"The Flamenco Academy" (50 page)

“And then, one day, the lonely little girl’s
father employed a
herrero
, a blacksmith, a metalworker, to
repair the extensive grillwork, the elaborate screens in front of
the fireplaces, as well as rationing all the copper pans that had
been handed down through the generations. The blacksmith, called El
Chino for the tilt of his eyes, brought his daughter with him.

“But this was no ordinary metalworker, and
his daughter was no ordinary little girl. They were
gitanos
from Sacromonte,
gitanos puros
who lived in the caves of the
sacred mountain. The little girl, Rosa, had learned her
compás
by dancing to the beat of her father’s hammer as he
sang his great Gypsy
martinetes
.

“Oh, this girl, this Rosa. Dark, dark as a
Moor. Her clothes were rags; her hair was a mat of knots alive with
lice; her hands and feet were black from the cinders from her
father’s forge, from the dirt floor of the cave. The duke forbade
Clementina from even speaking to Rosa, for everyone knew that
Gypsies were thieves and cutthroats, that they stole babies and
were in league with the devil. And the worst, the worst of all was
their music, flamenco, the music of drunkards and prostitutes.

“Little Clementina was so lonely, she
disobeyed her father and tried to speak with Rosa. Rosa, however,
was as wild as a mountain goat and ran from her. So Clementina set
a trap for the little girl in the patio and baited it with
mantecaditos
. Rosa, always starving, could actually sniff
out the little cookies of almonds and olive oil and would gorge
herself on the delicacies. Her hunger forced her to trust the young
mistress of the house.

“Thus they became friends. Clementina,
barely older than Rosa herself, took this creature under her wing.
She bathed the wild Gypsy child, scrubbed her until the brown skin
showed beneath the black. Washed her hair until the water ran clear
and Rosa’s black Gypsy hair glinted blue in the sun. She fed the
Gypsy girl all manner of delights: candied chestnuts in syrup with
brandy, perfectly grilled sardines, tender marinated octopus.
Clementina went to her own closet and took out her pink silk party
frock embroidered with rosebuds, a delicate gown of English lawn
trimmed with Belgian lace, her black velvet slippers, a mantilla
blessed by the pope, and gave them all to Rosa.

“Rosita, overwhelmed by such kindness, had
only one thing to give her generous benefactor in return. In
secret, the wild Gypsy girl began to share her art with the
highborn aristocrat. From the first, Clementina loved flamenco, for
the rhythms that Rosa clapped out were not strange to her. She had
heard these rhythms echoing through the lonely house late at night
behind the locked doors of her father’s rooms. With these
bewitching rhythms came other sounds she was forbidden to
investigate, men’s hoarse voices, the furious stamping of heels on
the heraldic tiles, women’s laughter. Clementina didn’t know what
happened behind the locked doors, but she knew it spoke to her
lonely soul. When she danced with Rosa, her spirit was set
free.

“ ‘
Un fenómeno’
is what Rosa called
Clementina, for she had never seen anyone learn her people’s dance
so quickly. For the first time in her life, Clementina was happy.
Rosa was even happier. She had a friend, a friend who was desperate
to hear everything about her life. So, as they danced, Rosa told
her stories from Sacromonte. She told her about her mother,
Delicata, how she would have reigned like a queen over Sevilla if
her father had not stolen her away and imprisoned her in a cave.
About the
cuadro
, La Sordita, Little Burro, Dried Wood, La
Burriquita. About dancing for
los suecos
that El Bala
brought to them. Rosa even told her friend she suspected that the
fearsome El Bala was in love with Delicata because the pair spent a
dangerous amount of time whispering to each other. Rosa’s stories
came alive more vividly in Clementina’s mind than anything that had
actually happened in her dull and confined life.

“For months the girls danced in secret until
the inevitable day when the duke discovered them. He threw the
nasty little Gypsy girl and her father out of the house and forbade
Clementina to ever speak with her again or to ever dance another
step of flamenco. The exalted gentleman told his daughter that he
would kill her with his own hand before he would see her associate
with such a tribe of degenerates.

“Clementina was desolate. She missed her
friend and all the friends she had made in her imagination.
Flamenco had opened the world to her and now she was in prison once
again. Day and night, she roamed the grounds of the estate. When
she was as far from her father’s prying eyes and from his spy, Tía
Rogelia, as she could get, she would take off her shoes and dance.
Over pebbles, over acorns, over thorns, burrs, she danced until her
feet bled. It didn’t matter: once the spirit had captured her, she
felt nothing.

“One day, Clementina returned to the house
expecting her aunt to scold her for allowing the sun to burn her
face. But she heard nothing from the old lady. Not when she
returned. Not through the endless, silent evening. Not a word.
Clementina was not surprised when she knocked at her aunt’s door
and heard no answer. She was even less surprised to find her aunt
lying atop the matelasse cover, her hands folded in prayer on her
chest, her mouth gaping open.

“All of Granada came to the funeral.
Clementina looked around at the funeral Mass and there were all the
fine young men from the best families. One of them would be her
husband. Would it be Esteban, with a bow tie and pimples on his
chin? Would it be Arturo, pear-shaped heir to an almond fortune?
Would it be Juan Pablo, with his hair parted in the middle and
flattened with too much hair oil? It could be any of them. It would
all end the same, locked away in the rooms of his family’s house
until she was as old and shriveled and dead as Tía Rogelia. At that
moment, Clementina envied her aunt because she had escaped. Only
then did she weep. She wept so copiously for the utter
pointlessness of her life that her sniffles turned to sobs. The
assembled took Clementina’s grief as testament to the young girl’s
devotion to her aunt. However, when the sobs turned to great
heaving moans that caused
el arzobispo
to turn from the
altar and shoot disapproving glances toward the source of the
racket, Clementina’s father took his daughter outside. When she was
unable to collect herself, he summoned a taxi, telling his daughter
that important business would keep him in Granada that night and,
most likely, for several nights to come. Then he ordered the driver
to take her to the family estate.

“As the driver, approached the iron gates of
the estate, Clementina felt she would die, literally suffocate, if
she were to hear the lock click shut behind her one more time.

“ ‘Driver,’ Clementina asked politely,
‘could you, please, take me to Sacromonte?’

“The driver turned in his seat and looked at
her. ‘Sacromonte is not a place for a fine young lady such as
yourself. Your father told me to take you home.’

“Ahead of them the old caretaker was
wheeling the gate open. Her heart pounded so furiously that the
rush of blood past her ears prevented her from hearing her own
words as she ordered, ‘Driver, the only location you will be paid
to take me to is Sacromonte.’ This time her voice was as strong and
sure as the stamp of her heels against the heraldic tiles when she
danced.

“ ‘
Ozu
!’ the driver uttered a Gypsy
curse and turned around, leaving the old caretaker to gape in
puzzlement as the taxi disappeared.

“The driver delivered Clementina to the foot
of Sacromonte and she stepped into a world she already knew in her
imagination. A world where the inhabitants lived, not in tiled
rooms, but in caves. Where children ran naked. Where the bathroom
business was done outside just like a dog. Sacromonte had smelled
much better in her imagination. For a moment, Clementina’s courage
faltered. But she had only to think of Tía Rogelia dead without
ever having lived to take her first step on the dusty path that
wound through the human anthill. She asked for Rosa, daughter of
the
herrero
, and was sent higher and higher up the hill.

“Night was falling and with each upward coil
of the winding path, it grew darker and the caves became even more
wretched. Flames from the blacksmiths’ forges leapt out of from the
cave openings as if the very earth itself were on fire. As if she
were in hell. Though
gitanos
of every description bustled
past her, Clementina did not recognize any of the characters she
knew so well from Rosa’s stories. Each time she stopped to ask for
directions, the Gypsies would either shrug and pretend they
couldn’t understand her or they would send her in the opposite
direction from the last person who’d offered help.

“At the top of the hill, Clementina gazed
down on Granada. Off in the distance, the Alhambra shone like a
great ship cruising through the night, a ship that the
superstitious
gitanos
believed to be filled with the ghosts
of the Moors who had died clinging to the beauty they had created.
Everyone she stopped claimed they had never heard of anyone named
Rosa. No, never in their entire lives had they known anyone with
the most common girl’s name in Spain. Clementina accepted that she
would never find her friend. That she would be forced to return to
her father’s house. That she would die without ever having lived.
She was walking back down when Rosa sprang out from behind a tangle
of prickly pear cacti.

“ ‘It’s true!’ Rosa exclaimed as she
embraced her friend. ‘I didn’t believe it when the first three told
me that there was a
payo
looking for me.’

“ ‘But I didn’t meet anyone who knew
you.’

“ ‘Didn’t you listen to any of my stories?’
Rosa laughed. ‘A
caló
never tells a
payo
anything.
Certainly not anything that has to do with
el tribu
. Come
on.’

“As she followed her friend through a warren
of paths, the magic of that word, tribe, settled over Clementina
like a spell that dissipated all her lonely years. As they
approached Rosa’s cave, the sound of an argument filtered out, so
terrible that even the side of a mountain couldn’t silence it.
Though the angry words alarmed Clementina, Rosa didn’t seem to
notice. Hugging the shadows, she sneaked Clementina into the cave
where her family lived.

“The cave, lighted by one
candil
, was
almost as dark as the night outside. The girls slipped in
unnoticed, though in truth Rosa’s parents, Delicata and El Chino,
screaming and trading blows, wouldn’t have noticed if King Alfonso
had walked in. For several seconds a few of the younger children
stopped watching their parents and gaped at the little aristocrat
hiding in the shadows. The next second, though, the impossible
apparition of a
payo
was dismissed as a phantom, something
that could not possibly exist in the stinking cave they inhabited,
and the children turned their attention back to the fighters.

“Clementina feared she would pass out from
the smell of goats and people, the heat of the cook fire, the
forge, the shrieks of the mob of children crying for their parents
to stop fighting. In spite of the stink and the heat and the noise,
she was ecstatic. It was as if the characters from her favorite
book had come to life in front of her eyes. She spotted Mono with
his squashed nose. And El Chino was even fiercer than she’d
imagined. But Delicata? Where was the dancing beauty with the
flashing emerald eyes Rosa had spoken of? Delicata was the least
delicate woman Clementina had ever seen. She was a dark troll of a
woman with dull eyes the color of a dried cactus pad. Clementina
could not imagine her enchanting anyone. While Clementina was still
trying to identify the others, Rosa dragged her away. In a small
room, dug into the mountain off to the side of the one large room
the family lived in, Rosa tossed a long, red dress covered in white
polka dots at her and told Clementina to put it on. Then Rosa made
Clementina sit while she covered the girl’s light brown hair with
olive oil mixed with soot until it was as black and greasy as
Rosa’s own.

“ ‘Why are you doing this?’ Clementina
demanded.

“ ‘You want to dance flamenco, right?’

“ ‘Of course.’

“ ‘Then you must look like a
flamenca
, so sit still and let me finish.

We’ve been called for a
juerga
tonight. The poet Lorca recommended us. He especially asked for my
father to sing. Maybe when everyone is drunk enough, you can dance
with us.’

“Clementina’s heart soared at these words,
and she sat still as a stone while Rosa covered her face and arms
with the soot mixture until her pale skin was even darker than
Rosa’s. The fighting stopped and El Chino began warming his voice,
tempering it with
aguardiente
. Hours later, when
la
voz
was sufficiently ‘broken,’ when it sounded like a ruptured
foghorn, Rosa’s father yelled,
‘Vamos ya!’
the signal that
the time had come.

“Rosa and Clementina hid until everyone was
outside in the dark night. Then they followed her father down the
twisting path. At several caves, El Chino roared out his bear’s
rasp,
‘Vamos ya!’
The curtains hanging over the front
openings would part and another of the characters from Rosa’s
fabulous stories would step out. A powerfully built mother-daughter
pair with identical spit curls pasted onto their foreheads.
Little Burro and her daughter, La Burriquita!
A stick-thin
widow with powder covering the dirt on her arms.
Dried Wood!
A sprite of a woman with deaf ears sticking out like an elf’s.
La Sordita!
In this way they assembled their
cuadro
and headed into the city.