Golden Earrings

by Belinda Alexandra

  ‘You’re a pack of murderers!’ my father shouted at the guard. ‘Nothing but a cheap bunch of murderers!’

  The guard tried to kick my father away, but he held onto the reins. The horse reared. A shot rang through the air. Suddenly the spectators were screaming and reeling backwards.

  I saw my father clutch his neck and fall to his knees. I ran towards him. When I reached him, he was lying on his back. Blood was spurting from his neck. I pressed my hand to the wound and tried to stem the bleeding, but I could feel the blood pumping out.

  A crowd gathered around. The gun had not been fired by the mounted guard but by an officer a few yards away. I remembered Papá’s words: He’s brought in new troops — a lot of them — from Valencia and Zaragoza. These soldiers will not shoot above our heads.

  Papá looked into my eyes. He tried to say something but the words wouldn’t come. His eyes glazed over and I knew that he was gone.

  PART II

  TWELVE

  Paloma

  Saturday was our busiest day for classes at Mamie’s ballet school, so in the evening we’d usually eat a simple meal of chicory leaf salad and saffron rice with pine nuts and bell peppers. ‘Our pick-me-up-gently meal’ Mamie called it. Afterwards we would sit on the sofa in the living room, massaging each other’s feet and watching Numéro 1, the Maritie and Gilbert Carpentier variety show, on television. The week that I had started flamenco lessons at the Académie de Flamenco, Mamie seemed perturbed. She sat with her arms folded and pursed her lips. I had an uneasy feeling that she might have found out that I was up to something behind her back. Had she run into Gaby and discovered that we didn’t go and see a film together? I did my best to look innocent, dangling my tired legs over the side of the sofa and playing with my hair. Joe Dassin was singing his hit ‘L’été indien’ against a backdrop of shimmering lights. I was humming along with him when Mamie rose and turned off the television. I sat up with a start. But Mamie wasn’t about to remonstrate with me for learning flamenco. She had something else on her mind.

  ‘I want to tell you about my family,’ she said, her frown lines deepening. ‘The Montellas.’

  She stared at me, studying my reaction. There it was again: ‘the Montellas’. What was so significant about the family? I placed my hands in my lap, letting her know that she had my attention. Mamie cleared her throat.

  ‘Your grandfather once made me promise never to tell you this …’ She hesitated and fidgeted with her hands. I knew that talking about the past was difficult for her; she had kept her silence for so long. But I didn’t want her to stop now she had built up the courage.

  ‘Go on,’ I prompted her.

  Mamie sucked in a breath. ‘My brother, Xavier, was thirty-nine when he was executed by Franco’s forces,’ she said with measured calm, as if she had been rehearsing this opening for some time. ‘He had been betrayed by someone he loved; someone for whom he had sacrificed himself but who turned on him like a wild animal one foolishly believes has been tamed. Your grandfather and I had to flee Spain, along with my sister, Margarida.’

  Mamie paused for a moment, to see if her words were making sense. I found it hard to meet her gaze. I was battling with a sense of shame at my own self-absorption. Why had I always assumed that Mamie was an only child, like myself and my mother? It had never occurred to me that she might have had siblings. I realised it was because I’d only ever seen Mamie in relation to myself, as my grandmother. Not as a person who might have once had parents, brothers and sisters, and youthful ambitions of her own.

  ‘But that is the end of the story,’ Mamie said, coming to sit beside me. ‘And I must tell you it from the beginning. But before I can do that, there is something else I have to tell you; something that might come as a bit of shock.’

  My jaw clenched. I dreaded what I might hear. But hadn’t I asked for this? Hadn’t I been the one to beg for stories about Spain? There was nothing for me to do but nod for Mamie to continue.

  Mamie rubbed her hands and glanced at the wedding ring she still wore on her finger. ‘Conchita isn’t a friend of the family,’ she said. ‘She was once my sister-in-law: Xavier’s wife.’

  I felt as though I’d been struck by a hammer. I tried to comprehend what Mamie had just said. I saw Conchita as I held her in my head: a beautifully groomed, eccentric old lady who gave me sweets and whom Mamie looked after. Now I found the image shaken up. So the Spanish husband who was never spoken about had been Mamie’s brother? That made reticent Feliu Mamie’s nephew — and my cousin! I thought of him in his brown leather bomber jacket, sitting quietly with Mamie over a cup of coffee and never staying more than half an hour. Questions ran around in my head, but then I remembered I wasn’t allowed to ask them. Instead I made sure I had the facts right.

  ‘So Conchita was your brother’s wife?’ I asked. ‘She was Conchita Montella by marriage, and you were Evelina Montella before you married Avi?’

  Mamie nodded and touched my knee, as if she was trying to soothe me. ‘So you might understand better, I’m going to tell you a story,’ she said. ‘It’s about something that seemed ordinary the day it happened, but soon came to carry great significance. I think it will help you understand the Montellas and our place in Catalan society.’

  It was 1927: the fourth year of the rule of General Primo de Rivera. He was the dictator who had overthrown the Cortes, Spain’s parliament, and made Spain prosperous again, lining the pockets of the ‘good families’ of Barcelona, including my own, the Montellas. It was November, and these families had gathered in the Old Cemetery for the Feast of All Souls. The section of the cemetery where our procession was headed had not been part of the architect’s original plan for an egalitarian burial ground that was to be symmetrically laid out, divided by broad, tree-lined avenues, like a well-planned city. We passed under an arched portico and into an empire of neo-gothic and neo-classical mausolea and crypts with monuments that had been created by famous sculptors. It was where the rich of Barcelona buried their dead.

  I cast my eye over the gathering. It was the same collection of faces that I saw everywhere: at church, at the opera, at any significant social event. These were the elite who had controlled the Catalan economy for almost two centuries. They kept their wealth intact through intermarriage and the custom of a single heir, so family fortunes were never diluted. It seemed everyone there that day was only a step or two removed from a Güell, a López or a Girona. Even the tombs bore the names of the families who still influenced Barcelona: the Nadals; the Serras; the Formigueras. Except my family, of course: the Montellas. We were the nous rics, the ‘newly rich’— something Pare hoped to correct by marrying me off to a son of an established family whose declining fortune might cause him to find me attractive not only for my youthful charms but also my substantial dowry.

  The gathering separated, with each family heading in the direction of their mausoleum. I linked arms with my mother and we followed Pare to the part of the cemetery where the Montella family’s tomb had been built. It was as grand as any other in the section, fashioned from Carrara marble and covered in carvings of beautiful doves, but so far it contained only two coffins. It had been commissioned by my grandfather, Ignaci Montella, who had made his fortune in Puerto Rico. He now lay at peace there with his wife, Elvira, who had died young and left my father an only child.

  While Pare strolled ahead, enjoying the parklike atmosphere of the cemetery, my mother and I took a detour to look at our favourite sculpture. It was a reproduction of Federico Fabiani’s famous statue of a winged angel lifting the soul of a young woman heavenwards. There were many beautiful sculptures in the cemetery, but this one held a special attraction for me: it was somehow comforting and I didn’t fear death when I gazed at it. But what did I know of death? I was only eighteen and had no inkling of the carnage that was to come.

  ‘Excuse me, senyora Montella. May I take a picture of you with your daughter?’

  We turned to see the society writer from Diario de Barcelo
na smiling at us from beneath his hooked moustache. Before my mother had a chance to answer, he signalled to his photographer, but my mother raised her hand to cover my face.

  ‘That is out of the question,’ she told the reporter firmly. ‘My daughter isn’t out in society yet.’

  At my age, I should have already made my debut. But Pare said I needed to learn to ‘talk without stuttering and stammering’ before he would give my mother permission to bring me out. That was why he had finally agreed to Olga. My ballet teacher had arrived at our house the week before in a cloud of Guerlain’s Shalimar perfume and with a Fabergé pendant dangling from her swan-like throat. She had been a dancer in St Petersburg and had fled the city during the Revolution, escaping on a steamer bound for Sweden. Olga had already filled my head with such romantic stories that even if she didn’t build my confidence, she would at least make my life infinitely more interesting. Her presence inspired terror and adoration in people: a combination Pare had hoped would shock me out of my silence. Whether it would or not I didn’t know, or care. I was simply happy to be studying ballet at last.

  The reporter and his photographer mumbled their apologies and scurried away, and Mama and I continued on to the family tomb. When Pare heard us approaching, he turned around and lifted his eyebrows as if to ask where Xavier and Margarida were. I shrugged in reply. I hadn’t seen them since the entrance gate. They were twins and from childhood had often disappeared together for private conversations or shared adventures.

  Pare had just lit the candles in the doorway of the mausoleum when donya Elisa de Figueroa, Xavier’s mother-in-law, came to greet us, along with donya Esperanza de Figueroa, the ninety-year-old matriarch of the de Figueroa family, and donya Josefa Manzano, whose husband owned a shipping company.

  ‘Where is Xavier?’ asked donya Josefa. ‘I must congratulate him. He played so beautifully at my soirée the other evening. I knew that he was talented, but his touch … well, it is simply sublime. He plays as well as any pianist I have heard in Paris or Vienna.’

  ‘He showed a talent for music from a young age,’ my mother said, lowering her eyes humbly but smiling at the compliment.

  ‘Hah!’ said donya Esperanza, waving her bejewelled hand. ‘It is more than a talent. It is a gift!’

  ‘He paints beautifully too,’ added donya Elisa. ‘It’s a pity that such a talent is wasted on a man. If he had been a daughter, donya Rosita, you could have married him off into royalty without so much as a curtsey.’

  The women laughed together. It was what Margarida would have called the ‘society lady’ laugh’: a bit too forced and a bit too shrill.

  ‘Xavier won’t have much time for those pursuits any more, I’m afraid,’ said Pare, walking down the steps of the mausoleum to greet the women. ‘We are going to invest in banking. I’ll need his help in the business more than ever next year.’

  Donya Josefa nodded her approval at my father’s policy of diversification. Out of the women, she was the one who best understood the business world because she had helped her husband build his company from the ground up. I had heard her say to Xavier once: ‘If your father hadn’t taken Ignaci Montella’s fortune and invested it in textiles, iron ore mines and machinery, the whole lot would have disappeared when Spain lost the colonies.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose he will have less time for artistic pursuits,’ said donya Esperanza, with a wink at my mother. ‘Newlyweds are usually kept very busy … and we are so hoping for the patter of little feet before long.’

  ‘Here comes the beautiful bride with her father now,’ said Pare, nodding in the direction of the path.

  We all turned to see Conchita making her way towards us with don Carles de Figueroa. The late morning sun glinting off her glossy black hair and her porcelain skin made it easy to see why many considered her the most beautiful woman in Barcelona. She was stylish too. While the other society wives of her age were still being dressed by the houses of Vionnet and Patou, she had discovered the couturière Coco Chanel. Conchita was looking impossibly chic in her poverty de luxe wool jersey dress.

  ‘So simple, so elegant … so French,’ said donya Josefa, admiring the tailoring of the dress.

  Don Carles and Pare stepped away from the gathering and were soon involved in a lively discussion.

  ‘What are they talking about?’ asked donya Josefa.

  ‘The demands of the workers, unfortunately,’ said my mother.

  Donya Esperanza shook her head. ‘I will never forget that terrible time in 1909, and those heathens who burned the churches.’

  Donya Elisa put her hand on her heart. ‘I was terrified of the mobs shouting “All or None!” in the streets. It was ludicrous! If we had sent our sons to Cuba, who would have been left to run the factories and create jobs? The country would have collapsed.’

  My mother flinched, recalling a bad memory. ‘I never made it to the wharf that day the trouble started. Evelina was only a baby and she had come down with a terrible fever. I sent my maid and housekeeper instead to give those brave young men our support … but they threw the medals into the water and horribly abused my servants.’

  ‘Yes, I remember,’ said donya Esperanza. ‘Poor Maria Parreño was pushed over by one of their brutish women. It gave her such a shock.’

  ‘It irks me what they write in their “workers’” newspapers about our husbands and families,’ said my mother. ‘It’s as if we are monsters. But when a man in one of our factories was badly hurt, Leopold and Xavier were the first to line up to offer their blood for a transfusion. Besides, who do they think is funding the construction of the Sagrada Família, the parks, charitable schools and other public works?’

  ‘They don’t understand,’ said donya Elisa. ‘If we gave them all our money, it would be gone on gambling, drink and whores in a week. They don’t know how to handle wealth any more than they know how to eat properly with a knife and fork. They don’t understand the responsibility we bear … and I guarantee that if we gave it to them, they wouldn’t want it.’

  ‘The Socialists say that the workers should run the factories,’ said donya Josefa. ‘Tell me, is Russia better off now that the workers run the factories and riffraff has taken over the palace?’

  Donya Esperanza laughed. ‘Well, as my dear late husband used to say: “Even the cats want shoes nowadays!”’

  Conchita, who had no head for politics, stifled a yawn and leaned towards me. ‘What do you think of la senyoreta Dalmau’s dress?’ she asked, nodding her head in the direction of the Dalmau family’s tomb, where the youngest daughter of the family was standing on the steps with her brother. Senyoreta Dalmau was wearing a printed knit dress. It seemed perfectly respectable to me.

  ‘You’d think with the amount of money her family has, she’d dress better,’ Conchita said. ‘That olive colour and those big flowers make her look like a sofa.’

  I cringed at my sister-in-law’s nastiness. Conchita didn’t seem so beautiful when she gossiped about others. I knew that when we were out of earshot, she and her sisters probably said the same things about Margarida. While my mother still had control over what I wore, she had lost the battle with my sister, who preferred English tweed to anything offered by Parisian designers. ‘But, Mama, you are always saying that clothes are a woman’s armour,’ Margarida would tell our mother with a sly smile. ‘Why then should I not wear sturdy fabric rather than something that will tear in the tiniest of breezes?’

  At 180 centimetres, Margarida was never going to be a petite beauty, so she’d developed a style all of her own. And even though she was something of a tomboy, her bronze-gold hair and vivacious eyes gave her a certain allure.

  Seeing that she didn’t have an enthusiastic audience for her commentary on clothes, Conchita changed tack. ‘Where is Xavier? I haven’t seen him since we arrived.’

  ‘I’ll go find him,’ I told her, glad to have a reason to get away.

  It took me a while to discover that Xavier and Margarida weren’t visiting the crypts o
f the other families. My search was delayed by having to stop and greet the people who waved to me as I passed. I inwardly cringed each time one of the mothers glanced from me to her son, sizing me up as a potential daughter-in-law.

  ‘Such an attractive, graceful girl,’ I heard senyora Almirall say to senyora Calvet. ‘But so shy. You only have to greet Evelina Montella for her to turn as red as a tomato. Perhaps she would have learned to talk more if she had a less garrulous sister.’

  I rushed back through the portico into the interior section of the cemetery to get away from my social obligations. While it was true that Margarida, who was full of spirited self-confidence, could hold a conversation as easily with a street sweeper as she could a member of the nobility, she wasn’t the reason I was shy. No one knew the reason I was so timid, not even me. And Margarida was the only person I could confide in. If I had told my mother that being in a crowded room made my heart pound so hard I couldn’t breathe, she would have worried and that would have made everything worse. Margarida, on the other hand, simply told me to imagine that everyone around me was a chimpanzee. Although it didn’t make things easier, at least it made me laugh.

  The interior of the cemetery, where I found myself, consisted of blocks of niches, several rows high, in which coffins were placed. There were tombs in the middle of the space and a few monuments. It was mainly middle-class families who buried their dead here; although some of the older Barcelona aristocrats, who had died before the new section had been built or had considered it too showy for their tastes, were interred here too. I shivered when I remembered what Margarida had once told me: that if the families of the deceased couldn’t keep up the rental payments on a niche, then the remains of their loved one were tossed in the paupers’ pit.

  ‘That’s heartless!’ I’d exclaimed. ‘The dead should rest in peace!’