When the count was particularly irritated with how I was playing, he tried his best to look at me, pushing his face up against my fingers, lowering himself into a crouch so that he could bring his nearly useless eyes level with my left thumb, studying me in his near-blindness, hovering over me like some hunched-over warlock. This was worse than when he pawed at me. It made me feel like he was trying to see something inside of me that no one else could see—some source of my ineptitude and my discontent, some basic character flaw. I would sit still as he ran his weak eyes over me, wanting him to see something good and promising in me, wanting to earn back his favor.
This continued all autumn, leaching away my joy. But my discontent was nothing special; I dared not mention it, or act out on account of it, or in any way publicize my displeasure, when more serious grief was brewing. The entire palace was hushed, contaminated with a melancholia that grew as our Queen Ena's belly grew. The gossip was that she felt worse than ever, had difficulty eating, should not have conceived again so soon.
And then the winter: I'd never been so cold! The wind gusted across the plains of La Mancha, down through the narrow river valley, up the little bluff that led to the palace and around the palace's corners. At night when the wind blew, I could hear a vibrating hum, like a stick rubbed fast against a washboard. It was the wind rasping against the palace's facade, grinding Spanish sand against those countless ribbed Greco-Roman columns. Such ostentation; so little comfort.
One day I caught sight of the Queen, being guided by the elbows along the marble hallway of the main gallery, between her quarters and the King's. She was trembling. Her little paunch, not quite disguised by a flowing gown, was trembling, too. Her pale blue eyes looked like ice that day, and her face looked like cold wax. Her ladies nodded at me as they passed, but the Queen herself showed no recognition of my presence.
Soon after that, workmen flooded the palace, hammering during my cello lessons (more interruptions and distractions; my tic increased). "Calor," the servants whispered. Central heat. The Queen had put her foot down. She who had been raised in gloomy England refused to freeze to death in so-called sunny Spain.
But heat—and spring—were not enough to stem her woes. Her uncle, King Edward VII of England, caught a cold following a wet weekend and, a few days later, died of pneumonia. Only nine years had passed since his mother, the Empress Victoria, had died. The old guard was passing, and their children and grandchildren were taking over. Baby-faced men seemed to run the world. Would they know not to make a mess of things?
Heads of state flocked to England for the funeral from all over Europe, with their medals, sabers, embroidered cuffs, and shiny knee-high boots: King Haakon VII of Norway, Ferdinand of Bulgaria, Manuel II of Portugal, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, Gustav V of Sweden, Albert of Belgium, Frederick VII of Denmark. The newspapers published the royal funeral portrait: Spain's King Alfonso sat in the front row, next to the new English monarch, King George V. King George asked after his cousin, and Alfonso said she was well enough, and sorry she couldn't have come. But it wasn't entirely true. She had wanted to come, but she wasn't at all well. The baby hardly moved.
The weather, too, was strange. People blamed Halley's comet, that streamer in the night sky; another omen. Later, as his power weakened and his paranoia intensified, Alfonso would claim that May itself was to blame. Wasn't that the month when he and his bride had nearly been assassinated? ("But also the month we were wed," Ena tried to remind him.) And wasn't it the month that Alfonsito, their firstborn, had nearly bled to death at his circumcision? ("But also the month that he was born. And he did live," she tried to say, correcting him privately as she never dared correct him in public.)
On some unknown date that month, the royal baby died inside of Ena. The royal doctors refused to operate on the Queen for fear of damaging her reproductive faculties and thus the very future of the monarchy. She had to wait, silent and uncomplaining, for the dead child to be born naturally. The entire palace held its breath. Music lessons and tutorials were canceled for a week. I passed Isabel as she exited the chapel off the main gallery, near the Queen Mother's quarters, and she rested her hand on my shoulder. I was forgiven by her, or at least forgotten, in this sad event that gave her and all the other bored courtiers something to dwell on. Isn't it terrible? she mouthed to me, then floated by, down the hall. All of us waited. All of us prayed.
It came out on May 20, stillborn. A boy.
"No vibrato," the count told me.
Through force of will, he had already changed the position of my left hand, and had brought all my bowing experimentation to a standstill. The worst thing was that he was sometimes right. Obeying him, I had improved my intonation, it was true. I had gained a better sense of where my bow rested—its precise orientation in regard to the bridge, its angle as it crossed the string. He noticed things that Alberto had not noticed—the position of my thumb, for example, anchored behind the neck of the cello. He was not correct all the time. But he was correct too often to legitimize a mutiny. And yet I wasn't sure he had my best interests at heart. Isabel seemed to have forgiven me, but he had not. Would my punishment ever be over?
"No vibrato," he said a second time, after we'd started work on a new piece I'd been practicing all week.
"I thought you meant during the first piece only. The warm-up."
"No," he said. "No vibrato at all. You've learned it haphazardly. And it is masking other defects. You are wrapping your notes inside so much ribbon and lace I can't make out if your positions are right, if you're making the corrections we keep talking about."
"It's just..." I stammered, "by now, it's a habit."
"Everything becomes habit. Bad things most of all."
"And I don't think I overuse it."
I tried to sound nonchalant, but inside, my head was spinning. Of all the grounds on which to be attacked! I prided myself on my restraint. I avoided emotionalism. My vibrato was rhythmic and understated and intentional, nothing at all like the wobbly, throbbing vibrato of restaurant violinists and Ramblas buskers.
"You're hiding behind it all the same," he said. "Who is the teacher here, Feliu? Who is the student?"
I had matured. This was a challenge, and I accepted it. Even outside my lessons with the count, even practicing alone, I began to play every note hard, cold, and bright—like a raw winter day, the Spanish sun beating down—no shadows, but also little warmth. And the music did feel different without the vibrato, in a way that I was beginning to grow accustomed to and even to prefer, as one grows accustomed to stronger drink and comes to dislike the sweet wines of youth.
Artistically, this was an essential development, but perhaps I took things a step too far, as was my tendency. I became a bit too sober for a seventeen-year-old. I took my lessons not only from the count, but from the court, and from the Queen herself, for whom self-sacrifice was the highest aim, and sorrow as natural as any song.
CHAPTER 10
That summer, a month after the baby was stillborn, Queen Ena sent for me. I assumed she was doing her mother-in-law a favor, dismissing me from royal service while the Queen Mother herself was away on holiday. Some nine months had passed since the disastrous concert; a year had passed since I'd moved to the palace. Besides composing a wedding song for one of Alfonso's distant cousins, I had done little in my official capacities except to continue studying with the count.
Perhaps, I thought, as I stumbled through cursory greetings—A sus órdenes, para servirle—I could prove my talent to the Queen herself.
"If you could hear me play," I began, stuttering through my self-defense as my eyes flitted between her face and the ubiquitous fresco on the vaulted ceiling overhead: classical figures in billowing powder-blue robes, tensed calf muscles and dark, gesturing hands. All that movement, all that drama, contrasting with the face of the woman to whom I spoke—a face of defiant stillness that revealed nothing.
"I have heard you play," she said.
"The Queen Mother's conc
ert—"
"You don't have to explain. I've heard you play since. Through doors and across courtyards, but I've heard you play."
There was that twitch again, not a smile but a softening, though her erect posture and thin, unsteady fingers made her look like a deer ready to bolt.
"During my last pregnancy, I was advised to steer clear of music," she said. "For health reasons. Nothing to quicken..." She paused, resting her hand on her chest.
"The heart?" I interjected, wincing inwardly as soon as I'd said it. One wasn't supposed to interrupt a monarch, even one struggling to master a second language.
"The pulse, I was trying to say." She signaled caution, both her lips and eyes narrowing. But there was friendliness in it. It was the kind of look a sister gives a younger brother. "The doctors said—but what do the doctors know? Mostly, they seemed determined to deprive me of pleasure. But the worst still happened. And once it does, no one has power over you anymore."
I waited, listening, thinking of the guard standing at the door behind me, and the statuelike servant off to one side of the room. Walker was her favorite, the only English servant in the palace.
It was from the maids and kitchen staff and doorway guards that I'd gleaned most of what I knew about the royal family, especially the King, about whom many stories circulated. When he went to Paris, he checked into hotels under an assumed name: Monsieur Lamy. Everyone laughed about it. The chambermaids added their own discovery—that the King always traveled with his own sheets. It was said that he loved the look of black satin against his long, thin limbs and sallow skin.
"Next week," the Queen took a deep breath, "we have two birthdays—Jaime and Beatriz, a day apart. And I am wondering: a party for a one-year-old and two-year-old, with a three-year-old attending—what on earth is one supposed to do? The King is in France. The Queen Mother is at San Sebastián."
I said, "All the birthday games I know would make a baby cry."
She looked puzzled.
"The loud noises." I noticed how tired she looked, the faint lavender shadows around her eyes. "But how about something outside? Something quiet, perhaps with animals?"
"Animals?"
"Burros? Cart rides?"
"There's an idea." She looked away wistfully. "I had a pet donkey, growing up. On the Isle of Wight. He used to help us haul buckets from a deep well. It was two hundred feet deep—at least." She paused. "Amazing how you forget things; how things come back to you."
The conversation flagged, and in the silence I could hear a clock ticking insistently on the mantel behind the Queen's head.
"As for the party," she continued more stiffly. "You could play your cello, next to the cart?"
"Not easily. Maybe some flutists could follow along. The children might like that. What do you think of streamers? In several colors, fluttering from the cart..."
In the hallway, after I was dismissed, I realized I had squandered an opportunity courtiers were supposed to prize: to get close, to curry favor, to become a favorite of the royal children, to become essential. But I was too distracted to worry. As I walked away, I repeated to myself, again and again, the name of that exotic place as she had pronounced it in her native tongue: "Ay-ílove Wa-ít; Ay-ílove Wa-ít." There was a melodiousness to the phrase, to everything she said in English, even when the words ended harshly, without vowels. How could one explain the way such short, sharp words could flow, could sound starkly beautiful? But that was Bach's trick, too. His Germanic music, so measured and restrained, nonetheless held great emotions and vast mystery.
That day, listening to the Queen speak, I knew that she would like Bach; that she would like how I played it, not in the Spanish way, but in the universal way, without affectation.
***
In his letters, my brother Enrique regularly asked me, rather insistently, if I had gotten to know any girls. I hinted at the affair with Isabel, skipping the embarrassing parts. I tried to make it sound like a conquest. I wrote him about the Queen, too, in a kind of code. I described a palace girl I'd met—I called her Elena—a quiet girl, only a little pretty, not always liked. Trying to capture this half-real new friend on paper felt like tuning an instrument: a careful process of finding the right words, making small corrections, pairing observations into verbal chords, listening for reverberations.
Here was one chord: She looked young, smooth-faced, both full-cheeked and round-eyed, like a child caught just seconds after filling her mouth with stolen pastry. But she also looked old—the guarded expression, the set lips, so like her famous British grandmother's. And here was another: She looked unhappy most of the time, everything about her flat and still and ponderous, but that heavy symmetry could give way in a moment. All she had to do was tilt her head slightly, or stand with one hip jutted from beneath an otherwise-plain ankle-length skirt, to communicate a flash of independent spirit—and in her, independence seemed synonymous with happiness, however fleeting.
But no matter how carefully those chords were struck, they didn't sound properly. The real Queen Ena wasn't oppressed or weak. In fact, she seemed to be the royal family's strongest member and the one most committed to the monarchy. The more I watched her, the less I understood why the Spanish people distrusted her. She was guarding our heritage, cultivating stability, while the King flitted between hunting lodges and polo matches and distant capitals, silly and oversexed, an embarrassing dandy. Madrileños criticized her for being passionless, too tranquil—but her stillness was her power. She was the pole around which everything else spun: the bridge, the sounding post. Everything else could move, could vibrate, because she stayed in place.
***
The best thing about visiting the royal chapel was that, upon exiting it, one had reason to walk along the gallery fronting the King's and Queen's private rooms, en route to the main palace staircase. One day, I went to light a votive candle in each of my siblings' names, and especially in the name of my new nephew, Enric, who had been born to my unmarried sister five months after I moved to Madrid.
As I headed back down the gallery, I heard my name called. I recognized the accent instantly, but I couldn't quite accept its source. I stepped toward the voice, which was coming from the open door of the Japanese Smoking Room: a tiny, dazzling refuge that was not much bigger than a small bedroom, with a ceiling twice as high. The King's father had ordered the walls covered with bamboo, panels of purple silk, and porcelain plaques depicting Asian fish, birds, and boats. Stepping into the room felt like wrapping oneself in a tight kimono.
Surrounded by all that color and shine, Queen Ena looked small and plain, garbed in a shapeless off-white dress. Her arms hung limply from the dark arms of a cane chair.
"I lost an opportunity, the last time we spoke," she called to me as I loitered in the doorway, unsure of the protocol for entering and greeting her. She waved away my hesitation, gesturing for me to come closer. "You helped me plan the party, but I did not manage to talk you into performing."
Through a side door I could see into the next small chamber—a billiards room, dark-paneled, the green baize of the table glowing under three low-hanging lanterns. I couldn't see the King, but I assumed he must be near, given that these rooms were his. I thought I could smell him, or some man; the smell of tobacco and drink, anyway.
"The opportunity lost was mine," I said. "I talked myself out of an honorable service."
"Everyone makes mistakes," she said.
I added, bowing, "Al mejor cazador se le escapa la liebre."
She repeated the words slowly, translating them: "Even the best hunter lets a hare escape. I will try to remember that. Each time the King returns, I try to surprise him with some proof that I am mastering the language."
"You speak it well already. So the King isn't here now?"
"He is away. His work allows him so little leisure."
She looked over my shoulder as if expecting to see someone there, but the hall behind us was empty. "We never have enough time, do we? Any of us, I mean. I
suppose one must enjoy what one has. Do you have a good saying for that?"
I clasped my hands behind my back, thinking. "Aprovecha gaviota, que no hay otra." Enjoy eating seagull, as long as there's nothing else.
She screwed up her face. "It rhymes nicely, but I can't imagine a worse meal than seagull. You sound like Cervantes's little funny man—like Sancho Panza—spouting those funny dichos."
"Do you have something prettier in English?"
"Goodness, I hope so," she said, wrinkling her nose. "I must. Let me think. How about this?" She enunciated slowly, in her own native tongue: "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may."
For a moment, the words hung in the room. I could picture them quite literally: rising, dispersing, like smoke.
"Please—say it again."
She did. Then she translated it into Spanish with my help, stumbling in her search for capullo. But I preferred the English word anyway—rosebud. Already, I could imagine myself including it in a letter to Enrique, to describe the blush of her cheek, the purse of her lips. Rosebud. I felt a ticklish heat creep across my chest.
The ticklishness proceeded to my throat, and into my nose. It wasn't just in the walls. And it wasn't just poetry. There was real smoke in the room. At last I traced it to a thin gray column rising just behind the Queen's chair, originating from her hanging hand, curled awkwardly under the chair's polished arm. What piqued my interest wasn't the thing she was hiding, but that she—the most powerful woman in the nation—felt the need to hide anything at all.
"But I'm wasting your talent," she said. "You shouldn't be giving anyone Spanish lessons. You should be giving music lessons."
"Do you play?" I said, too eagerly.
"I don't."
She read my disappointment. "I used to. But I wasn't very good. And where I grew up, silence was the rule, especially on rainy days, when we all crowded indoors. 'Children should be seen, not heard'—perhaps you have heard that English expression."
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