When Old María saw her leaving the palace, enraged, squirming with the desire to cry or burst out in insults against the count and countess, she shook her head. “What did you expect, girl?” she muttered under her breath before Milagros reached her.
They’d thought that the countess was their last chance. Some days earlier, Inocencio, the Carmona patriarch, had snorted when María and Milagros went to him in search of help.
“I think highly of your father,” he conceded. “He’s a good man, but there are still many imprisoned, including several members of our family. We are fighting to get them freed, but it is becoming more and more complicated. The authorities keep putting up obstacles. It seems … it seems as if they don’t want to release anyone else. Despite the recommendations we made at the elders’ council meeting, there are many gypsies all over Spain who are demanding the return of their goods, and that worries the King, who is unwilling to pay. It’s as if he salved his conscience enough with the first releases. Please understand,” he then said, his voice growing cold, “we have very little money to buy favors, and as head of the family I have to put all my efforts into those who have a real chance of getting out. Your father has very little.” He accompanied those final words with an even colder look at María, obviously implying that José’s situation was a result of marrying a Vega who had refused to be wed by the Church.
Milagros, after protesting to the patriarch without success, swore that she would appeal to the chief justice officer of Seville, the archbishop and the King himself if it came to that. But Inocencio Carmona convinced them that her begging for José’s freedom wasn’t a good idea.
“Don’t do it, girl,” he advised her, obviously sincere in his concern. “You don’t have documents. You aren’t listed as one of those arrested in the July roundup, nor as imprisoned in Málaga and freed. For them you are a gypsy on the run. The new royal decree obliges you to present yourself before the authorities within thirty days. And, given your parents’ circumstances … it wouldn’t be surprising if they put you in jail. Are you baptized?”
Milagros didn’t answer. She wasn’t. She reflected for a few seconds. “At least I would be with my mother,” she whispered then.
Neither María nor Inocencio doubted that the girl was seriously considering making the sacrifice.
“No.” Inocencio’s words disappointed her. “They haven’t sent any women to Málaga for some time now. After the first expeditions, the others were jailed right here, in Seville. They would jail you far from her, Milagros: in Triana, among the other gypsies, you go unnoticed, you’re just one more, and they’ll think you are one of the freed, but if you make a mistake, if they catch you on the roads, they’ll arrest you and you won’t even be able to get them to take you to where your mother is.”
The Carmonas, her family, wouldn’t defend them. The count and countess wouldn’t either. Fray Joaquín had disappeared and their hands and feet were tied. If Grandfather were here … what would Grandfather do? He would surely free his daughter, even if he had to burn down all of Málaga to do it.
Meanwhile they were hungry.
Milagros and Old María were returning from the Count of Fuentevieja’s palace. They turned onto Cava Nueva at San Jacinto and went along it silently as they headed to the San Miguel alley. María was the first to see her: black as jet in the late autumn sun, with her straw hat pulled down to her eyebrows and the tails of her grayish shirt tucked up, rummaging through the garbage accumulated in the trench that had once been a defensive ditch for the area. The old woman stopped and Milagros followed her gaze just as a vagrant grabbed something out of Caridad’s hands that she had just found. She didn’t even threaten to fight over the treasure; she hung her head, submissive.
Then Milagros allowed the tears she hadn’t cried as she left the palace come rushing to her eyes.
“Morena!” Old María tried to call Caridad but her voice was choked. Milagros turned toward her in surprise, her eyes flooded. The old woman tried to wave it off, cleared her throat a few times and shouted again, this time in a strong voice, “Morena, get out of there before they mistake you for a black mule and eat you!”
Hearing María’s voice, Caridad, in the ditch, lifted her head and looked at them from beneath the brim of her hat. Sunk in the garbage up to her calves, she smiled sadly.
THEY SOLD the little they had—colored ribbons, bracelets, necklaces and pendants—for a pittance, but that wasn’t the solution, and Milagros knew it. If they had at least had the pearl necklace and gold medallion that Melchor had given them … But those jewels had been left in the settlement, for the soldiers to steal. Surely they hadn’t been inventoried but just ended up in one of their bags. The days passed in that house without furnishings or even basic essentials, just the bedspread, Caridad’s threadbare blanket and the tent cloth spread out for sleeping. Caridad would glance mournfully at the bundle that rested in one corner. Inside it were her red clothes and the lodestone that Melchor had given her, the only thing she had ever owned in her life, and she was loath to sell it.
Hunger continued to drive them on. Their earnings from their last sale of a beaded necklace and a little silver bracelet had been used not for food but for a dark, mended skirt for Milagros. Only Caridad’s old long shirt from when she was a slave seemed to withstand the passage of time; the gypsies’ clothes frayed and tore. María decided that the girl couldn’t go around showing her thighs through her ruined skirt and petticoats, and her breasts seemed about to burst out of a shirt that just a few months earlier had seemed loose. Her torso could be covered with the old woman’s large tasseled scarf, but her legs, the focus of so much gypsy desire, no. She needed a skirt, even at the risk of going hungry.
At least, the old woman tried to console herself, they weren’t being charged rent. No one had ever tried to collect rent for those homes in the San Miguel alley. And that wasn’t because of the inhabitants’ race: it was just that no one knew whom they really belonged to. This was a situation that was repeated throughout Seville, where neglect by the proprietors, most of them institutions—from charities to schools—had led to their true ownership being forgotten over time.
Nevertheless, as the days passed they ran out of bread. Milagros didn’t know how to beg, and María wouldn’t have allowed her to. Caridad didn’t know either, but if she had she would have done so, rather than keep going to La Cava to sift through the rubbish. The healer, who was only called in to ply her trade for extremely serious cases, found herself unable to demand payment when it was clear the gypsies were penniless.
Finally, the old woman was forced to accept the suggestion Milagros had made some time back, remembering the coins that she’d occasionally earned with the Fernández family.
“You will sing,” she announced to her one morning, after waking up and finding they had nothing for breakfast.
Milagros nodded with a couple of joyful claps in the air, as if she was already getting ready. It had been some time since she’d sung. Guitars were no longer heard in the alley for the simple reason that nobody had one. Caridad sighed in relief: she thought of her bundle, still in a corner. It was the last thing left to sell, and her efforts to obtain scraps of food on La Cava were turning out to be entirely useless.
However, neither of the two women imagined how difficult it had been for María to make that decision: the Sevillian nights were extremely dangerous, even more so for a girl like Milagros and an exuberant Negress like Caridad, who were looking to inflame men’s desires so they would loosen their purse strings and give them some coins. When the girl had sung on the roads with the Fernández family, far from constables and justices, they were protected by gypsies willing to stab anyone who went too far, but in Seville … Besides, the gypsies were forbidden to dance.
“Wait for me here,” she told the other two. “And you,” she added, pointing to Caridad with her atrophied finger, “stop going through the rubbish or they are really going to eat you.”
Instinctively, Carid
ad brought a hand to her forearm and hid the bite marks she’d received from a vagrant when she tried to defend a small bone with something resembling meat stuck to it. All she’d done in return, however, was to naively turn her back on him. The beggar bit her, Caridad dropped her find and he got what he wanted.
The inn stood in a small neighborhood outside the city walls in front of the Arenal Gate, between the Resolana, the Guadalquivir River and the Baratillo, where they were building Seville’s bullfighting arena. The Arenal Gate was the only one of the thirteen in the city’s walls that remained open at night. On the other side of it was the old brothel, where, despite the ban, they continued plying their trade. It was a humble community, with people who worked in the port, farmers passing through and all kinds of ruffians. Its moldy buildings showed the damage caused by the frequent flooding from the river, against which they had no defense. She didn’t like to, but María had to ask for favors; she was owed quite a few.
Bienvenido, the innkeeper, was as old, skinny and shrunken as she was. His expression soured when he heard the old woman’s request and his wife, a big woman who was his third or fourth—María had lost track—slid silently toward the kitchen.
“What do you give them?” asked the old woman, pointing to his wife in a vain attempt to please Bienvenido, who ignored the compliment.
“Do you know what you are asking me?” he replied instead.
María breathed in the foul air of the inn. It was still morning, and unemployed sailors and port laborers drank among tired prostitutes who were trying to extend their shift from the night before, which perhaps hadn’t been as lucrative as they would have liked.
“Bienvenido,” answered the gypsy after a pause, “I know what I can ask you for.”
The innkeeper avoided María’s eyes; he owed her his life.
“A young gypsy girl,” he then murmured. “And a Negress! There will be fights. You know it. And I guess that, as always, they will come accompanied by gypsy men. I …”
“Of course we’ll come with men,” interrupted María, thinking about which ones she should bring, “and we’ll need a guitar at least and …”
“María, for God’s sake!”
“And all the saints!” she said to silence him. “The same ones you put yourself into the hands of when you had fevers. Did they come to your aid?”
“I paid you.”
“That’s true, but I told you then: it wasn’t enough. You had spent everything you had on doctors, surgeons, masses, prayers and who knows what other dumb stuff, do you remember? And you agreed. And you told me that I could count on you.”
“I can’t pay you now …”
“I’m not interested in your money. Make good on your word.”
The innkeeper shook his head before sweeping his gaze over his customers in order to avoid looking at María. What was his word worth? Had any of them ever made good on theirs? he seemed to be wondering at the same time.
“We’re old, Bienvenido,” argued María. “Maybe tomorrow we’ll bump into each other in hell.” The old woman let a few seconds pass as she sought out the innkeeper’s bilious eyes. “We’d better settle our debts up here, don’t you think?”
AND THERE, at Bienvenido’s inn, the two women and the girl met up a couple of nights after María had reminded him of hell’s eternal flames: the old woman feeling in the pocket of her apron for the knife she used to cut plants—she’d kept her hand on it since they’d crossed the pontoon bridge and entered the Sevillian night; Milagros with her green gypsy skirt (María had managed to get someone to lend her a petticoat); and Caridad dressed up in the red outfit, which was tight around her large breasts and revealed an exciting strip of black at her belly, where the shirt didn’t reach the skirt. They were accompanied by two gypsy men—Fermín and Roque, one a Carmona and the other from the Camacho family—whom the old woman had convinced with arguments similar to those she’d used on Bienvenido. Both of them knew how to play the guitar; both were strong and intimidating, and both were armed with knives that María had also got from the innkeeper. Even so, the old woman was still nervous.
Her distrust grew when she entered the inn and saw sailors, artisans, cardsharps, friars and dandies squeezed around the small tables of rough wood. They were playing cards and shooting dice, chatting, laughing loudly as if competing between tables for who had the most raucous guffaw. Some argued in bold voices or simply sat there staring vacantly at some unspecified point in the distance. They ate, smoked, or did both at the same time; they negotiated with the prostitutes who came and went displaying their charms, or they grabbed the buttocks of Bienvenido’s daughters who were waiting on the tables. But all of them, without exception, were drinking.
A shiver ran up the healer’s spine as she noticed, amid the dense blanket of smoke that floated in the air, how Milagros was trembling. The frightened girl backed up a step toward the threshold she had just crossed. She bumped into a stunned Caridad. “This is crazy!” declared María then and there. The old woman was about to tell Milagros that if she didn’t want to she didn’t have to … but an outburst of shouting and laughter from the nearby tables prevented her.
“Come here, lovely girl!”
“How much for the night?”
“The Negress! I want to fuck the Negress!”
“Suck me off, girl!”
Fermín and Roque moved up until they were flanking Milagros and they managed to silence some of the shouting. The two men threateningly stroked the hilts of the knives stuffed into their sashes and they fixed a piercing gaze on anyone who addressed the girl. Arrogant in the face of the danger, the two gypsies ignored the possibility of being attacked, and challenged the crowd as if they didn’t believe them capable of it. María took her attention off the girl and looked around the inn until she found Bienvenido near the kitchen, beyond the entrance door, listening to the unfamiliar shouting. The innkeeper, up against the wall, shook his head. I warned you, the old woman thought she could read on his lips. María didn’t move; she kept her lips pressed firmly together. Then Bienvenido extended his hand and invited them to join him.
“Let’s go,” said the healer without turning around.
“Come on, girl,” one of the gypsies said. “Don’t worry, nobody is going to touch a hair on your head.”
The firmness of those words calmed the old woman down. In a line, avoiding chairs, barrels, drunks and prostitutes, the group of five headed to where Bienvenido had cleared a table to make some room for them: María at the head, Milagros between the two gypsy men and, bringing up the rear, as if she were completely unimportant, Caridad. They tried to get comfortable in the small nook that Bienvenido had arranged for them; leaning against one of the walls behind them were two old guitars.
“That’s the best I could do,” said the innkeeper before the old woman had a chance to complain.
Then he left them alone, as if what might happen from that point on had nothing to do with him. Fermín picked up one of the guitars. Roque made a move to do the same, but the other shook his head.
“One is enough,” he told him. “You keep an eye out, but first bring me a chair.”
Roque turned and, without a word, lifted up a young dandy by the scruff of his neck as he was conversing with two others just like him. The Frenchified fop was about to complain but he shut his mouth when he saw the gypsy’s grimacing face and the knife in his hand. Someone let out a giggle.
“Now you’ll have your arse in the air, pansy!” spat one of the men at the next table.
Roque handed the chair to Fermín, who rested one foot on it and tried out the guitar on his thigh, attempting to tune it and get used to it. No one in the inn seemed to be the least bit interested in listening to music, because the uproar continued at full volume; only the brazen lustful looks at Milagros and Caridad and the occasional sharp remark proved that the customers knew the gypsies were there. When Fermín gestured to her, the guitar at the ready, María gathered her strength to face Milagros. She ha
d avoided doing so up until that point.
“Ready?”
The girl nodded, but her whole being contradicted her: her hands trembled, she was breathing heavily and even her dark complexion looked pale.
“Are you sure?”
Milagros clenched her hands tightly.
“Breathe deeply,” the old woman advised her.
“Let’s start, precious,” encouraged Fermín as he started playing. “With seguidillas.”
The guitar made no sound! It couldn’t be heard over the commotion. María started to clap her stiff hands and made a movement of her chin indicating that Caridad do the same.
Milagros didn’t know how to start. Bienvenido’s place was nothing like the inns where, protected by the Fernández men, she had sung in front of a few patrons. She cleared her throat several times. She hesitated. She had to go forward into the tiny circle that opened out in front of her and sing, but she remained rooted beside María. Fermín repeated the guitar’s entrance, and then again. The girl’s hesitation captured the attention of the closest spectators. Milagros sensed their eyes on her and she felt ridiculous facing their smiles.
“Come on, girl,” encouraged Fermín again. “Or the guitar’s going to get tired.”
“Never forget that you are a Vega,” María said, spurring her on with the message from her mother.
Milagros moved into the circle and began to sing. The old woman closed her eyes tightly in desperation: the girl’s voice was trembling. It wasn’t enough. No one could hear her. She lacked rhythm … and joy!
Those who had been smiling were now swatting the air with their hands. Someone whistled. Others booed.
“Is that how you pant when you’re getting fucked, little gypsy?”
A chorus of laughter accompanied the remark. Tears welled up in Milagros’s eyes. Fermín questioned María with a look and the old woman nodded with her teeth clenched. She had to get going! She knew she could do it! But when rotten vegetables started flying toward the girl, Fermín made a gesture to stop strumming the guitar. María observed the crowd, which was drunk and overexcited.