Cante hondo [1]
It’s five hours to Madrid, to Barcelona—four. I didn’t know where I wanted to go: I dreamt of flying away, just like that. Here to there. Choose the second spot my finger lands on the world map. Imagining this could be heaven. Where no one says, “You should…” or “Sir, you have to…”
“Yes, I’ll pay,” – to the girl in the thin sweater.
I often book my tours with her: she’s unassuming, doesn’t wear a bra—it’s nice looking at a chest like that. She probably realizes it. Do I want her? Probably not.
I’ll turn off my phone. Open up Something with Pictures (they put it in the seat-back pocket each time) and, having flipped through it dismissively, set it aside. Maybe I’ll skim through the safety instructions, fasten my seat belt. I’ll take a swig from my bottle of Napoleon, the one I bought in Duty Free. Alone.
Alone. Alone at last. But!
I turned back to the window and, not paying attention to the chatter of the poorly-disguised lesbian couple next to me (how strange, both beauties), fell asleep.
In the hotel, all as usual: clean, nice enough, standard. A solo trip—that was everything I needed right now.
But….
Which street was it? Where I’d seen her? The first two days I’d made my way through almost the whole city, on the third the muscles in my legs were buzzing: when you go on wheels…. It was all just so uninteresting, like buying the same old souvenirs: a “Russian turisto’s” peccadillo. I didn’t buy them: I didn’t have to get anyone anything now, divorced and resigned, amen.
Uninteresting. Again.
The fat neighbor girl, dressed in a gypsy polka-dot dress (the hem just visible), opens the door into our old Moscow apartment on Chistoprudny Boulevard. First her nose appears, then her plump arm, and only after a minute or so does her whole body appear in the hallway. A fat girl wearing high-heeled shoes (my mother’s new shoes!)—they beat an otherworldly rhythm: the beat of heel and sole on the floor creates the illusion of a drum line. Soon I notice a whole row of drummers filing around the fat girl: all of them—Lilliputians—small, old, ugly. I’m starting to get scared, but the fat girl dances for me alone—for the frail little kid hiding behind a curtain: don’t look away.
Once again I woke from this haunting with sleep’s manic punctuality: of course, of course, three in the morning. At last the fat bailaora has danced away!
The fat girl came for me, and I went with her, more to spite myself (“I’m not ashamed, I don’t mind that she looks like this!”) than from pity.
When we played “doctor” for the first time, I was amazed by the amount of fat on her body, touched her folds with interest. The fat girl giggled and touched me there, there, below my belly button.
We were about six. We still believed in the fable about the evil stork coming and tossing human cubs into strangers’ homes.
We went to different schools, but we saw each other often, never mind how much we (the bottom of the food chain) were made fun of by the kids in the courtyard who were scared, more than anything in the world, of not fitting in: “He likes the fat girl!” But for some reason it didn’t bother me: my neighbor was really cool, what did it matter if she weighed twice as much as the “average student”?
The rest of the food chain didn’t get it, just laughed.
Then my parents got divorced and moved away from the apartment on the boulevard, the massive apartment filled with my grandfather’s antiques on the boulevard. I sobbed with hatred for the new neighborhood and the new boring soulless furniture that stank of paste. Our welcoming party who came “so we can introduce ourselves like neighbors, like people” was a lady who talked too much with gold teeth and orange dye in what some people might refer to as hair, who looked at my father carnivorously and asked for “fifty kopecks by next Tuesday.” We didn’t open the door after that.
So, I stayed with my father. “Never get married,” he said fifteen years later: those were his last words. It was snowing, and I felt nothing, absolutely nothing, except his gentle touch.
When I was sixteen I fell in love with a classmate and told her about the fat girl. I remember: heavy drops that never fell from her gray-blue eyes. For some reason, hands holding a postcard from Amsterdam from my mother: “My little big boy!”
The fat neighbor girl, dressed in a gypsy polka-dot dress (the hem just visible), opens the door into our old Moscow apartment on Chistoprudny Boulevard. First her nose appears, then her plump arm, and only after a minute or so does her whole body appear in the hallway. A fat girl wearing high-heeled shoes (my mother’s new shoes!)—they beat an otherworldly rhythm: the beat of heel and sole on the floor creates the illusion of a drum line. Soon I notice a whole row of drummers filing around the fat girl: all of them—Lilliputians—small, old, ugly. I’m starting to get scared, but the fat girl dances for me alone—for the skinny little kid hiding behind a curtain: you can’t look away.
In the courtyard they called her Karlsson, like the fat flying man from Astrid Lindgren’s stories, not because of her weight, but her grace.
Uninteresting again.
But, damn it, there were still a few days. And the bailaora was still in the café!
She was still getting ready, she always was just like that, on the outskirts…. The music—sultry, languid—carried: she started slowly (a graceful turn of the head), then a little faster (her hands flew up), and now, it seems, yes, she’ll start, bring the fire, but not quite: again she lurked in the agonizing bliss of her hand-fans, and it all started again—and everything lingered endlessly, relentlessly, hopelessly long…. Then it seemed as though the bailaora had stopped in place, barely rustling her skirts, but then she’d already swung, already swiveled her hips, and gone…gone…straight at me, and gone!
I stopped, astonished, not believing my eyes: it was her, her, the fat girl from the boulevard—I couldn’t be wrong!
…but her glowing skin… The fat girl from the boulevard! …but her body… The fat girl, it was my fat girl!
I tried to sneak to see her afterwards, but two guards blocked my way: it hardly made sense to try and fight them.
It’s five hours to Madrid, to Barcelona—four. I didn’t know where I wanted to go: I dreamt of flying away, just like that. Here to there. Choose the second spot my finger lands on the world map. Imagining this could be heaven. Where no one says, “You should…” or “Sir, you have to…”
Yet, the skirt soars, for a moment revealing slender legs: Karlsson, dancing the flamenco.
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[1] The oldest and “cleanest” layer of flamenco music and poetry.