Golden Earrings (18 page)

‘Your brother tells me that you are studying ballet?’

I gave a start. The voice had come from the other side of the room. I lifted my eyes to see Gaspar Olivero leaning against the fireplace and studying me.

It took me a moment to answer. I had been so flustered I hadn’t noticed that anyone else was in the room.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You know my brother well?’

‘I’m Gaspar Olivero,’ he said, walking towards me. ‘Xavier and I have been friends for years but you probably don’t remember me. The last time we met, you were still a girl. Your brother and I shared the same first piano teacher: Enrique Granados.’

The face that I had spied from the opera box was as sweet up close as it had been from afar. I wondered how it was that I didn’t remember such a character-filled countenance, but I was
so shy as a child I was probably looking at my feet when we were introduced. There was something reassuring in Gaspar’s manner. I relaxed for the first time since we had entered the Cerdà mansion.

‘I’ve heard that you are a wonderful pianist too,’ I told him.

Gaspar picked up one of the dining chairs from the table and sat down next to me. ‘Well, if that’s true then I have my parents to thank for it,’ he said, looking at me with his bright eyes. ‘They never forced me to take up music … they
inspired
me to do it. From the earliest time I can remember there were always musicians in the house. Music is as much a part of me as my heart or lungs.’

I liked how he spoke about his parents — with deep gratitude, not resentment. The way donya Esperanza had referred to them, she had implied that Gaspar should be ashamed of them. But I didn’t get the impression that was what he felt.

‘Why are you here and not in the other room?’ I asked him.

He grinned. His teeth overlapped slightly at the front, making his face all the more appealing. ‘The opera was so sublime, I needed a few moments to take it all in … to relive it. Francesc is a wonderful fellow, but he talked non-stop all the way in the car.’

Gaspar didn’t ask me why I had snuck away from the gathering. Had he guessed?

‘But let’s talk about your dancing,’ he said, clasping his hands on his knee. ‘I’m a great admirer of Diaghilev’s ballets. Did you see the Ballet Russes at the Liceu?’

I shook my head. ‘I would have liked to. But it wasn’t in my father’s taste. He doesn’t like modern things much.’

‘So you will dance with a more classically oriented company? The Paris Opera Ballet?’

‘No,’ I said, laughing, although I was flattered by his suggestion. ‘My father would never let me dance in public.’

Gaspar looked amazed. ‘But
you
would like to?’

His question caught me off guard. I never thought about what I would like to do. I couldn’t see the use of dwelling on the impossible.

‘Yes, I would like to,’ I confided in him, surprised at my sudden boldness. ‘I’m not so nervous when I dance.’

He nodded understandingly. I realised how comfortable I was with him. Despite the surprise he had given me, I hadn’t stuttered once. I could speak to him as easily as I could to Xavier or Margarida. I was about to tell him about Olga when Xavier came through the door.

‘There you are, Evelina! Mama was wondering where you had disappeared to,’ he said.

Gaspar stood up and shook hands with my brother. ‘I was going over the performance tonight in my head when your charming sister wandered into the room.’

‘She doesn’t like crowds,’ Xavier said, looking at me affectionately.

‘I can’t blame her,’ said Gaspar. ‘I’m not crazy for them myself.’ Then, as if to save me further embarrassment, he changed the subject. ‘What did you think of the tenor tonight?’ he asked Xavier. ‘As good as Miguel Fleta?’

‘His voice was rich and lyrical,’ Xavier agreed.

‘They say he will be the new Caruso.’

I would have been content to listen to Xavier and Gaspar talk about the opera all night, but it wasn’t to be. Three maids moved into the room, switching on the lights and setting the food out on the table. A moment later, the concertina doors were folded aside and the Marquesa entered with her guests behind her, like Moses leading his people through the Red Sea.

I was placed between Xavier and Mama with Francesc opposite. When I looked at senyora Dalmau and Maria, they were sending daggers with their eyes at me. Margarida had been right.

‘I didn’t recognise you this evening, Evelina,’ Francesc said. ‘I think the last time I saw you, you were only a little girl.’

Unlike Gaspar, the last time Francesc had seen me was at Mass the previous week, but obviously it had taken the gown for him to notice me.

‘I find coming home after the opera much more pleasant than going to the Hotel España or the Ritz, don’t you?’ the Marquesa asked me.

This time I was able to answer her calmly. ‘It was very kind of you and the Marqués to invite us,’ I said in my most ladylike manner.

‘The pleasure is ours, I assure you,’ the Marquesa replied, nodding to her husband.

If she had not been surrounded by people, I think Mama would have grabbed my face and kissed me.

Something shiny on Francesc’s collar caught my eye. He saw me looking at it. ‘Ah, so you have noticed my pin,’ he said. ‘I’m a toxophilite.’

I had never heard the term. It sounded like the member of an ancient tribe.

When Francesc saw my confusion, he laughed. ‘I’m an archery enthusiast,’ he explained. ‘I won last week’s championship.’

He then began to elaborate on the mechanics of a bow: how it was a simple but marvellous piece of engineering. He was so passionate about the subject, I found myself quite interested. Margarida was wrong to have said that Francesc was stupid. As I listened to him talk about archery before moving on to football and the Tour de France, I realised he was simply a person who did not concern himself with complicated or controversial subjects. Nevertheless, when the main course was served, I found myself looking in the direction of Gaspar. Although he was a relation of the Cerdà family, he had been placed at the lower end of the table. It was not meanness on the part of the Marquesa, but the way things were done. Another person might have been
humiliated — Gaspar’s family had once been one of the wealthiest in Barcelona — but the conversation taking place around his end of the table was more animated than the artificial laughter emanating from our end. The normally stern-looking senyor Homar was laughing heartily, and even sour-faced senyora Casas was managing a smile.

There was a lull in the conversation at our end of the table, long enough to hear senyor Homar say, ‘I’m looking forward to hearing Gaspar and Xavier play for us this evening.’

‘Even when Gaspar was a child,’ the Marqués said, addressing the guests, ‘he never rushed into playing a piece before he was ready. He worked at his scales and technical exercises until he felt he was prepared to tackle the piece. I think that patience has rewarded him well and made him the virtuoso that he is.’

‘Ah, but feeling is the soul of a musician,’ said senyor Dalmau. ‘Without it, one is merely a mechanic.’

‘What you say is true,’ Gaspar replied. ‘But what is also true is that the greatest music is intellectual as well as sentimental. If you look at Beethoven’s Sonatas, for instance, you will see that the composer put a lot of thought into the structure of the motifs and the movements. Beethoven’s music is truly divine, and yet it is also well planned. For me, he is the perfect proof that art requires discipline and thought; that it doesn’t drop out of the sky from heaven in perfect formation.’

An awed hush fell over the gathering. Gaspar had everyone’s attention, whether they were interested in music or not. It wasn’t only what he said, but the way he said it. When he spoke, his eyes were alive with passion. I noticed that Xavier was watching him intently.

‘I agree with you entirely,’ he told Gaspar. ‘There is this idea that art is somehow supposed to reflect life. But it doesn’t at all, does it? Life is chaos. It is art that gives meaning and order to life.’

‘Well said!’ replied Gaspar, raising his wine goblet to Xavier.

Francesc leaned towards me. ‘I don’t know how you feel, but this is all going straight over my head.’

‘Well,’ said the Marqués, standing up. ‘As we appear to have finished supper, perhaps this discussion is the perfect lead-in to hearing these gentlemen play.’

Xavier was the first to take his place at the piano. He treated us to the hauntingly beautiful ‘Clair de Lune’ by Debussy. As I watched my brother play, I was filled with love for him. There was so much beauty in him — and so much conflict too. It was more apparent when he moved on to Tchaikovsky’s ‘Symphony No 6,
Pathétique
’, which he had been memorising and perfecting for over a year. The piece was filled with sorrow, hope, happiness, grief and a sense of foreboding. I saw every one of those emotions pass over Xavier’s face as he played.

When Xavier finished the symphony, the gathering applauded him.

‘So beautiful, so moving,’ said the Marquesa to my mother.

Because Xavier had been asked to play at the last moment, he limited his performance to the two pieces. ‘Now,’ he said, standing up and making a flourish with his hand towards the piano stool. ‘I would like to invite my good friend, and a true virtuoso, Gaspar Olivero to play for us.’

Gaspar had chosen music by Spanish composers for the evening and commenced with a composition by the teacher he had shared with Xavier: ‘The Maiden and the Nightingale’ by Granados. It was a romantic, moving piece and it made me think of the sad fate the composer had suffered. During the Great War, he had been travelling across the English Channel on board the
Sussex
when it was torpedoed by a German submarine. Granados had been able to reach a lifeboat, but when he searched around for his wife, he spotted her flailing in the sea. He dived in to save her but they both drowned.

My mind returned to the present, and I became aware of the intense expression on Gaspar’s face and the way the piano
seemed to be a continuation of his arms. ‘Music is as much a part of me as my heart or lungs,’ he had said. I saw the difference between him and Xavier. Although they were both superior musicians, Xavier was a man divided while Gaspar was a man complete. Xavier had to compartmentalise his life: his role as an heir in the Barcelona elite; his role as a husband and father; his music and art. But Gaspar put all of himself into his playing: all his emotions, intellect and personality. His spontaneity was evident in the music, along with his goodwill, his cheerfulness and even his sense of law and order. It was wonderful to hear it. Then I realised that while people pitied Gaspar because his parents had misspent his inheritance, perhaps in reality they had given him something far superior. Xavier was wealthy, but he did not have Gaspar’s freedom.

Gaspar continued to thrill the gathering with pieces by Albéniz and Rodrigo. When he finished, the applause was enthusiastic. He returned to the table while the servants brought out fruit and cheese.

‘Gaspar, that was marvellous,’ said Xavier, his eyes shining with admiration. ‘Maestro Granados would have been proud!’

‘Well, I take my hat off to you,’ senyor Dalmau told Gaspar. ‘You have proved what you said earlier about technique and emotion. You certainly have both.’

It intrigued me to watch how Gaspar, who had been seated at the end of the table, had turned things around to become the centre of attention for the night. Then he said something prophetic, although I didn’t realise it until much later.

‘I’m glad you see that my emphasis on technique does not exclude emotion,’ he said, touching his heart. ‘For I am a deeply sentimental person. There are certain pieces I never play because I have some terrible association with them. I had been working on Brahms’s “Concerto No 1” when I learned of Granados’s death. I was fourteen years old at the time and I have never touched that piece since. I dread that something
extreme may happen one day that will cut me off from music forever.’

The evening ended, and the Marqués and his wife, along with Francesc, saw the guests off at the door.

‘Do you like tennis, Evelina?’ Francesc asked me. ‘Perhaps you and Xavier would like to play doubles with me and my sister, Penélope, when she returns from finishing school this summer?’

I had never played tennis in my life, but I knew Mama would be upset if I declined the invitation. ‘Thank you,’ I told him. ‘I would like to if you will teach me how to play.’

‘It would be my pleasure,’ he said, grinning from ear to ear.

Mama and Pare were still talking with the Marquesa, and Margarida and Xavier were admiring the house’s façade, so I waited on the steps for them.

‘I hope that I will have the chance to see you dance one day, Evelina.’

A thrill of delight ran through me. I knew who was speaking and turned to face Gaspar.

‘And I hope to hear you play again soon,’ I told him.

He smiled. ‘Why don’t you ever come with Xavier and Margarida to the club where I play? Some of the best musicians and dancers from around the world perform there. I see your brother and sister there all the time, but never you.’

A pang of jealousy at Xavier’s and Margarida’s independence jabbed me. ‘My brother and sister seem to do what they like,’ I said. ‘But I’m not even allowed out of the house without Mama or a servant.’

‘Well, now you are in society things might be different,’ Gaspar said, looking at me hopefully. ‘Surely your parents won’t mind if you come with your brother and sister as chaperones? Truly, you should see some of the dancers.’

I was sure that my cheeks must have been as bright as sunrise. I laughed and turned to see Mama glaring at me. What
had I done to earn such displeasure? I had thought she would be happy because I hadn’t stuttered most of the night.

Our car pulled up and the driver opened the door. Pare waved to us all to get inside.

‘I’d better go,’ I told Gaspar.

I was about to climb into the car when Mama gripped my arm, her fingers pressing into my flesh. She had never been so fierce with me before. ‘Evelina,’ she said under her breath, ‘being out in society is not all fun and games and pretty dresses. You have responsibilities towards your family and your peers.’