The Moon Sister

by Lucinda Riley

  Lucía dropped the receiver into its cradle. ‘Never!’ she hissed. ‘Never will I crawl back to him, beg to be with him. He doesn’t want us any more, or he wouldn’t have left.’

  She sank back onto her pillows, exhausted by the mental merry-go-round that she seemed unable to escape from. ‘He has even stolen you two from me,’ she said as she looked at her feet, which felt as though they were disconnected completely, a separate entity that had once taken her on a euphoric journey up to the heavens, but now hung on the end of her little legs like a couple of dead sardines. ‘I do not even want to dance! He has taken everything from me, everything. And given me you instead,’ she said to the bump.

  Reaching into the drawers next to her bed, Lucía took out a tablet from the half-empty packet and swallowed it down with a glass of water. The payo doctor she’d seen before she’d left New York had prescribed them for her when she said she wasn’t sleeping.

  Ten minutes later, she slid into blissful unconsciousness.

  *

  ‘Lucía, you must get up!’ María entreated her daughter. ‘You have been lying in this room for almost two weeks! You are as skinny as our old mule and you look as if you have already joined your ancestors above us! Is that what you want? To die?’

  María listened to the rise of her voice. She was at her wits’ end with Lucía; nothing she could do or say could stir her daughter from her bed. As she spent her days scrubbing away the years of neglect from their new home, Lucía lay here, inert and more unresponsive by the day. So, it was time to play her final card.

  ‘I am going to the finca now, and by the time I get back, I want you out of bed. You have not had a wash since you arrived and the room stinks of your sweat. If you are not up and dressed, then I shall have no choice. I will call Meñique and tell him where we are and what has happened.’

  ‘No! Mamá!’ Lucía’s eyes shot open and María read the fear and horror in them. ‘You wouldn’t dare!’

  ‘Oh yes I would! I will not let you lie here any longer. I must protect my precious grandchild.’ María picked up her handbag and walked towards the door. ‘Remember how much I have already lost, Lucía. I will not see another pointless death occur right under my nose. I will be back by noon. Okay?’

  There was no reply so, with that, she slammed the door behind her, glad of the relatively pure air in the corridor. She hadn’t been exaggerating when she had told her daughter she stank. Walking towards the lift, she saw her hands were shaking and only hoped that her threat would have the desired effect.

  To her relief, when she arrived back just after lunchtime, she found Lucía at least sitting up cross-legged on her bed, wearing a towel.

  ‘I am up and washed as you wished. I had the maid come in to change my sheets, okay?’

  ‘It is a start, yes. Now let us find you some clothes.’ As María rooted through Lucía’s wardrobe, she realised that part of her was actually disappointed she had not had to carry out her threat. Maybe the best thing that could have happened was for Meñique to know.

  ‘It is hot outside, so wear this.’ María laid a cotton dress in Lucía’s arms. ‘I want you to come with me this afternoon to the finca and see where it is that your baby will come into the world. I want you to look up at the Alhambra and remember who you are, Lucía.’

  ‘Do I have a choice?’

  ‘Yes. You can start taking responsibility for yourself, but if you insist on acting like a child, I shall have to treat you as one.’

  That afternoon, María put Lucía next to her in the passenger seat of the old Lancia touring car that Alejandro had sourced for her through a friend. Although this had once been an elegant and powerful vehicle, years of neglect had led to copious amounts of rust on its once royal-blue body, and it seemed that the engine was in no better condition, as mother and daughter lurched and stalled their way towards the finca.

  ‘If only Papá could see you now,’ Lucía uttered a chuckle, as María pressed the brake instead of the clutch and they swerved towards a ditch.

  ‘I don’t know why you are laughing.’ María feigned irritation as she righted the car back onto the road. ‘Your father struggles to keep a mule’s nose in the right direction.’

  As they bumped down the dusty track, María only prayed that Lucía would approve of what she’d worked so hard on to turn into a home for them both.

  ‘There she is! The Villa Elsa, named after Alejandro’s great-grandmother. Isn’t she pretty?’

  ‘Not as pretty as my house in Mendoza, but yes, she is,’ Lucía added quickly, realising that negativity would no longer wash with her mother.

  María gave Lucía the grand tour, proud of the way the house now smelt fresh, and how all the rooms were filled with soft summer light since the window boards had been taken down.

  ‘This will be the nursery, Lucía,’ she said as they stood at the doorway of the small room that lay between her own and Lucía’s. ‘Just to think how you slept on a straw pallet with me and your father when you were small. How we have moved on, and all thanks to you and your amazing talent. Aren’t the rooms a good size?’

  Lucía opened her mouth to say the finca was hardly the Waldorf Astoria, then shut it immediately, cowed by the threat of the phone call.

  ‘And look,’ María continued, opening a door and proudly displaying the toilet and the small bathtub. ‘It’s all attached to the well, which is filled by the stream that flows down the mountain. Alejandro tells me it has never run dry in forty years. Would you like some orange juice?’ she asked Lucía as they reached the kitchen. ‘I pressed some this morning.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Lucía said. María poured them each a glass and they went out to sit on the shady terrace that fronted the finca.

  ‘See?’ María pointed to her left, high above them. ‘There is the Alhambra in the distance. The night of the Concurso was the start of everything for you, querida.’

  ‘Yes, it was. For better or worse,’ Lucía agreed.

  ‘I am only glad that we bought everything for us and the baby in New York. It is impossible to get anything in Granada unless I buy it on the black market. And the prices . . .’ María shook her head as she sipped her orange juice. ‘Can you believe the little one will be here within three months?’

  ‘No. I feel that everything in my life has changed in the last few months, Mamá.’

  ‘This is the biggest change of all, Lucía. Having my children is the greatest achievement of my life. I am so proud . . . of you all.’

  It was María’s turn to stifle a tear.

  ‘Have you . . . made any enquiries yet about Carlos and Eduardo?’ Lucía asked tentatively.

  ‘I asked Alejandro where I should start. He told me that . . .’ María wavered, having just managed to threaten Lucía out of her depression, she hardly wanted to push her straight back in.

  ‘It’s okay, Mamá, I can take it.’

  ‘Alejandro says . . .he says that it is difficult to trace anyone who is missing. There are,’ María swallowed, ‘a number of mass graves around the city where the Civil Guard dumped the bodies of men, women and children alike at the height of the Civil War. He said there are few records. I was thinking . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I was thinking that I would take a walk up to Sacromonte to see if anyone knows anything. In fact, I have thought of it every day since I’ve been here, but I am frightened of what I might find. Or not find.’ María put a hand to her brow. ‘At least for all these years, I have been able to believe that one day I will find my cherished sons and grandchildren alive, but here we are, two weeks on in Granada, and I dare not go.’

  ‘I will come with you, Mamá,’ Lucía said, putting a hand on María’s. ‘We will face it together like we promised each other, sí?’

  ‘Gracias, daughter.’

  Lucía wondered whether it was this lovely peaceful place that her mother had worked so hard at to turn into their new home that had cheered her spirits. And besides, in all the destruction and devas
tation that war had wrought on Spain, she was alive, with a new life inside her. Whereas her brothers and their families . . .

  ‘Mamá?’

  ‘Sí, Lucía?’

  ‘I am sorry for being . . . difficult since we arrived.’

  ‘You were always difficult, querida, but I understand why. You have been grieving.’

  ‘You are right, I have been. For everything I was. But as we said, this is the start of a new life, and I must try and embrace it. When so many others can’t.’

  *

  María and Lucía moved into the Villa Elsa a few days later. María took out the Singer sewing machine she had brought with her and sat on the terrace at the rough wooden table making curtains and table-coverings out of the pretty flowered cotton she’d brought from New York. Lucía amused herself by taking the old car up and down the dusty path to the road and back, and within a few hours she was a far better driver than her mother would ever be. María also fashioned her some simple maternity dresses from the fabric, and in her big sunhat, with her belly protruding beneath the flowing dresses, and in a city populated by people who looked like her, Lucía started to venture out to collect provisions. And with her mother’s home cooking, Lucía suddenly found herself hungry and able to sleep without the aid of pills.

  ‘Mamá?’

  ‘Sí, Lucía?’ she answered as they sat eating a breakfast of freshly baked bread and trying out the taste of the orange marmalade María had been experimenting with.

  ‘I think that we should go up to Sacromonte before I become too fat to move beyond the terrace. Are you ready?’

  ‘I will never be ready, but yes, you’re right,’ María nodded. ‘We must go.’

  ‘And there’s no day like today.’ Lucía reached a hand to her mother. ‘I will check the petrol.’

  Half an hour later, with Lucía’s bump pressing against the wheel of the car, she drove them into Granada and up the winding alleys towards Sacromonte. Leaving the car at the city gate, the two women grasped hands and walked through it into a world that had once been everything they knew.

  ‘It doesn’t look different,’ said Lucía in relief as they walked along the main path. ‘Except, look – Chorrojumo’s old cave is boarded up. His family must have left.’

  ‘Or been murdered . . .’ María said darkly, squeezing her daughter’s hand for comfort. ‘Look up, Lucía, I can’t see any wisps of smoke coming out of the chimneys. The place is deserted.’

  ‘It is high summer, Mamá, no smoke means nothing.’

  ‘It means everything, Lucía. On days when it was too hot to breathe the air, my fire would still burn to cook for my family. Do you hear it?’ María whispered as she stopped short.

  ‘Hear what?’

  ‘The silence, Lucía. Sacromonte was never quiet. Day and night you could hear people laughing, arguing, shouting . . .’ María gave a sad smile. ‘No wonder everyone knew everybody else’s business; the caves echoed out all our secrets. There was no privacy here.’ María took a deep breath. ‘So, first we must head for your grandparents’ cave.’

  The two women walked down the snaking mountain path until they reached the caves just above the Darro river, where María’s parents had once run their successful blacksmith’s business. Peering inside, María saw that the pretty home her mother – God rest her soul – had once fashioned was no more. All that was left was the shell itself; the glass windows, colourful curtains, the furniture had all long since disappeared.

  ‘I am happy they did not live to see what became of their beloved Spain,’ María said as she stood in what had once been the sitting room but was now a dirty and putrid-smelling empty space, the floor full of rubble, empty packets of cigarettes and discarded beer bottles.

  ‘So.’ María swallowed hard. ‘Now to your brothers’ caves.’

  The two women walked a little further up the hill and found both Eduardo and Carlos’s once beautiful homes in an identical state to that of María’s parents’ cave.

  ‘There is nothing left . . .’ María wiped away her tears roughly. ‘It is as if they were never here,’ she whispered, her voice breaking with emotion. ‘As if the past never happened. What about Susana, Elena and my beautiful grandchildren?’

  ‘They may have been interned, Mamá. You know many gitanos were during the war. Meñique told me it said so in the payo papers.’

  ‘Well, we will find nothing more here. Come, Lucía, let us go back. I—’

  ‘Mamá, I know this is hard to bear, but while we are here, surely we must see if we can find someone to talk to who can tell us if they know what happened to Eduardo and Carlos? There will be someone that does, I swear. So, let us walk up the hill to our family cave, see if anyone is left up there.’

  ‘You are right. If I don’t do this now, I will never again find the courage to return.’

  ‘Goodness, did we really walk all this way every day to fetch the water?’ Lucía puffed alongside her mother as they trudged up the hill.

  ‘You’re pregnant, Lucía, so it’s harder for you now.’

  ‘And so were you when you lived here, Mamá, many times!’ said Lucía. ‘I do not know how you did it.’

  ‘We all do what we need to when there is no alternative,’ said María. ‘And then when we do know something better, we realise how hard our life was. Lucía’ – María clutched at her daughter’s arm as they rounded the bend and their old cave came into view. ‘Look!’ María pointed above it. ‘There’s smoke coming from the chimney. ¡Dios mío! There is someone living there! I . . .’

  ‘Steady, Mamá,’ Lucía said as her mother’s step faltered and her hand went to her mouth in shock. She lowered María gently onto the wall that provided a safety barrier above the olive groves tumbling beneath the cave. ‘Sit here a while, take some water. It’s very hot today.’ Lucía offered a flask from the basket she was carrying and her mother drank long and plentifully.

  ‘Who can it be . . . ? What will we find behind that closed door?’

  ‘Perhaps it is just squatters who have taken over the place and are nothing to do with our family,’ Lucía shrugged. ‘We must not get our hopes up.’

  ‘I know, I know, but . . .’

  ‘Mamá, do you want to stay here and I will go and find out?’

  ‘No, whoever is in our cave, I must see for myself.’ María flapped her fan violently in front of her face. ‘Okay, so, we go.’

  Only seconds later, they were standing in front of their old front door, the blue paint now cracked and faded.

  ‘Shall I knock, or will you, Mamá?’

  ‘I will.’

  María did her best to compose herself, knowing that behind the sturdy piece of timber lay the answers to the questions she had asked herself a thousand times since she’d left Sacromonte. She lifted her hand, which shook violently, to tap against the wood.

  ‘You’ll have to knock harder than that, Mamá,’ Lucía encouraged. ‘Even a dog with his ears pricked wouldn’t hear it.’

  María knocked harder, holding her breath to listen for footsteps coming towards the door on the other side. There were none.

  ‘Maybe they’re out,’ shrugged Lucía.

  ‘No, no gitano would ever leave a fire burning in a cave that was empty,’ said María firmly. ‘There’s someone in there, I know there is.’ She knocked again, and still there was no response, so she went to the small glass-paned windows to try to look through them, but they were covered in the thick lace netting that she herself had sewn and fixed at the windows to prevent prying eyes such as hers.

  ‘¡Hola!’ she said, tapping on the windowpane. ‘It is María Amaya Albaycín. I used to live here. I have come back to find my family. Please let me in! Hello!’

  ‘It is Lucía, her daughter, here too. We mean no harm,’ Lucía added plaintively. ‘Please open up.’

  What Lucía had said obviously did the trick. The heavy sound of footsteps was heard approaching the door from inside, the latch was pulled up and the door opened by no mor
e than a few centimetres.

  One green eye peered from behind the door. Lucía met its gaze.

  ‘Here is Lucía,’ she indicated herself, and then, grabbing her mother, pulled María into the line of the eye, ‘and my mother. Who are you?’

  Finally, the door was opened. And there in front of them was a familiar face – a face now criss-crossed with age, the hair as white as the snow that fell on the Sierra Nevada mountaintops, the body so enormous it filled the doorway.

  ‘¡Dios mío!’ the woman whispered in shock as she gazed at them. ‘María . . . and little Lucía, whom I helped into the world on the night of Chorrojumo’s granddaughter’s wedding! I cannot believe it! I just cannot believe it!’

  ‘Micaela?! It is you!’ María exclaimed as the village bruja opened her arms to embrace both women against her massive bosom.

  ‘Come in, come in . . .’ Micaela said, her eyes flickering nervously along the dusty path as she stepped to the side to allow them in. Shutting the door firmly behind her, María saw the pine rocking chairs that Carlos had made for her. The sight of them brought tears to her eyes. And hope spinning up with them.

  ‘Well, of all the people in all the world . . . never did I think I would lay eyes on either of you again,’ Micaela chuckled, her laughter echoing around the walls of the cave. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘We have come partly because of Lucía’ – María indicated Lucía’s bump – ‘and partly to find out what happened to my sons and their families.’

  ‘So.’ Micaela placed a hand on the bump. ‘You have a girl in there, a treasure, and a fighter. She is very like you, María,’ she said as an aside. ‘Who is the lucky papá?’

  When neither woman answered, Micaela nodded.

  ‘Ay, I understand. Well, let us be happy that at least one of a new generation of gitanas will arrive soon into this terrible world of ours. So many are lost to us . . .’

  ‘Do you know the fate of my sons, Micaela?’ María shook her head and reached instinctively for Lucía’s hand.