The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman Read Free Page B

also taught me to play the guitar, pointing out that it was a perfect instrument for arranging on, as it had the capacity for three different voices at once. It was my custom then, as it is still, to spend a part of every evening during and after sunset learning and practising new pieces sitting on the doorstep of my front door. The acoustics of the quiet air of the mountainside were absolutely perfect, and Antoine used to say that I could be heard clearly all over the town. ‘Listen,’ the people would say, ‘the Mexicano is playing again.’ Sometimes I would stop and hear the crickets setting up their own raggedsymphonies, and, as I have unnaturally sharp hearing, I could listen also to the conversations of the bats.
    One evening I was playing ‘El Noy de la Mare’, which is a particularly lovely folk-tune from Catalonia. It is quite difficult to play because its variations are very subtle, and I still play it often to remind myself of the gratitude I feel for what it helped to bring about.
    I thought I saw a shadow move in the darkness behind the wall, and then disappear. I was puzzled, but thought no more of it, and began to play the arrangement for guitar of the ‘Requiem Angelico’ that Sr. Vivo and I had made between us. To me it seemed exquisitely tender, and I became wholly lost in it. When I had finished something made me look up, and again I saw a shadow move, except that this time it detached itself from the darkness and then came towards me. The tune had made me think of the earth goddess that they worship around here, Pachamama, and for some reason I momentarily felt an awed panic that it was Pachamama herself that I had evoked. But it was Ena.
    She stood before me, and I saw that her huge brown eyes were brimming with tears. We looked at one another in silence for a few moments and then, with all the natural grace of a little girl, she sat down cross-legged in front of me and said very gravely, ‘That was so beautiful. I have never heard such saudade. Please play it again.’
    ‘I do not play it too well,’ I said. ‘You should hear Sr. Vivo play it.’
    ‘Play it again,’ she said, ‘except for me this time, and not for whoever it was that you were thinking about.’
    I was a little startled at this, and I laughed at her percipience. But as I began to play it I realised that I wanted to play it especially well for her, and that I was trying too hard. I fumbled a few notes and then forced myself to stop thinking, so that I could enter into the music.
    When I had finished she reached forward with a wondering expression and tenderly brushed her hand across the strings. Then she leaned back and sighed very deeply. ‘I wish I could do that,’ she said at last.
    ‘Perhaps one day you will.’
    ‘No, never. For that one needs a lot of sadness. I do not haveenough sadness.’ Then she laughed and cut me a sideways glance. ‘Now tell me, who is the one you were thinking of when you were playing before?’
    ‘She lives in Mexico City,’ I confessed, much to my own surprise. ‘She is younger than me, and older than you. Unfortunately she does not love me, and so . . .’ I shrugged, ‘. . . I play sometimes for someone who never hears.’
    ‘You should play only for those who listen, and love only those who love in return. That is what I would do.’
    ‘You are wiser than me, I think.’
    ‘Obviously. Now play me some Spanish ones, real Spanish ones, with duende and gracia.’
    The only variety of flamenco with which I was aquainted was the soleares, the solea, and soledades, because that was all that Sr. Vivo himself had learned when he had once visited Andalucia. One can play these pieces quite slowly, because their theme is the melancholy of solitude. I played four in a row, during which time she sat with her head cocked to one side watching my fingers attentively. At the finish she said, ‘Your hands are like spiders. I think that you should learn the tiple and the charango as well.’