Mercedes was set on a course of action and, in spite of a very reasonable fear of rejection, she continued. She was on a tightrope with an obligation to move forwards or backwards. Having come this far she had to speak the words she had rehearsed in her head.
‘Will you play for me?’ Overwhelmed by a sense of her own audacity, she braced herself for rejection.
‘I have just played for you . . .’
There was a weariness in his voice. For the first time he bothered to look at her. He saw her features picked out in the lamplight. So many women approached him like this, seductive, available, aroused by his playing, but when he saw them in the light he could see they were old enough to be his mother. Sometimes, though, high on the adrenalin of his performance, it did not deter him from an hour or so of intimacy with them. Being the object of worship never failed to have some appeal.
This girl was young, though. Perhaps she genuinely wanted to dance. That would make a change.
‘You’ll have to wait,’ he said roughly. ‘I don’t want a crowd.’
He had done enough performing for the day but the thought of seeing what this girl wanted from him was quite intriguing. Her audacity was enough to persuade him, even without her pretty face. He lit another cigarette and remained in the shadows. The minutes passed and the crowd drifted away.
Mercedes, hovering out of sight, saw the willowy figure of her brother slope down the narrow cobbled street and out of sight. He would assume that she was already at home. Only the cueva owner remained, eager to lock his doors for the night.
‘Could we have just a moment inside?’ Javier asked him.
‘All right,’ he said, recognising Mercedes.‘If you like. But I need to go in ten minutes. No more.’
Mercedes switched the light back on. Javier resumed his position, head bent, listened to the intervals between the strings, adjusted two of the pegs and then looked up. Now he was ready to engage with this señorita.
Until this moment, he had taken in little about her, merely her youth, but now, poised and ready to dance, he saw that she was no coy child. She had everything of the haughty madam about her: the poise, the ‘attitude’, a sense of drama.
‘So what do you want? Some alegrías? Bulerías?’
In a simple full-skirted summer dress and flat shoes, she was not properly attired for dancing but this did not deter her.
‘A soleá.’
She amused him, this girl. He smiled at the confidence she displayed in front of him. It flowed out of her before she had uncoiled so much as a fingertip.
Now his attention was fully on her like a beam of light. She tapped her palms together to take up his beat and once she could feel that his rhythm and hers were perfectly synchronised she began to move. She hammered out a pattern of beats on the floor, quite slowly at first, then raised her arms above her head and coiled her hands, folding them back almost flush against her wrists.
Then her feet began to move, faster and faster until they began to purr. There was not a breath between them, one step followed on so swiftly after the other. To begin with, Mercedes danced shyly, a respectful distance between herself and accompanist. He watched her closely, skilfully reflecting her movements in his playing, just as Emilio always did.
This dance continued for five or six minutes and she twirled and stamped, always returning to the same spot with her feet.The outline of her muscular body was visible to Javier through the thin cotton of her dress. Dancers tended to move the folds of their dresses as part of the choreography, but the fabrics were often heavy and Mercedes found the flimsiness of her frock a liberation. On the final beat she stopped, breathless, and her body continued to sway from the exertion.
‘Muy bien.’ He smiled for the first time. ‘Very good. Very, very good.’
She had not so much as glanced at him during the dance, but he had not taken his eyes off her. It seemed to him that she had undergone a transformation between the opening and closing bars.
He had forgotten the pleasure it could be to accompany a dancer. For some years he had avoided it. He so rarely came across a dancer that he wanted to be with.They were rarely good enough.
Now it was his turn to choose the music.
‘Next the bulería,’ he announced.
Mercedes found this a much harder dance but she had no trouble picking up his rhythm.The moment he began she sensed the beat and the pace, and her feet moved almost automatically. The dance was just for him now and it was her task to respond. She turned slowly through three hundred and sixty degrees, her pale, extended fingers reaching out but never touching him.
It was a longer piece and she gave everything this time. There would not be another after this. As she turned, her black curls flew out like a blanket and her hair clip clattered to the floor. Her arms seemed both to lead and to follow her rotations until, like a gyroscope, she finally slowed and ended the dance in one last stamp that timed with his final chord.
She was breathless and soaked with perspiration, strands of damp hair trailed across her face. She looked as though she had been running through the rain.
Pulling a chair towards her, Mercedes sat down. The silence was overpowering, unnerving after the noise they had been making. To break the tension, she busied herself by leaning down to retrieve her hairpin.
A few minutes passed. Javier studied this young woman who had turned into someone else while she danced. Quite unexpectedly, she had moved him. Perhaps once before in his life, he had been ignited by a bailaora but more often he had felt like a pack horse bearing a burden. A long time ago he had made the decision not to be an accompanist. With this girl it had been a duet.
‘Well . . .’ said Javier ambiguously, watching her as she fastened her hair back.
She felt uncomfortable in the spotlight of his gaze. Trying to hold her breath to hear what he might say next, while still panting, made her feel as though she might burst.
‘. . . was that what you wanted?’
His question was not what she had anticipated, but she had to answer.
‘It was more than I had hoped for,’ was all she could think of to say.
The cueva owner had returned and was jangling his keys. This musician might be fêted in other places, but that did not stop the proprietor wanting to lock up and go home.
Javier replaced his guitar in its case and snapped it shut.
Outside he turned towards Mercedes. The temperature had dropped and in her sweat-soaked dress she shivered with cold. He could see her shaking and it seemed natural to take his jacket off and put it round her shoulders.
‘Look, you take this. I’ll come and get it in the morning before I leave,’ he said gently. ‘How will I find you?’
‘My father’s café. El Barril. Just off the Plaza Nueva. Anyone will direct you.’
Under the flickering light of the gaslamp he took a long look at this creature and was puzzled by his own reaction to her. She was a curious mix of child and adult, an adolescent on the brink of adulthood, naïve and yet worldly. He had seen many young flamenco dancers like her, virginal and yet lacking in innocence. Usually their extravagant sexuality vanished the moment they stopped dancing but with this girl it was different. She exuded a sensuality, the memory of which would keep him awake that night.
Mercedes arrived home and could immediately sense she was in trouble. Emilio had returned an hour before, expecting her to be there, and was now sitting at a table in the bar with his parents. Girls were never allowed out at night unaccompanied, and Concha and Pablo were furious, both with their son, for not performing his role of chaperon, and also with their daughter. She knew that it was not worth explaining that she had been dancing. It would only provoke the usual lecture on how dancing was going to get her into trouble one day. It was something she did not want to hear.
‘And what exactly are you wearing?’ demanded Pablo. ‘That’s not yours, is it?’
Mercedes absent-mindedly fingered the lapels of Javier’s jacket.
‘W
hat do you think you are doing, going around wearing a man’s jacket?’ There was indignation in her father’s voice.
She drew the jacket around her. It was suffused with the smell of the flamenco and she breathed deeply to take its intoxicating fragrance into her lungs. Her father held out his hands, expecting her to remove the offending item of clothing, but she darted past him and ran to her room.
‘Merche! Come out at once!’ Concha had pursued her up the stairs and now banged furiously on her door.
The girl knew that she could safely ignore her mother’s summons. Everyone was tired and soon they would retire to bed. They could argue again in the morning.
Though it was a warm night, she slept with the jacket wrapped around her, inhaling deeply on the memory of the man who owned it. If she never saw him again, at least she would have this. She would never let it go.
The next morning Javier strolled into the café. It was Saturday so there was no school and Mercedes had been hanging out of her window since she woke up, hoping he might come.
He had lain awake almost the entire night. He could not stop thinking about that young dancer.When he shut his eyes she was there and when he opened them she stayed with him. Such sleeplessness was unusual for him. Most nights he retired to bed exhausted, full of whisky and cigars.
Unless he was actually in the company of women, he did not spend much time thinking about them. But this girl haunted him. He was glad of the excuse to go and find her again the next day.
He rather hoped that, in the daylight, she might not be as he remembered. He was mildly irritated with himself. He certainly did not need his life complicated by love. Perhaps the half-light of the previous evening had helped create a fantasy. In either case, he had to get his jacket back. It was his best.
A young man was making coffee at the bar when he went in. It was Emilio. Before Javier had time to speak to him, Mercedes rushed in. She was holding out his jacket. In the daylight, her charm seemed all the greater. Any trace of shyness that had been there the previous night had gone, replaced with the most open and enchanting smile he had ever seen.
Emilio observed them. He had recognised Javier.
‘Thank you for lending me this,’ Mercedes said, holding out the jacket.
How could she keep him there for a moment longer? She was desperate for inspiration.
‘Was my dancing all right?’ she asked impulsively.
‘You are the best non-gitana, the best payo, that I have ever seen,’ he answered truthfully.
It was a statement of such extravagance that she found it hard to believe. She blushed, not knowing whether he was teasing or telling the truth.
‘If I ever come back, will you dance for me again?’
Her words dried in her throat. The question needed no reply.
They stood, a metre apart, breathing each other’s air.
‘I have to go now.’
Though the desire was there, he could not peck her on the cheek or touch her arm. He knew that such actions were unacceptable and, in any case, he was aware of the watchful gaze of Emilio, who was noisily piling up plates behind the bar.
A moment later, Javier was gone.To her own surprise, Mercedes found that she was not sad. She knew with absolute certainty that she would see him again.
For weeks she waited, thinking of nothing else, and trying to retain the memory of his smell.
Eventually a letter arrived. Javier had written to Mercedes via her teacher, La Mariposa. He was returning to Granada and wanted her to perform with him.They could rehearse at the old bailaora’s house.
Mercedes agonised.This man was a total stranger to her family, he was half a decade older than her, and most unacceptably of all, he was a gitano, a gypsy. She knew what her parents would say if she asked them. For her there was only one course of action and that was to do all of this behind their backs. She was prepared to take any risk to dance with Javier again.
Mercedes confided in Emilio, knowing that he would not betray her. He continued to play while she sat on his bed, bubbling over with news of this invitation.
‘I will tell our parents,’ she promised. ‘But not straight away. I know they’d only stop me.’
Emilio did his best to conceal his resentment. He knew he was being left behind.
Mercedes was insensitive to the implications for her brother and carried on excitedly: ‘You will come and see us perform, won’t you? Even if I can’t ask our mother and father, it won’t be the same unless you come . . .’
The first time she took her dancing shoes up the hill to María Rodríguez’s house to meet Javier, her trembling legs could hardly carry her. How was she going to dance when they shook so much she could scarcely walk?
She reached the old woman’s house and, as she always did, lifted the latch without knocking. The interior was dark, as usual, and it would take her eyes a few minutes to adjust. María normally appeared a few moments later, alerted to her arrival by the sound of the door.
Mercedes sat on the old chair by the door and began to change her shoes. Out of the shadows came a voice.
‘Hello, Mercedes.’
She almost jumped out of her skin. Assuming that she would be the first there, she had completely failed to notice that Javier was already in the room.
She did not even know what to call him. ‘Javier’ seemed too familiar. ‘Mr Montero’ seemed absurd.
‘Oh, hello . . .’ her voice said quietly. ‘Did you have a good journey?’
It was the kind of neutral conversation that she had heard adults having so many times.
‘I did, thank you,’ he replied.
Just then, as if to diffuse the awkwardness of the moment, María came into the room.
‘Ah, Mercedes,’ she said, ‘you’re here. So shall we see some of this dancing? It sounds as though Javier was quite impressed with you last time he came to Granada.’
They repeated the soleá and the bulería from their first meeting, and then Javier played a sequence of other dances for Mercedes. As the hour went by, almost without a break, she relaxed. They almost entirely forgot the presence of María Rodríguez. Occasionally she quietly joined in with the palmas but she did not want to distract them.
Eventually Javier stopped.
‘I think that’s probably enough for today, isn’t it?’ the old woman said.
Neither of them seemed to have anything to say.
‘So I think another rehearsal, same time next week, and you should be ready to perform together. I’ll work on a few things with you, Mercedes, meanwhile. Thank you,’ she said to Javier, smiling. ‘I’ll see you both next week.’
‘Yes . . .’ said Mercedes. ‘See you next week.’
She looked across at Javier, who was packing away his guitar. His eyes met hers and he seemed to hesitate.There was no doubt that he was on the point of saying something but he changed his mind.
A moment later he was gone. Within minutes, having changed her shoes, Mercedes too was outside on the cobbled street, but Javier had already disappeared.Their contact had been so intimate and yet so distant.
Mercedes’ stomach churned with anxiety and confusion. She thought of nothing but Javier and counted not the hours but the minutes until she would see him again. She confided in her friend Paquita.
‘Of course he isn’t going to think of you in that way,’ said Paquita. ‘He’s five years older than you! He’s nearly Ignacio’s age!’
‘Well, I don’t think of him as a brother,’ said Mercedes.
‘Just be careful, Merche. You know the reputation of those gitanos . . .’
‘You don’t know anything about him,’ answered Mercedes defensively.
‘But neither do you really. Do you?’ teased Paquita.
‘No. But I know how I feel when I am dancing with him,’ she said very seriously. ‘It is as though the whole world is contained in María’s small house. Nothing outside it exists or matters.’
‘And when will you see him again?’
?
??He’s coming back in a week’s time. I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I can’t think of anything else. There is nothing else.’
‘Has he kissed you?’ asked Paquita inquisitively.
‘No!’ exclaimed Mercedes, almost affronted. ‘Of course he hasn’t!’
They were in the courtyard of Paquita’s home. Both sat silently for a while. Paquita could not doubt her friend’s sincerity. She had never heard her talk in this way. They had both spent many hours of their lives hanging about in the city’s squares exchanging flirtatious words and glances with boys of their age, but these feelings Mercedes had for Javier Montero appeared to have nothing to do with such childish crushes.