The baroness and me
Jeremy Clarke
Istudied the seating plan of the Club Taurino of London’s 47th anniversary dinner without recognising any of the other names. (I’m a relatively new member.) The CTL is an extraordinarily diverse collection of people noted for their friendliness towards new members. People obsessed with the finer points of the ritual slaughter of magnificent beasts by men in tight trousers, willing to travel considerable distances to see it, perhaps feel obliged to be. But I was slightly unwell and feeling less than convivial, and I sincerely hoped that my immediate neighbours wouldn’t complain afterwards about having to put up with a bore at their table.
The one on my left was French. A stunning blonde. Mid-twenties. Lots of everything in all the right places. Revealing top. A welcoming glint in her eye suggested a vast and very primitive hinterland that had swallowed up many a hapless explorer.
I sat down beside her and she was immediately confidential, then intimate. She slipped a très chic gold ring from her finger and placed it in my palm. It bore a coat of arms. She was a baroness, she said. She had a house in Biarritz. And now we were going to get drunk together, she said.
I’d heard they were friendly, but not that friendly. Perhaps I was dreaming. I looked dazedly around the room. The ornate grandeur of the late-Victorian Mayfair dining room tended to support this view. I turned to greet my other neighbour. He had a stern, very crimson face and a suit of an outrageous check. Had I heard? he said. After lunch they were going to push the tables back for an encierro and novillada sin pics. This means a Pamplona-style running of the bulls then a bullfight without picadors. No picadors? I said. Ceiling too low, he said, gravely, pouring me out a glass of red wine.
The baroness tipped her wine glass and winked at me over the rim. Then the guest of honour — the up-and-coming matador Salvatore Cortes — arrived and everyone stood and cheered. The baroness hopped about on tiptoe to get a clearer view. She adored matadors, she said. Her English was not fluent. She supplemented her halting sentences with expressive mime. At the word ‘matador’ she looked me meaningfully in the eye and gave a discreet little spasm of ecstasy. She’d had so many matador boyfriends, she said. So many. When she’s at home in Biarritz all the matadors come and stay. Name a matador, she said, and he’s probably stayed at her house. What about him, I said, pointing to the smart, dignified, rather bewildered young man at the centre of the applause. No, not him. Malhereusement. Actually, she was having a rest from matadors at the moment and was focusing on flamenco guitarists. She indicated the young man next to her who was taking a photograph. ‘Flam-en-co,’ she said.
We resumed our seats and the baroness introduced me to her flamenco guitarist. He had a long white thumbnail and a drawn, tired face. His whole demeanour was one of profound exhaustion. He was quite affable, however, and managed to whip up some interest in me. I politely asked what I thought was a fairly intelligent question to ask a flamenco guitarist, but which on reflection was one he’s probably been asked more times than I’ve had hot dinners. I asked him about duende.
Duende is a peculiarly Arab/Gypsy/ Andalusian concept. Basically, it is the timeless spirit of death, art and God which, when it is done well, is transmitted by flamenco music and dance to the audience, unifying and transporting it to another, darker place. In Arab music, when duende descends, the audience cries, ‘Allah! Allah!’ This is said to be the origin of the Spanish cries of ‘Ole! Ole!’ that occur in bullfight crowds when genuine artistic emotion is transmitted by the fluid plastic sculptures made by man and beast in the final act of a corrida.
‘Do you achieve duende every time you perform?’ I said. (The baroness winked at me again over her tilted glass.) ‘It depends on the audience,’ he said. ‘In Spain and France, sometimes. In England, never.’ The baroness closed her eyes and shook her head sadly at this living tragedy of the poor, brutish English. ‘You ’ave no idée of duende in your culture, no?’ I had a think. Shamanism must have played as important a role in our culture as it has in anyone else’s. Actually, we do have a popular song, I told them, that perfectly embodies the spirit of duende. Thrilled to hear it, the baroness and the flamenco guitarist invited me to sing it to them. I enlisted the help of the man with the red face and the outrageous check, and we raised our glasses and together sang: ‘ ’Ere we go! ’Ere we go! ’Ere we go!’ They weren’t that impressed.
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