Golden Earrings

by Belinda Alexandra

  Ramón sucked in a breath. The antagonism he had initially shown towards me had dissipated. I knew he was telling me what was in his heart.

  ‘My sister did not bother anyone in the Spanish émigré community. Thirteen years had passed since the end of the war; those who saw her in the street either no longer recognised her or decided to ignore her. She did not attempt to contact Evelina Montella again either, but she had one dying wish … She showed me an article from a dance magazine about the ballerina Julieta Olivero, her daughter. She was one of the youngest students ever to be accepted as a quadrille in the Paris Opera Ballet.’

  Ramón’s face turned dark as a painful memory came back to him. ‘Although she was weak, Celestina dressed beautifully for the opening of Swan Lake in a satin ball gown with a tulle scarf over her hair. “You look like an Indian princess,” I told her as I led her to the box I had chosen especially to stay out of sight of Evelina and her husband Gaspar, whom I knew would be there. What a delight it was to see the glow on Celestina’s face as she watched her daughter dance. She almost became young and well again before my eyes. After the performance, my sister seemed at peace. “Now I’ve seen her, I can die without sadness,” she told me. “I was right to try to save her. Xavier would have been so proud. She is beautiful.”

  ‘In the foyer, as we were leaving, Celestina caught sight of Evelina and Gaspar. Julieta came out to greet them. Celestina hesitated, and for a moment it seemed to me that she wanted to approach them. But then her face clouded and she turned to me with tears in her eyes. “Come on, Ramón,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  ‘When Celestina began to seriously deteriorate, I moved her from her apartment to mine, and brought all her clothes and furniture with her so that she would be surrounded by things she had once loved. The disease and pain made her mind fragile. With nothing ahead of her but suffering that morphia would not be able to completely deaden, she decided to take her life so as not to be a burden to me.’ Ramón shook his head and covered his eyes. ‘The stupid thing is … she seemed much better that week. She didn’t show any signs of pain. I didn’t realise she was rallying her strength to end her life.

  ‘On the day she had decided to leave this world, I woke to find that she had prepared for me an elegant breakfast of croissants, fruit and coffee on her finest china. She hadn’t been well enough to do anything like that in a while. “I wish I’d had a lifetime to spoil you, dear brother, as you used to spoil me,” she told me. “But these last few months have been the most wonderful of my life. Don’t worry about anything; everything has been taken care of.”

  ‘I thought that she was talking about the fortune she thought she had in the bank and willed to me after her death. I had no inkling she was referring to her decision to die that day. I left her with kisses and a promise to cook her paella that evening. But when I returned to the apartment, it was dark and she wasn’t in her room. Then two policemen arrived to tell me about the “accident”. But it wasn’t an accident, of course … She chose a method she knew there would be no coming back from — no stomach pumping, no resuscitation. And a spot where the trains travel too quickly for even the alertest driver to stop.’

  Ramón fell quiet. Then he placed his hand to his face and began to cry. It was terrible to watch his bitter tears. I wanted to cry with him, but I couldn’t. I had to explain that he’d been as wrong about Mamie as he’d once been about his sister. He’d judged her too quickly.

  ‘Ramón,’ I said, ‘Mamie didn’t know. She didn’t know. She truly believed that Celestina had denounced Xavier maliciously. Why didn’t you tell her — even after your sister’s death? Why didn’t you settle the record then? Mamie would have been devastated that she had falsely accused your sister, but at least she wouldn’t have gone through her life cursing the woman who had once been her friend, who had loved her brother, who had … borne her child.’

  Ramón looked at me with red-rimmed eyes. ‘I was angry and full of hate,’ he said. ‘Yes, I could have told Evelina Montella the truth, but I wanted revenge.’

  I shook my head. ‘Why was it revenge not to tell her? Imagine how she would have felt to know that the woman she had accused of murder had actually saved her life? And the life of her family?’

  Ramón sat back and closed his eyes. ‘It was because of what I had learned after Celestina’s death from a former Spanish criminal that made me decide to keep it a secret.’

  I waited for Ramón to explain. Then he uttered something that rattled me completely.

  ‘I thought it a fitting revenge that the person who had really betrayed Xavier … was the woman Evelina Montella sheltered under her roof.’

  I paced the courtyard for some time before I found the courage to knock on Conchita’s door. I wasn’t sure if I could go through with this conversation. But I decided that responsibility didn’t diminish with age, especially when I considered the enormity of what Conchita had done to my family.

  When Ramón had explained Conchita’s betrayal, my initial urge was to go straight to Mamie to tell her the truth about her ‘delicate’ sister-in-law. But once my anger and excitement wore off, I knew that Mamie was too fragile to cope with such a revelation. Her heart was still weak, and the shock of the truth could be fatal. I had to protect Mamie at all costs.

  Conchita must have sensed a change in my manner towards her. After she had invited me inside, she kept glancing at the photographs of her deceased second husband and twins, as if to warn me that she was frail and had experienced a terrible tragedy.

  There was so much that was unknown about this woman. She had pushed Xavier away so they wouldn’t have more children, but she had borne twins to another man. Why? To keep his love? Who knew? When I studied her, I no longer saw an eccentric old lady but the woman Margarida had described: ‘A black hole … a drama queen who wants attention and wants everyone to be responsible for her.’ This woman, whom I had always felt sorry for, had betrayed Mamie, deceived her and then used her!

  ‘Feliu came to visit Mamie at the hospital after her surgery,’ I said.

  Conchita shrugged as if the news was of no consequence to her, but her face stiffened. ‘He never loved me, that child. He never responded to me. Not like the twins …’ She turned towards the photographs of her dead children and wiped a tear from her eyes.

  I wasn’t going to let her use that piece of manipulation on me again.

  ‘Does he avoid contact with you because he knows that you, not la Rusa, betrayed his father?’

  Ramón had explained to me that when it seemed certain that the Republic was going to lose the war in Spain, Conchita had attempted to make contact with her father through his friends in the Falange. She had hoped for a reconciliation with her family if she shunned the Montellas.

  Conchita’s eyes flashed at me. ‘I don’t know what you are talking about!’ she said. ‘From whom did you hear such lies? You have wounded me deeply by believing them!’

  ‘You offered information you had overheard about Xavier’s intelligence work to the Nationalists in order to get back on side with your father,’ I said. ‘You knew the night that la Rusa came to collect you all that you were going to be arrested. You had telephoned your father’s friend, Salazar. That’s why you didn’t bother dressing properly for an evacuation. You and Feliu weren’t even put in prison.’

  Conchita cast me a look of contempt, but I knew what I was saying was correct. I could see it in her eyes.

  ‘Salazar was grateful for your information, but your father still didn’t want you back,’ I went on. ‘That terrified you. Not only were you a traitor to the Republic and the Montellas with no place to go, but you were also a potential target of Nationalist extremists because you were Xavier Montella’s widow. Salazar could protect you against official prosecution but not against individual vendettas. You had no choice but to cling to Mamie to save you. You had already arranged with Salazar to let you escape to France. He had his own reasons for convincing la Rusa that she had betrayed Xavier, but the
truth was that the information she gave made no difference to Xavier’s fate — that had already been sealed by you!’

  Conchita’s mouth pinched into a narrow line. I thought she was going to deny my accusations, but to my surprise she stood up and shouted at me.

  ‘So what if I did, you prissy little ballerina? How dare you sit there with your serious face and point the finger at me! What would you know about war? What would you know about survival? You know nothing!’

  She walked over to the pictures of her children and second husband and placed them face down before turning back to me. It was an odd gesture: as if she didn’t want them to hear what she was about to say.

  ‘The Montellas ruined my life!’ she continued. ‘Do you think Xavier Montella was the only man who wanted to marry me? I was the greatest beauty in Barcelona. My parents arranged our marriage thinking I would have a privileged existence for the rest of my life. Well, that was Xavier’s first deception. I despised him for his foolish talk about equality and a better life for the masses. What about my life? What about my birthright?’

  I stared at her in disbelief. Everything Margarida had said about her was true. She was beautiful on the surface, but a black hole inside. And she had sucked everyone into her vortex.

  ‘You’ll never know what a great family the Montellas were … their wealth, their standing in society,’ Conchita continued. ‘Xavier threw all that away as if it were nothing. He was the family’s heir! He had responsibilities. I was a fool to have married him. The Montellas brought shame on me — their stupid liberal ideas ruined my life. It’s only right that Evelina Montella should have made it up to me. She should be responsible for taking care of me!’

  When she saw that I was too lost for words to respond, Conchita sat down. ‘All that happened long ago,’ she said with a wave of her hand. ‘It no longer concerns me.’

  It shocked me even more that she felt no remorse for what she had done. Xavier had been Feliu’s father! And for the first time I understood how she truly saw Mamie — not as her friend, not as her sister-in-law, but as her servant. Poor Mamie. I could never tell her what Conchita had done … how could Mamie ever reconcile herself to that? Ramón had been right: this was the most terrible revenge of all.

  ‘So,’ said Conchita, folding her hands in her lap, ‘I suppose you intend to tell Evelina now and have me thrown out.’

  I shook my head. ‘I’m not going to tell her — for her sake not for yours. But I won’t let you suck her into your little tricks any more. You can pay your own way from now on. As far as I’m concerned you are no longer a part of this family.’

  She sniffed and stared out the window.

  I left, wishing that Ramón had never revealed the truth about Conchita. I was now her unwilling collaborator in the most vile of secrets.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Paloma

  I didn’t wake up the following morning until ten o’clock. Mamie was moving around the kitchen; I could hear her opening and shutting cupboards and talking to Diaghilev. I closed my eyes again for a moment and tried to take in my new identity: the granddaughter of the world’s most famous flamenco artist. Was it possible that I had dreamed the whole thing? That Ramón Sánchez had never existed to tell me such a fantastic story? Overcome by everything I had discovered since yesterday — that Mamie wasn’t my blood grandmother, that she had been wrong about la Rusa’s betrayal and had been deceived for years by Conchita — I wept quietly. I was sorry for la Rusa, for Xavier and Ramón — and for Mamie too.

  ‘Paloma, don’t you have to practise today?’ Mamie called from the kitchen.

  I couldn’t stay in bed all day unless I wanted to end up with muscle cramps. But I didn’t want to face Mamie either. Knowing what I did now, I was frightened that the bond between us might have been severed.

  I came to myself and wiped my eyes. I tore a brush through my hair and put on my dressing gown.

  Mamie beamed at me when I entered the kitchen. ‘Look at what I found,’ she said, holding up a red cloth-covered scrapbook. At first I thought she had discovered something from her days in Barcelona but then I recognised the swirly patterns on the fabric. It was my scrapbook from when I was a child.

  ‘Do you remember?’ Mamie asked, her eyes shining as she turned the pages. ‘You and I made this together when your parents were touring America. You were four years old. It was a special time for me. I had you all to myself.’

  I looked over Mamie’s shoulder at the pictures of fairies, ballerinas, birds and rainbows. The scrapbook was a collection of my childhood whimsies and dreams. I forgot my earlier doubts as we pored over the drawings and pictures.

  ‘Look,’ I said, pointing to a photograph of a cat lying on a cushion. ‘There’s your old cat, Tigre.’ Some of the writing in the scrapbook had faded and a few of the drawings had bled, but I remembered those weeks when Mamie and I had been together as special to me too. ‘It was raining,’ I said. ‘That’s why we had to do something inside.’

  I saw a photograph of Mamie and me sitting in a bateau mouche, one of the tourist boats on the Seine. It must have been Mama who had taken the picture. I’d pasted it in my scrapbook and written in huge letters above it: Me and Mamie.

  Tears filled my eyes and I feigned a cough. I rushed to the sink to pour myself a glass of water. But you’re not my real grandmother, I thought. So much of what we have lived has been a lie! I wondered if Mamie would have let la Rusa see Julieta if she hadn’t thought her responsible for Xavier’s death. Did she ever intend to tell Mama who her real mother was? Only Mamie could answer that question, and it was something I could never ask her.

  Mamie held up another page for me to see. It was a drawing of my mother in a pink tutu.

  ‘You were a talented artist,’ she said. ‘Even at that age you managed to capture Julieta’s large eyes and expression. You got that gift from your grandfather.’

  Avi! My beloved grandfather wasn’t mine any more either. I wondered if he ever suspected the truth about whose child Julieta was when she grew into a dusky beauty. Even I recognised la Rusa now in Mama’s exotic looks. But who was Mamie thinking of when she said ‘grandfather’ — Xavier or Avi? Or had they become one in her mind?

  The emotional rollercoaster was getting too much for me. I was about to make an excuse to leave the kitchen when Mamie opened the scrapbook to a page where I had glued the tickets for the first ballet we had seen together: a matinee session of Cinderella.

  I watched the delighted expression on Mamie's face as she savoured the memory, and saw something that I had not noticed before. I saw myself through Mamie’s eyes: how much she loved me; how precious I was to her. She was the woman who had been there for both the good and the difficult times. Whatever I thought she might have done differently, I realised that she had done her best. And when I thought of how people like Conchita had behaved, I could see that Mamie had acted much more honourably than most. It was futile blaming her for a set of circumstances that was not her fault.

  I looked at the scrapbook with Mamie for a while longer. The glimpses of my four-year-old self were both beautiful and sad. Over the page there was a drawing of me, my mother and Mamie holding hands. Papa was standing in the background. Even as I child, I’d sensed their distance, I thought. I’d simply forgotten it.

  ‘Mamie,’ I said, ‘I need to repair my relationship with Papa.’

  ‘I know. I told you that you should.’

  I held her gaze. Perhaps Mamie had known all along that it was Mama who’d had the affair. Perhaps it had been easier to collude with me in blaming Papa so that we could both go on believing that Mama had been perfect. Maybe Mamie’s heart attack had made her realise that I might need my father one day. I sighed. My family was nothing like Jaime’s, where everybody told each other everything, and nobody could keep a secret. Mamie and I certainly had our secrets. I couldn’t tell her that I knew la Rusa was my blood grandmother or that I knew she wrote letters to her dead sister. But I realised that all it re
ally meant was that we were more complicated than most people; and if we kept secrets it was to protect each other.

  I put my arms around Mamie. As soon as I felt the warmth of her body I knew that everything was all right. She was still my Mamie and always would be.

  ‘I love you, Mamie,’ I told her and kissed her cheek.

  I drove to Carmen’s apartment to fill Jaime in on what had happened after he’d left the cemetery. Ernesto was in the living room, listening to the radio quiz program 1000 francs par jour and shouting out the answers to the questions. Everyone else was at work. Jaime and I sat on the floor of the studio. When I told him everything Ramón had related to me, he looked shocked.

  ‘You didn’t say a word of this when you called me last night,’ he said. ‘You just sounded tired.’

  ‘I had trouble making sense of it all myself.’

  He reached out and brushed my cheek with his hand. ‘Promise me that we won’t have secrets from each other?’

  ‘I promise,’ I told him.

  I unclasped the bat pendant from around my neck and handed it back to him. ‘I think I’ve seen through enough illusions for a while,’ I said.

  ‘I think you have too,’ he agreed, putting his arm around me and giving me a hug.

  We both fell silent, contemplating the revelations the past day had brought.

  ‘No kissing!’ Ernesto’s voice suddenly boomed from the living room.

  Jaime and I both jumped with surprise at the outburst. Then we looked at each other and laughed.

  ‘We weren’t kissing!’ Jaime shouted back.

  ‘Well, I’m warning you,’ said Ernesto. ‘It’s too quiet in there.’

  Jaime cocked his eyebrow at me. ‘Do you want to swap a family with secrets for a crazy one?’

  I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I want both.’

  Before heading home, I drove to avenue de l’Observatoire to see my father. I wandered around the jardin du Luxembourg for a while, gathering up courage. I remembered what Mamie had said about Conchita’s relationship with Feliu: ‘There are some things about the past that can never be fixed.’ Was it too late to repair the relationship with my father?