Duende by Jason Webster
Author:Jason Webster
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781407094618
Publisher: Transworld
chapter SEVEN
* * *
Por Bulerías
En esta vía maldita,
siempre le faltan las cosas
al que más las necesita.
In this damned life,
the people who need the most
are the ones who go without.
TWO GYPSY SISTERS aged six and eight are taking turns to swing their little brother by the arms in a circle. Their clothes are cheap and dirty from rolling around in the dust. They laugh enthusiastically at their game, swinging the child, then changing places and swinging him once again. Their skin is dark – like Indians’ – and their ruffled, unwashed hair hangs about their eyes like overgrown ivy. They break from their playing to beg at the nearby bar. An old man with dyed black hair, streaked over a scalp dotted with liver spots, attracts most of their attention thanks to the yellow Labrador lying lazily under his table. The dog and the Gypsy kids get on well, but the man is uncomfortable and tries unsuccessfully to shoo them away. Eventually a barman emerges from inside and moves them on. They stare back at him in a playfully defiant way, denying him moral victory while obeying his order to leave.
They go back to the entrance of the ugly modern church, where a woman in a brightly coloured floral dress stands with a pram, holding out her hand expectantly to the exiting parishioners. She looks old enough to be a grandmother. The sisters start clapping a Bulería rhythm as the congregation, in their fine blouses and shirts, anxiously side-steps them. The lesson has ended. No charity today.
‘We’ve got a tour next month. I want you to join us.’
Carlos knocked back his brandy and indicated to the barman to bring another. The cigarette smoke caught in my throat.
‘You’ll be famous,’ he laughed. ‘El Niño Rubio – the Blond Kid. Great for the guiris.’
I was in.
‘Two, three gigs a night,’ Carlos continued. But I wasn’t listening. My mind had returned to the night with Jesús. I wondered if he had had a hand in this, if I’d passed the test. I was pleased, a great chance had finally come. But at what price? Even then, half-stupid as I was with my desire to be accepted, a voice of conscience could still be heard. ‘Car thief,’ it said. And a wave of guilt and fear would flood through me. ‘What if you get caught?’
The group wasn’t just about flamenco for me, though. It could give me something far more important. I had made virtually no friends in Madrid, insulated as I was against the world by my unhappiness, and I desperately needed the company of other people and a social life. With Carlos I thought I had found that. And so, I reasoned to myself that I hadn’t actually stolen the car: it was Jesús. I’d helped him drive, true, but I had no idea how he’d got it, or what he’d done with it afterwards. Didn’t that clear me?
Carlos continued speaking as my educated brain drew on years of intellectual training to justify what I’d done.
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