Only in Spain

by Nellie Bennett

  I didn’t think there was any chance of me being a bad influence on Diego. He seemed to believe that he was the emperor of Madrid and that he could do whatever he wanted. He left his broken-down car parked wherever he liked and used the parking tickets he got as filters for his cigarettes. Luckily he always seemed to have an entourage of primos around to push-start his car.

  I had managed to scrape together enough money for a week of classes at the Amor de Dios, and on Tuesday afternoon, after an hour of bulerías de Jerez, I changed into my date outfit. I found Diego at reception, leaning against the notice board, jacket slung over one shoulder, flirting with a group of Japanese girls. I don’t know how Diego managed to flirt with girls who didn’t know the difference between “sí” and “no,” but he did. He could flirt with a pile of bricks and they would follow him home. Just as I followed him, out of the school, down the stairs, through the fish market, and out onto the street where he’d left the gypsy mobile double-parked.

  I pulled open the passenger door and climbed in. The car stank like an ashtray and as I wound down the window the handle came off in my hand. Meanwhile, Diego had convinced the fish guys to push the car while he revved the engine. Finally it caught and we were off.

  We sped through the city with the cool spring air racing through the car. Diego turned the radio to Radio Olé and sang along in his raspy voice.

  Step 3: Don’t be intimidated, even if they are Mr. and Mrs. Posh.

  We’d left the grungy boho neighborhood of the Amor de Dios and were driving through the big end of town. Flamenco music blaring from the stereo, we whizzed down the grand old avenues, overtaking black BMWs and silver Mercedes. I couldn’t help noticing the way everyone stared at us as we passed. “Damn gypsies,” they muttered to themselves. As a lifelong mutterer myself, it was nice for once to be the mutteree.

  Diego zigzagged down the avenue in his tin-can car, narrowly dodging motorcycles and stray pedestrians. I suddenly realized that I had no idea where he was taking me, so I asked, “Where are we going?”

  Diego kept his eyes on the road and snapped, “You always want to know everything, don’t you?”

  Er…I’m sorry? As I opened my mouth to reply, he turned up the radio and beat the steering wheel with the palms of his hands in time to the music.

  Soon the old gray stone buildings and paved roads of central Madrid were replaced with office buildings and glass skyscrapers. This was the business district. Workers in suits and ties were racing back from their coffee breaks clutching briefcases and newspapers.

  My phone rang. From the caller ID I saw that it was my father calling from Australia. Before I could answer it, Diego slapped the phone out of my hand. “Ow!” I cried.

  His eyes flashed. “You never use your phone when you are with me,” he said. “Don’t you know how disrespectful that is?”

  Uh-oh. Who was this guy? It was one of those moments when you mentally track back over all those stranger danger rules you learned when you were little. Had I told anyone where I was going, and with whom? No, of course not. I thought about jumping out of the car at the next traffic light, but then he swerved onto an entrance ramp and we were speeding onto a highway, and I’m not really the type to jump and roll.

  I suddenly realized how stupid and arrogant I had been for thinking I could just pack up my life and run away with the gypsies. But then, I wasn’t running away with the gypsies, was I? I was being taken away. But where to? Oh Lord, I thought as I made fervent prayers to a god I didn’t really believe in. I guess this is what I get for reading too many magazines.

  When Diego turned off the highway, we entered a part of the city I hadn’t seen in any guidebook. I didn’t even know if we were still officially in Madrid. It was a flat expanse of wide concrete streets lined with uniform apartment blocks. Gray washing and dying houseplants hung from square windows. Groups of kids kicked footballs along the gutter. Old women dressed all in black struggled home with groceries, while the old men stood around the corner bars smoking their cigarettes and watching cars pass. I thought back to my class at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and how my students had told me about the gypsy ghettos outside Madrid, the apartment blocks that the Spanish government had paid the gypsies to go and live in. Oh great. I’d been brought to the ghetto.

  Finally, Diego pulled up in a dirt parking lot. The sun had gone down and a crowd of gypsies was standing around a fire burning in an upturned garbage bin. This was the family. Yes, all fifty of them. I knew that for the gypsies the term “family” had a much broader meaning than our two-point-five-children model, but even so, I hadn’t expected to meet an entire village.

  The tíos looked sinister in the firelight with their sideburns and bushy eyebrows. Next to them stood the aunts, the tías. Bloated like blowfish and dressed all in black, they wore thick gold earrings that made their earlobes hang out of shape and bright frosted lipstick painted outside their mouths.

  Then there were the primas, or nieces, who looked supernaturally beautiful. They all had identical doe eyes with Cleopatra eyeliner and sparkly pouting lips, and wore their black hair in tightly wound ringlets.

  The primos, many of whom I knew, were looking as suave as ever in the gypsy uniform of suit jackets over jeans and fake crocodile-skin shoes. The older boys had carefully trimmed goatees and long black hair that fell straight down their backs. Some had pale skin and jet-black hair, while others were dark-skinned.

  In the center of the group, a guy with long hair was playing a beat-up guitar. The gypsies were clapping compás, and they dipped in and out of different rhythm patterns and switched from the beat to the offbeat. Every now and again someone broke out and danced. It was one of the boys now. He threw his long hair behind his shoulders and stepped into the middle of the circle with the panache of a bullfighter. As he lifted his arms and clicked his fingers, the family shouted, “Olé! Así es! Eso! Eso! ”

  Diego strode across the parking lot toward the fire. I lagged behind, not wanting to follow him but afraid to be left alone on the street. He grabbed my arm, dragging me with him across the parking lot. “I can walk, you know!” I complained as I skidded over the dusty ground. But he wasn’t paying attention to me. By now the family had spotted us. The music stopped, and all eyes were on us. The beloved son had come home…with a white girl.

  I was in no way prepared for the sensation I caused. The aunts started shouting at Diego when they saw me. The uncles forgot their cigars and rumbled among themselves. The girls looked me up and down and laughed derisively at my outfit. But the boys smiled shyly, and one even lowered his sunglasses to give me a cheeky wink.

  “She’s okay,” Diego said to the family. “She dances flamenco.” At this the shouts turned to laughter. An Australian dancing flamenco? Impossible! Who did she learn from, the kangaroos? Well, that was one half of the group. The other half wanted someone to explain to them what an “Australia” was.

  Diego insisted that I could dance flamenco as well as a gypsy, which I knew wasn’t true. I wished there was somewhere I could hide. I even considered making a run for it, but I wouldn’t get far in my “meet the parents” heels.

  A silver-haired man in a black frock coat stood up and everyone fell silent. His face was dark and leathery. He walked slowly toward us, leaning on a brass-capped cane. When he stopped in front of me, I smelled alcohol on his breath. “Niña. You dance flamenco?” he asked.

  “Sí,” I said, trying not to let him stare me down.

  He cleared his throat and spat a wad of phlegm into the dirt, then unclasped his frock coat and handed it to Diego. “Let’s see how this kangaroo dances.”

  The old gypsy stepped into the center of the circle, and Diego told me to join him there. When I didn’t move, two of the primas grabbed me, digging their acrylic nails into my arms, and pushed me into the circle.

  After the darkness, the light from the fire was so bright it was almost bli
nding. Squinting, I saw the guitarist prep the fretboard and strum the opening chords of a bulería. Great. No one dances bulería like the gypsies. What had I gotten myself into?

  I tried to concentrate on the music, moving on instinct. The old man and I held each other’s gaze as we circled around the fire. The family were clapping the rhythm. The primas sneered and hissed as I moved past them. The primos cheered us on, clapping and laughing, their faces appearing in front of me like gargoyles in the firelight.

  I don’t know what I danced, and I know I couldn’t repeat it. All I know is that it felt good. Not just good; crazy good. My feet moved of their own accord, propelling me around the circle. I crossed one leg in front of the other and did the sharp turns that always eluded me in class, and somehow I never lost the beat. I was there, suspended in the moment, until the gypsy dropped his arms and grabbed me around the shoulders. He gave me a kiss on both cheeks and said, “Mu salá!”

  I had passed the first test. Mu salá, or muy salada in proper Spanish, can be literally translated as “very salty.” This is possibly the highest compliment you can receive from a gypsy. In Spain a woman is like a serving of hot chips—no good without salt.

  Step 4: Remember his family’s names—and use them!

  Okay, whoever wrote that has clearly never dated a gypsy. First Diego introduced me to his tía Antonia. Tía Antonia gave me a kiss on each cheek then spun me around to face Tía Maria. Tía Maria gave me two kisses and passed me on to another Tía Antonia. Tía Antonia pinched my cheek and kissed me, and passed me to the next Tía Maria.

  When the tías were done covering me in their lipstick, they pushed me toward the tíos. Tío Antonio grabbed my shoulders to steady me before giving me his two kisses and passing me on to Tío José. After Tío José there was another Tío Antonio, then, just to break it up a little, there was Tío José Antonio. My head was spinning. How could one guy have so many aunts and uncles? And why did they all have the same names?

  When the introductions were over, the guitarist strummed another bulería, and the family picked up the compás again and started clapping and singing. I still had no idea where I was or how I was going to get home, so I asked Diego.

  “Casa?” he repeated, apparently refusing to understand my meaning. “Ahora eres mi mujer, y ésta es tu casa.”

  Eh? I didn’t understand. That is to say, I did but I didn’t. I mean, I couldn’t have. Surely he didn’t just say that I was his wife? That had to be my bad Spanish.

  Diego could be extremely informative when he wanted to be, but it seemed he chose his moments carefully. He now decided it was time to let me know what was going on, so he explained that there’s a clause in the unwritten gypsy law that if a gypsy male brings a non-gypsy female onto gypsy territory it means that they are married. So, according to the gypsy law, we were already man and wife.

  “Anda, niña!” he said. “We’ll have twelve kids, half gypsy, half Australian. They’ll be Gystralians.”

  Gystralians? Surely this was all some crazy dream. It couldn’t be happening. I looked around the dark parking lot, wondering how I could get away.

  Meanwhile, Diego was taking my lack of enthusiasm as a personal insult. “What’s wrong with you?” he shouted.

  What was wrong with me? Where should I begin? For a start, I’d never imagined that my wedding reception would be held in a dusty parking lot on a Tuesday night. I didn’t mean to sound like a snob, but it had simply never occurred to me. Same as it had never occurred to me that I would be challenged to a dance-off by a gypsy patriarch in a frock coat. These were things that my suburban upbringing had not prepared me for.

  By now the guitarist had switched to a fast rumba. The beat was infectious, and in spite of myself I started to dance. The boys surrounded me in two seconds flat, clapping their hands and shouting, “Toma que toma que toma.” One kid stepped forward to dance with me. He came in close and shimmied his shoulders, lowering his sunglasses to flash his dark eyes at me.

  Would you think me crazy if I told you that at this point I was actually considering going along with the whole thing? Wasn’t this, after all, what I’d been dreaming of? I’d wanted to run away with the gypsies, and okay, I had been picturing something a little more airbrushed, but I guess that’s to be expected when you base your life on fashion spreads in Harper’s.

  The boys were laughing and dancing in the firelight, and the girls joined them, swinging their hips and combing their long acrylic nails through the air. I took a step back and watched them all. Every one of them would belong on a stage, yet none of them had taken a dance class in their lives. Even Diego hadn’t set foot in a classroom since he was thirteen, but he toured the world with his very own company. Maybe, just maybe, if I stayed here and lived with these people, I could learn to dance like they did. For the gypsies, singing is as natural as talking, and dancing is as easy as walking.

  The stars shone brightly over the parking lot, and the gypsy kids danced rumbas in loafers and stilettos. And I thought, Maybe this could work. Maybe, with the help of some fake tan and eyeliner, I could become a gypsy chick.

  THE ESCAPE

  Or

  Put your hands up!

  I’ve heard a lot of stories about dates gone wrong, nights that just go from bad to worse, but if there’s a worst-date competition anywhere in the world, I would win it hands down, because I’ve never heard of a girl going home to meet her date’s parents and ending up trapped in a gypsy ghetto at one in the morning with a donkey.

  That’s right, a donkey.

  When the fire died out and the party broke up, Diego took me up a flight of stairs to an apartment where he told me to wait for him while he went to talk “business” with his primos. I sat down on a wooden chair beside a table spotted with cigarette burns. It wasn’t until Diego had slammed the door behind him and his singing had faded away down the corridor that I heard another sound. A clop clop clop.

  I turned, slowly, not sure that I wanted to see what was behind me, and there it was: a donkey.

  Or at least I assumed it was a donkey. They aren’t a regular sight in Sydney. But even so, I was pretty sure that donkeys belonged in barns, not in two-bedroom apartments. I know that was terribly middle class of me, but that’s just the way I was raised.

  And as I sat there in the cold apartment, tired, hungry, and married, it occurred to me that I had never really appreciated my privileged middle-class upbringing. I had always resented it, just as I had resented growing up in suburbia, with the neat lawns and friendly neighbors and the quaint little fences. But what I would have given to be back there now…

  I had known the risk I was taking by choosing to step out of my context and into a culture I knew nothing about. I knew when I chose to dive headfirst into flamenco that it would be sink or swim. But what’s the point in being alive if you’re not going to be a little wild sometimes? I didn’t want to live by the manual. I wanted to do what I loved, even if it did get me into trouble. And I could officially classify this as “trouble.”

  However, there was one thing I knew for sure: it was time for me to get out of there. The problem was that the donkey was between me and the door, and though I knew in theory that donkeys didn’t eat people, this one looked pretty hungry.

  The donkey started coming toward me. I yelped and climbed up onto my chair. It went to sniff my feet, so I jumped up onto the table. While the donkey was distracted with sniffing something on the floor, I jumped off the other side of the table and made a dash for the door.

  I ran down the stairs, out the front exit, and onto the street. The night air was cold and made me shiver. My sense of direction isn’t generally that good, but by the way the wind was blowing and the position of the North Star, and the fact that I was in a gypsy ghetto, I made a pretty accurate estimate that I was in the middle of nowhere.

  I started walking down the dark street. There was nothing on either sid
e of me but identical apartment blocks. Most of the windows were bare, but some were covered with newspaper in place of curtains. In one of the apartments an old man was singing flamenco. What a voice! It ripped through the silence. I couldn’t pause to listen, but kept on walking in the hope that I might turn a corner and see a bus stop, or a metro station, or some other sign of modern society.

  I had to keep moving to stay warm, but which way should I go? How far would I have to walk to find a landmark? Each time a car came past I didn’t know whether I should flag it down or hide behind a pile of garbage till it was out of sight. I thought about calling someone, but I was out of credit, and as I tried dialing Juan’s number, all I got was an extremely unhelpful recorded message advising me to recharge my phone.

  As I stood there trying to decide which way to go, I heard another car coming down the street, flamenco music blaring on the radio. Uh-oh. Gypsies. Where could I hide? I ducked behind a garbage can, which did little to hide me, but at least it got me off the street. Fortunately, the car sped past, and the music faded into the distance.

  I picked right and walked as fast as I could down the street. A dog was sniffing around in the gutter up ahead. Maybe I’ll end up mauled by wild dogs, I thought. That’d be a classy way to end the evening.

  I kept on walking, my heels clacking on the pavement. There was a boy coming toward me, singing a song to the night in a sweet young voice. He would have been about eleven or twelve years old. As we passed each other, he looked me up and down and said, “Guapa.” Then I felt him pinch my butt. The little brat! I turned around, but he had already disappeared into the darkness.

  When I turned the next corner, my heart jumped. I’d found a main road. At least, it looked like a main road. There were no cars, but it had freshly painted lane markings, a sign that someone cared. I looked both ways and wondered which way led to Madrid. It was hard to tell. There was nothing but suburban wasteland for as far as the eye could see. Once again, I picked a direction and started walking. A cold wind had picked up, and my ankles were killing me. I considered taking off my shoes and walking barefoot, but the broken glass and random syringes on the street convinced me that was a bad idea.