The Snow Gypsy

by Lindsay Jayne Ashford

Lola moved across the room, her body as slender as esparto grass in a tight-fitting green dress and a shawl the vivid scarlet of pomegranate flowers.

At the end of the second fandango, the tempo changed. Cristóbal let out the first mournful notes of the cante jondo. The deep song. Tortured and passionate, he sang as if blood, not music, were coming from his mouth. Lola’s dancing echoed the melancholy sound. Her body told a story of betrayal and lost love. She moved like someone possessed.

Flamenco was about surrendering to the duende. It was about allowing your body to be taken over by something you couldn’t see, only feel. And when you were doing it well, it felt like a religious experience. Sacred and precious.

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“Grief is living with someone who’s not there, who’s gone out of your life for one reason or another.”

The setting sun had turned the sky into a bonfire. Tiny charcoal clouds drifted across the sea, glowing red where the dying rays touched them.

Cristóbal picked up his guitar, and his fingers rippled across the strings, the notes conjuring a poignant sense of longing. Then, as Lola started to move, he began to sing. It was the strangest sound: anguished and yet utterly compelling. As if he were leaving a little piece of his soul in each line. Rose couldn’t discern the words, but it didn’t matter. The song transcended language. It spoke of some primeval pain that drew an echo from the hearts of all who heard it. And Lola gave life to all that emotion. The way she held her head, arched her body, snatched her shawl from her shoulders and whipped the ground—her dancing electrified the air around her. Rose felt as if all her pent-up grief was suddenly exposed. It made her feel raw, vulnerable—and yet it was somehow cleansing and cathartic.

The sun lit up the pools of salt water, turning them molten silver. In the distance flamingos were gathered on the margins of a lagoon. Hundreds of them, like drifts of pink-tinged apple blossoms.

Rose felt the rhythm of the music enter her body like a second heartbeat, drumming against her ribs. Dragging her gaze away from Cristóbal, she saw Lola’s fingers sculpting the air as her wrists rotated in a series of intricate movements, like fantail doves rolling in midair. This time she used her upper body more than her feet to convey the emotion. The combination of her movements and Cristóbal’s voice had a transcendent effect on the audience: it was as if they had cast spider threads into the night air to tug at the heartstrings of every man and woman in the vast crowd gathered in the village square.

This time she induced a different kind of enchantment. People were twisting and swaying as if they had itching powder in their shoes. It was impossible not to be carried along by the sheer exuberance of Lola’s dancing.

Euphoria coursed through her body like liquid fire.

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Who did Rose think she was, mixing with people like that? Didn’t she have the sense to realize that wildness and freedom were shorthand for promiscuity and infidelity?

nightingale.” “The Spanish call them ruiseñores. They say the birds have pearls and corals in their throats.”

Did she believe in heaven? If there was such a place, she hoped it would be like this. A place where the spirits of the dead glided over perfumed, sunlit meadows to a symphony of birdsong. Yes, she thought, Nathan would be happy here. Wherever his earthly body had been left, his spirit would find a home on this mountain.

rockroses, with wrinkled pink petals and yellow centers. This flower was on Maria’s list. She intended to extract oil from it, which she said was good for nervous complaints, and make a brew of the petals as a gargle for ulcerated throats. The next plant Rose spotted was a larger cactus—the prickly pear. Maria wanted the flowers that sprouted from the leathery green flesh to make a cure for amoebic dysentery.

the Sierra Nevada violet—more like a pansy than the violets native to Britain, with pale-pink and yellow petals. Maria said the crushed leaves could be used as a poultice to treat skin cancers and growths. The other herb was called trumpet gentian, with intense blue flowers shaped like the musical instrument it was named after. It was the root of this plant Maria wanted. She used it to neutralize the poison in snakebites and scorpion stings.

“Many herbs are dangerous unless you know what you’re doing. Opium poppies don’t cure anything—and they’ll kill a man if he takes too much—but they’re wonderful for relieving unbearable pain.” Maria had explained that it was the juice of the poppy heads she needed, extracted from the plant before the petals fell off and the seeds inside the pod dried out.

Rose recognized the plant by the small emerald seed cases beading the creeperlike stems. In Britain it was called goosegrass. She had a vivid memory of Nathan getting covered in the sticky seeds after rolling about with Gunesh the day he came to say goodbye to her in Sussex. “This is good for all fevers,” Maria said. “Take a handful, pound it in a pestle and mortar, then infuse it in warm milk. Give her two tablespoons three times a day if she can take it. If not, use it as a poultice on her forehead and give her water with a little lemon and honey to drink.”

“The Gypsies I knew in England used to say that not to forgive someone is like drinking poison and expecting someone else to die.”