“It’s called El Toro. It’s on the Calle Basura. A ghastly section, apparently. We might both be knifed. Except, don’t worry, I can take care of you. What’s the name of this city?”
“Cordoba.” She laughed. “If this is Tuesday, it must be Cordoba.”
“That’s right, Cordoba. And one of the stellar matadors these days is El Cordobes. According to Felipe, he frequents El Toro. I don’t go for bullfights, but matadors have a certain glitter.”
“Do you have any idea how sleepy I am?”
“You’re young! Art is long and life is fleeting. Let’s go, girl. I’ll let you stay in bed later tomorrow. We’re spending a whole other day here. Okay?”
• • •
El Toro was indeed in a questionable section of the city.
Their taxi driver pulled a face. “I could get a dagger in my back,” he objected. “There are better places … in the Florida quarter …”
“Be a sport,” Steve said, opening his wallet. He pulled out some notes. “Will this help?”
“It won’t help a dead man.”
“We want to go there. We were told that El Cordobes shows up once in a while.”
“El Cordobes isn’t afraid of a knife in the ribs.”
But in the end he took them there.
It was the Hell’s Kitchen of the city. Dark, dingy, with a forsaken look, the street was like a waterfront area, with long, cavernous alleyways and litter and dung in the gutters. The driver let them out as soon as he had collected his fare, and then sped away quickly.
But inside, the posada was rather cheerful. The lights were fairly bright, once they went down a long flight of worn wooden steps, and the clientele, if inclined to be rough types, were amiable and clearly enjoying themselves.
There were, of course, necks craned at the entry of the Americans, and one or two resentful looks came their way. Steve hastened to say that Felipe, at the Hotel Granada Palace, had sent them, and then there was a warm welcome.
“Ah, Felipe … a good friend of mine!”
They were seated, and after a while, as the manager went from table to table explaining that these people were friends of friends of his, their presence was accepted.
“Do you like it?” Steve asked, as they drank.
“I wouldn’t recommend it to my friends, but yes, it’s interesting,” she admitted.
After a while a singer stood in a hot spotlight, an ugly but fascinating-looking woman. She did a rather suggestive number. At its end there was coarse laughter and riotous hand-clapping, but then she sang a mournful Catalan ballad, haunting and melancholy. Kelly saw a big, sweating man with a ruined face wiping his eyes at the end of it. And this time the applause was quiet and restrained.
They were there for a little over an hour, and just as they were about to leave, a tall, ginger-haired young man with a wide, sweet mouth and superb white teeth came down the stairs. There was instantly a kind of bedlam. Shouts went up.
“Ole … ole … ole …”
It was the matador.
The manager rushed forward, kissed the young man’s hand, and bowed. Then he turned and held both hands high above his head.
“Senor y Senores … El Cordobes …”
“Bienvenido!” the guests at the tables cried, getting to their feet.
The bullfighter, simple, shirt-sleeved, extraordinarily handsome, scattered pesos to the waiters. There was a beautiful girl with him. He sat quietly at a table, murmuring to the girl with him.
“I told you,” Steve said. “Didn’t I tell you he came here?”
She was pleased for Steve. He was so set up. So triumphant. All men were little boys at heart.
She glanced across at the toreador. He was rather haunting. That boy faced the bulls, with their pronged horns, and he looked like a Richard of ten years hence. Gentle, with a sweep of reddish blond hair, blue eyes that were without guile.
Outside was darkness, quite frightening, and elongated shadows. Luckily, a cab drove up, letting off a party of working people, and they got in. It was almost four o’clock when Kelly pulled the sheets back.
She fell asleep remembering the plaintive ballad the woman had sung.
El manzano … la cantilena … y el oro …
CHAPTER 9
Faithful to his word, Steve had let Kelly sleep. It was almost eleven when she woke. The waiter in the dining room served her, saying that he understood that the Senor and Senora had gone last night to El Toro.
“Yes, it was a very unusual place,” she said. “The matador was there.”
“El Cordobes. Ah …” He kissed his fingers. “A wonderful boy … you know he gives to the poor. Much money. He comes from the poor and he has never forgotten.”
His shoulders went up. “He is not Manolete, of course. Not the same style. But he is brave, very brave.”
“He must be. Have you seen Mr. Connaught this morning?”
“Yes, he and the boy are in the back, in the pool.”
So it was to be a leisurely morning after all. She finished, and then went back to her room, where she changed into a bikini. And then joined her friends.
Steve was at the edge of the board, flexing his muscles. He didn’t see her. He stood there for another moment, then took a dive. She stood looking down at him as his arms cut the water.
“Well done,” she said.
“Ah …” He looked up at her, his dark hair wet and gleaming. “So you decided to get up at long last.”
“I’ve wanted a sleep like that for the past few days.”
“So you feel okay?”
“Wonderful.”
“Then come on in,” he said. “The water’s fine.”
She went down the flight of submerged steps and joined him. “Race you to the other end,” he said.
They got to the finish line at the same time. Richard was there, sitting at the edge of the pool with some other American children. “Hey,” he said cheerily. “Isn’t this great?”
She pushed back her wet hair. “Um hum. Did you have milk for breakfast?”
“Yeah, Steve made me drink a whole gallon, I guess.”
“That’s a good Steve.”
And then they lay, tanning, on deck chairs. There was an ineffable breeze, rendering the tropical sun bearable. “You look gorgeous with a tan,” Steve murmured, opening an eye. “You’re so nice-looking, Kelly.”
She didn’t say anything, only smiled. The cries of the children, the wafting of the breeze, the wonderful, beneficent sun and the man beside her.
This is Eden, she thought, closing her eyes again. It’s Paradise. If she died right now, at this moment, it would be all right. And she remembered the song again.
El manzano, la cantilena, y el oro …
The apple trees, the singing, and the gold.
• • •
After a light lunch they left the hotel in the car.
“Where are we headed for?” Richard asked interestedly.
“The Alcazar.”
“What’s that?”
“Take a look at your guidebook.”
“Okay.”
Richard fished out his paraphernalia.
“Ah yes,” he said, crackling the stiff paper. “The Mosque is the crowning achievement of local Caliphate art. Begun by Abd el Rahman in the mid-eighth century, it was successively enlarged during the — ”
“Little friend, read to yourself, okay?” Steve asked, pained, and Richard subsided, his lips moving as he pored over the literature in his lap.
Of course they walked first, through the callejas, the crooked, winding streets which were steeped in the essence of bygone Cordoba. Even their names were fascinating: los Rincones de Oro, La Luna, the Cuenta de Pero Mato.
And, unforgettable sight, the Puerta de Sevilla, near the monument to Ibn Hazm, with its dazzling view of the city walls.
They stopped off for a second breakfast at a small but superb fonda near the Montmayor, where they had a delicious paella and one of the c
hilled, delicious white wines of the Aguilar de la Frontera.
“Are we going to the Alcazar now?” Richard asked.
“Just as soon as Kelly finishes her cigarette.”
“I’m ready,” she said, and stubbed it out.
The Alcazar was stupefying, its central dome of the Mihrab chapel one of the wonders of the world. It was Richard who pointed out, guidebook in hand, that the Mosque had the curious feature of facing southwards instead of east.
It was a formidable palace, Moorish, and at this off season, deserted. The entry fee was a few pesetas apiece and once inside its labyrinthine vastness, one had the feeling of being buried alive. If there had been other visitors, it might have been less eerie. But there were none.
The three of them were its only occupants, and their voices echoed in the great, vaulted corridors, which were arched in the Mauresque manner, striped in orange and sand-color, like some exotic desert tent, like a strange caravansery that went on, literally, forever, an infinity of chambers that stretched ahead without, it seemed, any end to its arched convolutions.
“The mysterious East,” Steve murmured.
“I have a Western mentality,” Kelly told him. “This kind of thing makes my blood run cold.”
The Alcazar was like a huge beehive, its parallel chambers reaching as far as the eye could see and even further. Columns rose, disappeared, and other columns took their place. You could circle around endlessly, or so it appeared to the confused eye. Richard, in fact, was weaving his way in and around pillars, calling, “Hoo hoo … hoo hoo,” and listening to his voice ringing out in answer. Kelly asked him, after a while, please to stop, and he did. For which one was grateful; it was spooky enough without that.
“Give me a good old Gothic cathedral any time,” she said, and Steve told her she was narrow in her outlook. Then he confessed he felt the same way. Of course it was magnificent in its bizarre, Oriental way, and the central dome of the Mihrab chapel was a masterpiece of tessellated design, each perfect tile forming an exquisitely-colored kaleidoscope of the most fabulous and inventive patterns.
But it was pagan, was more fanciful than the Western mind could tolerate without some uneasiness. There was a kind of cruelty in its primigenial tribute to Saracen worship; there was no recognizable spirituality here, no feeling of mercy, peace, or deliverance.
Steve was briefing her from his own guidebook.
“Built from the eighth to the tenth centuries,” he read. “Yes, Richard’s right. Islamic doctrine dictates that places of worship face the east, but this doesn’t. It faces south. Funny, I wonder why?”
He looked up. “Those alternating orange and yellow patterns striping the arches are called voussoirs.”
He leaned against a pillar.
“Roman, Visigothic and Caliphate art are combined in an architectural melange. The original choir-stalls and the sixteenth century Gothic-Renaissance cathedral section.”
He stopped reading.
“This lousy fine print. My eyes aren’t what they used to be. Where the hell is the center of this chamber of horrors, anyway?”
“There isn’t any. It’s like time. An eternal circle, no beginning and no end. We’re lost forever. This will be our tomb.”
“Then let’s die happy,” he said, reaching for her hand. “Let’s make love, before hunger and thirst drive all such thoughts from our minds.”
“You are really a nut, Steve.”
“I’m a full-blooded American male and I have you in my power, my dear. Don’t fight it, lass. C’est plus fort que — ”
“If you think that, you don’t know me,” she said, fending him off. “I’ve been taking care of myself for a long time. Did I tell you I know judo? Come here, Steve, and I’ll show you a few throws.”
He groaned. “I was afraid of a lot of things, but I never thought about that.”
“Now you know.”
“Tell me about your brother,” he said.
“How do you know it was a brother?”
“Because you handle men so well. So it’s a brother, not a sister.”
“It was a brother.”
“It was?”
His eyes questioned her.
“Yes. Lewis. He’s dead. Vietnam. He was a photographer. He got killed on the Pleine des Jarres. Just taking pictures, you understand. For Life magazine. He was a nice boy. We were quite close.”
“Christ, I’m sorry.”
“It’s happening all the time,” she said brightly.
“You poor kid.”
“I’ve learned to live with it. I don’t know about my mother and father.”
“I never guessed,” he said miserably. “When I said that about Scarsdale …”
“It doesn’t matter where. Don’t look like that, Steve. It’s been absorbed, taken into account, resigned to. We all have our little troubles.”
The silence was like a weight on them. It was almost cold. The ponderous stone carapace of the Mosque shut out the Cordoban heat, shut out the bright, steaming day, shut out the world. When she shivered, Steve put an arm around her.
“It is kind of nasty in here,” he said. “Like a lost world. Like — ”
He stopped talking suddenly.
They had both slowed up. There was now an immense silence, no ringing footfalls, no resounding voices echoed back. There was just that ghastly, cold silence. It was really like being enclosed in a tomb, like breathing the dank air of death, a final and ineluctable end to sunlight and beauty and laughter.
“Where’s Richard?” Steve asked.
“Just up ahead, I expect.”
Steve put his hand on one of the great blocks of stone that was part of a pillar, and called.
“Richard.”
There was no answer.
He called again.
“Richard!”
There was still no response.
And Kelly felt her flesh crawl.
“Call him again,” she said sharply.
“Jesus Christ,” Steve said angrily. “Where did that little bastard go to?” He dropped her hand and began walking rapidly through the corridors. “Come on, let’s see where the little jerk is.”
And then they were walking faster, almost running.
“Steve, why are you so — ?” Kelly asked.
He didn’t bother to answer. Suddenly it was a nightmare; those interminable corridors, the pillars flashing by, striped and now quite hideous, as they plunged down the series of archways, their heels clashing against the marble underfoot.
It was like … we should have a compass, Kelly thought … like running, as you did in horrible dreams, through eternity, never being able to catch up with what you wanted to find … whatever it was.
This incredible, abandoned place … like hell, perhaps, like the underworld. And then, blessedly, there was an end to the apparently endless corridors. Through an open doorway, a mere slit in the wall, the green of grass was framed, like a glorious picture, dead ahead. Steve shot through the narrow aperture and after him, Kelly. It was like being given life again … to see the sky, to feel the warmth of the day:
Seated outside on the grass, reading studiously, his face intent, Richard sat, legs splayed, looking peaceful and content.
“Damn you,” Steve barked. “Didn’t you hear us screeching for you?”
The boy looked up.
“Wha’?”
Steve swore under his breath. “Get up and say you’re sorry,” he thundered. “When you’re with me you stay with me, is that understood?”
“But — ”
“Apologize!”
There was a stunned silence. Then Richard, eyes wide, scrambled up. “I’m sorry if — ”
“All right, all right! Don’t ever do that again. Wander away … who do you think you are, you little joker?”
“What did I do?”
“You left us! We were yelling for you! Who gave you permission to — ”
Something shone in the boy’s eyes, and it wasn’t hurt or res
entment, Kelly saw. It was a kind of slowly dawning admiration. He didn’t mind the scolding. In fact, he liked it. A man’s authority, a man’s anger.
“I didn’t realize,” he said. “Gee, I just didn’t think.”
“Well, from now on you think,” Steve said grimly. “I mean what I said, Rich. We’re responsible for you. And you’re to remember that.”
“I will, Steve.”
“Okay. Now let’s get away from this crazy place.”
• • •
They had lunch at La Rambla, where there was a gift shop with beautiful pottery, and later went on to Castro de Rio and Pozoblanco. Richard made a trip to the bathroom and Kelly asked Steve why he had been so upset at the boy’s disappearance in the Mosque.
“Nothing happened,” she said. “Yet you made a real Federal case out of it.”
“It’s over with now. Let’s forget about it.”
“Uh uh. What was all the shouting about?”
He lit a cigar. “Okay, you might as well know. Richard’s a very rich boy. Through an inheritance from his paternal grandmother. Grape nuts, or something similar. There’s a lot of money riding on that kid.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I make it my business to find out things.”
“Why? Who are you?”
“What does it matter?”
“Steve, you’re unfair. You tell me these things and I’m supposed to sit back and smile nicely. I want to know.”
He looked away, puffed on his cigar and leaned back. “Let it go.”
“No. When Richard disappeared, you thought someone had — ”
He didn’t say anything.
“You thought someone had … taken him.”
She knew then; she had a flash of insight. She should have guessed it before. “Why, you’re watching out for Richard,” she said. “It wasn’t coincidence. You didn’t just happen to be on the same plane with him. You came over with him. I wondered about that. A child under ten is always accompanied by a stewardess; that’s a rule of the airline. Over ten is in a different category, but just the same … and if you’re right, if Richard is a very wealthy boy, no one would take chances with such a child. So you came along to keep an eye on him. Why? Whom do you represent?”
Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances Page 59