‘All or none!’ shouted the crowd, rushing towards the departing boat. ‘Throw away your guns!’
I caught a glimpse of Anastasio clutching the railing and watching the chaos on the dock as the ship headed out to sea. He cupped his hands to his mouth and bellowed, ‘Ramón, look after your sister!’ He shouted something else, but his voice was drowned out by the roars of the crowd as it pushed against the policemen.
The Captain General ordered his men to fire. They raised their guns and shot volleys into the air. The sound was deafening. A bullet ricocheted off a post and whistled past my ear. Women screamed, and the crowd flew into a panic. Some of the police rushed forwards, beating protesters to the ground before arresting them. A policeman made a lunge for Teresa, but my father grabbed her and pushed her behind him. She was sucked up into the writhing crowd and carried away.
The soldiers fired into the air again. ‘Disperse!’ the Captain General shouted. ‘Or the next shots will not be above your heads!’
His warning had mothers gathering their children and rushing back in the direction of las Ramblas. Papá took hold of me and Ramón and we ran until we were out of breath.
We stopped for a moment on a corner. My legs were unsteady beneath me and Ramón’s teeth were chattering despite the heat. Several people who had also escaped from the port gathered around us and we exchanged glances. The authorities had fired on us and terrorised us, but there was an inferno in our blood. We had seen the alarm we could evoke in our enemies when we acted as one. Perhaps we were not as powerless as we had thought.
SEVEN
Paloma
Mamie’s ballet studio might not produce dancers of the standard of the School of the Paris Opera Ballet, but it turned out highly competent ones. The students at l’École de Danse Evelina Olivero gracefully executed their glissades and their jetés and passed their examinations with honours. Many had gone on to careers in film and modelling, and one was even a television star. Mamie took pride in the fact that her school’s dancers were recognisable by their graceful deportment and, as in the case of Gaby, their self-confidence. A good number of Mamie’s students stayed in touch with her long after their ballet studies were behind them, sending her greeting cards and pictures of their children.
Helping Mamie with her class of fourteen to sixteen year olds a week after I’d seen the ghost, I couldn’t help pondering how differently these girls experienced ballet from the way I did. The dissimilarities had always been there, but they were becoming more apparent to me, perhaps because I was not training at the Ballet School any more. Mamie’s students were all different heights and sizes, whereas at the ballet school anybody taller than 175 centimetres or developing curvy hips or a full bust was out. You couldn’t even contemplate a place in the corps de ballet unless you were slender, had a long neck and small head, and a perfect limb-to-torso ratio. I had started at the school when I was eight years of age, and my fellow students and I had approached puberty with trepidation. For us, it wasn’t a time for blossoming, discovering love or rebelling against our teachers and parents. Instead, we existed with the dread that after all our training and the sacrifice of our childhoods, our bodies would ultimately betray us. As our ballet teachers warned us: ‘Nothing must spoil a perfect line.’ By ‘nothing’, they meant breasts, hips or a bottom. Mamie saw things differently. She revelled in her students’ womanly blooming. If the pink tights and leotard of the school uniform didn’t flatter a student’s new shape, she would discreetly recommend that ‘a pretty chiffon skirt’ would be most becoming.
When the class was over, I watched her students skipping out the door and down the stairs, or stopping a while in the corridor to chat. One of the older girls blew kisses to Mamie before she left.
‘Which film are you and Gaby going to see tonight?’ Mamie asked me.
I remembered that seeing a film was my alibi for going to the flamenco class, which started that night, and quickly thought of something Mamie would be unlikely to go and see herself.
‘The Towering Inferno,’ I said. Although I wasn’t a fan of disaster movies, it starred Paul Newman and Steve McQueen and was the type of film that Gaby would want to see.
‘Just you and Gaby?’ Mamie asked.
I nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘But Gaby … she seems to know lots of nice young men.’
I rolled my eyes. Although the outing with Gaby was fictional, even the thought of going out with Marcel and any friend of his made me cringe. At the same time, I thought it was very ‘French’ of Mamie to suggest I double-date with Gaby. Most of the Spanish émigrés never let their daughters out of their sights, and no young man could visit their homes unless he came with the serious intention of marriage.
‘Well, you’d better have something to eat before you go,’ said Mamie, turning off the lights in the studio and heading towards the kitchen.
I hated to eat before dance classes; even a piece of bread gave me a stitch. I wondered if it would be the same with flamenco.
‘Not too much, Mamie. Gaby and I might get something to eat after the film.’
‘I hope so,’ Mamie replied, taking bowls from the cupboard. ‘You could do with a bit more weight.’
She warmed up the bean soup she had made earlier and sliced up some bread.
‘You might not believe this, Paloma,’ she said, placing our bowls on the table and sitting down, ‘but I used to be painfully shy too.’
I knew Mamie meant well but her comment irritated me. She always spoke to me as if I were some sort of fragile flower. She had no idea of the nerves of steel I’d had to develop to make it to the final level at the Ballet School; the incredible physical and psychological endurance I’d had to maintain. As delicate as the dancers looked, it was only a mask. The ballet world was not a place for the weak. Not one of Mamie’s students would have lasted a term in that microcosm of Darwinian theory.
I decided the best way to handle Mamie’s concern was with a dose of humour. ‘You, shy?’ I said, smiling. ‘How did you overcome it?’
She didn’t take my comment as it was intended, and looked thoughtful for a moment. ‘I was much shyer than you,’ she said. ‘Until I met your grandfather, I hardly spoke a word. The merest greeting from a stranger would send me into a fluster. My mother was the opposite, of course. She was a social butterfly. She loved conversation and she loved parties. I would watch from behind a column or potted plant as the elegant guests arrived for her soirées: the women draped in silk and lace, the men in smartly cut suits. But even though my mother had the most exquisite dresses made for me, and everyone admired my prettiness, I would run away as soon as I could and hide in the kitchen, where I’d watch the cooks preparing giant platters of food, until somebody came and found me and compelled me to join the party.’
I had stopped eating, my spoon halfway to my mouth. Mamie was talking about Spain. She had never mentioned her mother before … or anything about elegant soirées. I was intrigued.
Anybody seeing the way we lived would have assumed Mamie and I were close. And we were: I loved her dearly and she loved me. But listening to her now, I realised how little I knew about her life, and I certainly didn’t tell her everything about mine — the appearance of the ghost for one. It seemed we often skirted around issues, each unwilling to cause pain to the other — or to herself. We rarely talked about Mama, although she was always on my mind and would have certainly been on Mamie’s too.
‘If you were so shy, Mamie, how come you took up ballet?’
Mamie’s eyes rested on my face. ‘Unlike you and Julieta,’ she said, ‘I didn’t begin to dance ballet until I was seventeen. I had studied Spanish classical dance since I was a child, but you cannot imagine what a scandal it was in my day to expose one’s legs as ballerinas did. The Mother Superior at the school I attended simply would not have allowed it. Then, on my sixteenth birthday, my parents took me to the Liceu to see the ballet. I was moved by the dancers’ elegance, their sensitivity to the music. I watched th
em leap high into the air and land as softly as feathers. I fell in love with their precision, their fragile yet powerful physical beauty. Afterwards I was in raptures. The ballet had opened a space between heaven and earth and had transported me closer to the angels. Night after night I dreamed that I was floating in the air, dressed in delicate white tulle. It took me a year to convince my parents to let me have lessons.’ Mamie sighed and fidgeted with her hands. ‘Pare,’ she said, using the Catalan word to refer to her father, ‘only consented in the hope that it would bring me out of my shyness and stop me from scaring off suitors. “I don’t need another old maid in the house,” he said.’ Mamie laughed, sounding girlish. ‘When I became quite good at ballet, Mama, who took my side in most things, suggested to Pare that if I were allowed to dance for her guests, rather than being forced to speak to them, I could show them a world of emotion. But of course, performing was unthinkable for a girl from a good family. “That,” Pare used to say, “is for whores and gypsies.”’
I studied my grandmother, chic in her headscarf and saffron caftan, and tried to see the young woman she was describing. Physically, it wasn’t difficult. Mamie was still beautiful, although not one feature on her face could be called ‘classical’. She had enormous honey-coloured eyes, which she enhanced with false lashes, her nose was largish and her mouth was broad. And yet together, all of her features, along with her pale porcelain skin, created a face that was best described as ‘arresting’. When I looked at her, I couldn’t help thinking of a big open flower. I wondered what she was like as a young woman, when Avi had fallen in love with her. Then it occurred to me that I’d never asked her, and she had not been able to bring any photographs with her when she had escaped.
‘So your father was strict?’ I asked. ‘What was your maiden name?’
A tremor seemed to run through Mamie, but she collected herself and changed the subject. ‘What time do you have to go?’ she asked, glancing at the clock. ‘There will be traffic this time of night.’
Although I was looking forward to the flamenco class, I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to hear more about Spain. But years of ballet training had instilled in me a military-like punctuality and a respect for my dance teachers that precluded turning up late for class. Reluctantly, I went to my room and pulled on a pair of jeans over my leotard. I’d already packed a bag with my skirt and character shoes in it. It was lucky for me that large bags were in fashion and so Mamie didn’t pay attention to my oversized one when she helped me slip on my coat.
‘Mamie,’ I said, looking at her, ‘now that I’m older, I hope you will tell me more about Spain. I don’t have Mama any more, and Papa … well, he has a new family now. You’re all I’ve got, and yet I know so little about your life …’
I stopped because Mamie’s back had stiffened and her mouth had clamped into a thin line. It was the same reaction I’d received whenever I’d asked about her past before. So why had she started talking to me tonight about how she came to dance ballet? Maybe she was thinking the same thing I had been.
I sat down to tug on my boots. I didn’t want to cause Mamie pain, but could everything about her life in Spain have been painful? Surely, suffering alone could not have produced such a gracious and generous woman? From her description, it sounded as if Mamie had come from a wealthy family. They must have had quite a nice life before the war.
‘Yes, all right,’ she said, so suddenly that it gave me a start. ‘It is your heritage and I shouldn’t allow Franco to take that from away from you. God knows, he got everything else. But I will only talk to you on one condition: that you do not ask me any questions. You must allow me to tell you only what I can bear to tell you. Is that understood?’
I nodded, understanding that Mamie was setting a boundary; a safeguard against going to places that were too painful for her. That was all right with me. I’d rather know something than nothing at all.
Mamie walked with me to the door. ‘Enjoy your evening,’ she said.
I kissed her and she gave me a long look. ‘I was once a Montella,’ she said. ‘But it’s been a long time since that was my name.’
I embraced her again before heading down the stairs. When I reached the door of the building, it occurred to me how strangely she had worded her sentence. I was once a Montella. As if ‘Montella’ was something you were, rather than what you were called.
Mamie’s 1967 Mercedes Benz was parked in the street. I sighed and put my key into the lock. If the flamenco class had been earlier, I could have taken the Métro to Montparnasse, but it wasn’t safe to travel that way alone after dark. It wasn’t that I minded driving; it was the behaviour of the other drivers that made me ill at ease.
No sooner had I turned off rue Spontini than I had a car beeping behind me. I was well aware that French men hated women drivers. Most of them, having forbidden their wives from picking up the car keys, could not comprehend that a woman my age needed to display such independence, let alone doing it in a conspicuous aubergine Mercedes. With its roomy beige interior and velour seats, the car was superior to the Renaults most of these men who shook their fists at me or cut me off were driving. The car horn sounded again, more loudly this time. I did my best to ignore it and thought instead about what Mamie had told me that evening. So her father had been strict and, although he had allowed her to learn ballet, she had been forbidden from performing in public. Perhaps that was why Mamie had never stood in the way of my or Mama’s ambitions.
The driver behind me opened his window and shouted at me to move over. But we were in a narrow one-way street and I couldn’t drive any faster without the risk of scraping the car or running over a pedestrian. The street widened at one point and the driver slammed his foot on the accelerator and swerved to overtake me, knocking over a restaurant sign and a flower planter on the way.
‘Out of the way, bitch!’ he screamed, cutting in front of me.
‘Crétin!’ I imagined myself shouting back. In reality, I said nothing. Perhaps Mamie was right: I was too timid.
The first thing that struck me as I made my way up the worn stairs to the studio of the Académie de Flamenco Carmen Rivas was the noise. I could hear someone clapping out a rhythm and dozens of feet pounding the floor.
‘I can’t hear you!’ a woman’s voice called out. ‘Planta!’
You must be kidding, I thought. From day one in ballet, we were taught the importance of moving as noiselessly as possible. Flamenco, it seemed, was the opposite.
The studio space was small, with a scuffed wooden floor and red velvet curtains at the windows. There was a raised stage at the front of the room and a woman with curly dark hair was standing on it, watching a group of women in black leotards and flared skirts stamping on the floor. It was obviously an advanced class and they were performing together. I was struck by the way their arm and head movements and the positioning of their bodies were all different. Even their facial expressions seemed individual. It was nothing like a ballet class.
The elderly Spanish lady who had given me the leaflet was sitting at a table at the front door. She smiled when she recognised me. ‘I had a feeling you’d come,’ she said. She noted down my name and took the fee for the class. ‘You can change there,’ she said, indicating a screen.
I went behind the screen and slipped out of my jeans and into my skirt. I was putting on my dance shoes when the advanced class finished up and the teacher, who introduced herself as Carmen Rivas, the director of the academy, called the beginners’ class to the floor.
‘Welcome to our special world of flamenco,’ Carmen said in her strong Spanish accent. There were deep wrinkles around her eyes and mouth, but her body looked as well-toned and supple as a healthy thirty year old’s. ‘You are about to enter a world of fierce passion,’ she promised us, flashing a mesmerising smile. ‘Flamenco incorporates three types of expression: cante, baile and guitarra — the song, the dance and the guitar. There is some controversy as to its origins: the gypsies claim it is theirs, while the Andalu
sians argue it rose from their culture. In my opinion, it is a beautiful intermarriage of the two worlds. The gypsies could not have given birth to flamenco without Spain, and the spirit of flamenco would have lain dormant in the Andalusian soil if the gypsies had not breathed life into it.’ Carmen paused a moment to look into each of our faces. ‘I am going to teach you some steps, but how you interpret them, how you express them when you dance, must be totally your own. There is nothing that flamenco aficionados appreciate more than the internal force of your spirit combining with the spirit of the dance and the music: what we call duende.’
The seven other women on the floor were as mixed in body shape and size as the students I’d just seen in Mamie’s adolescents’ class. They were all different ages too. One woman looked to be in her sixties. The closest one in age to me was in her early twenties: blonde with a ski-slope nose, like the singer from ABBA. I wondered what they each did when they weren’t dancing, and what had attracted them to flamenco.
After some warm-up exercises, including rotating our wrists and ankles, Carmen began the class by demonstrating a step where we had to swing our leg back from the knee and strike the floor with the ball of our foot, then snap down our heel.
‘Planta! Heel! Change weight! Planta! Heel! Change weight!’ she called, bringing the class into rhythm.
I picked up the step easily. My classmates had more trouble, but nobody seemed worried about it. They looked at each other and laughed.
Carmen gave them encouragement. ‘Don’t worry if you don’t get it at first; it takes a little while,’ she said. ‘But soon dancing flamenco will be as natural to you as walking … or even as breathing … you’ll see. The main thing is to not take yourselves too seriously.’
In terms of my experience of dance lessons, Carmen might as well have been speaking a foreign language. In ballet school, the teachers were much less sympathetic. If you couldn’t pick up at least the basics of a routine after one or two tries, you were out.
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