"The Flamenco Academy" (53 page)

“ ‘Are you crying because you lost your
father?’ Rosa asked.

“Clementina nodded dumbly.

“ ‘Are you crying because you have no money?
No place to sleep? Because you might be killed by bandits on this
mountain road? Because no decent man will ever marry you and we’ll
probably starve to death? Or are you crying just because your feet
hurt?’

“Clementina’s tears poured faster as she
listened to this inventory of her miseries and realized how much
worse off they were than she’d feared.

“Rosa slammed the back of her hand against
Clementina’s sternum so hard that the air caught in her chest and
she could not get enough breath to continue crying. ‘Well, look at
me. Not only have all those things happened to me, but El Bala is
going to hunt me down to drag me back to be his wife. Am I
crying?’

“ ‘You’re made of much sturdier stuff than I
am.’

“ ‘Oh, you poor little rich girl. Your
suffering is so much more refined than mine, is that it?’

“ ‘No,’ Clementina said with her mouth while
her mind said yes.

“ ‘Come on, we’re lucky. All I have to do is
imagine being trapped in a cave with El Bala and I want to burst
into song. Think of lying in bed with one of those boys from last
night on top of you. How about that one with the head shaped like
an almond and all the pimples?’

“Clementina shuddered at the thought and her
tears fell faster.

“ ‘Do you like being sad?’ Rosa asked her
friend.

“ ‘No.’

“ ‘Then don’t think sad thoughts.’

“ ‘It’s not that simple,’ Clementina said,
but her words were lost in the growl of a truck laboring past,
hardly traveling faster than they were walking. It required little
more than a hop for Rosa to jump onto the back of the flatbed. She
laughed as the truck rumbled away and Clementina ran to catch it,
then jump up beside her friend. The vast, fertile Granada
vega
stretched out all around them, rust and golden and
green, all the way to the Sierra Nevada frosted with snow. When
Rosa started singing, Clementina joined her with
palmas
and
pitos
. Even though it was a sad song
por soleares
about never having a home again and wandering as Gypsies have
wandered for hundreds of years, Clementina’s spirits soared.

“Every person they passed shouted greetings,
for the road to Granada was the most sociable in Spain. It was
clogged that day with goatherds, muleteers, washerwomen,
horse-dealers, and hawkers of every description. A couple of the
vendors heading into Granada even reversed their direction and
walked swiftly enough to keep up with the lumbering truck so they
could ask the girls how they could live without the needles or pans
or bits of lace they were selling. Being with Rosa made Clementina
bold, and she yelled back retorts so saucy that one merchant, a boy
really, barely older than the girls, was inspired to fling a lady’s
souvenir fan painted with a view of the Alhambra into the back of
the truck. He shouted honeyed
piropos
comparing Clementina
to a rose, a dove, a lily until he was out of breath and stood by
the side of the road watching as the truck carrying the two girls,
giggling madly at his compliments and fanning themselves with the
fan, disappeared from sight.

“Clementina and Rosa watched the Alhambra
that had stood invincible over their childhoods grow smaller as one
terrace after another slipped from view until only the top spire
was visible, a shimmering rose patch above Granada. Clementina
remembered her aunt’s stories about Boabdil, the last Moorish
ruler. In 1492, when he was driven out by the Catholic kings, he
looked back at the paradise his people had created and he had lost
and wept. His bitter tears at the thought of never again seeing his
beloved Alhambra caused his mother to scorn him, saying, ‘Weep like
a woman for what you have not defended like a man.’

“ ‘What do you think happened to Señor
Lorca?’ Clementina asked Rosa. When she received no answer, she
looked over and found Rosa fast asleep against a bag of wheat.
Clementina already knew what Rosa would answer: ‘Do you want to be
sad? No? Then don’t think sad thoughts.’ She lay back next to her
friend, let the sun pour over her, and repeated those words until
the rumble and sway of the truck rocked her to sleep.

“A horrible scything sound followed by
sudden stillness woke the girls. Rosa ordered Clementina to hop
with her off the back of the broken-down truck and hide before the
driver could discover the stowaways. Cursing loudly, the driver
turned the engine over again. It sputtered and caught.
Unfortunately, the girls couldn’t scramble from their hiding place
fast enough to catch the truck and it rumbled off without them.
Looking around, they found themselves in a forbidding landscape of
lunar starkness. Pinnacle upon pinnacle rose up on all sides. Sheer
precipices careened down from the rocky road. Stunted pine trees,
moss-covered boulders, and an occasional white house perched like a
watchtower in the distance were all that broke the landscape. A
solitary vulture carved lazy, black Vs across a nearly white
sky.

“ ‘Have we landed on the moon?’ Rosa
asked.

“They might as well have for all the idea
Clementina had of where they could be. She wondered whether it
might not have been better to die quickly back in Granada rather
than slowly of thirst out there in such a desolate wasteland.
‘We’re certainly not on the road to Sevilla.’

“ ‘That’s good,’ Rosa said in a chirpy voice
that made Clementina wonder if the heat had overtaken her
friend.

“ ‘It’s good that we are in the middle of
nowhere with no idea which way Sevilla is?’

“ ‘
Claro!
Where would I go if I ran
away from Granada?’

“ ‘To Sevilla, of course. To dance in the
cafés cantantes
and rule over the city of charm like an
empress.’

“ ‘
Claro
. So, the first place El Bala
is going to search is the road to Sevilla,
verdad
? Your
father has probably alerted every
guardia
already, and
they’ll be watching the main roads. So this is perfect.’ Rosa gazed
around at the desolation and smiled. ‘Yes, this is just where we
want to be.’ She found a bit of shade cast by a rock outcropping
and plopped herself down in it with a satisfied sigh as if pleased
with how events had worked out. Clementina stood beside the
sun-blasted road, baffled by Rosa’s insouciance.

“ ‘You better get out of the sun,
payo
.’

“Clementina started to join her friend when
the low-throated rumble of a truck laboring up the winding hill
stopped her and she ran back into the middle of the road, ready to
flag the driver down.

“ ‘Someone’s coming!’ Clementina’s joyous
shout was cut short when Rosa abruptly yanked her off the road and
shoved her behind the rocks. A second later Clementina saw that the
canvas covering the back of the truck was painted with red stripes
at the top and bottom, with a yellow stripe in the middle where a
black eagle with a red beak perched clutching the arrows and the
yoke of Fernando and Isabel. She saw that the army truck was filled
with soldiers wearing the same dung-colored uniforms as the ones
who had taken the poet Lorca away.

“ ‘They might have given us water,’
Clementina said wistfully as the truck disappeared in the vast
beige wasteland of rock and dust.

“ ‘The only thing men in uniforms give
Gypsies is misery. Come on up here where there’s a breeze.’ Rosa
clambered up the tallest rock, untucked her blouse, and lifted it
out.

“Clementina perched next to her friend.
‘Tell me about the
cafés cantantes
,’ Clementina said.

“An updraft blew along the ridge. It filled
the girls’ untucked blouses like wind in a sail and Rosa told
Clementina again all the stories about the life they would have
when they reigned as princesses of
el baile
in Sevilla.

“Hours later the screech of a wooden oxcart
wheel axle interrupted Rosa’s stories. A farmer drove a two-wheeled
cart up the mountain. He was a stoutly built fellow in worn, brown
corduroy pants, an ancient cap perched jauntily on his head, bald
except for a few silvery strands.

“Rosa stepped into the road weeping tears
she summoned on the spot and sobbing sobs so piteous that they
drowned out the shrieking of the cart.
‘Señor, señor, por
favor.’
She held out a trembling hand and begged for him to
stop, something the farmer, exhausted from a long day’s tramp and
hungry for the supper waiting for him, was not inclined to do.

“ ‘We’re lost! My poor sister and I are
lost! Our parents are dead. We’re going to our aunt in Sevilla. We
have nothing. We’re lost.’

“With a gusty sigh of resignation, the
farmer stopped and gestured for them to help themselves to his
water barrel tied to the back of the cart.

“ ‘You don’t look like sisters,” he observed
as pale Clementina sipped delicately out of the dipper and dark
Rosa all but dunked her head, drinking directly from the barrel
like a horse.

“Rosa laughed and shrugged. The farmer
turned out to be a garrulous sort who accepted Rosa’s little
subterfuge as a fine example of
gracia
, Andalusian wit. He
was happy to join them in the shade where he passed around sausage
and a flask of
aguardiente
.

“ ‘To kill the worms,’ he said, raising the
aniseed brandy. Before the flask had gone around twice, the sun was
slipping from the cloudless sky, coloring the bleak landscape with
browns, hazels, reds, blues, and purples, and turning the distant
olive groves bluish green. Far to the east, the delicately tapering
peaks of the Sierra Nevada glowed pink in the fading light of
day.

“Muttering about Long Steps, the most feared
bandit ever to maraud the Sierra Nevada, the farmer heaved himself
to his feet. He warned the girls that they shouldn’t stay out
unprotected and offered to let them sleep in his barn, less than an
hour’s walk away.

“ ‘Why should we tramp another hour to sleep
where your ox shits?’ Rosa asked.

“The farmer roared with laughter. More
gracia
. ‘Take your chances with the bandits then.’ He
whacked his ox until the creature moved and the wooden axle
screeched.

“ ‘We have nothing to steal!’ Rosa shouted
after him.

“ ‘Then Long Steps will steal you!’ the
farmer yelled back.

“ ‘Only if he can find us!’ Rosa hurled
back, already stealing away from the road. Beyond a stand of pines,
dwarfed and twisted by the ceaseless wind, she found a perch at the
very edge of the precipice. Clementina’s stomach lurched and panic
clutched at her throat as she peered into the chasm below. Rosa, on
the other hand, was as comfortable as a mountain goat bedding down
for the night. Rosa, who’d never slept alone in her life, snuggled
up to her friend like a puppy settling in with its littermates.
Clementina, who’d never slept a night with another human beside her
since her mother died, was comforted by Rosa’s presence.

“ ‘Guess what?’ Rosa asked Clementina. ‘I’ve
picked a stage name. In Sevilla, I will be known as La Leona, the
Lioness. Just like my grandmother. Clementina, you have to change
your name so your father won’t find you. What’s it going to
be?’

“While Clementina pondered what her new name
would be, Rosa fell asleep.

“Night fell with a stunning velocity. In the
darkness Clementina became terrified of falling into the void below
and was certain she wouldn’t sleep a wink on the rocky earth. But
as the pricks of light that were the farmhouses below blended with
the stars blazing overhead, it seemed as if she were swimming
through a dark sea with diamonds floating and glinting all around
and Clementina relaxed. Whether it was the farmer’s
aguardiente
or the unaccustomed solace of a warm body,
Clementina joined Rosa in a sleep lighted by dreams of the golden
radiance of the gas lamps of the
cafés cantantes
.

“In the dream, she learned what her stage
name would be and awoke eager to tell Rosa, but when she opened her
eyes, the only creature she beheld was a lone eagle riding high
above a pink dawn.

“ ‘Rosa. Rosa? Rosa!’ Her shouts grew louder
when a search turned up nothing but a few lizards that skittered
away, twitching their tails in the dust.

“The only evidence that Rosa had ever been
there was the fan flung to them by the smitten young man on the
road to Sevilla. Clementina found it crumpled behind a rock, near a
dark spot still damp from where Rosa had relieved herself. The
impression of a man’s boot heel was pressed into the small circle
of mud. Long Steps. Rosa had been stolen by bandits. Tears flooded
Clementina’s eyes. She opened Rosa’s fan. Each time she waved it in
front of her hot face, it dried one tear and two more poured out.
Soon all her tears had spilled and she regretted every single one
because a thirst worse than any she had ever known burned in her
throat. Shriveling like a chile drying in the early morning sun,
Clementina was so thirsty that she forgot Rosa, she forgot her
hunger, she forgot everything except water.

“When Clementine heard the rattle of an
approaching vehicle, she didn’t care who it belonged to. If it was
Franco’s soldiers, at least she’d have a quick death instead of
dying of thirst. A car like her father’s, an Hispano-Suiza,
approached in a cloud of dust. Unlike her father’s, however, this
once-luxurious automobile was now an ancient rattletrap. She
dragged herself into the middle of the road and the car stopped.
Espectáculos Vedrines
, the name of a famous variety show
that toured the country, was written on the side. The man driving
barely slowed down long enough for one door to fly open and a woman
with dark red lipstick, her hair covered by a snood, to gesture to
Clementina. ‘Come on! Come on! Get in or he will leave you
here!’