"The Flamenco Academy" (32 page)

“The fragrance of cinnamon and cloves hid
the smell from the overripe fruit as I handed the glasses to the
women. They responded with words that sounded as if they’d been
spoken by horses. My mother started
palmas
, clapping softly,
and everyone fell silent. My mother nodded at
las inglesas
.
The women smiled back, holding up their copper cups in salute. My
mother caught my eye and I jumped to refill the women’s glasses.
They waved their hands over the rims insisting they didn’t want any
more, then glanced at one another, laughed, and pulled their hands
away, surrendering. Though that was the first time I saw this
charade, it would not be the last, for surrender was what
foreigners came to us for, what they sought in the caves of
Sacromonte. They all came to us wanting to surrender. Surrender
their white to our dark. Surrender their clean to our dirt.
Surrender their tame to our wild.

“As I sat back down after refilling the
glasses, Dried Wood added
pitos
, snapping her fingers. La
Sordita clacked on the floor with her heels. I joined my mother in
palmas
. Because there was no singer, no
cante
, I came
in on the wrong beat, and my mother shot me a dark glance. An
instant later, though, the Englishwomen nestled their copper cups
between their thighs and clapped their hands and my mother saw that
she needn’t have worried. The women clapped like El Maleta, the
Suitcase, a half-wit with one arm longer than the other. They
clapped like they were wearing mittens and listening to another
beat. All of us glanced at one another because we had never heard
such a thing; even a Gypsy baby could keep better time than these
grinning
inglesas
. But my mother just kept smiling at the
women and even held out her hands to them as if to compliment their
talent and shouted ‘
Olé
!’

“Hearing my mother put the accent on the
last syllable as if we were at a bullfight made us smile and look
away because her
payo
pronunciation was a grave insult since
it said the person was an outsider, and for us there was nothing
worse.

“But
las inglesas
, their cheeks
already turning red from the wine, didn’t hear the insult. They saw
only our smiles and shouted back,
‘Olé’

“My mother, numbed by the
aguardiente
, took her pass first, shaking her skirt and
stamping forward like a windup toy. She kept her head lowered to
hide her bruised face. Her exuberant
zapateado
had nothing
whatsoever to do with the mournful
soleares
Mono was
playing. But we smiled even more when we saw that it didn’t matter
to the strangers.

“ ‘Brava! Brava!’ the women shouted when my
mother took her chair, huffing and puffing and fanning at her bosom
as if she had truly exerted herself.

“Little Burro was up next. Her dance was
tough and muscular, with lots of
palmadas
, slapping the side
of her shoe, her thigh, and stomping the floor. She even sang a bit
in her foghorn of a voice. It was a ridiculous charade of the real
flamenco we did for ourselves, but, again, the Englishwomen loved
it, clapping wildly. They no longer pretended to resist when I
passed among them, refilling their glasses. Their cheeks were as
red as a baby’s with fever. They lolled against one another,
whispering comments in one another’s ears, laughing, and clapping
in their mittened, half-witted way.

“My mother never stopped watching them, her
gaze sharpening as theirs dulled. When she saw them leaning against
one another, whispering secrets, she signaled to my brother and he
strummed through a series of arpeggios and tremolos, He played the
tricked-up, show-off fake flamenco that my father wouldn’t allow at
home but that these English ladies seemed to love.

“Then La Burriquita trotted out in her new
dress. Eventually, La Burriquita ended up looking like her mother,
like the driver of a mule team. But that night, she was magnificent
in her new dress. Unfortunately, she had no idea how to dance with
una bata de cola
. Instead of making it her partner, La
Burriquita fought with it as if it were a serpent that had
swallowed all but her head and arms.

“Still my mother stood and clapped and
yelled to make the tourists believe that this was the grand finale.
Luckily, English people are so polite that they will see whatever
someone wants them to see. So, it was true, those women really did
see a grand finale and they stood, too, and clapped with my mother
when La Burriquita held her arms up like a toreador dedicating a
bull to his sweetheart.

“Then, before the English ladies knew what
was happening, all the dancers disappeared and my mother was taking
the copper cups from their hands and lifting the chairs out from
under their bottoms. They turned then to leave, but their friendly
guide, the poor fellow with his one eye gone dead, so polite, so
courteous in spite of his gruesome face that they had taken pains
not to stare at it, was blocking their way. Even more alarming, the
friendly guide was no longer grinning and his sliced-up face no
longer aroused their pity. It scared them.

“ ‘
Señor’
one of the ladies said in
her horse Spanish when the Bullet didn’t move away from the door to
let them out. ‘
Por favor.’

“But El Bala still didn’t move. The women
stepped a bit closer to one another, the red draining rapidly from
their cheeks as El Bala lifted his ragged lip up in a wolfish smile
and presented them with a bill.

“ ‘What is this?’ the shortest one asked.
She looked more like a bulldog than a horse. ‘We already paid you.
One hundred and fifty pesetas. Back at the plaza.’

“ ‘Yes, pesetas. But I said
duros
.’

“ ‘
Duros
? What is a
duro
?’

“El Bala bowed his head and scrunched his
shoulders to make himself and the total seem smaller.
‘
Perdóneme
. We say
duro
, you say
five
pesetas
.’

“The Englishwomen’s eyes all popped open.
‘This is mad. Seven hundred and fifty pesetas! You said it would be
one
hundred.’

“El Bala closed his eyes and shook his
finger in front of his face. ‘No. Duros, no pesetas.”

“ ‘No, indeed not. We have paid what we
agreed upon.’

“ ‘
Sí, sí
, but if you will look
here...’ El Bala redirected their attention to the bill as if,
because he had written them down, the numbers were truer on the
paper.
‘Por la cuadra. Por la sangria. Por el tocaor.
The
boy, truly a
fenómeno
, no? Then, is customary to buy
everyone a drink.’

“ ‘And this?’ The bulldog woman stabbed a
stubby finger at a figure.

“ ‘For charity. Is for the sick, the aid,
the widow, the cripple, the—’

“ ‘Yes, yes, yes. Back home in Derbyshire
we’re all quite active in the Parish Relief Society. But that’s not
the point. The point here is, we agreed upon one hundred and fifty
pesetas. Not
seven
hundred and fifty.’

“ ‘One hundred and fifty pesetas! In England
you can have such an evening for one hundred and fifty pesetas?’ El
Bala turned back into the Bullet and stopped speaking. He refused
to answer any more questions and he refused to move from the
doorway. He gave the ladies enough time to remember that they had
told no one at their hotel where they were going. They had wanted
an adventure. They had wanted to be spontaneous. They had wanted to
surrender.

“They looked over at us expecting to find
women who would be sympathetic to their plight. They saw for the
first time exactly what we were:
gitana
wolves who fed on
pale
payo
flesh.

“The one with the longest, saddest horse
face finally snapped, ‘Oh, just pay it. Let’s get out of here. I
can’t stand this smell another second. It’s all simply too, too
authentic.’

“The instant El Bala had their money, he was
all smiles and courtly manners again. He swept the curtain away
from the door and stepped aside as if the women were marquesas and
he their liveried footman.

“The next night, El Bala brought two
Germans, heavy-boned men with gray shadows beneath their eyes, dull
hair the color of toast cut too short on the sides.

“We were astounded to hear El Bala speak to
them in their language as well, pulling aside the curtain and
saying,
‘Bitte, bitte.’
He pointed to me, La Burriquita, La
Sordita, my mother, and said,
‘Schonne, nein? Los damen son muy
schonne?’

“The Germans studied us like men used to
driving hard bargains at brothels. Their faces were stolid, set
against us. We didn’t have to understand any German words to know
that they did not find any of us pretty. This rejection made my
mother mad enough that she danced with a fierceness that was like a
train coming through the cave. My brother even had trouble keeping
up with her on the guitar. She was so good that he yelled out
óle
, and Mono was just like our father; he never applauded
anything that was not
flamenco puro
. On any stage in the
world my mother’s dance would have brought down the house. But
those Germans just sat there like two rotten piles of wurst.
Nothing, not a sound. You couldn’t even hear them breathing.

“It was even worse for the others. The
Germans didn’t clap, didn’t call out. All they did was drink. As I
filled and refilled the copper cups, they gave me looks that made
me aware again of the fleabites on my legs, of the way my shoulder
blades stuck out like chicken wings against the back of my dress,
of the black crescents of dirt beneath my fingernails.

“At last La Burriquita ended the performance
with her grand finale, battling with the python of her
bata de
cola
. Even though my mother screamed her
olés
, the
Germans didn’t twitch a muscle. Instead they called El Bala over,
pressed money into his hand, and pointed to my mother.

“The Bullet threw the money back in their
faces, drew his knife, and shouted in furious
Caló
, ‘She is
no whore some goatfucking German can point at.’

“That is how the Germans learned that
flamenco was not an advertisement for Gypsy prostitutes. One of the
men raised his hand to El Bala. Who knew why. Maybe he was going to
shake hands. Maybe he was going to reach into his jacket for a gun
to kill us all. Whichever, the Bullet’s knife came down and when he
pulled it away, the German’s finger drooped like an elephant’s
trunk. It would never point again. El Bala had sliced the tendon in
one
golpe
.

“That was the only night we didn’t make any
money. Night after night, El Bala brought the tourists. If we were
tired, we danced. If we were sick, we danced. If we were sad, we
danced. We learned how to get money from them all. We learned that
the English would pay for smiles. The Spanish tourists from the
north would pay for scowls. The Americans would shower us with
pesetas for footwork at double, triple time, anything that was loud
and made the sweat jump from our faces. Anything that looked like a
lot of hard work. The Germans hardly paid for anything, but if I
could make them laugh by waggling my bottom and pretending to be a
pain, there might be a few
perras gordas
in it for me.

“For the other girls, our shows quickly
became boring. They were always unpinning their skirts before the
last note was played. I didn’t understand it. For me all the rest
of life on Sacromonte was boring. It was the hours we spent dancing
that were exciting. When I danced, I dreamed I was my grandmother,
that I was La Leona, queen of the
cafés cantantes
. I
pretended that the tiled floor of the cave was the wooden stage of
the Café del Burrero in Sevilla, where the happiest people in the
happiest city on the face of the earth were happy all the time.
Where there was always enough and more than enough for those with
talent. Where a good dancer could rule over the city like a queen
if she was talented. And I was. I was talented.”

With that unequivocal declaration, Doña
Carlota stamped to a finale and signaled the rest of us to stop.
“Have you all been reading your Lorca?” she asked as we chugged
water and wiped sweat from our faces, our necks.

“
Sí
, Doña Carlota!” we chimed
back.

“
Bueno
. Today you will learn Lorca’s
bulerías
.”

At the mention of Lorca’s name, Didi edged
closer to La Doña. She had become even more enamored of the
charismatic poet as she read everything she could get her hands on
about his life and, even more important, his death. She loved that
Lorca was idolized in his own time, that his flamboyant life and
ambiguous sexuality enraged conservatives, that he was martyred by
fascists.

Doña Carlota clapped sharply; our break was
over. She continued her story: “One minute, it seemed, our
zambra
was new and frightening. The next it was all any of
us had ever known. I could no longer remember having a life that
didn’t revolve around dancing for
payos
who huffed and
puffed behind El Bala, climbing up the paths to Dried Wood’s
cave.

“But it wasn’t one minute. Three snows had
fallen on the Sierra Nevada and three had melted since that first
night. Three years. For the first time I knew the year because in
Dried Wood’s cave there were two miraculous things: electricity and
a radio. I never had a lover I loved as ardently as that radio. No
sun ever lighted my life as brilliantly as the glow from the tubes
of that radio. If I’d ever been alone with it, I would have wrapped
my arms around it. The other girls called me La Catedral because
the first thing I did when I stepped over the threshold was to rush
in and kneel in front of Dried Wood’s radio shaped like a
cathedral. It was there, on my knees, that I learned the year was
1934.