There were two hotels, one of them run by a Swiss, who offered me hospitality in return for certain odd-job duties, which included...playing the violin in the saloon at night... Each morning we practised together on the roof, working up a selection of musical tit-bits. Jacobo was a nimble accordionist and played the instrument with windy pleasure; it seemed well suited to his pneumatic passions. Quite soon we’d developed a reasonable repertoire, enough to satisfy Herr Brandt’s demands - operatic arias for the tea-rooms, serenades for the evening, pasodobles and tangos for dancing. The Sunday before Christmas we gave our first Grand Concert, but this was ruined by exploding wine-bottles, a series of reverberating incidents due to faulty supplies which put our audience in disarray. We had somewhat more success with our weekend dances, which were held in a kind of white-tiled wash-house downstairs. These were formal affairs, full of suppressed sexuality, but controlled by rigid Andalusian manners. The chaperoned girls sat on display round the walls, pretty as coloured paper, quivering to the music with butterfly vibrations which soon brought the young men in from the night. Approaches could only be made through a watchful third party - mother, brother, or aunt - but the dances, though stilted, concealed much emotional grappling, and for a while were the height of fashion. << less