by Tim Weed
Still, he kept at it. In a way, shooting photos was the only method he had to prove to himself that he was real—not a figment of someone’s half-remembered dream.
He spent the day after the procession cloistered in his darkroom. First he developed the shots of the floats, a few of which showed promise in a grainy, impressionistic way. The skinny boy atop the reliquary appeared in none of them, which was a surprise, because James remembered framing him several times, and the float he’d been sitting on had come through clearly enough.
He turned his attention to a series of shots he’d taken several days earlier, three rolls of a church façade carved playfully in the plateresque Renaissance style. He’d spent an entire morning shooting it, and the photos were remarkably clear, conveying the warm texture of the sandstone, the lyrical curves of the human forms, and the whimsically inventive shapes of the grotesques—dragons; mermaids; various half-beast, half-human composites.
One of these was especially interesting, a figure with the body of a winged serpent and the face of a man. He’d used up half a roll on that figure—from different angles, adjusting the aperture—and when he hung the photos up side by side he noticed something strange about them. A closer examination revealed the source of the problem: the expression on the figure’s face appeared to change from frame to frame. It was subtle; each of the changes took place over several shots. But in the end—James had to close his eyes and open them again and again—there was no mistaking it. The expression changed. The face was that of an elderly man, with stern brows and an imperious hawklike nose, a face like a Roman philosopher’s. The tight-lipped face gradually went from disapproving to sardonic; then bored; and finally, in the last few shots, it began to grin with dawning delight.
James stared at the photographs until they began to blur. Then he put away the chemicals, turned off the crimson overhead light, stepped out of the darkroom, and bolted the door behind him. He leaned his back against the door and massaged his eyes with his fingertips. Mystery solved. He was losing his mind.
Strange as it may seem, the new insight into his condition improved his mood. He slept unusually well that night, and the next morning he got up early and ascended the stairs to the rooftop terrace with his camera. It was early April. The air was warm, and suddenly the buds on the caper vines had burst into flower—little yellow stars cascading down the wall of an adjacent terrace. The sun threw long shadows over the roofed hillsides of the Albaicín, whose antique charm was only slightly marred by its spiny jumble of television antennae. The Alhambra sprawled along the high ridge across the valley, its massive square towers almost frighteningly medieval in the soft-hued morning light.
A pigeon fluttered down to rest on the terrace. It pecked around for a while on the chipped cement floor, then flapped up to the wall and cooed softly just behind James’s head. He scooted his chair around to keep the bird in view, but it grunted and flew off. He moved his chair back to its original position facing the Alhambra. A light gust of wind blew a leaf across the terrace. Following it with his eyes, he noticed a face peering at him over the terrace wall. He stood up quickly, his heart pounding.
The man nodded curtly. He had slicked-back white hair and alert aquiline features that were familiar from somewhere—the open-air market, James thought, or perhaps the small photography store in the new town where he bought his supplies. A neighbor, obviously, though he’d never seen the man out on the terrace before.
“Beautiful day, is it not?” The man spoke excellent English. His accent was upper-class: noticeably Spanish but educated, with more than a hint of Oxbridge.
“Yes, it is.” James struggled to regain his composure. “You spooked me a little there. Just showing up like that.”
The older man frowned. “So sorry. I should have announced myself. But you looked so . . . unhappy. I did not wish to intrude.”
“It’s no intrusion, really. Always good to meet a neighbor. James Levin.” He thrust his hand over the wall, and the man took it.
“Eusebio Romero de la O. Very pleased.” His grip was firm. They gazed at each other over the wall, James wracking his brain for small talk, feeling more awkward as the seconds passed. The old man appeared content merely to stare.
“So you live here?” James finally said. “In the building, I mean?”
“I worry about you, James,” the old man said. “Do you not know who I am?”
James shook his head, feeling embarrassed and inexplicably frightened. The old man’s gaze was intense and unrelenting, and he couldn’t for the life of him figure out where they might have met.
“I worry about you, James, because you insist on spending your time alone.
“Oh, I don’t mind that,” James explained. “Actually, I like being alone. It’s one of the professional hazards of being a photographer.”
“No, my friend.” The elderly man shook his head slowly, brows knit over the prominent arc of his nose in an expression of grave concern. “You’re not just a photographer. And you should not be alone so much, not now. There is an establishment I know. I’m going there tonight, in fact, and I have come to ask you to accompany me. Do you consent?”
James shrugged uncomfortably. It would be rude to turn down such a direct invitation, but he generally hated the idea of going out. He usually read a little, studied his Spanish, and went to bed early. It was a soothing routine.
And yet, if he thought about it, how could he say no? He had, in fact, been feeling guilty for not taking part in the famous Spanish nightlife. Often his slumber was interrupted at three or four in the morning by singing and drunken carousing under his window. Now, during Holy Week, the nighttime streets were alive with noise: guitar music, laughter, screams, young Spaniards roving the streets in gangs, clapping their hands in complex, inescapable rhythms that annoyed him and thrilled him and kept him awake until he had to cover his ears with his pillow.
“All right,” he said, letting out his breath. “What time should we meet?”
“I’ll come to your door at eleven,” the Spaniard said. His face broke into a broad grin and James’s stomach dropped, because suddenly he knew why the old man was so familiar. He bore an uncanny resemblance to the figure from the photographs now drying on their line in the darkroom. The figure with the expressive and subtly changing face that had been carved into golden sandstone more than four centuries before.
That evening he went out to witness another procession, this one known as “El Silencio,” because it took place in total silence. All the celebrants held candles, which lit up their faces so that their heads appeared to float freely, unattached to human bodies. The vision filled him with dread.
He went back to the apartment and tried to read, shivering on the couch under a heavy woolen blanket. He didn’t know whether Eusebio Romero de la O had been a real person or just some spectral vision concocted by his disturbed imagination. He hoped the old man was imaginary, because the truth was that he had little desire to go back out tonight.
Eusebio did come by, as promised, at exactly eleven o’clock. Together they walked down to the Plaza de la Primavera, and from there westward on the narrow street that followed the valley between the two steep hills that made up the old part of town, with the Albaicín above and to the right, and the spot-lit Alhambra looming up implacably on the hillside to the left. The air was cool, and by the time they arrived at the entrance to the establishment—a shadowed doorway three steps below street level in an unlit side alley—James was fully awake.
Eusebio gave him a companionable wink as he pushed open the riveted oak door, and a murmur of conversation and clinking glassware drifted out. It was an old wine tavern, a vaulted bodega lit by candles and torches bracketed to the brick walls. There were polished, antique mahogany tables and a hewn-oak bar. It was crowded with Spaniards of various ages chatting and laughing, their faces gleaming in the yellow light, their shadows dancing on the low brick vaults of the ceiling.
He turned to Eusebio, but the old man had
melted into the crowd. James felt a wave of indignation that his neighbor would dump him so unceremoniously after having invited him out in the first place. He scanned the crowd for familiar faces from the photography shop or the open-air market, but he recognized no one. He found it striking, though. He could sense that the people in the bar were acutely aware of him—although no one would meet his eyes directly—whereas normally he felt invisible in a crowd. Here it was just the opposite, as if he was the most visible person in the room. Feeling conspicuous and painfully self-conscious, he crept through the crowd to the bar, where he sat on an antique-looking metal stool. Suspended from the ceiling behind the bar were a half-dozen sweating hocks of mountain ham. Beneath them was a broad cutting board stacked with baguettes, powdery links of dried sausage, and several bulky rounds of Manchego cheese. The barman put down a small tumbler, which he proceeded to fill with a clear yellowish liquid. James rarely drank alcohol, but with a newfound feeling of recklessness, he decided to take a sip. It was some kind of chilled sherry, and he found it uncommonly delicious: dry, refreshing, nearly bodiless. The barman watched him with an expectant smile.“¿Bueno?”
“Excelente,” James replied, raising the glass to toast the barman before taking another sip.
The barman winked companionably and returned to the cutting board. He came back a moment later with a small plate, which he laid on the bar in front of James. “Buen provecho.”
The plate held a crescent of green figs and several paper-thin slices of ham. James didn’t normally eat air-cured ham—it had a chewy consistency and a fleshy odor that he found disconcerting—but to please the barman he rolled one of the figs in a slice and popped it in his mouth. It was surprisingly tender, a delicate blend of flavors reminiscent of woodsmoke and mountain air. He closed his eyes, savoring the taste.
When he opened them, the barman was gone. A woman had taken the neighboring stool. She was facing away from him, and he took advantage of the moment to admire her shapely back, which was exposed to great advantage by a low-cut black dress. Her skin was of a warm olive complexion, and her raven-black hair fell down over her shoulders in loose curls. At the base of her left shoulder blade was a small diamond-shaped scar. James was gripped by a desire to touch it; to spin the woman around by her shoulders and kiss her on the lips.
She turned suddenly, and he just managed to look away in time. In his peripheral vision, he could see that she was now leaning against the bar, with both elbows resting upon it, gazing out at the crowd. It was the woman from the alley, he was sure of it—the one who’d made fun of his accent.
He agonized for a moment, and then slid the tapas plate down the bar for her. She shook her head and smiled sardonically, fixing him in her gaze. Her eyes were almond-shaped, green-flecked hazel, light as a cat’s eyes but warmer, and luminous in their intensity. Say something, he urged himself silently, wracking his brain for an intelligent line. The barman placed a glass of red wine on the bar behind her, and she turned to pick it up.
“Are you a friend of Eusebio’s?” he asked in Spanish. She gave him a scornful look. “Am I a friend of who?”
“Eusebio Romero de la O,” he replied sheepishly. “That’s who I came here with. I thought you might know him.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said, still holding him immobile with the hypnotic intensity of her gaze. Her voice was slightly hoarse, simultaneously cultured and crude in the way of certain Spanish women. He caught a whiff of her scent: jasmine mixed with peppery clove. She was perhaps ten years younger than him, in her late twenties. He felt himself gripped by a sudden, powerful infatuation.
“May I kiss you?” he asked. He was shocked that he would come out with such a thing—the sherry was evidently impairing his judgment—but it was too late to take it back, and the truth was that he didn’t want to take it back. For the first time in recent memory, he was actually enjoying himself. Yet there was something dwelling beneath this new sense of abandon, an unspeakable terror that clutched at his throat. It took all his concentration to stamp it back down into the darkness. Not now, he begged it; not now.
She gazed evenly at him and there was a long, painful silence. Then she simply picked up her wineglass and walked away. He got up and tried to follow her, but his passage was blocked by an uncooperative thicket of tavern patrons. Several of them hissed as he tried to shoulder his way through, and twice he was elbowed roughly. Finally he made his way to the exit, pulled open the heavy door, and climbed the stairs into the street, where he found Eusebio in animated conversation with three other elderly men. As he approached, the discussion died. They all regarded him politely.
“I’m going home,” he declared. Eusebio gave a vaguely sympathetic nod, but did not urge him to stay.
When Eusebio knocked on his door the next night at eleven, James did not hesitate. In fact, he’d been dressed and ready to go for hours and was quite anxious to get back to the wine bar. They walked through the dark streets in silence, and when they came to the sunken doorway, James was neither surprised nor annoyed to find that the old man went in and left him alone without a backward glance. It was all part of the arrangement, apparently. James had concluded that the events of recent days were like real-time scenes in a play being put on for his benefit—a kind of vast street-theatre experiment of which he couldn’t yet see the point, but in which he was an ever more willing participant.
The woman wasn’t at the bar, so he sat and drank several of the exquisite finos while he waited. The barman gave him a tapa of deliciously cured hard sausage, sliced paper thin. After half an hour or so, as he’d expected, she did come, luminous in the black flamenco dress, with those extraordinary light-hued eyes, and the scent of jasmine and cloves. She sat next to him at the bar. They talked. She laughed at his Spanish. Occasionally her knee brushed against his thigh, and once, she reached out to squeeze his forearm, a surprisingly tender gesture that set his heart racing. After an indeterminate amount of time—it must have been several hours, though they flew by like minutes—she asked him to walk her home. Her name was Soledad. She lived deep within the Sacromonte, on a cobbled footpath where gypsies had dwelled for centuries in the hillside caves their ancestors had carved out of the soft volcanic rock. Conventional wisdom held that it was dangerous for a foreigner to walk in the Sacromonte at night, but when he mentioned that to Soledad, she said scornfully, “That’s just a rumor we spread to keep the tourists out.”
At her door she let him kiss her. Her lips were warm and dry. Her breath was cool and smoky, with a hint of clove.
The next night there was a Moroccan band playing at the wine bar. The music was strange and primal, complex percussion rhythms and high, trilling Arabic wails. One could hardly call it music at all in the sense to which James was accustomed, but it was strangely seductive. He’d never liked dancing—it made him feel exposed, as if he were naked in public—but with Soledad there, he got caught up in it. At first he danced tentatively, watching his feet to make sure he didn’t step on anyone’s toes, but soon the intricate rhythms possessed him, and he began to spin loose-limbed around the floor, an aimless marionette puppeted by the drums and the trilling voices. Soledad danced in front of him with graceful, flamenco-inspired moves, watching him the whole time with a serious, almost grave expression. Such prolonged scrutiny would normally have made him intensely self-conscious, but every so often the hint of a smile would come into her face, and he would speculate with rising exultation that this was the face of true love.
And then a wild feeling overtook him, a feeling utterly foreign to his experience. It was a floating up, a surrendering of self, a sense of joyous communion with the shadows whirling across the vaulted brick ceiling of the tavern. Soledad and the other dancers blurred and disappeared, replaced by flickering beams of pearly white light that spiraled and pulsated in synchrony with the complex drum rhythms. There was something terrible about this vision—a fearsome power—but it was also staggeringly beautiful, as if each dancer
had taken on the concentrated essence of the aurora borealis.
The beat changed, and he lost sight of the vision. He stopped dancing and pressed his eyes shut, trying unsuccessfully to summon it back. When he opened his eyes he saw that he was standing alone. He made a full circuit around the dance floor looking for Soledad, and shoved his way through the crowd to the women’s aseo. He waited by the door, but several girls and women came and went, and it became obvious that she was not inside. Feeling increasingly claustrophobic and desperate, he found the exit and ascended the stairs to the darkness of the street. She was waiting for him there, her clove cigarette a glowing ember in the shadows by the wall of the tavern.
“I was afraid you’d left,” he said.
She flicked the cigarette onto the street. “No. I was waiting.”
“Do you want me to walk you home?”
“No. Not home.”
“Okay. Where to?”
She strode off into the darkness, and he hastened to follow. She led him down to the river, across the bridge toward the Alhambra, then uphill—he struggled to keep pace—into the vine-choked network of aqueducts and walkways that crisscrossed the hillside below the vast Moorish palace. It was a warm night, more summer than spring, and the uneven cobblestones still radiated the heat of the day’s sun. Gentle breezes wafted the distant smoke of burning olivewood, blending it with the more intimate scent of blossoming caper-vines.
