Only in Spain

by Nellie Bennett

  A tear ran down my cheek. “No, no, no,” Iñaki said, wiping the tear off with his finger. I didn’t have the energy to try to explain to him why I was crying. I was such a failure. It was all a complete and utter disaster. I hadn’t even been able to look after myself. I was so lucky that I had Juan and Iñaki to look after me; I dreaded to think what could have happened to me if they hadn’t been there.

  Iñaki unzipped his backpack and took out my copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in Spanish. He asked if I wanted him to read to me, and I nodded. I pulled the blankets up around me and settled back into my bed as he began. Before he’d finished the second page I was asleep.

  They kept me in the hospital for three days. I decided not to tell my parents where I was. There was nothing they could do except worry, and there was no need for that. Each day Iñaki came straight from the restaurant after lunch, bringing food. He’d gotten approval from my doctor to bring me fresh fish cooked on the grill with olive oil and garlic, and vegetable soups and crunchy bread. He’d set up the meals on my little table, and while I ate the food from his restaurant, he’d eat my hospital meals.

  Every night after dinner he would come back to the hospital and read to me until I fell asleep, then he’d make himself up a bed on the couch so that he’d be there if I needed anything during the night.

  When the doctor came in with my results, I found out just how bad my condition was. Apart from the savage virus I’d caught, I was suffering from serious anemia and many other deficiencies. The doctor warned me that if I didn’t start looking after myself, I’d soon be back in the hospital. And that meant I had to sleep and eat. And by eating he meant red meat.

  “Don’t worry,” Iñaki said. “I’ll make sure of that.”

  That afternoon Iñaki took me home, and after I’d had a few days to recover, he brought me to the restaurant for my first steak. I’d broken my veganism on many occasions since leaving Sydney, but each time I was only flirting with meat. But this was the real deal.

  He put the plate in front of me, and there was an island of red meat surrounded by caramelized red peppers. I looked down at it and said, “There’s no way I can eat that.”

  “Uh!” Iñaki said, raising a finger. “Doctor’s orders.” Doctor’s orders indeed…only a Spanish doctor would prescribe this.

  I cut into the thick steak and put a small piece in my mouth.

  Okay…I’ve eaten a lot of good things in my life, but nothing could compare to this. It was perfection, and I understood why most people aren’t vegan or vegetarian, because this is what we’re missing out on. I felt my whole body respond to the nourishing protein, so I ate a little more.

  It didn’t change my mind about the ethics of eating meat, but I was able to say thank you to the world for feeding me and looking after me at this time when I really needed it. And when Iñaki was satisfied that I’d eaten enough, he whisked away the plate and replaced it with a bowl of rice pudding. “But—” I tried to protest.

  “Nell…” he said in a warning voice.

  “I know,” I mumbled. “Doctor’s orders.”

  THE HAPPILY EVER AFTER

  Or

  Vivan los novios!

  The church bells in the tall steeple rang out over the green hills of Italian Switzerland. The crowd of guests around the door cheered as the newly married couple stepped out of the church.

  “Toma que toma!” Zahra called to me as she walked out on the arm of her new husband, Mario. Around us Swiss bankers and bankerettes threw rose petals over the couple as they made their way to the waiting Rolls-Royce.

  “Vivan los novios!” Iñaki shouted. Long live the bride and groom!

  Zahra was the ultimate flamenco bride in a white dress with a long ruffled train. Her hair was gathered up on top of her head, covered with a flowing lace mantilla and held in place with an elaborate comb carved out of mother-of-pearl. In her hand she held a white lace fan that she waved in front of her face as she and Mario ducked under the shower of petals.

  I loved that dress. Zahra had had it made in Seville at a famous bridal boutique. “I wanted a real toma que toma flamenco dress!” she said, telling me that she’d gone through every style in the designer’s book until she came to one that fulfilled her flamenco dreams.

  As a prewedding present, I had bought Zahra a set of jewelry from my favorite flamenco shop in Madrid. The earrings, the necklace, the bracelets, and the combs were all inlaid with little red stones. It was just like the sets we had drooled over in Seville and promised each other that we would come back for.

  A month before the wedding, Iñaki and I had traveled down to Seville to spend a couple of days with Zahra and Mario while she had her final fitting. Mario was Italian Swiss, softly spoken, and a perfect gentleman, and he was head over heels in love with Zahra.

  “And he loves meat!” Zahra had said when I told her that Iñaki would be cooking for us that evening. He’d brought wine and jamón and steak from the restaurant to cook on the barbecue on the terrace of the apartment where we were staying for the weekend. Iñaki and Mario immediately bonded over food, which left Zahra and me to the more important matter of the dress.

  Zahra stood in front of the bridal store mirror in her white lace dress with its ruffled skirt and train. Her eyes darted to each imperfection, each wrinkle, and every inch of slack fabric. It made me think back to standing with her in the busy dress shop for the fitting of her flamenco costume days before the feria.

  Two years had passed since that day. Zahra caught my eye in the mirror. She seemed to be thinking the same thing, and when the tailor hurried off to get more pins, she said, “Do you remember that night in Sevilla? That magic night on the bridge when we made a wish?” Of course I remembered. “I wished to get married and to move to Geneva and manage a bank.”

  “And I wished that I could live in Spain.”

  “And you see?” Zahra said. “Our wishes have come true.”

  She was right; our wishes had come true. Standing on the bridge that night, I had wished to be able to live with the joy that I had found dancing flamenco in Seville. It had been a hard road to get here. I’d gone down a couple of dead ends, and I’d learned a few lessons along the way. Yet somehow, in spite of all my recklessness, I’d managed to fall into my place in the world. And that’s the only way I can describe it. I don’t think it would be right to say that I had “found” it. Maybe it found me.

  Living with Iñaki was a joy that grew with every day we spent together. It was quite possible, I sometimes mused, that we were actually made for each other. I tried to find some flaw, something wrong with him or with us, but I couldn’t.

  Even Juan agreed. He invited us around for lunch one day in the lavish new house he was decorating in Madrid’s most exclusive suburb. We sat in the garden on deck chairs, enjoying the midday sun as Iñaki swam laps in Juan’s new swimming pool. “He’s a good man, lamparilla,” Juan said. “You got lucky.”

  Zahra approved too. When I’d originally received my invitation to the wedding, I’d called her and asked if I could bring a date. There was a pause on the line before she said, “It is not some gypsy, ey, chica? You know this is a stylish wedding.” When she met him in Seville, she looked at him and said approvingly, “Muchísimos ojos!”

  And stylish wedding was right. By the time we arrived at the reception, for which we had to cross the border into Italy to get to a palatial villa on Lake Como, I was feeling like the poor cousin. All the other women had changed after the ceremony and were arriving in spectacular evening gowns. I was still in the only evening dress that I owned, a light silk bias-cut dress covered in red roses. I’d bought it with my mother years ago on sale and never worn it; I’d only put it in my suitcase to take to Madrid on Mum’s insistence, because she said that you never know when you might need something special.

  The tables in the dining room were all named according to
places that had a special significance to Zahra and Mario, and I was delighted to see that Iñaki and I were seated at Seville. At the table with us was a young banker and his girlfriend. He was the child of Swiss foreign diplomats and had been born in Argentina, raised in the United States, educated in England, then worked in Brussels before moving to Geneva.

  “How many passports do you have?” I asked.

  “Three,” he said.

  “Awww…” I was disappointed to be beaten at “count my passports.” “I’ve only got two. I want three!”

  He gave me a diplomatic Swiss smile and said, “You have time.”

  “What’s the third one going to be?” his girlfriend asked.

  Iñaki leaned forward and said, “It will be Basque.”

  After dinner, Iñaki and I wandered down to the lake. He’d taken two weeks off work so that we could turn the trip into a holiday. We’d just spent a week swimming and sunbathing on the Ligurian coast, and it was hard to think about going back to work.

  I would be starting a new job when we got back. Iñaki had introduced me to a friend of his who worked as an English teacher, and he had passed on my CV to his academy. A week later they called me for an interview, and I got the job. The pay was three times what I’d been making, all my classes were in the center of Madrid, and I insisted on nothing before ten a.m. With my new salary and reduced workload, I could easily pick up two dance classes a day, and in a year’s time, who knew?

  I was sad about leaving my students at the old academy, especially my group at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. On the day of our last class, they took me out for a farewell lunch. They’d bought me a present: a flamenco CD and a book about Spain.

  When I looked at them all gathered at the long table, talking and laughing, I felt so sad to think that I had to say good-bye. I remembered how I’d started out that class with only two students, who both intimidated me to the point that I couldn’t even hold up the sheet of paper I was reading off because my hands were trembling, and then every week after that a new student had arrived. And here we were, a group of more than twenty. Looking at them digging into their desserts and joking in Spanish, I felt tears well up in my eyes. I would have loved to continue teaching them, even if I wasn’t paid for it, but the academy had already reassigned the class.

  We carried our glasses of champagne into the ballroom for the bridal waltz. Iñaki slipped his hand into mine as we watched Mario and Zahra sweep across the marble floor, their eyes locked, blissful smiles on their faces.

  I wondered in that moment if I could ever do that. And by “that” I don’t mean the waltz; I mean the other bit, getting married. If I did, it wouldn’t be in a palace, and I couldn’t imagine that I’d have a hundred bankers in attendance. And I really didn’t see myself flying to Seville for my dress and Milan for makeup tests. But perhaps a small church, with a flamenco guitarist…

  Just as I was drifting off into a daydream, Zahra’s voice jolted me back into the present moment. “Chica!” Mario cued up a CD of sevillanas. Oh dear…

  Zahra beckoned to me to join her in the center of the dance floor. This was one day when I couldn’t deny her a sevillanas. Though I’d never expected to be dancing it in front of a crowd of Swiss bankers with cameras.

  Mario restarted the song from the beginning, and Zahra and I stood facing each other. We reached our arms slowly out and up, and I watched my hands as they twirled above me. We’d come a long way from Bar Andaluz.

  I thought about flamenco and how it had swept into my life and turned everything upside down. I remembered that day in the lunchroom when I saw the ad in the classifieds and just knew that I had to dial the number. But I could never have guessed the journey it would take me on.

  Flamenco took me out of that narrow world where success was equated with the value of your handbag on eBay, your boyfriend’s taxable income, and how close you were to buying that waterfront property, and showed me joy in compás, in a calimocho, a bowl of olives, warm sun on my cheek, and the smell of orange blossoms. With its special brand of toma que toma magic, it whisked me out of that world of piped music and muted colors and showed me a life that is outrageous and covered in polka dots. Where red is the new black and everyone can wear orange, but not Hermès orange. Brighter.

  With flamenco I was transported into a world where everyone is beautiful, because beauty is in everything, the glorious and the ugly; because flamenco celebrates living, through the cries of pain and the cries of joy, the symmetry of a young face and the character of an old face. A young dancer is applauded for displays of dizzying technique, and an old dancer is celebrated for saying the same thing with a flick of the hip and a twirl of the wrist.

  And when each stage of life is celebrated and expressed through art, it is impossible to be afraid of life. Perhaps that was flamenco’s biggest gift. It taught me not to be afraid. Whether it was the fear of death by secondhand smoke in a bar in Seville, of making it to the end of the week with only five euro to my name, of escaping from a gypsy ghetto in the middle of the night, or of falling in love, flamenco taught me to take that fear and crush it under the heel of my shoe and move on, because life is too important to be missed by worrying.

  Okay, I may not have totally mastered that lesson, because I was starting to worry that I couldn’t remember all the steps of sevillanas. It had been a long time since our nights out in Seville. I might just have to make something up. Stay close, flamenco. I’ll be needing you…

  And why do I get the feeling you’re not done with me yet? What other adventures do you have in store for me? No, actually, don’t tell me. I don’t think I want to know.

  “Olé!” Zahra cried as the first copla started up. We stepped toward each other, and then back. Forward and back, and I heard in my mind my first partner at Bar Andaluz saying, “Pasa! Gira! Pasa!”

  The ballroom was filled with the flash of cameras, like the light of the fire in the gypsy ghetto. And I heard that old familiar voice in my ear, whispering: Why don’t you…ride off into the sunset in a painted caravan?

  Why not?

  THE END

  Or

  THE NEW BEGINNING

  Or

  Vamos, chica!

  “This one is fantastic!” Alejandro cried, turning up the car stereo. He tried to translate the lyrics for me. “My love has no…fronteras?”

  “Borders,” I helped him.

  Alejandro was one of my English students in Madrid, but now we were driving together across Spain. I needed to travel this weekend, but every train and bus and goat cart heading south had been booked out for weeks. Alejandro was going to his village for the long weekend, and when I’d mentioned I was looking at flights, he insisted I come with him. And as we drove over the mountains, he treated me to his personal collection of all-time greatest love songs.

  “This song! This song is lo mejor, the best!” I cringed at the opening strains of “My Heart Will Go On” from Titanic. I knew Alejandro was planning to spend his weekend dancing sevillanas, so why wouldn’t he play some flamenco? But he could see that I wasn’t myself, and he was trying to cheer me up. And I was grateful.

  I was still reeling from what I’d done. With four simple words my life had been turned upside down. It was a conversation that started when Iñaki and I went to bed, and went on for hours as we drifted in and out of sleep. At three o’clock in the morning the beautiful, wonderful man of my life asked me the question that I had been avoiding for too long: “What do you want?”

  I had looked at the man lying next to me, the man I had slept alongside every night for three years. I loved him so much that it was impossible to bear. I loved him before I even knew him, and the more I knew him the more I loved him. At the beginning our communication was stilted at best, but with time, as I picked up more and more Spanish, we became closer and closer. He was the kindest, gentlest man I had ever known. And yet…I wasn’t happy
.

  I wasn’t happy with the life I was leading. It was a beautiful life. We had a beautiful home, with a lovely little rooftop terrace where I had an herb garden, and a block of wood I could practice my flamenco footwork on while gazing out over the Madrid skyline. During the days we both went off to work, then we’d meet for a beer in a sunny outdoor café in the afternoon. On Iñaki’s nights off we’d go out to dinner, then wander home through the cobblestoned streets of old Madrid. It was idyllic and romantic and everything I had ever wanted. So what the hell what wrong with me???

  That was the question that plagued me. I could feel the restlessness building inside of me. I wanted another adventure. I wanted to see more of the world and experience other ways of living. But Iñaki had found everything he wanted, and he couldn’t understand why I didn’t feel the same way. Now we were talking about getting married. He wanted children, and I didn’t know what I wanted. But if I was going to have twelve, it was time to get started.

  Sensing that I was awake, he stirred and pulled me to him. “What do you want?” he asked, his voice heavy with sleep.

  Good question. What did I want? I needed to find that out. But I was starting to realize what I didn’t want. I didn’t want to settle down and start a family. I knew that I still had a few more good escapades in me.

  I whispered, “I don’t want this.” And so, at exactly three oh two a.m. on March 17, moments before drifting into sleep, I said the words that ended the most beautiful love story of my life.

  I’ll never get over this, I thought. Maybe there are some things in life we just aren’t meant to get over. Just breathe, I told myself. Perhaps I shouldn’t expect to ever be free of this pain; I should just hope for little victories. One whole day without tears, for example. To dance again. To learn to enjoy life’s little moments without needing to share them with him.