The Sacred Beasts (33 page)

RUTH AND MONSERRAT had finished dinner and decided to enjoy the
last of the evening with the women’s groups. They entered the gazebo first. It
was dark already and the moon had risen. The air was cooler and the setting, an
open-air house with the design of a forest, enchanted them.

“It began here,” Monserrat said.

“Yes.”

“But you’ve been traveling for such a long time.”

“And now I’ve come home to you. In every way.”

“Are we fortunate?”

“Oh, yes, but this is something we’ve earned, too. It’s yours to
give, though.”

“But I’ve already given it to you. Now it’s yours to give.”

“No one will win this dispute.” They smiled, walked quickly toward
the living room, and nearly ran into Alex and Sylvie, who had just returned
from dinner.

The four women stared silently at one another. Alex felt cheeks
blushing; Sylvie’s face grew dark. Ruth smiled and looked courtly. Monserrat
laughed. The laugh was infectious and soon they were all laughing.

Then Sylvie, unsmiling, walked up to Ruth, took her hand, led her
to two chairs in a corner, and began to talk. Alex smiled in unabashed delight
and hugged Monserrat, kissing her cheeks and forehead. They sat down on a couch
in the living room and began to talk. They were all soon at ease with one
another and telling stories. From a distance, you would have thought they were
two mothers with their daughters, the daughters having taken a trip somewhere
and now returning to tell all the new things that had happened to them. At one
point, Ruth laughed uproariously. Damn, Alex thought, she told! We vowed never
to tell anyone about the Fantasia. Then Sylvie returned to Alex and Ruth to
Monserrat, and the two new couples joined the groups meeting in the living
room.

“Is it all right now?” Alex asked Sylvie.

“Oh, yes. She’s always so easy to talk to. I realized that I’d
been missing her a lot. I hope we can still stay close.”

“You said we would never tell anyone about that night, when we
made love all over the city. But you told Ruth.”

“Oh, no!” said Sylvie. “I would
never
tell Ruth about that!
She’d think I terrorized you all night.”

She’d be right, Alex thought. Sylvie as a
sexual terrorist . . . true enough, Alex decided and appreciated its strange
irony. We think of a beautiful woman with many admirers as fortunate, she
thought. But, Sylvie had been much admired by many men, and they had wanted to
dominate her immediately. It was part of their desire for her. And, she was a
beautiful woman who hated it, who insisted on her freedom. So, the woman
becomes a kind of adventurer, Alex thought, a sexual terrorist—at first. Should
I be shocked, frightened by Sylvie’s sexuality? Alex wondered, but she only
smiled
.

“Are you comfortable with Alex now?” Ruth asked Monserrat.

“Oh, yes. There’s no change, really. We admitted that we’d missed
one another.”

“How was Sylvie?”

“Very much herself.” Ruth smiled and said no more. A woman of a
certain violence, she thought.

The groups were breaking up and some women
were staying behind, as they often did. Something very unusual was happening,
however. As they began to gather in the living room, they were all suddenly
fascinated by Pilar, who was telling the story of her mother’s life to a group
of writers.

“My mother was a tocaor, a gypsy flamenco singer. Her stage name
was Malena and they called her Malena the Maddened One and sometimes Malena the
Singing Beast. When she came onstage, she yelled, ‘I’ve got ten times the balls
of any man here!’ and the pandemonium began. Many things then happened almost
at once: her whole body tensed and sometimes her feet pawed the ground like a
bull, one arm threw itself out to the audience, her mouth opened and a sound
came out of it that was low, guttural, bass and churning. It was deep and thick
and ragged, a voice made of blood, gravel and agony. It made you think of the
force of a flooding river or rancid butter or the world’s biggest bullfrog
crying out as a knife was shoved into its gut. The audience went crazy with
shock, ecstasy and pain. The hair rose on their arms, and my mother lived for
that moment. From then on, they were all in a trance led by my mother.

“She sang only cante jondo, deep flamenco, the oldest version of
the art and most emotional, unlike the flamenco fusion music you hear today, and
she was very well-trained by her own mother. She knew all the palos, whose
different styles and rhythms numbered into the forties. Some were songs sung at
fiestas—alegrias, rumbas, tanquillos. The most complex of these were the soleas
and siguiriyas. Some of the oldest were originally written for blacksmiths as
they pounded metal into shape—the martinetas. Other old ones were the deblas
written to goddesses. There were many of these since gypsies are a matriarchal
society. Newer songs were the carcilenos, prison songs, since so many gypsies
use illegal drugs and end up in prison. You would probably recognize some of
these songs by their rhythms—tangos, fandangos, rumbas, guajiras, milongas. So,
despite my mother’s effect on audiences, her art did not lack discipline, and
she was actually a very gentle person, particularly with me. But, there was a
great creative violence in her soul, and it poured from her in every
performance.

“It has been said that as much as two-thirds of gypsies never go
to public schools and are therefore illiterate. This was not true of my mother,
and she often rewrote the lyrics of her songs or sang spontaneously. The
flamenco songs I heard from men were often misogynist and sado-masochistic, but
my mother’s songs were most often about the strength of women. Several agents
wanted to sign her up for a recording contract, but my mother could read the
documents’ language, which was always absurdly exploitative. She immediately
demanded better terms, which shocked them. They were used to illiterate gypsies
who would sign anything.

“So, my mother never made a record or album. She performed all
over Spain, most often in Andalusia, where we lived. I always attended school
under strict supervision by my father’s sister, and then I could not accompany
her. But over holidays and summers, I went everywhere with her, and I loved our
life on the road. My mother performed in the tablaos, nightclubs in the big
cities, in aventas or inns in the countryside, and also in festivals and
competitions across Spain. Some of them, like the Bienal, could last a month.
In Andalusia, she performed at romerias, fiestas that accompanied pilgrimages
as well as fiestas after hunting in the countryside.

“Some holiday and summer flamenco concerts were elaborately and
expensively staged events with seats selling for top prices. These had huge
audiences from North America, Japan, and Germany. Only a fourth of the audience
was Spanish because so few Spaniards could afford the ticket price. At one of
these, my mother performed with a very famous flamenco dancer—a woman like Eva
Yerbabuena—and she was so moved by her beauty and dance that she kissed her on
both of her thighs and ended up being punched in the nose by her—to the raucous
delight of the audience. My mother loved women more than men and yes, ladies,
she was as wild and raw as they come. I was very proud of her for it, though I
had to ice her swollen nose. The dancer later apologized and said she was only
startled and not angered, but the promoter loved the press that concert got.
The scandal increased attendance at the next one.

“When school wasn’t in session, it was up to me whether I went
with my mother or not, so you can be sure I always went. I saw everything a
child is never allowed to see: completely uninhibited life at all levels of
Spanish society, including sex, drugs, drunkenness and brawls. The gypsies who
performed with my mother learned to slowly recede from the party, however.
While it was in progress, everyone wanted to be a gypsy. They loved us for the pure
wild life only we could give them; but once it was over, they couldn’t stand to
have us around. They never wanted to know anything about our lives, and we made
no friends. My mother, of course, was one of the most fascinating singers and
she was beautiful for a long time, too, but no one cared to know about the poor
barrio she would return to. So, we felt the hot embrace of life and the door
slammed in your face in very rapid succession. I must say, though, that I loved
every minute of it and wouldn’t have missed a bit of that life on the road with
my mother. I had no respect for the people who were so ambivalent about us.
They feared their own deepest urges, not us.

“The government was uncomfortable about flamenco, too, even the
socialists who were from Andalusia. All other performing arts got extensive
government support, particularly the ones drawing international attention or
even showing the faintest potential for that, like Spain’s pathetic failure to
create a national ballet. Not us, and we were one of Spain’s most successful
and enduring performing arts. Spain wanted EU membership then, and the
government found flamenco embarrassingly primitive, a reminder of a less than
ideally civilized past that kept coming back to haunt them. The heart of this
life is as wild and raw and full of tempests as the earth, and flamenco draws
on this more directly than any other Spanish art. Civilization will always have
its ways of stilling the heart—those endlessly flickering little screens you
watched on every table and soon in the palm of your hand—that’s only the latest
maneuver. But that wild heart will never be stifled. It will always demand
expression, and my mother’s life showed this to me in a unique and
extraordinary way. I am grateful for this because it has taught me to trust
things that raise the hair on your arm: they are telling you something about
yourself and the world that nothing else will reveal to you. This Iknow:
my mother was a great artist, though she came from a poor barrio.

“And, our barrio was Spain’s most notorious—Las Tres Mil
Viviendas—on the outskirts of Seville. All the famous flamenco singers come
from here. To get to our barrio, you would have to drive away from the city’s
beautiful old haciendas and jacaranda trees, all the way out to Triana and then
to a place where there are piles of refuse, junked cars, and nothing else but
dusty earth. Then you would begin to make out a city of run-down apartment
buildings, all as poor as the dust. Some have blocks of eight-story buildings
that have been abandoned. Farther on, the gypsies who live here are called
People of the Flood since the river has overflowed and destroyed the area
several times. The river is not done with us, either. Eventually, it will
overflow again. Like those Indonesians who live near active volcanoes, we
didn’t have the money to leave, so we lived breathing in death and danger.

“Our barrio is the result of a government real estate scam. The
government wanted the gypsies out of their houses in Triana, which had
adjoining patios that enhanced the contact between families our culture is
based on and gives us our strength as a people. So, the government offered to
build new homes for us and buy our old properties. Naively, we agreed, and the
three thousand apartments—crowded and physically separate that together look
like a bombed-out pit in a war zone—is the result. The notorious photo of a
donkey looking out of an apartment window comes from our famous barrio. The
owner kept the donkey outside in an empty field during the day—his former house
had a lawn with a small stable—but he had no choice but to put the donkey in a
room of his apartment at night or it would run away or be stolen. Now, when an
apartment house for gypsies goes up anywhere in Spain, people claim to see a donkey
looking out a window.

“Las Tres Mil Viviendas is also notorious for drug abuse and
crime. It well deserves its reputation for drug abuse. Spain’s gypsies gave up
their wandering lifestyle a century ago and mainly worked as farm hands in the
countryside during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As those jobs
disappeared, they came to live in urban shantytowns where drug dealing was
often the only way to earn a living. So, if you were walking through our
barrio, you would see walled gardens, many of which are barred cages to keep
out addicts, drug lords and gangs. Moving on, you would come upon a wasteland
that leads to a fence with a hole in it. Over the hole is a sign that says
‘Church,’ and through the hole is a nearly empty building with a basement for
gypsies who have just shot up. I’m told there are pictures of Christ on the
walls. You’ll see a lot of emaciated junkies around there with bandaged limbs
called los mutilados, the mutilated ones. The worst spot for drugs, though, is
the section called Las Vegas, but I’ve never been there. Church and the
mutilated ones were quite enough for me: I didn’t need any more local color.

“As to our reputation for crime, I don’t know what to say. Sure,
you can find gangs of young gypsy boys who sometimes set bonfires on the
street. Occasionally, they attack cars of strangers driving through—break
windows, demand money. But if you’re just walking through, and particularly if
you live here, the crime rate is no worse than any other area called a
‘project.’ There are people on the street all the time, day and night. You see
lines of colorful washing everywhere, and what I do love is that you hear
flamenco music everywhere. It’s pouring out of kitchen windows, bars, bedroom
windows, open doors of houses, street corners. A gypsy can just start singing
and instantly others join in, beating out the rhythms we’ve all learned as
children. Inspiration is catching, and a full performance, or juerga, can start
anywhere. Gypsies start and stop whenever la ganga, the urge, comes upon them.
On the street, we finally have the direct contact with others that we need,
though the government built us a Civic Center for that purpose. The foundation
or skeleton was built first, of course, and then the rest was just forgotten
for many years. That’s how much the government wanted to restore our group
identity. The name, El Esquelito, stuck. No one goes there. So much for life in
a skeleton.”