The Barefoot Queen

by Ildefonso Falcones

  And the gypsy was true to his word: he gave El Cojo several gold coins and let him go; with that money in his bag El Cojo wouldn’t turn him in and he’d have enough time to escape.

  “Then,” said Tomás when his brother ended the story, “El Gordo has no way of knowing whether it was you who robbed him or if he was betrayed by his own trusted man.”

  Melchor tilted his head and instinctively brought a hand to one of his earlobes, smiled, drank wine and spoke: “What satisfaction could we get from revenge if the victim doesn’t know we were the ones who took it out on him?”

  After El Cojo left the house, Melchor had taken off one of the large silver hoops that hung from his ears and placed it right in the center of the small chest he had emptied of his possessions.

  “He knows,” Melchor answered his brother. “As sure as the devil, he knows that it was me! And at this moment, right now, he’ll be cursing my name and raging, just as he’ll do at night, and when he wakes up, if he’s ever able to get any sleep, and—”

  “And he will hunt you down and kill you,” declared Uncle Basilio.

  “Undoubtedly. But now he has more pressing problems: he can’t pay for his contraband, or pay his men. He has lost a large part of his power. Let’s see how his enemies, who are legion, respond.”

  Basilio and Tomás nodded.

  MELCHOR DIDN’T want to go back to the San Miguel alley; nothing tied him to the blacksmiths’ place and, if he had to choose between his daughter and José Carmona on one hand and Milagros on the other, he’d choose his granddaughter. After talking to the Vegas, he headed toward the shack where the girl lived. Night was already falling.

  “Thank you for what you did for the girl, María,” he said as soon as he entered. They were cooking something in a pot that looked like a piece of meat.

  The old woman turned toward him and shrugged. Melchor stopped one step in front of the coarse curtain that served as a door and watched his granddaughter for a good long while; she turned her head occasionally, looked at him out of the corner of her eye and smiled.

  “What do you want, Nephew?” asked the old woman with a weary voice, behind him.

  “I want … a palace where I can live with my granddaughter, surrounded by a vast tobacco plantation …” Milagros was about to turn, but the old woman elbowed her in the side and forced her to keep her attention on the fire. Melchor squinted his eyes. “I want horses and colorful silk suits; gold jewelry—tons of it; music and dance and the payos serving me my food every day. I want women, also by the dozens …” The old woman elbowed Milagros again before she could turn around. That time Melchor smiled. “And a good husband for my granddaughter, the best gypsy man in the land …” Her back still to her grandfather, Milagros tilted her head from left to right gracefully, as if she liked what she was hearing, and was urging him to continue. “The strongest and the bravest, rich and healthy, completely free, and who’ll give my granddaughter many children …”

  The girl continued nodding until Old María spoke.

  “Well, you aren’t going to find any of that here. You’re in the wrong place.”

  “Are you sure?”

  The old woman turned and Milagros turned with her. In one of Grandfather’s hands, his arm extended, hung a lovely necklace of small white pearls.

  “You have to start somewhere,” Melchor then said, and he approached his granddaughter to place the necklace around her neck.

  “It’s so sad to get old and know that your body no longer excites men!” complained the healer as Milagros stroked the pearls that gleamed on her tanned neck.

  Melchor turned toward the old woman. “Let’s see if with this …” he started to say as he searched in one of the inner pockets of his blue jacket, “you can manage to attract some gypsy into your bed, to warm up that body that no longer—”

  The old woman didn’t let him finish his sentence: as soon as Melchor pulled out a gold medallion inlaid with mother of pearl, she grabbed it from his hands and, almost without looking at it, as if she were afraid he would change his mind, put in the pocket of her apron.

  “Not many men would come to me because of that trifle,” she let fly later.

  “Well, here is one who needs supper and a corner to sleep in.”

  “I’ll give you food, but forget about sleeping in this house.”

  “The medallion’s not enough?”

  “What medallion, you lying gypsy?” she responded with mock seriousness before turning back to the pot.

  Milagros could do nothing more than shrug her shoulders.

  “SING, MORENA.”

  Caridad, absorbed in her work by candlelight, sketched a wonderful smile that lit up her face. Standing in the doorway, Melchor examined the shack: the old couple was already resting in their bed, from where they looked at him expectantly.

  “Antonio,” he said to the old man as he threw a coin the other caught on the fly, “you and your wife can sleep on Caridad’s straw mattress. She and I will take yours, it’s bigger.”

  “But …” the old man started to complain.

  “Give me back the money.”

  The old man caressed the coin, grumbled and elbowed his wife. Caridad couldn’t help smiling again as the two old grim-faced gypsies reluctantly relinquished their prize possession.

  “What are you laughing at?” the old woman snapped, her gaze going right through Caridad, whose face fell. And while the old couple covered themselves awkwardly with a blanket on Caridad’s mattress, Melchor went to the table and handled some of the cigars that were already prepared. He winked at Caridad and brought one to his lips. Then he took off his blue jacket and his boots and he lay down in the bed, with his head against the headboard, where he lit the cigar and filled the shack with smoke.

  “Sing, morena.”

  Caridad had wanted him to ask her for that again. How many nights had she yearned to work with that man at her back! She cut the tobacco leaf for the wrapper with extraordinary skill and began to sing softly. But, without planning it or even thinking about it, she abandoned the monotone African songs from her homeland and, just as when she’d worked on a tobacco or sugar plantation, she used her music to narrate her worries and her hopes like the Negro slaves did in Cuba, only able to talk about their lives in song. And meanwhile she continued working, focused on the movement of her hands, attentive to the tobacco, her feelings flowing freely into the lyrics of her songs. And those two old gypsies steal my slave smoke, she protested in one, and then while they suck on the veins, they complain about the tobacco …

  She also asked for forgiveness for having allowed them to steal the tobacco: And even though the gypsy says it’s not my fault, it was, but what could the Negress do against the white man? She cried over her torn red clothes and she celebrated Milagros’s getting them mended. She confessed her uneasiness about Melchor’s leaving to take revenge. She thanked him for the tranquil nights in the San Miguel alley. She sang of her friendship with Milagros and the hostility of the girl’s parents, and of their reconciliation, and of Old María who took care of the girl, and of the parties and the bear and—

  “Morena,” interrupted Melchor. Caridad turned her head. “Come here and smoke with me.”

  Melchor patted the mattress and Caridad obeyed. The wooden bed frame creaked, threatening to give when she got on it and lay beside the gypsy, who passed her the cigar. Caridad took a hard puff and felt the smoke filling her lungs completely; she held it there until she started to feel a pleasant tickle. Melchor, with the cigar again between his fingers, exhaled the smoke toward the reed and straw roof that covered them and gave it back to Caridad. What should I do? she wondered as she took another drag. Should I keep singing? Melchor kept silent, his gaze lost on that roof through which the rain dripped. She hesitated between singing or offering her body to him. Every time she had ever got into a bed, it had been for some man to enjoy her body: the master, the overseer, even the young son of another white master took her on a whim one Sunday. She sm
oked. She had never been the one to offer herself; it had always been the white men who called her and took her to bed. Melchor smoked too; the cigar was already burning when he passed it to her again. He had invited her into the bed … but he wasn’t touching her. She waited a few seconds for the cigar to cool down. She felt the contact of the gypsy’s body, on his side next to her, both crowded in, but she didn’t notice that accelerated breathing, that panting with which men usually pounced on her; Melchor breathed calmly, as always. And yet wasn’t her heart beating harder? What did it mean? She smoked. One drag right after the other, with gusto.

  “Morena,” he then said, “finish the cigar. And make sure not to move too much during the night or I’ll have to pay those two for a new bed. Now sing … the way you used to in the alley.”

  Melchor kept his eyes fixed on the reed roof: all he had to do was turn over and he would be on top of her, he thought. He felt the desire: hers was a young, firm, voluptuous body. Caridad would accept him, he was sure of that. She began to sing and the sad slave melodies filled Melchor’s ears. How he had missed her singing! If he leapt on her, she would stop. And from that point on, nothing would be the same, as always was the case with women. The affliction and pain that oozed from that music provoked other feelings in the gypsy, feelings that clouded his desire. That woman had suffered as much as he had, maybe more. Why break the spell? He could wait … for what? Melchor was surprised at the situation: he, Melchor Vega, El Galeote, wondering what to do. That morena really was special! Then he placed a hand on her thigh and slid up its length, and Caridad was silent and remained still, waiting, tense. Melchor could feel it in her leg muscles as they hardened, and in her breathing, which stopped for a few moments.

  “Keep singing, morena,” he requested, lifting his hand.

  HE DIDN’T seek out her body again, in spite of the ardor he felt when he awoke in the night and found they were entangled, both embracing each other against the cold, and the woman’s breasts and buttocks were tight up against him. Hadn’t she noticed his erection? Caridad’s tranquil, unhurried breathing was answer enough. And Melchor hesitated. He pushed her away from him but she kept sleeping, only muttered something in a language unfamiliar to the gypsy. Lucumí, she had told him one morning. She trusted him, slept placidly and sang to him at night. He couldn’t let her down, he again concluded, surprised on each of those occasions, before pushing her away from him.

  Melchor felt comfortable in the settlement, with his granddaughter and other relatives, and where his daughter Ana regularly visited. She was the one who came running over to him one day to warn him that a couple of men had appeared at the alley pretending to be interested in some cooking pots; but not even the least sharp of the gypsies believed that they’d come there to buy anything. Amid their dealings they’d said that they knew Melchor and they asked about him, but no one, that Ana knew of, had given them any information.

  Tomás increased the vigilance over the settlement. He had taken that measure when he found out about his brother’s revenge on El Gordo’s assets, but now he urged the young Vega men to be increasingly zealous. The gypsies of La Cartuja were used to being on a constant state of alert: the settlement was frequented by all sorts of delinquents and fugitives from justice seeking refuge, trying to blend in with the members of a community who proudly lived outside the laws of the payos.

  Yet Melchor told his brother, “Don’t worry.”

  “How can I not? They must be El Gordo’s men.”

  “Just two? You and I can take them. You don’t need to bother the young men, they have things to do.”

  “We have plenty of money now … for a while. Two of them accompany Old María and your granddaughter when they go out to collect herbs.”

  “All right, pay those ones well,” Melchor corrected himself.

  Tomás smiled.

  “You are very calm,” he said later.

  “Shouldn’t I be?”

  “No, you shouldn’t, but it seems that sleeping with the morena does you good,” he affirmed with a crafty expression.

  “Tomás,” said Melchor, running an arm over his brother’s shoulder and pulling his head close to his own, “she’s got a body that would satisfy the frenzied passion of the best lover.”

  Tomás let out a laugh.

  “But I haven’t laid a hand on her.”

  Tomás freed himself from the embrace. “What …?”

  “I can’t. I see her as innocent, insecure, sad, shattered. When she sings … well, you’ve heard me say this before. I like to listen to her. Her voice fills me up and transports me back to when we were boys and we used to listen to the Negro slaves singing, do you remember?” Tomás nodded. “The Negroes today have lost those roots and just try to turn white and become payos, but not my morena. Do you remember how Mother and Father were crazy for their music and their dancing? Then we would try to imitate them in the settlement, remember?” Tomás nodded again. “I think … I think if I lay with her the spell would be broken. And I prefer her voice … and her company.”

  “Well, you should do something. The settlement is a rumor mill. Think of your granddaughter …”

  “The girl knows we haven’t done anything. I’m sure of that. I would be able to tell.”

  And that was true. Milagros, like all the gypsies in the settlement, knew about the deal her grandfather had struck with the old couple, who complained to anyone who’d listen about how little Melchor had paid them to have their bed to share with the morena. Who had ever heard of a Negress sleeping in a bed with legs? Milagros couldn’t stand the idea of her grandfather and Cachita … Three days passed before she made up her mind and went in search of Caridad, and found her alone in the hut, working the tobacco.

  “You are fornicating with my grandfather!” she rebuked her right from the doorway.

  The smile Caridad had greeted her friend with faded on her lips. “No …” she managed to say in her defense.

  But the gypsy girl didn’t let her speak. “I haven’t been able to sleep thinking that you two were there: fucking like dogs. You, my friend …! I trusted you.”

  “He has not mounted me.”

  But Milagros wasn’t listening to her. “Don’t you realize? He’s my grandfather!”

  “He has not mounted me,” repeated Caridad.

  The girl furrowed her brow, still enraged. “You haven’t …?”

  “No.”

  Would she have liked him to? That was the question that crossed Caridad’s mind. She enjoyed Melchor’s touch; she felt safe and … did she want him to mount her? Beyond the physical contact, she felt nothing when men did that. Would it be the same with Melchor? As soon as he’d taken his hand off her leg that first night and asked her to sing, Caridad again felt the spell established between them to the rhythm of the Negro songs, their souls united. Would she like him to touch her, to mount her? Perhaps yes … or no. In any case, what would happen afterwards?

  Milagros misinterpreted her friend’s silence.

  “Forgive me for having doubted you, Cachita,” she apologized.

  She didn’t ask again.

  Which was why Melchor could maintain to Tomás that his granddaughter knew he wasn’t having sexual relations with Caridad. No explanations had been necessary on any of the many occasions that the gypsy came to see her.

  “I’m stealing her from you,” he would announce to Old María when he entered the hut where they were working with herbs; then he would take the girl by the arm, paying no mind to the healer’s complaints, and they would stroll by the riverbank or the Triana lowlands, mostly in silence, Milagros afraid her words would break the spell surrounding her grandfather.

  Melchor would also ask her to dance when he heard some handclapping, he would treat her to wine, he would surprise her when she and Caridad hid to smoke at dusk and he would join them—“I don’t have the friar’s cigars,” he would joke—or he would go with her and the old gypsy healer to gather herbs.

  “These weeds won’t
cure anybody,” grumbled the old woman on those occasions. “Get out of here!” she would shout at Melchor, shooing him off with her hands. “This is woman’s work.”

  And he would wink at his granddaughter and move a few paces away until he was beside the gypsies Tomás had ordered to watch over the women. They were already familiar with the healer’s crankiness and bad temper. But before long Melchor would be close to Milagros again.

  They were returning from one of those strolls when they heard the news of young Dionisio Vega’s death.

  THERE WAS a place in Triana that Melchor hated; there gathered, all mixed and crowded together, pain, suffering, impotence, rancor, the smell of death, hatred for all of humanity! Even when he was walking around Seville, near the Gold Tower, with the wide Guadalquivir in between, the gypsy turned his face toward the city walls to avoid seeing it. However, that spring dusk, after the dramatic wake for young Dionisio Vega, an irrepressible impulse led him there.

  Dionisio hadn’t even been sixteen. Surrounded by the relentless cries of grief from the women of the settlement and the San Miguel alley, all gathered to bid their final farewell to the boy, Melchor remembered the liveliness and intelligence in his dark penetrating eyes and his always smiling face. He was the grandson of Uncle Basilio, who endured the gathering with composure, trying to keep his gaze from meeting Melchor’s. When, at the end of the ceremony, Melchor headed over to his relative, Basilio accepted his condolences and for the first time in that day faced him. Basilio said nothing but the accusation floated through the settlement: It’s your fault, Melchor.

  And it was. Those two men El Gordo had sent, the ones Ana had told him about, had disappeared. Maybe because they saw that Melchor was never alone, maybe when they saw the security measures. But over time, the vigilance Tomás had ordered ceased. How could they think that El Gordo would forget the offense? Spring came and one day, young Dionisio, with two friends, left the settlement and went onto the fertile plain of Triana in search of a hen to steal or some iron scraps to sell to the blacksmiths. Two men cut them off. The boys were obviously gypsies from their dark faces, their colorful clothes and the trinkets that hung from their ears and around their necks. Not a word was exchanged before one of the men stuck a dress sword through Dionisio’s heart. Then the same man addressed the other boys.