Shaking, Pepe made his way to the stage. Meñique stood up and gallantly offered Pepe his chair. The boy sat down next to his father, who whispered in his ear.
‘Señores y señoras, may I present José and Pepe – father and son – playing together for the first time!’ Lucía announced as she swept herself and her train to the side of the stage.
As Pepe lifted his guitar into position, José reached out to clutch his son’s shoulder, then gave him a nod and began to play. After a few seconds, Pepe joined in tentatively, watching his father’s fingers and listening to the rhythm. María held her breath as Pepe struggled to conquer his nerves, and finally, as his eyes closed and his shoulders relaxed, María’s did too. She watched as José ceased playing suddenly, understanding that Pepe had the confidence to continue alone. Lost in his own world, just like Lucía had always been when she danced, Pepe’s fingers moved like fast, agile spiders across the strings. His solo achieved a roar of applause, then Meñique, José and Lucía joined him, bringing the performance to a brilliant crescendo, which had the audience on their feet and yelling for more.
José stood up, pulling his son to his feet and hugging him. Unable to stop them, María let the tears fall freely down her face.
Lisbon
August 1938, two years later
26
‘I have received an offer for us to perform in Buenos Aires,’ José announced as he sat with Lucía and Meñique in their suite.
‘Is that not where La Argentinita was born?’ Lucía asked her father.
‘She was born in Argentina, yes.’
‘And where is Argentina? Is it in the United States of America?’
‘No, it is in South America – Spanish America, if you like.’ Meñique rolled his eyes at Lucía’s confused geography.
‘They speak Spanish there?’
‘Yes. We will say no of course,’ said José.
‘Why?’ Lucía narrowed her eyes. ‘We have been in Portugal for two years and I have had enough of being an exile in a country that speaks a different language. In Buenos Aires, I will be able to understand what everyone is saying! Papá, I want to go.’
‘We will not be going, Lucía,’ José stated firmly.
‘Why not?!’
‘We have to board a ship and spend many days on the water to get there. As you know well, querida, no gitano can cross the water and live to tell the tale,’ José replied solemnly.
‘Please, not that old superstition again! Did I die when I crossed the Darro river to leave Sacromonte and walk across the bridge to the Alhambra? There were hundreds of us, Papá, and none of us left the earth.’
One did . . . thought María, who was sitting quietly in the background, sewing a ruffle onto Lucía’s new flamenco dress.
‘The Darro river has welcomed us for hundreds of years. It is a few feet wide where we cross, not an ocean that we must live on for weeks! Besides . . .’
‘Besides what, Papá?’ asked Lucía.
‘We are a success here in Lisbon. We have everything that we want. You are not known in Buenos Aires, Lucía, and we would have to start all over again.’
‘Is that not what we have spent our whole lives doing, Papá?’
‘La Argentinita is queen there . . .’
‘You’re afraid of her? I am not! I am bored here, and even though we are earning a lot of money, there are new countries that must see what I can do.’ Lucía turned to Meñique. ‘Do you agree?’ she asked him.
‘I think it is an interesting opportunity,’ he replied diplomatically.
‘It is more than that.’ Lucía gave him a defiant stare and stood up. ‘It is meant to be. You can telegram that I will be there. It is up to the rest of you if you wish to come with me.’
Lucía swept from the room as her parents and Meñique eyed each other nervously.
‘It is madness to leave here when everything is so good,’ said José. ‘While we are unable to return to our country, we enjoy a good life close by in Portugal.’
‘We do, yes,’ Meñique agreed, ‘but I have been growing concerned at the wider political situation in Europe. We live a precarious life here, José – I have done my best to protect us from informants, even though Lucía’s fame has drawn all eyes upon our little cuadro. When will Salazar’s policía become weary of us gitanos and send us back to Spain to be murdered? And when will Adolf Hitler antagonise France and Britain enough for there to be all-out war—’
‘Hombre, you read too many newspapers, and spend too many nights talking to your payo compadres,’ José said scornfully. ‘There is nothing more dangerous than crossing the oceans; you are trying to seduce us to our deaths!’
‘José, with the greatest respect, I am only trying to do what’s best for all of us. I have a strong feeling that we should leave Portugal while the going is good and the borders are open.’ Meñique turned to María. ‘What do you think?’
María smiled gratefully at him. It was not often that she was asked for an opinion. She searched for the right words. ‘I think that my daughter’s hunger to show her talent off will never be sated. She is still young and wishes to climb taller mountains. As we all did once.’ María threw a look at José. ‘She is the one who the public wishes to see, the one who provides our daily bread. And however we may all feel about it, we must satisfy her appetite to conquer new countries.’ María shrugged apologetically, then turned her eyes back to her sewing.
‘You speak a lot of sense, wife,’ José said eventually. ‘Do you not think, Agustín?’
‘Yes,’ he replied, relieved that María agreed, but smarting from her truthful but hurtful comment that it was Lucía the public wanted to see. ‘And if we find that I was wrong, then there are ships back to Portugal. Or, if we are lucky, one day to Spain.’
‘Then I am out-voted.’ José sighed. ‘Although I do not know whether the rest of the cuadro will follow us.’
‘Of course they will.’ María’s needle paused as she looked up at them. ‘They know they are nothing without Lucía.’
But does she know that she is nothing without us? Meñique thought.
*
‘¡Dios mío! Why did we do this?’ Lucía groaned as she leant over the side of the bed to vomit into the bucket Meñique had placed there for her. ‘Why does the ocean have so much water?’
‘I am sure you will be better soon, pequeña.’
‘No.’ Lucía dragged her body back onto the bed and held onto the sides of the cot as the ship heaved to the right. ‘I will die before I reach shore, I am convinced. And the sharks will eat my body and it will be my fault for wanting to come.’
‘Well, if you don’t eat anything, they won’t have a very good supper,’ commented Meñique, who was the only one of the cuadro who hadn’t been seasick since the Monte Pascoal had left the port of Lisbon a week earlier. ‘Now, I’m going to find a steward to clean up in here. Can I get you anything else?’ he said as he opened the door.
‘An engagement ring would be wonderful,’ she called as the door closed behind him.
*
‘We are dining at the captain’s table tonight,’ Lucía declared three days later as she pinned her hair up and dabbed some rouge onto her cheeks, which still betrayed the pallor of her previous sickness.
‘Are you well enough, pequeña?’ Meñique asked.
‘Of course! The captain has asked especially for me, and I cannot let him down, or he might run this ship aground,’ she said, with not a hint of irony. ‘Now come.’
Dinner at the captain’s table was a pleasant occasion. The captain plied them all with fine wine, and waiters brought out course after course, which only Meñique managed to eat. José sat beside him, talking heatedly to the captain, a great aficionado of flamenco music.
‘And you will have heard the news from England?’ the captain said. ‘The Prime Minister, Mr Chamberlain, has promised “peace for our time” – he is certainly keeping Hitler in line.’
‘You see, hombre,’ José said,
slapping Meñique on the shoulder, ‘peace! We needn’t have ventured onto this wretched sea after all! Oh, how I long for Spain . . .’
‘Ah, my friend,’ the captain said as he leant over and poured some brandy into José’s glass. ‘Once you have seen the splendour of Buenos Aires and Argentina, you will never wish to leave.’
*
‘I just went to Mamá’s cabin, but it was empty!’ Lucía declared exultantly the next day.
‘So? She could be anywhere on the ship.’
‘Not at six in the morning. So then I walked as quietly as a little kitten along to Papá’s cabin. And guess what?’
‘Tell me.’
‘I push open the door and see them in bed together in each other’s arms. Isn’t it wonderful?’ Lucía performed a quick zapateado around their own bed. ‘I knew it! I just knew it.’
‘Yes, it is good news that they have put their pasts behind them, for now at least.’
‘Meñique!’ Lucía rounded on him, hands on hips. ‘True love is forever, sí?’
‘Of course. Now, I am off to practise a new song with Pepe.’ Before her pronouncement caused him, too, to be violently ill into the bucket that still stood by the bed just in case a further attack of seasickness overtook Lucía, Meñique left the cabin.
*
As the Monte Pascal sailed along the coast of Brazil, the weather at least cheered the spirits of its residents. The cuadro came onto the deck, basking in the heat like the sharks they so feared. Now all their energy was focused on preparation for their arrival in Argentina. Even Lucía, out of practice due to her seasickness, deigned to rehearse with them.
‘Meñique?’ she said the night before they were due to dock in Buenos Aires.
‘Yes, pequeña?’
‘Do you think that we can be a success in Argentina?’
‘If anyone can be, it’s you, Lucía.’
Her small hand snaked to his. ‘Can I be better than La Argentinita?’
‘I cannot answer that. This is her homeland.’
‘I will be,’ Lucía stated with certainty. ‘Buenas noches, querido.’ She placed a kiss on his cheek and turned over.
*
The following morning, the ship made fast to the dock in Buenos Aires. The cuadro were on deck, all dressed up for the occasion in their best outfits, their hair slicked down with oil.
‘Even if there is no one here to greet us, we will act like we expected there to be,’ Lucía whispered to Meñique as they watched the gangplank being lowered. Lucía stood on tiptoe to peer over the side of the ship at the throng of people on the quayside.
‘They look and sound like us!’ she exclaimed happily.
‘Lucía! La Candela!’ someone shouted from below them.
‘Did someone just call my name?’ Lucía turned to Meñique in surprise and delight. She turned back and waved. ‘I am here!’ she screamed, the sound of gulls acting as her impromptu chorus.
The Albaycín cuadro made their way down the gangplank, their cardboard suitcases adorned with bundles of herbs tied on with scarves to ward off bad luck.
‘¡Hola, Buenos Aires!’ Lucía called out in triumph as she stepped onto Argentinian soil for the first time. ‘I did not die!’ She hugged the rest of her clan. A barrage of flashbulbs went off in their faces as a tall man in a silk suit walked towards them.
‘Where is Lucía Albaycín?’ he asked.
‘I am here.’ Lucía pushed her way through the crowd.
‘It is you?’ The man looked down at the tiny wisp of a woman whose head did not even reach up to his shoulder.
‘Sí, and who are you?’
‘I am Santiago Rodríguez, the impresario who brought you here, señorita.’
‘Bueno, you pay and we will dance for Buenos Aires!’
A cheer came up from the onlookers.
‘How does it feel to be on Argentinian soil?’
‘Wonderful! My father, my brother, my mother, even my handbag were sick on the seas!’ she said with a smile. ‘But we are here now, and safe.’
The flashbulbs went off yet again as Señor Rodríguez encircled Lucía’s tiny form and another loud cheer split the air.
‘And so,’ muttered Meñique, ‘a new circus begins . . .’
Tiggy
Sacromonte, Granada, Spain
February 2008
Eurasian brown bear
(Ursus arctos arctos)
27
‘Now I am sleepy,’ Angelina announced, bringing me back from the past. ‘No more until after I have rested.’
I looked at Angelina and saw her eyes were closed. She’d been talking for a good hour and a half.
What I wanted to do was to run back to my hotel, grab some paper and a pen and write down everything Angelina had told me so I didn’t forget a word of it. Most children had the luxury of their past being attached to their present and their future: they’d been brought up in an environment that they accepted and understood. For me, it felt as though I was having a crash-course in my heritage, which could not be more different from the life I’d led since I’d been taken from here by Pa. Somehow, I had to glue the two Tiggys together into a whole, and I knew that would take some time. Firstly, I just needed to settle into being this new present Tiggy I was discovering.
‘Time for lunch.’ Pepe stood and began to walk towards the entrance to the cave.
‘May I help you?’ I asked, following him inside and finding myself in an old-fashioned kitchen.
‘Sí, Erizo. The plates are in there.’ He pointed to a carved wooden cabinet, which looked very much like the ones I imagined María’s son Carlos had fashioned all those years ago.
I took them out as he’d asked, while he collected food from an ancient fridge that buzzed and whirred.
‘Would you mind if I had a quick look around? I’d like to see where I was actually born.’
‘Sí, just through there.’ Pepe indicated the back of the cave. ‘Angelina sleeps there now. The light switch is on the left.’
I walked through the kitchen and drew back a threadbare curtain. I fumbled in the pitch-black, found the switch and the room was suddenly illuminated by a single light bulb. I saw an old wrought-iron bed with a colourful crocheted blanket covering it. I looked up at the whitewashed oval ceiling, and let out a sigh of wonder. How could it be that, as a tiny baby, I could remember so vividly being lifted up towards it by those strong, secure arms?
Leaving the bedroom, I felt suddenly dizzy, and asked Pepe for a glass of water.
‘Go sit down with Angelina.’ Pepe handed me the glass and I did so, moving the chair into the shade of a fragrant bush.
Then he arrived with an overflowing tray and as Angelina stirred, I helped him lay everything out.
‘We eat simple food here,’ he said briskly, just in case I was about to turn my nose up at the freshly baked bread, dish of olive oil and the bowl of plump tomatoes.
‘This is perfect for me. I’m a vegan.’
‘What this word mean?’ asked Pepe.
‘I don’t eat meat, fish, milk, eggs, butter or cheese.’
‘¡Dios mío!’ Pepe’s eyes swept down my body in surprise. ‘No wonder you so scrawny!’
For all its simplicity, I knew I would never forget the taste of the bread, dipped in home-pressed olive oil and the freshest tomatoes I’d ever bitten into. I gazed across the table at Angelina and Pepe, and marvelled at how different they looked, even though they were uncle and niece. If anyone doubted they were related, though, the fluid way they moved and the inflections of their speech marked them out as family. I wondered what I had inherited from them.
‘Soon we must arrange for you to meet the rest of your Sacromonte family,’ commented Angelina.
‘I play my guitar,’ Pepe said, snapping his fingers then using them to twirl his handlebar moustache.
‘I thought everyone had left here?’ I queried.
‘They leave Sacromonte, but they are not so far away in the city. We must have a fiesta!�
�� Angelina clapped her hands in pleasure. ‘Now, I will take a siesta and so will you, Erizo, for you need rest. Come back at six o’clock and we will talk some more.’
‘And I will prepare more food. We will make you strong, querida,’ Pepe said.
We gathered the bowls and dishes onto the tray and I carried the water jug and glasses back into the kitchen. Angelina disappeared through the curtain with a wave.
‘Sleep, Erizo,’ she repeated, so I nodded at Pepe and walked back up to my hotel.
*
Having slept like the dead, I woke ten minutes before six, splashed my face with cold water to wake me up and hurried back to the blue front door just along the narrow path.
‘Hola, Erizo.’ Angelina was already waiting for me there. She reached for my wrist, holding her fingers upon my pulse, then nodded. ‘It is better, but you will take another poción before you leave. Come.’ She beckoned me forward as she began to walk down the sloping path past her cave.
We walked side by side in the fast-descending dusk. As I looked further up the hill, I could see thin trails of smoke coming from four or five chimneys, and we passed an old woman smoking a cigarette outside her front door, who called out to Angelina. She paused for a chat, and it made me feel a little better to know that Sacromonte was not completely deserted. Then we walked on, eventually arriving in a densely wooded area some way outside the village.
Angelina pointed a finger up to the moon hanging in the sky above us. ‘She is a quickening moon. She brings a new dawn, the birth of spring, a time to cleanse the past and begin again.’
‘It’s odd actually, because I can never sleep when there’s a full moon. And if I do drift off, I have really strange dreams,’ I said.
‘It is same for all us females, especially those with the gift. In gitano culture, the sun is the god of men, the moon the goddess of women.’
‘Really?’
‘Sí.’ Angelina smiled at my surprise. ‘How could it be anything else? Without the sun and the moon, there would be no humanity. They give us our life force. Just as, without both men and women, there would be no more humans. See? We are equally powerful, but each with our own special gifts, our own part to play in the universe. Now, we move on.’
The Moon Sister Page 39