‘Do you think he will like tuna?’ she asked.
The concierge rang to say Gaspar was in the foyer. I asked him to send him up to the apartment. A few moments later, Gaspar was at the door.
‘Come in,’ I told him. ‘I’ll fetch my bag.’
His eyes nearly popped out of his head when one of Diego’s chickens ran between his feet. He looked at the laundry hanging in the hallway and the assortment of women sleeping on sleigh beds in the drawing room.
‘Senyoreta Sánchez! How many people are living in this apartment?’
‘Diego and his family plus my teacher Manuel’s sisters and their husbands and children,’ I told him.
Gaspar pinched his lips as if he were trying not to laugh.
‘What’s so amusing?’ I asked.
‘I don’t think el Ruso will be pleased,’ he answered. ‘He wanted you to have this apartment to yourself. So you could concentrate on your work.’
‘But this is my clan. I can’t live in an apartment and leave them on the beach.’
‘No, I suppose not,’ he replied, his eyes twinkling. ‘But aren’t gypsies supposed to be nomads who live by their wits?’
I shrugged. That was what Francisca used to say — that my clan was inviting bad luck by staying too long in one place and not living the old gypsy way. Anyway, el Ruso had said he was going to tour me. I assumed my clan would be coming with me, so I guessed that would count as travelling for them.
It was early summer and the trip to Alcañiz was long and dusty. Fidelia slept most of the way while the tuna sandwiches she had made stank out the car. It was difficult to talk to Gaspar while we were driving because of the noise from the engine, so I spent most of the time looking out of the window. I had never been out of Barcelona before and my eyes were opened by the Spanish countryside. The mountains, plains, forests and clear skies were beautiful, but the poverty was not: the starving children on the roadside; the subsistence housing; the old people bent over by the loads of firewood they carried on their backs; the mangy dogs and rickety cats.
‘The poverty gets worse the further south you go,’ Gaspar said, when we stopped for a while to stretch our legs. ‘Most of the farms there are owned by landowners who only employ labour for the harvests. That means in between harvests — or if a harvest fails — the peasants starve because they have no other sources of income.’
When we arrived in Alcañiz, I tried to see it as Ramón and Teresa would have experienced it when they first arrived after being exiled from Barcelona. A twelfth-century castle — once the headquarters of the Knights of Calatrava, who had ruled this part of Aragon — dominated the town, with ancient white houses clustered around its base. When we stopped in the marketplace and got out of the car, I felt we had stepped into a place where time seemed to have stopped. I looked at the Gothic and Renaissance buildings and the old Baroque church. It was nothing like Barcelona, which always seemed to be changing.
Some children gathered around Gaspar’s car. He let them blow the horn a few times. ‘Where are your mothers?’ he asked. ‘We need to find someone who can help us with some information.’
‘My mother is over there,’ said one boy, pointing to a young woman in a headscarf who was working at a fruit stall.
‘Buenos días, señora!’ Gaspar greeted the woman in Spanish. ‘We are looking for some people who came here in 1909 … from Barcelona.’
I was thankful that Gaspar was taking over the search. My legs were shaking. Anticipating whether I was about to hear good news or bad news about Ramón and Teresa made my hands cold and clammy, even though my dress stuck to my back in the heat. I looked around, wondering if any of the young men were Ramón. I noticed some flower sellers at the far end of the market, but none of them was Teresa.
The young woman smiled. ‘Yes, my mother knew them very well.’ She turned to the man with her on the stall, who might have been her husband, and said something. He nodded. ‘Come this way,’ the woman said. ‘I’ll take you to my mother.’
Knew them very well? That didn’t sound good. At the very least, it didn’t sound as if Ramón and Teresa were still in Alcañiz. I put my hand on Fidelia’s shoulder for support.
The young woman, who introduced herself as Sofía, led us down a narrow street to an old stone house. She shouted to an upstairs window. The shutters opened and a woman of about fifty years of age peered out. Sofía introduced her mother, Antoñita, to us and explained to her why we had come. Antoñita said she would come downstairs.
‘Yes, yes,’ she said, when she opened her door to the street and ushered us inside her house, which smelled of borax and old wood. ‘I remember them very well. They were brought by the Civil Guard in September 1909.’ She looked from me to Gaspar. ‘You are not the first of the children who were left behind to come looking for them. Which ones were your parents?’
Gaspar indicated me. ‘We are looking for this señorita’s brother, Ramón, and her guardian, Teresa.’
‘Ramón! Teresa!’ Antoñita cried. She grabbed my hands and urged me to take a seat. ‘You must be Celestina! They both talked so much about you. How happy poor Teresa would have been to know that you are all right!’
‘What happened to Teresa?’ I asked.
Tears filled Antoñita’s eyes. ‘Her heart gave out a couple of months after she arrived. The upheaval was too much for her.’
I felt pain in my own heart. It was the news I’d most feared.
‘We buried her in the cemetery here,’ Antoñita said.
It was a few moments before I could speak. I remembered Teresa’s distraught face on the day she was taken away. She had cared for us after Papá’s death. She had tried to be strong for us. As a child, I had taken these things for granted. But as an adult, I better appreciated the sacrifice she had made.
‘And Ramón?’ I asked. ‘Where is my brother?’
Antoñita shook her head. ‘I don’t know. The Civil Guard came again one day after the exiles had been here for a few months. They took them all away. We have never been able to find out where.’
Sofía poured us a glass of wine each and sat down with us while Antoñita related the story.
‘When the authorities brought the exiles here, they told us that they were dangerous criminals. I think they wanted to work us up into a rage in the hope that we would lynch them. But it was obvious those people were not evil. They told us their stories and we were moved. They had nothing, so we gave them what we could. But in the end, it was they who left us with the greatest gifts.’
I looked at Antoñita, trying to understand her meaning. She smiled and stood up to take something from the shelf next to her. She handed me a book. It was a Spanish translation of Jack London’s The Call of the Wild.
‘I had never learned to read,’ Antoñita explained. ‘One of the women, Carme, was a teacher. She taught me how to read and write, and she gave me this book. It was all she had with her. I still read a few pages of it every day. I’m so grateful to her.’
The wine Sofía had given us was Aragon wine: full-bodied and potent. My head felt dizzy but at least the wine numbed the grief that was racking my body.
‘That’s why the authorities took them away,’ Antoñita continued. ‘They thought the exiles were having too much influence on us, giving us revolutionary ideas. One day, without warning, the Civil Guard arrived, put them in horse carts and took them away.’
I rested my head in my hands. I’d never had the means to come to Alcañiz until now, and I was too late. Far too late. How would I find Ramón now?
‘Your brother was a charming and resourceful boy,’ Sofía said. ‘I remember him well because we were close in age. I’m sure he will be all right wherever he is.’
Antoñita agreed. ‘He was very clever indeed! He helped with the olive harvest and found ingenious ways to do things faster.’ She put her hand on my arm. ‘Would you like to see Teresa’s grave?’
Gaspar, Fidelia and I followed Antoñita and Sofía to the cemetery. Teresa had
been buried alongside Antoñita’s parents. Her grave was decorated with bunches of blue and yellow wildflowers and some pink peach blossoms.
‘My neighbours and I attend to it,’ Antoñita explained. ‘We felt sorry for Teresa, dying so far away from her home and being buried without her family around her.’
‘Teresa was a flower seller,’ I told her. ‘At the big market in Barcelona. I’m sure she would have liked the display you’ve made for her very much.’
Antoñita and Sofía took Gaspar and Fidelia to see the other graves in the cemetery, leaving me alone to spend some time with Teresa. I could hear Antoñita explaining the history of the region to them as they went.
I kissed the white cross that marked Teresa’s grave and leaned my face against it. It was still warm from the sun. I tried to think only of my love for Teresa and my sadness at her loss, but anger at the injustice of her exile and death burned inside me. One day I would find a way to get justice for her and Papá.
Afterwards, Antoñita took us to see the house on the outskirts of town where the exiles had stayed. I touched the walls and the Spartan furniture with reverence, knowing that Ramón had been here. I sat on a rusty bunk in one of the bedrooms and gazed out of the window towards the castle.
‘Ramón,’ I whispered, ‘what happened to you? Where are you?’
That night, Antoñita insisted that we stay at her house. She cooked us corn cakes and garlic soup. After dinner, some of her neighbours came to meet us. They were eager to share their stories of how the exiles had taught them to read and write and also simple arithmetic. They spoke of their dreams of democracy.
‘We’ve had enough of the monarchy,’ Sofía’s husband said. ‘And dictators.’
The others agreed with him. ‘It’s time for a Second Republic,’ they said.
The exiles had influenced them indeed!
An old lady with cataracts touched my arm. ‘Teresa was very distraught to have left a little girl behind in Barcelona. She will be at peace now that you have visited her and shown her that you are all right.’
Sensing my emotional exhaustion, Gaspar drew the gathering’s attention away from me and amused them by singing some songs and demonstrating how to dance the sardana.
Later that night, after everyone was asleep, I snuck out of the house and hurried down the road in the moonlight to the house where Rámon had stayed. Everything was so silent. I stood outside the house and danced a soleá for him. What else could I do to express the loneliness and alienation I felt?
‘You see,’ I told Ramón, lifting my leg and executing a turn, ‘I have become a dancer.’
In the morning, we had to leave early again. Antoñita insisted that we take some sandwiches and olives with us. We thanked her for her hospitality.
Gaspar started up the car. As we were about to turn the corner, Antoñita came running out of her house.
‘You left your money on the table!’ she called to us. ‘You left one thousand pesetas!’
Gaspar glanced at me. I shook my head. ‘Keep driving,’ I told him. ‘I left it for her.’
He put his foot to the accelerator and drove into the brilliant Aragon morning.
On the night of my first appearance at the club, Zakharov brought red roses and champagne to my dressing room and then told me he was going home to bed. ‘I can’t bear to watch,’ he said. ‘El Ruso will tell me how it all went in the morning.’
It was fascinating to me that everyone else seemed to be on edge while I felt as calm as the sea on a still day. Gaspar’s smile was stiff; and el Ruso paced up and down the corridor, before willing himself to go out and sit in the audience.
I wasn’t the main act for the evening; that place was taken by the tenor Miguel Fleta. But I had been billed as the new surprise act and that had drawn a lot of people too. Senyora Dávilo had designed a stunning costume for me: shimmery black pants that were split from the knee to give a good view of my feet, and a silver-grey silk blouse, big-shouldered with ruffled full sleeves. The make-up artist had pinned my hair in a half-updo with a red hibiscus behind my ear. The greasepaint she had plastered on my face was even heavier than the powder I was just getting used to applying, my eyes were outlined in thick black kohl and my lips were painted bright red. I felt like I was wearing a mask.
‘She’s not la Argentina, is she?’ I heard one of the chorus girls say to another. ‘She’s not exactly going to charm the audience.’
Their viciousness didn’t distract me. I flexed and stretched my toes and warmed up my wrists.
‘Don’t be nervous,’ the nicer chorus girls said to me. ‘You’ll be terrific!’
It had never occurred to me to be nervous. There was going to be music and there was going to be dancing. It wasn’t in my character to worry whether or not people liked me. They either understood the dance, or they didn’t. That was all.
There was a knock at my door. ‘Senyoreta Sánchez, ten minutes until you are on,’ the stage assistant called. ‘Please make your way to the wings.’
Senyora Dávilo brushed down my costume one more time while the make-up artist ran the power puff over my nose and chin. I opened the door and followed the stage assistant to the wings. As I passed the other dressing rooms, the performers peered at me. Their pay packets for the next few weeks depended on my success.
In the wings, I tightened the straps of my shoes. I still wasn’t quite used to them. I had grown up dancing in bare feet, but el Ruso had insisted that no star of his would dance on his stage without shoes. Gaspar winked at me from his place at the piano.
The stage manager led me to the spot behind the curtain where I was to wait for the comedian who was on before me to complete his act. When the comedian had finished, he announced me.
‘And now, the act that you have been anticipating: a young flamenco dancer plucked straight from the bosom of the gypsies who will thrill you with her vivacity and the virtuosity of her dancing. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Celestina Sánchez.’
The curtain rose. A hush fell over the audience. I couldn’t see anything beyond the lights except for the occasional flash of diamond or gold jewellery. It didn’t matter; I could feel the crowd. Their excitement was electric. I breathed in and summoned their energy into me, like an ancient tribesman singing in his catch of fish. Gerardo played the introductory falseta. I clicked my fingers, raised my eyes and took three steps forwards into the spotlight …
TWENTY-TWO
Diario de Barcelona, 2 July 1920
Last night, Maxim Tarasov, ‘el Ruso’, the inimitable impresario and owner of the glamorous Samovar Club, launched his new show for the season. Known not only for his capacity to attract the big-name stars to his Barcelona venue but also his ability to discover new ones, Tarasov had filled his club to capacity with an audience anxious to hear the famed Miguel Fleta and to see the touted ‘surprise act’: a gypsy flamenco dancer.
Fleta was in fine form, as to be expected, and the audience was not disappointed when they also became witnesses to the debut of perhaps the most astounding and intoxicating performer Barcelona has ever seen.
The curtain rose to reveal the diminutive Celestina Sánchez, whose delicate physique transformed into a force of agility and strength the moment she took her first step. Her technical capacity was impressive, with precise and percussive footwork and a perfect sense of rhythm, but add to that an innate style that is wild and sensual and you have all the makings for a tempest. A pretty enough young woman, la senyoreta Sánchez transforms to a vision of beauty and passion when she moves, and hypnotises all in her wake. She had the audience enthralled with her rapid spins, her graceful turns and the way her arms flashed like fire around her body.
Accompanied by ten guitarists and an orchestra playing neoclassical music composed by Gaspar Olivero, la senyoreta Sánchez treated to her audience to an alegría, a fandango and a soleá before ending with a fiery farruca. Her costume was stunning, the split trousers and her long wavy hair giving her athleticism a sense of fe
mininity.
Flamenco is an art whose dancers start at a very young age and yet often do not come into their own until their fifties and sixties. If last night was anything to go by, this young dancer, who has been christened ‘la Rusa’ after the impresario who discovered her, has even more thrills to offer future audiences …
TWENTY-THREE
Paloma
I didn’t sleep the night after I met Manolo at the flamenco bar and he told me that la Rusa and Avi had been good friends. I thought of how Mamie had described my grandfather when he’d been a young man: with alert eyes ‘like a squirrel’. La Rusa’s eyes were different: dark and full of secrets. Try as I might, I couldn’t picture the two of them as friends.
I lay staring at my clock until it was time to get up and help Mamie prepare for the Saturday classes. When I walked into the studio, Mamie was already there, wearing a black dance skirt over her leotard and a pink scarf tied around her head. She had finished sweeping the floor and was wiping down the windowsills with a dusting cloth.
‘Ah, good morning,’ she said when she saw me. ‘How was your outing with Gaby?’
‘Mamie, I didn’t go out with Gaby last night.’
My grandmother’s eyes widened and she gave me a quizzical look. But she had too much faith in my sensible nature to think that I had done anything outrageous. A smile danced around the corners of her mouth.
‘Have you met someone?’ she asked. ‘I’ve been wondering … you’ve been so mysterious lately.’
On any other occasion I would have loved to talk about Jaime. But I’d been visited by a ghost — and one that had once known Avi. It was hard to behave normally with that on my mind. If la Rusa had been friends with my grandfather, there was a chance she’d been friends with Mamie too.
‘I’ve been taking flamenco classes,’ I said. ‘To improve my character dancing.’
The first part was true; the second part was a ‘stretched truth’ intended to protect Mamie’s feelings.
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