The Spanish Bow

  I'd never noticed how plain it all was—no tile mosaics or exotic sculptural adornments, as in Barcelona; no columns or vast white flagstones, as in Madrid. Everything was dark yellow, or a cracked light red. The color of soil. The color of mud. As I passed, the houses' oak front doors—curved at the top, wide enough to fit a cart—looked more than ever like barn doors to me. Passing under a second-story balcony, I heard a softly explosive glottal noise; I thought of a rooting pig, then realized I was hearing snoring. Someone was taking his afternoon nap above me, with the doors thrown open.

  My family's door was just as barnlike as the others. When Luisa opened it, she shrieked and buried me in kisses, then tried to race me up the stairs to the main floor, just as we'd done as children. But now she was too wide. I stepped back to let her climb ahead of me, and she bunched up her skirt and scaled the stairs with exaggerated steps, mocking my gentlemanly gesture. Walking behind her, I noticed the dirt on her bare feet, the thick yellow pad of her cracked, calloused heel and the width of her calf, flaring muscularly from her Achilles tendon.

  Upstairs, I dug into one of my bags and pulled out the white gown I'd bought for my nephew Enric, finished at the bottom with a satin ribbon.

  "Lindo!" Luisa called out with delight. Then taking it in her hands, "But it's so tiny!"

  "The storekeeper said it would be just right for a baptism."

  "For a one-week-old's baptism, but not for a one-year-old's."

  She continued to hold it up, as if the fabric might widen if she stared at it long enough.

  My mother came and put her arms around my waist. "That's what she gets for waiting."

  "Mamá," Luisa protested—and I did not need to hear the rest, to know this argument had waxed and waned for a year, sustained by irregular letters from the baby's father, an atheist, serving in Morocco.

  "Keep it for the next baby," came Tía's leathery voice from a dark corner—the most optimistic thing I'd ever heard the old lady say.

  "Have you heard from him?" I asked Luisa, under my breath.

  "Not lately."

  There was an awkward pause, and then I was nearly knocked over by Percival, who had grabbed me from behind.

  "You're skinny!" my eldest brother shouted, looming over me.

  I struggled free. "You're blue." His loose white tunic was speckled with paint. There were smears even on his large ears, which protruded from his stubbly scalp, all close-shorn except for a large black forelock over his forehead. "Have you become an artist?"

  "I have."

  "I heard nothing about it!"

  "My exhibition finishes tomorrow." His lips were twisted into a braggart's pout. My mother was smiling.

  "Finishes? You mean closes? Where?"

  "Here, in Campo Seco. I am the next Picasso."

  "I had no idea. Mamá, Luisa—why didn't you mention it in your letters?"

  Tía sat in the corner, fanning herself stiffly, scowling at all of us.

  "All that music has left you blind, Feliu," Luisa laughed. "Look up!"

  I did. The ceiling was the same color as the paint flecks—pale blue, except for the exposed dark-wood beams, just as it had always been, in this and every room. The sky-blue surface, freshly painted, should have looked familiar. I'd stared at it for years.

  "Your old room is the only one that's still wet, and the smell is strong," my mother said, ladling the food onto dishes. "You'll have to sleep out here, on the floor."

  "If you can sleep on a floor, given what you're used to," my brother added. "We hear the palace beds are so high off the ground, you get nosebleeds."

  I was still catching my breath, still laughing, but there was something else in my voice; I heard it myself as it slipped out, an off-key note. "Percival—you're not a painter?"

  He pushed my shoulder a little too hard to be friendly. And then, to make up for it, he pulled our father's old chair away from the table, gesturing for me to take the place of honor, though he was older. I stalled, unsure. Mamá and Luisa called out in unison, "La comida está fría," and their combined voices woke the baby sleeping in the corner. I reached out a hand, waving to catch his attention, but his eyes were deep, wet wrinkles of fury. Luisa smiled apologetically and carried him to the table, where he bawled through the dinner blessings. Mamá tried to hurry the routine but Tía's mouth kept moving long after the rest of us had crossed ourselves.

  I kept waiting to feel more comfortable in my home, more comfortable with my family, but the feeling never materialized. The low point came during the second course, as we worked our way through the gluey pink rice and rubbery shrimp. At a grunting, suckling noise, I looked up, thinking it was Tía extracting the last bits of meat from the tails. But it was Enric. Luisa was nursing her red-cheeked baby at the table. As he sucked, one tightly curled fist punched first at the air and then, with more satisfaction, at the soft white drum of her breast. She continued eating, lifting her fork each time over his flailing arm. A part of one dark nipple was visible, level with her plate.

  I stopped eating.

  "You said they starved you on the train," Mamá protested. "Where's your appetite?"

  "It's good, Mamá. I'm tired."

  "Tired? You need to eat. Have seconds. After all that travel."

  "Travel is the problem," I said. "It unsettled my stomach."

  "Percival, pass me his plate." She held out her hand.

  "No, Mamá. I'll have some more wine. See? A half-glass more."

  "You can drink, but you can't eat? Is that what court life has taught you?"

  Luisa was still filling her cheeks with rice; the baby kept letting go of her nipple and then finding it again, pushing his face into her breast. Luisa sighed. "He can't latch on properly. He's all stuffed up with a cold. Do you think he'll be all right for the ceremony tomorrow?"

  "He'll be fine," Tía said, her mouth full of rice.

  "Everyone has it," Mamá said. "And with the heat—what misery. The church will be cool, though. He'll sleep through most of it."

  I cleared my throat. "Does she have to nurse the baby at the table?"

  Luisa ignored the comment, but my mother's face darkened. Percival looked at our mother, then cast a sidelong glance toward me. I felt everyone's eyes on me, expecting an apology.

  "Can't she go into another room?"

  My mother set down her fork.

  "It's not very discreet—that's all I'm saying. You asked me what happened to my appetite."

  Mamá wiped her mouth with her napkin. She took a deep breath. "How—and where—does Queen Ena nurse her infants?"

  "I haven't seen her do it," I stammered. "Maybe someone does it for her."

  Percival snickered.

  "She certainly has many babies," Mamá said. "Close together, and not very healthy, so we hear. If she isn't nursing them herself, perhaps that is the problem."

  "Can't we talk about something else?"

  "I nursed you at the table, Feliu," she said. "In the church, in the street, on the stair."

  She was reminding me of my beginnings, putting me in my place.

  "Please, Mamá—"

  "I wouldn't look to royalty for lessons in how to live," she said. "I'm glad you're doing well in Madrid, but don't forget—it's not real life, living at court."

  "Actually, I've received a surprising honor," I started to say, wondering how best to mention the sapphire without seeming to boast.

  My mother seemed not to hear. "Watch and learn and prosper. But don't lose your head."

  I persevered. "Not so much an honor, as a kind of reward..." But it was coming out all wrong. "I suppose," I tried again, smiling weakly, "you'd call it more of a gift."

  My mother's stern eyes met mine. "In life, there are no gifts. Do you remember the free violin lessons?" Her voice wavered. "Do you remember the piano?" She tossed her napkin on the table and left the room.

  Luisa broke the long silence that ensued. "Have you gotten to see much of the Queen?"

  "The back of her head, main
ly," I said.

  Percival laughed. My self-deprecation had earned me brief entry back into the fold. But I knew I wouldn't tell them about the sapphire now.

  ***

  Hours later, Percival shook me awake. I reached toward him in the dark, felt the thick coarse fabric of his sleeve and smelled something like turpentine. It turned out to be rank home-brewed liquor—stronger and less skillfully brewed than my father's regional liqueur.

  "Get dressed."

  "Why are you wearing a coat?"

  I sat up and banged my head. I'd forgotten I'd gone to sleep under the dining-room table, feet splayed toward the open balcony doors. From the street, I heard a light whistle, followed by stifled mirth: Percival's friends, waiting for us.

  Outside, I stood at a distance while Percival concluded, in muffled whispers, some long-simmering argument with one of the other men—was that little Jordi? And Remei's cousin, too? I heard my old nickname, Cerillito, and Percival saying that he'd hidden a wheelbarrow near the church, to aid our escape; if I couldn't run fast enough he'd push me in it. I didn't press for further details. I was more concerned with straining to hear what had been said about me, and finding satisfaction in Percival's insistence that I come.

  Under the footbridge someone had stored three lanterns and a pile of fat sticks. When the first lantern was lit, I finally saw the faces. The flame leaped, the shadows settled, and where I expected to see full cheeks and tousled hair, I saw red eyes and trembling Adam's apples, protruding above the edges of tightly tied bandannas. These were not boys, they were men, and they did not look merely mischievous. Laughter had petered out into nervous chuckles, and then into anxious throat-clearings punctuated with barked commands, issued at half-volume. Jordi wrapped a rag around a stick while he told us that back home, his son was coughing flecks of blood and his wife was distraught; he couldn't stay away long. He drained the bottle Percival had brought and threw it hard against one of the bridge's wooden pilings, where it shattered. I was still thinking: Little Jordi is married? He has a son?

  "Percival—where are we going?"

  "I told you," he said. "The church."

  "What are we doing there?"

  He turned his back to me. I heard Remei's cousin say Father Basilio's name. He accented the last symbol and lengthened it—Basili'oro, "Basil of the Gold."

  "Father Basilio isn't rich," I said to the others' backs. "He doesn't even eat meat."

  A man called Quim started lighting his rag torch and the others flapped their arms at him, telling him to save it until they were on the other side of town. He dropped the torch and stepped on it, struggling to suffocate the flame.

  "I don't mean just on Fridays. I mean on all days."

  Quim swore under his breath. A gurgle erupted from another man's throat—a forced, drowning laugh.

  "He doesn't have a housekeeper," I continued—that was a polite word for a live-in girlfriend. Most of the priests had them.

  No one heard me.

  "We used to bring him—right, Percival?—we used to bring him tomatoes."

  "We 'll give him tomatoes," one of the others muttered.

  "Why waste tomatoes?" someone asked. "Use cobblestones."

  I said, "If this is about money, you're going to the wrong place. You should see Father Basilio's socks!" But my attempt at humor came out as a squeak. In Madrid, I had grown used to turning heads as soon as I pulled my bow across a string. Here no one listened to me.

  Only Percival cocked his head in my direction, granting me a profile backlit by the flicker of Quim's lantern. "The Church is sitting on a fortune," he said.

  "But our church isn't the Church."

  "They refuse to pay taxes, while our neighbors are losing their farms—except Oviedo, of course." That was the duke, the one Don Miguel Rivera worked for. "He's twice as rich as when you ran off to Barcelona." He said it as if the two things were connected: the rising power of the aristocracy and my pursuit of a musical career.

  Percival turned back toward the others. The huddle tightened; I stood outside of it.

  "Father Basilio will recognize you," I said, pulling on Percival's sleeve. "How can you do this the night before your nephew's baptism?"

  Percival spun and hovered over me. He laid his hands across my shoulders, stooping so that his forehead touched mine. "Basilio will stay inside," he whispered. "He knows from the last time. These fellows won't hurt anyone. They're just sending a message."

  "It's wrong," I said.

  "You're just soft on the priest."

  "Not him—it could be anyone. There are better ways to do things. There are better ways to send messages."

  Percival said, "You'd like us to talk to someone in the Cortes? Someone handpicked by Oviedo? Someone the Rivera brothers do favors for?" He pushed away from me and forced a chuckle. "Or do you mean the King? Maybe you're right. Go talk to him. We'll wait here." When I didn't speak or move, he said, "What have you ever discussed with the King? Horseracing? Whores? Don't pretend you have his ear. Our kind of people never have his ear."

  "Please, Percival." I said softly, ignoring the impatient glances of the others. "You don't have to be involved."

  He shook his head slowly, grabbed my ears and made my head swivel in time with his. We were boys again, but only for a second.

  "Somos o no somos?"

  "No somos. We should stay out of this mess."

  "Stay out? We 're in it."

  "Not me."

  "You want to see the bulls through the barrier, eh? No risk?"

  "I don't want to see anything," I whispered. "I'm not going."

  "They'll wonder about you. I wonder about you sometimes, brother. Which side are you on?"

  "I'm not on any side. Percival—you shouldn't be doing this." I reached out to embrace him, but he stepped backward, into the darkness. The lanterns had been snuffed—Quim's torch, too. The smells lingered—oily, soaked rags, the acrid smell of Quim's burned shoe. The group was slumping away from me—uneven footsteps, clattering along the stony riverbed of the dry wash. Then they scaled the riverbank, cleared a small hill, and vanished.

  I fought sleep the rest of the night, waiting for the sounds of Percival's return. An hour before dawn, I heard footsteps on the stairs, and surrendered to confusing, long-delayed dreams. In what felt like minutes, the house was bustling again. Luisa was kicking at my feet, extended beneath the table, and my mother was dragging the blanket from my bare legs and chastising me for sleeping too long on an important day.

  The walk to church was agonizing. I held back, delaying everyone, while my mother clucked sympathetically about my legs, a ready-made excuse. Down every alley and around every turn, I looked for signs of the previous night's malice. The scorch mark I saw darkening a fine stone house was really just a long morning shadow. The windowpane on the school building had been cracked a week earlier, my mother informed me, by boys playing pelota in the plaza. I was imagining the horrible shouts of men with torches while Mamá mused, "It's funny to say, but it's almost pretty, the way the cracks catch the early light. It looks like a dew-covered spiderweb."

  Coming around the last corner, with the church tower in view, I saw a pile of white robes, a collapsed figure in the street. I gasped and tripped into Mamá's side, steadying myself against her arm. But it was only a sheet blown off a balcony clothesline. A young girl waved down to us from the balcony and then appeared at street level a moment later, to retrieve her muddied linen while her unseen mother moaned above us, lamenting the wasted effort. The little scene made Luisa laugh; she had been walking just ahead of us, with baby Enric in her arms, both of them radiant, as if there 'd never been a more perfect morning.

  Percival had taken another route. Avoiding me at the house that morning, he'd found an excuse to leave early by volunteering to stop at the bakery to pick up the special pastry that had been ordered for the occasion. Or so he said. I rehearsed what I would tell my mother if Percival never showed up—if he jumped on a train bound for Alicante or C�
�diz, and was never seen again. As we crossed the plaza, I was still shaping the words in my head when I heard Luisa say, "There he is, coming with the pastry box. I want to get inside and settle the baby before the others arrive."

  No graffiti, no broken glass—just the cool church, the smell of dusty darkness and the flicker of candles. Perhaps the boys—the men—had decided instead to hike into the hills, unearthing hidden bottles. Perhaps they had wobbled all the way to the shack of ill repute where Juanita, the aging orphan girl, lived.

  My thoughts were interrupted by a tap on my arm: Father Basilio. From one side, his smile looked normal and welcoming. Then he turned. The left side of his face drooped. Swelling half-closed one purple eye. A vertical gash ran just in front of his ear.

  "I must..." he said in a low whisper, his voice strained.

  Mamá, standing next to me, turned and saw his face. "Father! What happened?"

  "An accident. It's nothing."

  Ignoring her alarm, intent on his message, he persevered, pinning me with one beetle-bright eye while the other remained an unfocused and watery slit.

  "There is a name I need to tell you—"

  Heart pounding, I steadied myself to hear the recriminations.

  "Because you will understand the importance," the priest continued. "You have the position now; you will tell the court of Madrid."

  He expected this to become a national matter? I looked around, panicky, for my brother. He was sitting to one side, relaxing in the church pew, demonstrating oblivion with a well-practiced poker face.

  "That they should never forget"—and here Father Basilio gestured dramatically with his robed arms—"Scarlatti."

  I froze, trapped between the priest's grand gesture and Mamá's confused stare.