Authors: Andromeda Romano-Lax
"Here he is, here he is," called a voice, and a fourth figure joined them—the duchess's husband, the Duke of Montalbanil, who had been in the adjacent Salon Goya, which had been set up discreetly for cigars and cards. He looked flummoxed and annoyed.
"It is appropriate," Señor Pérez boomed, as the crowd quieted, "to choose this evening to bestow a special honor, on behalf of the King and Queen. When else would so many close friends of the duke and duchess be present?"
There was a chorus of jubilant "Hear, hear!" from the far corners, and a scattered suspicious whispering from nearer the center, where the more perceptive guests stood.
Minister Pérez was well prepared. He pulled a medallion from his jacket pocket, attached to a blue ribbon. More whispers, as everyone leaned forward, trying to understand what the medallion represented.
"The duke has so many fine natural qualities," Pérez intoned. The duke frowned. King Alfonso smiled queasily. "Often he has expressed desire to rule over more expansive lands." Only the duchess was smiling sincerely, a sweet, puzzled expression on her upturned face. "And so, on the King's behalf, I am authorized tonight to grant him a great honor. He inherits the title of Duke of Ortiz, and dominion over the isles of Puerto Cruz and Verillana. To take residence, and do the Crown's bidding, immediately...."
The whispers escalated. The duchess's eyes widened. The King reached a hand toward the duke, who accepted it, with mouth open and jowls faintly trembling.
I turned to the violinist. "Where are—?" But he'd had enough of me and my disappearing acts that night. The violist was more forgiving. He leaned forward and said, "Fly specks—little dry islets, southwest of Morocco. Uninhabited. Once a penal colony, I think."
A week later, two items in the newspaper caught my eye. The first mentioned that the King had resolved again to press the Church to pay taxes. Several incensed patrons of the Church were quoted, expressing their consternation that the King had not "come around" as they had hoped and expected he would. Several liberal groups that had opposed the King now congratulated him in a lukewarm, cautious fashion.
The other item was smaller, but of much greater interest to me. It reported an incident in Campo Seco—one of the few times our town would be mentioned in the national press. There was no mention of a fire, but there was mention of several deaths. The priest had been hanged by an unknown group of vandals in the town square. Three unidentified peasants had been executed by the Civil Guard in response. I scanned quickly again, looking for names. They weren't provided. Peasants' deaths didn't merit such detail.
I allowed myself to hope and dream that Percival was not among the men caught. I tried to hold open an uncorrupted place in my heart, a place full of soothing uncertainty, at least until I heard the facts from home. But that uncorrupted place had already sprung a leak; no matter what I tried to pour into it—anger, fear, self-pity—it kept emptying and shriveling, folding back upon itself. If I had stayed in Campo Seco another few weeks, if I had not raced back to Madrid to serve the Queen in a task that bothered me still, I could have kept an eye on my brother. I had reneged on a family responsibility with the pretense of nonintervention. And only so that I would be in the proper time and place to help intervene in other matters, equally tainted.
None of it should have had anything to do with me in the first place. I wasn't an outlaw. I wasn't a court opportunist. I was only a musician.
Only
a musician. How many times did I repeat that unsatisfying phrase in my mind? At least until the letter came, confirming the worst, informing me there would be no funeral, that I should not visit, that Percival's body had already been put to rest with other shamed corpses outside the cemetery gate.
I requested an audience with the Queen. She kept me waiting for three days, busy with other things—medical visits, I later heard. I asked her to accept the return of the sapphire.
"You don't care for it?"
"I don't deserve it. I don't feel equal to your confidences. I am not sure I can continue to serve you in the way you expect."
"But Feliu, it was a personal gift." Her face was blank. "You're not mixing up the affair of the other night with this symbol of our friendship?"
I didn't know how to answer, or what to think. In the silence that passed between us, I noticed the sound of ticking—not one clock but three in the room, not synchronized.
She followed my glance and narrowed her eyes. "Yes, they're back from the restorer—every last one, plus an antique scrounged from Vienna to replace the one that broke. All with shiny new parts inside."
When I started to speak again, she interrupted. "Keep the stone. I won't take it back. I continue to trust in your services."
At that moment, she knew me better than I knew myself. Because I did want to keep her gift. I did want to serve her still, not because I believed in the monarchy, not because I believed in a king without integrity, whose views—conservative one day, liberal the next—could be manipulated so easily without regard for Spain's future. I wanted to serve her because of who
she
was: a struggling soul with whom my own slightly off-pitch sense of self could harmonize, passing for true.
Then she told me her latest news, which only her closest attendants knew.
"I'm with child again, Feliu. And you know what that means. I must be very careful—no wine or coffee or chocolate; no strong emotions. No music. That's what the doctors advise."
"Are you permanently attached to that seat?" said a voice behind me.
I couldn't make out the face, only a shock of thick dark hair in the rust-spotted reflection above the weathered headline—
CATASTROPHE IN SARAJEVO
—with a blurry, yellowing photo of the assassin, Gavrilo Princip, being dragged away by several policemen.
"How long have you been sitting there?" the stranger tried again.
"I'm still on my first."
"I doubt that."
He was even closer now, pressing against the back of my chair to let another man pass. When he reached over my shoulder to signal for a drink, I noted the sharp clean line of his shirt cuff and the heft of his arm. I could smell something on him—lavender, perhaps—that was aggressive in its floral prettiness.
I ignored him and lifted a finger toward the aproned barkeeper.
"I think you've been sitting several hours," he persevered.
"Listen—"
"Maybe even years."
"If you're in a hurry—" I said, turning.
The words caught in my throat. He laughed and clapped me on the back and finally embraced me, squeezing my thin suit jacket. Even after he let go, I could feel the spot on each triceps where his wide fingertips had pressed.
"
Dios santo,
" I gasped, catching my breath, "I thought you were in Paris!"
"I was, until a week ago."
"You promised you were never coming back to Madrid."
"Did I? I wish I could keep that promise."
Fine red capillaries snaked across his cheeks, but from a distance, they would only look like the hearty bloom of indefatigable youth. Everything about him, from his shoes to his wax-tipped mustache, shone.
He was studying me as closely as I was studying him. I opened my mouth and realized, after a hard swallow, that I had nothing to say.
The barkeeper set down my drink. Al-Cerraz reached over and grabbed it before I could, and gave it a sniff. "I forgot how cheap the liquor is here. I can't let you drink this! We'll find ourselves a better bottle somewhere."
I reached out to rescue the drink but Al-Cerraz had already pushed it, along with a coin, into the barkeeper's hand. "Coffee instead, please—two of them,
cortados.
"
I said, "You didn't leave because of the fighting?"
"It wasn't the war itself I couldn't stand, it was the whole festive atmosphere—one big party, the whole city engaged in debauchery, and young boys running around with wine bottles, hanging on their sweethearts, telling them they'd be back in two weeks. Two weeks!"
"Well, maybe..."
"They'll make beautiful targets in their bright uniforms. Here." He gestured for me to join him at an emptying table on the other side of the café, closer to the entrance. "The worst of it was the music. Three days of it. Bands playing in the streets, people dancing and singing like wind-up toys. If there had been a moment of quiet, people might have had a chance to think." The bartender came around and wiped the table for us. Al-Cerraz thanked him. "They say music is a dangerous aphrodisiac. It's nothing compared to patriotism. Anyway—how long have you been trying to grow a beard?"
"What do you mean, trying?"
He wrapped a heavy arm around me again and squeezed. His fingernails were manicured, glossy, with shiny white half-moons rising from trimmed cuticles. Suddenly I was aware of how long it had been since I'd laundered my shirt.
"This wasn't the first place I looked for you. I tried the music school, the theater. Then I thought, maybe some of the finer restaurants—they're not too bad, if you don't mind tinkling spoons. Personally, I refuse to compete with flan for attention."
"I have a few private students."
"Then I thought, maybe he's gone to America! Carnegie Hall."
"Not all of us are looking for fame and fortune."
"I can see that."
"Listen..."
"I'm listening, Feliu—tell me everything!"
"The letters," I managed to say with effort. "Didn't you get them?"
He made a few false starts, then smiled sheepishly. "I'm hopeless at writing. Ask anyone."
"But seven times? Eight? I figured the address was bad, but I had nowhere else to write."
"I'm here now. You can ask me—tell me—anything." And he leaned forward, bearded chin resting in his fleshy palms.
"Forget it. If you're here to find out about the latest intrigues, you're talking to the wrong man. I'm not with the court anymore." When he didn't react, I added, "The Queen asks to see me every few months, though I no longer play for her. Any local dandy spends more time there than I do. If you're setting up royal residence, you'll have the entire spotlight to yourself. I never had much of it, anyway."
"No, you just caught one bright spark." He bumped the table slightly, chuckling. "I hear it left a shiny spot on the inside of your bow."
A shaft of light had penetrated the bar's entryway and was dancing on a mirrored pillar next to the table. "You know," I said, squinting, "it's good to see you. But I think I'll go back to where I was sitting. Sun's in my eyes. I feel a headache coming on."
"The sun's in your eyes?" He laughed again, jostling his full cup. The saucer beneath was close to overflowing.
"You don't need the dark, you need something to eat. Away from here. I insist."
I hedged, thrust my hand into my pocket, felt the last coin there, and thought of the empty apartment waiting me.
"
Vale.
But I'm not fetching any water for your car," I cautioned.
"Water? There's no need—but that gives me a marvelous idea."
He didn't mean the Stanley Steamer; he'd replaced that long ago, before souring altogether on automotive fads. By water, he meant the
estanque,
the nearby Retiro's pond with its paddleboats and lawns for picnicking. This August day it was nearly deserted, the food stalls and little puppet theater shuttered against the midday sun while a few employees napped in the shadows, waiting for evening's cool reprieve. The only other park stroller was a shifty-looking man in a threadbare cape—perhaps a failed courtier like me—tilting his ear toward the marble statue of the King's father as if he were listening to the dead monarch's secrets.
Al-Cerraz rattled the window to rouse the sleeping rowboat attendant and slipped a folded bill between the bars. Soon we were floating on the dazzling water, next to a line of ducks too hot to flee. I hadn't thought I was hungry, but when I smelled the grease-spotted bags he'd loaded into the boat, filled with bread, sausage, cheese, and fruit he'd bought along the way, my appetite returned. I listened, sleepy and full for the first time in days, as the pianist expressed his distaste for Stravinsky's
Rite of Spring,
his tentative interest in jazz, his catalog of every famous Spanish musician and artist living in Paris. "Anyone and everyone you can think of!" And then, catching himself and endeavoring to be more kind, "Well, not everyone. A lot of has-beens, come to think of it."
He talked to me about music and life in England, Italy, San Francisco, and New Orleans—about everywhere, it seemed, but Spain. Perhaps I'd assumed wrong. Al-Cerraz wasn't settling back into court life here, he was just passing through. Spain was the last place in the world that interested him, and he was a man who demanded to be interested, inspired, at the center of things, where everything was new. Yet he hated war—even the most remote hint of it, the sight of bandages, any hint of tinny bugling. And so, he assured me when I asked him directly, he was home to stay. Spain, he predicted, would stay neutral in the war, not upon any moral high ground, but to dig itself out of its economic slump. With the rest of Europe in ruins, its tottering industries might have a chance—as might its performers.
"We 'll take the trains," he was saying. "Not with our own private car, not this time—anyway, traveling with a piano is overrated; why rehearse with a better instrument than you'll get to play at the concerts themselves? But first class we'll manage, traveling light. The cities, of course, but the smaller towns, too, on the way. You'll have the energy for that. As my beautiful mother always said, hard work and a harder bed keep an artist young."
I had nodded off, lulled by the gentle rocking of the boat. "Trains?" I rubbed my eyes, yellow spots dancing on my inner lids.
"You're probably wondering about the violinist. He's adequate. He's had the same questions about you, of course—as did Monsieur Biber, but I've reassured him. The first week is always a trial, but after that—"
"Reassured him?"