The Sacred Beasts

by Bev Jafek

  Just in time to avoid a brawl or a flock of dead birds, Ruth thought.

  I have never seen anything like this, Sylvie thought.

  At last, the woman whose voice transfixed the crowd advanced into view in Andalusian gypsy flamenco attire. The crowd of men instantly opened and fell back so that all could see and hear her. Ruth thought, what a stunningly beautiful woman—face, figure, voice—walking with slow, regal carriage, commanding the crowd like the most exquisite general. Ah no, it’s partly physics: her dress is so tight and heavily ruffled below that she can’t move other than slowly, grandly, with measured steps. She’s several of their myths in one—goddess/unapproachable virgin/whore—so the men predictably go crazy. Yet how spontaneous this performance is! It could not possibly be rehearsed: the crowd and the performers are reflecting and infusing one another, moving and sounding as one. Fascinating: is it like performance art in the US? A bit, but it’s something much deeper, older, vastly more intense and emotional. What can Sylvie be thinking? But of course, there’s that wolfishly hungry look on her face. It is inevitable that she will paint this woman.

  You are my bird of paradise, Sylvie thought, and that is how I will paint this moment. How spontaneously you come to me, like an animal, and that I can only love, for you come to me in the pride of your womanhood, every movement regal, stately, and grand. Your formula may be simple: a tight dress with ruffles low on the hem, a flower beside your ear, a colorful shawl, and your hair too wild and thick for a comb. But what a transformation you have created: your dress is midnight blue and sheerly follows your body, embraces it with passion. You come to me as dreams begin in the midnight color of night. Your shawl is part of the dream yet what a contrast: swirls of the most glowing orange and yellow color, like gems turning fluid and draping themselves to you, your lovers. Everything, everyone, is your lover. These are the wings I will paint for my midnight bird’s luxuriant body. Now, you fold your wings like the bird that knows paradise only too well, and for the moment only your deep, dark, wine-colored mezzo soars. In these brilliant colors, your large dark eyes and olive skin are translucent, devastating. The orange flower beside your ear is artless, hence more powerful. You are art yet artless, for you and the earth dream together, paint colors and make sounds together, and I can only dream and paint with you. My painting will be the ecstatic love—artistic, erotic, intrinsic—that you compel in me, for you come to me in the power of your womanhood. It gathers force, and you are almost in flight, almost! My painting will complete you, and there you will raise your wings and soar away from us, a wild thing, too perfectly beautiful for this world, my bird, my art, of paradise.

  They watched the woman perform until she mysteriously vanished into the crowd. A male singer and dancer followed, and then it all ended abruptly, in the gypsy fashion, when the performers no longer wished to perform, oblivious of the audience. Ruth and Sylvie walked around the village in astonishment, looking at the last moments of a fiesta that had become another world. “Let’s stay here awhile, at least spend the night,” Sylvie said suddenly. “Let’s forget about Granada.”

  “You’re an artist and you can dismiss the Alhambra?” Ruth asked.

  “I’m a woman and I know the Moors generally denied everything of significance in their culture to women. Screw their art! I plan to transcend it, anyway, reveal something they never saw.”

  “That’s a good reason: we stay, fine by me. I’ve already been to Granada and the Alhambra. You might be responding to the fact that the gypsies are matriarchal, as was prehistoric Spain, according to several historians.”

  “I know the gypsies are matriarchal. I can feel it.”

  “Who would guess we’d come to Spain and turn into gypsies?”

  “I would,” Sylvie said, lightly pushed Ruth against a wall and kissed her slowly, oblivious of the time. “Make love to me,” she said.

  “You never need to ask,” Ruth said tenderly. “We’ll find a rural inn around here, one where the gypsies are performing. They often have bars and stages on the first floor. We’ll shower and make love, then come down for the performance. It will relax us.”

  “Perfect. How do you always know what I want? How can that always be true?”

  “I just know what it means when a woman pushes me against a wall and presses her lovely body all over me. Nothing complicated about that.” They laughed.

  “I am obvious, I agree,” Sylvie said, “and I have no shame.”

  “I like that about your generation!” Ruth said.

  As they drove around the village, Sylvie thought: through the lens of an orgasm, the Alhambra shrinks to a crack on the floor and women become giantesses, living in an immense jungle that looks a bit like olive groves, but is high enough for a forest canopy through which the sun and moon cannot appear as such, but only glitter and glow in impossibly vivid streaks of blue and green. The women’s bodies are tawny and round, shaped in primitive lines like Rousseau. The Alhambra and other architectural wonders of Spain look like a child’s pile of toys in the corner. Oh, that I must paint!

  They soon found a two-story inn with a stage for musical performances and moved in their backpacks and duffel bags. They showered, and then made love very roughly, as they had in the forest. Ruth found herself resisting this, and then decided that it was impossible not to enjoy making love with Sylvie; perhaps it was time for love on the rough side. Eventually, they forgot everything and could not stop, just as they had in the forest, until Sylvie screamed loudly in orgasm and was answered by a hawk flying over the valley below. To this, they both laughed uproariously, realizing that they were, at last, satisfied.

  “Well,” said Sylvie, “now I’m a bad influence on the birds of prey.”

  “You’ve just overstimulated them, my love; but no matter, we’re here with the gypsies.”

  “Are you relaxed enough?”

  “Oh, yes, but you are the question mark. There will probably be another one of those beautiful gypsy women performing.”

  “OK, I’m over the first,” and Sylvie smiled. “All ready for the second.”

  “Apparently the hawk knew that. He wanted his turn.” They laughed and caressed one another; then decided that yes, indeed they were very relaxed.

  They quickly washed and dressed and went down to the bar, which included both a stage and a restaurant. They ordered dinner and a bottle of the local wine in delighted expectation of another gypsy performance. Touching their glasses to their favorite toast, krasna život, they felt very close to one another again, as they had in the forest. “What else but the beauty of it?” Ruth said.

  “That’s just it,” Sylvie said. “I need to draw and paint again very soon. I’ve had so many ideas that I haven’t been able to tell you.”

  “Let me guess,” Ruth said. “You have a burning passion to paint the Seville prostitute and that gypsy flamenco singer we heard this afternoon.”

  Sylvie was quiet, staring. “How did you know that?”

  “You looked at them like wolf drooling over a lamb, though you were a very beautiful wolf. You’ve looked at me like that, too,” Ruth said, smiling.

  Sylvie smiled and looked down. “That’s probably true, though I’m sure I have never drooled. I’ve had a lot of other ideas, too, and I really need to stop and paint for a time. Spain will have to wait; though of course, we’re touring Spain.”

  “That’s just too bad for Spain! It loses two tourists.” They laughed. “You can best do that in Barcelona, you know. Monserrat has plenty of space for painters. Artists are probably the most fascinating part of the feminist movement for her. Our stay is open-ended, too, so you can paint for some time if you want to.”

  “So let’s drive straight to the coast and up to Barcelona. Let’s forget the rest. I want to paint all day and then drink Spanish wine and make love to you at night. I’ll say to myself, ‘Ah, the life of an artist, just giving in to every strong urge and miraculously making something beautiful out of it’!”

  “Call that �
�Spain Perfected.’ ”

  They clinked glasses and felt that they were celebrating something, though it was nothing more than the fact and pleasure of their lives. The wine was nearly finished when they heard a sharp cry behind the stage; a taut, vibrating male voice full of fire, pain and gravel.

  They come, Ruth thought, our element, the wildlife of Spain. The stage filled with male dancers whose canes tapped the floor in a rapid, staccato beat like gunfire. Male and female singers entered with guitars, all in Andalusian dress. Altogether: they stop and are silent; and the heartbeat of the earth passes; then the fast rhythm of canes beating and the music of crying voices sounds again only to stop with a crash, breathless, the heart skipping a beat, and then the rhythmic music again and again. Sylvie thought, they seem to be conjuring, summoning; perhaps a force of nature is coming, something they can’t live without. The crying, crashing rhythm sounds again and stops; rhythm and stop; rhythm and stop.

  And onto the stage she came.

  Another beauty, Ruth thought, but a dancer this time. She looked at Sylvie and thought, my love has become a wolf again. I will have to start believing in the werewolf legends of Galicia. But, it is art that has bitten her. There are several men alternating between staring at Sylvie and the dancer, but Sylvie’s oblivious of it. Good.

  Sylvie thought, you come to me in the shawl and ruffled skirt I have seen before, but what a change: now they are charmed objects, alive, your familiar spirits all in yellow, and your body can add new shapes, sculpt reality, continually transform itself. You dance with these new creatures: they are your wings, then your capes, then mysterious spheres appearing at any point around your body, then a crowd reaching for you, then your weapons—that above all! Your beauty is not your essence but your weapon: how well I know you! With the long train of your dress behind you, we know that something immense has passed, a titanic ship, and left a whirlpool wake that devours us. You raise your arms in the shawl and advance toward me like a yellow bird of prey, and I want to be captured. Several people behind me are clapping and saying the word “buleria,” so your dance has a name; yet you are something beyond words but not beyond images, for I will capture you in paint. How passionately I will merge with you then. From the frothy yellow masses you have drawn in the air, your lean arched back and bare arms rise like blades. Your arms reach to the sky as though calling a world into being. You are heat and fire; you explode in yellow flames; then your arms fall straight down and cut like knives through the turbulence you have created. Again you let the rhythm of your moving body drive you to frenzy and then stop as one dead, only to arch your lean body again and become another rhythm traced in yellow fire. Your hands with castanets pierce the air in knife-like strokes before you, pass over your head and vibrate behind you. The men cry in a primitive fusion of desire and pain, their canes stamping the rhythm whose rise and fall is the golden yellow dagger you dance, back arched, hands and castanets piercing, piercing. Everything about you pierces—arms, feet, eyes, the severity of your hair pulled back by a comb. The men work through sound but you, with body arched, are pure fury in elegant layers of yellow cloth, the sun to the first woman on earth, majestic and proud.

  Now your movement is perfectly angular, your arms straight in the air like swords, then caressing the air above you; then your castanet hands weave themselves tenderly down and trace the lines of small flowers behind your back. You clap and stamp your feet—faster, faster!—only to show the mastery of your body. You pace to me, half pawing the floor like a wild animal, then your feet seem made only for fast, rhythmic beats. You raise your arms, only to lean into your own body’s curves. When you move fast, you cast the world into shining yellow pieces. When you stop, you take my breath. You undo all that you do, explode and implode. You are the flame of life that clenches itself into a pattern; then releases itself into another, only to repeat, repeat; as agonized as it is ecstatic; losing control only to stop on a line; all in a roar of stamping feet and canes. You are the power of excess that can only become the fluidity of desire. To say that you have seduced me is to belittle your victory: you have seduced the world into dancing in the domain of art. You complete the dance with sweat pouring from the lean arched blade of your body. You are my warrior love: how well I know you! You give me the power to say that you and you alone are Spain. You are the matador and the bull.

  She is simply magnificent, Ruth thought, and so deserving of our admiration and protection. She reminds me of the wildlife I left behind in Doñana. What will happen to them all when the heat of the planet puts so much land under water? What body politic can act in sufficient unity to create the infrastructure that protects life? Not my country, not the US; no center-right nation suspicious of government will have a chance. Spain? Who knows; I suppose the gypsies will return to their wandering lifestyle. I think I’ve read that the government forced most of them into an Andalusian slum by the Guadalquivir and it often floods, even now. This dancer probably either lives there or grew up there. Maybe all of Spain will take up the gypsy wandering life. Who will have the luxury of living a sedentary life on a hill with complete resources for life—and who would ever want to live that way? Besides, they’ll be destroyed in the first tornado. Who will feel what is being lost? Who will care, really? Human beings seem to be disappearing into their economic fears, their crazy religions, their cell phones and their video games.

  Sylvie was shocked to see how pale and serious Ruth looked; she had nearly forgotten to clap for the dancer. In their room, later, she said angrily, “You are still grieving and you said nothing! You are thinking of Katia even now!”

  Ruth smiled wearily. “It’s not Katia; not at all. I love being here with you, and I do love you. How you’ve made me live again! What an idiot I would be not to appreciate it!” Her voice showed a painful intensity that Sylvie immediately trusted. “Sometimes, I can’t avoid thinking about the world I will leave behind me. I felt this way in Doñana when I realized how decimated the animal populations were.”

  “But you will write your book!”

  “Yes, and what a pathetically small act that will be, given the enormity of the problem. But that’s all I can do and I will.”

  They held one another and fell asleep quickly. The day had exhausted them both. In the morning, they felt renewed and were only too glad to be back on the road again. Love it while you can, Ruth thought, while anyone can. It’s so easy to love this world, the road opening in front of you like something that will never end. It says, life goes on, there’s always hope, and hope is the most powerful seducer we ever meet in this life.

  As they drove further east, the land became even more arid. It’s almost Biblical, Ruth thought. I see medlars and carobs, date palms like the ones in Arabian deserts, and even almonds, like those eaten by John the Baptist. They had nearly reached the coast when a strange village on a hill caught Sylvie’s eye. “Look there!” she said. “It has the same lay-out on a hill like the other one, but it’s dark, almost brown, and I can’t see the roofs. Was there a fire? What’s wrong with it?”

  “It looks like it hasn’t been whitewashed in a long time and the roofs have fallen in. It could be abandoned.”

  “But, a whole village abandoned?”

  “All the jobs might be on the coast. That could empty a village.”

  “I have to see it!” Sylvie said, and Ruth took the first off-ramp. Soon they were ascending another hill. They drove into a courtyard whose design was much like the other village they had visited. But, all the buildings were covered with desert dust and fists of bristling yellow vegetation. The roofs had fallen in on most of the buildings, and the windows had been shattered by desert winds. They suddenly became aware of the low desolate sound of a powerful wind. The village seemed to be completely abandoned, defeated and dying in the strange, dark voice of the wind.

  “This is awful!” Sylvie said. “Keep driving around. I want to know if absolutely everyone has left.” They continued driving until the streets were impassabl
e. There was no sign of life anywhere. “Let’s go back to the courtyard,” Sylvie said. “I can hardly believe this! I’ve never seen a ghost town before.”

  “There are plenty of them in Patagonia, actually, if you get far enough away from the cities—not like this, of course. Wood structures decay faster and the villages really are ghosts, barely discernable, vanishing in front of you.” They parked in the courtyard; then Sylvie tried to enter what seemed to be a former general store. Inside was black night; the windows were boarded up and vague piles of detritus were scattered over the floor, from which a putrid smell rose into the air. From the darkness and stench, a roaring growl assailed them, and they could barely see a flash of wild eyes and the outline of what seemed to be a big dog or a wolf with the carcass of a sizeable animal.

  “Slowly move out backwards,” Ruth said and they were in the street immediately.

  “What was that?” Sylvie asked. Ruth returned to the jeep and brought back a baseball bat.

  “Probably a wild dog with its kill,” Ruth said, “but I’m not sure—it was too dark. Whatever it is, there’s food beside it, and it isn’t likely to threaten us out here. But, I’ve got some protection anyway.”

  “It’s so depressing! I want a drink.”

  “That problem I can solve. We’re never without wine, but it may not be cool.” She pointed to a tumbledown house with the still stable steps of a porch. “Sit down there. I’ll get a bottle of wine.” She continued to carry the baseball bat.