The Spanish Bow by Andromeda Romano-Lax Read Free Book Online

response to my plea.
    The new century pulsed with a mania for novelty and precocity. Young performers from England, Austria, and Russia visited Spain. A girl from America, younger than me, was performing virtuosic works on the cello—
my cello,
I couldn't help thinking. None of these performers came to our village. I read about them in the newspapers and at the train station, where the posters announced
Madrid—Sevilla—Granada—Córdoba—Valencia—Barcelona.
Never Campo Seco.
    Whenever I passed Eduardo Rivera, he crossed to the other side of the street or lifted his chin away from me. I recognized the terrible loneliness in his droopy expression. I wanted to shout, "I feel it, too!"
    "Barcelona is far?" I'd pester my mother.
    "Too far."
    She said the same thing about the beach that we no longer visited together. "I can't carry you if you get tired on the way back," she told me. "You're too big for that now."
    "I won't get tired. I promise." I tried not to notice her eyes dropping to my left leg.
    "Don't make promises you can't keep."
    "But I
do
promise." Frustration burned in my stomach. I knew my older brothers and sister would get to go. I wanted to run with them, even fall or tire, without consequence, and without worrying that I had gravely inconvenienced or saddened my mother.
    "Here's a better idea," she said. "Let's rest at home today. When Carlito naps, I'll read to you from
Don Quixote.
"
    And maybe because that book's adventures came to seem like a pale substitute for the physical adventures I wanted to have, I never cared for Cervantes. She read me those stories, I began to suspect, not as an inspiration to dream, but as a caution against dreaming. "How silly—and how terrible," she'd say about the deranged protagonist, whose self-delusion earned him every kind of sadistic torment, reminding me that beneath a veneer of humor, the world was actually cruel.

    I asked Mamá one day, "My bow—it really is a cello bow, isn't it?"
    She was seated at the dining table sewing a dress for Luisa, her hands struggling to align two pieces of cloth, her mouth clamped over a threaded needle. Tía, a more expert seamstress, watched from a corner, shaking her head at Mamá's mistakes.
    "How did Papá know I'd like the cello more than the violin?"
    My mother mumbled something, her mouth still full of thread, but I couldn't make it out. I tried again, and this time she didn't answer at all.
    But Tía had no stomach for a child's insolent questions. She lashed out, saying what my mother had never considered, or never wanted to admit: "Your father knew about your lame leg,
entiendes?
He figured you could sit and play for your dinner, at the very least. Even a beggar needs a gimmick."
    My mother separated the pieces of cloth in her hands and removed the needle from her mouth. She seemed to be choosing her words carefully, but I was faster: "I don't care. Even if I had good legs—"
    She interrupted me. "You'll never be a beggar—don't worry about that. We'll find you something to do for work."
    "I don't care about a job," I started to say, but my mother's soft look hardened, stopping me.
    "No person can have dignity without work. I've told you before. Music is fine, but it's not work."
    "You said it was no different than making shoes or building bridges. So it is work."
    "Things change, Feliu. Everything changes. When things are good, there is time and money for music. When things are not good—
hostia!
" She threw down the dress she had been sewing, wagging the finger she had pricked, and continued to swear, using words I'd never heard come from her mouth. Her face reddened as she held her breath, desperately trying to restrain herself, but a few more words leaked out. "Damn you" were two of them. The third wasn't so easy to hear.
    As Mamá rested in her dark bedroom with a headache, I'd thought about what she'd cursed—from the Communion wafer to a dozen other holy objects we weren't supposed to mention in anger. But of