The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto (9 page)

“This Franco,” El Maestro grumbled. “If he had his way, we would play only flamenco.”

Still, sometimes good is found amid bad, just as major-key notes can be played over minor chords. One day, as Frankie was pulling his wagon toward Crista Senegal Street, past a new sign that warned
IF
YOU
ARE
SPANISH
,
SPEAK
SPANISH
!, he saw a commotion in front of the city’s biggest store. Policemen in gray uniforms were pulling people out, and merchandise was being stacked in the street. Frankie moved through the crowd and heard whispered words he did not understand. He heard others cheering, “Franco! Franco! Franco!” As people began to push one another and the yelling increased, Frankie’s eyes fell on something amid the stacks of goods. A phonograph machine. He had seen one in the store window once, and Baffa explained that it played music on round discs. When Frankie asked if they could get one, Baffa said, “They are too expensive.”

But now here was a phonograph just sitting on the curb, atop a stack of recordings—music from America, England, France, and the outer regions of Spain. Frankie was too young to understand that under this government, such recordings were considered subversive. He figured if they were in the street, someone didn’t want them.

So as gray-clad police began clubbing people into submission, Frankie quickly loaded the phonograph and the records into his pale green wagon, covered them with a blanket, and pulled a big chunk of me away from the fighting.

He had no idea he was being watched.

10

I SHOULD SPEAK FOR A MOMENT ABOUT FRANKIE’S ABSENT MOTHER,
and the shadow she cast on his young life.

Frankie, of course, remembered nothing of Carmencita, the prayerful woman with hair the color of dark grapes. And Baffa, who never knew her, could not tell Frankie the truth—that he had been found in a river by a hairless dog—because what child wants to think he was once thrown away?

So a legend was constructed. It is how you humans remold your history. Baffa told Frankie that his mother was a saintly woman, Baffa’s one and only love, who died tragically on a trip they took shortly after Frankie was born. This, Baffa figured, would explain why they never visited her grave at the cemetery in Villareal.

It was not a good lie. And unfortunately for Baffa, Frankie was nearly as curious as he was musical.

“Where was the trip, Papa?”

“America.”

“Where is that?”

“Far away.”

“How did Mama die?”

“A car crash.”

“Was she driving?”

“Of course not.”

“You were driving?”

“Yes.”

“Were you hurt, Papa?”

“No. Well. I was hurt, but not badly.”

“Did you try to save Mama?”

“Of course.”

“Did you try really hard?”

Baffa sighed. You should never construct a lie based on a child’s questions. It is like writing music based on cymbal crashes.

“Yes. I tried everything.”

“Where was I?”

“You were here.”

“By myself?”

“With a friend.”

“Which friend?”

“You don’t know him.”

“How come?”

“He died.”

“How?”

“A car crash.”

“Was he driving?”

Baffa rubbed his head. He was a practical man, with a good heart. But I am rather certain when he came into this world, his little fists did not grab the talent for storytelling.

“I don’t remember, Francisco. It was a long time ago.”

“What happened to Mama?”

“When?”

“After she died?”

“She was buried.”

“What does that mean?”

“When you die, you are put in the ground.”

“Then how can she live with God?”

“After you are buried,
then
you live with God.”

“Where is Mama buried?”

“In a cemetery.”

“Where?”

“In America.”

“Where?”

Baffa barely knew America. His sister, Danza, had moved to Mexico years ago, and had married an American man from Detroit.

“Detroit.”

“What is that?”

“A city.”

“Where?”

“In America.”

“And you went there?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you go there?”

“To get a car.”

“Our car?”

“A different car.”

“The one that crashed?”

“That is the one.”

“Was Mama pretty?”

“Very pretty.”

“Did she love me?”

“Very much.”

On this, Baffa told the truth, even if he didn’t realize it. And then, with his head pounding, he shut down the tale.

“No more questions, Francisco.”

“What did she look like?”

“Please.”

“Is this her?”

Frankie held out a photograph. In it, a younger Baffa had his arm around Danza, his sister, a plump woman with light hair and dark lipstick. The picture was from years ago, the last time he had seen her, before she left for Mexico.

“Where did you find that?”

“In the closet.”

“Why were you in the closet?”

“Is this Mama?”

Baffa sighed. “Yes. That is her. No more questions, all right?”

Frankie gazed at the photo. So the plump woman hugging his father was his mother, the saint, who had died in a car crash in a faraway country and was buried in the ground so she could live with God.

He had his story. Years later, inspired by this tale, he would write his first guitar composition, which he called “Lágrimas por Mi Madre.”

“Tears for My Mother.”

Truth is light. Lies are shadows. Music is both.

11

SPEAKING OF ME, YOU HAVE MANY WORDS FOR HOW I SHOULD BE PLAYED
. In classical music, most of them are in Italian.
Adagio. Moderato.
This goes back to what you called the Renaissance, when Italy was at the center of creativity and musicians who went there invented hundreds of phrases for my tempos.
Vivace. Andantino. Prestissimo.
So far in Frankie’s story, we have been going
largo
, slowly, or at least
larghissimo
, as slow as it makes sense. But with the looming funeral service, we must employ
accelerando
, going faster, perhaps reach
adagietto
or
allegro.

The next three years of Frankie’s life—from the day he stole the phonograph to the day he left Spain in the bottom of a ship—contained the following developments: he grew nine inches, lost six baby teeth, got in four fights at school, took his first Holy Communion, mastered a soccer kick, put pomade in his hair, had a girl plant a kiss on his ear (and run away laughing), learned to ride a bicycle, pray in Latin, and make
bocadillos
with sausage and olive oil. He wore his first bathing suit, saw his first tank, asked Baffa, constantly, to point out America on a globe, and slept with that photograph of the light-haired woman under his pillow every night, the one he believed to be his mother.

He also practiced his guitar at least three hours a day in the garden, learning more than a hundred songs and serenading the hairless dog with arpeggios and finger drills.

Of his lessons with El Maestro, I can attest that he made extraordinary progress, measured by the fact that his blind teacher actually smiled sometimes when Frankie played. El Maestro even gave up smoking cigarettes, although this may have been due to the time when Frankie, using the lighter, accidentally set fire to a tablecloth, then doused it with wine before his teacher could warn him that alcohol might set the whole place ablaze. (It did not. But such a scare can break a habit.)

Frankie spent more and more time in that flat above the laundry on Crista Senegal Street, learning the proper classical techniques, turning the guitar neck away from his left shoulder, tilting it upward, putting his foot on a stool. El Maestro made him hold an orange in his right hand for hours to simulate the proper setup position for plucking the strings, and he constantly grabbed the boy’s fingers to show him the fleshy part of the thumb and the angle of the nails that would bring out the purest sound. He taught him every inch of the guitar, the piercing high sounds of playing up on the neck, the volume and tone relative to the sound hole, how each string vibrated and could be picked, tapped, plucked, fingered, or strummed.

Frankie also learned to work the phonograph he had stolen from the curb. El Maestro, at first, was furious. He insisted they throw the machine away. (“If the
policía
shut down the store, what do you think they would do to me, stupid boy?”) But when Frankie put the needle on a recording of Duke Ellington’s orchestra doing “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,” El Maestro slumped in his chair with his mouth open and made the boy put the needle back thirteen straight times.

Eventually, he and Frankie listened to every disc that was in that pile, many times over. El Maestro’s favorite was a shellac recording of a gypsy guitar player named Django Reinhardt, whom the teacher labeled “not of this earth.” Frankie was partial to Louis Armstrong and the song “Bill Bailey, Won’t You Please Come Home?” the lyrics of which he memorized. One day, as El Maestro ate one of Frankie’s sausage
bocadillos
, the boy sang it for his teacher in perfect imitation.

“Won’t you come home, Bill Bailey?

Won’t you come home?”

She moans the whole day long.

“I’ll do the cookin’ honey; I’ll pay the rent.

I know I’ve done you wrong . . .”

When Frankie stopped, the blind man finished chewing, then rubbed his chin with two fingers.

“Francisco, you are going to have a problem.”

“What problem?”

“You sing well.”

“Thank you, Maestro.”

“Too well. You must decide what you are going to be—a great singer or a great guitar player.”

“Can I be both?”

El Maestro sighed. “Being both means being neither.”

Frankie looked at his teacher, the dark glasses, the unshaven whiskers. He didn’t mean to let him down by singing.

“I am sorry, Maestro.”

The blind man smacked his teeth.

“And stop trying to sound like Louis Armstrong. You are going to hurt your throat.”

12

I HAVE PROMISED SPEEDY MOVEMENT THROUGH THESE REMAINING SPANISH YEARS
. So let me focus on two days only: the day Frankie fell in love, and the day he left.

The first took place in the early autumn of 1944, on a cloudless afternoon when Baffa drove Frankie to the sardine factory near La Vilavella
.
Not long after arriving, Baffa was drawn into another argument between laborers, and he told Frankie to take the hairless dog for a walk. Frankie understood this to mean his papa did not want him hearing what was being said, and that was fine, since he wanted to finish learning the latest song El Maestro had taught him.

With the guitar slung over his back, he led the hairless dog down the long path out of town. He whistled as he walked, and he sang a tune to himself and threw a stick, which the hairless dog retrieved.