My first visit to Cordoba

 

Lilo had gone and I was alone once more.  But in Granada, whenever I felt lonely, all I had to do was take the train, and then the bus over the hills, to Montefrio. There, everyone was my friend, and those who weren’t wanted to be!

I was at La Fonda one day in May with Manolo, who, as usual, was singing his siguiriyas, hammering el compás on the metal counter with his knuckles, snarling and hissing and then, suddenly, howling like a soul in hell whose feet have been plunged into the brimstone.

This drew the attention of a bright-looking fellow next to us, who introduced himself as a medical student in Madrid who had come to the village to spend the weekend at the home of a classmate.  Seeing a flamboyant inglés with the half-crazed butcher who looked like a Moorish martyr, conversation and more copas followed.

 When my new friend, whose name I have forgotten but I shall call José, said he was from Cordoba, I told him that I longed to discover the legendary city of the mosque that had become a cathedral, or, if you prefer, the cathedral that had been built in the heart of a sprawling mosque.  He warmly invited me to stay at his home there, where his mother would put me up.

If I went the next week, I would be there to see the traditional concurso de patios, when each family vied with the other to have the most beautiful flowers and pottery in their courtyards. All I had to do was go to the address he gave me and say that I came from José.

It seemed like a good chance to see Cordoba inexpensively, so I took him up on it a few days later. The house was in La Judería, the “jewry” or medieval quarter around the Mezquita. 

It was a typical casa cordobesa, with a patio surrounded by elegant columns and arches supporting an open gallery.  In the middle was a burbling fountain set in a profusion of potted flowers and shrubs. The walls were immaculately white and bordered with enamelled Moorish tiles, all painstakingly scrubbed and polished by the family servant who received me in her uniform.

The señora was having her siesta so I left my bag in the prissily decorated room I was shown and went out.  On the maid’s recommendation I visited some of the patios which had been opened for the contest, where people came and went expertly appraising the arrangements.  Being less sensitive to the qualities of flowery courtyards and, after two or three, went on to more exciting things.

 I had expected to have supper with my friend’s mother but was instead ushered into a formal dining room. At table there was only a middle-aged man who glanced in my direction with distaste and grunted Buenas noches. 

The maid placed a half-empty tureen of soup in front of me.  Thinking it was for me alone and having worked up a good appetite, I filled my soup plate to the top.  To my surprise she then placed it in front of my neighbour, who after scraping up what was left – barely half a plate full – angrily threw the ladel back into the tureen.

Then the señora appeared, a respectable-looking lady with silvery hair and cashmere cardigan. But she did not sit down as I had expected.  Rather, she stood in front of us, as if she were officially greeting her foreign guest, and asked me how I was enjoying Cordoba.  Then she turned to her other guest and suggested, to his undisguised dismay, that after dinner he might show me about the neighbourhood.

So once we had finished our almost silent meal he walked me around the Judería. Since I had thoroughly explored its tiny squares and alleyways that afternoon, we both had to act as if we were enjoying something we would have been glad to skip.

To make matters worse, three or four boys began heckling me because of my long hair.  They followed us down the alleyways shouting “¡Maricón!  ¿Eres hombre o mujer?” – Fairy! Are you a man or a woman?

I laughed and told my guide to ignore them.  But after a few such tirades he grew so irritated that he waved his fist at them and cried out ¡Desgraciados! - scoundrels.  So our paseo nocturno ended even more sourly than it began.

Once rid of one another, I went off on my own to find some flamenco, and came across an otherwise empty tavern where a Spanish gentleman had hired three gypsies to entertain him, a dancer, a singer and a guitarist,.  I took a table that was at a discreet distance and sat down to watch the marvellous performance.  But I had barely finished my first glass when the magnanimous señorito waved me over and filled my tear-shaped catavinos from his own bottle.

The girl was so wraithlike and the guitarist so febrile that I fell in love with them both.  The next night I saw the pair, without the singer, making their way along the side of the Mezquita. She was carrying her flouncy dancing dress in a bag under her arm and he – a cripple - was hobbling after her with his guitar case. 

They were on their way to perform in some other tavern, no doubt, where I would have loved to follow them.  The boy, who might have been my age, gladly returned my greeting, but I didn’t dare ask if I could tag along.

José had suggested I visit a highly respected connoisseur of flamenco, a retired professor who would surely be able to introduce me to the secrets of the art.  He was a close friend of Antonio Mairena, and like him known to be homosexual, which made him something of a renegade. 

José had told me roughly how to get there, on a particular plaza at the end of a particular street. It was in a poorish quarter up the river, and once I found myself in the odd-shaped plaza the neighbours pointed the way to his house.

His cook let me into the tiny parlour, where the little man was surrounded by books, and many paintings and photographs of the poets and singers he had known.  He seemed sad, sitting there crumpled up in his dressing gown and slippers.  For an instant I wondered if I might one day end up like him, after a life of adventures.

His touching persona was what interested me most, but I dutifully asked several questions about cante jondo, which he answered no less dutifully, as if he were weary of having said the same things so many times before.  He took me into the dining room where there was on the table a small plastic record player, much less up-to-date than the one I had brought from New York but which, with his professor’s pension, must have represented a considerable investment. 

First he played some scratchy antique recordings which I knew already, with the ghostly voices of Manuel Torres and Tomás Pavón wailing out over the rapid strumming of tinny guitars and the dry, sharp clapping of hands.  Then, he suddenly pushed these precious relics aside and put on the 45 rpm record I had seen on the turntable when we went in, saying, “But this is what I like listening to now”.

His tone had a touch of defiance, since any Spanish aficionado would have regarded his new love as nothing less than a betrayal.  But for me, what I heard was a revelation of another form of Iberian music, more hedonistic and refined than the fiercely virile flamenco.  At the first notes, I understood how it could stir a jaded old heart such as his, once the tragedy of the siguiriya had failed.

An unearthly cooing, half woman, half nightingale, floated along on overlapping waves of husky cellos and filled the mean little room and my own as yet unjaded heart. It spoke of tropical moonlight and shadowy jungles, a steamy hothouse where masculine and feminine meant less than pleasure and longing – saudades, I later learned it was called.

When it was over I sat transfixed, as if I had overheard the warbling of an angel.  It was from Brazil, my host explained, and by a composer with a Spanish name, Villa-Lobos, who had infused the mournful melodies and rhythms of his land with the counterpoint of Bach, I learned.  The wordless song we had heard was, the professor said, from a long symphony entitled bachianas brasileiras.

The music took us, as we sat together at his table, very far from the hard, mineral world of Spain where everything was sharply divided up and unforgiving.  As I walked back to the Judería my steps seemed softer and lighter, as if I were an Amazonian Indian softly stalking a negress through the undergrowth. A new seed had taken root in my fertile imagination, but I had no way then of knowing that it would soon embrace me with its lianas and leaves.

Back in the angular, unambiguous reality of my friend’s home, which I had not yet realized was a very respectable boarding house, I ate my last and now completely silent supper with the mysterious “other guest”.  In the morning I packed my satchel and told the maid I wished to bid the señora farewell.  But to my surprise she brought me instead an elegantly penned bill.

I was horrified, especially since, if I had known I was going to pay, I would never have stayed in a place with the prices I was being charged, not to mention the fact that I would have eaten in more cheerful circumstances outside. I asked to speak to the lady personally and was led to a room upstairs where she was sitting. 

I told her with wounded indignation that I had been invited by her son to stay in his family home and that no mention had been made of paying.  She looked stricken, as they say, and muttered that she would ask him about it as soon as he returned.  At that, I stiffly said “thank you very much for everything” and headed for the door. 

I often wondered if José really meant me to be his guest or if his mother simply decided to ignore the invitation and charge. It would certainly have been against the law of Spanish hospitality if she had. 

At the same time, inviting me to stay in his home was one thing and in his boarding house another, especially when we had just met in a bar.  And what if I had simply failed to understand that he was drumming up a litte trade for his family’s not very profitable pensión?  Since I never ran into him again, I don’t suppose I shall ever know.

But I was certain of one thing, the delight with which my fellow guest must have greeted the news, when the señora told him at lunchtime how she had been misused by the wily foreigner.  “¡Desgraciado!” – the scoundrel - he must have chortled, as he filled his plate with soup.

 

xxx