Page 40 of The Moon Sister
‘I was worried about you after yesterday, so I came to check you were okay.’
‘No need to worry, girl. Yesterday the best time I did have in years.’
‘Chilly, this Sacromonte place, the caves . . . is that where you were born too?’
‘No, I’m a Catalan, born on the beach in Barcelona, under a wagon.’
‘So how come you know about Sacromonte?’
‘My great-grandmother was born there. She was a powerfulbruja. Cousins, aunties, uncles . . . many family were from there.’
‘What’s abruja?’
‘A wise woman, someone who see things. Micaela, she deliver your grandmother into the world. She was one who tell me you would come. And that I would send you home. I was itty-bitty boy, an’ I did play guitar for your grandmother. She become very famous.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Dancing, of course! Flamenco!’ Chilly put his hands together and beat out a rhythm. ‘It be in our blood.’ He picked up his pipe and relit it. ‘We were in Sacromonte at the great festival held at the Alhambra. She a kid like me.’ Chilly chuckled in delight. ‘I think after eighty-five years of waitin’, Micaela make mistake, that you would not come, but here you be.’
‘How do you know itis. . . me?’
‘Even if your papá not leave you letter, I would know.’
‘How?’
‘Ha ha ha!’ Chilly clapped his hands together, then slammed his fist down on the side of his chair. He reminded me of Rumpelstiltskin, and if he was upright I was sure that he would be doing a strange dance and chanting around a cooking pot.
‘What?’
‘You have her eyes, her grace, though you be pretty! She was ugly, until she dance. Then she beautiful.’ He pointed to the old brass bed. ‘Underneath, please. You get the tin and I be showing you your grandmother.’
I stood up to do as he asked, wondering at the ridiculousness of being in an icy Scottish wilderness with a crazy ancient gypsy, who was telling me that my arrival here had already been foretold. I knelt down and drew out a rusting shortbread tin.
‘I show you.’
I placed the tin on his lap and his arthritic fingers struggled to open it. When he did, black and white photos spilled onto his knees and the floor. I picked up the ones that had fallen and handed them to him.
‘Now, this be me. I did play at La Estampa in Barcelona . . . I was handsome,sí?’
I studied the black and white photo and saw a Chilly of perhaps seventy years ago; dark-haired and lithe-limbed beneath the traditional ruffled shirt, his guitar clutched to his chest. His eyes were on a woman who stood in front of him, arms held above her head, wearing a flamenco gown and a large flower in her gleaming hair.
‘Goodness, she’s beautiful. Is that my grandmother?’
‘No, it was my wife, Rosalba. Yes, she wasmuy linda. . . so beautiful. We married at twenty-one . . . the other half of my heart.’ Chilly clutched his chest.
‘Where is she now?’
Chilly’s expression darkened and he looked down. ‘She gone. Lost in Civil War. Bad time, Hotchiwitchi. The devil entered hearts and minds of our countrymen.’
‘Chilly, I am so sorry.’
‘It’s life,’ he whispered, as he caressed the face of his poor wife with his filthy thumb. ‘She do speak to me still, but her voice is fainter because she be travelling further away.’
‘Was that why you left Spain? I mean, after you lost your family?’
‘Sí. Nothing left there for me, so I did move on, best leave the past behind.’
‘And ended up here?’
