SECOND WRITING PRIZE WINNER –
Summer 2021
is Caroline Ross Tajasque
of Walton-on-Thames, Surrey – UNITED KINGDOM
AND HER SOUL SANG
By Caroline Ross Tajasque
Once there was a young girl whose fate it was to marry the Sultan. She was not beautiful. She was not rich; her father was a shepherd and she kept chickens, collecting their eggs, deftly wringing their necks and plucking them when it was time to sell.
But she could sing Coplas, Malagueñas, Cante Libre, fast and free, or Cante Jondo, slow and deep when she was alone. And it was this that the Sultan heard when he was out riding. She had duende. It made her chickens lay well and it stopped the Sultan’s gray stallion in its tracks, lifting its hoof to paw delicately at the air.
The transaction was done.
When she was dressed in her bridal dress, with a veil so delicate it seemed to have been made from the wings of moths, her father wept to see her go. A year later he sold the chickens. They never laid so well again.
At first, her joy had no bound and she spent her days in the gardens of the Alcazar, running her fingers in the waters of the lion fountain, learning the names of the flowers, and which were scented and which were not. She would sit in the Harem, with the Sultan’s mother and the other women, and listen to the Andalucian birds shouting their business from treetop to treetop, like fishwives at the port. She would shade her eyes and look outside the palace, past the whitewashed houses, to a patchwork of red earth, green olive trees, and then up at the jagged-toothed mountains and the shadow mountains behind them, blurring into the cloudless blue. On the horizon, where land touched sea and sea touched the sky, rose the limestone scarp where Tagzona and her lover, rather than renounce their love or be captured, had jumped to their death, holding hands.
Inside the palace, there were lamps that gave off sweet perfumes, sandalwood, jasmine, patchouli, and the ceiling was hung with cloths of deep blue silk dotted with gold. She dined on tender birds wrapped in vine leaves washed down with cups of sherbet cooled with snow from the high Sierras. In the evening, she would light a candle and put it in a small brass lantern, blackened over the years, cut into which were the shapes of the sun, moon, and stars, which danced a light alegría across the walls and ceiling. This was the one thing she had brought with her from her father’s house.
She sang for the Sultan every night: playful Verdiales, pinning coloured ribbons and strings of pearls in her hair and playing the tambourine, or haunting Soleares, songs of love and solitude.
Soon word spread throughout the land and the lands beyond and princes visited the palace to hear her voice.
“You have married a nightingale,” they would say, for hers was truly a most wondrous and joyful song. It charmed those who heard it, soothing their souls, calming their spirits, turning rivals into vassals.
The princes would bring the Sultan gifts and tributes, silver teapots from the Kasbahs of Marrakech, silk rugs from Isfahan, jade horses from the Forbidden City of the Ming Emperors. The Sultan’s mother would catalogue these gifts. “Such a son that girl will give you,” she would say. “He will be ruler from east to west, from sea to sea.” And the old woman would clink the coins between her fingers like castanets.
At other times, the girl would sing to herself, a palo seco, clapping her hands in counterpoint to the rhythm of the blacksmith’s hammer outside. She could imitate the song of the peacock so that even the peahens couldn’t tell them apart.
The Sultan was proud and handsome and he grew taller in her wonder. At first, she amused him and he took his pleasure from her without reserve. He put her in the highest tower of the palace so she could look down on the other women below.
But, as the days passed, he needed more and more till she had nothing left to give. Then he felt cheated. She had raised him up, but lacked the strength to hold him there.
“Sing,” he would demand. But she could not.
For the first time, her voice failed her. It wavered in the low notes, cracked in the high notes; she could no longer find the spaces in-between, like a child’s finger-width on the strings of a Rebec, where duende lay.
Princes no longer visited. Or, if they did, they would hold the Sultan’s eyes, not bow their heads. The other women exchanged secret glances behind their fans. The Sultan’s mother no longer even looked at her.
Then it started.
She was poor at her lessons. When she went outside the palace to buy slippers in the market, she forgot to take her manservant with her. When she made tea for the Sultan’s mother, it was too weak. Then it was too strong.
“You are trying to poison me,” the old woman cried, dashing the cup on the stone floor and making the girl clear it up, to teach her a lesson.
The girl was clumsy, careless. She broke things, his things, always his things. But then all the things were his.
She spoke too much, or at the wrong times. She interrupted men when they were speaking. After a while, she spoke so little that her throat hurt her when she tried to make a sound. She no longer sang and even the peacocks became mute. When she no longer spoke, he punished her for her looks until her eyes grew red and clouded like the seeds of pomegranates.
The Sultan would grow so angry the tapestries would catch fire and the flames would taunt her like gypsies, backs curved, long arms and fingers stretched out, their eyes ablaze, dancing a mocking bulería. At such times, the courtiers would quietly disperse, their eyes lowered lest they meet hers for this they could not bear. Then the Sultan would beat her till she could no longer stand. There was never any sound as this took place, just the dull thud, thud of his fist on her face.
When she took tea with her designated friends, amid the stories and the appropriate laughter, there would be a look, a question, pity. Only for a second. They knew their place. But she saw it. And then she would laugh, explain. She was always walking into things. She had tripped in the baths. She had a weak back. Her eyes watered in the sun. She started to use thick powder to cover her face, wore long-sleeved tunics and dark kohl around her eyes.
On and on it went, for a thousand and one nights. Because she let him do this, he would do it again, for it became easier to do. He began to need it, to expect it, so then how could she stop it? And she let him do this because she knew there was a rottenness inside her, which he could see, which everyone could see, and which betrayed her. It poisoned the jellies of quince and kumquat she made so that they were too bitter to eat. It withered the rose petals and oleander that she touched so that she had to exile herself from the gardens. It dried up the water in the well. And it rotted the baby inside her for which there could be no forgiveness.
Each night, when he was done, the Sultan would drag her to the Tower and lock her inside, in the dark. When she could, she would slowly ease her way to the window to look down at the city below. Then the tears came and, as they hit the cold night air, they froze until they formed a bridge of ice reaching, inch by inch, each night, further down towards the ground.
She came to expect the pain, to need it, like a wild dog that provokes a kick just to reassure itself that it belongs here, on this hard earth. The worst part of it was the waiting so that the blows came almost as a relief. Sometimes, when she could bear it no longer, she would force his hand. She would provoke his wrath, crushing the stem of a goblet between her fingers, playing with the tiny shards of glass, grateful for the sting of wine in her blood.
But on that last morning, when the ice bridge finally touched the ground, something inside her snapped. A burst of blood and she was transformed into a fish. The ice melted and she was washed down the waterfall of her tears into the streets below. She swept between the bare feet of children playing hide-and-seek, whirled round the jeweled sandals of women fanning themselves in the heat, and on past the worn boots of shepherds walking out to their flocks. On and on she swam, down into the river and, at last, into the wide ocean beyond. And her soul sang.
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~By Caroline Ross Tajasque
About the author:
I am retired now, living in the UK with my husband and my son. I got into writing originally from acting and I love the short story format as it allows me to reinvent what I do each time I write. My parents lived for many years in Spain, which partly inspired this story.
