by Sarah Bird
“As the driver, approached the iron gates of the estate, Clementina felt she would die, literally suffocate, if she were to hear the lock click shut behind her one more time.
“ ‘Driver,’ Clementina asked politely, ‘could you, please, take me to Sacromonte?’
“The driver turned in his seat and looked at her. ‘Sacromonte is not a place for a fine young lady such as yourself. Your father told me to take you home.’
“Ahead of them the old caretaker was wheeling the gate open. Her heart pounded so furiously that the rush of blood past her ears prevented her from hearing her own words as she ordered, ‘Driver, the only location you will be paid to take me to is Sacromonte.’ This time her voice was as strong and sure as the stamp of her heels against the heraldic tiles when she danced.
“ ‘Ozu!’ the driver uttered a Gypsy curse and turned around, leaving the old caretaker to gape in puzzlement as the taxi disappeared.
“The driver delivered Clementina to the foot of Sacromonte and she stepped into a world she already knew in her imagination. A world where the inhabitants lived, not in tiled rooms, but in caves. Where children ran naked. Where the bathroom business was done outside just like a dog. Sacromonte had smelled much better in her imagination. For a moment, Clementina’s courage faltered. But she had only to think of Tía Rogelia dead without ever having lived to take her first step on the dusty path that wound through the human anthill. She asked for Rosa, daughter of the herrero, and was sent higher and higher up the hill.
“Night was falling and with each upward coil of the winding path, it grew darker and the caves became even more wretched. Flames from the blacksmiths’ forges leapt out of from the cave openings as if the very earth itself were on fire. As if she were in hell. Though gitanos of every description bustled past her, Clementina did not recognize any of the characters she knew so well from Rosa’s stories. Each time she stopped to ask for directions, the Gypsies would either shrug and pretend they couldn’t understand her or they would send her in the opposite direction from the last person who’d offered help.
“At the top of the hill, Clementina gazed down on Granada. Off in the distance, the Alhambra shone like a great ship cruising through the night, a ship that the superstitious gitanos believed to be filled with the ghosts of the Moors who had died clinging to the beauty they had created. Everyone she stopped claimed they had never heard of anyone named Rosa. No, never in their entire lives had they known anyone with the most common girl’s name in Spain. Clementina accepted that she would never find her friend. That she would be forced to return to her father’s house. That she would die without ever having lived. She was walking back down when Rosa sprang out from behind a tangle of prickly pear cacti.
“ ‘It’s true!’ Rosa exclaimed as she embraced her friend. ‘I didn’t believe it when the first three told me that there was a payo looking for me.’
“ ‘But I didn’t meet anyone who knew you.’
“ ‘Didn’t you listen to any of my stories?’ Rosa laughed. ‘A caló never tells a payo anything. Certainly not anything that has to do with el tribu. Come on.’
“As she followed her friend through a warren of paths, the magic of that word, tribe, settled over Clementina like a spell that dissipated all her lonely years. As they approached Rosa’s cave, the sound of an argument filtered out, so terrible that even the side of a mountain couldn’t silence it. Though the angry words alarmed Clementina, Rosa didn’t seem to notice. Hugging the shadows, she sneaked Clementina into the cave where her family lived.
“The cave, lighted by one candil, was almost as dark as the night outside. The girls slipped in unnoticed, though in truth Rosa’s parents, Delicata and El Chino, screaming and trading blows, wouldn’t have noticed if King Alfonso had walked in. For several seconds a few of the younger children stopped watching their parents and gaped at the little aristocrat hiding in the shadows. The next second, though, the impossible apparition of a payo was dismissed as a phantom, something that could not possibly exist in the stinking cave they inhabited, and the children turned their attention back to the fighters.
“Clementina feared she would pass out from the smell of goats and people, the heat of the cook fire, the forge, the shrieks of the mob of children crying for their parents to stop fighting. In spite of the stink and the heat and the noise, she was ecstatic. It was as if the characters from her favorite book had come to life in front of her eyes. She spotted Mono with his squashed nose. And El Chino was even fiercer than she’d imagined. But Delicata? Where was the dancing beauty with the flashing emerald eyes Rosa had spoken of? Delicata was the least delicate woman Clementina had ever seen. She was a dark troll of a woman with dull eyes the color of a dried cactus pad. Clementina could not imagine her enchanting anyone. While Clementina was still trying to identify the others, Rosa dragged her away. In a small room, dug into the mountain off to the side of the one large room the family lived in, Rosa tossed a long, red dress covered in white polka dots at her and told Clementina to put it on. Then Rosa made Clementina sit while she covered the girl’s light brown hair with olive oil mixed with soot until it was as black and greasy as Rosa’s own.
“ ‘Why are you doing this?’ Clementina demanded.
“ ‘You want to dance flamenco, right?’
“ ‘Of course.’
“ ‘Then you must look like a flamenca, so sit still and let me finish.
We’ve been called for a juerga tonight. The poet Lorca recommended us. He especially asked for my father to sing. Maybe when everyone is drunk enough, you can dance with us.’
“Clementina’s heart soared at these words, and she sat still as a stone while Rosa covered her face and arms with the soot mixture until her pale skin was even darker than Rosa’s. The fighting stopped and El Chino began warming his voice, tempering it with aguardiente. Hours later, when la voz was sufficiently ‘broken,’ when it sounded like a ruptured foghorn, Rosa’s father yelled, ‘Vamos ya!’ the signal that the time had come.
“Rosa and Clementina hid until everyone was outside in the dark night. Then they followed her father down the twisting path. At several caves, El Chino roared out his bear’s rasp, ‘Vamos ya!’ The curtains hanging over the front openings would part and another of the characters from Rosa’s fabulous stories would step out. A powerfully built mother-daughter pair with identical spit curls pasted onto their foreheads. Little Burro and her daughter, La Burriquita! A stick-thin widow with powder covering the dirt on her arms. Dried Wood! A sprite of a woman with deaf ears sticking out like an elf’s. La Sordita! In this way they assembled their cuadro and headed into the city.
“ ‘Stay with me in the back,’ Rosa whispered to Clementina. ‘And no one will even know you’re with us.’
“Clementina did not need to be asked. She could not keep up with the pack in the dark. Again and again, she tripped on a root growing across the path or was stabbed by the thorns of the cactus that hung overhead while the rest of the group scampered ahead, nimble as mountain goats.
“Rosa’s father passed around a bottle of aguardiente and with each switchback, the group grew more boisterous until, by the time they reached the bottom rung where caves had real doors and windows, where animals were penned outside instead of bedding down with the family, where some even had electric lights, neighbors were yelling at them to shut up or they would feel a knife in their livers. The only one who wasn’t boisterous was Delicata. Not a sound came from her as she followed the group down the twisting path.
“They all grew quiet as they came to the bottom of the hill and passed the bottle around one more time for a little courage before they stepped into the world of payos, all those pale-skinned outsiders who existed to either exploit the calé or to be exploited by them. And then they set off.
“The road flattened and they were in the city. The cobbled streets were silent and shuttered. Moonlight shimmered on the whitewashed walls as brilliant as a veiled sun.
“Clementina crept along with t
hem, stunned by this first taste of freedom that had turned so unexpectedly into a banquet, a feast she was having increasing difficulty digesting. With each step, Clementina grew more certain that her father’s hard hand would reach out and trap her. Since he knew everyone in Granada, why was there any reason to think he wouldn’t find out? She walked in silence behind the others, who were moving now soundless as cats, and tried to imagine what her punishment would be when her father discovered what she had done. Since simply being born a girl had condemned her to a life of virtual cloister, she decided that tonight’s offense was certain to result in the real thing. In a narrow alley, filled with geraniums hanging from balconies, Clementina thought of spending the rest of her life behind the walls of a convent and stopped dead.
“ ‘Ándale!’ Rosa hissed back at her but Clementina was frozen on the spot. Rosa, cursing her Gypsy curses, ran back and grabbed Clementina’s hand and tried to drag her forward, but Clementina would not budge.
“ ‘I have to go home,’ she stammered.
“And Clementina would have, would have run all the way back to the safety of her gilded cage, except that, at that moment, El Chino began to sing. His voice made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end as it pierced the darkness, echoing off walls and summoning ghosts of the Moors and Jews who had loved Granada more than any of her citizens before or since. The cruel Christians had taken from them the city they had created, and lost love is always the deepest. The voices of the Moorish dead were in El Chino’s voice. Wailing, warbling, sobbing, they stabbed directly into Clementina’s heart. Perhaps it was the revenge of the exiled Moors and Jews who decided that they would enslave this pretty young Catholic girl. Who knows? But as powerful as the spell of the dance had been on Clementine, the magic of the cante was even stronger. In that instant, drunk on rapturous emotion and the fragrance of jasmine, a lifetime in the convent in exchange for having a sound that was the sound of all life pouring through her head seemed a fair trade.
“Though many of the words he sang, words from the language of Rosa’s people, Calé, were strange to Clementine, she understood enough to realize that the song was about a husband who has been betrayed and his plan to kill the treacherous wife. Clementine saw fear on Rosa’s face, fear for Delicate.
“ ‘Do you think he will?’ Clementine asked.
“ ‘Kill my mother? No one in el tribu would blame him. She has been seen many times with El Bala when no male member of our family was present. Husbands have killed wives for less than that.’
“ ‘Shouldn’t we do something? Call the guardia civil?’
“Rosa laughed a harsh laugh. ‘What a payo you are. La guardia looks for reasons to torture calós. We can never give them any.’ Rosa’s eyes flickered upward until she found the Alhambra, floating radiantly through the night, and Clementine remembered her friend’s Gypsy name, Miracielos, given for her habit of watching the sky, of finding the beauty that released her from the ugliness. Now it released her from fear. ‘Whatever happens,’ Rosa said, ‘my mother’s dance will live on in me. No man will steal me and trap me in a cave. I will go to Sevilla and dance in the cafés cantantes. The city will fall at my feet and I will wear the crown that should have been hers. Come on.’ Rosa grabbed Clementine’s hand and the two friends ran through the street, their heels clattering on the cobblestones, both ready to follow El Chino’s cante no matter where it might lead.
“They entered a maze of narrow streets that led to a pair of tall, weather-beaten oak doors, locked tight. El Chino rapped out a complicated rhythm on the thick planks and, with a rusty creak, a lock turned and the doors swung open. Clementine had lived her whole life seeing plain doors open into courtyards of unsuspected splendor whose beauty was all the greater for being hidden. Yet the courtyard she stepped into that night rivaled the Alhambra itself. She had no time to wonder which of the great families might own it for the old crone who’d opened the door was impatiently waving them inside. Filigreed columns looked like pillars of lace with moonlight filtering through. The scent of jasmine, rosemary, and sandalwood hung like a cloud above fountains that pattered silver coins of water into basins decorated with Roman maidens trailing diaphanous gowns.
“The sounds—clapping, heels hammering on tile floors—that drifted into the courtyard once the great doors were closed were the joyous sounds she’d learned from Rosa. The whole cuadro came to life once the doors shut behind them. They picked up the distant beat of the flamencos who were already performing and followed it to its source. With Rosa clapping beside Clementina just as if they were on the patio back home, Clementina’s fears melted away. Nothing bad could happen tonight. She clapped along with her friend as the whole group capered through the courtyard to a side entrance where they crowded together, walking up a flight of stairs to a room on the second floor. Clementina had never been as happy as she was at that moment. For the first time in her lonely life, she was part of a group laughing and making noise.
“The old woman opened the door at the top of the stairway. ‘Pásele! Pásele!’ she hissed. Delicata was the first to enter. She stepped into the private room as regally as a queen. Her entrance was hailed by a roomful of drunken Spanish aristocrats, señoritos, who pounded on the tables and yelled for the replacement dancers to enter.
“ ‘Pásele! Pásele!’ The old woman ordered the girls into a room that consciously tried to duplicate the caves Rosa’s people inhabited, right down to the odor of tobacco and unwashed bodies. The only light was from candiles, pots of oil with wicks in them. Their illumination flickered across the sweaty bodies of the exhausted dancers whom they had come to replace and threw shadows against the walls. As Clementina’s eyes adjusted to the room, which was darker than the moonlit courtyard, she saw that other than the dancers and the serving girls passing among tables, clearing away and replacing empty bottles of fino, dumping ashtrays, the room was filled with men. A head bobbing up just above a table caught Clementina’s eye. Its owner was a dwarf with a hunchback, holding a large serving platter containing small plates of ham, glasses of wine. As he passed, the revelers reached out and touched his hump for good luck.
An especially drunk carouser noticed the new girls and yelled out to the dwarf, ‘Those two look hungry! Bring those girls some fried eggs!’ A rumble of low chuckles greeted the request. The dwarf ducked behind a screen, then reappeared in front of Clementina and Rosa. He held the platter low and it was now covered by a napkin. The little man stared up at the girls and jiggled the platter anxiously.
“ ‘I don’t think he can talk,’ Rosa said.
“The dwarf bobbed his head toward the napkin until the girls understood that they were to remove it. Clementina glanced at Rosa. Rosa nodded for her to do what he wanted. Afraid of attracting even more attention, Clementina lifted the napkin and everyone in the room, including Rosa, exploded in bellowing laughter. Clementina dropped the napkin and turned away immediately, but not before seeing the dwarf’s testicles, swollen by disease to mammoth proportion, resting on the platter.
“Clementina bolted away, rushing to the darkest corner of the room. Rosa, still laughing, found and chided her, ‘Clementina, what’s wrong with you? Don’t you have any gracia? It was just a chiste.’
“Not having any sense of humor, not getting a joke, was the worst thing you could accuse an Andalusian of. It was so bad that Clementina tried to hide the shock that had made her feel faint.
“ ‘Ay! Mira!’ Rosa grabbed Clementina’s arm and pointed at a sad-eyed, slender man in a white suit like a cubano. ‘It’s him.’
“ ‘Who?’
“ ‘You know, Garcia Lorca, the poet who loves my dancing. I told you about him. He came to see our cuadro.’
“As Clementina followed Rosa’s finger pointing toward the poet, though, one familiar face after another began to pop out of the darkness at her. First, she saw Esteban, still wearing the bow tie he’d had on at Tía Rogelia’s funeral. His frog eyes goggled as he watched the dancers. Then she spotted Art
uro, pear-shaped heir to the almond fortune, whose face suddenly disappeared as he leaned over to vomit. At another table, Juan Pablo and his father, they of the matching over-oiled haircuts parted in the middle, clinked glasses and tossed back a bolt of fino that caused the boy to sputter and cough. The other fathers laughed as Juan Pablo Senior pounded his son on the back, refilled both their glasses, and held his high, yelling out a toast to Clementina’s aunt above the clamor: ‘A la vieja!’
“Clementina was touched that, throughout the shadowy room, men held up their glasses and toasted her dead aunt. She’d always thought that the men of Granada either didn’t like or simply didn’t notice her aunt. It pleased her to discover that the old woman had actually been esteemed. Her pleasure ended abruptly when other toasts followed. These were composed mostly of filthy words she didn’t precisely understand. The brays of male laughter they incited made their meanings clear.
“ ‘Did your aunt really die of a dry cunt?’ Rosa asked, confirming Clementina’s worst suspicions about what the men were saying.
