The Barefoot Queen Page 41

  “Stay still, Diego!” he begged his companion, surprised just a step away from them.

  This Diego hesitated as he tried to get his eyes accustomed to the darkness.

  “Diego … for Our Lady of Atocha …” repeated the first man.

  Once he had caught his breath, Melchor was able to speak. “Listen to him, Diego,” advised the gypsy. “We don’t want to hurt you. This can all end well. We just want to get into Madrid, like you.”

  MELCHOR HAD forgotten to mention to Caridad that the people called manolos were not only bold, proud and indolent, but they were also loyal. They had become leaders of the atavistic forms of Spanish life, and found themselves in constant struggle against what they considered the superficiality and frivolity of the nobility and the Frenchified influential classes. That sense of honor, which had been shown throughout Spain’s history in so many epic chapters, and which was now threatened by the authorities, meant that when they made a commitment they felt obliged to fulfill it, as if their identities depended on it.

  “Word of honor!” Melchor heard them both say.

  That is what sets a manolo apart from a gypsy, Melchor said to himself, smiling, while loosening his grip on the man’s throat with total confidence, closing the knife and hiding it again in his sash: a gypsy giving a payo his word meant nothing.

  Melchor even helped to bandage the wound on Pelayo’s hand—that was the name of the first manolo—using a strip ripped from the man’s shirt. Later, he and Caridad followed them to the slaughterhouse at the Toledo Gate, where, after an exchange of passwords, a man allowed them through. Melchor haggled over the payment the man from the slaughterhouse demanded.

  “I’m not trying to buy one of your cows,” he reproached him as he counted out some coins.

  Diego and Pelayo didn’t pay with money; instead they opened the sack they were carrying, rummaged around inside it and handed the slaughterman a tiny stone that glittered red in the light of the lantern he held. Between the money and the stone, the man was satisfied and he accompanied them to Arganzuela Street through a narrow alley that crossed between the houses that bordered the back of the slaughterhouse.

  “Fake stones, that’s your trade?” inquired Melchor once they were on the street.

  “Yes,” admitted Pelayo. “It’s a good business; even fake they sell for a lot of money.”

  Melchor knew that; he was well acquainted with the price of glass beads. Except pearls, which weren’t considered precious stones, the King had banned the use or buying and selling of all fake stones: diamonds, rubies, emeralds, topazes.

  “The women and men who can’t afford the real ones, which is most of Madrid,” continued Pelayo, “still like flaunting the fakes. It’s a very profitable trade.”

  The gypsy took note of that, while Caridad inspected their surroundings. The darkness was almost absolute: a few candles and oil lamps struggled to illuminate the interiors of some single-story houses whose pitched roofs could be seen against the moon. Among the shadows, however, she sensed the presence of people moving from one side to the other and she heard laughter and conversations. On the street, beyond them, a couple lit their way with a lantern. But what most attracted her attention was the stench she was breathing in, and she wondered where it was coming from. Then she understood that what she was stepping in with her bare feet was nothing less than excrement accumulated on the dirt floor.

  “We have to go,” announced Pelayo. “Where are you headed?”

  Melchor knew a gypsy related to the Vegas who lived in Madrid: El Cascabelero, a member of the Costes family who had married a Vega cousin more than twenty-five years ago; several of the Vegas on the settlement in the Carthusian monastery grounds, himself included, had gone to the large wedding that had sealed the alliance between the two families. Even so, he had been haunted by doubt since he’d come up with his plan in Barrancos, when Méndez told him about the snuff shipment he was waiting for. What if they’d also arrested the gypsies in Madrid and he couldn’t find any? He told himself that the capital was different: it wasn’t considered an officially authorized place of residence for gypsies, so they wouldn’t have arrested anyone there. Despite the fact that living in Madrid was forbidden for gypsies, the royal proclamations ordering their expulsion from the capital had been repeated many times, owing to the gypsies stubbornly remaining there.

  Surely there were gypsy descendants of that cousin in Madrid? But since his last visit, before being sent to the galleys, they could well have married into other families that were enemies of the Vegas. He would have to check. But Melchor was sure that, until he did, the Madrid gypsies shouldn’t know about Caridad’s presence; the death sentence that had undoubtedly been passed by the Triana council of elders would already be known even there. Milagros had spat at his feet and Ana was jailed in Málaga. He couldn’t risk losing his morena, too.

  “Pelayo,” said the gypsy, “I’ll buy one of those stones off you if you take us somewhere safe to sleep. Somewhere discreet.”

  They agreed. They all went along Toledo Street and a bit further on they turned right onto Carnero. Hearing the shrieks of the animals being sacrificed at night, they reached the little hill of the Rastro, a mound of earth that rose between the buildings, beside the old abattoir, which was kept uncultivated to let the area breathe. They splashed in the stream of blood that descended from the slaughterhouse along Curtidores Street and, always staying to the right, crossed Mesón de Paredes and Embajadores Streets. There they bade farewell to Diego, who went into a house with his fake stones. Pelayo continued with Melchor and Caridad to a secret hostel on Peligros Street. According to what he told them, he knew Alfonsa, the widow who ran it, so they wouldn’t have any problems. She wouldn’t inform the constables of their presence, as innkeepers were required to do with all guests.

  They had trouble waking Alfonsa up.

  “Were you expecting the Duke of Alba?” spat Melchor as she looked askance at them after talking to Pelayo.

  The woman was about to answer back, but she closed her mouth when she saw the money the gypsy held out to her. Pelayo said goodbye. Alfonsa charged them, and Caridad and Melchor followed her up a dark staircase as narrow as it was steep, the three in single file brushing the damp, chipped walls, until they reached the attic: a filthy little room that they had to share with three other sleeping guests. Alfonso pointed them to a rickety old bed.

  “That’s all I have,” she claimed without a hint of apology before turning her back to go down to her house, on the lower floor.

  “Now what?” asked Caridad.

  “Now I hope you’ll snuggle up on one side of that bed so we can sleep a little. It’s been a rough day.”

  “I mean—”

  “I know what you mean, morena,” interrupted Melchor as he tugged at her arm, trying to navigate the belongings scattered on the floor by the other guests. “Tomorrow we’ll see who can give us a hand.”

  She had been cooped up there for five days. There was nothing she could do in that disgusting little room she shared with a bricklayer, his sister, who claimed she worked washing clothes in the Manzanares River, and a third guest who was surely involved in shady activities but maintained, as fervently as the washerwoman, that he was a cutter, though he didn’t specify whether he worked in a slaughterhouse or in a tannery.

  “I’m going to look for the notary. Don’t leave the hostel,” Melchor had whispered to her the first morning, when the other guests were still stretching. “Don’t talk to anyone or tell them about me and especially not about the snuff.”

  He started to leave but then stopped. He fingered the hilt of his knife and launched a murderous look at the others, including the washerwoman, all three of whom had their eyes glued on the couple. Then he turned and kissed Caridad full on the mouth.

  “Did you understand, morena? I might take a while, but I will be back, no doubt about it. Wait for me and keep an eye on the bed—don’t let Pelayo’s friend sell it as ‘half with clean.’ ” />
  Caridad didn’t know what “half with clean” meant and Melchor didn’t explain before heading down the stairs. It was an expression coined in the underbelly of Madrid, populated with beggars and layabouts, criminals and all sorts of people without resources who drifted through the big city, some waiting for an actual royal favor—revenue, a job in the administration, the results of a lawsuit—others waiting on some risky business that would line their pockets, and the rest looking to pilfer or sell junk, when not just to outright steal. Many of them, come nightfall, would head to one of the houses where for two bits they could rent half of a bed they shared with someone clean: that was someone without lice, scabies or ringworm.

  Madrid was unable to absorb the constant immigration. Enclosed by the wall that surrounded it, beyond which it was forbidden to build, two-thirds of the property was split between the Crown and the Church; the remaining third, in addition to what those two institutions decided to lease, had to be fought over by the almost one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants who packed the capital at mid-century. The houses they fought over were poorly put together, with tiny dark rooms devoid of any comforts, all the result of the construction of “houses of malice,” a scheme that Madrileños had used in previous centuries to get around the lodging privileges that forced them to give the King, free of charge, a part of their dwellings for the use of the members of the court. So, despite the royal proclamations regarding the quality of the buildings that should adorn the kingdom’s capital, more than half of the ten thousand houses erected in Madrid the century before were only one story high, therefore ineligible to welcome ministers or servants of the Crown. Already well into the eighteenth century, when the lodging privileges were replaced by economic contributions, the houses of Madrid were renovated and the single-story buildings were reconstructed or simply raised to accommodate the immigration that continued to arrive in the capital.

  These secret hostels, like the one where Melchor and Caridad were staying, were born out of that need. While the city had enough taverns and bars, there weren’t many public hostels, and they were both expensive and constantly watched over and regulated by the royal magistrates and the constables during their rounds. That was why the secret hostels sprung up and, although no one knew for sure how many there were, it was known that they were all dirty and messy like the little attic room where Caridad whiled away the hours. She didn’t even have a cigar to smoke and calm her hunger, which was far from sated by the watery, rotten stew that Alfonsa fed her guests. The chickpeas, turnips, onions and heads of garlic didn’t seem to have left any room for pork, mutton, beef or chicken.

  Melchor had left the hostel five days ago and Caridad was gripped by anguish. Had something happened to him? Milagros and her mother had faded in her mind as the days passed. Melchor, Melchor and Melchor: the gypsy was all she thought about! He had told her not to leave the hostel, she reminded herself over and over again as she paced up and down the little room, oppressed between those walls, disgusted by the stench that came up from the street. Her only contact with the outside was the hustle and bustle and traffic that she could hear through a little window far above her head. She cursed that useless window. She sat on the bed. He had told her to keep an eye on it … She smiled sadly. Where did you go, damn gypsy? She could go out, but she didn’t know where to go or what she would do. She couldn’t go to the constables to report the disappearance of a gypsy smuggler. Besides, Melchor had told her not to talk about him to anyone. Even the gleam of the fake sapphire he had given her, and which she kept clenched in her fist, seemed to have faded.

  Over the course of those days, the bricklayer and the woman he said was his sister had given up trying to get more than a monosyllabic answer out of her, but Juan, the cutter, insisted on wheedling her and interrogating her over and over, persistent despite the silence and lowered gaze with which Caridad received his questions.

  “Where is your master? What business brought him to Madrid?”

  The cutter surprised Caridad by returning to the hostel the morning of the fifth day after the other two had already left. Juan was a middle-aged man, tall, bald, with a pockmarked face and teeth as black as the long nails that extended from his fingers and which at that moment were in sharp contrast to the large loaf of white bread he was holding. Caridad couldn’t keep her eyes from drifting briefly toward the loaf: she was hungry. He noticed her gaze.

  “Do you want a piece?”

  Caridad hesitated. What was the cutter doing there?

  “I bought it at the San Luis junction,” said the man as he broke it in two and offered her one of the halves. “You and I could get a lot like this one. Take it,” he insisted, “I’m not going to do anything to you.”

  Caridad didn’t do so. The cutter approached her.

  “You are a desirable woman. There are few real black women in Spain, they’ve all got whiter over time.”

  She backed up a few steps until her back hit the wall. She saw the cutter’s eyes light up, boring into her before he could.

  “Here, take the bread.”

  “I don’t want it.”

  “Take it!”

  Caridad obeyed and grabbed it with the hand that didn’t hold the fake sapphire.

  “That’s it. Why were you going to refuse? It cost me good money. Eat.”

  She nibbled the half-loaf. The cutter watched her do so for a few seconds before trying to grab one of her breasts. He didn’t manage to; Caridad had foreseen it and batted his hand away. The cutter persisted and she rebuffed him again.

  “You want to make it hard for me?” muttered the man, as he threw the bread onto one of the beds, visibly excited, and rubbed his hands together. His black teeth stood out in his lewd smile.

  The bread and the sapphire fell to the floor when Caridad put her arms out to repel the cutter’s onslaught. After a struggle, she managed to stop him by grabbing his wrists. Her own reaction surprised her and made her hesitate: it was the first time she had challenged a white man! He took advantage of her indecision: he freed himself, shouted something incomprehensible and smacked her. It didn’t hurt. She looked him in the eyes. He hit her again and she kept looking at him. The woman’s passive reaction to his violence excited the cutter even more. Caridad thought that he was going to hit her again, but instead he held her and started to bite her neck and ears. She tried to get away from him, but couldn’t. The man, frenetic, grabbed her curly hair and searched out her mouth, her lips …

  All of a sudden he let her go and doubled over. She tilted her head to one side, as if she wanted to listen more carefully to the long muffled wail that came from the cutter’s throat. She had seen her friend María—the mulatta she sang with—do it one Sunday back at the sugar factory: María had allowed the Negro harassing her to get close, holding her and getting excited, and then she had jammed her knee into his testicles. He had doubled over and howled just like the cutter, with both hands grabbing his crotch. Caridad breathed heavily while she searched for her sapphire. She knelt and extended her arm to grab it; her hands were trembling. She couldn’t control them. The rage seemed to want to burst from inside her. She grabbed the stone and the bread and got up, confused at the whole sequence of new feelings inside her.

  “I’ll kill you!”

  She stared at the cutter: he was recovering and almost able to stand up straight. He would do it, he would kill her; his contorted features made that clear; the knife that glittered in one of his hands galvanized her as if he was already about to stab her. The hostel owner was her only hope of salvation! Caridad ran downstairs. The door of the woman’s apartment was locked. She beat hard on it, but her blows were drowned out by the screams of the cutter who was coming down behind her.

  “Whore! I’m going to cut your throat!”

  Caridad leapt down the last flight of stairs. She ran into two women as she burst out onto Peligros Street, a narrow thoroughfare no more than five paces wide. The women’s complaints merged with the bedlam that she’d been listen
ing to for five days, which now exploded in all its rawness. She looked both ways, back and forth repeatedly, not knowing what to do. One of the women tried to pick up the countless chickpeas that had scattered on the ground when they crashed into each other; the other screamed insults at her. Onlookers crowded around to watch the scene. So did the cutter, who had stopped in front of the building. They were separated by barely three steps. Their eyes met. Caridad tried to calm down: he wouldn’t dare to kill her in public. She saw in the man’s resigned face, as he put away the knife and brought a hand to his chin, that he had reached the same conclusion. Caridad let out a snort, as if she had been holding it in since she started to descend the staircase.

  “Thief!” then echoed between the buildings. “My bread! She stole my bread!”

  Caridad’s gaze ran from the half-loaf of bread, still in her hand, to the cutter, who was smiling.

  “Get the thief!”

  The shout came from behind her back and stopped her attempting to deny the accusation. Someone tried to grab her arm. She got away. The woman picking up chickpeas looked at her and the one who was insulting her jumped on her, as did the cutter. Caridad dodged the woman and pushed her against the cutter, taking advantage of the momentary confusion to escape and rush down the street.

  The others chased after her. She ran, blindly. She bumped into men and women, avoiding others and shoving aside those who tried to stop her. The noise and the shouts of those trying to catch up to her spurred her on in a reckless race. She got to the end of Peligros Street and found herself on a wide avenue. There she was almost run over by a luxurious carriage pulled by two saddled mules. From the driver’s seat, the coachman swore at her as he cracked his whip in her direction. Caridad tripped. More carriages were passing: coaches, calashes and curious litters with a mule in front and another behind. Caridad snaked through them until she found another side street and ran down it. She could still hear the shouting; she wasn’t aware that she had already left it far behind.