Golden Earrings (34 page)

I waved as I pulled out from the kerb. ‘You’ve got a man now; I’m here to protect you.’ It was such a Spanish male thing to say, I thought with a smile. But it felt good too.

To my dismay, after I drove home like a maniac and bounded up the apartment stairs, Mamie was already in bed when I arrived. I had to wait until after dinner the following evening, when we had cleaned the dishes and sat down with a pot of tea in the lounge room, for Mamie to begin to tell me what had happened to her brother.

‘When I realised that Xavier and la Rusa were in love I suffered a dilemma.’ She shook her head and glanced at her hands. ‘I know it was wrong in the eyes of the Church, but how could I deny my brother this one happiness? He looked after Conchita well and saw to her every need; he was devoted to Feliu; and a dutiful son to our parents. But when he was with la Rusa … it was as if the real Xavier had emerged, the piece he could save for himself. He shed the skin that had been suffocating him and came alive.’

‘Are you saying that la Rusa liberated him?’ I asked her. ‘Initially anyway?’

I thought of the spirit of freedom I had experienced while riding on the back of Jaime’s Vespa — the sense of breaking out of restrictions and rules. I wondered if that was how Xavier had felt when he was with la Rusa. The idea made me sympathise with him.

Mamie stood up and walked to the window, where she stared out at the street. ‘I was enamoured of the woman myself,’ she said. ‘La Rusa had this shining charisma and presence! Although she was a passionate person, she had a superhuman ability to contain herself. How was I to know the blackness within her?’

‘Did Conchita ever find out?’

Mamie shook her head. ‘Not at first, but eventually, yes. Xavier was head over heels and would not have been so discreet
if it wasn’t for la Rusa. She was careful that as few people as possible knew about them. She was always trying to protect Xavier. I liked her all the more for that.’

‘Even so, Conchita knew?’

Mamie nodded and came back to sit on the sofa. ‘It doesn’t take much for a woman to suspect these things: a little hearsay, a whimsical smile on her husband’s lips, hairpins in his pockets. There were some terrible fights. I remember Conchita screaming at Xavier once: “So that whore of a dancer has you eating out of her tough little hands, does she? She’s glamorous and exciting in your eyes and I’m just some old shoe. But you are stuck with me whether you like it or not! If you ever try to leave me, my father will have you killed!”

‘Her rages and threats of suicide would cause Xavier to try to be more discreet, but Conchita always knew and she hated la Rusa with a passion. Although it was normal for Spanish men of Xavier’s position to have mistresses, and many men treated their wives more cruelly than Xavier treated Conchita, she was consumed with jealousy. She was convinced that la Rusa had used black magic to captivate Xavier. “She is a gypsy, after all,” Conchita once told me. She could not see her own role in creating a cold, sexless marriage and blamed la Rusa for everything.’

Mamie looked like she was about to say something else, but instead rubbed furiously at her wedding ring. ‘Xavier was ten years older than me and seemed happy for the first time in a long time. I had to trust him to manage his life. Besides that, the changes in Spain that were taking place around us were so great, I often felt that our daily lives were on the verge of being engulfed by them.’

Despite the troubles the Republican government suffered, there were many Catalans who regarded the early years of its rule as a kind of Golden Age in which culture and art blossomed. Even
Pare, while not happy about having to pay higher wages and deal with worker unrest, was pleased that the Catalans had won greater autonomy for themselves and now had authority over the local police and civil service, local government and education. The Catalan language was once more official, and there were plans for new hospitals and better housing and recreation areas for the workers. ‘For too long Barcelona has been held back by Madrid,’ he said.

Although he maintained conservative views, Pare did not forbid Margarida from running for parliament in the February 1936 elections, although he did warn her that: ‘It will be the last nail in the coffin of any hope you may have of marriage. A man will never take a woman involved in public life for a spouse.’

Given that Margarida had never been the marrying type, I think that prediction suited her. She preferred to undertake her battles outside the home, where the right-wing candidates she was up against tried to dismiss her as ‘a lesbian and a whore’. Despite the fact that Margarida had never encouraged violence as a means to an end, her opponents attempted to turn middle-class voters against her by claiming she was an anarchist. Even some members of Margarida’s own party resented her disdain of tradition. While they mired themselves in battles over seniority and so much bureaucratic detail that their reforms became useless, Margarida sidestepped party politics and put all her energy into making life better for the men and women in the street.

‘Margarida has won twice as many votes as her nearest opponent!’ Xavier shouted the day we all sat around the radio waiting for the election results to be read out.

The Left swept into power again. The Anarchists, having witnessed the damage absenteeism had done in the previous election, had urged the workers to vote this time. Margarida was among a handful of ‘new women’ who had won places in the Cortes. I was happy for her, although it meant she would now be spending time in Madrid and I would miss her.

‘Well, she set out to win and she did it!’ Pare cried proudly. ‘Although I would have preferred it if she had joined the Catalan Party rather than the Socialists.’

‘Just be happy for her!’ Xavier told him.

Pare grinned.

I looked at my father. He had just turned sixty. Was he mellowing with age? Still, I couldn’t imagine he would be as pleased if
I
had run for parliament.

Not everyone was happy with Margarida’s new-found prestige. The person who was most angry of all was Conchita’s father, don Carles, whose fascist sympathies had led him to become a prominent member of the Falange, along with the bull breeder and gangster Ignacio Salazar.

‘You are supposed to be good Catholics!’ he shouted at my father. ‘And you are sending this country to hell!’

Don Carles cut off all relations with our family, including with his own daughter.

‘Look at the trouble your sister has caused,’ Conchita complained to me. ‘Fortunately, my father has already honoured my dowry!’

When I look back on those times, the sweeping changes Spain was experiencing appeared to be heightening everyone’s essential personality: the passionate became more passionate; the material, even more self-seeking; the timid, more frightened; and the treacherous … more dangerous.

But in 1936 I was too blissful to worry much about politics or family rifts. I was pregnant at last. And the baby was Gaspar’s.

I had not seen Gaspar for three years, since the day he came to visit la Rusa while I was having a flamenco lesson with her. My feelings for him were so intense that I hadn’t been able to bring myself to look at him. I knew then that I would never love anyone the way I loved Gaspar. But our situation was hopeless and I avoided him so that I wouldn’t inflict more pain on him
than I already had. While his work brought him to Barcelona from time to time, I had the impression he too was staying away as much as he could. Then fate brought us together again in January 1936.

An important part of the Catalan revival was to bring music and art to the workers of the city. One day, when Francesc was in Madrid, I went with Margarida to listen to a concert Xavier had organised in a community hall in the barri Xinès. Pau Casals, the famous cellist, was playing, along with other musicians. We hadn’t told Xavier that we were coming. If we had, I’m sure he would have warned us that Gaspar was on the program.

When the master of ceremonies announced Gaspar Olivero’s name and I saw the man my heart longed for walk onto the stage, I literally stopped breathing.

‘Do you want to leave?’ Margarida whispered to me.

I shook my head. ‘No, really, it’s all right,’ I assured her.

But it wasn’t. Along with other Spanish compositions, Gaspar performed ‘The Maiden and the Nightingale’ by Granados, the piece he had played at the Cerdà family’s supper the first time I’d met him. Every moment of that evening came back to me in vivid detail. I remembered the intense expression on his face, and the way the piano had seemed to be a continuation of his arms. I recalled the calming effect he’d had on me when I’d panicked and fled to the dining room.

Gaspar finished playing and the audience rose to applaud him. He stood up from the piano and bowed. He straightened and for a split second our eyes met. The feeling of something unfinished, something longed for but never realised, pierced my heart.

‘Let’s go,’ I said to Margarida.

We stood up to leave, but before we could reach the door, we were mobbed by people who had recognised Margarida as one of the new Socialist candidates running for the Cortes.

‘Good on you for standing up to the landowners!’ a man in a coat patched at the elbows told her.

‘Please ask for better working conditions for women,’ begged a mother clutching a small child.

While most people gathered around Margarida were supportive, one man wearing overalls folded his arms across his chest and said to her, ‘You’ve never belonged to a union, you’ve never worked in a factory and you think you can represent us!’

If someone had confronted me that way, I would have shrivelled on the spot. But Margarida was made for politics.

‘That’s true,’ she agreed. ‘But I can read and interpret the legal documents that your employers throw at you and, because of that, I can stand up for your rights.’

A young man in a tram conductor’s uniform gazed at her admiringly. Even though my sister towered a good foot over him, it didn’t seem to bother him. ‘You’re very beautiful for a politician,’ he said. ‘Why aren’t you married?’ He flashed her a flirtatious smile.

It occurred to me that if Margarida had been so inclined, she would not have hesitated to marry someone from the working class. She was brave enough to defy society’s norms. I wasn’t. That was how I’d lost Gaspar.

Despite our attempts to reach the door, more people gathered around Margarida, giving her suggestions for reforms or asking her to solve a personal issue. Margarida wasn’t fazed by the attention or the demands. She looked everyone straight in the eye and told them what she honestly thought.

I remembered a story that la Rusa had told me that illustrated my sister perfectly. La Rusa said that she had met my sister and me when Margarida was a child and I was a baby in a pram. Our nursemaid had taken us to the flower markets where la Rusa was helping a friend of her father’s with her stall. Margarida had held out her hand to the little urchin la Rusa without a moment’s hesitation. That was Margarida all over.
She was different to everybody but she could get along with anybody. She had even managed to twist my strict father around her finger. The exceptions, of course, were Conchita and don Carles: certainly there was no love lost there.

‘Evelina?’

The sound of Gaspar’s voice jolted me from my thoughts. When I saw him standing in front of me, I realised that time and distance had not changed the intensity of my feelings. The longer we were apart, the stronger they grew. I realised what I had been waiting for and what I had let slip through my fingers because of my lack of boldness.

‘Come to see me this evening,’ I whispered to him. ‘Francesc and his parents are in Madrid.’

My voice sounded strange even to myself, but in that moment I was determined not to allow myself to be thwarted ever again.

A serious expression came over Gaspar’s face. Hadn’t he heard me correctly? Did he disapprove? I stared at him, trying to understand the source of his hesitation, but before we could speak further, the crowd around Margarida swelled even larger and we lost sight of each other.

That night at dinner, I pushed and prodded at the rice and tomato on my plate until I admitted to myself that I had no appetite. Penélope was married now, and I was alone in the house. I sat by the fire, my heart racked with pain. Gaspar had not sent a message and it was now ten o’clock. He wasn’t coming. My feelings for him were so powerful that I hadn’t counted on the fact that his for me might have faded. Then a terrible thought came to me: what if Gaspar had married since I had last seen him and nobody had told me?

I sent the servants to bed early so I could be alone in my misery. But no sooner had I returned to my chair in the drawing room than there was a soft knock at the front door. I rushed to open it and found Gaspar standing before me. A feeling of
radiant happiness washed over me, dispelling all the self-doubt of a moment before.

I ushered him inside, and we studied each other’s faces affectionately for a long while before he said, ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t come earlier. I had another concert to play at this evening. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to get away!’

I shook my head. So that had been the source of his hesitation. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered now that he was here. I invited him to the drawing room and we both sat down in the chairs by the fire.

‘I’ve sent the servants to bed,’ I told him. ‘But I can make us some tea.’

Gaspar gave me a long and tender look. He stood up and tried to say something, but for once he was lost for words. Instead, he pulled me to him and pressed my cheek to his chest.

I could not believe that Gaspar was holding me in his arms, that anything about the moment was real. I had been married for seven years but I had no sexual experience. Yet everything seemed natural. I was peaceful and happy when I led Gaspar to the bedroom and we pressed our bodies together. The passion that I had been denied burned over my skin. Even when we got older and life took its toll, I never lost the flame in my heart for Gaspar that was ignited that night.

When dawn broke the next morning, Gaspar and I lay in the tangle of bedclothes and gazed into each other’s eyes.