“The Dancer’s Body at Rest”
by Katherine Quevedo
I nearly shut the door on the woman as soon as she mentioned flamenco. For years I’d endured dancers and musicians trying to drum up an act to amuse the tourists and other impressible parties who wouldn’t know the true art form if it bit them on the arm. Being a female singer, I was rare enough to attract anyone whose act flouted the very rules that made flamenco great. I broke no rules being a singer, I just wasn’t as common as the men, yet these avant-garde performers assumed I’d embrace their cheap, flashy spectacles.
This woman, though, looked like the real thing. Her hard face scrutinized me, and she wore a ratty crimson shawl so worn through, it lay across her shoulders like cobwebs on a forgotten, locked-away statue. But she was anything but stone; she looked built for movement. Even now, standing in front of me with arms folded as though to contain herself, she swayed softly from foot to foot.
I let her in.
“Thank you, señora,” she said with a hint of reluctance at the formality.
“Please, call me Marisol.”
She eyed the chairs in my living room, apparently unanxious to sit.
I did not invite her to. “And you are?”
“You don’t remember me?”
I squinted at her.
“Surely you were in the audience,” she said. “It was in your hometown.”
Of course! The young Gitana dancer whose soleá had spurred me, cheering, to my feet—until she’d collapsed. Then the singer and guitarist had rushed to her as she convulsed on the ground, shrieking as if in terrible pain. They’d thrown a coat over her and whisked her off to one of their folkloric healers. I’d never seen her again. Until now. Two decades had etched the beginnings of wrinkles into her face and silvered a bit of her hair, just like mine, but her eyes smoldered as though eternally coveting the stage, defiant no matter how relaxed a pose she attempted. I wanted to praise her artistry, thank her for moving me so deeply those many years ago. But I dared not bring up that abrupt end to her performance and risk reopening any wounds—perhaps literally.
“Concha,” she said, tapping her heart. She focused on my front door. “Are you in need of good luck?”
I glanced at the horseshoe nailed above the doorframe. “My grandfather always advised hanging one,” I explained. I kept it up more in his honor than for the superstition. “He was a Gitano.”
Concha’s eyes widened. “If it weren’t for your reputation among other singers, I would say you hide your heritage well.”
I didn’t dare say I used to hide it out of shame. That, and to avoid questions from the full-blooded on either side. Now, what I wouldn’t give to hear my grandfather’s voice one more time teaching me to sing, his wailing tenor, like a sob, sticking me to the ceramic patio tiles until the very oranges on the trees around us swooned, desperate to plunge from their branches in sorrow!
Concha stared at my door charm. Her only ornamentation (besides the shabby red shawl, if that counted) was a bejeweled hair comb in her bun. She tightened the shawl around her shoulders.
I fetched two glasses from a nearby cabinet. “So what brings you here?” I asked, pouring us lemonade from a pitcher.
“An audition.” She refused the drink, then paced as she spoke. “Every time I dance, it is an audition, but not for me. I am testing the musicians, always looking for a rare type of talent.” Her eyes glinted at me. “I had to come find you when I heard you are a singer.”
“Used to be,” I said.
She clucked her tongue. “You either are a singer or are not. Without you,” she said, waving her hand so I knew she meant singers in general, “we would not have expanded with dancing, guitar, clapping. The voice is the heart of it all.” At least she didn’t treat me as accompaniment, unlike the others who came knocking on my door. “And speaking of the heart…” She held still for once and looked at me full-on. “I have auditioned many male singers, but I don’t come across many female ones.”
Ah, here it was. I swirled my glass and watched the pulp settle. Time to turn down yet another proposal. Over the years, with the influx of foreigners hungry for flashy acts, and a glut of hobbyists all too eager to cater to them, I’d lost my taste for even the most spontaneous and visceral performances. I couldn’t bear to watch, much less participate.
I opened my mouth, but she cut me off.
“Can you conjure duende, Marisol?”
I choked on the dismissal forming in my throat. I may not have believed in the horseshoe nor the bread, but I believed in duende, the demon within, that primal connection to all the agony and ecstasy ever felt by any other human, those alive now or long before us. People had asked me plenty of times if I’d experienced it, but conjuring it? How does one begin to answer such a question?
She saw my hesitation and resumed pacing. “Perhaps you’ve never had the right accompaniment before.”
I swallowed and found my voice. “And I suppose you can provide this accompaniment?”
“If you pass my audition, I guarantee we can conjure it in an entire audience.”
“How?”
Her eyes gleamed like mirror shards as she walked. “You will find out in time, if you pass.”
Eliciting such empathy and passion in spectators intrigued me. I’d seen men and women’s eyes brim with tears after my solos, I’d seen them clutch hands to their hearts. But how could I know whether they were simply moved, or whether I’d achieved that rare feat of truly transporting them, of rousing duende?
“You will join us, won’t you,” she said sharply—a statement, not a question. Her gaze, though, demanded an answer.
“Yes,” I blurted, then rushed the glass to my lips to get the taste of agreement out of my mouth. Flamenco, it seemed, was not through with me.
The next day, just after siesta, I arrived at the tavern on the outskirts of the city where we’d agreed to rehearse. A row of ripe orange trees lined the entrance. Pigeons bustled along the narrow street. My shoes clopped across the cobblestones far too loudly as I approached the studded door. I glanced around, half expecting a familiar face to pop up and interrogate me about dabbling in flamenco again. I held the doorknob a few seconds longer than necessary to steady my hand. With a deep breath, I slipped inside.
Surly faces studied their drinks in the dim light. The air hung heavy with aromas of meat and olives—appetizing under other circumstances, but today, suffocating. I tried to swallow, but my throat resisted. Not even rare stage fright could tighten me this badly. So much for having reached peace with my grandfather’s heritage; now I worried about being marked an impostor. What good was a singer who could not sing?
The rear door opened. Concha peered through, spotted me, and beckoned. Her red and white dress tapered around her legs before flaring in a floor-length train, and she wore the same comb in her hair and the crimson shawl now on her hips. I followed her through a hallway with stained, peeling wallpaper, past the kitchen entrance, out to a courtyard. The balconies of adjacent buildings overlooked a fountain with deer sculpted around its circumference. The water lay silent and still in its base, waiting for my voice to ripple it. A wide wooden board served as a makeshift stage. In front of the nearest doe, two guitarists sat next to an empty stool. Concha introduced them as Gonzalo and Rodrigo.
“It’s a pleasure, Marisol,” Gonzalo said, leaning over his instrument and shaking my hand. His jowly, bearded face smiled. Rodrigo, a gaunt man with drowsy eyes, nodded and gestured to the vacant seat. Welcoming as those two seemed, I felt like Concha yesterday, hesitant to sit for the conformity and finality it implied.
“Stand if you must,” she said. “Let’s begin.”
“Won’t we disturb the neighbors?”
“Not at this hour.”
Out of excuses, I sat. The other three watched me expectantly, awaiting a solo. I cleared my throat, but still my voice sounded thick and phlegmy as I sang. The lyrics stumbled off my tongue. Tears welled in my eyes for the wrong reasons—embarrassment and disappointment, not the torment of life’s woes to which duende would have connected an audience.
I cut the song short. “I guess I’m a little rusty.”
Concha’s eyes narrowed. “Unacceptable. I need a singer who can hold people spellbound.”
Finally, someone with standards!
Her mouth twisted in a sneer. “I can see why you quit.”
That stung. My talent level had nothing to do with it. Disgust at all the tourists reshaping the art form with their preconceptions, yes. And, admittedly, a sense of inadequacy that had begun rattling in my ribcage whenever full-blooded Gitanos watched me (like now), yes. Lack of skill, no.
“You have no ide—” I began.
She cut me off. “I overestimated you.” Her already hard features tightened in a scowl. “You’re unreliable.” She made it sound like the ultimate insult. “I’m afraid your audition is over.”
I leapt to my feet with a glare, throat still too tense to make it worth retorting. My cheeks burned as I stormed back through the hallway, back through the heavy, salty scent of ham in the dingy bar. I’d finally found someone who thirsted for the same artistic purity as me, and she judged me unworthy!
Outside the tavern, I paused for a deep breath. My gaze fell upon the orange trees. My grandfather had never liked calling it “performing.” Instead, he’d insisted, you must bare yourself through your music, stage or no. A sudden breeze rustled the branches, and the leaves whirred like the cheering of a distant audience.
I missed the sound. I deserved the sound. The tightness in my throat relaxed.
Gonzalo and Rodrigo greeted me with surprised smiles when I rejoined them at the fountain. Concha folded her arms and swayed, determined to look unimpressed.
“I am ready now.” I pointed at her. “But this time, you dance.”
A pleased grin spread across her face as though she’d been craving those words.
Once I sat, she strode to the center of the board and posed with arms outspread like a wingspan, eyes downcast but waiting—waiting. This time, my voice echoed through the courtyard as though my throat hadn’t constricted just minutes ago. As though it hadn’t been years since I’d punctured the silence with beauty. Gonzalo joined in, and Rodrigo clapped and called out a few jaleos once Concha started dancing, then he took up his guitar too.
Concha wasn’t a flashy dancer. I liked that. She reveled in the fine details—a flick of the hand, a swoop of the heel to move the train of her dress—touches that would escape most laypeople’s notice. Only when the music demanded it did she focus solely on larger movements. Her cheeks quivered and our stools trembled as her feet thundered the board. Then she shot back into sophisticated flourishes, delicate but strong, always fitting. She bent the music to her will, not the other way around.
When the song concluded, as she released her final pose, her shoulders jerked and collapsed. She winced.
I leapt from my stool and stepped toward her. “Something the matter?”
She shook her head, still doubled over, her diaphragm racing beneath her tight dress.
I frowned. “Maybe we should take it easy.”
“No.” She hobbled to the fountain’s edge and sucked in her breath as she sat. “I’m fine.”
Gonzalo and Rodrigo raised skeptical eyebrows, then busied themselves putting away their guitars.
“We’re done already?” I asked. “Concha could just sit the next one out.”
Her eyes twinkled. “Hungry for more?”
“I came across town for this, that’s all.”
“Can you sing like that under pressure?”
“Yes. The first time was a fluke.” I hoped I was right.
“Fine.” She pushed herself to her feet and headed toward the door as though nothing had ailed her moments ago. “You passed your audition. We’ll meet here tomorrow.” Before disappearing through the door, she peered back at me and said, “Won’t we.”
Having proved my vocal skills, I would’ve loved to show her “unreliable” by standing her up. I could picture her pacing in front of the fountain, waiting for me to arrive, the board creaking under her heels, the fountain’s water motionless and expectant. But then I remembered the thrill of layering notes and rhythms as part of a group. It had been so long! Our cohesion transcended any solo I could sing unaccompanied, and it introduced a moving, healing work of art into the world.
Perhaps it could even summon duende.
So I joined Concha and the others. My voice grew stronger each time we practiced, back to its old self. Concha continued to electrify our makeshift stage, and Gonzalo and Rodrigo strummed their instruments for longer and longer after our wrap-up time, loath to stop. After our fifth rehearsal, Concha cleared her throat, smoothed her shawl, and announced that she had booked us a performance at Las Rosas de la Fortuna theater on Saturday night.
“Already?” I asked, voice squeaking, hopefully from all the rehearsing and not nerves. I cleared my throat. “That seems hasty, don’t you think?” Much as we meshed here in the courtyard, a live audience was another thing altogether. I turned to Gonzalo and Rodrigo. Their eyes betrayed their excitement, even Rodrigo’s without the usual sleepiness.
Concha glared at me and froze. It was the stillest I’d seen her since we’d met. It looked unnatural. “You doubt my dancing ability?”
“Of course not…”
“Then it must be that you doubt your own ability.”
Something fluttered between my ribs. Unease. Dread, perhaps, as used to grip me under the envious stares of the flamenco practitioners in my hometown. Their jealousy should’ve affirmed my talent, yet it always felt like they found me undeserving. I searched Concha’s eyes for envy, finding only impatience. I shook my head. Anything to get her moving again.
Finally, she swayed. “Good. It’s settled.”
My heart raced. That tourist trap of a theater represented everything I detested in contemporary flamenco. And yet… And yet.
The evening of the performance, I opened my closet and shoved clothes aside. I strained for the last hanger where, if memory served, my one remaining polka-dotted dress had languished all these years. Had I even kept it?
Finally my fingertips brushed the crepe fabric. The dress was a tight squeeze, but stage appropriate nonetheless. I lined my eyes and rouged my lips in front of the mirror, and gradually that familiar singer’s face from so long ago gazed back at me, less a disguise than an old self.
As I entered Las Rosas de la Fortuna, the staff were arranging chairs in curved rows across the marble floor. A scarlet curtain with gold trim covered the stage. Sconces along the side walls emitted a soft, lunar glow. Someone drew the curtain back, revealing a green backdrop behind empty chairs set out for us. I found Concha and the others backstage. She wore her usual dress with a new hip scarf for once, a black one.
“Remember, Marisol,” she said, “do your part, and I will help you conjure duende.”
My heart quickened as though the demon stirred within me.
As show time neared, I peeked out at the audience. Mostly foreigners, from the look of it. Their posture held the usual giddiness of those who deem their surroundings exotic and therefore, by default, exciting—superficially of course. I could sing nonsense words over and over, and they’d call it poetry to their friends back home. A select few sprinkled among the rows looked doggedly bored, ready to be unimpressed by an art form whose intricacies would be wasted on them anyway, even if their feet didn’t throb from extra walking, or their stomachs ache from unwise meal choices, or their bloodshot eyes look glazed from another night away from their own bed. A crowd who’d already made their minds up. Was this what flamenco had been reduced to, a priceless bottle poured into such a shallow glass?
“We used to elevate the sufferer,” I said to Concha. “We used to gather together on a whim and make beauty out of our broken lives. Now we’re going to—” I could hardly say the words. “—put on a show.”
Concha took a quick peek behind the curtain and waved away my concern. “They’re perfect. They may think it’s just a show, but it will be the show of their lives. They’ll never be transported like this again.” She smiled a greedy smile, one unable to share its pleasure. Then her face fell, and she gripped my arm with surprising strength. “I’m counting on you.”
Self-doubt fluttered in my chest like a bat until she released me.
When she’d moved out of earshot, Gonzalo approached me shaking his head. “Sra. Concha is a bit unstable, but what genius isn’t?” He spread his meaty hands helplessly.
I glanced to where she was warming up and glimpsed red fringe peeking out from under her black hip scarf. That same blasted shawl.
“Yes,” I said, “that’s a good word for her.”
He laughed. “Genius, or unstable?”
“Both.”
Minutes later, when the curtain opened, I closed my eyes and pretended the bright stage lights penetrating my eyelids were sunbeams pouring through tree branches. Orange trees. I imagined singing for my grandfather. I beat down the doubt and allowed the rush of collaboration and improvisation to take hold.
Sweat trickled from my temple under the hot lights, although it must’ve been nothing compared to Concha dancing in her heavy costume. I opened my eyes and found her hiding her discomfort well. She spun and stomped, then rolled her wrists with fingers outspread. She snapped her fingers and slapped her thighs. Her long earrings swung, and her comb sparkled like a star. The guitars, the shouts, her thundering feet, all interwove with my voice into a percussive symphony. We wowed the crowd with several fast numbers and soaked up their cheering in between. I couldn’t help but notice how the peals of approval sounded the same from any audience, no matter how familiar with our art.
Before I knew it, we’d reached the final song.
“Duende,” Concha whispered at me through clenched teeth.
The audience stared, rapt, some of them poised for duende judging by the brightness in their eyes. I wanted to see if I could inspire it in all of them, as Concha had promised. It was time for the cante jondo, the deep song. I closed my eyes and felt the music rising from my throat—no, from my ribcage. I thought of my grandfather, living as a second-class citizen and never complaining, except when pain had seeped out through his songs. I’d been too young to understand it. Now I sang out my own regrets to an audience who could never comprehend. Or could they?
I opened my eyes as the guitars joined in, and what I saw nearly stole my voice. Fine crimson threads appeared from each audience member’s chest, right over their heart. Despite my shock, the complex guitar rhythms and clapping swept my song forward. Not to mention, my heart trembled as much with fascination and curiosity at these strange happenings as with apprehension.
Slowly the threads snaked toward the stage, prodding the air as though to suss out what had stirred them from their bed. No one else seemed to see them, not even Gonzalo and Rodrigo, who probably could’ve reached out and strummed them like guitar strings from their chairs. But Concha saw them too. She gathered them in her flourishing hands, weaving a spell, literally, as she danced. Each tense yet graceful spread of her fingers, each roll of her wrist, served to wind and twist the threads together. Her body was a giant loom, spinning, industrious.
Gradually her weave formed a triangle with what looked like fringe on two sides—a replacement for her shabby shawl. Suddenly she stamped her foot, and the guitar music stopped. Gonzalo and Rodrigo sat frozen in mid-strum. I looked out at the audience and saw unblinking eyes and fans stopped halfway to their owners’ faces. Threads still hung in the air from their hearts, sending an unsettling chill down my spine. Dare I move and risk disturbing the strange web?
Concha breathed a loud sigh of relief. The sound inspired me to rise from my seat with the same discomfort she’d shown back in my entryway when the two of us had stood alone, neither taking a seat. My movement now startled her, for she jumped and ducked behind her floating shawl. Then she peered out, stepped back in front of it, and smoothed her skirt nonchalantly.
“Marisol, you’re still awake! You’re even more talented than I realized.”
Sweet talk sounded sickly coming from her.
I waved a hand in front of Rodrigo’s eyes. He didn’t blink. I gazed out at the audience. “How long will they stay like this?”
She shrugged. “Long enough for me to get what I need.”
“And what then?”
“They won’t notice a thing. They’ll think they saw our show finish and the curtain fall.” She strode to the side of the stage and grabbed the curtain cord. Her nearly complete scarf still hovered over center stage.
I frowned at her. “You’re stealing duende from them. Will they ever experience it again?”
She ignored my question as she pulled the curtains shut. All those floating red lines bunched at the slit in the middle, leading back to their owners. So many threads.
At my last glimpse of the crowd, my heart sank like those orange tree branches when my grandfather had sung so long ago. What matter if the audience didn’t appreciate our art at some presumably worthy level? They deserved to witness and partake in their way. So what if flamenco lived on with new audiences in more avant-garde deteriorations of its original form? So be it. I still needed it, the alternating expressions of elation and healing, the collaboration between all of us musicians and dancers. I could still have my version, and I would treasure it like the trinkets I’d inherited from my grandfather whose meaning only a fellow Gitano could fully appreciate.
“This is wrong,” I said, reaching toward the closest string. My skin tingled at the contact, and suddenly my mind cleared. The strand, delicate to the touch, made me feel strong, unbreakable. Those bat-wings quieted in my chest at last, as still as the deer fountain’s water. I hesitated to let go.
Concha’s eyes flashed at me like mirror shards. “You know their type. They would never have known duende without us. They won’t need it again.” She walked back to her floating shawl. “You and I will be remembered above all other performances they’ll ever see.” Her voice grew quiet. “Besides, I need duende, Marisol. My body aches otherwise. No, not aches. It screams at me.” She untied both her hip scarves and cast the black one aside. Gonzalo’s “unstable” comment came to mind as she caressed the old red one, running her fingers through its fringe. “I need a new dose.”
This magic healed her pain? I remembered her body slumping onstage so long ago. Sad to watch, sadder to imagine her experience. Yet how many times she had carved off slices of an audience’s empathy and enthrallment to keep for herself? How many victims lay in her wake? How many unwitting accomplices, like our guitarists who’d shown me nothing but kindness and a fellow artist’s respect? How many other singers? And now she’d pulled me in without permission.
I snatched both her ratty shawl and the nearly finished one. A rush of power spun through my head at the touch. It energized me, overwhelmed me with my own potential. The smooth, light fabric felt so fragile in my grip, especially with the threads still connected to our audience.
Concha snarled at me, then froze as I tugged at the new shawl in defense. Somehow it wouldn’t tear, fragile as the floating threads seemed. She grinned in relief. Then I pinched one of the strands of fringe on her old shawl. This time, the thread broke apart and faded into nothingness. I quickly tore the rest of the shawl to bits, hoping it might undo at least part of the spell that had formed it long ago. She screamed and lunged for her new shawl, but I jerked it away. Concha reached back and pulled her comb from her bun. It wasn’t a comb at all. It was a tiny dagger in a decorative hilt. She unsheathed it, pointing the blade at my heart.
“You helped create it,” she said. “You want to destroy it without wearing it down over time, you’ll have to destroy yourself. That’s what it means to be awake during this part.”
“So if you kill me, you’ll lose your precious shawl.”
She stepped toward me. I stepped back.
“You want to unfreeze those tourists?” She turned the dagger around and offered me the hilt. “Cut the cords. Complete it. Go on.”
I locked eyes with her and took the blade. It was safer in my hands. One palm grew cold against the hilt, the other tingled with power from the fabric. I could finish her spell for her and be done with this. Better yet, I could keep the shawl for myself, summon duende at will, beat down the scrabbling wings of inadequacy for good.
And perpetuate her magic either way.
“You owe them nothing,” she said. “They’re unworthy of duende.”
Unworthy. All my life I’d feared being just that. Lesser than full-blooded payos because of my mixed heritage. Less Gitana than the Gitanos. Less of a singer than the men. Less important on the stage than a dancer. No more. We were different, that was all, neither inferior nor superior. Tourists all, in one way or another. I was in no position to look down upon her victims. No one should have the demon stolen from them, whether it lay dormant or not. The mere possibility of its conjuring was all that mattered. I would beat down those bat-wings myself, without making a sacrifice of others, just as Concha should’ve dealt with her own pain years ago.
“I owe them this,” I said, then sliced through the center of the shawl. The crackles of energy within me lowered to a prickle.
“No!” she wailed.
As the shawl unraveled, she collapsed onto the stage, unable to move, her ruffled dress like the petals of a crushed flower. Her bent knuckles bared fingernails against an unseen threat, but the anguish on her face indicated she couldn’t stave off its tortures. Clearly she drew vitality from the shawl, relied on it, even in another’s hands. Might such dependency become my fate?
I attempted to lift her, but she screamed from the movement. I knelt beside her and picked up the remaining threads of duende, wishing I knew a safe way to unconjure it and free our poor audience, yet afraid to try for fear of what it might do to her.
“Concha,” I whispered, “we’ll heal you.” My mind raced. Had my grandfather ever taught me a traditional cure? Some magical combination of ingredients? A horseshoe on a doorframe? I should’ve paid more attention. “We’ll find you some relief.”
My fingers tightened around the forbidden threads. These were her relief. I laid the remnants over her chest.
Tears leaked from her eyes. She summoned what must have been all the mobility left in her body, for in one swift motion, she grabbed the dagger from me and plunged it through the threads and into her heart. The remaining heightened energy drained from my head and rushed out through my arm. I recoiled and watched, stunned, as the red lines snaked back through the curtains to their owners. Her breathing slowed. Her eyes shut. Even sprawled on the stage, with fingers closed around the hilt protruding from her chest, Concha looked as though this “sleep” were a nuisance to be dealt with quickly so she could arise once again to her natural dancing state. But then her final breath slipped out, and the shawl disintegrated. Her face relaxed. She looked at rest.
That same moment, a roar of applause erupted behind the curtain. Gonzalo and Rodrigo gasped and rushed to my side.
“I couldn’t stop her,” I whispered. She had stopped herself.
They nodded as though they could’ve foreseen this tragedy.
The cheering and clapping continued from the auditorium, forming a complex rhythm, constantly shifting. Beckoning. My heart ached that this audience, indeed the whole world, would never again know Concha’s dancing. Perhaps they’d never again feel duende, but let that be for lack of moving performances, not for lack of the demon itself.
And what of flamenco? Unlike Concha, my participation came without a price. I dared not squander that privilege. I still had a chance to share my singing with the world. To continue on with flamenco for no one else’s sake but my own, and without the crutch of stolen duende, seemed a fitting tribute to my grandfather—and to Concha, the most gifted and cursed dancer I ever saw.
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Katherine Quevedo was born and raised just outside of Portland, Oregon, where she works as an analyst and lives with her husband and two sons. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Fireside Magazine, Triangulation: Appetites, GigaNotoSaurus, Apparition Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. Find her at www.katherinequevedo.com.
