ALABAZAM
Take one teaspoonful of Angostura bitters and half a pony of orange Curacao. Add to it one teaspoonful of white sugar and one teaspoonful of lemon juice. Then pour in half a wine glass of brandy. Shake up well and strain in a claret glass. Brief, dark and bitter.
We once had a conjurer visit the inn during the feria.
He was a shabby-looking man with drooping moustaches and a threadbare velvet cloak.
I wasn’t very impressed; no one was, until we saw his trick.
He took a duck from a cage, and wrenched its head clean from its neck.
The girls shrieked to see it, and flinched as he paraded around the courtyard, the body in one hand, the little feathered head in the other.
Then, he put his hands beneath a red silk handkerchief, said a word and whisk!
the duck was back, whole and quacking and pedalling its legs in protest.
That’s how I felt as I stood in the doorway, looking at the Senor as the life flowed out of him.
I kept expecting someone to say a word and wave a cloth, for him to stop his empty gulping, open his bloodstained mouth and grin.
But no one said anything. Neither of us moved until the soft, wet gasping sounds finally ceased.
Then, Elena staggered. The broken bottle fell from her hand, the bowl of ice from mine as I stepped forward to catch her.
‘I didn’t,’ she gasped, clinging to my apron, her eyes bulging and frantic. ‘I didn’t …’
She looked down at the Senor, his blank eyes fixed upon the ceiling. ‘Ramón!’ she screamed and dropped to her knees beside him.
She was gripping his face, trying to lift his head, but he was gone, the wound at his neck bleeding sluggishly. That’s when I heard footsteps on the stairs, and the echo of voices. I turned to meet Morales’ gaze.
I didn’t know that a life could change so drastically in the space between one heartbeat and another.
For one trembling breath everything hung suspended, like alcohol in water: Elena holding the Senor’s head, me with blood on my apron, the dropped ice, the broken bottle.
Morales’ eyes flicked to her daughter, before settling on me.
‘Murder,’ she said softly.
I started to cry out, to explain, but my voice was lost in hers as she shouted the word.
The doorway behind her was filling with the reddened, sweating faces of the Senor’s friends, on their way to the parlour.
I saw their redness curdle, their mouths fall open, and still I stood paralysed.
Then Elena looked up. Her pretty face was tear-streaked, her fingers slippery with blood as she pointed at me.
It was enough. The world descended into hands grabbing, clawing, wrenching my arms behind my back as Morales shouted murder. I struggled and threw myself sideways, trying to see Elena. We locked eyes and I knew, in that moment, what she and her mother had agreed, without words.
I screamed at her, spittle flying from my mouth as I called her a lying bitch.
It didn’t help my cause. One of the gentlemen hit me with his fist, a blow that folded me over in shock, made my eyes flood.
A few drops of blood splattered from my nose on to my smock as they hauled me towards the stairs.
Morales was calling for help, calling for someone to fetch the guardia, to find Capitán Davila and tell him there had been a murder at the inn, tell him to bring men and a car to arrest the murderess.
Her voice slapped me into wakefulness. Capitán Davila – who came to the inn every month to inspect the premises and claim his ‘commission’. Capitán Davila who had known Morales for years, who at her word would throw me into a cell and shrug and call it a night’s work.
‘Elena,’ I choked, as they pulled me down the stairs. ‘It was her, he promised to take her away from here, he promised and she found out the lie—’
One of the gentlemen beside me faltered and glanced at the others. I recognized him from the night in the parlour. He was the one who had offered the Turkish Delight. ‘Please!’ I begged him. ‘Please, you know it’s true! Tell them!’
He flinched away, and I saw something in his eyes, a shred of belief. The Senor must have bragged of his nights with Elena, must have laughed over how he could make her do anything, for a handful of promises.
But the man was shaking his head, his grip weak. ‘I can’t have my name in this,’ he said breathlessly, ‘if my customers discovered, my wife—’
‘Does she know our names?’ Another man was interrupting, shaking me. ‘What if she talks?’
He was addressing Morales, who stood at the foot of the stairs. She looked at me, her eyes hard.
‘If she talks, who will listen?’
My strength faded when she said that. She was right. No one would listen. Bad blood, they would say, rotten whore, and they would be believed. The girls would be silent. Antonio the groom would be silent. Only Morales would speak out, to send me to be garrotted for murder in Elena’s place.
The thought made my head cloud, and I half fainted. They lifted me underneath each arm. My feet dragged uselessly, my hands brushing at my apron.
That was when I felt the weight of the knife.
We’d reached the bottom of the stairs. Through burning eyes, I could see the courtyard to my left, with its press of guests and tables. To my right, the open gate and the street, crowded with people, all drinking, shouting, making their way towards the river.
One chance.
I collapsed again with as much force as I could.
This time I made it to the floor, slipping from the grip of one of the men.
It was the one with the blinking eyes, the one who might have spoken for me.
Doubled over, I managed to work my hand into the apron’s pocket before he renewed his grip beneath my armpit and hauled me to my feet.
I didn’t wait, I didn’t even breathe. I flailed out with the knife, stabbing at him. He let me go and I whirled, slashing at the other man. Blood spurted, a voice yelled in pain and for a split second, no one held me.
I threw myself towards the gate. Someone made a grab for my legs, and had I been wearing a skirt rather than Ifrahim’s old work trousers they would have brought me down.
But their fingers slipped from the fabric, and whoever it was hit the ground.
I darted into the street, barging my way through the crowd.
There were shouts behind me and booted feet and Morales’ yelling for someone to stop me, but there were horns too, and tambourines and bells and I ran like a wild thing from the Plaza del Potro.
Get to the river. That was my only thought: the river where it was dark and where there were tents teeming with people.
As I reached the far side of the square, I glanced back and saw one of the gentlemen staring through the crowd, conspicuous in his fine, black jacket.
I ducked down, pulled off the stained apron and bundled it in my arms, wiping the blood from my nose.
Keeping my head down, I slipped into a large group of people who were jostling, hootingly drunk, towards the river, and vanished.
At least, that is what the newspapers said. According to them I disappeared into thin air, evading capture by calling upon a network of gitano thieves and bandits, who smuggled me past the tireless guardia.
They said other things: that Senor Ramón Vélez del Olmo was a great man, a philanthropist who had donated thousands to the Church and its reformatory.
They said that I had tried to extort money from him, and had become enraged when he refused.
They said he had only been at the inn to seek out a friend, in order to dissuade him from sinning.
About Elena, they said nothing. Why should they?
Men just like the Senor ran the newspapers, and they all had Elenas of their own.
So, Senor Vélez del Olmo was a great man, and I was the venal whore who murdered him.
That was the story they told themselves at their card tables and racing parties.
The truth is always less glamorous.
The truth is that I passed the hours following the Senor’s murder in terror, trying to lose myself in amongst the feria.
I had no one, nothing but a knife and the clothes I stood up in – old trousers and a blouse and stained apron – unsuited to the world.
My nose throbbed like the devil. When I explored it with my fingers, it felt hot and swollen but thankfully unbroken.
Behind some of the tents were barrels of water for the mules where I rinsed the dried blood from my face.
In the light of the fireworks, I saw myself reflected; hair wild and straggling from the scarf, nose swollen, face gaunt with shock.
By the time the second shower of light came, I had pulled the scarf from my hair and wet it so that it lay neater, I had turned the apron back to front and tied it around my waist, so that it looked almost like a skirt.
While people were still distracted by the lights, I stole into the back of a tent and swiped an embroidered shawl that had been abandoned on a chair.
I crept through the people clutching drinks, staring upwards, their eyes and teeth reflecting red and orange.
I sought out the most boisterous crowds, at the end of the river where the rich folk did not go.
I tried to blend in by pasting a smile on to my face and clapping my hands to the music like a toy monkey.
But all the while, my mind was racing. I had to get out of Córdoba, I thought as I grinned and clapped, I had to get out before morning.
It seemed impossible. I had never left the city before.
My only knowledge of the world came from Ifrahim’s stories, of French jails and Portuguese shipyards, English enclaves and African souks, and they were just that: stories.
Even if I did know where to go, I had no money for a bus or train ticket, no papers, no proper clothes even.
Only the knife.