A Marriage in Four Seasons

by Kathryn Abdul-baki

  They left the Alhambra and strolled back down the road with the melodic water channels on either side. Immersed in the headiness of having finally witnessed the legendary castle, Joy thought of the composed young meditator who had seemed to be lost in the beauty of the room. She was grateful to have experienced those few moments of reverie as she’d tried to emulate him.

  Inspired, she pointed to the map.

  “Look, honey, Sacromonte isn’t far. The entire neighborhood is built into the mountainside across from here. Let’s see if we can catch a flamenco performance there tonight.”

  Richard looked skeptical. “Isn’t that the gypsy quarter?”

  “It’s more touristy now. But it’s famous for flamenco and the dancers are local gypsies.”

  “We saw lots of flamenco in Seville. We need to stick to safe streets here, Joy.”

  “But Sacromonte’s the real thing.” she said. “It’s authentic.”

  “It can’t be that authentic if it’s for tourists. And I don’t want to fool with gypsies.”

  “Honey, everybody goes there to see the flamenco. Do this for me. I’ve been dying to see the gypsy dancers of Sacromonte. Washington Irving raved about them.”

  Richard raised his eyebrows as if trusting in Irving’s “raving” about something was the height of insanity. “You’re obsessed with that guy. Maybe you should have come here with Irving instead of me.”

  She chuckled. “Don’t be silly.”

  “Gypsies are trouble,” he said flatly.

  “I know you’ll love it,” she said, already anticipating the evening of dangerous enchantment ahead.

  3

  “I can’t get him out of my mind,” Joy said, nibbling on a cumin-scented olive at an outdoor patio in the medieval Albaicin.

  Since arriving in Spain, she’d fancied starting dinner like the Spaniards, trawling the bars for thimblefuls of sherry and tapas of olives, Manchego cheese, and Iberico ham until ten o’clock, when they’d choose a restaurant for their main meal. Inevitably, however, by eight their American stomachs were howling with hunger, and so each night they’d caved in and had their entrees early. Tonight, practically the only diners in the restaurant, they ordered paella for Joy and a fish baked in rock salt for Richard.

  “Who can’t you get out of your mind?” Richard said. “Someone I should worry about?”

  She smiled, mischievous. “Washington Irving.”

  “Irving? Oh, yeah. That book.”

  “Tales of the Alhambra.”

  Richard gazed into his wine glass. “I thought it was Hemingway you liked.”

  There were photographs on the walls of a bespectacled, paunchy Hemingway, cheering at a bullfight. He’d purportedly researched the topic for Death in the Afternoon in this very establishment, feasting on red wine and braised oxtail.

  She shook her head. “Hemingway’s obsessions were wars and bullfighting. Irving loved Spain’s beauty and romance, and he especially loved the Alhambra.”

  Richard swirled his goblet, inhaled, then took a sip of his Rioja Reserva, the red wine he’d chosen for them tonight. Despite eschewing wine recently in the event she got pregnant, Joy had indulged tonight, enjoying the full-bodied oakiness of it.

  “Irving was an incredible adventurer,” she went on. “He traveled through bandit-infested territory with only a friend and a single guard—unheard of in those days. He’s my kind of hero.”

  Richard took another sip of his wine, again pausing to sniff and savor. “Hemingway too macho for you?”

  “Too bloody. Real heroes are compassionate.” Even as she said this, she was aware that her nuanced world was a little suspect to Richard.

  “Well, we should have seen a bullfight in Seville, Joy, or at least in Ronda,” he said, with an unmistakable hint of regret.

  She made a face.

  “I went to one with my father once,” he went on, wistful. “Seville has the oldest bullring in Spain.”

  She took a gulp of her wine, wishing he hadn’t brought this up, now. Although moved by his sentimental memory of an outing with his father, she couldn’t stomach such cruelty.

  “The poor bull never has a chance,” she said.

  “I shouldn’t have let you talk me out of it.”

  She touched his hand. “We went to the Bandit Museum. That was fun.”

  He frowned into his wine glass.

  How she had loved Ronda! They’d arrived at early sunset, the Puente Nuevo Bridge sprawling across the Tajo gorge below them like a spindly legged mosquito. The bridge highlighted Ronda’s remoteness in past centuries, when the town had been better known for its ruthless highwaymen than for its pretty streets and spectacular views; and there had been the incredible Moorish Palacio Mondragon where Queen Isabella had delivered her daughter, one of the exquisite settings in which the willful medieval queen had managed to give birth. Why ruin the memory of the lovely locale with a gruesome bullfight? Any manner of death now made her think of Stephen and the stillbirth.

  Several days before they left home, she’d felt an urge to go rummaging in the guest room drawer for the quilt she’d made for Stephen. She and Richard had picked out just the right turquoise-checked fabric together, as well as the thick padding and the embroidery stitch to use on her sewing machine. She’d worked on the quilt during her second trimester, finishing it just before going into premature labor at six months. As if she had known.

  When it was all over, and they returned home from the burial, she’d slept with the quilt for several nights. Even though it had never touched the baby, it seemed to embody him. She’d brought it to her face and cried for a long time before putting it back into the drawer that day. As she remembered the blanket now, a somber sadness passed over her like a shadow, there and then gone, and she knew for a brief moment that she was mourning not only Stephen, but her marriage and life as it used to be, as well.

  Richard was leaning forward. “Honey, forty percent of Spaniards don’t think it’s so terrible. They still swear by the memory of Manolete.”

  She tried to remember what they’d been talking about.

  “Manolete,” Richard repeated. “The matador who was gored to death in 1947.”

  She nodded, secretly harboring satisfaction that a bull had taken revenge on an all-powerful torero.

  “That’s something I’ll never understand,” she said. “How people so fun-loving and artistic can uphold such cruelty.”

  “Well, forty percent of the people polled admitted they enjoyed bullfighting, and the rest lied when they said they didn’t. Bullfighting is in their genes. The stands are full every time.”

  A svelte waiter in black leather pants brought out Richard’s baked fish, presenting the snow-white hake peeping out amid the glittering salt crystals for their approval before taking it back to the kitchen to be filleted. A scent of lemon and fennel lingered in its wake, and Joy thought of Irving’s accounts of delectable Spanish “repasts” in the cool shade of an olive grove: salted cod, roasted kid and partridge, figs, crusty bread, and a robust red wine.

  “See how artistic that is?” she said, referring as much to her vision of Irving’s picnics as to the aromatic fish they were just shown.

  Richard smiled. “Well, these artists didn’t think twice about gouging out eyes during the Inquisition or butchering each other in a civil war not too long ago. Lorca was dragged off and shot somewhere near here.”

  “That’s still no reason for us to go to a bullfight,” she said, giving him a light warning kick under the table to remind him not to dilute her joy at being in Granada.

  She knew about the ghastly horrors of the civil war of the 1930s, a descent into barbarity that had wiped out hundreds of thousands of citizens. Granada’s own Federico Garcia Lorca, arguably the greatest Spanish poet and dramatist of the twentieth century, was imprisoned and shot by the right-wing Nationalists in 1936 for his outspoken criticism of them. Not even his famous Blood Wedding had saved him. Yet, despite the unspeakable acts that had taken pla
ce on this beautiful spot, she couldn’t let Richard’s skepticism dispirit her.

  “There’s a bullfight tomorrow,” he said cheerfully.

  She overlooked the enthusiasm in his announcement, concentrating on the saffron-and-paprika-scented rice as perfect and round as pearls melting on her tongue between morsels of shrimp, squid, and chorizo.

  “I’d like to go,” he said.

  “Well go, then,” she said, savoring the smoky flavors.

  She should have known this topic would come up the moment they walked into the restaurant. The walls leading to the patio were bursting with paintings of “illustrious bullfighters” and stuffed heads of “brave bulls.”

  “What about you?” he asked.

  Ignoring his question, she held up a nugget of chorizo on her fork. “One reason pork is so prevalent in Spanish food is because it was proof that you weren’t Muslim or Jewish. During the Inquisition, a kitchen without pork was practically a death sentence.”

  She popped the bite into her mouth, relishing the perfectly cured meat, puzzled that a thing so exquisite could be linked to such human oppression. Despite her infatuation with Iberian culture, it was beginning to seem that everything pleasurable in Spain had sprouted from some long-ago fountain of pain.

  “You don’t want to go?” Richard asked.

  “You can’t seriously expect me to see a bullfight?”

  “I’d like to.”

  “Then, go,” she said, shrugging, barely masking her disdain. “But I thought we were heading for Cordoba tomorrow.”

  “We can take off later in the afternoon,” he said, although she was not sure whether his look was one of disappointment or relief that she did not want to join him at the ring. “What’ll you do while I’m gone?”

  “I’ll find plenty to keep me busy.”

  “Be careful, Joy. Don’t take your credit cards.”

  “Rich, you’re so darn worried all the time. I’ll only be shopping, then sitting in a nice cafe while you’re enjoying your bloodthirsty sport.”

  He smiled at her jab. “Well,” he said, reaching over and caressing her cheek, “Carmen was killed outside the ring. And,” he added with a seductive whisper, “the only blood sport I enjoy is with you.”

  She glanced at him cynically, sure that his sudden enthusiasm had more to do with his anticipation of the ring than with romance. She could barely stand to think that he could enjoy something so horrible. How could he be two people at once— kind and gentle and yet insensitive to such animal suffering?

  The young waiter who came to pour them more wine enthusiastically answered Richard’s questions on matador fighting styles. He obviously endorsed Richard’s wanting to go to the ring, and in brotherly spirit, the two men chatted about bulls and Joselito, the current reigning matador.

  The waiter beamed at them. “It is the real Spain. You will love it.”

  “I’ll be going alone,” Richard said.

  The waiter looked surprised. “You should try it once,” he said. “If you don’t like it—finish,” he added, with all the drama of plunging the final sword into the bull’s spine. He smiled uneasily, as if he had little tolerance for the squeamishness of foreign women. “The bull likes to die that way. Bravely. He does not like to go to the butcher.”

  Joy smiled back. “I’ll be shopping.”

  Richard shrugged as though equally baffled by his wife’s lack of interest in the national pastime.

  The waiter’s eyebrows rose in abject disapproval. “What if there is a big war tomorrow? What if there is no tomorrow? Do you want to miss the corrida?”

  Joy continued to smile.

  After supper, she and Richard took on the lamplit streets.

  Despite its substantial size and the crowds, Granada felt surprisingly intimate. Some roads were so narrow they could only be navigated on foot. Even the dogs on their leashes seemed purposely small so as to take up as little space as possible. Best of all, there was a palpable air of contentment, entire families out for a late evening stroll, teenagers whizzing by on motor scooters as if there were no school tomorrow.

  She browsed through hanging shawls richly embroidered with bright flowers and birds, like the flamenco dancers wore. Like the gypsies. Gypsies. Her thoughts flew back to what she had read about the gypsies having moved into the caves of Sacromonte mountain after the Moors had abandoned them during the reconquest. Although Joy knew there was little chance of Richard going to the Sacromonte willingly, she simply had to find a way to take him.

  “Does the lady care to ride?” Richard said suddenly, signaling to the driver of a flower-adorned horse carriage

  Richard helped her into the colorful carriage. The white horse’s mane was braided with blue and orange ribbons, and the husky driver proceeded to steer the horse down a quiet alley, away from traffic. Richard’s spontaneous romantic gesture and the clip-clopping of the horse’s hooves against the worn cobblestones delighted Joy, diffusing the cloud of his earlier talk of the darker side of Andalusia. When he took her hand, leaned over, and passionately kissed her as though to atone for his earlier bullfighting harangue, she relaxed into his arms, relieved by this lighthearted shift and impromptu make-out session in the back of the carriage. Maybe their vacation was finally about to start.

  She couldn’t help wondering now who the real Richard was: this gracious, attentive husband or the self-absorbed man he had been these past months.

  Resolving to enjoy the moment instead of focusing on her earlier thoughts of leaving him, she settled affectionately against his chest, reaching up to stroke his cheek, her earlier foreboding beginning to dissipate as her heart unfolded to envelop him more fiercely than she had in a very long time.

  4

  A bullfight. Maybe a good idea. He’d get it out of his system, once and for all, so she needn’t deal with it anymore. And, for a change, she’d have some unchaperoned time, time to leisurely explore the sun-drenched plazas and their aromas of toasted chestnuts, time to buy an ice cream or coffee. As she anticipated her afternoon alone, free from marital squabbling and gypsy fear, she began to feel the romantic pull of this place again. Maybe some dark-eyed Spaniard, totally at ease in this community, would invite her for a glass of Jerez and explain the city’s sights to her.

  Amazed by her flippant thoughts, she glanced around now as if to spot this dashing, fictional companion, but no one fitting this image was in sight. Only two elderly men, their hands clasped behind their backs in that melancholic way of old Spanish men here, were plodding up the street ahead.

  Emboldened by her vision, she turned to Richard. “Let’s walk over to Sacromonte since it’s so close.”

  “Now? It’s late.”

  “Honey, the evening’s just starting here. If you don’t like it, we’ll turn back. I promise.”

  Richard scowled. “Do we have to do everything Irving did?”

  She pretended not to hear him, moving onto the sidewalk to make way for a passing motor scooter.

  “Joy,” he said, as if explaining the obvious, “anybody who’d spend months sleeping in a deserted ruin had to have a screw loose.”

  She laughed out loud, feeling more reckless and hungry for adventure than she had in a long time. “Irving was perfectly sane. And look at all these people. They all go.” She gestured encouragingly at the pedestrians—tourists and locals, grandparents to toddlers—climbing the narrow streets of the Albaicin as if they came here every night.

  They arrived at a cobbled passageway with an old-fashioned street lamp and a sign that read “Sacromonte.” An arrow pointed upward.

  “Just a little farther, Rich,” she urged, the second glass of Rioja she’d had at dinner propelling her onward into the jasmine-scented night.

  He stopped. “These alleys are made for scooters. I don’t want to walk back late at night.”

  She sighed. “There will be cabs, sweetheart.”

  Midway up the incline, she turned around to face him, panting with the exertion.

 
“Hey,” she asked, “whatever happened to the risk-taker I married? There’s a time to be prudent, Rich, and a time to just enjoy ourselves. We don’t come here every day.”

  She waited as he bent to shake a pebble from his shoe. He was stalling.

  She wanted to kick his butt right then, appalled by the change in him. Where was that gusto she’d been so smitten by when they first met? Up until recently, he’d seemed to have maintained at least some of that charismatic enthusiasm he’d displayed when he was wooing her. When had it all evaporated? Had he lost a piece of himself, too, with the loss of their baby?

  “We’re practically there,” she urged. “Honey, stop being so frigging paranoid.”

  He stepped back into his shoe, ignoring her remark.

  “It’s like the waiter said,” she continued, her voice with more edge than she’d intended. “We could all blow up tomorrow, Rich. You’ll go to your bullfight, and I’ll see Sacromonte.”

  She turned and resolutely started up the dimly lit street.

  Years ago, she’d fancied herself someday linked to a thrill-seeking man who would share her wanderlust and with whom she would discover the world; a spirited, fearless man like Che Guevara, her hero in those idealistic college years,

  For some months at NYU, she actually had her own Che, complete with flowing hair and motorcycle. His name was Francisco Esteban, a native of El Salvador, and he was attending the university on a scholarship.

  She had gone back to school to do graduate work in English, and he was a teaching assistant, an avowed Marxist-Leninist earning his master’s in public policy. By the end of the semester, they were in love, and he’d introduced her to the Socialist organizations on campus and made her aware of the folly of her lamentable “bourgeois” ways.

  “Rubia,” he would affectionately chide, “Blondie, why spoil your beautiful face with makeup?”

  Wearing makeup and feminine clothing was frowned upon by Francisco as a sly tool used by the bourgeoisie to make women feel powerless. He never tired of repeating this mantra, and oddly enough, once she’d given up lipstick and mascara, Joy actually had felt more liberated.