Spanish Heart

This month I’m doing something different: presenting a short story whose first line came to me recently in a dream. I’ve dedicated it to the memory of my Spanish great-grandfather, Cristobal Plana, and his daughter, my maternal grandmother Anna, two of the gentlest, sweetest people you could ever hope to meet. Their lives were hard and full of sorrows but they never gave up or complained, instead relishing all of life’s small pleasures, their joyful and humble spirits inspiring everyone around them.

I was with Papa in the city when we heard the music. Ah, you could hear it from so far away, and we all quickened our steps towards it, hurried up the neat wide streets of the new city where everyone was too busy to notice us or smile. We saw them there, on the stage, in the middle of the people. In the middle of this new city in this new land where nobody knows us.

There! There was a drummer with long black hair, and a guitarist with fingers flying, and a singer in a red and black dress.The name of the band was Spanish Heart, and I pulled at my Papa’s arm: “Oh look, look, oh look!”

Oh! how that singer sang, and danced, how her heels rang, and the guitar sang too, of love and loneliness and the wanderings of the gypsy moon.And the drummer’s black hair, raven-black like my Papa’s, swung and flashed as the beat grew hard and hot under his hands.

I was swaying, and clapping gently, and I felt a smile grow like a rising sun inside me.  But my Papa, he stood as if made of stone. “Why does nobody clap, why does nobody stamp, why does nobody beat time?”

Beside me, beside us, the people were listening, the sun flashing on their dark glasses, their city clothes. They were smiling, they looked as if they liked the music, but why did they stay so still, like statues in a garden?

I thought of the city we had left behind, the old city far away but not so long ago, a city filled with sunny squares and flowers, and I saw what my Papa felt and was sad, for already this new city I loved too.

And then it happened. A man near my Papa saw us planted there, like trees taking in sunshine, and he said, “What a lovely day, eh!”

My Papa turned to face him and something began in his mouth and his eyes and his face until all at once his hands began to move and his feet, beating out the rythmn, hard, in and out of the melody.  Bang, bang, bang, went his hands, clapping in delight and joy and aliveness, boom, boom, boom went his feet, stamping out disappointment and sadness and regret.  Boom, boom, boom to the music of our Spanish hearts, bang bang bang, proudly in that new city that was to be our home.

And some smirked and looked away; but others smiled, and the drummer called out, and then everyone, just everyone was laughing, and clapping, and then they began to get up, stamping, dancing, as the music grew hotter and wilder and freer.

In that bright neat square, in that new city, something new, something good, began for us under my Papa’s stamping feet, through the wild song of the band and the beating of thousands of hearts.

We might be gone from the old city, but it lived still within us, and the new one grew in power and delight in our hearts as we danced.

Sophie Masson

Born in Indonesia of French parents, and brought up in France and Australia, Sophie Masson is the award-winning author of over 70 books for children, young adults and adults. Her latest books include Sydney under Attack (children’s historical novel, Scholastic Australia, 2022) A Hundred Words for Butterfly (adult novella, ES-Press, 2022)  and Cock-a-doodle-doo (children’s picture book, (illustrated by Kathy Creamer, little Pink Dog Books, 2022). In 2019, Sophie received an AM (Member, General Division) award in the Order of Australia honours list.

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