"The Flamenco Academy" (27 page)

Will shrugged, lowering his head as he moved
down several frets. “Last I heard he had a gig playing at this
flamenco club in Miami. This other dude, though, said he was
teaching at Berklee. You know, the music college up in Boston.”

“Does he come back much? Ever?”

“I doubt it. He’s got this whole complicated
thing with flamenco. I heard him interviewed somewhere.”

“Where?”

Will shrugged. “Was it the radio? That
guitar show that comes on Saturday afternoons? Or maybe it was
something my professor was telling me. I don’t remember exactly. It
really wasn’t anything he said. The interviewer asked Tomás when he
was coming back to New Mexico and he answered, ‘Next.’ That was it,
just cut him off. Then the guy asks when he’s going to do another
flamenco concert and he does the same thing. ‘Next.’ That’s all.
Hey, do that step again you were doing. I’ve got to figure out this
accompanying thing. It’s kicking my ass.”

I went through all the combinations Doña
Carlota had taught us, imagining Tomás as my ever-present,
invisible audience. When we finished, Will asked me if I wanted to
go across the street to the Frontier Restaurant to get something to
drink. I looked around, saw Didi walking away with Jeff, and
answered, “Why not?”

In the friendly, cavernous restaurant, we
split one of Frontier’s catcher mitt–size sweet rolls and watched
the activity outside the window along that stretch of Central
Avenue. Students bending like sherpas under backpacks, waiting to
cross the street, blinking into the sun. Oddly speckled dogs tied
with rope to the lamppost, waiting for their masters. A guy wearing
cutoffs sliced down to the size of a thong, tanned to the color and
consistency of shoe leather, frantically panhandling. A couple of
senior citizens on recumbent bikes pedaling beneath high-flying
orange safety flags. At the table next to us, a study group
reviewed French subjunctive verbs.

Over the next few weeks, without anything
being said, Will and I entered into a companionable relationship.
He and Jeff became the guitarists for Didi’s “cool new group.”
Blanca, the nice girl from our class, was our first recruit. Soon
most of the other first-year girls were gathering under our spruce
tree after class. We spent a lot of time outside that autumn,
smoking Ducados and practicing beneath skies as bright as new
pennies. Starting with Jeff, Didi entranced the male portion of the
flamenco crowd so thoroughly that we were absorbed into Liliana’s
group without her permission. Liliana simply surrendered to Didi’s
inevitable encroachment with salvos of high-pitched compliments—“I
lovelovelove that top!” “You’ve lost weight. God, you’re a
toothpick!” and, always, “Where did you get those shoes?”

The flamenco culture was made for Didi.
Smoking and drinking were expected and many of its greatest stars
had died of drug overdoses. So, though Didi still considered the
tyranny of
el compás
to be a tedious nuisance designed for
lesser mortals, she adopted every other facet of
el arte
.
Overnight, she shed her Strokes T-shirts, removed all her fake
piercings, let her spiky hair grow out until she could pull it back
into a braid, lived in her long, dark practice skirt, and
transformed herself into the
flamenca
she christened Ofelia.
All that was missing were the spit curls and a rose between her
teeth.

So, for different reasons, the Flamenco
Academy became the center of the universe for both Didi and me. The
only other class we paid much attention to was Spanish. Didi,
already fluent, took it for the easy A. I struggled through it
because I had to. It was the language of flamenco. As much as I
could, I made Didi speak to me in Spanish. All other classes that
first semester, we simply endured. We became part of the scene
transforming the old gym into backstage at a Broadway musical. Our
wardrobes became the dancer’s grab bag of stretch and sweat
everything, leggings with a short wrap skirt, yoga pants. We too
were dancers doing their dancer things—changing into practice
skirts, slugging down water, stretching, taping our feet. I aspired
to have bulbous, inflamed bunions and an eating disorder that would
turn my teeth gray.

I was worming my way into Tomás’s world,
learning to dress and act like its inhabitants. I still had a long
way to go, though, before I would be ready to reenter his universe.
I still had to learn flamenco and I still had to learn his story.
And for that, I needed Doña Carlota.

Doña Carlota clapped out a rhythm and
ordered, “Name it?”

As usual, no one answered and too many gazes
swiveled my way since I was the one who could always identify
whatever
palo
, style, Doña Carlota clapped out. I stared
down at my feet to avoid eye contact.

“Why do we go through this cruel charade?”
Didi asked Amalia, a girl from the South Valley with the profile of
an Aztec princess who threw a lot of hip-hop attitude into her
dancing and was Didi’s current favorite among her growing
entourage. Amalia grinned because Didi gave “charade” a jokey
French pronunciation.

“Metrónoma! Tell them!”

“
Por soleares
?” I answered
hesitantly, pretending I didn’t know. I did. Not just because I had
a natural facility for hearing the rhythms, but because I spent
every moment I could spare in the Lair listening to CDs with titles
like “
Todos los Compases!
” and “Learn Flamenco Rhythms.”

“In the style of?” she asked, pointing at
me.

“In the style of
soleares
, songs of
solitude, songs of loneliness.”

Will winked at me. We were sort of regarded
as a couple. He regarded us as a couple. Since Didi was either
hanging out with Jeff or building her entourage, Will had filled
the vacuum she left. In defiance of university rules, he was
smoking a Ducado inside the studio. He plucked it from his lips and
squeezed it into the gap between the strings and the wood on the
neck of his guitar before he picked up Doña Carlota’s rhythm and
began playing. Without a word, she began the footwork. By that time
most of the class was able to follow. The class was no longer a
bunch of rank beginners and it showed in our outfits. Swanky pairs
of shoes in purple and red now appeared among us and we’d all taken
to wrapping our skirts in special ways just like the older girls.
We wore jeans, gym shorts under the long skirts, then whirled the
yardage around ourselves, tucking the ends into our waists in order
to show off and air out our legs. Even Will with his Ducados was
transforming himself. I tried not to think about how ridiculous he
looked, a choirboy sucking on a cigarette trying to be a badass.
Still, he was no more ridiculous than a Czech milkmaid attempting
to become a flamenco temptress.

Doña Carlota noticed a couple of students in
the last row, staring at their feet and trying to follow. She
dragged them from their hiding places, brought them to the front,
and made them stand behind me.

“Watch her feet,” she told them, pointing to
me. Then she pointed at Didi and added, “And watch her face.”
Clapping out the rhythm, she started again. My heart sank. Today
would be another day when she wouldn’t tell any more of the
story.

“You girls, you have no idea how lucky you
are. I had to learn to dance to the beat of an anvil. Yes, it’s
true.
Brazeo!
She ordered us to bring our arms to life and
they twined upward until we looked like a bed of kelp waving in the
current. I wished fervently for the class to follow well enough
that Doña Carlota would tell the story. For once, they did.

“
Cante jondo
.” Doña Carlota fondled
the words, expelling them on a theatrical sigh. “Deep song, none
was deeper than my father’s. It came not just from his heart, but
from the hearts of his ancestors for a thousand years. He beat the
songs out on an anvil just as he beat out his specialty, fancy
grillwork. My father’s anvil was only a block of iron, but he could
fashion anything on it. The fanciest designs, decorative grillwork
that no one anywhere can do anymore. With him iron and hammer were
like paper and scissors. Peacocks fanning their tails. Palm trees.
A toreador swinging his cape.”

While we concentrated on the story, letting
our minds follow Doña Carlota’s words, our bodies followed her
feet, her hands.

“His customers, the rich señoras, said that
El Chino had the blood of the Moors in his veins because it was
those long-ago invaders from the desert who taught us how to turn
metal and fire into palm trees and peacocks and, yes, cannonballs.
It is said that Gypsy metalworkers forged the cannonballs that King
Fernando fired upon the Moors to free Granada and reclaim her in
the name of Saint James. For five centuries, the people of Granada
had their horses shod, their pots mended, and the nails to build
their homes forged on the
fraguas
of Sacromonte.

“And then one morning a shriek sounded
through the sierra so loud that it made the chickens gabble and run
into each other in a clucking fury of feathers and dust and all the
blacksmiths put down their hammers to listen. What they heard was
the sound of their children chewing their last mouthful of bread.
Cima Metales had opened a factory in Granada. All day and all
night, cyclones of fire whirled about this factory. Trains loaded
with coal pulled up at one end and at the other out came an endless
stream of pots, pans, metal plates, spoons, ladles, hinges, nails,
and decorative grillwork in the shape of peacocks, palm trees, and
toreadors.

“Suddenly all the housewives who used to
walk up the mountain with their great-grandmother’s miserable iron
pots and pans to have our men patch the holes could now buy pots
and pans from this factory so cheaply that it was not worth having
new tin put on the bottoms of the old ones. Who cared that the
factory pans were so thin the
tortillas de patatas
scorched
and the flan turned to leather; suddenly these shiny pans were what
all the housewives desired. It was such a joy to buy something new
that they didn’t care they would have to buy it again and again and
again. At first, the Gypsy blacksmiths just laughed at this
factory, my father the loudest.

“ ‘Cheap things,’ he said. ‘Only for the
poor people. The stupid. My customers,
los ricos
, know
quality. They pay for the best and from El Chino they get the
best.’

“And, for a while, for my father, this was
true.

“But the smoke from this great factory,
wrapping around the city like a beggar’s blanket, bewitched
everyone. Now they wanted only metal that had poured like lava from
the great iron cauldrons, metal that did not show the marks of a
herrero’s
hammer. They wanted their hand to be the first to
touch the shiny, new metal. Soon even my father’s customers became
infatuated with the idea of choosing something that was already
made.

“One by one,
las fraguas
went out,
the Gypsy earth stopped burning, and the face of Sacromonte went
dark. For the first time, we were hearing a possibility mentioned
that no self-respecting Gypsy man would have ever considered
before: going to work for
los payos
. My father wouldn’t
allow such a possibility even mentioned in his home. He walked down
into the city carrying samples on his back. Heavy grilles that
would have broken a mule’s back. These he carried down each morning
and these he brought back each night.

“Like all Gypsies, my father had turned into
gold every
pesata
he saved. As his children grew hungry, he
exchanged the gold for bread for his family. At first my mother’s
necklace was sold. Then her bracelets. Finally only her earrings
were left, and still my brothers and sisters and I kept eating like
locusts. Delicata’s
potaje
, the stew we ate every night,
usually had tomatoes and garlic and whatever else my mother could
scavenge, eggs, onions, beans, fish, chorizo, maybe a chunk of
blood pudding. Each night it grew thinner and after El Chino and my
brothers ate, there was less of it left for Delicata and my sisters
and I, who, good Gypsy women that we were, always ate after our
men. When the tomatoes, then the garlic disappeared, we knew we
were lost. We children fanned out through the sierra, grubbing for
prickly pear and acorns. Whatever we found was never enough to stop
the rumbling of our stomachs at night, so we stole. We dug beets
from gardens at night like raccoons and snatched grapes and oranges
from the stalls in the market during the day.

“As a last resort, my father, who could make
señoritas dance
sevillanas
across iron screens, was reduced
to forging nails. It was beneath his dignity to take these
miserable things into the city. He told my mother that she must
join the other women who hiked down the mountain once a week to
sell in the plaza the baskets they braided and the horseshoe nails
their men forged.

“The walls of our cave were covered in
whitewash. This coating of white over the rocks of the hill was
what made it a house and not a hole. Even the millipedes that
invaded when the rock showed through knew this. But the cave
sweated off the whitewash like a whore sweats off powder. When my
father gave my mother the order that she must sell his nails in the
plaza, the walls were so nervous that they sweated away the last
bit of white because my mother answered no.

“My father was momentarily too stunned to do
anything, and she told him: ‘I am the daughter of La Leona, who
danced for King Alfonso himself. Every
café cantante
in
Sevilla begged her to work on their stages. The name La Leona is
known all up and down the Alameda de Hércules. And I would have
been even more famous. Even now, after seven children, I am still
the best
bailaora
on the Sacred Mountain. Every day the
tourists squander thousands of pesetas to watch those cows in La
Cagachina’s
zambra
dance and you ask me to sell horseshoe
nails in the Plaza de los Reyes Católicos?