Troubadours

Troubadours

Love • Death • Rumba

A Novel

Richard Lee Price

Texans have a name for them—vatos locos, Spanish for a couple of crazy dudes. Guillaume and Vidal were two musicians who believed to be true whatever they wanted or desired. They wandered the Hill Country playing gigs and finding comfort in many a lover’s bed. Come morning they’d return to Austin, which Vidal, inveterate nicknamer that he was, renamed Proensa, the original name for Provence in southern France. It was rumored (a rumor rumored to have been spread by Vidal himself) that he was a direct descendent of the medieval Provençal troubadour, Peire Vidal. Like his forebear Peire, Austin’s Vidal fancied himself a troubadour, a lover, and a lusty bachelor. And he was hell-bent on exceeding the excesses of his namesake.

Old Peire wandered the hills of Provence singing in his native Langue D’Oc in which oc, not oui, meant yes. And many a lady at court said oc to Peire and became his paramour. For the love of Loba de Pueinautier, he roamed the countryside on all fours, wearing a wolf’s hair shirt, howling at the moon, pursued by his own hunting dogs and his enemies.

Old Peire developed the dangerous habit of bragging about his conquests and immortalizing them in song. And then one day En Baral, incensed by the mockery and ridicule in one of Peire’s many tributes to Na Baral, the lord’s wife, cut off a substantial portion of the poet’s tongue.

So with Austin’s Vidal. Many a cuckolded boyfriend would have given his right arm to make a souvenir of Vidal’s braggart’s tongue.

Guillaume too had a Provençal connection, his surname, Cabestan. As the story goes Guilem de Cabestanh of old loved the lady Seremonda with all his heart. When Lord Raimon learned of their derne amour, their secret love, his knights carved the beating heart from the poet’s chest. Raimon cooked the heart in a wine sauce and served it in a dish to Seremonda. And when she had eaten her surfeit, Raimon revealed the secret ingredient and asked if the dish was satisfactory, to which she replied After a meal as nourishing as this, I should never want another and threw herself from the castle balcony.

And though Austin’s Guillaume never had his heart in a dish, he often had his ass in a crack.

And so, though the feet of Guillaume and Vidal were firmly planted in the thirsty dirt of Austin, their souls grew like vines in the rich imaginary soil of Proensa, birthplace of the love song, land of the troubadours.

CHAPTER 1—HILL COUNTRY

The breeze lifts

the coattails of the hills.

The skin of the sky

is as smooth as the pelt

of the river.

-Muhammad Ibn Ghalib

The morning sun was so bright that for a moment he had to close his eyes. Guillaume mounted Camargue and rode the hairpin turns down 620. The sun-baked hills were quiet but for the whistle of songbirds and the roar of an occasional car. He sang as he rode: Que linda està la mañana, en esta verde primavera. Camina y ven pa’la loma.

He tapped clave on the handlebars, swerving his bike and slaloming in time to the rhythm as he pulled into the Circle K for gas, dancing salsa as he filled his tank. Customers stared. Some smiled. Some danced along.

He crossed the Mansfield Dam bridge. On one side, the river, on the other, the lakes flowed through the endless rolling hills. As he passed the white church whose steeple towered above Lake Travis, he said a prayer of gratitude for the gift to be alive in these hills on this morning. Guillaume danced Camargue down 2222, singing a love song to the summer breeze. Like a sheik on a prancing Arab mare, he took the turn to Pease Park, to the rumba.

CHAPTER 2—RUMBA

Each of her glances could cause hearts to turn over…

-Ibn Faraj

The pulse of the rumba rippled the waters of Shoal Creek. Marí felt the drums pound the ground beneath her feet. She jumped from stone to stone as she crossed the creek so that no water splashed her boots. She listened for the sound of skin on skin as it echoed against the mossy rock formations of the canyon above and took the path near the clearing. A frisbee fell at her feet. She stopped to retrieve it and hurled the disc in one smooth motion to a teenager who missed the catch. When Marí reached the far end she waded into the crowd of onlookers. She stood on tiptoe, resting her arms on the shoulders of the couple in front of her. They turned and stared. She smiled. Marí spied an opening. She began stepping to the drum rhythms, joining a throng of dancers who undulated in time with the drums.

She could barely keep her eyes open against the black furnace of the sun. Some of the drummers wore white turbans. Some were stripped to the waist. They were athletes, lean and muscular. Hard hands smacked the skins of the drums. Dugu dugu, pat tun, pat tun, pat. Marí gave herself to the drums, adrift in a sea of African rhythms.

Fernando moved through the crowd with the long, deliberate stride of a man at peace, a wine-colored conga balanced on his shoulder. The dancers parted before him.

Mira, pa’ ti Fernando.

A rumbero handed Fernando a chair. He draped his vest across the chair’s back and sat down to tune his drum. He warmed up, slowly at first. Soon his hands were a blur against the skin.

Estoy listo hermanos. I came to play. Wepana! He led the drummers through the complex rhythm patterns, assuming his role as master drummer in the rumba.

Marí watched Fernando’s sweat-slicked body glisten in the heat. He hovered over his drum, rocking like a warrior in a sun dance. His powerful arms were long and sinewy. They swooped like birds of prey, attacking the speckled conga. She watched his eyes turn black with fire, his nostrils flare.

Los cueros te llaman. Los cueros te llaman, Fernando chanted.

She closed her eyes and repeated his words under her breath, The drums call you.

When Marí opened her eyes again, a new drummer had taken his place alongside Fernando. His face was a rich chocolate with tones of copper and coffee. He removed a black conga from its burlap sack and looked toward Fernando. The two drummers locked in, eye-to-eye, sound to sound. Fernando’s hands struck with surety and grace. Vidal responded. He riffed on his conga, weaving a counterpoint to Fernando’s rhythms, at times lifting the conga off the ground with his thighs.

Habla, Vidal. Habla! Fernando shouted.

The dark pupils of Vidal’s eyes rolled back in his head, as if he were looking deep into the crown of his skull for the blessing of the Orishas. Vidal’s rumba was a promise to his Yoruba ancestors whose voices spoke through his drum.

Fernando turned to a third rumbero who had entered the semi-circle of drummers, Campana compañero!

Guillaume reached for the cowbell and wooden palito at Fernando’s feet.

Fernando signaled a new rhythm, a toque in Afro six. Vaya, little brother.

Guillaume beat the pattern on his bell in time with the drummers who played a rhythm to Yemaya, Fernando’s Orisha.

Échala! said Fernando.

The bell player rang the pattern, his body hunched, his face contorted in an ecstatic grimace.

The dancers spun like dervishes. Blonde hippies in multi-patterned camisas kicked the dirt path with bare feet. Nubian rastas with long, beaded braids flourished skirts in homage to the drums. They swirled in a spirit-seeking, head-swaying, hip-thrusting trance.

Marí stood close behind the dancers stepping to the rhythm. She heard the bell tone above the drums. It was the bell player who most intrigued her in his black boina, green T-shirt and jeans. Guillaume shook the hair from his eyes and scanned the crowd of dancers. Marí’s energy pulled his attention toward her. He looked away, made shy by her bold stare. But then he took a longer look. Her head was cocked to one side and her hands were tucked inside the back rim of her jeans, sunlight bouncing off her lean angularity. Her eyes were dark, her hair an auburn sunset.

Marí fixed her gaze on him. Guillaume gazed back. He faltered and lost the rhythm on his bell.

Guillaume’s bell was crusado, at odds with the drummers.

Aguantala, hermano! said Fernando, calling Guillaume back into time. He returned to the toque rhythm. Fernando nodded to him and Vidal. Together they played the cinquillo cadence that signaled the end of the rumba.

The drums stopped. The air was still. The rumberos stood up from their drums, sweat pouring off their bodies, smiling, laughing, giving high fives, then abrazos: Fernando and Vidal, Guillaume and Fernando, Vidal and Guillaume.

Guillaume watched as the crowd dispersed. Marí stood in the distance. He nodded to her. She smiled and walked away, swaggering. Her boots kicked dust.

Vidal turned to Guillaume and greeted him with a warm Maricón!

No man, Marty Cohen plays in your daddy’s band, Guillaume retaliated.

In your mama’s band, mamao.

But Guillaume did not respond. He stared down the path Marí had taken. Vidal heard him mutter mmm, mmm, mmm. Guillaume asked, Did you see her?

Qué linda, they’re all so beautiful. I love every one of them. In fact, I may have, Vidal said.

No, Vidal, I mean the one who was looking at me.

"Oh, you mean that one. I saw her. Que domna."

She was looking at me, But Guillaume did not laugh.

Que Dios te bendiga, brother, Vidal said, in that way Puerto Ricans say brother, giving it heart. If you have this girl on the brain, go after her, pero ten cuidado. I can tell she’s lean and hungry with those she-wolf eyes of hers. Okay, ‘Wambumba,’ let’s go hunt la loup.

The two musicians walked the wooded path searching for Marí.

Yo, Mojimbo, where’d you disappear to last night? Me and Tino knocked off a plate of migas and a bowl of queso at Magnolia waiting for you. Vidal arched like a torero and narrowly escaped a boy with a snow cone in each hand headed straight for him.

Guillaume called out Olé! They continued walking. You waited for me? Yo te esperé! You never showed.

Vidal stopped and stood bemused. Then what happened to me? Where’d I go?

Notorious for his memory lapses, Vidal lived a life of fragmented amnesiac dreams. He pieced his past together from snippets fed him by other musicians. Guillaume became an historian of Vidal’s amorous exploits.

Tino dropped you at Sapopa’s, remember?

Ay, Sapopa, Vidal smiled at the thought of her.

They took the path that led to the main stage.

Mira, she’s over there at the crystal seller’s tent.

Vidal yanked Guillaume out of the way of a young girl on a bicycle. You have eyes in back of your head, Mosby. The trouble is you need a pair that sees ahead.

Guillaume didn’t hear his friend. He left the path and crossed the field.

Vidal stood by a large pecan tree whose thick branches provided shade. He watched Guillaume run across the field. Qué mujer. He thought of Sapopa and began to reconstruct their night together. Thoughts of Guillaume evaporated as he turned and walked out of the park, moving through the crowd like a somnambulist, headed straight for Sapopa’s house. He had many lovers, but the others were aventuras, islands where he docked and bartered and drank and laughed. He gave them all names. Mary was La Peluda, full of wild abandon. Sylvia became Our Lady of Perpetual Pecho. Delores, who often gave him gifts, he called Dolares, and Lorena was La Reyna. But Sapopa was not like the others. She was no island, but his patria, the homeland to which he returned, like a Moor returning to al-Andalus. Sapopa was Mi Corazón.

Vidal jumped the wrought iron gate to Sapopa’s house and banged on the wooden screen door.

Who’s there? She stepped out of the shower, toweling her black hair. She grabbed her robe, hugged it close to her, and unlocked the door.

Standing there dripping, she reminded Vidal of an Olmec stone. Her face was brown and solid with high cheek bones and full, full lips.

Back so soon?

I can’t find my keys, he smiled.

Sapopa loved his smile. It enfolded her, surrounded her, like the sun when she stepped out of the cold water of Barton Springs. It warmed her, energized her, and put her at ease. She knew the power of his smile, how men became his friends as if they had known him all their lives. And she knew its lure, how women gave themselves to him as if it were the most natural course for a lady to take in his presence. Tus narices! Qué Vidal, she said, opening the door. Are you waiting for an invitation? Come on in.

Vidal followed. He reached for her robe. The screen door slammed. I’ll fix that spring for you later.

Buenas, mi Moro.

Buenas, mi Olmeca.

CHAPTER 3—CAMINOS

[He] complains of thirst while holding the quenching water in his throat.

-Safwan Ibn Idris

Marí studied the amber-colored crystal amulet. She asked the vendor the price. Too high. She let it go and grabbed another. It was clearer and smaller but it seemed to suit her. Marí stared into a mirror suspended from the center post of the vendor’s tent as she placed the chain around her neck.

Guillaume came up behind her. His face appeared in the mirror. He stood behind her thinking of an icebreaker. The only thing he could come up with was, Are you following me?

No! Are you crazy?

I was hoping you’d say yes. And yes, I am.

They laughed. Marí spun around to face him. Who are you? she asked.

As Guillaume looked at her his expression grew pensive. He knew that the answer to her question would be determined by whom she would become to him. He answered, I’m Guillaume Cabestan. And you?

Marí. Good to meet you too.

He took her in from top to toe and then back again with child-wide eyes. My pleasure, midons.

You play very well, she said.

You were looking at me, then?

So? What’s not to look? she joked in a mock-New York accent.

He smiled.

Marí continued, You’re good. Do you play anywhere else besides parks?

Of course, said Guillaume. We are part of a larger ensemble, Los Trovadores del Sur. You’ve probably heard of us.

No, I’m new here. What kind of music do you play?

Salsa, he said proudly.

"Other than