“It was the same donkey?”
“Exactly the same one, Míster Crasman, Jenaro himself.”
Soleá paused to draw breath. She pulled her hair into a high bun. She fixed it in place with two hairpins and then carried on up with the wind in her face, her back to the golden Alhambra, and Atticus Craftsman breathlessly following her.
“Is that funny?” he asked shyly.
“Of course it’s funny. My family has spent fifty years laughing at that story.”
“Can I laugh, even though I’m not from your family?”
Soleá stared him in the eyes. She thought carefully about her answer and finally said, “Better not.”
• • •
Soleá’s brother Tomás, her cousin Arcángel, and Potaje, who ran the business, were waiting for them at the entrance to the cave, all three with their hands on their hips.
The tourist buses were starting to appear at the end of the road. Atticus hurriedly said hello to the three men and, guided by Soleá, went backstage to where the dancers, who were none other than Soleá’s sisters and cousins, had put on their flamenco dresses and clipped carnations into their hair.
Granny Remedios’s sister Dolores was waiting in her thronelike seat at the back of the stage, and next to her were two empty seats, both with Spanish guitars leaning up against them. She wore her hair in a large bun, with a huge flower, and earrings so big that they looked as if they were about to drop off her ears.
The corner that served as a dressing room was separated from the main area by silk curtains. Atticus and Soleá settled in to watch the show from there, elbow to elbow, sharing a jug of wine with lemon and ice.
About twenty Japanese tourists took their seats in the front rows, behind them were some noisy Americans, and at the back, three or four other couples. In less than ten minutes the room was full to bursting.
“Borrachita is dancing tonight,” Soleá told him. “Poor thing, she’s always wasted, has been ever since she was a girl.”
A middle-aged woman stumbled into the center of the stage and clacked some castanets with skill that Atticus admired. Then she began dancing, very gracefully, but Soleá shook her head sadly and started whispering to her cousins.
“She used to be on the street, y’know,” she whispered in Atticus’s ear.
Then the younger women came out. The Japanese shouted, “Olé, olé!” and took photos with their digital cameras.
Aunt Dolores shouted and clapped to cheer them on.
They came into the dressing room, changed their dresses—“Don’t look, míster”—and went out with different flowers, different shoes, different fierce looks.
The show ended a couple of hours later. The tourists left, satisfied, and Atticus got up to go home.
“Where are you going, Míster Crasman?” Soleá said in surprise. “This is when the jarana really starts, as soon as the last gringo has left, if you’ll pardon the expression.”
It was midnight.
Potaje locked the door and everyone moved the seats to the sides. Arcángel grabbed the guitar and moved into the center. He played.
This time Atticus felt a strange magic spreading through his body and taking hold of him. Potaje struck the cajón and toothless Aunt Dolores chanted a spell: A youthful spirit thrust her forward into the space. She danced.
The girls let their hair down and formed a group in the middle of the stage, surrounding the old woman. They all moved their hands like glowworms as they danced. You could feel the blood beating around their bodies from their heads to their toes, while a group of guys led by Tomás feasted on them with their eyes, their hands, their mouths.
Atticus couldn’t take his eyes off those writhing waists and the legs that sometimes escaped from the frills of their skirts. Ankles, sweat, heaving chests, smooth hair cascading down backs. Clapping hands, stamping heels, the grandmother’s keening song, the beat of the guitar. Little by little, the cave filled with other men and women, other guitars and other echoes, until the air became hard to breathe.
After what felt like an eternity under some kind of hypnosis, Atticus realized that Soleá wasn’t by his side. He sought her with his gaze and found her in a dark corner of the cave. A young man was closing in on her, and she was letting him. He put a strong arm around her waist, she flung her head back. He leaned in to say something in her ear, she laughed, lifted her hand to her mouth, blew him a kiss.
And Atticus Craftsman, bewitched by the dark arts of the cave’s music, felt the urge to kill that man with his bare hands.
He went outside. He breathed in the fragrant air of the Sacromonte hillside. The heady scent of jasmine turned his stomach. Then he saw the sun rising on the other side of the hill. Dawn had caught him unawares. He didn’t know the way back to Soleá’s house, so he lay down to sleep by the side of the road, next to a yellow rubbish bin, like a true drunk, muttering curses on all the women on earth.
When he woke up, he discovered Granny Remedios’s toothless smile a few inches from his face.
“Good morning, míster” she said with a naturalness that didn’t square with it being four in the afternoon. “Your stew’s getting cold.”
Atticus suppressed the urge to vomit. He got up as best he could and recognized the room, his room, with its collection of fans and dolls in flamenco dresses. The rest of the family was spread about the house. The table was laid, the kids were squealing in the courtyard, the girls were chatting by the window, Tomás was snoozing on a sofa, and Soleá was smiling at him out of the shadows. He imagined her sharing her bed with one of those exotic-looking men, making love to him with a passion comparable only to that shown onstage by her cousins, those three felines.
“I’m pleased to see you, Míster Crasman,” she said jokingly. “It looks like you survived your first night in Granada.”
“Good morning, Soleá,” he replied.
“My brother Tomás brought you back,” she explained. “He found you lying in the street and talking English. Bravo!”
“What was I saying?”
“No one knows. I’m the only one here who speaks any English, and I was already in bed.”
Atticus started daydreaming about seeing her asleep.
“I’m so ashamed . . .” he began, but Soleá put her hand over his mouth.
“Shush,” she said. “Don’t beat yourself up because you had fun. Y’know what we say here? No one can take away last night’s dancing!”
They sat at the table a long while after lunch, digesting slowly. When evening came, Soleá took Atticus out for a walk, leading him as if he were a pet dog, guided by the wind in her hair, through the old streets of El Albaicín. She told him stories about her family, gradually sharing more. When they got to the San Miguel viewpoint, she stopped by his side, facing the Alhambra, and took a deep breath.
“So,” she said, “it’s time to think about the plan.”
“What plan?” Atticus had lost all notion of time and space.
“Míster Crasman, what plan do you think? The plan to convince my granny to let us see the poems!”
“Oh, yes! That plan.”
Atticus hadn’t thought about any kind of strategy. The matter seemed simple: He would present his credentials to the old lady and make her an offer she couldn’t refuse. He had imagined that his visit to Granada would consist of sitting down for a couple of hours of formal negotiation, shaking hands, and then beating a polite but hasty retreat.
However, things had changed radically since he had arrived at Soleá’s house. The spirit of el duende, the mysterious imp everyone talked about, had seized control of his will to such a degree that he was starting to doubt his true intentions. In the time he had spent there, he had felt like he was being dragged from one scene to another, unable to intervene in the main plot, and, in some way, he had come to the conclusion that the real treasure wasn’t the García Lorca poems, it was the blood that ran through these people’s veins.
It was May 30, and Atticus Craftsman, stand
ing in front of the Alhambra, understood that up to that moment he had only been sampling flavors with the tip of his tongue, and now he wanted to eat the whole dish. Mop the sauce up with bread, lick his fingers, clean the plate.
“The first thing,” he said, “will be to buy myself a Spanish guitar.”
CHAPTER 34
Berta didn’t have a guest room at her tiny flat on Calle del Alamillo, so María had to make do with sleeping on the sofa, although she was wrapped in the finest linen sheets and covered with a mohair blanket that her boss had bought especially for the occasion, out of maternal instinct, at a housewares shop they passed on the walk home.
Despite having eaten the bowl of hot soup and the potato tortilla that Berta made for her while she had a hot bath, with aromatic candles and relaxing oil, María was still trembling with cold. Her teeth chattered and her joints ached. She bundled herself up in the blanket even more and hugged the pillow as if it were a life jacket and she was on the point of drowning at the bottom of a freezing-cold lake.
Berta sat on the sofa beside her. So far, neither of them had wanted to start the conversation they both knew was inevitable. It had all been kind words and good intentions, a mug of warm milk, cotton pajamas, a bit of classical music, and a few tears of thanks and shame.
“So, César Barbosa,” Berta finally said, to break the ice and get a bit of warmth flowing.
María could do nothing but nod, her hands clutching the mug of milk and her eyes fixed on the carpet.
“What a scoundrel,” Berta went on. “I had him figured out the day he walked into the office with that stubble and that dirty jacket, the tattoo, the tough-guy look, and the motorcycle helmet. I really don’t know what you see in men like him when it’s clear as day that they have no good intentions.”
“Because you’re clever, Berta.” María turned on her and added, “And that’s why you’ve been single your whole life.”
“Better alone than in bad company,” Berta replied, somewhat put out. “I hope you’ll call the whole thing off now.”
“It’s not that easy,” replied María nervously. “Things are a lot more complicated than they seem. I’ve tried to break up with César loads of times, and he’s gotten violent. He says there’s no way he’s going to let a stupid woman like me leave him.”
“Sure, because he’s the kind of guy who thinks he’s better than you, right?”
María burst out crying. “Oh, Berta! What have I got myself into?”
“I hate to say it, but I told you so, María,” said Berta. “I don’t want to be cruel, but remember what I said to you? That you were risking your family and your happiness. You should’ve listened to me.”
Exhausted by her fear and pain, María slowly began to drop off into a deep sleep; she felt as if the pillow was suffocating her, but she didn’t have the strength to lift her head and breathe. Berta watched her sleep for a while, then before long she too began to nod off. It had been an intense day.
When Berta got up from the sofa to turn off the living room lights, she saw that María had gone to sleep clutching her cell phone. She was gripping it with superhuman strength, as if it held the key to her survival. Gently, trying not to wake her, Berta uncurled each of María’s fingers from the device, one by one, until she was able to extract it. Then, when she was just about to turn it off and leave it on the table, she noticed that the little red New Message light was flashing.
She peered at the phone and saw the name César Barbosa light up intermittently. Then, feeling no pang of conscience, she decided to read the latest abusive and threatening text: “I know you’re at your boss’s place. If you rat on me I’ll kill you both.”
The phone dropped to the floor. María let out a weak moan. Berta felt the room spin around her, as if she was on a merry-go-round at the fair, and the lights, the music, the laughter, and the shouts of children were making her nauseous. She was defenseless, trapped in a tiny flat on Calle del Alamillo, with nothing to protect her but an old lock and an old door and a few old neighbors.
She picked the phone back up and read the last sentence again: “If you rat on me I’ll kill you both.” She went out to the balcony. She scanned the street from one corner to the other, looking for the sinister figure of César Barbosa, his leather jacket, his pointy shoes, and his metal belt buckle, but the night was calm and silent. It was too silent.
She crouched down. For no particular reason. She simply crouched down.
She crawled on all fours to the table where she kept her house phone. She lifted the receiver. She dialed the number that she had memorized, absurdly, as if she was the girl eating sunflower seeds in the square, who sees the short-trousered boy, the one who stares at her, bumps into her all over the village, throws pebbles at her window and dreams about her, who repeats her name in the echoing gully, and then writes it in white chalk on the wall by the allotment.
“Manchego?”
“Berta?”
“Help, come quick!”
CHAPTER 35
Inspector Manchego was on a winning streak. He had been dealt three aces, and the pot, a pile of five-euro notes, came to more than €250. Macita looked like he might have two pairs, Josi had just said, “I’m out,” and Carretero was bluffing, not very well because when he was lying he always got a nervous tic in his nostrils, and Manchego, who had known him since they were kids, couldn’t fail to notice the flapping of those enormous blowholes. So they were either neck and neck or Carretero was done for—as he well knew from the days when they used to play mus together at the village club.
Manchego was already rubbing his hands together and mentally savoring some tasty dish from the restaurant he had promised to take Berta to when his cell phone rang in his trouser pocket.
“Christ on a bike, don’t you dare pick up,” spat Macita; the poor sod thought the money was his.
Manchego looked at him with a mixture of disdain and ferocity as he took the cell phone out of his pocket quicker than John Wayne drawing his pistol in Stagecoach and waved it in front of Macita’s eyes.
“For fuck’s sake, this isn’t the phone in a grocery shop, Macita,” he said. “It’s crucial for my work. It’s the line that can separate life and death, catch a killer, avert tragedy. And you’re telling me not to pick up, Mr. Small-timer? Stick to what you know. However many times you write gourmet on the tacky sign outside your shop, you’re still selling cans of tuna. Don’t pick up, don’t pick up,” he added mockingly, imitating his friend’s nasal voice. “And what if it’s to do with drugs, or a gunfight, or an armed robbery?”
He answered.
“Berta?” he stammered.
“What a prick!” exclaimed Macita.
The truth is, Manchego found it easier to hide three aces than keep his cool when he had a new love interest. His friends had noticed something stirring the inspector’s complex emotions the first time he turned up late for their game of poker with some excuse about work piling up, his face flushed, a stupid smile on his lips, and an absent look. He had confused a pair of queens with a pair of jacks, left his portion of garlic prawns half eaten, and hadn’t been on the ball all night.
“Manchego, Manchego,” Míguel teased him, “you’ve fallen in love again, say no more.”
“Who? Me?”
The inspector fell in love easily. And he wasn’t picky. Nor was he very realistic. The guys had accompanied him on many drunken nights when his hopes had been dashed; together they had damned all the women on Earth to the fiery pits of hell because of their treacherous ways, and sworn they would never fall into their traps again. And even though all of them, except Manchego, were married, they had all broken their promises in the most shameful ways. The inspector’s last conquest had turned out to be a con artist who stole his wallet on their first date. Her name was Piluca, and the guys suspected that she used to be a man; her hairy hands, her shaved mustache, and her Adam’s apple were all dead giveaways in their books.
There had been no way of verifying t
heir suspicions, however, because that particular ill-fated love story ended before it had even started, in the local restaurant where Manchego lost his money, his wallet, and his dignity.
Since then, Manchego had attempted to remain celibate in thought, word, and deed, partly to protect his emotional integrity and partly because so far he hadn’t come across a new candidate for breaking his heart.
But Berta Quiñones, the mild-mannered editor of Librarte magazine, whom the inspector had described as middle-aged, plump, and shortsighted, seemed, for some strange reason, to have found her way inside Manchego’s head. He maintained that his interest in Berta was purely professional—he had kept his friends in the loop about the Craftsman case—but the guys knew him well and had no doubt that the way Manchego trembled every time his cell phone rang owed to a different kind of interest, most likely the amorous kind. What they didn’t understand was what their friend could see in a woman like that; she was so different from the girls he usually went for, who all seemed to be straight out of American TV series. He had always liked them tall, blonde, and voluptuous, a bit dumb, a bit easy, with absurd names like Babi or Mimí, poor helpless things in need of a brave police inspector who would risk his life to save their handbags.
Set the bar lower, they told him, or you’ll end up lonelier than Gary Cooper in High Noon. You’ll end up old before your time, you’ll develop all sorts of strange habits, and in the end you’ll die, like we all do. What they didn’t realize was that the bar, in all senses but the physical, was already set so low that it would hit the floor if it went any lower.
No woman had ever really loved Manchego. He was at the disadvantage of having been born with a naturally fabulous body, well out of the league of mere mortals like plain old Berta, and so far he had known nothing but physical attraction and emotional turmoil. He was still relatively handsome—he was a big man with wide shoulders, large hands, and athletic legs—but gray hairs had begun to lay siege to the part of his head that hadn’t already succumbed to baldness; his belt sported two new holes made by the local cobbler; and sometimes he got breathless if he exerted himself more than usual. The good thing was that he had arrived at the point at which the unequal pairing of a bookworm and a hunk was starting to reach a natural balance, giving way to the credible image of two members of the same species stumbling along side by side.
The Altogether Unexpected Disappearance of Atticus Craftsman Page 13