The Sacred Beasts

by Bev Jafek

  “Is it all right now?” Alex asked Sylvie.

  “Oh, yes. She’s always so easy to talk to. I realized that I’d been missing her a lot. I hope we can still stay close.”

  “You said we would never tell anyone about that night, when we made love all over the city. But you told Ruth.”

  “Oh, no!” said Sylvie. “I would never tell Ruth about that! She’d think I terrorized you all night.”

  She’d be right, Alex thought. Sylvie as a sexual terrorist . . . true enough, Alex decided and appreciated its strange irony. We think of a beautiful woman with many admirers as fortunate, she thought. But, Sylvie had been much admired by many men, and they had wanted to dominate her immediately. It was part of their desire for her. And, she was a beautiful woman who hated it, who insisted on her freedom. So, the woman becomes a kind of adventurer, Alex thought, a sexual terrorist—at first. Should I be shocked, frightened by Sylvie’s sexuality? Alex wondered, but she only smiled.

  “Are you comfortable with Alex now?” Ruth asked Monserrat.

  “Oh, yes. There’s no change, really. We admitted that we’d missed one another.”

  “How was Sylvie?”

  “Very much herself.” Ruth smiled and said no more. A woman of a certain violence, she thought.

  The groups were breaking up and some women were staying behind, as they often did. Something very unusual was happening, however. As they began to gather in the living room, they were all suddenly fascinated by Pilar, who was telling the story of her mother’s life to a group of writers.

  “My mother was a tocaor, a gypsy flamenco singer. Her stage name was Malena and they called her Malena the Maddened One and sometimes Malena the Singing Beast. When she came onstage, she yelled, ‘I’ve got ten times the balls of any man here!’ and the pandemonium began. Many things then happened almost at once: her whole body tensed and sometimes her feet pawed the ground like a bull, one arm threw itself out to the audience, her mouth opened and a sound came out of it that was low, guttural, bass and churning. It was deep and thick and ragged, a voice made of blood, gravel and agony. It made you think of the force of a flooding river or rancid butter or the world’s biggest bullfrog crying out as a knife was shoved into its gut. The audience went crazy with shock, ecstasy and pain. The hair rose on their arms, and my mother lived for that moment. From then on, they were all in a trance led by my mother.

  “She sang only cante jondo, deep flamenco, the oldest version of the art and most emotional, unlike the flamenco fusion music you hear today, and she was very well-trained by her own mother. She knew all the palos, whose different styles and rhythms numbered into the forties. Some were songs sung at fiestas—alegrias, rumbas, tanquillos. The most complex of these were the soleas and siguiriyas. Some of the oldest were originally written for blacksmiths as they pounded metal into shape—the martinetas. Other old ones were the deblas written to goddesses. There were many of these since gypsies are a matriarchal society. Newer songs were the carcilenos, prison songs, since so many gypsies use illegal drugs and end up in prison. You would probably recognize some of these songs by their rhythms—tangos, fandangos, rumbas, guajiras, milongas. So, despite my mother’s effect on audiences, her art did not lack discipline, and she was actually a very gentle person, particularly with me. But, there was a great creative violence in her soul, and it poured from her in every performance.

  “It has been said that as much as two-thirds of gypsies never go to public schools and are therefore illiterate. This was not true of my mother, and she often rewrote the lyrics of her songs or sang spontaneously. The flamenco songs I heard from men were often misogynist and sado-masochistic, but my mother’s songs were most often about the strength of women. Several agents wanted to sign her up for a recording contract, but my mother could read the documents’ language, which was always absurdly exploitative. She immediately demanded better terms, which shocked them. They were used to illiterate gypsies who would sign anything.

  “So, my mother never made a record or album. She performed all over Spain, most often in Andalusia, where we lived. I always attended school under strict supervision by my father’s sister, and then I could not accompany her. But over holidays and summers, I went everywhere with her, and I loved our life on the road. My mother performed in the tablaos, nightclubs in the big cities, in aventas or inns in the countryside, and also in festivals and competitions across Spain. Some of them, like the Bienal, could last a month. In Andalusia, she performed at romerias, fiestas that accompanied pilgrimages as well as fiestas after hunting in the countryside.

  “Some holiday and summer flamenco concerts were elaborately and expensively staged events with seats selling for top prices. These had huge audiences from North America, Japan, and Germany. Only a fourth of the audience was Spanish because so few Spaniards could afford the ticket price. At one of these, my mother performed with a very famous flamenco dancer—a woman like Eva Yerbabuena—and she was so moved by her beauty and dance that she kissed her on both of her thighs and ended up being punched in the nose by her—to the raucous delight of the audience. My mother loved women more than men and yes, ladies, she was as wild and raw as they come. I was very proud of her for it, though I had to ice her swollen nose. The dancer later apologized and said she was only startled and not angered, but the promoter loved the press that concert got. The scandal increased attendance at the next one.

  “When school wasn’t in session, it was up to me whether I went with my mother or not, so you can be sure I always went. I saw everything a child is never allowed to see: completely uninhibited life at all levels of Spanish society, including sex, drugs, drunkenness and brawls. The gypsies who performed with my mother learned to slowly recede from the party, however. While it was in progress, everyone wanted to be a gypsy. They loved us for the pure wild life only we could give them; but once it was over, they couldn’t stand to have us around. They never wanted to know anything about our lives, and we made no friends. My mother, of course, was one of the most fascinating singers and she was beautiful for a long time, too, but no one cared to know about the poor barrio she would return to. So, we felt the hot embrace of life and the door slammed in your face in very rapid succession. I must say, though, that I loved every minute of it and wouldn’t have missed a bit of that life on the road with my mother. I had no respect for the people who were so ambivalent about us. They feared their own deepest urges, not us.

  “The government was uncomfortable about flamenco, too, even the socialists who were from Andalusia. All other performing arts got extensive government support, particularly the ones drawing international attention or even showing the faintest potential for that, like Spain’s pathetic failure to create a national ballet. Not us, and we were one of Spain’s most successful and enduring performing arts. Spain wanted EU membership then, and the government found flamenco embarrassingly primitive, a reminder of a less than ideally civilized past that kept coming back to haunt them. The heart of this life is as wild and raw and full of tempests as the earth, and flamenco draws on this more directly than any other Spanish art. Civilization will always have its ways of stilling the heart—those endlessly flickering little screens you watched on every table and soon in the palm of your hand—that’s only the latest maneuver. But that wild heart will never be stifled. It will always demand expression, and my mother’s life showed this to me in a unique and extraordinary way. I am grateful for this because it has taught me to trust things that raise the hair on your arm: they are telling you something about yourself and the world that nothing else will reveal to you. This Iknow: my mother was a great artist, though she came from a poor barrio.

  “And, our barrio was Spain’s most notorious—Las Tres Mil Viviendas—on the outskirts of Seville. All the famous flamenco singers come from here. To get to our barrio, you would have to drive away from the city’s beautiful old haciendas and jacaranda trees, all the way out to Triana and then to a place where there are piles of refuse, junked cars, and nothi
ng else but dusty earth. Then you would begin to make out a city of run-down apartment buildings, all as poor as the dust. Some have blocks of eight-story buildings that have been abandoned. Farther on, the gypsies who live here are called People of the Flood since the river has overflowed and destroyed the area several times. The river is not done with us, either. Eventually, it will overflow again. Like those Indonesians who live near active volcanoes, we didn’t have the money to leave, so we lived breathing in death and danger.

  “Our barrio is the result of a government real estate scam. The government wanted the gypsies out of their houses in Triana, which had adjoining patios that enhanced the contact between families our culture is based on and gives us our strength as a people. So, the government offered to build new homes for us and buy our old properties. Naively, we agreed, and the three thousand apartments—crowded and physically separate that together look like a bombed-out pit in a war zone—is the result. The notorious photo of a donkey looking out of an apartment window comes from our famous barrio. The owner kept the donkey outside in an empty field during the day—his former house had a lawn with a small stable—but he had no choice but to put the donkey in a room of his apartment at night or it would run away or be stolen. Now, when an apartment house for gypsies goes up anywhere in Spain, people claim to see a donkey looking out a window.

  “Las Tres Mil Viviendas is also notorious for drug abuse and crime. It well deserves its reputation for drug abuse. Spain’s gypsies gave up their wandering lifestyle a century ago and mainly worked as farm hands in the countryside during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As those jobs disappeared, they came to live in urban shantytowns where drug dealing was often the only way to earn a living. So, if you were walking through our barrio, you would see walled gardens, many of which are barred cages to keep out addicts, drug lords and gangs. Moving on, you would come upon a wasteland that leads to a fence with a hole in it. Over the hole is a sign that says ‘Church,’ and through the hole is a nearly empty building with a basement for gypsies who have just shot up. I’m told there are pictures of Christ on the walls. You’ll see a lot of emaciated junkies around there with bandaged limbs called los mutilados, the mutilated ones. The worst spot for drugs, though, is the section called Las Vegas, but I’ve never been there. Church and the mutilated ones were quite enough for me: I didn’t need any more local color.

  “As to our reputation for crime, I don’t know what to say. Sure, you can find gangs of young gypsy boys who sometimes set bonfires on the street. Occasionally, they attack cars of strangers driving through—break windows, demand money. But if you’re just walking through, and particularly if you live here, the crime rate is no worse than any other area called a ‘project.’ There are people on the street all the time, day and night. You see lines of colorful washing everywhere, and what I do love is that you hear flamenco music everywhere. It’s pouring out of kitchen windows, bars, bedroom windows, open doors of houses, street corners. A gypsy can just start singing and instantly others join in, beating out the rhythms we’ve all learned as children. Inspiration is catching, and a full performance, or juerga, can start anywhere. Gypsies start and stop whenever la ganga, the urge, comes upon them. On the street, we finally have the direct contact with others that we need, though the government built us a Civic Center for that purpose. The foundation or skeleton was built first, of course, and then the rest was just forgotten for many years. That’s how much the government wanted to restore our group identity. The name, El Esquelito, stuck. No one goes there. So much for life in a skeleton.”

  Like the other women, Sylvie had been listening in fascination to Pilar’s story. So many images came into her mind that she decided to paint a whole series of canvases devoted to Malena and her life with Pilar. Suddenly she wondered if the painters who had studios there were listening to the story, too. She was in the back of the room and could silently and almost invisibly walk into the painting room. There, she found that the women were listening with the same rapt attention, in fact with even greater intensity and concentration, since they were also painting. She continued to watch in fascination and saw that bright oranges, reds and ochres had begun to appear on the canvases and would probably define them. She smiled and thought that I can understand, and returned to the room with Pilar.

  “My father, who I never knew, was a strange gypsy,” Pilar was saying. “He spent most of his time reading and writing. My aunt, his sister who lived with us, was a big reader, too. There were books all over the walls, and a number of his stories about gypsy life had been published. He earned a small income teaching other gypsies to read and write, though he taught them for nothing if they couldn’t pay. He sang flamenco, too, but he wasn’t the professional my mother was. According to my mother, he was very gentle but prone to intense and uncontrollable depressions, so eventually he became a drug addict like so many other gypsy men.

  “When he went to prison for the first time, my mother visited him as much as she could. They would sing flamenco together through the bars in their low, throaty voices and they always set the place on fire. There were so many gypsy prisoners thumping out rhythms and crying out, they had a full juerga every time. The whole prison loved my mother’s visits. My mother and father made love there, too; there were separate rooms they could use. I always wondered what my mother sounded like when she made love; maybe something like the sound of her singing. My father couldn’t tolerate prison at all, though, and died of a drug overdose shortly after being incarcerated. My mother had tried to keep him alive with music, but she could not erase so much despair. She always said that he was a great man in his way, and she very much respected him, but he was not strong enough to live the life of a gypsy. My mother never took drugs, she said, because she had her music and me, and no amount of sorrow could take them away.

  “Later, when she had more money, we moved to Cerro Blanco, another crumbling gypsy barrio but much more pleasant than Las Tres Mil Viviendas. All those books went with us, because I was an avid reader by then and wanted to be a writer like my father, though I had never known him. We were happy there, but my mother developed cancer and died. I always wondered what might have been in the river when it overflowed and in the soil at Las Tres Mil Viviendas, but how can you ever know a thing like that? I eventually sold the house, went to the university and graduated, which would have made my mother fiercely proud. I would give anything to hear the song she would have sung about it!

  “When I think of my mother now, I see her face surrounded by vivid sounds, music, floating colors, strangely beautiful lights that haunt me. I don’t know why I always see her that way; my mind just creates it. But in this world, there has never been a color or a light or a sound as vivid as my mother.”

  The women were perfectly silent. No one moved. They did not expect Pilar to end her story so abruptly, but it was over. Several women thought they had just witnessed a one-woman juerga. Monserrat’s eyes were full of tears, and she went to Pilar, kissed her cheeks, embraced her, squeezed her hand, said a few soft words, and returned to Ruth. Everyone knew that Monserrat loved the gypsy girl like a daughter. Sylvie thought of the colors, sounds and lights and was astonished to realize that this was much how she conceptualized painting Malena. But floating colors! That she had not imagined. She felt a prickling of her skin, looked down and saw the hair rising on her arm. She smiled and thought, thank you, Malena and Pilar.

  Alex was finally the one to break the silence. “Oh Pilar, you’ve got to write about her! What a story!” She thought but did not say, and if you’re not going to become a writer, please let me have it.

  “I will write about her,” Pilar said firmly, “but not now. She is still too close to me. The music, the colors and lights are too bright.”

  Amen, that one is yours, Alex thought. She felt a brief but intense shame that she had wanted to write the story herself.

  There was silence again in the room. There would be no casual group conversation that night. The wome
n who stayed behind had always thought they knew Pilar very well, but her story astonished them. They realized that they had missed what was perhaps the most important part of her identity. A critical piece of each woman’s self had always been invisible until this moment, when Pilar revealed it to them. The women looked at one another in surprise and fascination. The expression on every face said, who was she? Who was your mother?

  The next woman who spoke was from the healthcare professionals group, a doctor who specialized in pediatrics. “My mother and I are from Galicia, the village of Santa Marta named after our local saint, who in the folklore was believed to be the sister of Lazarus. It was hardly a village at all then—just some farmhouses on hills overlooking the River Mino and our famous church of the saint. But, the area, like all of Galicia, was a lovely arcadia of winding country roads, misty eucalyptus forests, a mountain I regularly climbed with my mother and an extremely rocky coastline covered with mist called the Sea of Death for the three thousand shipwrecks that occurred there in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I remember most vividly the sharply sweet odor of eucalyptus forests and the tangy odor of octopus cooked in vats of olive oil and spices for the annual fiesta honoring Santa Marta. Today, it’s full of wind farms and the coast is better known for drug smuggling than death, but I love to drive the winding roads back there to see my mother.

  “I grew up with all the myth, magic and folklore of the region; it was a powerful atmosphere for a child. I was always walking through the eucalyptus forests and looking into the mists to find all the supernatural beings described by my mother and grandmother as well as the other villagers—werewolves, good and bad witches, mouros or spirits hiding treasure beneath the ruins of ancient fortresses (for there were remnants of Iron Age villages built before all the invaders came, even before Christ), owls who announced your imminent death, mermaids lounging on the coasts, and cold hands that could touch you in the dark, believed to be those of souls wandering through purgatory. The mists always seemed to be full of such spirits; and though I never saw them, the unseen was a great power in our lives; and their silent presence turned my childhood into a dark and mysterious ecstasy.