Golden Earrings

by Belinda Alexandra

  When I stood up to leave, Mademoiselle Louvet grabbed my hands. ‘Promise me, Paloma, that you will put all thoughts that you could fail this examination out of your mind. I want you to give it everything. Ballet is like a love affair: you must surrender yourself to it fully, otherwise you will receive nothing in return. You must have faith, even if it cuts you like the Little Mermaid dancing on knives.’

  I tried to keep Mademoiselle Louvet’s advice in mind when I practised in the studio the following day. I pushed myself to my limits, but I couldn’t get rid of the lump in my chest. Could my father really have ruined my dreams for good?

  Only the sight of Jaime waiting outside the Conservatoire’s library later that morning lifted my spirits. When Jaime smiled, his whole face came alive. He kissed me and took my hand.

  ‘I’ve booked two films of la Rusa for us to see,’ he said. ‘One is a clip of her dancing at the Samovar Club as a young woman, and the other one is a routine she did for a flamenco film just before the Civil War.’

  I waited anxiously as the projector whirred. The film jiggled until Jaime steadied it. My hand flew to my mouth when la Rusa appeared on the screen, alive and animated. It was strange to watch her: compelling and uncomfortable at the same time. The moments when she looked directly into the camera with her hypnotic eyes sent shivers down my spine. I could see in her the dancer Mamie had described: savage, violent and forceful in her movements. She had a lithe body but her technique was sharp and precise.

  When she had finished her dance, she smiled at somebody. That intrigued me. In all the images I held of la Rusa in my head, I had not pictured her being happy. I looked at the corner of the screen and glimpsed a young man sitting at a grand piano. Avi! Seeing my grandfather, young and smiling, made me want to cry. He had no idea at that moment of the fate that was to befall him.

  Jaime held my hand and gave me a few moments to collect myself before he wound on the second film.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked. ‘This must be confronting for you.’

  I rested my head against his shoulder. It was nice to have a boyfriend and Jaime was so kind. I wondered why I’d had to meet him now, when my life was in disarray and I was dealing with having been visited by a ghost.

  There was no dialogue in the second film; the story was told through singing and dancing.

  ‘The people in it are all la Rusa’s gypsy family,’ said Jaime. ‘Apparently, wherever she went, they went too.’

  I’d never thought of la Rusa as having a family either, I realised. She seemed different in the second film: she was older and more beautiful, with a nobility about her that made me think of an Indian princess. Her technique had changed as well. She was still explosive in her movements and powerful, but the sharpness of her steps had gone. She had softened.

  I leaned forwards and studied her face with its gentler expression and the eyes that shone with joy. Did she look like that because she was in love?

  Jaime and I went to a nearby café to talk.

  ‘It’s been such a strange time for me,’ I confided in him. ‘I’ve realised that there’s so much I don’t know about my own family. My grandfather, for instance — he was a successful musician and travelled the world. Conchita, who I had always thought was a family friend, is the widow of my great-uncle. I’ve just discovered that Feliu, a man who visits every few years, is my cousin. And then, there’s Mamie. I had never considered for a second that she could have been married before Avi. And I sense that my grandmother hasn’t told me half of it yet.’

  ‘I can’t imagine what that must be like,’ said Jaime. ‘No one in my family could keep a secret even if they tried. I’ve heard their stories so many times that they only have to say the first word of one and I can repeat the whole recollection for them. Your grandmother must have her reasons for not telling you those things until now.’

  ‘That’s what scares me,’ I said. ‘I get the impression that even with Franco dead she doesn’t feel “safe” talking about Spain.’

  ‘I can understand that,’ said Jaime. ‘I grew up in Spain under Franco. My father is a respected surgeon but because of my uncle’s activities we were always under surveillance. It was like being under house arrest. Life was hell for those who had sided with the Republic during the Civil War. One of our neighbours had been a celebrated architect, but he couldn’t get a job under Franco’s regime and eked out a living selling marquetry boxes to tourists.’

  Jaime had an afternoon class and had to return to the Conservatoire. He paid for the coffees and then he stood up and kissed me.

  ‘You’re not alone with this mystery, Paloma. I’ll help you.’

  I had a few hours to spare before my flamenco lesson with Carmen later that evening, so I went back to the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève and looked up old newspapers, trying to learn what I could about la Rusa’s death. Her body had been found on the train tracks on the outskirts of Paris, in an area that was scrubland back then but was now a growing suburb. There was a question mark over whether the death was suicide or not because when the police went to her apartment to look for a suicide note, they discovered it had been cleared.

  I was out of my depth, but I decided to go to the Prefecture of Police and pretend I was researching a book on la Rusa’s life.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mademoiselle,’ the police sergeant said, ‘but we do not have a record. Investigations into suicides may be destroyed after twenty years have passed.’

  I found it hard to believe that the records of the investigation into the death of a famous figure would have been destroyed, particularly when there was controversy around her death, but as I wasn’t being honest about writing a book, it wasn’t the time to get into an argument with a policeman. I was turning to go when I noticed another, older policeman standing near a filing cabinet and sending furtive looks in my direction. I was sure that he was listening to our conversation.

  I turned back to the sergeant at the desk. ‘You said records may be destroyed. Why would some be kept and others not?’

  ‘Various reasons, but in the case you are speaking about, probably because foul play was ruled out.’

  I caught the train to the station nearest to where la Rusa’s body had been found. The station hadn’t existed in 1952; according to the newspaper reports, la Rusa had caught a taxi to the village and then walked to the isolated spot by the tracks. No one remembered seeing her.

  I alighted from the station in the late afternoon. The suburb consisted of high-rise buildings, a laundromat and a few stores. The buildings had a run-down look about them although they couldn’t have been more than five years old. There were some cars parked alongside the station. One of them caught my eye: a brown BMW Longue. I noticed it because Mademoiselle Louvet had one like it in white. Although this car was an older model, it was polished and stood out from the battered Renaults and Citroëns. There was someone sitting in the driver’s seat, but I couldn’t see the face clearly because the windows were tinted.

  I walked alongside a low concrete fence until it ended and there was nothing between me and the tracks but some overgrown grass and weeds. I was suddenly overcome by a feeling of desolation. Why had la Rusa, the greatest flamenco dancer of all time, come to this spot to end her life?

  When I arrived for my flamenco lesson with Carmen, she told me that she was inspired to teach me the farruca.

  ‘It’s not a dance I usually show beginners,’ she said. ‘But I feel there is something you are suppressing. Perhaps this dance will bring it out.’

  I glanced at Jaime, but he shook his head to let me know that he hadn’t breathed a word about la Rusa to his aunt. ‘It’s not my secret to tell,’ he’d promised me.

  As I followed Carmen’s lead, I saw that the farruca was everything that la Rusa had expressed in the first film that Jaime and I had watched that afternoon. The footwork was aggressive and the music shifted dramatically from one mood to another.

  ‘Wow, you are on fire!’ said Carmen, looking at me with adm
iration.

  Indeed, dancing the farruca made me feel majestic and powerful; a sharp contrast to the defeatism I’d experienced the day before. If only I could make those feelings last, I thought. But I knew that as soon as I went home the strength would fade and I’d return to my normal anxious self.

  ‘I’m sorry I can’t stay for dinner tonight,’ I told Carmen after the lesson. ‘I’ve promised to help my grandmother with some things.’

  I was torn between wanting to stay longer with Jaime and his family and my eagerness to hear more of Mamie’s story. I was afraid that if there was too long a break between her reminiscences, she would change her mind and not tell me any more.

  ‘You are welcome in our home any time,’ Carmen said, kissing my cheeks. ‘And your grandmother is welcome here too.’ Then she added with a cheeky smile, ‘She might have to change her mind about flamenco now!’

  I glanced at her, wondering what she meant.

  Carmen laughed. ‘Jaime told me about the both of you,’ she explained. ‘I’m pleased. You are a well-brought-up girl. I’ve ordered my nephew to treat you with respect.’

  I felt myself blush, and glanced at Jaime, who smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘He does,’ I told Carmen. ‘He’s very good to me.’

  While Jaime walked me to my car, I filled him in about my visit to the police station and the place where la Rusa had committed suicide. ‘It was such a sad, lonely spot. If it was la Rusa who betrayed Xavier, perhaps she deeply regretted it. I hope to find out more tonight.’

  Jaime and I kissed before I climbed into the car. As I was about to start the engine, he knocked on the window. I unwound it and we kissed again.

  ‘In future,’ he said, serious for a moment, ‘if you want to do any detective work, take me with you. You’ve got a man now. I’m here to protect you.’

  I waved as I pulled out from the kerb. ‘You’ve got a man now; I’m here to protect you.’ It was such a Spanish male thing to say, I thought with a smile. But it felt good too.

  To my dismay, after I drove home like a maniac and bounded up the apartment stairs, Mamie was already in bed when I arrived. I had to wait until after dinner the following evening, when we had cleaned the dishes and sat down with a pot of tea in the lounge room, for Mamie to begin to tell me what had happened to her brother.

  ‘When I realised that Xavier and la Rusa were in love I suffered a dilemma.’ She shook her head and glanced at her hands. ‘I know it was wrong in the eyes of the Church, but how could I deny my brother this one happiness? He looked after Conchita well and saw to her every need; he was devoted to Feliu; and a dutiful son to our parents. But when he was with la Rusa … it was as if the real Xavier had emerged, the piece he could save for himself. He shed the skin that had been suffocating him and came alive.’

  ‘Are you saying that la Rusa liberated him?’ I asked her. ‘Initially anyway?’

  I thought of the spirit of freedom I had experienced while riding on the back of Jaime’s Vespa — the sense of breaking out of restrictions and rules. I wondered if that was how Xavier had felt when he was with la Rusa. The idea made me sympathise with him.

  Mamie stood up and walked to the window, where she stared out at the street. ‘I was enamoured of the woman myself,’ she said. ‘La Rusa had this shining charisma and presence! Although she was a passionate person, she had a superhuman ability to contain herself. How was I to know the blackness within her?’

  ‘Did Conchita ever find out?’

  Mamie shook her head. ‘Not at first, but eventually, yes. Xavier was head over heels and would not have been so discreet if it wasn’t for la Rusa. She was careful that as few people as possible knew about them. She was always trying to protect Xavier. I liked her all the more for that.’

  ‘Even so, Conchita knew?’

  Mamie nodded and came back to sit on the sofa. ‘It doesn’t take much for a woman to suspect these things: a little hearsay, a whimsical smile on her husband’s lips, hairpins in his pockets. There were some terrible fights. I remember Conchita screaming at Xavier once: “So that whore of a dancer has you eating out of her tough little hands, does she? She’s glamorous and exciting in your eyes and I’m just some old shoe. But you are stuck with me whether you like it or not! If you ever try to leave me, my father will have you killed!”

  ‘Her rages and threats of suicide would cause Xavier to try to be more discreet, but Conchita always knew and she hated la Rusa with a passion. Although it was normal for Spanish men of Xavier’s position to have mistresses, and many men treated their wives more cruelly than Xavier treated Conchita, she was consumed with jealousy. She was convinced that la Rusa had used black magic to captivate Xavier. “She is a gypsy, after all,” Conchita once told me. She could not see her own role in creating a cold, sexless marriage and blamed la Rusa for everything.’

  Mamie looked like she was about to say something else, but instead rubbed furiously at her wedding ring. ‘Xavier was ten years older than me and seemed happy for the first time in a long time. I had to trust him to manage his life. Besides that, the changes in Spain that were taking place around us were so great, I often felt that our daily lives were on the verge of being engulfed by them.’

  Despite the troubles the Republican government suffered, there were many Catalans who regarded the early years of its rule as a kind of Golden Age in which culture and art blossomed. Even Pare, while not happy about having to pay higher wages and deal with worker unrest, was pleased that the Catalans had won greater autonomy for themselves and now had authority over the local police and civil service, local government and education. The Catalan language was once more official, and there were plans for new hospitals and better housing and recreation areas for the workers. ‘For too long Barcelona has been held back by Madrid,’ he said.

  Although he maintained conservative views, Pare did not forbid Margarida from running for parliament in the February 1936 elections, although he did warn her that: ‘It will be the last nail in the coffin of any hope you may have of marriage. A man will never take a woman involved in public life for a spouse.’

  Given that Margarida had never been the marrying type, I think that prediction suited her. She preferred to undertake her battles outside the home, where the right-wing candidates she was up against tried to dismiss her as ‘a lesbian and a whore’. Despite the fact that Margarida had never encouraged violence as a means to an end, her opponents attempted to turn middle-class voters against her by claiming she was an anarchist. Even some members of Margarida’s own party resented her disdain of tradition. While they mired themselves in battles over seniority and so much bureaucratic detail that their reforms became useless, Margarida sidestepped party politics and put all her energy into making life better for the men and women in the street.

  ‘Margarida has won twice as many votes as her nearest opponent!’ Xavier shouted the day we all sat around the radio waiting for the election results to be read out.

  The Left swept into power again. The Anarchists, having witnessed the damage absenteeism had done in the previous election, had urged the workers to vote this time. Margarida was among a handful of ‘new women’ who had won places in the Cortes. I was happy for her, although it meant she would now be spending time in Madrid and I would miss her.

  ‘Well, she set out to win and she did it!’ Pare cried proudly. ‘Although I would have preferred it if she had joined the Catalan Party rather than the Socialists.’

  ‘Just be happy for her!’ Xavier told him.

  Pare grinned.

  I looked at my father. He had just turned sixty. Was he mellowing with age? Still, I couldn’t imagine he would be as pleased if I had run for parliament.

  Not everyone was happy with Margarida’s new-found prestige. The person who was most angry of all was Conchita’s father, don Carles, whose fascist sympathies had led him to become a prominent member of the Falange, along with the bull breeder and gangster Ignacio Salazar.

  ‘You are sup
posed to be good Catholics!’ he shouted at my father. ‘And you are sending this country to hell!’

  Don Carles cut off all relations with our family, including with his own daughter.

  ‘Look at the trouble your sister has caused,’ Conchita complained to me. ‘Fortunately, my father has already honoured my dowry!’

  When I look back on those times, the sweeping changes Spain was experiencing appeared to be heightening everyone’s essential personality: the passionate became more passionate; the material, even more self-seeking; the timid, more frightened; and the treacherous … more dangerous.

  But in 1936 I was too blissful to worry much about politics or family rifts. I was pregnant at last. And the baby was Gaspar’s.

  I had not seen Gaspar for three years, since the day he came to visit la Rusa while I was having a flamenco lesson with her. My feelings for him were so intense that I hadn’t been able to bring myself to look at him. I knew then that I would never love anyone the way I loved Gaspar. But our situation was hopeless and I avoided him so that I wouldn’t inflict more pain on him than I already had. While his work brought him to Barcelona from time to time, I had the impression he too was staying away as much as he could. Then fate brought us together again in January 1936.

  An important part of the Catalan revival was to bring music and art to the workers of the city. One day, when Francesc was in Madrid, I went with Margarida to listen to a concert Xavier had organised in a community hall in the barri Xinès. Pau Casals, the famous cellist, was playing, along with other musicians. We hadn’t told Xavier that we were coming. If we had, I’m sure he would have warned us that Gaspar was on the program.

  When the master of ceremonies announced Gaspar Olivero’s name and I saw the man my heart longed for walk onto the stage, I literally stopped breathing.