Golden Earrings

by Belinda Alexandra

  ‘Excusez-moi; perdó; perdón; pardon me,’ I told him in French, Catalan, Spanish and English. He laughed. Having been so mortally embarrassed by my slip-up earlier in the evening, I was surprised at myself for being able to make light of it now.

  After the main meal’s dishes had been cleared away, Vicenta brought out the desserts she had made. Ballet training had made me a light eater and I was already too full. But I didn’t want to insult her so I tried one of her honey-coated pastries.

  ‘This is delicious,’ I told her. ‘I don’t know how you all stay so slim.’

  ‘Because,’ said Carmen, standing up from the table and clapping her hands, ‘after dinner, we dance!’

  I thought she must be joking, but after everyone had helped tidy the table, Jaime and Félix moved the furniture against the walls. Ernesto began to play a folk song on a bandurria, a Spanish instrument similar to a mandolin. After he had played a few songs, Jaime picked up his guitar. I watched in amazement as Vicenta stood up and danced. She performed complicated footwork and danced so vigorously that I realised I had more to learn about flamenco than I had ever imagined. After her performance, the others took a turn at dancing, including Ricardo and Víctor.

  Carmen signalled to me once everyone else had performed. ‘Come on. Try what you’ve learned.’

  Even though I was with people who had been dancing flamenco all their lives, for some reason I didn’t feel as competitive as I usually did. I wasn’t driven by the need to outshine everyone; I was content to simply perform my percussive steps with pleasure — and Jaime’s family were even generous enough to shout ‘Olé!’ for me.

  The evening didn’t end until long after midnight, when Mercedes remembered that Ricardo and Víctor had school the next day.

  ‘I’ll walk you to your car,’ Jaime offered to me.

  The night air was freezing after the warmth of Carmen’s apartment, but the sky was clear.

  ‘So are you still in ballet school or are you with a company?’ Jaime asked.

  I was caught off guard by his question. My muscles tensed. After the light-hearted evening I’d just spent, I’d forgotten what a ‘non-person’ I had become. I wasn’t a student any longer, and I wasn’t part of the corps de ballet.

  ‘I’m teaching and taking extra lessons while I’m waiting for the next audition for the Paris Opera Ballet,’ I told him.

  Jaime gave a low whistle. ‘The Opera Ballet! Well, that explains your high level of skill.’

  It was flattering that he was impressed, but I would have felt better if I had been able to tell him that I was a quadrille and that we were rehearsing for La Sylphide.

  ‘And you?’ I asked, keen to turn the conversation away from me. ‘You are at the Conservatoire?’

  Jaime nodded. ‘I’m majoring in composition and classical guitar. But I’ve been away for several months — I had to return to Spain to do my compulsory military training.’

  ‘What was that like?’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s not my style to hold a gun, but if I hadn’t returned for it, I would have been labelled a deserter. That would have made it difficult for me to travel to Spain as frequently as I do to see my parents and sisters.’

  We reached the car and I realised that I hadn’t had a chance to ask him about la Rusa.

  ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘I’m very interested to learn more about la Rusa. She sounds like a formidable dancer. Are you acquainted with anyone who knew her?’

  Jaime looked thoughtful for a moment. ‘Yes, in fact I do know someone,’ he said. ‘If you are free on Friday night, I can take you to meet him. He’s playing at a flamenco club in Montmartre.’

  I didn’t know which part of what Jaime had said made me more excited: the idea of meeting someone who had known la Rusa; or that I would be seeing him again on Friday night.

  ‘I’ll come,’ I said. ‘That would be great!’

  We gave each other the standard Spanish and French parting of a kiss on both cheeks, but I was sure Jaime lingered a bit longer than usual. I felt drunk from the warmth that emanated from his skin.

  He opened the car door for me and I climbed inside. I had to let the engine run for a few minutes before the heater would work. When the car was warmed up, he shut the door and I gave him one last wave before pulling away from the kerb. As I drove towards the sixteenth arrondissement, I contemplated the evening that had passed. I used to think that Gaby had the closest family I had ever known, but her family had nothing on Jaime’s. I had never experienced such exuberant energy at a dinner before. Although they were hardly poor, they didn’t seem to have a lot materially and yet they made so much of what they did have. Carmen’s apartment was tiny, but she had decorated it beautifully. Nobody was working in a prestigious profession (over dinner I had discovered Isabel was a waitress, Félix was a mechanic and Mercedes was a stay-at-home mother) and yet they appreciated the food on their table as if they were eating at La Coupole. It seemed to me they knew how to make the most of their lives — whatever circumstance they found themselves facing — and put their full energy into it.

  I couldn’t help comparing them to my own family — or lack of it. My mother had been an only child, and my father’s brother had moved to New York when he’d finished university. We used to see Mamie and Avi every day, but my father’s parents only visited us at Christmas and other special occasions despite living just outside Paris. I’d had no idea that I had a Spanish cousin until Mamie had told me Conchita had been married to her brother.

  I didn’t know why I did it, but instead of heading home I turned in the direction of avenue de l’Observatoire, in the fifth arrondissement, where my father now lived with Audrey and her son, Pierre. Although I had never been there, the address was imprinted in my memory from all the times I had seen it on the back of the letters my father had sent me after his marriage to Audrey, even though I hadn’t opened or kept one of those missives.

  As I drove, I thought about my childhood. Being the offspring of highly accomplished parents, I had often been treated like an adult. I remembered lunches at Maxim’s and other haute-cuisine restaurants where I’d eaten things like quail with truffle sauce and cream of mussel soup — dishes any other child my age would have found unpalatable. Then it dawned on me how little I’d seen of my father after I’d started at the Ballet School. My mother had retired from performing after it was confirmed she was pregnant with me, and she’d made a point of being home during the school terms instead of touring with my father as she had done previously. My mother had been an object of fascination to me: a dark beauty whom I would have loved to emulate. But I’d inherited my father’s blond hair and his golden brown eyes. I’d adored watching my mother dress for the evening, putting on her silk gloves and perfume. Yet, despite my closeness to her, it was my father whom I’d most intensely missed when he wasn’t around. I remembered our reunions at airports and train stations when he returned from a tour. Mama always had to hold on to me to stop me from rushing down stairs dangerously or pushing other people out of the way. I remembered how my father laughed and embraced me when I finally got the chance to fling myself into his arms. ‘Ah, Paloma,’ he used to chuckle, ‘there is never anyone who welcomes me anywhere as unreservedly as you do!’

  Tears filled my eyes, and I blinked a few times so I could concentrate on driving. I was angry at my father but I still missed him, even now. He sent me cassette tapes and he tried to see me, but there was nothing he could do to change what had happened. He had been with another woman when my mother — and I — had needed him most!

  I turned into the avenue de l’Observatoire and pulled up outside the neoclassical apartment building where he lived. I looked up to the second floor and was surprised to see the lights were still ablaze. I wondered what my father was doing up in the small hours of the morning. My eyes took in the building’s elegant wrought-iron balconies and lion’s-head cornices. The memory of a trip my father had taken me on to Vienna when I was seven years old came flooding back to
me. He was scheduled to perform a series of Christmas concerts in the city. Mama was helping my grandmother nurse Avi through a severe bout of influenza so she hadn’t come with us. My father and I checked into the prestigious Grand Hotel Wien, where the organisers had booked a room for us. But when the bellboy brought our bags and offered to make a reservation for us at the hotel’s restaurant, my father declined. ‘We already have arrangements,’ he explained. After the bellboy left, my father turned to me. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s see the real Vienna.’

  We caught a taxi to Bandgasse, where my father showed me the tiny apartment he’d stayed in as a student a few years after the war. We ate soup and dumplings in a café he used to frequent with his friends.

  ‘Vienna had a special atmosphere then,’ he’d explained. ‘The Soviet Union, America, Britain and France were occupying the city. It was said that Vienna was full of spies. But I didn’t pay too much attention to that; my head was too full of the beautiful music.’

  The next day, my father eschewed the limousine the hotel had offered him and hired an old Volkswagen to show me around the city. We explored Stephansplatz, the Schönbrunn Palace, and ate sachertorte in a traditional coffee house. My father was already a famous concert pianist by then and people recognised him in the street. But he didn’t mind; he simply returned their curious glances with a self-deprecating nod.

  I realised that the trip had given me my most vivid memory of my father.

  I glanced again at the apartment building. Papa had always had an innate sense of style, but he had never been concerned with status. Whether something cost two francs or a thousand made no difference to him. ‘It’s the feeling an object gives you that matters,’ he always said. But the avenue de l’Observatoire, near the jardin du Luxembourg, was where you lived if you had money and you wanted people to know it. And the second floor, with its full-length balcony, was the most prestigious position in the building. When had my father become such a snob?

  I sighed. How could I know the answer to that? I didn’t know anything about my father any more: not what he was doing up so late; not what pieces he was working on for his next performance; not even what he ate for breakfast these days. My father was a stranger to me now.

  Resisting the tears that were filling my eyes again, I restarted the engine and headed for home.

  SEVENTEEN

  Celestina

  The old gypsy woman listened to my stories about the death of my mother, father and Anastasio and the exile of Ramón and Teresa on our way to the gypsy camp in barri del Somorrostro. I also told her about Juana and how I had been trying to find her.

  The camp was by the beach. We passed a group of men sitting around a fire drinking something that smelled like burned matches. The youngest of them, a man of about forty, stood up when he saw us. He rounded his muscular shoulders and fixed his eyes on me for a moment before turning to the woman. ‘Francisca, why do you bring this paya to the camp?’ he asked, his eyebrows raised in alarm.

  ‘She was in danger. I saved her.’

  ‘Good,’ said the man, grimacing and revealing a row of gleaming teeth. ‘Now take her back to her family and ask for a reward.’

  Francisca shook her head. ‘She has no family,’ she replied. ‘She belongs to me now.’

  The man wiped his hand over his jaw. ‘The townspeople already think we are child thieves,’ he said. ‘If the police learn we have a paya child in the camp, they will crawl all over the place looking for others.’

  Francisca raised her hand to calm him. ‘There’s nothing to fear. The guardian spirits told me to take her. For what purpose, I will discern tomorrow. For now, she needs rest.’

  Ignoring the man’s exasperated expression and the murmurings of the others, Francisca directed me through the camp. It was a shanty town of dwellings fashioned from whatever the occupants had been able to scavenge — plywood, corrugated metal, pieces of canvas and rope. One even had an old fishing boat for a roof.

  Francisca’s shack was located on a mound slightly above the other dwellings. The hinges creaked when she pulled open the door, which looked as if it was made from a tabletop. She pushed me inside and lit a lamp, which she then rested on an upturned crate. Despite the poverty of the camp, the interior of Francisca’s shack was a magical wash of colour. Magenta Jarapa rugs on the walls made the space cosy, while the makeshift furniture had been painted sky blue. Next to a small stove was a lopsided cupboard with dishes and pots arranged on it. Francisca pulled aside a curtain that divided the space and directed me towards a bed with a crocheted blanket.

  ‘Lie down and rest,’ she said.

  I took off my shoes and laid my head on the lace pillow.

  Francisca moved towards the cupboard, then returned with a glass of muddy-coloured liquid. She indicated that I should drink it. I gagged because it tasted like seaweed and sewer water. A few seconds later, my vision blurred and I felt drowsy. My eyes stayed open just long enough for me to notice the rabbits’ feet dangling from the bedpost near my head.

  ‘For protection,’ Francisca whispered. ‘Now go to sleep.’

  The series of shocks I had suffered left me ill for some time, but Francisca was a patient nurse. She was the gypsies’ chovihani and patrinyengri: their healer and medicine woman. ‘You are safer with me, little one,’ she said. ‘The authorities might take your friend Juana as well, and the police don’t come to the barri del Somorrostro if they can avoid it.’

  After a few weeks of rest, I started to feel stronger and joined Francisca to search for herbs and mushrooms. Perhaps it was my mother’s Romani ancestry, or perhaps a desire to belong somewhere after having lost my family, but I took to my gypsy life as naturally as a fish lives in water. Francisca and I were welcomed into any shack we chose to visit: the families always invited us in and shared their meals with us.

  At first, the lice-ridden gypsy children were wary of me, but soon I was allowed to join in their games on the coal-blackened sand. We would run towards the waves, shouting with joy, and then flee when they rolled into shore. We often found debris that had been dumped by the factories, and which the waves deposited on the beach. Once we discovered a broken conveyor belt and took turns dragging each other around the beach on it.

  The company of other children soothed some of the loss I felt over Ramón, although I still cried if I thought too much about my family. Ramón had promised to come back for me one day. Until then, I would have to make the best of my new life: after all, I was being well looked after. The gypsy women busied themselves adjusting old clothes to fit me or brushing my knotty hair.

  Only Diego, the leader of the clan who had objected to my presence, continued to eye me with a look of mistrust. ‘And what did the guardians tell you the role of this little paya will be?’ he asked Francisca after I had been with the clan for few months. ‘Will she weave baskets like Ángela? Or tell fortunes like Micaela?’ Although Diego himself was lazy, he didn’t like anyone in his clan to be idle. Even the youngest children were given chores to do each day.

  Francisca looked him straight in the eye, something none of the other gypsy women dared to do. ‘This one is a dancer. I will take her to Manuel and give her lessons.’

  Diego’s face twitched. Because of Francisca’s privileged position, he had to bow to her wishes and that seemed to make him dislike me even more. At the same time, Francisca’s statement sent a quiver of excitement through me. My feet tingled and my fingers involuntarily opened and closed like the petals of a flower. Francisca noticed, and smiled. Diego frowned.

  ‘She’ll never be one of us,’ he said. ‘So teach her to dance and then send her to town to take money from ignorant tourists who don’t know any better. They’ll think a little girl dancing flamenco is cute.’

  The tourists and townspeople were the gypsies’ favourite prey. It didn’t take me long to understand that the Romani saw non-gypsies, payos, as inferior and unclean: they were not clever enough to live by their wits and were slaves to their jobs. B
ecause of that, the gypsies had no qualms about separating them from their precious pesetas or belongings. One day, at the water fountain with some of the women from the encampment, I learned that their ‘psychic’ abilities were nothing but con tricks.

  ‘This is what I do to the payos,’ said Micaela, a young woman of sixteen who already had four children. She fixed her eyes on a point in front of her and murmured as if in a trance: ‘You are a good person, I can see. You do a lot for other people. But they don’t always treat you well.’

  Aurora laughed, smoothing her shock of salt-and-pepper hair with a bony hand. ‘Ha! That’s the way. Hook them in by telling them what they want to hear. They will search their memories until they find a match. Then you’ll have their trust.’

  The women egged each other on to share their deceptions.

  ‘I always tell the men that the “petite woman” is their soul mate,’ giggled Estrella, a middle-aged woman with a downy moustache. ‘The chances are good that he will relate what I’m saying to someone he knows!’

  ‘The ones whose mothers have recently died are the best,’ added Micaela. ‘They can’t pay enough to communicate with their mamas.’

  These fortune tellers, who went out daily from our camp and returned with legs of ham and bags of olives, were scammers and cheats. But Francisca was different. She told people about their past, not only their future, and she was concerned whether a person was on their soul’s true path.

  ‘Your mother had the spirit of flamenco in her,’ she told me. ‘And that’s how I know you will be a dancer. She couldn’t use the gift in her short life and she passed it on to you.’

  Sometimes, if I awoke at night, I would hear Francisca walking around the shack and speaking out loud to her divine guides. She believed that everything — animate or inanimate — had a spirit. If she broke something, she prayed over the object as the glue dried as sincerely as she would pray over a child with a fever or a man with a broken limb. When she pushed her wheelbarrow of healing potions around the camp, she spoke to it as a cart driver might coax an old horse. Before commencing a healing, she whispered to the herbs she intended to use, revering them for their magical qualities as much as for their medicinal ones.