Duende

by Jason Webster

  The music started: two guitarists beating out more Alboreás. The women took turns to dance in a frenzy, some in pairs, each trying to outdo the other.

  I began clapping to the rhythm, letting myself feel, once more taken away by the joy, the all-embracing energy of a flamenco juerga. My face was flushed and an uncontrollable smile forced its way onto my lips. Standing there, tapping my foot, letting myself get drunk on it all. I was aware of a space next to me and then I turned. Grace had gone. I expected she had found herself another companion. But then I spun round the other way and looked up. She was standing outside on a slope by the road on her own, her head clearly visible above the others, looking me directly in the eye.

  ‘Too noisy in there for you?’ I asked as I walked up to her.

  ‘I have to go back to Granada. You can stay if you want. I’m sure you’ll be able to get a lift from somebody.’

  It had the makings of a party that would last at least three days. I would be lucky if I got out of there before the end of the week. I looked back at the crowd – the groom’s brother was standing on a chair pouring wine into the father-in-law’s mouth as he lay on the ground. Only a few moments before they had been close to killing one another. I turned back round and looked again at Grace. There was no question about her intention, it just seemed odd timing – just as it was all starting.

  ‘No, no. I’ll come with you,’ I said reluctantly, and we headed up to the car.

  The music was still audible through the open windows as we headed out of the village, and didn’t fade completely until we had passed over the hill and into the next valley. Grace was quiet. I slumped back into the seat, a swift hangover, brought on by the heat and sudden tearing away from it all, descending on me like a damp cloth. I dozed for a while, and woke up once more under the streetlights of the city.

  ‘They’re a funny lot, aren’t they?’ Grace said as she dropped me off. ‘Such an emotional people.’ There was something about the way she said it.

  ‘Yes,’ I said automatically. ‘I suppose you’re right.’

  I climbed the stairs in the dark, opened the door and threw myself down on the sofa, trying to work out what she meant, my thoughts passing over the day’s events in chaotic detail. The noise of the city at night was dull by comparison.

  ‘Deep song always sings in the night,’ Lorca had written. ‘It knows neither morning nor evening, mountains nor plains. It has nothing but the night, a wide night steeped in stars. Nothing else matters.’

  It was the credo of the flamenco: a rejection of the mundane, the ordinary, the life of the everyday man, embracing, rather, an extreme world – extreme passions, extreme feelings, the extremes of life and death. And it was a way of life I had wanted to believe in, had been intoxicated by – its excitement, its danger, the affirmation it gave that you were different, and alive.

  But I was beginning to have doubts. For over two years I had done little but listen to music, think about music, play music. There was so much music I barely spent a moment without some tune, some rhythm playing itself out in my mind. First thing in the morning, as I was having a shower, over lunch, walking in the street, or when I tried to go to sleep – this was the worst. There were times when I would spend hours trying in vain to switch my head off, fingers on my left hand involuntarily twitching as an idea for a falseta or a variation on a compás would play itself out over and over again.

  I had begun to listen to less music in general, though. Whereas it had always been there in the background – a cassette player or the radio – now I began to crave silence. Just the thought of hearing music would make me feel nauseous, like being offered a rich creamy pudding at the end of a heavy, greasy meal. I had overdosed, was suffering from music fatigue, and wanted nothing more than to hear the natural sounds around me with no artistic interference.

  Grace had something to do with it. There was a calmness about her, despite – or perhaps because of – her eccentricity, which seemed to rub off on me. She was right about the Gypsies at the wedding: they were very emotional, probably over-emotional. Just as I myself was. I was beginning to see that now. Stifled by the academically-oriented life I had been leading in England, I had thrown myself to emotional extremes with Lola and then with Carlos and Jesús. Now I found myself seeking some sort of balance: neither the madness of what I had lived in Alicante and Madrid, nor a return to the passionless life I had led beforehand.

  I didn’t want to reject what I had done; I knew that something in me had been allowed to develop in Spain, although exactly what that was was hard to define. Perhaps a greater emotional awareness. As a child, I had absorbed the qualities and attitudes of my surroundings, making unconscious choices about who I was, based on the values of the world within which I was growing up. But this left areas untouched or underdeveloped, and these needed their own space in which to grow. So I had come to Spain and learned flamenco, free from the restrictions of an English personality, exploring parts of myself that would otherwise have remained dormant, absorbing a new set of values and norms. Spain had allowed my emotions to breathe and be expressed, perhaps even to excess. But they were visible, out in the open. England had frozen them, pretended they didn’t exist.

  As for duende, I was beginning to see it less in terms of the ecstatic emotional state I had viewed it as before, or a half-glimpsed vision of beauty I was constantly trying to recapture, and now perceived it as more of a subtle phenomenon. It could mean different things to different people. Certainly it existed – I had felt it as a palpable force, even as an independent spirit of sorts – but I wondered if the quality of what each individual felt depended on what he or she brought to the experience. For Juan, it had been love. But that had been Juan all over: fossilised in the state of jilted lover, forever defined by what he had failed to resolve in his inner life. For Jesús, duende had been life on the edge, until he finally pushed it too far and was killed by it. For myself, I was no longer sure.

  ‘Every man and every artist, whether he is Nietzsche or Cézanne, climbs each step in the tower of his perfection by fighting his duende, not his angel, as has been said, or his muse. The distinction is fundamental.’

  But Lorca appeared to be certain about what duende was. For him, the muse and the angel came from without; duende came from ‘the blood’.

  If duende were to be approached at all, it could only be done so obliquely. I had been down at least two wrong avenues in my search, and viewed Juana’s teaching approach as antithetical to cultivating duende. Discipline, yes, but you had to be allowed to breathe. Perhaps, I thought, I would have to start looking for answers away from the world of flamenco. Or perhaps, even, my search had never really been for duende after all.

  Getting hold of tickets for the Paco de Lucía concert was more of a challenge than I had expected. The notice in the paper was so small it was as good as lost in the smudged newsprint. And when I asked where the ‘Casa Cultural’ was, no-one had a clue. I went back to the Tourist Office. The girl was as helpful as when I had first gone there.

  ‘I don’t know where it is,’ she said.

  ‘But how else am I going to find out if you can’t tell me?’

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘I don’t know. I only tell people what I read in the brochures. You could try the Corte Inglés,’ she called as I stepped out into the street.

  The Corte Inglés? That was a department store. I was none the wiser. But I had nothing to lose from trying.

  The cool air-conditioning hit me like a wall of plastic as I walked in. A melancholic salesgirl was standing by the lipstick counter.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said when I asked her, as though this was her real job, not selling make-up after all. ‘Top floor.’

  The top floor sold suitcases and jockstraps.

  The jockstrap salesman also welcomed the question as though it were the most normal thing in the world and pointed me to a counter in the far corner hidden by a row of naked mannequins.

  ‘It’s gone
twelve o’clock,’ the woman behind the desk said. ‘We can’t sell any more tickets now.’ I looked at the clock: it was ten past twelve.

  ‘Surely ten minutes . . .’

  ‘Too late. They’re mostly sold out anyway.’

  How? Had several thousand other people already followed the same labyrinthine route? I began to suspect a conspiracy.

  ‘Look, there must be some other way.’

  ‘Try Juan Carlos’s newspaper kiosk. He might have some left. But not before three, mind.’

  I slid down the escalators armed with this vital piece of information. Only one problem: who was Juan Carlos and where the hell was his kiosk? I went back to the lipstick girl.

  ‘Just one more thing. I don’t suppose you know where Juan Carlos’s kiosk is?’

  She pointed across the road. ‘Just there. Enjoy the concert.’ Why hadn’t she sent me there in the first place?

  Juan Carlos was about to close.

  ‘Come back after three,’ he grunted, trying to pull down the metal shutter.

  ‘I just want some tickets for the Paco concert,’ I said hopefully.

  ‘Yeah? Like flamenco then, do you?’

  I sometimes forgot how foreign I looked.

  ‘Come on then.’ He beckoned me forward. ‘Here, I’ve got some good seats left in the middle. I was keeping them for someone else, but he said he’d be back before lunch and he hasn’t shown up. You can have them.’

  I handed over the cash and the tickets were slipped into my hand.

  ‘Where is the Casa Cultural, anyway?’ I asked.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘The place where the concert’s happening.’

  ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about. He’s playing up in the Generalife.’

  Luis returned to the school in late April, more than ready to pick up the guitar again.

  ‘Tell you what,’ he whispered, ‘that illness lark wasn’t so bad.’ He nudged me in the ribs. ‘There’s nothing she wouldn’t do for me. Know what I mean?’ He winked knowingly. ‘Any time, day or night. Fantastic!’

  I carried on playing for Carmen at the late-night special classes, but Luis’s natural place was that of principal guitarist, so I fell back to accompanying him in the main lessons. Not that it involved very much – in effect we were providing two metronomes for the dancers instead of one. Occasionally there would be a bit of interchange between us – an echoing rasgueo, for example – but, for the most part we simply kept compás. He was totally concentrated on the dancers and Juana, and less interested in making music. It was clear that my time at the studio was coming to an end.

  A week later, after everyone had gone, I told Juana I was leaving. A resigned smile formed on her large, powerful face. She knew it was coming. It probably saved her the trouble of telling me herself.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, kissing me on both cheeks, and walked away. She didn’t like goodbyes.

  I walked out of the empty studio, through the hallway, and found Emilio. He was sitting in his booth, writing.

  ‘Remember to watch the animals,’ he said. ‘Study them – how they move, how they hunt, how they live. They have wisdom.’

  I made to leave.

  ‘Wait!’ he called. He held his hand out as if to halt me in my tracks. There was something fluttering overhead, a shadow in the sky. I couldn’t make it out. It looked like a leaf. Then it slowly came down, circled around once more and landed on his arm. It was a butterfly.

  ‘Colias croceus,’ he said. ‘They only come down to the city at this time of year. Not often, though. Less and less now – the pollution and everything. But they only land on you if you are very, very still. They frighten easily.’

  I looked and saw its yellow wings gently opening and closing as it rested on his cotton sleeve. Emilio was concentrating on the creature on his arm, but I felt he was gazing directly at me.

  ‘There she goes.’ The butterfly took off and flew out into the street. ‘It’s just like duende,’ he said.

  We both followed it for a moment as it fluttered above the cars in the road, until it lifted on a breath of wind and disappeared into the bright air.

  Grace and I sat under the inadequate shade of a parasol at a café in the Albaicín near the Mirador San Nicolás, trying unsuccessfully to stay cool and ignore the argument developing among a group of German tourists at the next table.

  ‘This heat is too much,’ she said. ‘I think I should be heading north somewhere. Morocco, possibly.’

  ‘That’s south.’

  ‘The Arabs are very good at building cool houses,’ she went on. ‘When I lived in Tangiers I never used to feel the heat. Isn’t that interesting?’ And she turned her sparkling blue eyes towards me.

  ‘I’ve heard that igloos can be very warm and comfortable,’ I said.

  ‘Yes. I suppose that’s similar. But I don’t think I’d like it up there. Igloos or no igloos. And I don’t find Eskimo men attractive.’ She sipped her cold beer, and we fell back into silence, too exhausted to talk much more.

  The waiter came and suggested we try the local dish – Sacromonte-style tortilla. He rattled off the ingredients and I agreed, without listening too carefully. I hadn’t heard of it before and wondered what it would be like.

  ‘I gave up my job at the school.’

  ‘But what about your guitar? What about flamenco? I thought you’d made your life here.’ She paused. ‘Or do you find it doesn’t satisfy you as it once did?’

  ‘I love flamenco. It’s . . .’

  She waited while I tried to figure out what I wanted to say.

  ‘I want flamenco to be a part of my life. Not be my life.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Most of the flamencos I’ve known do it because they think it makes them free – on the edge, away from the mainstream. But they’re not. They create their own rules, their own restrictions. And they think the charm, the power of flamenco can only exist within flamenco itself. Nowhere else.’

  ‘I knew an old Gypsy woman once who told me very authoritatively that Bach’s music has duende.’

  We had never talked about duende before.

  ‘Personally I’ve only experienced it a handful of times,’ she said. ‘But on each occasion it was in very different circumstances. Not all of them musical, either. But you already know all of this by now, of course. You must have had plenty of duende experiences.’

  As ever, she was one step ahead. The understanding she assumed I had was only just forming in my mind.

  ‘I’ve been so obsessed with flamenco, trying to live a real flamenco life – whatever that is . . .’

  The waiter bringing the food cut me off, and our attention was diverted to lunch.

  ‘What did you say this was?’ Grace asked with a smirk on her lips.

  ‘It’s some special local dish. It’s got all sorts in it.’

  She dipped her fork into it hesitantly. I had to admit, there was something strange about the smell. We pushed on, forcing it down through sheer hunger.

  ‘Do you think it’s off?’ she laughed, pulling a face.

  ‘Can’t be. I’ve been here before. Food’s always pretty good.’ I had to admit, though, this was awful. I tried to remember what the waiter had told me it had in it. Peas, was it? Beans? I couldn’t remember. And then there was something else. Ah, yes.

  ‘I know what’s making it taste funny,’ I said. ‘Brains. It’s got sheep’s brains in it.’

  Our stomachs both churned simultaneously. Grace put her fork down.

  ‘I think I’ve had enough for now, thanks. Do you think you might order some more water?’

  We tried to wash the offending taste away; brains and heat just didn’t go well together. For another two hours we sat at the table, slowly trying to digest, drinking steadily, unable to move or even think through sheer discomfort.

  ‘Do you think we should go somewhere else?’ Grace asked. Her face was pale and she suddenly looked her age, as though a light inside her had been turned
off. ‘We’ve been here for quite some time without ordering anything.’

  ‘No, it’s all right,’ I grunted. ‘They won’t mind.’

  The afternoon wore on. Children were coming out from the school nearby. I shifted in my seat to gauge the state of my guts. Not so bad this time. Perhaps there was light at the end of the tunnel.

  ‘I’ve got an idea,’ I said. Grace looked as if she were asleep in her chair. ‘Let’s drive up to the Sierra Nevada.’

  There was still no movement from her and her face was quite pasty now. I leaned over to feel her hand. Perhaps . . .

  ‘What a good idea!’ she cried, opening her eyes wide. She sat up, knocked back her water and was on her feet in seconds, the colour rushing back to her cheeks.

  ‘Here,’ she said, handing me the keys. ‘You drive.’

  I was hoping she’d say that.

  We sped away from the city, heading for the mountains. Within minutes the heaviness seemed to lift as we started climbing, and the air blowing in through the windows became cooler.

  The road was lined with pine trees, isolated wooden huts with logs stacked against the outer walls for winter, and roadside cafés with chalet-like roofs. Like the Alps, but without the rain.

  ‘They do a lot of skiing here in the winter, apparently,’ Grace said. ‘The king comes here. I wouldn’t mind seeing him in his skiing outfit.’

  Every so often we could spot Mulhacén ahead, the mountain covered in snow above the green trees and ash-grey rock.

  ‘Are we going all the way up there?’ she asked.

  ‘I hope so. Unless we get snowed in, of course.’

  ‘Snowed in? In June? What a silly thing to say.’

  ‘A friend told me there are eagles up here,’ I said.

  ‘How exciting!’

  The road wound on, and the air became steadily lighter and thinner.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about a line of Lorca’s,’ I said. ‘He says: “A mi se me importa poco que un pajaro pase de un alamo a otro”.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘He doesn’t care about little things,’ I explained, ‘about whether a bird flies from one tree to another. The only things that matter to him are big events. Life, death, blood, passion. But he’s wrong. There’s as much life in a bird, or an insect for that matter. You miss so much if you only concentrate on the dramatic.’