I took the train, alone, to Madrid. It was nearly empty, though at every stop the platforms were crowded with families tearfully embracing their conscripted sons, who were boarding trains headed the opposite direction, toward Barcelona, for transport across the Mediterranean. Internal battles already raged. Workers called a general strike. In the days to come, martial law would interrupt train transport. Radical groups would dynamite several rail lines, and roads to and from Barcelona would be barricaded. What Alberto had predicted, what he and my mother had wanted to save me from, was happening: chaos and insurrection. People I met on the train heard I was from Catalonia and assaulted me with questions: "Is it just an antiwar movement? Or is it a Republican uprising? Have they really burned a hundred churches? Is it true the women are fighting next to the men, that even the prostitutes are armed?" I couldn't answer their questions, except to say, "I think it was about Morocco, mainly."
I hadn't paid attention in the week before I left town. I didn't even recognize the names of the various faction leaders. I had no opinion about the men who faced execution once the fighting ceased. Semana Trágica—The Tragic Week, it would be called later, a prelude to violence in the decades to come. I had been immersed in my own world, the world of the cello. I can't say I regretted my ignorance—if anything, I took pride in it, the luxurious and self-deluding pride that only youth can afford.
PART III
Madrid 1909
CHAPTER 8
"Do not mention Barcelona," I was warned by a lady dressed in bumblebee stripes of yellow satin and black lace as we stood in the palace antechamber.
"Don't mention Catalonia at all," an older woman added. She had red satin flowers pinned on top of her head and held a matching fan to the bodice of her red ruffled dress.
"Nor even the train ride here," the bumblebee lady said. "It upsets her terribly to think about the rails being blown up. She's ridden on those same rails—in her own private car, yes, but on the very same rails!"
Not Barcelona, not Catalonia, not the train, I thought.
The count parted the throng of women with an outstretched hand, steering his way with surprising skill for a man who was nearly blind. "Music, Master Feliu, that is all you need to discuss."
The count nodded in the direction of the halberdiers as we passed into the official chamber. It was as elaborately furnished as all the rooms we'd passed through so far. Cherubim floated between puffy clouds on the painted ceilings; chandeliers hung from bunched satin ropes.
Another man introduced the count. The count introduced me. The ladies took their seats against the wall. The Queen Mother, Maria Cristina, gestured toward an overstuffed, tapestry-covered chair. I had to jump up a little to sit on it, and my heels hung slightly above the floor. Two small dogs with bulging, black-olive eyes circled my feet warily before returning to recline at their mistress's feet.
"You had a good trip here, I hope?" the Queen Mother said, enunciating each word slowly. She had a pinched nose, thin lips, and ashen eyebrows. Her hair was silver and tightly curled. It seemed as if every ounce of color and life had been drained from her—cut off at the wasp waist molded by her tight ivory bodice.
I didn't know how to answer her without mentioning the train. I tensed my shoulders slightly—an unintentional, exhausted twitch—which she accepted as my answer.
"I look forward to hearing you perform soon with our Conde Gunmán's dear daughter. Until then," she continued, expelling the words with what seemed to be a great effort, "let us set aside the topic. Talking about music without hearing it is nearly as dull as talking about food without eating it, don't you think? Tell me about yourself."
My mind sifted and discarded numerous possibilities. I glanced back quickly, searched the room for clues, and tried to send a meaningful and beseeching glance the count's way, but that was a wasted effort. I looked up and nearly lost myself in the mural high overhead—muscular arms and babies' bottoms and tunics billowing everywhere. How could anyone stand being stared at so relentlessly? Perhaps it was easier to be blind in a room such as this one.
The count's cough brought me back to the present moment. The Queen Mother gazed into the middle distance, her eyes avoiding mine.
"One man has suggested I offer you an allowance," she said finally. "This man believes you have something to contribute to your country."
I did not know how to respond without mentioning music, a subject she had already dismissed.
Finally she snapped: "Tell me dear, where are you from?"
Not Barcelona, not Catalonia. I stammered, "From near the sea, Your Majesty."
She pressed her lips together, which made the skin of her soft jaw-line quiver. "And which sea would that be?"
"The Mediterranean."
I heard the shuffling in the back of the room, the stiff rubbing of the ladies' gowns as they stifled giggles.
"Your father, what does he do?"
"A customs inspector," I blurted, eager to have stumbled into safe territory. But the relief didn't last. "Except he died. In Cuba. El Desastre."
"I am certain he served Spain well." But she looked unsettled. "And your mother? Was she also in Cuba?"
"No, in Catalonia." I winced at the mention of it, and kept going. "But yes, she was raised in the colonies, and moved here only later."
"Marvelous. And how did she compare the two places?"
I paused again, but the Queen Mother's hard dark eyes seemed to caution against obfuscation. I rambled, "Mamá's uncle was hanged. Plus, there were the diseases. She never wanted to go back, even before Papá died. So I guess she thought Spain was better."
The count rushed up behind me, guided at his elbow by the bumblebee lady. Now he was the one stammering. "Feliu, why don't you say something about your musical training?"
The Queen Mother waved him away. Her two dogs launched into orbit around her legs, their little black paws beating at the floor in excitement. "No, it's quite all right. I'm more interested in knowing what this boy is like, even when his cello is in another room."
"Actually," I mumbled, "I don't have my own cello."
"What's that?"
The count put his hands on my shoulders to silence me, but the Queen Mother had heard. "We do have a royal luthier, if you need a cello made. A gift to welcome you to Madrid. Unless you insist on something German or Italian."
"Spanish is fine. I would be grateful."
"Very good," she said, pleased to have ended our interview on an efficacious note.
Count Guzmán made me recount the whole episode for the condesa to hear. I had joined my new teacher and his wife at their royal apartment for the midday meal, as I would join them often for the next several years, before I returned to the small room in the servants' quarters, one floor above, that I shared with an architecture apprentice from a small town outside Lisbon.
"Well, at least we'll always know what this boy is thinking," the condesa laughed. "A far cry from some of the students that Maestro Guzmán has had."
I wanted to hear about these other students and their illustrious careers. But just then, the count's daughter entered the room.
She was wearing a simple white sheath that bunched just under her breasts, and an open neckline that revealed perfect rosy skin. Her auburn hair was swept away from her forehead and dropped to the sides in long sausage curls.
"Don't you stand when a lady enters the room?" she asked. I stumbled to my feet and waited for some acknowledgment. She prolonged my discomfort by studying me from head to foot.
"You looked much taller sitting down," she said.
"Isabel," her mother chided, and nodded at me to return to my seat. "Come hear this funny story." And I had to repeat it all over again: my insipid conversation with royalty, and my tactless mention of family sorrows, which had ended miraculously with the offer of a cello.
Count Gunmán's daughter feigned huffiness. "We've had family tragedies, haven't we? If I'd known it was so easy to get a royal instrument, I would have cried to th
e Queen Mother myself."
The count humored his daughter with a smile, the dark skin around his sunken eyes crinkling. Except for his impairment, he was a handsome man, clean-shaven, with a sharp jaw and a fine wardrobe that his wife and daughter fussed over, just as they took turns satisfying all his needs.
"I've played for the royal family at least two hundred times. Haven't I, Papá? I mean, really..."
The count wiped his mouth with his napkin and then set it aside, raising his palm, commanding full attention before he spoke. Isabel stopped talking. The condesa set down her fork. I had just loaded a toolarge bite into my mouth and it took me a while to finish chewing, which evidently he could hear. Giving up, I swallowed hard, and winced at the knot of food caught in my throat.
"Now seriously, Feliu," he said. "About the Queen Mother. You were lucky today. But be careful. In this palace, she is the one to impress. She loves music, and she loves her musicians, and she loves her private chamber-music parties. But don't make any mistakes."
I nodded and swallowed again, my throat still aching slightly.
"If she asks you your favorite cellist, the answer is Boccherini. He was court composer a century ago, but she acts as if it were yesterday. If she asks you what foreign language you are learning, the answer is French."
"That's true," I started to say, my mouth empty at last. "French and English, and a little German—"
"The answer is French," he repeated. "Now, what else?" He tilted his face towards the condesa's. She didn't answer, but he nodded tersely as if she had.
"If she asks you about the weather outside, fine," he continued. "But if she asks you about the temperature inside, play dumb. Every winter, there is some disagreement about whether the palace is too cold."
"Every winter for the last three years," Isabel interjected.
"What happened three years ago?" I asked. The count, the condesa, and their daughter all stared at me.
Of course. The royal wedding.
"All the members of the royal family have their own apartments, obviously," the count continued, and I nodded again, because I had heard it was so, and I had puzzled over the idea of a young man sleeping in a bedroom far from his young wife.
"And likewise," he said, "each has his own friends. And the friends of one are not necessarily the friends of the others, if you understand me. So be careful what you say, and to whom; or better yet, say nothing at all."
The condesa smiled heartily and lifted her glass for a toast. "Here's to the luck of being a musician—someone who does not need to speak, and so may live a long and happy life!"
Isabel lifted her goblet in front of her nose, so that her face was mostly hidden. But from the side, I saw her clowning, her lips puckered and her nostrils flared. She noticed me noticing, and made a show of becoming sober again, as if she'd only been fighting a sneeze.
Setting my glass back down I asked, "But why do I need to impress the Queen Mother most? Doesn't the King care about music?"
At this, Isabel guffawed, a spray of wine leaked from the condesa's mouth, and even the count chuckled tenderly, reaching out with fumbling hands to offer his own napkin.
"The King cares about polo," Isabel said.
"He doesn't go to the opera?"
"He goes, but not for the music. The problem is that he doesn't always come back."
The count's fond smile faded again. "You see why my not-so-young daughter hasn't married yet? She always takes things just one step too far."
Isabel looked down at her lap. I persevered: "And the Queen?"
This time, Isabel knew better than to speak. Finally the condesa, her chin wiped and her calm restored, answered me. "She does love music, actually. She hosted her own private concerts before Alfonsito, Jaime, and Beatriz were born. But three children in three years—I suppose she's tired. And even so, she hasn't done what they brought her from England to do."
The count cleared his throat, and for a second time conversation stopped. When it resumed, the subjects were dull and safe: "How are your accommodations? Have you written a letter to your mother yet?"—leaving my mind to continue mulling what had been left unsaid.
I was not too provincial and slow-witted to know what the condesa had meant, about the unfinished duties of Queen Victoria Eugenia—Ena for short. Her firstborn, Alfonsito, was a hemophiliac who had nearly died at his own circumcision. No one was supposed to talk about it, but it was hard to ignore the fact that he lived in his own corner of the palace, tended by nurses and doctors, rarely seen. Something also seemed wrong with one-year-old Jaime, who did not babble or turn his head at the sound of a clap. At least the infant Beatriz seemed healthy enough.
As for Queen Ena herself, she was said to carry herself as gloomily as had her grandmother and namesake. Though only twenty-one, she had a heavy weight on her shoulders. Bourbon heirs had always been scarce—King Alfonso himself had been born just months after his father had died—and the quest for healthy male children had become a national preoccupation.
Toward the meal's end, a footman came to the door and the count excused himself. Changing the subject, the condesa asked, "Your roommate, Rodrigo—is he a good match for you?"
"He says he spends most of his time traveling between Madrid, Lisbon and Paris. I suppose that means I'll have more privacy for practicing."
"How convenient."
I nodded, but I was still thinking about the royal family. "May I ask you one more question?"
The condesa leaned forward, eager to indulge in gossip before her husband returned.
"Do you like Queen Ena?"
"It's not our place to like or dislike," Isabel recited.
The condesa smiled at her daughter gently, then turned back to me. "Even if it were our place, and she were not our Royal Majesty, and she spoke our Castilian tongue with greater ease, I'd have to say ... we simply don't know her. That's the problem. No one does."
Pescado frito, Isabel mouthed silently to me, forcing me to focus on her lips.
Taking my leave of them both after dinner, I waited until the condesa had turned away. I took Isabel's hand, shook it awkwardly, and said under my breath: "The Queen likes fried fish?"
"Frío. The Queen is a cold fish, you imbecile." But she winked at me before closing the door.
My new cello was lustrously varnished, the color of amber. Its sound, however, was somewhat thin and brittle. "It must warm up," the luthier explained. "Every time you play it, you'll be vibrating the wood, changing its sound, helping it to mature like a fine wine." All the same, I was glad to have one familiar and constant thing: my bow.
I had lessons every day with the count in both cello and piano, as well as music theory. Unlike Alberto, a seasoned cellist who rarely played, Count Guzmán was a well-rounded dabbler who could pick up any instrument and play it competently, if not expertly. He had no stifled ambitions or regrets. Even his near-blindness, which had developed slowly over the last decade, didn't seem to dampen his spirits. He could still make out the occasional note or key signature on a page by holding it a centimeter in front of his brown eyes and moving it around slightly. On rare occasions, I saw him study a person or a painting in the same way, putting his face directly up to it and moving back and forth in small, irregular circles, like an insect pollinating a flower.
Most of the time, however, the count relied on his memory and his ears. That was his one regret, he told me cheerfully: that his sense of hearing hadn't become more acute as his vision failed. Wasn't that the expected compensation?
But no, he hurried to reassure me, not wanting me to think him morose. The true compensation was his family. Isabel and the condesa doted on him more every year, just as he needed them more every year. In a royal setting, this kind of intimate servitude was nothing strange—anyone of any rank had someone following after him, refilling his glass or pressing napkins into his lap, or bowing to his commands. "And if you think a blind man—or a king—is the only person who needs a retinue," the count told me pointedly, re
ading my thoughts, "then you are only beginning to understand the musician's life. A musician relies on people of all kinds: patrons, publishers, the audience. If you've brought any notions from Catalonia about the artist being an independent soul, leave them at the gate—they're rubbish."
Count Guzmán toyed with composition, but most of all he loved to teach. He had tutored many court musicians and even King Alfonso XIII, from the time the boy King was old enough to sit at a piano bench. The scores the count had used with royals and court prodigies were still marked from those long-ago lessons.
"That's where His Majesty would always stumble; counting was not his strength," the count would say nostalgically, listening to me play. "He couldn't wait to quit lessons." Or, "The Queen Mother let me help her with this piece. The fortes and pianos are all circled to remind her; she had a way of making every measure sound the same."
Had he ever taught the young Queen? Did she play? The count shook his head once, without clarification. Given the little that anyone would tell me, I imagined that if she did play piano, she would play quietly, timidly, without passion. On her wedding day three years earlier, a dramatic attempt had been made on her life. Everyone had marveled that the new Queen had shown no emotion at all, but continued to wave to the frenzied crowds from the palace balcony, her pale blue eyes blank as cornflowers. If she had sobbed, the gossips said, the people would have loved her more. But what did they know? Volume wasn't everything. Barcelona's streets had taught me that.
"Here is something different," the count interrupted my thoughts, extracting a worn sheet of piano music and running his fingers over its wrinkles. "Don't tell me—I recognize the paper. This is the Liszt piano concerto I kept from my last lesson with one of my best students. It was—what? Seven years ago. He never stayed anywhere for long. Anyway, this piece opens with some grueling hand positions. It's not for you, not this one."
"Why is it so ... creased?"
"That's where he stomped on it."
The Spanish Bow Page 13