The Barefoot Queen

by Ildefonso Falcones

  “Dance!”

  “Sing!”

  The other two women did so brazenly, both now completely nude. They danced around Milagros, touching her, encouraging her to join their shamelessness. Repulsed, she tried to get away from their caresses and pushed a hand off her inner thigh. Other hands groped her breasts and buttocks, pulled on her skirt and shirt as they spun and spun to the noblemen’s delight. Behind her, someone grabbed her by the elbows and forced her to be still. Milagros managed to see that it was one of the chisperos. Pedro, beside him, tore his wife’s shirt with a single knife slash and pulled on the cloth, which slowly came off her body as he mocked her. Milagros struggled, trying in vain to bite the arms that imprisoned her, but her resistance only excited the noblemen’s lust, who came closer to help Pedro when he set to on her skirt and the rest of her clothes until she was left completely naked. She tried to cover herself with her hands and arms, her face filled with tears. They didn’t allow her to: they pushed and hit her as the two women continued spinning in a dizzying dance, lifting their arms above their heads to show their breasts, swinging their hips to exhibit their pubes. Milagros’s dark skin stood out against the other women’s paleness and excited the noblemen even more, who awkwardly joined the dancing. Then they grabbed the women, groped them and kissed them, Milagros being their favorite target.

  Right there, on the carpets, the noblemen fornicated with the two women and then, once, twice, three times … they raped Milagros, her pleading and howls of pain lost amid the sound of the guitars and Pedro and his chisperos’ cheering and clapping.

  How many times had Pedro sold her over the course of almost an entire year? Five or perhaps seven more times? He was aware that the situation would erupt at any point; that the rich Madrileños would lose interest in the Barefoot Girl as soon as the rumors got around their circles and enjoying her was no longer considered a triumph to boast about, so he sold her to the highest bidder.

  María. Milagros sought refuge in her daughter, who was all she had. She hugged the girl, holding back her sobs, whispering songs in her ear in a broken voice, stroking her hair until the little girl fell asleep and rocking her for hours and hours.

  She learned to receive her laughter with feigned joy and play animatedly with her, even though she could still—and had done ever since that day—feel the disgusting brush of a brute’s dirty hand on her inner thigh, on her nipples … and on her lips. In the end, most of the noblemen took her violently, blinded, screaming, biting and scratching her. It was as if they were beating her. But when they tried to seduce her, sure that their caresses and their words of love could bend her will as if they were gods, she felt even worse. Arrogant swine! Those were the memories, and not the violent ones, that Milagros couldn’t shake; only the little brown hand of María running clumsily over her face managed to diminish the bitter feelings. Milagros nibbled her little fingers while the girl, laughing, pressed the other hand over her eye. And she sought out time and again the touch of her daughter’s soft skin, the only balm for the sadness and humiliation that overwhelmed her.

  I swear you will be dead in life. The autumn was ending when Pedro’s threat exploded in her head after returning from the Príncipe and calling to her daughter several times and not seeing her come running.

  “Where’s the girl?” she asked Bartola suspiciously.

  “With her father,” answered the García woman.

  “When will he bring her back?”

  There was no answer.

  At nightfall, Pedro showed up, alone.

  “María shouldn’t live with a whore,” he answered harshly. “It sets a bad example for such a young girl.”

  “What …? What do you mean? I’m no whore; you know that. Where is María? Where have you taken her?”

  “She is with a God-fearing family. She will be better off there.”

  Pedro looked at his wife: she was close to desperation and seemed to be trying to break her fingers, twisting them over each other, digging her nails into her hands.

  “I beg you, don’t do this to me,” implored Milagros.

  “Whore.”

  She fell to her knees. “Don’t take my daughter from me,” she sobbed. “Don’t do it …”

  Pedro watched her for a few seconds. “It’s what you deserve,” he said, interrupting her pleas before turning his back on her.

  Milagros grabbed his leg and shouted, weeping, “I will do whatever you want,” she promised, “but don’t take my daughter away from me.”

  “Don’t you already do whatever I want?”

  Pedro fought to be rid of his wife but she clung to him. He grabbed her by the hair and pulled backward until, gradually, her neck twisted, Milagros let go of his leg. Then she ran after him; Pedro smacked her on the landing until she went back into the house.

  The next morning, a couple of nasty chisperos from the Barquillo neighborhood were waiting on Amor de Dios Street to escort the sedan chair that arrived to pick up Milagros and take her to the theater. Then they loitered on Lobo and Príncipe Streets until the rehearsal was over. In the evening, during the performance, there were two others as grim as the first pair; Pedro had enough money to hire an army of chisperos.

  Milagros tried to find María. She didn’t know where she was, but if she could find Pedro and follow him … From what she understood, he spent a lot of time in Barquillo. One night she waited until she heard the rhythmic breathing of the old García woman in the next room and she went down the stairs feeling along the walls with her hands. Bartola opened one eye when the door creaked, but she just rolled over on her straw mattress. Milagros didn’t get past the landing; in the dark she tripped and fell over a chispero who was dozing there.

  “Your husband has ordered us to kill you if necessary,” the grim-faced young man threatened when they both managed to get up. “Don’t make things difficult for me.”

  He pushed her into the apartment. Desperate, Milagros even offered her body to the chispero on watch in exchange for helping her to find her girl. The man cynically weighed one of her breasts.

  “You don’t understand,” he argued as he squeezed it between his fingers. “There’s not a woman in the world who could tempt me enough to take that risk. Your husband is very good with his knife; he’s shown that on several occasions already.”

  On another day she got down on her knees at Bartola’s feet and begged her, her face streaked with tears. The only response she got was insults and recriminations.

  “None of this would have happened if you hadn’t given yourself to the marquis, whore.”

  PROSTITUTED AGAINST her will, deprived of her daughter, controlled everywhere she went, Milagros was transformed into an empty, defeated, silent, distant woman, her eyes sunken into deep sockets that not even Bartola could cover up when it was time for her to go to the theater.

  “Keep her beautiful and desirable, Aunt,” demanded Pedro when he found out that Milagros was refusing to eat. “Force-feed her if necessary; dress her well; make her learn the songs. She has to go on dazzling the audience.”

  But the old García woman was getting desperate. Every time Pedro sold his wife to one of those noblemen, she came back in worse shape. With bites, scratches, bruises … and blood: blood on her nipples, in her vagina and even in her anus. Bartola didn’t spend money on potions and remedies; she just washed and tried to hide the unhinged woman’s wounds. She hated the idea of taking care of a Vega, but she didn’t dare stand up to Pedro, and day after day Milagros returned to the Príncipe, where she ended up thinking she could find some refuge and comfort. She made an effort to provoke warm applause from her public, and the compliments that came up spontaneously from the stalls or from the men gathered on Lobo Street when she passed in her sedan chair.

  However, when she looked up from the stage at the box seats and she saw the nobles’ glittering jewels and adornments, she would get distracted, thinking how one of them had taken her by force and that perhaps at that very moment he was bragging abou
t it. And her voice would give way until she remembered the audience in the pit and the balcony. Probably many didn’t notice, but she did, and so did Celeste, and Marina, and the other players waiting their turn to go on stage and their chance to get revenge on that vain and arrogant gypsy girl who had excluded them from the parties held by the powerful noblemen.

  One evening, as the affected voices of the other players recited verses written by Calderón for Love After Death, Milagros found a bottle with some wine still in it beside the dressing rooms. She looked around behind the set on which Celeste was playing the part of Doña Isabel. The presence of the prompter, who followed the leading lady along the side of the dressing rooms to remind her of her lines, didn’t worry her: the man seemed pretty busy. However, it was the prompter’s comings and goings behind the curtain, with lantern and libretto in hand, that kept her from seeing a musician who played the viola da gamba beside the curtain that hid the orchestra.

  “She drank desperately … right out of the bottle,” he later told anyone who would listen. “She almost fell over backward trying to get the last little drop.”

  What did Milagros care who it was that, from that moment on, left a bottle of wine in the dressing room every day? Maybe it was Don José, she thought, because she herself believed she sang better and moved more freely on the stage, unconcerned about the boxes and the men inside them. “Forget,” she repeated to herself with every sip, until the image of her little one’s face faded with the alcohol.

  Bartola soon realized the state in which Milagros was returning from the Príncipe every night; so did the chisperos: two good bottles of undiluted wine meant they had to hold her up when she got out of the sedan chair.

  “And what do you want us to do?” they defended themselves to Pedro. “They give her wine in the theater.”

  The old García woman was fed up with that life, especially since the little girl was no longer there. Only Milagros’s obligations in the Príncipe were keeping her in Madrid. She missed Triana. Pedro now only set foot in the house on Amor de Dios Street when he came looking for the money Milagros earned in the theater.

  “No one will pay for her anymore!” the gypsy confessed one day as he put aside some coins for them to live on. “She earns more singing and dancing than if I sold her body on the streets … and it’s more comfortable for me,” he added with a cynical sneer.

  “Pedro,” argued Bartola, “we’ve been in Madrid for almost two years and this last one you’ve made a lot of money off the Vega girl. Why don’t we go back to Triana?”

  The gypsy brought a hand to his chin. “And what do we do with her?” he asked.

  “She’s not going to last long,” she answered.

  “Well, I’m going to take advantage of her for as long as she lasts,” he declared.

  Bartola didn’t have to think twice: she would make sure she didn’t last much longer. One day, with the food money, she bought a flask of wine and left it in the kitchen. Another day she brought distilled liquor. And sweet wine. And she always had spiced liqueurs made of distilled alcohol or wine, sugar, cloves, ginger, cinnamon …

  All in Milagros’s reach, and Milagros drank it all.

  “FOOLS!”

  Milagros felt as if her brain was exploding from the brusque movement to turn her head toward the curtain that covered the orchestra section. Why aren’t they playing properly? she wondered, waiting for her vision to clear so she could focus on that part of the stage. Are they trying to mess me around? she thought.

  “Fools!” she shouted at the musicians again, clumsily flailing her hands and arms before turning back toward her public.

  The music sounded again in the Coliseo del Príncipe at the gypsy’s sign, but she missed her entrance and her thick, slurred voice came in late. “That’s not the piece! Or is it? You are trying to ruin me!” She turned to the curtain again as boos came up from the audience. Cowards! Why were they hiding?

  “Start again,” she ordered.

  She thought she heard the music and she tried to sing. Her voice caught in her dry, burning throat. The words were trapped between her tongue and her teeth, stuck in her viscous saliva, unable to get away and slip out. The shouts of the groundlings drilled her head. Where were they? She could see one, two at most; the third was already blending into the lights, the golden reflections of the boxes and the jewels of those who had raped her. They were laughing. Didn’t they understand it was the orchestra’s fault? She stammered out the first verse of the song in a hoarse and ragged voice, trying to hear the music. She listened carefully. Yes. It was playing. Dance; she had to dance. She lifted her arms awkwardly. They didn’t respond. She was dizzy. She couldn’t control her legs either. She fell on her knees before the audience. Something hit her, but she didn’t care. The entire theater howled at her. And the applause? She hung her head. She let her arms fall to her sides. Where is my little girl? Why did they steal her away from me? she sobbed.

  “Bastards, all of you!” she muttered when another object, soft and sticky, hit her body. Red, like blood. Was she bleeding? She felt nothing. Perhaps she was dying; maybe dying was this simple. She wanted it. Dying to forget … She felt them grab her by the elbows and drag her off the stage.

  “Milagros García,” she heard once she was in the dressing room, as the theater magistrate seized her roughly by the chin and lifted her head, “you are under arrest.”

  Constable Blas Pérez rested his truncheon on the filthy dirt floor of Hortaleza Street one sunny spring morning when he was hurrying toward the Santa Bárbara Gate, at Madrid’s northeast edge. He didn’t see José, the constable from Barquillo, until he almost bumped into him emerging from the side street of San Marcos.

  “What brings you so far from your district, Blas?”

  He stifled an irritated sneer; he didn’t want to get into a conversation, he needed to find Pedro García, quickly. The gypsy had ordered him to keep his ears open for news about Milagros.

  “An order,” he then answered, lifting a hand, as if he were annoyed to find himself there.

  He was about to say goodbye and continue on his way when he was forced to stop. “Damn my luck!” he muttered.

  In front of him, the sound of dolzainas and a drumroll from the Church of Saint Mary Magdalene announced the arrival of a priest wearing a black hat and carrying a simple bag containing the viaticum for someone dying. Many of the people on the street silently joined the procession behind the priest; those who didn’t removed their hats, knelt in the dirt and crossed themselves as he passed. A carriage pulled by two mules stopped where Blas was kneeling. Three well-dressed gentlemen got out and offered the carriage to the priest, who got in. The gentlemen joined the procession and followed the Holy Sacrament on foot as soon as an altar boy indicated to the coachman where the dying person was and he drove the mules on.

  Blas remained on his knees as the procession passed him by.

  “Rodilla’s wife,” murmured the other constable, who had come to kneel beside him. “The accountant of the congregation of Our Lady of Hope—do you know him? He’s very upset.”

  Blas shook his head; his thoughts were elsewhere.

  “Sure you do,” insisted José, “one of the brothers of the mortal sin patrol.”

  “Ah!” was all Blas said, nodding.

  He must know him; more than one night he had run into those brothers of the congregation who went through the streets of Madrid asking for alms and calling the licentious citizens to order, trying to interrupt their indecent carnal relations with their chanting and their prayers, warning them that they were committing a grave sin and that if death called for them in that moment …

  Surely he knew Rodilla, like many of those who walked behind the priest and would squeeze into the sick woman’s room as he attended to her. The death rites, he thought. Even the King gave up his carriage to the viaticum and walked behind it! What Blas wasn’t sure about was whether His Majesty had ever gone into the dying person’s bedroom after paying homage to
the Holy Sacrament. He, Blas, because of his position, had done it on several occasions: the priests extracted protestations of faith and acts of contrition from the sick person to help him die well even at the cost of his precarious health: penitential psalms; ejaculatory prayers; litanies; praying to the saints … A deployment of prayers for each of the seconds of agony that the mourners accompanied with their compassion, until some indication—perhaps the frightened eyes of someone seeing death draw near, maybe an incomprehensible babbling, foaming at the mouth or uncontrollable convulsions—signaled the presence of the devil. Then the priest sprinkled the bed and the entire room with holy water and, to the horror of those who witnessed it, lifted the Holy Sacrament over his head and challenged Satan.

  “Do you need my help with your order?” The constable from Barquillo interrupted his thoughts.

  They both got up and wiped the dirt off their stockings. Blas didn’t need help. He didn’t even want the other constable to know where he was headed.

  “I appreciate it, José, but it’s not necessary. How are things going?” he asked only so he wouldn’t seem rude.

  The other man sighed and shrugged. “You can imagine—” he began to say.

  “The procession is getting away from you,” interrupted Blas. “I don’t mean to keep you.”

  José shifted his gaze to the backs heading down Hortaleza Street. He sighed. “She was a pious woman, the accountant’s wife.”

  “I’m sure she was.”

  “Everyone’s time has to come.”

  Blas didn’t want to get into that discussion and he kept quiet.

  “Well,” added José after clicking his tongue, “I’ll see you soon.”

  “Whenever you’d like,” agreed the other as José prepared to follow the viaticum.

  Blas waited a moment and then set off again, passing in front of the Saint Mary Magdalene Home for Reformed Prostitutes: the viaticum had left from its church and the mortal sin patrol would also emerge from there. He slowed down and even tapped his truncheon against the ground, slightly worried. The death that comes to everyone—sin, the devil that the priests were trying to expel—made him doubt what he was going to do. He could change his mind. He smiled at the idea of having regrets right in front of the place where fifty loose-living women, who’d been touched by the hand of God, had voluntarily decided to be confined under the auspices of Mary Magdalene, living a cloistered life of prayer and self-discipline and never again leaving the home unless it was to embrace religion or marry one of those honest men whom the Brothers of Hope procured for them.