Golden Earrings (33 page)

The pain and despair in Evelina’s voice touched me. So this was what she had been keeping inside her all this time. No wonder she was scared to express her true self. Ladies of the upper class were not meant to reveal family unhappinesses of any kind.

I sat down beside her. I didn’t share her deep urge for a child; I had never experienced that maternal pull although I was thirty-two years of age. Xavier and I took precautions against pregnancy. Not being one to hold back my opinion, I clasped her hand and said, ‘You know, even if a man prefers men he can still make a woman pregnant.’

Evelina shook her head and replied in a hushed voice, ‘I’ve tried
everything
. He just can’t.’

I sighed. Rich families and their marriages! Xavier was miserable in his, and now I’d learned that Evelina was unhappily wed too. No wonder Margarida had avoided matrimony altogether.

A few days later, when we were having coffee after our lesson, I brought up the subject again. I couldn’t stand the pained look on Evelina’s face any longer, and she seemed incapable of finding a solution to her unhappiness herself.

‘What about Gaspar?’ I asked her. ‘You like him. He obviously likes you. Why don’t you ask him to give you a baby? Surely Francesc can’t object if he isn’t up to the task?’

Evelina looked at me with a horrified expression on her face. ‘I couldn’t do that!’

One of the things that I found so amusing about her was that even though she was married to a homosexual man, she was still so easy to shock.

‘Why not? It sounds like your husband would be relieved. It would stop any rumours about him.’

‘But … I love Gaspar.’

I waited to hear why that was an obstacle to the plan.

Evelina shook her head. ‘It wouldn’t be right to tie him to me that way. He should be married and happy himself. I want him to forget me.’ She burst into tears.

I brushed aside a strand of chestnut hair that was sticking to her cheek. Well, that suggestion didn’t go well, I thought. Evelina and I moved in two different worlds. I promised myself never to try to give her my proletarian advice again.

‘I’m sorry,’ I told her. ‘That was probably … not the right thing to suggest to you.’

She looked at me with tears in her eyes and shook her head. ‘Apart from Margarida, you are the only true friend I have.’

I saw then that Evelina hadn’t really wanted to learn flamenco at all. She had simply been looking for something to fill up her empty life.

The November 1933 election went exactly as Xavier had predicted. The Socialists and the Republicans refused to cooperate and it cost them their power.

The evening the result was announced on the radio, Xavier and I sat in our apartment, shocked and upset. Margarida arrived after dinner.

‘Finally, women get the right to vote and what do they do?’ she said angrily, flinging her coat onto the sofa. ‘They listen to their priests and vote for the Right! The Church is the very institution that oppresses them! Haven’t they read the story of Adam and Eve?’

‘At least that’s one step up from following their husbands,’ I said, trying to inject some humour into the melancholy mood. ‘Seriously, the working-class women would have voted for the
Socialists if the Anarchists hadn’t run such a successful campaign to discourage the working class from voting altogether.’

‘The Right’s victory seems a bigger landslide than it actually is,’ said Xavier. ‘Due to our stupid electoral law, the side that wins at the polls is given representation in the Cortes way out of proportion to the voting results.’

‘One thing’s for sure,’ said Margarida, ‘the Right are going to undo all the reforms that were started when the Republic came to power. Wages are going to be cut, landowners will have their estates restored to them, the peasants will be evicted, and women are going to be forced out of their jobs.’

I thought of my father and Teresa. ‘The only way things will change for the poor in this country is with a revolution,’ I said. ‘I don’t think anyone will believe in reform any more after this.’

Xavier, Margarida and I spent the rest of the evening debating whether revolution was the only recourse open to the peasants and workers. As we discussed the ins and outs of various political systems to help the most downtrodden elements of society, we didn’t see that much more dangerous forces were lurking on the horizon. When Xavier and I climbed into our bed in the early hours of morning and embraced each other before falling asleep, we had no idea how swiftly and brutally things were about to change. And that the sweet life we shared was about to be cut short.

W
ith Mamie keeping me on the edge of my seat with her stories about Spain, and the surprising developments in my relationship with Jaime, I hadn’t given much thought in the past few days to what Madame Genet had said about me taking the examination for a second time. But when I arrived at the ballet school on Monday morning for my lesson with Mademoiselle Louvet, I was overcome by feelings of defeatism. What was the point of training until my body cried out in pain and my feet bled if it was all going to be for nothing?

‘What’s the matter today, Paloma?’ Mademoiselle Louvet asked me, when I’d finished my barre work. ‘You are not extending yourself completely or finishing off your movements. Why are you holding back? Last week you gave me everything.’

I bowed my head. I was a perfectionist and this was not what I wanted to hear. But I knew Mademoiselle Louvet was right. If I couldn’t put my heart into what I was doing there was little point going through with the training.

‘Can we talk for a moment?’ I asked.

Mademoiselle Louvet sent me a concerned look. ‘You can always talk to me, Paloma.’ She nodded to the accompanist, Monsieur Clary, who took the opportunity to get himself a cup of coffee.

‘Last week, after our lesson, I ran into Madame Genet outside the administration office,’ I told her. ‘She said that I haven’t a chance in getting into the
corps de ballet
because Mademoiselle Marineau’s prejudice against me will override all my efforts.’

Mademoiselle Louvet’s beautiful face scrunched into a frown. ‘It was quite out of place for Madame Genet to say that. If the head of the school has decided that you are fit to take the examination, then it really isn’t any of Madame Genet’s business. Mademoiselle Marineau said she didn’t think you could take the load of a professional dancer, but you did that examination under the strain of having lost your mother less than a year before. Things will be much better for you the next time around.’

I wanted to believe what Mademoiselle Louvet was saying, but Madame Genet had been right when she’d said that I’d performed exceptionally well in the examination
despite
everything that had happened.

‘Madame Genet said I didn’t have a chance for personal reasons,’ I told Mademoiselle Louvet. ‘That the reason Mademoiselle Marineau hates me has something to do with my father.’

‘Your father?’ Mademoiselle Louvet looked thoughtful for a moment. ‘Well, your father was the orchestra’s pianist when your mother was dancing Giselle and fell pregnant to him. Mademoiselle Marineau was playing the role of Myrtha, Queen of the Wilis. They could have had some falling out about the music perhaps?’

The ballet
Giselle
was often interpreted as a battle of the sexes. The Wilis were the spirits of young women who had died before their wedding day and sought revenge on male victims by making them dance until their hearts gave out. The answer occurred to Mademoiselle Louvet the same time as it did to me.

‘My father had an affair with Mademoiselle Marineau, didn’t he? And he broke it off to marry my mother!’

Mademoiselle Louvet shook her head. ‘I find it too hard to believe. Mademoiselle Marineau has been in love with the choreographer Christophe Valois all the years I have known her. Even though they have never married, I think he is the only man she’s ever been in love with. Some would even go so far as to call it an obsession.’

‘It’s not my place. You will have to ask your father,’ Madame Genet had said. Mademoiselle Louvet might find it hard to believe, but I was sure now that my father had been two-timing even then! I would never have thought my father capable of such a thing if he hadn’t married Audrey so soon after my mother’s death. He was due back in Paris on Wednesday, but there was no way I was going to see him now. His philandering had ruined my life!

I continued as best I could with my lesson. Afterwards, Mademoiselle Louvet and I went back to her office and she gave me her recording of Brahms’s ‘Intermezzo’ that she had played for me after my last lesson. ‘Listen to it,’ she told me, ‘and you will feel your mother’s love.’

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 admiration.

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.’