The Return

by Victoria Hislop

  At the bottom of the street where the shops ended and anonymous blocks of flats were planted in crop-like rows, Sonia could clearly see beyond the city to the green plains of the Vega, the lush pastureland beyond the city. Consulting her city map she turned right and through some gates into a park. It extended over several acres and had been laid out in a style that was somewhere between dreary municipal and Elizabethan knot garden, with sandy pathways running between geometrically arranged borders and low box hedging. The plants had been recently watered. Moisture hung like crystal beads on velvety crimson petals and the heavy scents of rose and lavender mingled in the moist atmosphere.

  As far as Sonia could see, the park was empty save for a couple of gardeners and two silver-haired men sitting on a bench, walking sticks propped against their knees. They were deeply engaged in conversation and did not even look up as she passed, nor were they remotely disturbed by the sound of a trumpet that pierced the air. The acoustics of the empty park amplified the sound of the lone musician, who was not busking (there would have been little point, given the paucity of passers-by) but using the space to practise.

  According to the guidebook, La Huerta de San Vicente was in the middle of the park and through the dense foliage of a group of trees Sonia could now make out the shape of a white, two-storey dwelling. A few people were clustered outside waiting for the door to be opened.

  The house was more modest than she had imagined for a place associated with such a grand name as Federico García Lorca. At eleven o’clock the deep green front door opened, visitors were permitted to file in and a smartly dressed middle-aged woman welcomed them in Spanish. Her manner was that of a housekeeper, thought Sonia, proprietorial yet reverential about the house she looked after.Visitors were expected to treat it like a shrine.

  Sonia’s Spanish allowed her to grasp a few things from the speech that the woman trotted out at the beginning of the tour: Lorca had loved this house and had spent many happy summers there - the house was as it had been the day he left in August 1936 to seek safety with his friends in the centre of the city - after his death, the rest of his family had gone into exile - visitors were requested not to use flash photography - they had thirty minutes to look round.

  Sonia got the impression that she expected visitors to know about the man and his work, just as a guide in a cathedral would assume tourists might know who he meant by Jesus Christ.

  The house was as stark as the information. The walls were white, the ceilings lofty and the floors tiled. For Sonia it had as little soul as the parkland that now surrounded it. It was difficult to imagine lively conversation around the dark wooden dining table, with its hard, high-backed chairs, or to picture Lorca at the cumbersome desk composing poetry. Some of his manuscripts were displayed in a cabinet, the fine, loopy writing illustrated with delicate, coloured drawings. There were interesting portraits on the walls and some of Lorca’s theatre set designs but what it lacked was any sense of who this man was. It was a shell, an empty husk, and Sonia was disappointed. The old man in the café had spoken with such passion about him and she was slightly bemused by how little atmosphere remained in what had once been a family home. Perhaps it filled her with gloom because she had been brought here by the story of the poet’s assassination.

  She paused at the postcard display. Only here did something clarify itself. There were several dozen images of a man’s face. Here was the man who had once filled this building with his presence. There was something astonishingly vivid and modern-looking about the face, chocolate-brown eyes meeting not just those of the photographer but of anyone who was standing at the postcard counter all these years later.

  His hair was wavy, his brows thick, his skin slightly roughened by acne and his ears stuck out more than he must have liked. He adopted many different guises. In one picture he played the role of uncle, and a niece, who resembled him so closely she might have been his own little daughter, sat on his lap learning to read, a stubby forefinger pointing to a single word. In another he was a sibling, cheerfully posing with his brother and sister, all of them appearing to suppress their laughter for the picture. The warmth of both the day and the affection between them made the image glow. Other pictures showed family groups and glimpses of a long-gone world when children were dressed in cotton pinafores, and babies wore mobcaps, when women engaged in embroidery and men sat in striped deck chairs. There were plenty of pictures that showed a frivolous side to Lorca: in one he posed as a pilot behind a huge image of a bi-plane, and in another a smiling face poked out from behind a huge fairground cartoon of an overweight woman. There was childlike laughter in such photographs, but in others, with a group of intellectuals or with just one other young man, he looked highly serious.

  Whatever he was doing - playing the piano, giving speeches, larking about, striking a pose - he was clearly a man who loved life, and a warmth and vitality emanated from these pictures that inspired Sonia in a way that the house itself had failed to. They provided glimpses of precious carefree moments in a life that had been wiped out not long after. For that reason alone they were absorbing.

  At the end of the row of postcards, which were ranked along the counter in neat wooden sections, there was one where he stood outside the front door of this very house, with a sharp shadow of bright summer sunshine behind him. Sonia wondered if it had been taken the summer of his arrest and death.

  Sonia moved along the row, picking out one each of every image.

  ‘Can I help you?’ asked the girl on the cash desk.

  She had been slightly bemused by the length of time this visitor had hovered. Sometimes the stock in here was pilfered, but that only usually happened when school parties came in and this woman did not look remotely suspicious. When she saw the pile of cards in Sonia’s hand, she leaned over towards a pile of books.

  ‘If you want so many,’ she said, ‘it makes sense to buy this.’ Sonia took from her the little book she held out and flicked through its pages.All the postcard images and more were contained in it, along with captions and quotes.With a dictionary, she might be able to translate them.

  Her eyes rested on the last image of Lorca where he sat, white-suited, at a café table with a stylish-looking woman who wore a beret.A carafe of wine stood on the table in front of them, sunlight streamed down through the branches of trees in full leaf and people sat back in their wicker seats at other tables. This was a portrayal of people at leisure, of Spain at peace.

  Below the picture were a few words: ‘Lo que más me importa es vivir.’ Sonia did not need a dictionary to translate them: ‘What matters to me most is to live.’

  The tragic irony of the words struck her forcibly. All these images of Lorca, in a turban, in an aeroplane, with friends, with family, showed him as a man with a huge appetite for life. It was unimaginable now that any poet could have been important enough to execute. The simple white-washed farmhouse was an image of innocence, frozen in time, a memorial that had been left alone while all in its immediate surroundings had been swept up in a new, forward-looking Spain. It was like a gravestone without a corpse.

  She handed over some pesetas for the book and left.

  Soon she was back in the hotel. As she pushed the button for the lift, Maggie stepped out of it, radiant after ten hours of uninterrupted dreams.

  ‘Sonia,’ she gushed, ‘where have you been?’

  ‘Just having a wander,’ replied Sonia. ‘I did leave you a note.’

  ‘Yes, I saw it. I just wasn’t sure when you’d be back.’

  ‘I’m going up to grab my shoes,’ Sonia said through the narrow gap between the closing doors of the lift.

  In the claustrophobic box of the lift, she began to feel slightly faint and realised she should have had something to eat. In the glow of sepia light, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirrored wall. Compared with the vision of Maggie’s bright face, she felt hollow-eyed and sunken-cheeked. Half-moons of darkness hung like eclipses below her eyes and her hair looked mousy with grea
se. She acknowledged to herself that it did not matter to her what she looked like, but she knew she would still feel the age-old pangs of resentment when men cast admiring glances at Maggie and she became her invisible friend. Having spent years practising this role, it was an all-too-familiar feeling.

  Back in their room, she swiftly brushed her hair, defined her eyes with kohl pencil and smeared on some lip gloss. In the descending lift, her spirits lifted slightly as she observed the improvement.

  Soon they were outside in the street and the two women propelled each other along, both equally excited by the prospect of their dance lesson.

  Sonia’s enthusiasm for the lesson waned after only twenty minutes, and the harsh brass sound of the salsa band, slightly distorted by the CD player, began to grate. She was as stiff as one of the shop dummies she had noticed earlier in the day. Engaging her mind to absorb instructions, she counted out the beats like a child, repeating and holding the numbers in her head.

  Felipe spotted her furrowed brow and tense arms. ‘Señora,’ he reprimanded. ‘Not like that. Please. More relaxed.’

  She felt chastened. It was a sin to be unrelaxed here and to think, rather than feel. She was not sure she could do it any differently today.

  It was a relief when the lesson finished at five o’clock sharp.

  ‘I’m so bad at this,’ she said under her breath, as she fiddled with a buckle, eventually pulling off her shoes without undoing them and aiming them furiously at her bag, which lay a few feet away.

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ said Maggie. ‘You’re just having a bad day. You’re coming out with me tonight.You’ll never improve otherwise, which was the whole point of coming here.’

  ‘Was that the point?’ asked Sonia grumpily, as they emerged from the building. ‘I can’t really remember.’

  ‘And for my birthday.’

  ‘Maggie! I’m so sorry. It’s today! Happy Birthday! God! How awful of me, I’d completely forgotten which day it was. I’m really, really sorry.’ She threw her arms around her friend and there in the sunny street hugged her with bone-crushing affection.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ smiled Maggie. ‘I do understand, honestly I do. You’ve got things on your mind, but the biggest favour you can do yourself is to try and think beyond them.You should let yourself go a bit more.’

  Normally Sonia might have allowed her irritation at Maggie’s instruction to show, but not today. It was Maggie’s birthday.

  ‘Yes. You’re probably right,’ she said.

  ‘So will you come dancing tonight?’

  ‘Of course I will. Is there somewhere particular you want to go?’

  ‘There’s a place quite near the dance school. It’s really friendly and very unintimidating.You’ll love it.’

  Just before midnight, Sonia found herself ducking to enter a low stone archway and descending a narrow staircase into a dimly lit basement. There was a small bar at one end, with a row of stools in front of it and the two couples who were dancing were enjoying the luxury of having the whole dance floor to themselves. At this stage of the evening, the flamboyance of their twists and turns was almost acrobatic.

  Sonia soon saw the reason for her old friend’s insistence that they should come here. Hardly had they reached the foot of the stairway, when a handsome, stocky, figure emerged from the shadows near the bar and made his way towards them. Above the conversation-stifling noise of the music, Maggie introduced Paco, and although the three of them mimed frantically, little was communicated. The problem was not so much the relentlessly thudding beat as much as Paco’s lack of English and theirs of Spanish. He did however show an attentiveness towards Sonia that allowed her to appreciate his charm, buying drinks for both women until, with a gesture of apology, he eventually led Maggie away to the dance floor. Sonia could see his appeal. Though she towered over him, there was something alluringly sexual about Maggie’s new man.

  Sonia watched, mesmerised by the way in which Paco’s hand spread against the small of Maggie’s back like a star, as he guided her firmly about the floor with deft, understated moves. She was perched on a stool, a glass of cold beer in her hand, and a strong sense of déjà vu overwhelmed her. How many times had she watched from the sidelines as Maggie danced? It happened when they were fourteen and it was still happening more than twenty years on.

  No one was a spectator for long - the collective enthusiasm for dance meant that everyone was going to be involved. The club was now filling up and soon Sonia was approached. There was no question of saying no, even had she wanted to.

  She recognised the music. It was one of the tracks that they had danced to that afternoon and the familiarity of its rhythm gave her confidence. It was neither too slow, nor too fast. The five minutes that followed were intimate, energetic, enlivening and physical. Almost immediately she felt the welcome synchronicity between mind and body as her feet began to move without instruction. It was as though the invisible ropes that kept her anchored to the ground had been severed. On the final beat of the music, the encounter was over.The dance was an end in itself. All she noticed was that her partner took her through the steps as if he had danced for his whole life. It was as natural to him as breathing.

  On her third or fourth dance, each one with a new stranger, Sonia began to feel less inhibited. She was no longer telling her feet which way to point and her mind no longer counted a beat. She had experienced a fleeting sense of what this might be like once before, watching the Cuban instructors back in London and seeing the expression on their faces that showed they were dancing with their souls not their minds. Sonia recalled the way in which the hairs on her neck had stood on end. Now she knew what that felt like. The enchantment of dance had buried itself deep inside her.

  Between dances, she had gravitated back towards the bar. Occasionally, Maggie and Paco stepped off the dance floor and came to find her. Maggie glistened. Her white shirt, luminous in the fluorescent lighting, was transparent with perspiration and tiny droplets beaded her hairline like a tiara.

  ‘Are you OK, Sonia?’ she asked. ‘Are you having a good time?’

  ‘Yes. I’m having a great time,’ she responded, and there was no edge to her answer.

  She had no idea at what hour her head finally sank into her pillow. It was another sleepless night but not, this time, because she was anxious about Maggie, whose bed in the twin room remained empty. Tonight, it was the endorphins coursing through her body that kept her spinning round till sunrise.

  Chapter Six

  NOT LONG BEFORE midday, Sonia turned the taps to ‘cool’ and gasped as the water sputtered from the showerhead, covering her in waves of shocking iciness. It was what she needed to feel fully awake and with the day. Her next thought was for coffee and for that there was only one destination. She slipped out of the lobby, knowing that she would be too late anyway for the paltry hotel breakfast of shrink-wrapped, long-life croissant, whose only chance of being brought to life was to be dipped into the weak coffee.

  By some kind of homing instinct she retraced her route to the pretty square where she had been the previous day. It was not just the excellence of his café con leche that drew her back but the sense that some of her conversations with the kind waiter were yet to be concluded. It was chilly and none of the other tables outside was occupied when she arrived, so she went inside. For more than five minutes, she sat there and no one came. Her sense of disappointment was out of proportion to the situation. There were plenty of other cafés close by that would serve decent coffee, she told herself.

  While she was waiting, she took the time to observe that the busier the café, the more it seemed to attract additional customers. She was about to follow the trend and take her custom elsewhere when she heard a friendly voice behind her.

  ‘Buenos días, Señora.’

  She turned.There was the café owner, smiling, evidently pleased to see her.

  ‘I thought you must be closed.’

  ‘No, no. I’m sorry, I was on the telephone.What can
I bring you?’

  ‘Café con leche, por favor. And something to eat? A pastry?’

  Some minutes later, both arrived.

  ‘You had a late night?’ commented the man. ‘If it’s not rude to say it, you look very tired.’

  Sonia smiled. She enjoyed the café proprietor’s honesty and knew she must look terrible, with smudges of yesterday’s mascara and all the other signs of sleep deprivation.