The Barefoot Queen

by Ildefonso Falcones

  I care about you. Caridad felt a shiver; everyone who had said they cared about her, or loved her, had disappeared from her life.

  “It wasn’t easy,” said Herminia, interrupting her thoughts, “to find a serious and solvent citizen who was willing to take responsibility for you before the High Court. Want a smoke?” She smiled and rummaged in her bag until she pulled out a cigar.

  She asked for a light from a man passing by. They were silent as he lit the tinder and brought it to the tip of the cigar. Herminia sucked hard and the tobacco caught fire.

  “Here.” She offered it to her friend.

  Caridad took the dark, thin, badly twisted and scentless cigar. She sucked hard on it: bitter, harsh tobacco that was slow to burn. She coughed.

  “I had better in La Galera!” she protested. “Even there they don’t smoke such bad tobacco.”

  Herminia smiled. So did Caridad. They didn’t dare to embrace in public, but in a single second they said a thousand things to each other in silence.

  “Well, you owe your freedom to this disgusting tobacco,” said Herminia, breaking the spell.

  Caridad looked at the cigar. A small clandestine tobacco plantation, that was what it was, explained Herminia. The priest of Torrejón de Ardoz kept a few plants on some land belonging to the parish. Until then, with the help of Marcial, who had leased the vineyards that hid the tobacco field from the parish, the priest had turned a profit with them through the sacristan, but the man was now too old to continue. “I have a friend …” Herminia had said, taking advantage of the coincidence when she found out about the situation. It took her a while to convince Marcial and Don Valerio, the parish priest, but gradually their reluctance diminished when no other options appeared. Whom could they hire for such an activity, which was so harshly punished by the law? They accepted, and Don Valerio used some old contacts in the High Court so they would see Marcial and grant him custody of the prisoner. There was no problem: Caridad had completed her two-year sentence and the farmer could prove he was solvent and had a record of good behavior. One day they informed him that the documents were ready.

  Marcial came back to the arcades with the cart still piled high with melons.

  “We got here too late!” he complained in a severe tone, blaming Herminia.

  The delay caused by the paperwork at the High Court and La Galera had meant he was unable to sell his wares.

  “None of the stalls want melons at this time of day.” Then he looked at Caridad the same way he had in the prison and shook his head. “You didn’t tell me she was so black,” he accused Herminia.

  “At night it’s not so noticeable,” interjected Caridad.

  Herminia burst out laughing. The farmer raised his eyebrows.

  “I don’t plan on spending my nights with you.”

  “Your loss,” added Herminia as she winked at her friend.

  No. Marcial wasn’t her husband, or her lover, not even a relative, Herminia answered, satisfying Caridad’s curiosity as they walked behind the farmer with his small cart loaded down with melons. He was just a neighbor. The house of Herminia’s aunt and uncle, where she lived and where Caridad would now be living as well, was right next door to Marcial’s, and despite the fact that the tobacco ought to be kept secret, half of the town knew about it. She had promised her aunt and uncle a small income in exchange for taking Caridad in.

  “But I don’t have any money,” she complained.

  “That doesn’t matter. You’ll definitely get it with the tobacco. They will give you a part of the yield. The parish priest will decide what you get based on the results,” explained Herminia. “Although your share will always be based on the finished product … Because you know how to work the leaf and make the cigars, right? That’s what you told me.”

  “That’s the only thing I know how to do,” she answered when they reached an irregular plaza where there were gathered as many if not more people than in the Plaza Mayor. “Although now I’ve also learned to sew.”

  “La Puerta del Sol,” explained Herminia, noticing that Caridad had slowed her pace.

  “Wait here,” shouted Marcial to the two women.

  Herminia moved silently out of the path of the cart; she knew what the farmer was going to do as he turned down one of the narrow streets that led out of the plaza. In Madrid there were ten stalls authorized by the High Court to sell melons, where they were sold under the control of the authorities, who oversaw their quality, weight and price, but there were also many peddlers who, without a set location or any authorization, risked arrest and ending up in La Galera for buying and reselling fruit and vegetables illegally. The women who sold melons were scattered around the Puerta del Sol, and Marcial, cursing under his breath, went in search of them.

  This is the famous Puerta del Sol? wondered Caridad. She had heard about that place too in La Galera: a gossip shop where people talked until they were convinced of the truth of rumors they themselves invented; a gathering place for idlers and layabouts, out-of-work bricklayers and haughty, impertinent musicians—some who had a chance and others who insisted on emulating them—waiting for some Madrileño to hire them to enliven one of the gatherings they often celebrated in their homes in the evenings.

  Both women remained standing beside the monastery commonly known as San Felipe el Real, at one end of the plaza. Due to the irregular ground on Mayor Street, the church’s long atrium, which had always been a place of meeting and entertainment for the Madrileños, rose above Herminia’s and Caridad’s heads. Yet neither of them paid any attention to the laughter and comments that emerged from there.

  “Would you like to go in?” invited Herminia.

  Caridad remained absorbed in the row of caves that opened up beneath the steps of San Felipe. There were also small caves beneath the atrium of the church of Carmen and in some other places in that city built on hills, but none were as well known as the ones in the Puerta del Sol. In some they sold used clothes, but most sold toys that the merchants displayed to the public piled up beside the doors or hanging from their lintels in an attractive and colorful display that caught the eye of all passersby.

  “Can we?”

  Herminia smiled at the naïvete she saw in Caridad’s round face. “Of course we can … as long as you don’t break anything. Marcial will still be a while.”

  They entered one of the caves, which was narrow and long, dark and gloomy, with no natural light other than what entered through the door. The toys were scattered everywhere including over the floor: carriages, buggies, dolls, whistles, music boxes, swords and rifles, drums … They both jumped like little girls when a snake leapt out of a box to bite the finger of the woman who was touching it. The fat old woman who ran the business let out a laugh as she stuffed the snake back inside the box. The woman got over her surprise and asked how much it cost. As they negotiated the price, Caridad and Herminia amused themselves among the four or five people crowded inside, some fighting with the children who accompanied them and were demanding everything in the shop.

  “Look at this, Cachita.” Herminia pointed to a blonde doll. “Cachita?” she insisted when she got no response.

  She turned toward Caridad and found her spellbound in front of a wind-up toy that rested on a shelf: on a small platform painted green and ocher, various figurines of black men, women and children, some loaded down with sacks, others with long sticks from which hung tobacco leaves, and a white overseer with a whip in his hand who finished off the arrangement, were placed around a representation of a ceiba tree and various tobacco plants.

  “Do you like it?” asked Herminia.

  Caridad didn’t answer.

  “Wait, you’ll see.”

  Herminia repeatedly turned a small key that stuck out of the base of the toy, let it go when it was wound as far as it would go and some little tinny music began to sound as the group of Negroes spun around the ceiba tree and the tobacco plants, and the white overseer lifted and lowered the arm that held the whip.


  Caridad said nothing; one of her arms was outstretched, as if she wasn’t sure whether to touch the toy or not. Herminia didn’t realize that her friend was practically in a trance state.

  “I’m going to ask the price,” she said instead, overjoyed, excited, heading over to the old woman who was watching them from the counter now that the woman with the snake in a box had left the cave. “Not even if we saved all the money we made for several years!” she lamented on her return. “Come and look at the doll!”

  Marcial had to check several of the caves before he found them. His angry face was enough to make Herminia pull Caridad away. She knew what had happened: the peddlers had bought the melons for less than half what he could have made. They followed the empty cart through the plaza of the Puerta del Sol, slowly, despite the curses Marcial spat at the crowd to get them to make way.

  Caridad saw the water carriers, all of them Asturian, gathered around the fountain they called the Mariblanca, with their pitchers ready to transport the water where it was needed. Jacinta was from Asturias and had told her about them. Was one of those men the relative who had brought her to Madrid, whom she hadn’t wanted to disappoint with her pregnancy? She watched them; tough and rugged folk, Jacinta had assured her, most of them dedicated to harsh jobs such as water carrier, coal hauler or porter. On Fridays, from a pulpit set up in the plaza, between the church of Buen Suceso and the Mariblanca fountain, priests and friars preached sermons at them. From the looks of it they needed them: the rows between the water carriers and the neighbors who tried to help themselves in the fountains were constant, as were the quarrels they had between themselves when one of them tried to take more than was allowed on his turn: one large pitcher, two medium-size ones or four small. Jacinta had also told her, wistfully, that the Asturians gathered in the Corregidor’s Meadow to dance the danza prima native to their land. They all danced together but they always ended up fighting with rocks or sticks, divided into sides based on what town they were from.

  As in the Plaza Mayor, around the Mariblanca fountain there were stalls and boxes for the sale of meat and fruits, but unlike the uniform, tall buildings there, the Puerta del Sol had few important constructions: the monastery of San Felipe el Real and, where it led to Mayor Street, a large house that took up an entire block with a corner tower demonstrating the nobility of its owner, the lord of the district of Humera; the church and the hospital of Buen Suceso, facing the tower on the other side; on one wall was the foundling hospital and, a little further on, the other side, the monastery of La Victoria, whose atrium was also a gathering place for Frenchified dandies. The rest of the buildings were nothing more than low houses, most of a single story, narrow, old and crowded together, whose façades displayed both the clothes hung out to dry and the lack of privacy of the inhabitants. Rubbish collected in the doorways, and the excrement that hadn’t been thoughtlessly tossed from the windows remained in front of the doors, in the chamber pots, waiting for the latrine cart to pass … if it ever did.

  Among the crowd and bustle that seemed odd to her after two years of imprisonment, Caridad struggled to keep up with Marcial’s pace as he pulled the cart. They passed the Puerta del Sol and entered Alcalá Street, with its press of carriages and carts going up and down, passing each other, stopping so their illustrious occupants could chat for a few moments, greet each other or just show off their wealth. Caridad tried to imagine what awaited her. Torrejón de what? She couldn’t remember the name of the town Herminia had mentioned; she’d forgotten it as soon as Herminia told her about the tobacco, just a few plants, a priest and an elderly sacristan. “Bad tobacco,” she added to herself. The rushing, the vehicles, the orders and insults hurled by the coachmen and the footmen who walked beside them forced Caridad to forget her worries and even kept her from looking at the ostentatious buildings erected by all sorts of wealthy people and religious orders on Madrid’s noblest avenue, which ended at its eastern gate, the Alcalá Gate. Caridad left the city through its single arch, flanked by two small towers, just a few months after Milagros had arrived there.

  Torrejón de Ardoz was four leagues along the King’s Highway. They covered them in an equal number of hours, scorched by a summer sun that showed no mercy on them as they crossed through vast wheat fields. “They grow tobacco here?” wondered Caridad, remembering the fertile Cuban plantation. She was reminded of her old straw hat: she hadn’t needed it in La Galera, but on that road, beneath the burning sun, she missed it. It must have been left behind in the room of the secret guesthouse, along with her red clothes, documents and money. “Strange freedom,” she said to herself. In two years she hadn’t missed her red clothes, not even when she had to pay money for one of the tatty old shirts supplied by the demandera, and yet after a few breaths of freedom the memories were coming back to her.

  Behind an irritated and silent Marcial, who dragged them along without compassion after having blamed Herminia, shouting, for the loss he’d had to sell the melons at, the two women had enough time to explain what they had been up to since they’d seen each other last.

  “How is your back?” asked Herminia just as they were crossing a bridge. “The Jarama River,” she announced, indicating the almost dry riverbed with her chin.

  Caridad was about to reply about the state of her back, but the other woman didn’t give her a chance.

  “We have to get you some shoes,” she said, pointing to her bare feet.

  “I don’t know how to walk in shoes,” she replied.

  They left behind the Viveros Bridge. There was still a league before Torrejón de Ardoz and Caridad already knew all about the family she was going to live with: Herminia’s aunt and uncle, Germán and Margarita. He was a farmer, like almost everyone in the town, and his wife helped him when she could.

  “My uncle is a good man,” murmured Herminia, “like my father, although he was a bit obstinate. Uncle took me in as a girl, when my mother couldn’t take care of her children and distributed us to various relatives.”

  Caridad was familiar with the story; she also knew that Herminia had never heard from her mother again, just as had happened to her. She remembered the night that both of them had cried.

  “Aunt Margarita is old,” she explained, “and always sick with something or other, but she will treat you well.”

  There was also Antón and Rosario. Caridad sensed a certain nervousness in her friend when she praised her cousin Antón, who worked the lands they had leased with his father, although he also often helped making tiles or transporting straw to Madrid.

  “If your relatives are farmers,” Caridad interrupted, “why don’t they take care of the tobacco?”

  “They don’t dare,” she answered.

  They walked a few steps in silence.

  “Because you know that this tobacco business is dangerous, right?” asked Herminia.

  “Yes.” Caridad knew it. She had talked to a prisoner who had been sentenced for trafficking in tobacco.

  “You have to be careful with Rosario,” warned Herminia a bit later. “She’s vain, bitter and bossy.”

  Her cousin’s wife didn’t help in the fields. She had four children whose names Caridad didn’t even try to remember, and for years she had been making good money selling the breast milk that should have been theirs to the children of wealthy Madrileños. According to what Herminia told her, for almost six months now the son of a public prosecutor in the War Council had been living with them, the newborn having been brought to Torrejón by his parents so that Rosario could nurse him.

  “And you?” asked Caridad.

  “What about me?”

  “What do you do there, in your aunt and uncle’s house?”

  Herminia sighed. Caridad stopped and Marcial got a few paces ahead; Herminia hadn’t told her why she remained in her aunt and uncle’s house.

  “I help out.”

  Caridad squinted at her friend’s silhouette outlined against the fields while that sun that was so different from the one that shone i
n La Galera caressed her figure. “You’ve never married?”

  Herminia urged her to continue walking. “We’re almost there—” She tried to change the subject.

  “Why?” insisted Caridad, interrupting her.

  “A baby,” Herminia finally confessed. “Several years ago, before prison. Nobody in Torrejón will marry me. And in Madrid … in Madrid the men are very reluctant to get married.”

  “You never told me about any of this.”

  Herminia avoided her eyes and they continued in silence. Caridad knew that men didn’t want to get married. Many of the prisoners in La Galera complained about the same thing, that in the Madrid of civility and outrageous luxury, the men were afraid to get married. The number of weddings decreased each year and with it a birth rate that was replaced by people who came from every corner of Spain. The only reason for it was the impossibility of meeting the costs of the luxuries, mostly dresses, that the women accrued as soon as they married in order to fiercely compete with others, both in noble and modest homes, each according to their means. Many men had been ruined; others worked ceaselessly to please their wives.

  Torrejón de Ardoz was a town of little more than a thousand inhabitants located at the foot of the King’s Highway that led to Saragossa. They passed the hospital of Santa María as they entered and dodged a couple of beggars who were harassing them. Another block and they went down Enmedio Street until they reached the town’s main square. On Hospital Street, between the church of San Juan and the hospital of San Sebastián, they stopped in front of some low adobe houses, with back gardens that bordered the fields. The sun was still shining.

  Marcial emitted a grunt in farewell, handed Caridad the papers confirming her freedom, pushed the cart against the façade of one of the houses and went into it. Caridad followed Herminia to the house next door.

  “Hail Mary, full of grace,” she called out in greeting as she crossed the threshold.