Authors: Andromeda Romano-Lax
I sat down and began to play the first few notes of Bach's first suite, as planned. But my right arm shook, and I could barely keep the bow perpendicular to the string.
"He needs rosin," I heard Mamá say, and a flurry of student hands passed up their amber-colored chunks, which I applied to the bow hair with quivering fingers. I set the bow upon the string again, but anyone could see it was a hopeless gesture.
"The book," Alberto stage-whispered—referring to the pedagogical restraint he had inflicted on me long ago. He meant it as a joke, but there was a commotion to one side of the room, and before I knew what was happening, a student had brought forth a hefty tome and wedged it under my right armpit.
"Do you see?" Don José replied. "I'm not the only teacher to inflict
el libro
on you." He nodded at me. "Go ahead now. That will stop the trembling and keep your elbow where it belongs, too." Across the room, Alberto flashed me an apologetic grin.
Clamping my arm to my side, I began to play again. Bach's baroque braid of sixteenth notes climbed and fell, gently, evenly, rhythmically. Changing strings, I felt the book slip slightly, and I clamped my right arm more tightly. The spasms subsided; I began to feel my muscles warming and cooperating. I even dared to glance up: Don José was watching dutifully, the students' faces were regarding me with mild approval, and my mother ... was twirling a loose strand of shoulder-length hair.
A hearty shout echoed outside the classroom window—a rally down the street—and I cursed the cheerful disorder in the man's voice. A bird flew by, nearly strafing the top of a clothesline where some protest banners had been hung, oddly placed between an assortment of chemises and socks. Several pairs of eyes followed the bird; a student noticed the undergarments for the first time and giggled.
I stumbled on my shift to the A string. Don José sighed deeply. Still I kept my composure, until my eye fell on my mother's hand. I watched as it wandered from her neck, to her lap, to the head scarf sitting beside her. I had played for less than a minute; I was only one-quarter of the way through the first movement; the melody was only beginning to build. But already, the audition was over. She knew I had not played well. She was fingering the knot of the head scarf. She was preparing to leave.
I closed my eyes. I loosened my right hand, which had been wrapped, clawlike, around my bow frog. I pictured the water flowing alongside the seawall, glittering golden in the sunset, and the pillarlike statue of Columbus above it, seeing more than just an endless train of waves; seeing possibility; seeing beyond the curve of the earth.
I relaxed and divided the sixteenth notes slightly less mathematically, extending them subtly as the melody arced. I relaxed my right arm. The book fell to the floor with a resounding boom. I heard gasps, but I did not open my eyes. I kept playing, and my right elbow began to lift away from my body, feeling lighter with every measure now that the infernal book was out of the way, and my wrist could flex naturally as the bow traveled across the string. The bow changes were much easier now—like sewing deftly through felt with a thick needle.
Now the suite reached its tensest moment, when the notes cascade in a downward spiral. It would have been so easy to storm down them, to throw my head around like Eduardo Rivera, or even like Rolland. It would have been easy to make the vibrato tremble and sob. Instead I kept my eyes closed and the notes terse and quick, subtle pressure changes against the strings infusing them with color and variation. I was not playing for coins, or for fainting girls, or for anyone but myself—and the hope that I could transcend the frustrations and limitations of this particular place, this particular time.
After that: I do not recall. I know I made it through the dramatic broken chords that resolve and close the piece, played on all four strings. I did not so much play them as hear them played. Then I opened my eyes and set aside the cello. Returned my bow to its case. And left the room.
Alberto was laughing as we walked the seven blocks home. "He was furious with your mother—
furioso!
He said she should have brought you to Barcelona years earlier, when you first showed talent on the violin. He said she had almost—
almost
—obstructed God's will!"
Mamá did not speak. She was not tickled about being rebuked by the same man who had refused her nearly two years earlier.
"It doesn't matter, Alma," Alberto continued. "He was angry at me, too. He said I was hiding talent. He said I should have spoken to him after Feliu had played for a few months. Not that he thought our boy's playing was perfect, mind you. Would you like to know what he said about the Bach, Feliu?"
I toyed with the idea of not responding, but my curiosity was too great.
"He said it demonstrated excellent potential, but that it was 'Too beautiful, too heroic.' He said, 'One should approach Bach more ... objectively.' He was particularly dubious of the bariolage at the end. He said it sounded as if you were playing two cellos, instead of one. Ha!"
Alberto ran forward a few steps and raised a fist to the sky, then turned and noticed my wounded pride. "You made him think! He didn't even mention the book dropping, or the way your elbow kept stabbing at the air. I'm sure he would have loved to tie your bowing arm to the chair, but he was too busy hearing a new interpretation—hearing music. Music, Feliu!"
I took a deep breath. "I'm not sure I want to study with him."
"I agree," Mamá said quietly, astounding me.
"You're both being irrational," said Alberto. "
No importa.
Don José doesn't want to teach Feliu, either."
Now it was Mamá's turn to be surprised.
"Feliu is already more skilled than his other students," Alberto explained. "Don José will get no credit for having discovered him because I tutored him for two years."
"But that isn't fair!" Mamá cried.
"It's for the best. It's better than the best! Don José doesn't want Feliu to study in Barcelona, where there will be too many comparisons to his own students. He is recommending that Feliu study with Count Guzmán. At the Palace. In Madrid. It is a giant leap forward."
"Madrid?" I echoed, my voice cracking.
"Count Guzmán is the court composer. He taught Justo Al-Cerraz for a season, until Al-Cerraz's father insisted the boy return to touring. Feliu, you will be walking in El Nene's footsteps!"
"No," my mother said firmly. "Those are the last footsteps I'd have him follow."
"And he will be away from Catalonia. At least for a while." Alberto paused, letting the idea sink in before he added with a smile, "Madrid is a safe place, Alma. It's a place of royal balls, not rebellion—tedious as that sounds."
That settled it.
***
I took the train, alone, to Madrid. It was nearly empty, though at every stop the platforms were crowded with families tearfully embracing their conscripted sons, who were boarding trains headed the opposite direction, toward Barcelona, for transport across the Mediterranean. Internal battles already raged. Workers called a general strike. In the days to come, martial law would interrupt train transport. Radical groups would dynamite several rail lines, and roads to and from Barcelona would be barricaded. What Alberto had predicted, what he and my mother had wanted to save me from, was happening: chaos and insurrection. People I met on the train heard I was from Catalonia and assaulted me with questions: "Is it just an antiwar movement? Or is it a Republican uprising? Have they really burned a hundred churches? Is it true the women are fighting next to the men, that even the prostitutes are armed?" I couldn't answer their questions, except to say, "I think it was about Morocco, mainly."
I hadn't paid attention in the week before I left town. I didn't even recognize the names of the various faction leaders. I had no opinion about the men who faced execution once the fighting ceased.
Semana Trágica
—The Tragic Week, it would be called later, a prelude to violence in the decades to come. I had been immersed in my own world, the world of the cello. I can't say I regretted my ignorance—if anything, I took pride in it, the luxurious and self-deluding pride that only youth can afford.
"Do not mention Barcelona," I was warned by a lady dressed in bumblebee stripes of yellow satin and black lace as we stood in the palace antechamber.
"Don't mention Catalonia at all," an older woman added. She had red satin flowers pinned on top of her head and held a matching fan to the bodice of her red ruffled dress.
"Nor even the train ride here," the bumblebee lady said. "It upsets her terribly to think about the rails being blown up. She's ridden on those same rails—in her own private car, yes, but on the very same rails!"
Not Barcelona, not Catalonia, not the train,
I thought.
The count parted the throng of women with an outstretched hand, steering his way with surprising skill for a man who was nearly blind. "Music, Master Feliu, that is all you need to discuss."
The count nodded in the direction of the halberdiers as we passed into the official chamber. It was as elaborately furnished as all the rooms we'd passed through so far. Cherubim floated between puffy clouds on the painted ceilings; chandeliers hung from bunched satin ropes.
Another man introduced the count. The count introduced me. The ladies took their seats against the wall. The Queen Mother, Maria Cristina, gestured toward an overstuffed, tapestry-covered chair. I had to jump up a little to sit on it, and my heels hung slightly above the floor. Two small dogs with bulging, black-olive eyes circled my feet warily before returning to recline at their mistress's feet.
"You had a good trip here, I hope?" the Queen Mother said, enunciating each word slowly. She had a pinched nose, thin lips, and ashen eyebrows. Her hair was silver and tightly curled. It seemed as if every ounce of color and life had been drained from her—cut off at the wasp waist molded by her tight ivory bodice.
I didn't know how to answer her without mentioning the train. I tensed my shoulders slightly—an unintentional, exhausted twitch—which she accepted as my answer.
"I look forward to hearing you perform soon with our Conde Gunmán's dear daughter. Until then," she continued, expelling the words with what seemed to be a great effort, "let us set aside the topic. Talking about music without hearing it is nearly as dull as talking about food without eating it, don't you think? Tell me about yourself."
My mind sifted and discarded numerous possibilities. I glanced back quickly, searched the room for clues, and tried to send a meaningful and beseeching glance the count's way, but that was a wasted effort. I looked up and nearly lost myself in the mural high overhead—muscular arms and babies' bottoms and tunics billowing everywhere. How could anyone stand being stared at so relentlessly? Perhaps it was easier to be blind in a room such as this one.
The count's cough brought me back to the present moment. The Queen Mother gazed into the middle distance, her eyes avoiding mine.
"One man has suggested I offer you an allowance," she said finally. "This man believes you have something to contribute to your country."
I did not know how to respond without mentioning music, a subject she had already dismissed.
Finally she snapped: "Tell me dear, where are you from?"
Not Barcelona, not Catalonia.
I stammered, "From near the sea, Your Majesty."
She pressed her lips together, which made the skin of her soft jaw-line quiver. "And which sea would that be?"
"The Mediterranean."
I heard the shuffling in the back of the room, the stiff rubbing of the ladies' gowns as they stifled giggles.
"Your father, what does he do?"
"A customs inspector," I blurted, eager to have stumbled into safe territory. But the relief didn't last. "Except he died. In Cuba.
El Desastre.
"
"I am certain he served Spain well." But she looked unsettled. "And your mother? Was she also in Cuba?"
"No, in Catalonia." I winced at the mention of it, and kept going. "But yes, she was raised in the colonies, and moved here only later."
"Marvelous. And how did she compare the two places?"
I paused again, but the Queen Mother's hard dark eyes seemed to caution against obfuscation. I rambled, "Mamá's uncle was hanged. Plus, there were the diseases. She never wanted to go back, even before Papá died. So I guess she thought Spain was better."
The count rushed up behind me, guided at his elbow by the bumblebee lady. Now he was the one stammering. "Feliu, why don't you say something about your musical training?"
The Queen Mother waved him away. Her two dogs launched into orbit around her legs, their little black paws beating at the floor in excitement. "No, it's quite all right. I'm more interested in knowing what this boy is like, even when his cello is in another room."
"Actually," I mumbled, "I don't have my own cello."
"What's that?"
The count put his hands on my shoulders to silence me, but the Queen Mother had heard. "We do have a royal luthier, if you need a cello made. A gift to welcome you to Madrid. Unless you insist on something German or Italian."
"Spanish is fine. I would be grateful."
"Very good," she said, pleased to have ended our interview on an efficacious note.
Count Guzmán made me recount the whole episode for the condesa to hear. I had joined my new teacher and his wife at their royal apartment for the midday meal, as I would join them often for the next several years, before I returned to the small room in the servants' quarters, one floor above, that I shared with an architecture apprentice from a small town outside Lisbon.
"Well, at least we'll always know what this boy is thinking," the condesa laughed. "A far cry from some of the students that Maestro Guzmán has had."
I wanted to hear about these other students and their illustrious careers. But just then, the count's daughter entered the room.
She was wearing a simple white sheath that bunched just under her breasts, and an open neckline that revealed perfect rosy skin. Her auburn hair was swept away from her forehead and dropped to the sides in long sausage curls.