Masquerade (48 page)

Luz smiled at the thoughtfulness of her father but shook her head. ‘No, it’s fine,
Papá
. You can stay for a while and still be with them for dinner. I think some time on my own is what I need to clear my head. Then maybe I’ll come and spend a few days at El Pavón.’

‘If you’re sure, then all right.’ He put down his glass and went into the next room to make the call.

Alexandra watched as Salvador closed the door behind him. ‘I still can’t believe that Don Andrés could have lived a double life for so long,’ she mused. ‘Apart from anything else, it must have been so confusing.’

Luz nodded and curled both feet up on the sofa. ‘I could never understand his mood swings or the secretive air he always had, but now it all makes sense.’

‘You know, most men are moody to some degree or other. Your father was just the same when we met,’ Alexandra sighed. ‘I couldn’t work out what he was thinking half the time and it drove me crazy. But as it turned out, he was keeping things from me only because he was trapped in a difficult situation that he couldn’t get out of and so he was protecting me. He loved me and didn’t want to hurt me. Marujita and the gypsies had him backed into a corner. I know that now, but at the time I was filled with anger and jealousy.’

‘Yes, I know that feeling, too.’

‘Oh, how I wish you didn’t,
niña
!’ Alexandra smiled sadly at Luz and touched her cheek lightly. ‘I won’t pretend I’m not shocked to hear that Don Andrés is the son of Marujita. She was manipulative and vicious even then. No doubt prison made her worse, but your father was almost killed when her brother stabbed him.’ As if reliving the memory, she shuddered.

‘Doña María Dolores had no choice but to call the police and it was she who insisted on pressing charges, not your father. In many ways Salvador had an affinity with the gypsies that I didn’t understand. I simply felt threatened by them.’

‘Because of Marujita?’ Luz offered tentatively. She didn’t want to dredge up more painful memories but she had never heard her mother speak so openly before.

‘Perhaps,’ Alexandra sighed. ‘There was that old witch Paquita too, always in the background with her strange, cryptic warnings. As soon I set foot in Spain, she was there, grabbing my hand, trying to tell my fortune. The dark magic that seems to surround them, it frightened me – it still does.’

Luz gazed at her mother.

‘I suspected as much.’

She wondered how much power the old gypsy truly had. If Paquita’s predictions for her mother had come true, maybe she knew Luz’s destiny, too.

‘What did she say to you? Did she predict that you and
Papá
would find happiness?’

‘She predicted a number of things,’ said Alexandra. ‘For one, your father’s accident before I met him and then the obstacles I would have to overcome … but yes, she saw that we would finally be together. Not that I wanted to listen to any of it, of course. At the time I didn’t know if she was trying to help me or scare me.’ Her gaze filled with apprehension. ‘What has Paquita said to you, Luz?’

Luz paused, thinking back to the old
gitana
’s words. ‘She told me that my destiny lies with someone called Gemini, that I mustn’t try to avoid it or I’ll be cursed. But then she said something about a curse of hatred that will never be broken unless it’s erased by love. Andrés, Leandro, he must be Gemini … and the evil she talked about that surrounded me might have been his mother’s attempts to use him for her revenge against you and
Papá
.’

At this Alexandra looked at her pensively and reached out to smooth a stray tendril of hair away from Luz’s face. ‘If Don Andrés has truly been accepted by the gypsies, he must have been willing to sacrifice everything so as not to carry out Marujita’s wishes. The code of the gypsies is unforgiving … A curse of hatred erased by love,’ she mused.

Emotion swam in Luz’s eyes. ‘But what if I’ve ruined any chance of happiness by pushing him away? What if it’s too late for love?’

Alexandra’s green eyes were still the hue of an emerald ocean and now they fixed on her daughter with deep understanding. ‘It’s never too late for love, darling,’ she said.

Salvador re-entered the room and resumed his seat, having refilled his glass. ‘So we are back to the question of love? That’s what this all boils down to.’ His eyes darkened, focusing on Luz keenly. ‘Do you still love this man, even though he has lied to you and hurt you?’ he asked, his face grave.

‘Yes,
Papá
, I do.’

‘And you believe that he’s a good man?’

Luz sighed. She knew the truth in her heart now. It lay immutable like a bright, enduring light within her, even after all the furious arguments that had wrestled for supremacy in her mind.

‘Yes. I don’t think he would have carried out his mother’s wishes, even if she had lived. He was just tangled up in two worlds. I believe he truly loves me but I drove him away.’

‘So, in that case, he will come back to you.’

Luz hugged a cushion to her chest. ‘Oh,
Papá
, I said some terrible things to him. I felt betrayed and wanted to punish him. I thought that if he was the son of someone as evil as Marujita, perhaps her nature had tainted him, too.’

Salvador nodded and clasped his fingers together. ‘He’s his own man, Luz. Andrés de Calderón has a good reputation in the community and that takes hard work and a strong character to build. Besides, I’ve looked him in the eye and seen what kind of man he is.’ He picked up his drink and gazed into its depths.

‘I know what it is to become dragged down by circumstances, no matter how hard you struggle.’ He glanced at his wife. ‘Your mother and I both do.’

Alexandra smiled ruefully. ‘Your father’s right. Don Andrés may have made mistakes, and there’s no doubt his background makes life more complicated, but from what I’ve seen he’s an honourable man, and one who has lost much. The past is done with, we should all bury it now.’ She reached out and squeezed her
daughter’s hand. ‘You must hold out for love, if you’re certain you’ve found it, Luz.’

‘The world is changing,’ added Salvador. ‘No matter what happens, if Andrés is somehow to keep his ties with the gypsy community, then we are all going to have to become more tolerant.’ His eyes settled on his daughter. ‘Think about what you truly want, that’s all you need to do,
niña
.’

It was a rare stormy day. Since the night of Andrés’ visit, Luz had taken to jogging every day on the beach to her favourite place where she had twice met Paquita in the past; somehow it helped clear the cobwebs that misted up her brain. The words of the old gypsy made sense to her now. Deep in her subconscious, she wished the
gitana
would appear again and perhaps tell her a way to rekindle her lost love and save her happiness, even though the sands of time may have already run out. Often she came across gypsy youths loitering on the beach, but Andrés was never among them. Whenever she passed the
gitanos
, she could feel them sniggering behind her back and wondered how much they knew.

At the beginning, after her parents had left, she had tried to put all thoughts of Andrés out of her mind, needing to empty herself of him and find some peace, just for a while. But she could not escape him in her dreams: green eyes burned through her and then turned to smouldering black. She was haunted by his caresses, the sound of his voice calling her name. Despite her father’s advice she did not know what she wanted; pride still made her emotional wounds hurt, and she hoped that fate would somehow intervene to light the path ahead.

As the days went by and the shock wore off, she knew that however painful his revelations had been, she would always love him. Nothing could alter that. She felt lost, incomplete, without him. Something was missing in everything she did. She had been a fool to think she
could stop loving him because he had a different name, or because he had deceived her. How would she have reacted had he told her the truth from the start? Would she ever have got to know the real Andrés? He was right: love forgave all, love did not judge.

Many times she had gone by his office building, hoping to bump into him, but he remained invisible. The notes for Eduardo’s biography lay untouched on her desk. How could she continue with the project now, given all that had happened?

The weather was cooler. Consequently, the beach was quite crowded when Luz, dressed in white shorts and a vest, went down for her daily jog. Here and there seaweed was piled up on the shore, brought in by the rough sea. There were barking dogs, running backwards and forwards to their owners with a piece of wood or a small ball in their mouths; children were flying their kites, their shrill shouts mingling with the screeching of seagulls and other birds of prey fighting for titbits of litter. The ocean was teeming with traffic, going into or leaving the port. A collier, deeply laden, with a thread of black smoke steaming from the funnel, was coming down the channel with the tide. The gypsy lads were on motorbikes today; one of them said something as Luz jogged past, causing them all to burst out into raucous laughter.

The sun was vanishing; clouds were gathering. Luz ran faster, the squelch of wet sand under her feet echoing in the silence, the fresh wind whistling in her hair, tossing wisps of it across her eyes. The long, drawn-out sound of a foghorn being blown out at sea tore the air. Seabirds were screaming, swooping and diving. As she reached her favourite place, she glanced at her stopwatch: she had beaten her personal best. For a brief moment she was happy, her eyes starry. She was panting a little, still flushed; her hair had come adrift from her headband and was blowing across her face.

The sea was choppy, rhythmically heaving. She climbed on to a boulder. Waves broke with savage force on the brown rocks along the shore. They dashed with a loud bang and a shower of spray as they hit sloppily against the jagged cliffs, the water spuming back
among the inlets between the rocks. A chill breeze brushed against her. Luz stared up at the sky. Sweeps of cloud feathered the normally clear blue heavens and the air was close.
I’d better go
, she thought for she did not like the look of it. She would rest only a short while before starting back home; it wouldn’t be good to get caught up in the storm.

Suddenly Luz was aware of a man’s figure standing not too far away, beside a boulder. He was tall with dark skin and, though his long, tousled hair was peppered with grey, as were his side-whiskers, he looked strongly built. Scored down one side of his face was a scar, above which piercing jet eyes stared at her. She had noticed him among the gypsies loitering on the beach several times in the past few days. Because the weather was grim, giving her thoughts a melancholy turn, she could only think that the menacing gypsy was an ill omen. Perhaps he wanted money. She turned her head away and fixed her attention on the frothy, relentless waves bubbling with foam as they broke along the shore below her. Perhaps if she remained aloof, he would simply go away.

Oddly enough, the aloofness did not put the man off, instead seeming to act as a spur to draw him on. Silently he moved closer and, when she withdrew her gaze from the sea, deciding to make a move, she found him standing almost next to her, barring her way. She glanced around; the part of the beach where she had ended up was deserted. In a rasping voice, the gypsy said something in
Caló
, which she did not understand, but she could still read the sneer. Luz stood rigid, rooted to the spot, as though paralyzed by a snake bite. Terror crept up on her as she met the vicious black eyes looking at her with such hatred, his mouth a cruel, ugly line. Staring into her face, he said something else to her in
Caló
, which she still could not make out.

‘No entiendo,
I don’t understand,’ she whispered.

He spat at her and then, as she tried to run, he lunged towards her suddenly and gripped her wrist fiercely. She jerked back so abruptly that she fell sprawling on to the wet sand with a cry. ‘Please, I have no money on me, but take this ring … it’s worth a lot of money.
It’s gold,’ she gasped, sick fear curling in her stomach as he advanced towards her.

‘I don’t want your gold, you bitch!’ he snarled contemptuously. His glittering eagle eyes moved over her openly, taking in her satiny skin, her long raven-black hair, her soft mouth and the slender curves of her body. ‘I want to dirty you, the way your father dirtied my sister and killed my older brother. I want to finish the half-baked job that wimp of a nephew of mine started.’

He was now on top of her, his mouth searching roughly for hers, while she fought like a wild cat, her head moving frantically from side to side in desperate fear to avoid his coarse lips. Now crying uncontrollably, she was pleading with him to let go. She could smell the sweat on his oily skin and the mixture of garlic and alcohol on his warm breath. His body felt hard, hot and heavy as he pressed into her weaker frame, his calloused fingers pushing at her vest sleeves and lingering hungrily around her bare shoulders. Despite all her kicking, heaving and wrestling, he was far too strong for her and she couldn’t throw him off. All her limbs were trembling with the effort of fighting. She tried once more to get away from under him but he pinned her down with one hand, while the other held her wrists tightly captive. He was just about to swoop down on to her mouth like a bird of prey when he was jostled from behind and jerked back by two powerful hands.

‘Bastardo!
Take your hands off her!’ Luz heard Andrés cry as he raised his fist and punched her aggressor full in the face.

The sun had vanished. Now the two men were scuffling on the sand. A chill wind swept across their backs. Luz watched, her eyes wide and anxious. Andrés was wiry and muscled; he moved with speed and was lighter on his feet. Built like a bull, her assailant moved less quickly but was more cunning in the way he fought, ducking and weaving to tire his opponent, his keen eyes never wavering from Andrés’ face.

Thunder stabbed the stillness of the atmosphere, pounding and rolling in magnificent peals that seemed to shake the world.
A blinding fork of lightning tore the sky and Luz’s eyes filled with terror as they fell on the scintillating reflection of the blade caught in the flash of light.