There was a very good reason that I was in Spain. I was intrigued by the history and culture of it, in particular I was intrigued by the music and dance, the flamenco, and that is why I had avoided the more popular tourist regions of Cadiz and Malaga in favour of Cordoba.
I had driven from village to village seeking the grassroots flamenco; sure I could have sat in a concert hall and watched the professional flamenco artistes strutting their stuff, but that was not what I came to find.
I parked my battered Citroen in front of a small hotel and walked inside. The entrance was cool despite the late afternoon sun lighting my passage inside. Off to one side was a large room with tables and chairs set around the edges leaving a cleared area in the centre. This looked promising.
There was a bell on the reception desk and a woman in her forties (or thereabouts) responded to my ring. "Senor?"
"Do you speak English?"
She turned her head toward the door through which she had just emerged and called, "Estralita." A young woman emerged from the back room. The older woman spoke rapidly in Spanish and I thought I heard the word 'Inglesias' or something like it, so I assumed she was being told that I spoke only English.
"Can I help you Senor" She would have been in her twenties of medium height, she had a slim waist that emphasised her full hips and breasts that pushed against her low cut bodice. Her tanned complexion, black hair pulled from her face and large brown eyes confirmed her Spanishness. Her origins could have been Moorish or Gypsy, who knows, but it was definitely Spanish and Andalusian.
"Yes, I would like a room for two, maybe three days, if that is possible."
"Certainly Senor." She pushed a large register towards me and I filled in my details. She took a key from a drawer, "Follow me." She led me through the door and up a flight of stairs, down a short corridor to a room at the rear of building. "This is your room, the bathroom is opposite." She showed me into my room and handed me my key.
"Thank you. What time does the dining room open?"
"It opens for meals at seven and there is music beginning at ten."
I got my bag from the car and unpacked my toiletries before having a quick shower to remove the grime of the days travel along dusty roads with the windows open to compensate for the non-existent air-conditioning, known back home in Australia as 'four by eighty air-conditioning', four windows open and eighty klicks (Kilometres per hour) down the road.
I had eaten my meal and was sipping a red wine when I heard the music start. It wasn't what we have come to associate with flamenco, instead it was a single unaccompanied voice and the sound of it said it all. A single small spot light lit up the face of the older woman I had met earlier as she sang, the expression on her face enhancing the Sephardic song that told of the pain and suffering endured by her ancestors. I didn't have to understand the lyrics as the emotions carried me back to the origins of flamenco. I had found what I was searching for.
The room was almost packed out by now and my table was against the far wall. The young lady, Estralita, came over and I ordered another glass of red wine.
A smattering of applause followed the song and she left the cleared area to be replaced by a man with a guitar. He wore black from his boots to his hat, and he held the guitar differently to the way rock musicians back home did, they held their guitars down low with the fret-board horizontal like a huge phallic symbol, while he held his fret-board almost vertical the phallus erect and ready, and the sound box held against his chest.
His fingers caressed the strings, the notes a signal for a man and a woman to emerge from the shadows and take centre stage. He too was dressed in black from his high heeled boots to his high waisted trousers, black shirt and hat. She on the other hand wore a flame-red full-skirted floor-length dress, black shoes peeping from under her skirt. Her black hair was pulled back severely and tied in a bun at the back of her head. Like the man she had a slim waist, her breasts pressed against the material of her bodice and her hips had been squeezed into the dress.
The dancers faced each other, their backs arched, hips thrust forward and their hands above their heads. The guitar burst into life again and the man began to stamp his feet and clap his hands in a twelve beat rhythm while the woman accompanied this with her own feet and the castanets she held in her hands. The man made lunging movements with his feet before retreating while the woman swayed back and forth at first, her back arched thrusting her hips forward and then she swayed back so that the man, and all those seated behind him had a clear view of her magnificent breasts. The audience were rapt with this performance and many of them provided their own accompaniment, either clapping their hands or rapping the table with their knuckles.
She slowly, with stamping feet turned around, her right hand lifting the skirt of her dress revealing a shapely leg, an intake of breath from the men in the crowd, she held their attention in the palm of her hand.
The room was so filled with the noise that reverberated around it that it was impossible not to get caught up in the mood.
I noticed Estralita standing in the doorway looking around the room. Seeing that the chair at my table was the only one not taken she came and sat next to me. "You like the music?"
"Yes, very much so, it tells so much of the history of this region."
"You know of our history?"
"Some of it, but I just had to come here and experience it. Do you dance?"
"Yes, but I am not as good as my sister is. I used to dance but my father decided that Margarita is better, so she dances, with my husband. "
"That must hurt, seeing the two of them together like this." I regretted saying it as soon as the words had left my mouth, her head bowed and tears dropped onto the table. "I'm sorry, that was insensitive of me." I reached over and placed my hand on hers. Her tear wet eyes reflected the pain that she felt, and I had the feeling that there was more to her pain than just seeing her husband and sister dancing together. She made no attempt to remove her hand from beneath mine for several minutes.
"She is good, your sister, but there is something almost mechanical about the way that she dances."
"This is true, she is very good with her technique but she has no heart. The true flamenco feels the rhythm inside, she has no need to count the beat. My sister she counts the beat, and that is why she looks so good."
"If that is so, why does your father allow her to dance instead of you?"
"Because that is what the patrons want to see, perfection, and with them, that is what they get."
"I wish that I had the talent to be able to dance."
"How do you know that you don't?"
"Believe me I don't. I have the wrong stature for a start, I am too wide and my waist is too large, I was born with two left feet, I cannot hold a tune to save myself, and I'm tone deaf and I have dyslexic fingers so I cannot play any instruments. I'm afraid that all I can do is watch, listen and enjoy."
"If you feel the music, love the music, how do you know that you can't dance, have you tried it?"
"No. When I was at school the mis-guided teachers thought that we should learn to dance as part of our PE lessons. I was never any good at it."
"But the dances they taught, they were ballroom dances, yes?"
"Yes."
"That was your problem. They are so formal, the steps are planned with precision and you must keep time with the music. I have seen this style of dance and the couples don't even look at each other and the smile, the smile is so false. Even this is not true flamenco." She said, nodding towards the dancers.
"If this isn't the true flamenco, what is?" I asked, and here I was thinking that I had found what I had been looking for this past month.
"Tomorrow, at siesta time I will come for you, I will teach you something of the flamenco and when you are good enough I will show the real flamenco. You will dance with me."
I couldn't believe this, a beautiful young woman who I had only just met, not only telling that she would teach me the flamenco, but inviting me to dance with her. Maybe dreams do come true after all.
We sat and watched her sister and husband dip and swirl, clap and stamp their way through another fifteen minutes of dance and I couldn't help but notice that, whenever they faced each other, the expression on their faces told of something more than a professional relationship. I glanced at Estralita and saw that she too had noticed this and I understood her pain, I felt her pain.
"She is a whore, my sister. She knows what the man wants and gives it to him, but, like the whore, her heart is not in this. The whore performs a sex act for money, my sister performs a dance for fame and recognition and, like the whore, she has no love." She got up from her chair and hurried off.
I rose late in the morning and spent some time walking around the village, hiding my eyes from the sun and hoping that the throbbing in my head from the few too many red wines last night would eventually go away. The jumble of buildings were all of similar construction, their whitewashed walls reflecting the sun and all had terra cotta tiled roofs. They were set close to the narrow streets and there was little room for cars and pedestrians at the same time.
Half way down the street a small café had two tables set up along the narrow footpath so I sat at one and ordered a sangria. As I waited for it to arrive I took several pictures with my little digital camera, I had wanted one that looked like a real camera, not a pregnant credit card, but space restrictions in my luggage forced the compromise. I had a notebook open writing my observations of what I saw when my drink arrived, the waiter giving me a curious look as if I was from another planet.
After a light meal I retired to my room to change out my sweaty clothes. I had just pulled on fresh shorts when there was a knock on the door and Estralita slipped inside. She looked beautiful in her long skirt and tight fitting blouse, and as yesterday, her hair pulled back and tied behind her neck. I caught her glance at my shorts and I hoped that he, my cock, was tucked away out of sight. On second thoughts I hoped that he was hanging out. I looked down and saw that he was well hidden, damn! I finished dressing and she took my hand and led me out of the hotel and down the road to a large house. Inside were several girls of varying ages, all looking like miniature flamenco dancers. They ran to Estralita and hugged her before standing back expectantly, all with curious expressions on their small faces.
Estralita spoke to them for several minutes, explaining to them in Spanish, what else, that I was Senor Andrew Cameron, who had come all the way from Australia to learn more about flamenco dance and maybe even learn how to dance flamenco. She also explained that I would have problems because I had two left feet. This brought an astonished look on the girls' faces until they glanced down and saw that my feet were quite normal in the left and right configuration.
She clapped her hands to gain their attention and then began to dance. The girls looked on with rapt expressions on their faces as she moved, her eyes closed and her feet tapping out the twelve beat cycle; tap, tap, stomp, tap, tap, stomp, tap, stomp, tap, stomp, tap, stomp, tap, tap, stomp, tap, tap, stomp, tap, stomp, tap, stomp, tap, stomp. As this cycle was repeated I noticed that there were subtle changes in her dance and I understood what she was talking about, she wasn't counting the beat, instead she was being driven by the beat.
