Duende

by Jason Webster

  Jonathan was a good journalist, though. He’d previously worked at a selection of national papers in England, and had once famously exposed police complicity in a smuggling racket in Gibraltar. The photos he’d taken almost cost him his life, and, in his rush to get away from the mobsters, he had lost his contacts book. Over time, this notebook had taken on mythical qualities, and everyone from King Juan Carlos to the Mayor of Marbella could have been called directly ‘if only Jonathan hadn’t lost that bloody contacts book’. Family responsibilities had led him to seek something more settled, and he’d ended up as the news editor at the Costa Gazette. Over the following months he showed me the ropes.

  ‘Here, boy. Let me look at your nails.’

  We were not having a good lesson. I had cancelled one class as a result of commitments at the paper, and Juan had not been impressed when I told him the reason.

  ‘Oh, I see. So you’re off all over the place like a stupid guiri, while I’m trying to teach you something serious here. Eh? You don’t think I came out of retirement just to be messed about?’

  In my own mind, although Juan was teaching me how to play the guitar, Eduardo was closest to being my real flamenco teacher, bringing me up to speed on such things as history, regional variations, and something of the philosophy of simply being a flamenco. Juan could take me through the motions, but Eduardo, I felt, could show me what it all meant. I needed them both and wanted to avoid conflict at all costs. But Juan had begun to push me even harder in our lessons now. No more simple Rumbas – Bulerías had been passed over for something more ‘fun’ – now I was expected to do things with my fingers I had never thought possible. Every class, he came up with a handful of incredibly complicated chords for me to learn. These required twisting my hand into ever more excruciating positions, and I was convinced he was enjoying the pain I was suffering.

  ‘Enough Gypsy Kings,’ he said. ‘Serious flamenco from now on. Now you’re mixing with all those guiris up in Benidorm, you’ll be wanting to do Verdiales, or Sevillanas – all the touristy stuff.’

  I looked up. Despite the months of practice, I still felt like I couldn’t really play anything anyone else would want to listen to – without either being paid or heavily sedated first. But Verdiales and Sevillanas were great party pieces, the sort of thing your Aunty Marjorie would be able to clap along to.

  ‘Well forget it,’ he said. I groaned. ‘It’s time for a Soleá, the Mother Chant.’

  The Soleá is supposedly named after a female singer in flamenco folklore called Soledad (the d’s, already softened by Spanish pronunciation, almost disappear when uttered by Andalusians or Gypsies). A slow and emotive style that often seems to evoke the ‘loneliness’ of its title, it forms, along with other palos – Seguiriyas, Polos and Cañas – the backbone of the ‘deep song’ of flamenco, the cante jondo. Singing is the first principle of flamenco, and deep song, as any aficionado will tell you, is what authentic flamenco is all about; it is the heart, root and soul of the whole art-form, the least accessible to outsiders and the sound most likely to produce duende. It is what takes the listener closest to that charged, primitive experience that seems like an echo from an older, lost age.

  ‘Deep song is imbued with the mysterious colour of primordial times,’ Lorca once famously said in a lecture he gave before the 1922 Granada festival. ‘Its notes carry the naked, spine-tingling emotion of the first Oriental races.’

  Palos that fall outside the deep song category are often referred to in lighter terms as cante medio, middle song, or cante chico, baby song, or even sometimes as cante flamenco, as though deep song were something distinct from flamenco altogether. All these can produce duende in their own right, but there is a kudos attached to deep song amongst flamenco circles, where the jondura – the depth – particularly in the Seguiriya, makes it revered as the aristocrat of all the song forms.

  There are singers who specialise in deep song, as there are those who are known principally for their Tarantas or Tangos. But a guitarist is expected to move in and out of each palo with ease; one minute slow and emotive, the next fast and rhythmic, like a fiesta.

  Juan began to play mournfully, a look of pain on his face, counting the twelve-beat rhythm out loud as the music lurched forward.

  I listened intently, my eyes fixed on the guitar as I concentrated on his technique. But another part of me was secretly cursing him. His moodiness was beginning to annoy me. I didn’t want to learn Soleá at that moment. It just didn’t feel right and I secretly wished we were doing something else. And now, as it was my turn to copy him and play what I had just heard, my fingers kept catching on the treble strings in the complicated double arpeggio movement.

  ‘Here. Show me your hand.’

  I stopped and reluctantly held my right hand out towards him.

  ‘OK. I thought that was the problem. Right, put your guitar away.’

  Confused, I did as he said. We were only halfway through the lesson. This was unusual, even for him. What was going on? Was there something wrong with my hands? Perhaps he was about to tell me I had a fundamental problem with my fingers which meant I would never be able to play the guitar at all. Hesitantly, I placed the instrument in its case and turned towards him.

  ‘Right, boy. The rest of this lesson will be dedicated to nails: how to look after them, file them, strengthen them, everything.’

  I laughed with relief.

  ‘Hey! What are you laughing at? You think I’m joking?’

  I shook my head obediently.

  ‘Some guitarists have been known to turn violent if their nails broke. Someone cut off my teacher’s nails when he was sleeping and he almost burnt the guy’s house down. The police stopped him in the street carrying a fire-bomb.’

  I laughed again.

  ‘I’m deadly serious. Here, look at mine.’ He thrust his hand forward. It was fine and sinewy, delicately manicured so that not a single nail was out of shape, each one shining with varnish, the thumb nail filed at an angle to give better purchase on the strings. The skin was soft and white, as though never used: no cuts, no roughness, not even at the knuckles.

  ‘Now look at yours.’ By contrast mine looked like a road-sweeper’s. ‘Right. Let me show you what to do.’

  Over the next hour we filed, glued, varnished, refiled, sprayed, blew and generally pampered ourselves like a couple of tarts on pay day. If ever Juan needed a job on the side, I was sure there were plenty of people who would spend a fortune for such treatment. He had turned the simple care of the human nail into a craft on a par with art restoration. At one point I thought I was even going to get a silk job – when thin pieces of silk are glued onto the nail to give it strength. But after much twisting and poking, he decided mine were healthy enough.

  ‘Just be careful when opening tin-cans and that sort of thing,’ he said. ‘Start using your left hand for ordinary tasks. Your right hand is sacred.’

  I nodded in bewildered agreement. I was beginning to have doubts about this. All I wanted to do was play the guitar, for heaven’s sake. But he hadn’t finished. There were the finer points of filing to master. It all depended on the shape of your own nail and how it related to the rest of your finger. Each one might be different, as was the case with my unfortunate hand. He filed, I put my hand in position on the guitar, he tutted, he filed again, I assumed the position, more filing – sometimes just one stroke at a time – then back to the guitar. It was endless.

  ‘Always file in the same direction. Otherwise, disaster!’ There was no irony in his voice. ‘And never, ever cut them. That’s fatal.’

  We finally came to an end, and, to my surprise, the arpeggios were now much easier. I was converted on the spot.

  ‘Thanks, Juan. I just had no idea . . .’ I said.

  ‘That’s fine. But you must look after them now. OK? You must learn to love your hand, your right hand. And your left. They are your tools. Without them you won’t be able to play our beautiful music.’

  A call came in. A
fire at a hotel in Benidorm. I was told to go and investigate – my first real story. Rushing out with a notebook and camera, I got to the hotel and dodged past security to find everyone lying by the pool as though nothing had happened. There were certainly no signs of a fire. A few people told me someone’s dustbin had caught alight and they had all been evacuated for a few minutes, but that was all. My heart sank. Some story.

  ‘Which paper are you from, love?’ asked an old Liverpudlian woman. It was a great chance to advertise my employer, I thought. I might win a new reader.

  ‘The Costa Gazette. It’s . . .’

  ‘Never heard of it. You should work for a proper paper like the Sun.’

  I went back to the office. I had been gone for two hours. Barry was not impressed.

  ‘You took your time. Went for a stroll by the beach, did you? Still, wouldn’t blame you. Heh, heh.’ And he rubbed his hands together lasciviously.

  I explained I’d had difficulties but had some great quotes.

  ‘You shouldn’t have bothered,’ said Jonathan. ‘We usually just make them up.’

  As the weeks passed I was gradually initiated into the murky world of local journalism and the even murkier one of the ex-pat community. Whole subcultures had been created, where each nationality had its own schools, bookshops, newspapers, travel agents, doctors, lawyers – anything where you might want to avoid having to deal with any of the natives. For the readers the paper, as Barry had said, was a bible: absolutely required reading to survive in what was certainly perceived as a hostile environment. Underlying it all was a form of racism, a deeply rooted idea that at heart all ‘dagoes’ were corrupt and dodgy bastards, only too ready to pull a fast one on innocent foreigners. The ex-pats didn’t come here for the people or the culture, they came for the weather – the warm, sunny winters – and they did their best to recreate life in the Youkay here on the Costa. The British class system was alive and kicking too. Torrevieja, to the south of Alicante, and to some extent Benidorm itself, were working-class ghettos where folk with little more than a state pension would settle in search of a better life. North of Benidorm – Altea, Jávea and Moraira – was the reserve of the golf-playing, middle-class and professional elites. Not that even they could compete with the gaudy wealth of the Costa del Sol . . .

  Spain did rub off on the English in one respect, however: the development of their own argot, formed from seemingly random, mispronounced Spanish words. I first encountered this when I called an English bar-owner in Benidorm to get some details about a break-in the night before.

  ‘Not much damage,’ he said. ‘But of course they had to break the rackers to get in.’

  ‘Rackers?’

  ‘Yeah, mate. Made a right mess of them, they did. It’ll cost me a tidy sum to get those fixed.’

  I could hear stifled sniggers from Jonathan opposite. I had no idea what the bar-owner was talking about.

  ‘Just where were these rackers, then?’ I asked.

  ‘Where they always bloody are! Where else are they gonna be?’ He slammed the phone down. I turned to Jonathan, who by now was quite beside himself.

  ‘What the hell are rackers?’ I demanded.

  ‘Rejas,’ he said, wiping the tears from his eyes. ‘He means rejas – window bars.’

  In a flash I understood. The Spanish word – pronounced ‘rekhas’ – had been anglicised into ‘rackers’. I could see that a knowledge of English and Spanish was not going to be enough. There was a third lingo to learn: ex-patese. Over the months I picked up as much as I could. Houses, it turned out, were always referred to as ‘cazers’ (casas), especially when in the countryside, when they became ‘cazers del campo’. You never lived on an estate, but an ‘urbanisation’ (urbanización), where the rubbish men collected the ‘bazura’ (basura), and every once in a while you were visited by an ‘alcaldy’ (alcalde – mayor), who came from the ‘ayuntamientow’ (ayuntamiento – town hall). If you wanted a drink, the largest concentration of English bars in Benidorm was on the ‘cally londreez’ (Calle Londres). This last one cost me many minutes scanning a map, trying to find something that might resemble the sound uttered by the woman on the other end of the phone, until Jonathan once again took pity on me and pointed me in the right direction.

  I went down to Ginés’s bar alone. Juan couldn’t make it that night, and when I saw there was no-one else there from our little group, I resigned myself to a quiet evening. I sat at the bar and ordered a brandy. If nobody arrived by the time I had finished my drink, I would simply head home.

  The old men were playing their usual game of dominoes, feet scuffing the sawdust-covered floor as they twitched on their seats. Their voices rose and fell in waves like an unpredictable flock of birds.

  I drained the glass and turned to go but was stopped by a tug on my elbow. It was Lola.

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘How about a drink?’

  I smiled yes and ordered two more brandies. I was glad to see her here away from the school.

  ‘Would you like to sit at the table?’ I asked.

  ‘No. Let’s stay here.’ She pulled up a bar stool and sat next to me. ‘I get so bored always doing the same thing.’

  We sat close to one another, drinking. There was a hesitant smile on her lips.

  ‘Teacher couldn’t make it?’ she asked after a pause.

  ‘No, Juan had to—’

  ‘Are you learning fast?’ she interrupted.

  ‘I don’t really know. It’s not easy to say. I think Juan pushes me quite hard.’

  ‘I thought perhaps . . .’ Her voice tailed off and she seemed to forget what she was going to say. She brushed a thick strand of dark red hair away from her eyes.

  ‘It looks like the others aren’t coming today,’ I said.

  ‘Yes. It happens like this sometimes. Although I’m usually the one who doesn’t make it. Pilar doesn’t like that. She thinks I should make more of an effort. But she doesn’t know what it’s like.’

  I studied her as she spoke: hair swept back over slightly rounded shoulders, revealing thick gold earrings; her fingers playing with the end of her long, fleshy nose; deep mischievous eyes that flicked around the room, never still. She seemed bored, or melancholy, but at the same time she radiated energy, like a hot coal waiting to burst into flame.

  ‘Doesn’t know what what’s like?’ I asked.

  She sighed, paused, and looked me hard in the eye. ‘She doesn’t know what it’s like being married to an antiflamenquista.’ There was a sense of inevitability in her voice, and I had an impression of crossing a threshold.

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked.

  ‘Vicente,’ she said. ‘Your boss, my husband.’ I waited. ‘He hates flamenco. Can’t stand it. Always has.’ She paused. ‘And he hates me having anything to do with it. Says I shouldn’t dance, tries to stop me from coming here to the bar, or going to our little get-togethers in the country. He hates it.’

  She buried her face in the glass and her hair fell over her eyes. I wasn’t sure if she was crying.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  She sniffed and lifted her head. ‘Vicente . . . Vicente likes to see himself as an intellectual. Rejects traditional Spain, folklore, that sort of thing, as barbarous. It’s horrendous. But they all look to France and Britain – especially Britain – as the heart of all that is good. Spain bad, Britain good.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, guiri. He thinks you’re wonderful. Admittedly he is a little confused by your interest in flamenco, but he’s convinced it’s just the passing infatuation of a northern European with his primitive southern cousins. You will see the error of your ways, probably under his guidance. He already has plans for you.’

  I only half-registered what she said. Her sudden opening up to me had caught me unawares.

  ‘But I don’t understand. Why are you and he . . .?’ I hesitated to ask. It seemed so familiar to be discussing such matters.

  ‘Yes. Good question. I ask myself
the same. Of course, I know the answer. But . . .’ She knocked back her brandy and ordered two more.

  ‘You did want another, didn’t you?’

  I nodded. The two glasses were placed down next to us on the metal bar with a clink. Lola lent across me reaching for a tissue, brushing her arm lightly over my chest. She wiped her mouth, then screwed the paper into a tight ball before tossing it to the floor.

  ‘I’ve been dancing since before I could walk,’ she continued, lighting a cigarette and drawing on it with her full, wide lips. ‘It was all there, from the beginning: my father with his old records, my mother teaching me steps in the kitchen. I was going to be a dancer, a good dancer. Everyone said it was in my blood.’

  ‘You are a good dancer.’

  ‘They had it planned for me: go to Madrid, study, dance, turn professional.’ She shrugged.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I met Vicente.’ She took another mouthful from her glass. ‘Got pregnant when I was seventeen. That’s kind of terminal for a dancing career.’ She laughed weakly. ‘But I could still have done it. I could still have been a dancer, maybe not professional, but, you know, here and there. But he held me back. Said I needed to stay at home. Then the school, and . . . well, that’s it.’ Her head bowed once more. ‘I’ve asked him for a divorce,’ she said quietly, looking down.

  I was both embarrassed and thrilled that she should be telling me such intimate details about herself. But this was quickly absorbed by the surprise of seeing the image I had built up of her dissolving in front of me: this strong, fiery woman, who instilled fear in those around her, was helpless and trapped.

  ‘I have to go.’ She threw her head back and stared at me. ‘I’m a mother, remember?’

  We paid and left, out into the pools of light cast by the streetlamps, walking together for the distance that our two paths coincided, silent, our shoulders almost touching. As we reached the corner she turned to face me, stepping away as though to be any closer meant danger.