Golden Earrings

by Belinda Alexandra

  ‘Mmm,’ I said, biting one of the cookies and relishing the feeling of it crumbling in my mouth. It was almost as marvellous as the tortell had been. ‘What are they called?’

  ‘Pets de monja,’ replied Laieta, stifling a laugh. ‘Nun’s farts.’

  ‘Why are they called that?’ Ramón asked, taking one of the cookies and sniffing it.

  Laieta shrugged. ‘I think it’s because of the popping sound they make when they are baking … but it could be because they are small and discreet.’

  Teresa laughed so much her breasts and hips shook. ‘Why do you assume nun’s farts would be small and discreet?’ she said, wiping the tears from her eyes. ‘Those religious bitches are full of gas.’

  She hated the Church, which she saw as a corrupt bastion of repression for the poor.

  Laieta grinned and leaned towards Teresa. ‘Speaking of explosions — that bicycle shop was an unlikely target for the bomb that went off last night. Personally, I think the clergy are setting them off so the municipal council will close the rationalist schools, which they claim don’t teach respect for authority.’

  ‘Well, whoever is setting the bombs off for whatever reason, it’s turning Barcelona into the Wild West,’ replied Teresa.

  Laieta’s bracelets tinkled when she reached up and adjusted her hat. ‘They hired some big shot from Scotland Yard to find the perpetrators, but all he’s been able to conclude is that a tourist is still safer in Barcelona than in London or Paris.’

  ‘How did you find that out?’ Teresa asked, tugging a brown petal from one of the roses. ‘About the detective from Scotland Yard?’

  Laieta gave a wry smile. ‘I have connections, you know.’

  Teresa turned to me and Ramón. ‘Run along for a bit, you two,’ she said. ‘I don’t need you right at this moment.’

  It was obvious that she wanted to talk to Laieta about things they didn’t want us to hear, but Ramón and I didn’t mind. It gave us a chance to visit our favourite place in the market: the wall where posters were pasted for upcoming entertainments. Ramón always gravitated towards the ones advertising bullfights.

  ‘Olé!’ he cried, swishing an imaginary cape. He did a good job of demonstrating the difficult butterfly stance that was nearly always depicted in the advertisements.

  I applauded him and threw him a pretend rose.

  ‘When I grow up, I’m going to be a famous bullfighter,’ he announced, puffing out his chest. ‘Then I’m going to buy us a grand villa on passeig de Gràcia and Papá and Anastasio will never have to work again.’

  ‘With maids and servants and crisp white sheets,’ I cried, clapping my hands together. ‘And lilies in every room.’

  Neither Ramón nor I had ever seen a bullfight and we couldn’t imagine the gore of the bullring, or the cruel way the noble animal was put to death. Nor did we know that toreros and their horses were often disembowelled or trampled to death. We were innocent children with no sense of bloodlust. We only knew the handsome matadors in their ‘suits-of-lights’ from their posters. They were like film stars to us — poor gypsies and peasant boys plucked from poverty and launched into a world of impossible riches: villas, luxury cars and beautiful women. For us, such fantasies were an escape from the reality that Ramón would join Papá and Anastasio in the factory soon; and that I would follow suit a couple of years later.

  While Ramón fantasised about being a matador, it was another poster that captured my imagination. My eye was drawn to the picture of the alluring woman with her arms poised above her head. She wore a yellow dress with a ruffled skirt like petals, and her long dark hair spilled over her shoulders and back, pinned with a red carnation behind her ear. Her gaze was towards her bare feet, and the fierceness of her downcast eyes suggested a strength and defiance that stirred something deep in me. I stamped the balls of my feet and raised my hands above my head.

  ‘And when I grow up,’ I told Ramón, ‘I will be a famous flamenco dancer.’

  A shadow passed over me, causing a chill to run up my spine. Ramón’s face froze. We both turned to see a woman wearing a crimson scarf staring at us. I knew immediately from her swarthy skin and the basket of herbs she carried by her side that she was a gypsy.

  ‘You must never make a wish in front of a Romani,’ whispered Ramón, his face as pale as a corpse’s, ‘lest they grant it in some perverse way.’

  I knew of that superstition but I wasn’t afraid. I was intrigued by the woman’s face, her knotted brow and the mole in the crease of her nostril. There were gypsies all over Spain, pure-blooded and those who had intermarried with Spaniards. My mother herself was said to have descended from a line of gitanos.

  I held the gypsy woman’s gaze and made my wish again, silently this time but with all my heart.

  When Ramón and I returned to Teresa’s stall, Laieta had gone but Amadeu was there, in the wheelchair his neighbours had made for him using bicycle tyres and a wicker chair. As a young man, Amadeu had been sent off to ‘fight for the colonies’ in Cuba and had returned without his legs. It was from him that we learned about the horror of life as a conscript with the Spanish army: minimal rations and no pay. ‘Those of us who didn’t die in battle or perish from malaria simply died of starvation,’ he’d told us.

  ‘The officers treated poor men like Amadeu with the same contempt in battle that their rich families do in civilian life,’ Teresa had explained. ‘They robbed them, and insulted them by giving them “uniforms” that were nothing more than straw hats, rotted rope sandals and pyjamas! The Great Spanish Army, indeed!’

  ‘I sacrificed my legs for their sugar, and they can’t even give me a pension,’ I’d heard Amadeu tell Teresa. ‘What pride I had left after losing my manliness was taken away by having to beg. When our poor families saw us off at the dock, they were farewelling most of us forever.’

  I liked Amadeu — he always had a smile and a kind word for us, despite his difficulties — but his stories also produced a kind of morbidity in me. Now Anastasio was eighteen years old, he would soon be called up for compulsory military service. Most likely it would involve nothing more than being stationed with a garrison for a couple of years of training. But I dreaded the thought that he, too, could be sent away.

  Ramón and I sat under the flower table and listened to Amadeu and Teresa talk about the latest bombing. I realised from the crumbs in Amadeu’s lap that Teresa had made a sandwich for him too. She had adopted us all: Ramón and me, Laieta and Amadeu. She was like a vagabond woman feeding the pigeons in the town square.

  To show his gratitude for the food and clothing Teresa managed to find for him, Amadeu came by each day to read the radical newspaper El Progreso to her. For while Teresa was intelligent by nature, she had only the rudiments of an education and reading a political newspaper was beyond her. Amadeu was not far into the news before the morning rush began. Housemaids rubbed elbows with restaurant owners; the wives of doctors and lawyers came in droves, determined that their new homes in l’Eixample be as elegant as those of the old ruling elite.

  Amongst the influx were two figures whom every flower vendor watched as keenly as a cat watches mice: the Montella family’s housekeeper and lady’s maid. The housekeeper wore a brown dress with a white collar and cuffs. Her grey hair was tucked under a mob-cap and her expression was grim. The lady’s maid was younger and was dressed in a lace blouse and striped skirt, with a lace mantilla on her head. Their mistress adored flowers and they only ever bought the best quality ones, especially if it was to make an arrangement for a special occasion. The Montella family owned several factories in Barcelona, including the one where Papá and Anastasio worked. They had stakes in the profitable iron-ore mines in Morocco, and were inferior in fortune only to the Güell family and the Marqués of Comillas.

  That day, the housekeeper and lady’s maid had another servant with them: a young woman in the blue uniform and white pinafore of a nursemaid. She was pushing a pram with a cream chassis and a navy-blue hood; the Montella fami
ly crest of a gold mastiff was embossed on the side. Holding on to the brass handle of the pram, and guided by the nurse, was a girl a year or two older than myself. She wore a white cotton piqué dress, high button shoes and a bow in her hair — clothes I could only imagine wearing in my dreams.

  The lady’s maid fixed her eyes on the lilies Teresa had on display and headed straight for our stall. The other women followed her. The lady’s maid nodded to the housekeeper.

  ‘Your lilies aren’t as good as last week,’ the housekeeper barked at Teresa. ‘Yet, outrageously, you want the same price!’

  Senyora Montella sent her lady’s maid to buy flowers because of her polished taste, and the housekeeper because of her ability to drive a hard bargain. Teresa knew the game.

  ‘Indeed they aren’t as good,’ she agreed. ‘They are better!’

  Ramón and I peered out from under the table. Watching the housekeeper and Teresa haggle was not unlike watching a couple dancing the fandango. The dance was a courtship ritual full of quarrelling: boy sees girl; girl rejects boy; girl pursues boy, and then flees. The housekeeper offered a third of Teresa’s asking price for the lilies. Teresa folded her arms and said she would not accept less than three-quarters. After some more bargaining gymnastics, they settled on half of the original price and moved on to bargaining over some roses.

  While the women were negotiating, Ramón and I sneaked a look at the baby in the pram. Her face was as pretty as a wide open aster flower. She had translucent skin, quite unlike the sickly complexions of the babies born in our neighbourhood, and her watchful eyes were honey-coloured. Although she looked to be only about six months old, she was already crowned with luxuriant locks of chestnut hair.

  The little girl holding onto the pram saw us admiring the baby and smiled. She took my hand. ‘That’s my sister,’ she said.

  ‘What’s her name?’ I asked.

  The nursemaid, whose attention had been on the negotiations, heard my question. She glanced down and saw me and Ramón under the table. Her face twisted with disgust when she noticed the girl was holding my hand. She tugged the pram back and grabbed the girl, wiping her hand furiously with a cloth as though it was coated in something filthy. ‘Margarida!’ she hissed. ‘I told you not to touch … beggar children!’

  It was just as well Teresa didn’t hear her. Customers or not, she would have chased them away. The nursemaid’s words were humiliating, but Ramón and I were used to rebuffs. Anastasio often said the Catalans looked down on the rest of Spain as if their language and culture were somehow better than everyone else’s. Behind their backs, he called them ‘señoritingos’: spoiled little rich kids.

  Teresa and the women concluded their transaction: they had squeezed her on the lilies but had also bought three bouquets of fine roses and several posies at her best price. She wrapped the flowers and placed them in the women’s baskets. As the Montella party turned to go, something urged me to ask the baby’s name again.

  ‘Your sister … what’s she called?’ I shouted out to Margarida.

  The nursemaid sent me a scathing look. But Margarida wrestled against her grip and beamed at me. ‘Her name is Evelina,’ she called out. ‘Little baby Evelina.’

  Evelina. It sounded like a name full of light; a name that would belong to someone bursting with hope and life. I watched the party disappear amongst the forest of flowers, as fascinated as if I had seen a court of magical beings. I recalled baby Evelina in the lace dressings of her pram. What a wonderful life she must be destined for! She was a fairy princess.

  Neither baby Evelina nor I had any inkling of the hell that was about to break out around us — or that our lives would one day be tragically entwined.

  FIVE

  Paloma

  The day after I saw the woman in the courtyard, I went to the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève to find out more about ghosts. I had been intending to visit the library since I had turned eighteen and was allowed to access the materials. It was a kind of pilgrimage to honour my grandfather, who used to visit the library once a week to look up information on an eclectic range of topics. Reserved by nature, he would suddenly come to life if someone needed to know the length of the Ganges River, or which civilisation had used aluminium first, or that a pregnant goldfish was called a ‘twit’ in English. It was from him that I learned that female watermelons were bigger, sweeter and had fewer seeds than their male counterparts, and that my left lung was smaller than my right lung to make room for my heart.

  ‘Don’t let the French convince you that they are the inventors of chocolate desserts,’ he would tell me. ‘Sweetened chocolate was introduced to Europe by the Spanish in the 1500s.’

  A piano tuner and restorer by profession, my grandfather was precise in every way. While others might be content to skip over an unfamiliar word in the newspaper as long as the context made sense, my grandfather would refer to his Dictionnaire Larousse and then to his el Fabra, switching between the French and the Catalan until he was convinced that he had absorbed the word’s exact meaning. I was only ever allowed to use the Catalan ‘Avi’ to address my grandfather, never the French equivalent, ‘Papi’. He claimed that if I called him Papi, it would erode his soul.

  When I stepped inside the entrance vestibule of the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève and gazed at its Arcadian murals and philosophers’ busts, I remembered how Avi had always advised me that knowledge was the best way to dispel fear. Turn on a light and the darkness disappears was his favourite saying. And I was afraid. The night before, I’d put the earrings in a Russian ebony box that had belonged to my mother, and slipped the box into the top drawer of my dresser, alongside the cassette from my father, which I didn’t want to acknowledge either. I’d hoped that when I opened the drawer in the morning light, they might both have disappeared. Of course, that hadn’t happened.

  I searched the library’s card catalogue, filled in my request slip and waited twenty minutes for my books to arrive. I found a seat in the grand reading room, which was crowded with students and scholars, journalists and members of the public, and took a moment to admire the fluted cast-iron columns and vaulted plaster ceiling with its cast-iron semicircular trusses. I remembered Avi telling me that the library’s designer, Henri Labrouste, had been groundbreaking in using a material normally reserved for utilitarian buildings like factories and train stations and applying it to a classical-style building. The effect was breathtaking.

  I turned on my reading lamp and looked at the books in front of me. I had selected Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s two-volume set The History of Spiritualism, a collection of writings by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, and a book on the supernatural and paranormal by a contemporary French psychic Mireille Fourest. The last book seemed the most concise, so I decided to start with that. In her introduction, Fourest claimed that Ghosts are spirits bound to the physical plane by an unfilled desire or a troubled memory. That was an explanation given in every ghost story I had ever read, and even Gaby had mentioned it, but I wrote it down in my notebook anyway.

  The chapter on the temperament of ghosts was more interesting: A ghost is not a divine visitor like an angel or spiritual guide. A ghost retains the same personality the deceased person had when alive. It the person was angry, their ghost will be angry; if they were kind, their ghost will be kind; a mischievous person will leave behind a mischievous ghost. That is why the ghosts of children are frequently naughty.

  I made a note of that too — same personality as when they were alive — before leaning back in my chair and staring at the pattern of leaves and flowers on the ceiling. I tried to conjure up an image of the ghost’s face: those strong, exotic features; her penetrating eyes. She hadn’t given me much clue to her personality, but whatever she had been in her earthly life, she must have had some sort of powerful influence on others.

  I returned to the book. Often ghosts are loved ones returning to us to give us messages of comfort or encouragement … I skipped over that point because I had never seen the woman befo
re. She was nobody that I knew; let alone a loved one.

  I skimmed through the chapter on how to tell if I had special psychic powers, assuming that if I had, I would be seeing around me the ghosts of all the exiles, artists, romantics and political activists who had sat in this same room through the years since 1850 when the library was built. I turned to the chapter titled ‘Dangers’.

  Beware of trying to communicate with a ghost yourself if you have no experience in these matters, Fourest warned. Some ghosts are demonic and will possess you if you attempt to make any contact with them.

  I glanced at my watch and saw that the morning had passed faster than I had expected. I had just enough time to get back to the studio to help with Mamie’s afternoon class. I carried my books to the returns desk.

  The bespectacled librarian took the books from me. ‘Ah, spiritualism and the paranormal,’ he said, looking at the spines. ‘Well, to each his own taste. My favourite stories are those where the supernatural occurrences turn out to have logical explanations, like “Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Speckled Band” or that play by Patrick Hamilton, Gas Light.’

  As I made my way back down the stairs to the first floor, I thought about what the librarian had said. I would love for there to be a logical explanation for my ghost, I thought, walking out into the sunshine. Unfortunately, the only ‘logical’ explanations I could come up with for the physical presence of the earrings weren’t very comforting: I was either suffering hallucinations or I had gone completely mad.

  While waiting at the Métro station, I reviewed the notes I had made in the library:

  Troubled or unfulfilled

  Kind or mischievous

  Beware: could be evil and demonic

  ‘All right,’ I said, closing my eyes and picturing the spirit again: her waves of black hair, her chin held erect. ‘Which kind of ghost are you?’