like? Enable me?
Me
? The
person who got you through high school? What? Has the quality of my
service gone down now that I’ve found a genuine interest in
life?”

“Flamenco or Mystery Man, Rae? Because
they’re two sides of the same obsession and flamenco isn’t any
better than Mystery Man. Flamenco is obsessive-compulsive disorder
set to a great beat. You can dance to it, but, Rae, you cannot have
a life to it.”

“I am through with this conversation,” I
said, and for the first time ever, I walked away from Didi.

That weekend, I allowed Will to relieve me
of my virginity. A part of me realized Didi was right. I’d left the
realm of the rational. I thought Will might be a first step back. A
first step away from Tomás. He wasn’t. Fully clothed, with one
kiss, Tomás had transported me to the stars. Naked in bed, with
Will laboring between my legs, I had never felt more leaden and
earthbound in my life.

There was a smear of blood on the sheet when
it was over. Will held me tenderly as I cried. It was nice to be
comforted even if it was for the wrong thing. Will thought I was
weeping for my virginity. My tears were for the knowledge that had
just been made certain that I would never be happy with anyone
except Tomás Montenegro.

At the height of the Ottoman Empire’s glory,
Topkapi, the sultan’s harem, housed nearly five hundred odalisques.
The most desirable women in the world—Berber, Nubian, Turkish,
Albanian, Caucasian, Greek, Chinese, Egyptian, Hindu—they were all
brought to Topkapi. Imprisoned behind the harem’s
eighteen-foot-high walls, they were guarded around the clock by
eunuchs.

The sole purpose of the captive women’s
lives, and the lives of the slaves who attended them, was to give
their master, the sultan, pleasure. Slaves in ten kitchens cooked
for the pampered females, making their bodies sleek and desirable
with extra fat. Three slaves washed and depilated each girl,
removing every hair on her body: nostrils, ears, vulvas, anuses.
They painted her hands and feet with henna. The captives were
instructed in how to whiten their skin with almond and jasmine
paste, to darken their lashes with Chinese ink, line their eyelids
with kohl, stain their mouths with berries. Mistresses of the
seductive arts spent years working with each new girl, teaching the
Ninety-nine Means of Giving Pleasure. She learned how to excite and
satisfy the jaded appetites of a sultan who had deflowered a
thousand virgins. But in order to be one of the fortunate few who
managed to achieve the purpose of her existence and spend a night
with the sultan, a girl first had to catch the eye of the Shadow of
Allah on Earth.

For this, the girl had to learn to
dance.

As blind musicians played—no whole man was
ever allowed inside the thick doors—the girls were taught how to
make their bodies into undulations of desire. How to attract and
arouse with the sinuous sweep of an arm, the roll of a belly, the
swing of a pelvis, how to tap out an irresistible code of
enticement with tinkling finger cymbals. Then, if each movement was
choreographed and executed with a sensuousness so seamless that the
odalisque’s body became a fluid ripple of erotic titillation, then,
and only then, might she be chosen out of the five hundred to give
the sultan one night of pleasure.

During the years I toiled to learn flamenco,
no one ever said cigarettes were a required part of the course, but
Didi and I smoked as many Ducados as we could afford. None of our
instructors in choreography, improv,
bulerías, alegrías, pitos,
brazeo, taconeo
, no one in any of our classes ever mentioned
alcohol, but Didi and I became experts on
manzanilla
,
Cruzcampo beer, Centenario brandy, and all the other Spanish
liquors so beloved by true
flamencos
. Not a single teacher
ever told me that flamenco was a seductive art, but, after Will, I
took a succession of lovers. I was never a heartbreaker like Didi,
who left broken marriages and suicide notes in her wake. I tended
to choose men likely to be as dispassionate as I. I was generous
and adventurous in bed since that, too, was part of my unwritten
curriculum. Not often—twice—my lovers wanted more. A commitment, a
future, something more intimate than my practiced writhing and
moaning. It wasn’t hard to extricate myself without feelings being
hurt. I simply told them the truth: I was already in love, but my
passion was unreturned, impossible. They nodded and didn’t press.
Almost everyone in the program suspected I was in love with Didi. I
didn’t mind that they believed my impossible love was for her.
Better that than anyone ever suspecting the truth.

What my instructors in Doña Carlota’s
Flamenco Academy did explicitly teach was the
compás por
alegrías, por bulerías, por soleares, por tangos, por
fandangos
, and at least half a dozen other
palos
, each
with a unique feeling based on variations in key, rhythm, and pace,
making a
Fandango de Málaga
completely different from a
Fandango de Murcia
. I learned that the insiders’ insiders
not only put the accent on the first syllable in
óle
, but
pronounced it with a nasal twang like singers from Valencia. I
learned that all true flamenco legends lived in poverty, ending
their days selling violets on the Calle de Serpientes in Sevilla or
dying young, preferably of cirrhosis or a flamboyant overdose.