The Barefoot Queen Page 52

  “Neither the men nor the women want that,” explained Marina, a slight blonde who was the third lady, when Milagros confided in her one night about her worries. “They need inaccessible idols; they need an excuse for not being able to win you over. If you go down to the pit and mingle with them, you will be of no use to them; you’ll be just like any of the women they know in real life. If you are coarse, they’ll compare you with the prostitutes who offer themselves on the streets and you will lose their interest.”

  “And the women in the upper balcony?” inquired Milagros.

  “Them? It’s simple: they envy all that attracts their men more than they do.”

  “Envy?” Milagros was surprised.

  “Yes, envy. An itch that will make them do everything in their power to be more like you.”

  Milagros not only learned to control her sensuality; she also knew how to give the public the repartee they expected from a good comic player. She left the orchestra’s musicians disconcerted, although they gradually, blinded behind the side curtain but warned by the indications of Don José himself, got used to the gypsy girl’s pace and the confusion she caused. Milagros would take her cue from the lyrics of the tonadas she sang and danced to.

  “Where is that sergeant?” she asked on one occasion, interrupting a stanza that lamented a soldier’s fruitless wooing of a countess. “Is there a sergeant of the glorious armies of the King here in the house?”

  Don José indicated to the orchestra that they stop playing and a couple of hands came up from the groundlings.

  “Don’t worry,” she then said to one of the military men, “why aspire to a lady of noble birth when all those beautiful women up in the balcony are yearning for you to show them how you use your … sword?”

  The magistrate shook his head as Don José, with an authoritative gesture, ordered the musicians to launch into the next bar to get Milagros to start singing amid all the lewd offers that were coming from the balcony.

  She sang for the common folk. She talked to them. She laughed, she shouted, she cried and she acted out tearing her hair over the hard luck of the less fortunate. To the rhythm of her countless popular songs, she boldly pointed to the noblemen and the rich in their boxes while hundreds of pairs of eyes followed her accusatory finger toward her chosen victim, and she interrogated them about their habits and their excessive luxuries. Amid laughter, she joked about the wooing of ladies and about the friars and idle clerics who sought sustenance in the company of women of means. The whistles and boos from the pit and the balcony accompanied her scorn toward the mannered fops who, imperturbable, as if nothing could affect them, responded to her mocking with disdainful gestures.

  In those moments, as the audience applauded, Milagros closed her eyes; when she did the entire theater vanished and in her mind all she saw were those she wished to see among the audience. “Cachita, María … look at me now,” she would whisper amid the cheers and praise. She was gripped by a strange anguish though, when she thought of her mother and her grandfather.

  SUCCESS BROUGHT more money. The Theater Board decided to double her wage and include her among the company members who received a salary. Don José was surprised by the gypsy’s reaction when he told her of their decision.

  “Aren’t you pleased?”

  Milagros thanked him in a stutter that failed to convince the director.

  Her success took Pedro further away from her. It wasn’t much money, but enough for her husband to take on the streets of Madrid. “Where’s Pedro?” she would ask at lunch- or dinnertime, when she came back from the theater to the rooms they had rented. “We should wait for him.” Sometimes Bartola’s expression soured and she looked at her as if she were a stranger. “He’s off doing his thing,” she would often answer.

  “He’s a man,” was Bartola’s excuse for him. “You’re the one who is never at home. What do you want, your husband to sit around knitting like an old woman? Well, stop singing and take care of him and your daughter!”

  Then Milagros could see the García blood in that woman who defended Pedro’s excesses even when they suffered real hardship because he squandered the money she earned. Bartola was like Reyes, La Trianera, and El Conde, like the entire family, who never hid their animosity toward her.

  “We were better off in Triana,” she heard the old woman grumble. “So many men fluttering around you with their green ribbons as a sign of … of …” Bartola gestured, unable to find the right word. “How do you think your husband must feel?”

  Milagros tried to find out, struggling against sleep and waiting up for Pedro, who almost always returned home as the sun was coming up. Most nights she couldn’t manage to stay up, but the few times she did succeed in overcoming her weariness, and the drowsiness brought on by a silence broken only by the rhythmic breathing of her daughter and Bartola’s snores, she received a man who staggering in reeking of alcohol, tobacco and sometimes other odors that could only fool someone who, like her, was willing to ignore them.

  How did Pedro feel about the men who wore green ribbons on their clothes? She soon found out.

  “None of your admirers give you gifts?” he asked her one night, as they both lay on the straw mattress, naked, after he had taken her to the heights of ecstasy once more. The pleasure, the satisfaction, that twinge of hope of recovering him for herself that she felt when he took her vanished even before he had finished his question. Money. That was the only thing he wanted! All of Madrid was taken with her, she knew it, men declared their love for her at the theater and in the streets when they crowded around her sedan chair. They sent love letters to her dressing room, which, since she couldn’t do it herself, Marina read to her: propositions and all sorts of promises from noble and rich men. She had soon decided to tear them up right away and return the presents. Of course they gave her gifts, but she knew if she accepted them, Pedro would turn them into more nights of loneliness. Comic actresses had the well-earned reputation of being frivolous and promiscuous; most of them were. Some changed Milagros’s nickname from “The Barefoot Girl” to “The Aloof Girl.” All of Madrid desired her and the only man whom she gave herself to willingly just wanted her money.

  “They try to,” answered Milagros.

  “And?” he asked in the face of her silence.

  “You can be sure I would never put your honor and your manhood in question by accepting gifts from other men,” she replied after a few seconds of hesitation.

  “And what about the parties and private performances that the company gives? They are well paid; why don’t you do them?”

  He could have imagined the parties, but how had Pedro found out about the private performances that the companies gave in the parlors and small theaters of the large mansions?

  “Here …” she responded, “here your family isn’t around to defend me. In Seville my honor is safe; your cousins and your grandmother make sure of that. Madrid isn’t like the inns and palaces in Andalusia. I know because they tell me about them. Who can oppose the desires of a grandee? Do you want your wife’s name to be on everyone’s lips, like Marina or Celeste?”

  Bartola’s snores tore through the room for a good long while as she held her breath waiting for his reply. None came. Shortly after, Pedro murmured something unintelligible, turned his back and went to sleep.

  Something changed that night for Milagros. Her body, usually exhausted after reaching climax, now remained tense, her muscles clenched, all of her restless. She couldn’t fall asleep. The tears soon began to flow. She had cried, many times, but never like on that night when she understood that her husband didn’t love her. She, who had thought that she would save her marriage in Madrid, realized that the big city was even worse than Triana. There, Pedro chatted with other gypsies on the alley and moved in known circles, while here … Milagros knew that there were gypsies from his family. Pedro had found his García relatives; he had told her about it with his features twisted in rage. One of them had been beaten up by members of a brotherhood
for insulting the Virgin on Almirante Street and had died. The rest of the family, men and women, were locked up in the Inquisition dungeons for crimes against the faith.

  “It was all because of …” He hesitated for a moment. Milagros misinterpreted his silence; she thought that he didn’t want to accuse her grandfather when what Pedro didn’t want was for her to know that there were other Vegas in the capital. “It was all El Galeote’s fault. I swear to you that one day we will find him and I will kill him where he stands.”

  She said nothing. It had been two years since Melchor had escaped from the Garcías. Don’t let them catch you, she yearned in silence. Pedro’s shouting gave her the impression that Melchor was no longer in Madrid; there were many gypsies who had scoured the entire city looking for him. Yes, Melchor’s life was in danger. She consoled herself thinking that her grandfather liked it that way. Yet what about her? Everything had turned out badly: she had no one to turn to. Her father was dead, her mother was in prison and had disowned her, and her grandfather was on the run. Cachita and Old María had disappeared. Even the little girl who carried the healer’s name seemed to be fonder of Bartola than of her! How could it be otherwise when she was never with her? And as for Pedro … He didn’t love her; he only thought about the money he could get from her to enjoy with other women: she admitted it to herself for the first time.

  The following day, at the Príncipe, Milagros lifted one arm to the heavens. With the other she lifted her skirt a few inches above her ankles and began to spin gracefully, wiggling her hips as she emptied her lungs in a finale that mingled with the audience’s loud acclaim. That was all she had left: singing and dancing; taking refuge in her art as she had in Triana, when she had conceded a truce in the dispute with her mother and danced with her. Those who saw her applauded harder and harder, believing that the tears that ran down her cheeks were tears of joy.

  Caridad had been a prisoner at La Galera for almost two years when the riot happened. The insubordination of a couple of hardened prostitutes had driven the warden to impose a punishment that was as humiliating as it was novel: shaving their hair and eyebrows off. The decision infuriated all the prisoners; they could stand mistreatment, but shaving their heads … never! Many, taking advantage of the unrest, decided to insist on an old demand: that they be told the length of their sentence, since they had to watch the years pass without knowing when it would end. Passions were running high and the women of La Galera rose up in rebellion, breaking everything that was in their reach, arming themselves with planks, scissors and pointed sewing implements, and they took control of the prison.

  When they closed the doors of La Galera and the inmates found themselves in charge of the building, a panting and enthused Caridad found herself with a stake in her hands. In her memory the running and shouting she had taken part in was still going on. It had been … it had been amazing! A mob of women, who until then had lived without free will or ever thinking for themselves, just like the groups of Negro slaves, had suddenly, instead of submitting to the master’s orders, fought all together, like madwomen. Caridad looked around her and saw hesitation in her companions’ faces. No one knew what to do next. Someone pointed out that they should prepare a brief addressed to the King; some supported the idea and others didn’t; some suggested running away.

  As they argued, a military detachment appeared on the street, preparing to attack the jail. Like all the others, Caridad ran to the upper galleries as soon as the first blow echoed against the door to Atocha Street. Many inmates climbed up to the roofs. Shortly, the door was ripped off its hinges and close to a hundred soldiers with fixed bayonets scattered across the central courtyard and the inside of La Galera. However, to the surprise of the prisoners and the anger of the authorities and officers, the soldiers acted kindly. In one of the upper galleries, as the officers shouted to incite their men, Caridad found herself cornered by two of them. She naively raised her stake against their bayonets. One of the soldiers just shook his head, as if pardoning her. The other made a very slight motion with the tip of his bayonet, as if he wanted to let her know that she could escape. Caridad brandished her stake and slipped between them, while they just pretended they were trying to grab her. Something similar happened between the other soldiers and the rest of the prisoners, who ran from one side to the other in the face of the troops’ passivity, when not outright collaboration.

  The situation dragged on. Desperation appeared in the faces of some officers who shouted themselves hoarse demanding obedience, but how could they force those soldiers conscripted in miserable towns in rural Castile to contain the women? Many of them had been condemned to serve eight years in the army for mistakes like the ones those unfortunate women had made, and the prisoners kept reminding them of that during the siege. The authorities decided to have the detachment fall back and the women cheered their withdrawal, feeling vindicated: their triumphant shouts echoed throughout the night. The gate and surrounding areas of La Galera were well guarded by the same troops that had refused to act against them but did clear out the crowd of curious onlookers that milled around Atocha Street.

  At dawn the next day, however, the royal magistrates themselves showed up at La Galera leading an urban militia made up of some fifty God-fearing citizens, all well built and armed with whips, sticks and iron bars. They went in to subdue them ruthlessly and the women ran off in terror. Caridad, still brandishing the stake, saw two of the militiamen beating Herminia with an iron bar. Her blood boiled at the viciousness with which they were taking out their rage on the poor woman. Herminia, curled up on the ground, covering her face, begged for mercy. Caridad screamed something. What was it? She never was able to recall. But she pounced on the two men and hit one with the stake. Amid the barrage of blows that rained down on her, she could see how Herminia, from the ground, grabbed one of the men’s legs and sank her teeth into his thigh. Her friend’s reaction spurred her on and she continued blindly swinging her stake. Only the intervention of one of the magistrates kept her from being beaten to death.

  One by one, the some 150 women prisoners were gathered in the courtyard of the jail, some limping, others with throbbing kidneys, chests or backs, their noses broken and their lips bleeding. Most of them hung their heads, defeated. Silent.

  A couple of hours was all it took for the warden to take back control of the women’s prison. With the rebellion snuffed out, he promised the prisoners that he would review all those sentences that had no fixed release date; he also warned of the harsh penalties that the instigators of the revolt would face.

  Caridad, the Negress with the stake who had taken on two upright citizens, was the first to be pointed out. Fifty lashes was the punishment she would receive, in the prison courtyard, in full view of the others, along with three other women reported as having incited the mutiny by a treacherous woman imprisoned for peddling, who was rewarded with her freedom.

  The lashes were merciless, cracking on the women’s backs after a whistle that cut through the air. The authorities gave strict instructions for their harsh discipline; how else could they put an end to a revolt in La Galera when that was where mutinous women in other jails were sent as a punishment?

  Caridad’s last memory was the screams of the other women when the warden finally ended the horrific punishment and they dragged her out of the prison. “Stay strong, Cachita!” “We’ll be waiting for you!” “You can do it, morena!” “I’ll save you a cigar!”

  “BE JOYFUL and give thanks, sinner. Our Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Virgin of Atocha do not wish you dead.”

  She heard those words without realizing they referred to her. Caridad, having been unconscious for several days, had just opened her eyes. Lying face down on a cot, with her chin resting on a pillow, her vision cleared gradually until she was able to make out the presence of a priest by her bed, sitting on a chair with a prayer book in his hands.

  “Let us pray,” he heard the chaplain for the dying poor order her before launching into a litany.


  The only thing that came from Caridad’s lips was a long, dull moan: the mere breath of the priest on her flayed back caused her as much pain as the whiplashes. Without daring to move her head, she turned her eyes: she was in a large vaulted room with lines of beds; the air was foul and hard to breathe; the wails of sick women mixed with the priest’s chanting in Latin. She was in the hospital of La Pasión, right next door to La Galera, the one the inmates sewed the white gowns for.

  “For the moment … your soul has no need of me,” the chaplain told her when he finished his prayers. “Pray that I need not come to your deathbed again. One of your companions has already passed on to a better life. May God have mercy on her soul.”

  As soon as the chaplain planted himself in the middle of the room, his eyes searching out some other woman in her death throes, another priest appeared, this one insisting on hearing her confession. Caridad couldn’t even speak.

  “Water,” she managed to articulate in response to the priest’s insistence.

  “Woman,” replied the confessor, “the health of your soul is more important than that of your body. That is our mission and the objective of this hospital: taking care of souls. You shouldn’t waste a moment before reaching peace with God. You can drink later.”

  Confessions, communions, daily masses for the souls in those rooms; readings of the holy scriptures; sermons and more sermons to procure the salvation of the sick and their repentance, all in forceful tones, rising above the women’s coughing, screams of pain and lamenting … and death. Thus spent Caridad that month in the hospital. After the chaplain for the dying poor had confirmed she would live and the confessor was satisfied with her hoarse, stammering confession, one of the surgeons struggled to sew up her wounds, awkwardly mending the bloody mass her back had become. Caridad howled with pain until she fainted. Every once in a while, the doctor and his assistants, also under the watchful control of a priest, applied a salve to her back that made it burn as if they were whipping her with a red-hot iron. More often, however, the barber-surgeon would show up, one of the several advanced apprentices who went from bed to bed in both hospitals—El General and La Pasión—performing forced bloodlettings on the sick. He would perforate a vein with a cannula while she, impotent, watched the blood leave her body and drip into a basin. She witnessed how the second of the prisoners punished thus died, two beds away from hers. Weakened, pale and gaunt, she died amid prayer and holy oils after two bloodlettings: one on her left arm and another on her right. “To even out the blood,” Caridad heard the surgeon say in a boastful tone. The third prisoner decided to flee, taking advantage of the commotion caused by a group of wealthy noblewomen who came to La Pasión each Sunday, dressed in coarse worsted linen for the occasion, to help the ill with their hygiene and bring them sweets and chocolate. Out of the corner of her eye, Caridad saw her get up and stumble away, while she, prostrate in bed, nodded time and again, promising to improve her conduct, before that grande dame, her attire as humble as her perfume was costly, who berated her for her faults as if she were a child, only to then reward her contrition with sweets and sips of the cups of hot chocolate they brought with them. At least the chocolate was delicious.