“Leave the saint worship for the payos!” ordered Old María.
Then Caridad fell into a restless, confused stupor that transported her to the work on the plantation, the whip, the feasts on the holidays, and all the old gods she used to sing and plead to appeared before her. The Yoruba drums echoed frenetically in her head, just as they had in the sleeping quarters on the plantation in Cuba. She danced in a dream coven that terrified her, and saw the Negroes beating on the skins of kettledrums, their laughter and obscene gesturing, the other slaves who accompanied them with claves and maracas, their faces shouting frantically inches from hers, all waiting for the saint to come down and mount Caridad. And Oshún, her Orisha, finally did mount her, but in her dream it wasn’t to accompany her in a joyful, sensual dance as the goddess usually did, but rather she forced Caridad with her movements and gestures toward a hell where all the gods in the universe battled.
She awoke suddenly, startled, soaked in sweat, and found herself amid the silence of the settlement in the dead of night.
“Girl,” said Old María before long. “I don’t know what you were dreaming about, but it scares me just to imagine it.”
Then Caridad noticed that the gypsy woman seated beside her was gripping her hand tightly. The touch of that rough, wrinkled hand calmed her. It had been so long since anyone had held her hand to comfort her … Marcelo … she was the one who had cradled the little boy. No. It wasn’t that. Perhaps … perhaps since she had been stolen away from her mother, in Africa. She could barely remember her. What was she like? The old woman must have sensed her uneasiness and she squeezed her hand. Caridad let herself be rocked by the gypsy’s warmth, by the feeling she wanted to transmit to her, but she kept trying to conjure up her mother’s face. What had become of her mother and her brothers and sisters? What was the land and freedom of her childhood like? She remembered struggling to sketch her mother’s features in her mind …
She couldn’t do it.
IN THE dusky light that entered the small courtyard, Caridad looked around at the accumulated filth; it smelled of rubbish. She sensed someone’s presence and she grew nervous: two women who stood inside the corridor, filling its entire width, observed her with curiosity.
“Just because she sings well?” whispered a surprised Milagros to her mother, without taking her eyes off Caridad.
“That’s what your father told me,” answered Ana, her kind expression turning serious when she remembered José’s shouting and wild flailing. “She sings well, he says! The last thing we need is a Negress!” he had howled after dragging his wife inside the smithy. “You get in a fight with La Trianera, you slap her grandson, and your father brings a Negress home. He set her up in the little courtyard! What is he thinking? Another mouth to feed? I want that Negress out of this house …”
But Ana interrupted his rant just as she did every time her husband raged against his father-in-law: “If my father says she sings well, that means she sings well, you understand? By the way, he pays for his own food, and if he wants to pay for the food of a Negress who sings well, he’ll do it.”
“And what does Grandfather want her for?” asked Milagros in a soft voice.
“I have no idea.”
They stopped whispering, and they both, as if they had agreed on it, focused on Caridad, who had lowered her gaze and remained seated on the ground. Mother and daughter contemplated the old dress of faded gray burlap she wore, the straw hat in her hands, and the bundle and wineskin to either side of her.
“Who are you?” asked Ana.
“Caridad,” she responded with her head bowed.
The gypsies had never not looked someone straight in the eye, no matter how eminent or distinguished they were. Gypsies held the gaze of the noblemen when even their closest advisers didn’t dare. They always listened to judges serve sentences with their heads held high, proud. They addressed them all with self-confidence. Wasn’t a gypsy, just for having been born gypsy, nobler than the best of the payos? The two women waited a few seconds for Caridad to lift her gaze. “What should we do?” Milagros’s eyes asked her mother, seeing the Negro woman’s stubborn bashfulness.
Ana shrugged.
Finally it was the girl who decided. Caridad seemed like a frightened, defenseless animal and, after all, if grandfather brought her here …, she thought. She approached her, moved aside the wineskin, sat beside her, leaning to try to see her face. The seconds passed slowly until Caridad dared to turn toward her.
“Caridad,” the girl then whispered in a sweet voice, “my grandfather says that you sing very well.”
Ana smiled, opened her hands and left them sitting there.
At first Caridad glanced furtively as she tersely answered the girl’s naive questions: What are you doing in Triana? What brought you here? Where are you from? As the evening wore on, Milagros felt Caridad fixing her small eyes on her. She searched for some gleam in her gaze, some brilliance, even the reflection of some damp tears, but she found nothing. And yet … Suddenly it was as if Caridad had finally found someone to trust, and as she told Milagros about her life, the girl felt her pain.
“Lovely?” replied Caridad sadly when Milagros asked her to tell her if Cuba was as lovely as they said it was. “There’s nothing lovely for a slave.”
“But …” the gypsy girl wanted to insist, but she grew quiet at Caridad’s gaze. “Did you have family?” she asked, trying to change the subject.
“Marcelo.”
“Marcelo? Who is Marcelo? Didn’t you have anyone else?”
“No, nobody else. Just Marcelo.”
“Who is he?”
“My son.”
“So … you have children … And your man?”
Caridad shook her head almost imperceptibly, as if the girl’s naïveté was too much for her; didn’t she know what slavery was?
“I have no man, no husband,” she explained wearily. “Slaves have nothing, Milagros. They separated me from my mother when I was very young, and then they separated me from my children; one of them was sold by the master.”
“And Marcelo?” Milagros dared to ask after a short silence. “Where is he? Did they separate you from him?”
“He stayed in Cuba.” He did find it lovely, she thought. Caridad sketched a smile and became lost in her memories.
“Did they separate you from him?” repeated Milagros after a time.
“No. The white men had no use for Marcelo.”
The gypsy girl hesitated. She didn’t dare to insist.
“Do you miss him?” she asked instead.
A tear ran down Caridad’s cheek before she managed to nod. Milagros embraced her and felt her crying. Hers was a strange sobbing: muffled, silent, hidden.
THE NEXT morning, Melchor bumped into Caridad as he left his room.
“Oh hell!” he cursed. The Negress! He’d forgotten about her.
Caridad lowered her head before the man with the sky-blue silk jacket trimmed in silver. Dawn was breaking and the hammering had yet to start, although you could hear people coming and going in the courtyard where the well was located, beyond the covered corridor. Caridad hadn’t slept so well in a long time, despite all the people who had stepped over her on their way to the latrine. She remembered the gypsy girl’s promise to help her cross the bridge.
“Pay?” Milagros had laughed loudly.
Caridad felt considerably better than the day before and she dared to look at Melchor; his extremely brown skin made that easier for her, as if she were addressing another slave at the plantation. He must be about fifty years old, she calculated, comparing him with the Negroes that age she had met in Cuba, and he was thin and sinewy. She observed his gaunt face and sensed the traces of his years of suffering and mistreatment, just as she had seen in the faces of Negro slaves.
“Did you drink Old María’s potion?” asked the gypsy, interrupting her thoughts. He was surprised to see the colorful blanket that covered her and the straw mattress she rested on, but it wasn’t his p
roblem where she’d got them.
“Yes,” she answered.
“Keep taking it,” added Melchor before turning his back, heading into the narrow corridor and disappearing toward the door that led out of the cluster of apartments.
That’s it? wondered Caridad then. Weren’t they going to make her work or mount her? That man, “the grandfather” as Milagros had called him on several occasions, had said she sang well. How many times had she been complimented in her entire life? I sing well, Caridad told herself with satisfaction. “Nobody will bother you if Grandfather protects you,” the girl had also assured her. The warmth of the sun’s rays that filtered into the small courtyard comforted her. She had a small mattress, a beautiful colorful blanket that Milagros had given her and she could cross the bridge! She closed her eyes and allowed herself to fall into a pleasant stupor.
At that time of the day the San Miguel alley was still calm. Melchor walked through it and, when he reached the height of the Minims, as if entering hostile territory, he touched the packet he carried in his inside jacket pocket. It was actually good snuff that Uncle Basilio had given him. The day before, as soon as he’d gone into his room, after leaving Caridad in the small courtyard, Melchor had pulled the powder out of the pig intestine it was wrapped in with a disgusted expression. He’d placed a pinch on the back of his right hand and inhaled deeply: finely ground. He preferred twisted tobacco, but he knew how to recognize quality in powdered tobacco. Probably “monte de India,” he thought, a rough powder brought from the Indies that was washed and treated in the Seville tobacco factory. He had a good amount. Uncle Basilio would make some good money … although he could make even more if … he searched through his belongings. He was sure he had it. The last time he sold powder he had used it … There it was! A bottle of red ocher, fine reddish earth. It was already night. He began to mix the tobacco powder with the red dirt, by candlelight, very carefully, making sure not to go too far.
With San Jacinto in sight, Melchor again patted the packet with satisfaction: he had added weight and it didn’t seem the quality had been too affected.
“Good day, Father,” Melchor said to the first friar he met in the area around the church under construction. “I am looking for Fray Joaquín.”
“He is teaching grammar to the boys,” answered the Dominican, barely turning, focused on the work being done by one of the carpenters. “What do you want him for?”
To sell him powdered tobacco a gypsy stole from the factory by sticking it up his arse, which you’ll surely enjoy sticking up your nose, thought Melchor. He smiled behind the friar’s back. “I’ll wait,” he lied.
The friar made a distracted gesture of assent with his hand, still concentrating on the timber being brought to the construction site.
Melchor turned toward the former hospital of the Candelaria, attached to the chapel on which the new church was being raised, and which the preachers were now using as a monastery.
“The friar out there,” he warned the doorman of the monastery, pointing toward the construction, “says you should hurry. It seems your new church is about to collapse.”
As soon as the doorman ran out without thinking twice, Melchor sneaked into the small monastery. The refrain of the Latin readings led him toward a room where he found Fray Joaquín with five boys who were repeating the lessons in monotone.
The friar showed no surprise at Melchor’s sudden appearance; the boys did. Staring at the gypsy from their chairs, one stopped reciting, another stuttered and the others began to jumble their lessons.
“Continue, continue. Louder!” the young friar priest ordered as he walked toward Melchor. “I have to wonder how you got in here,” he whispered once he was beside him, amid the din made by the boys.
“You’ll soon find out.”
“I was afraid of that.” The friar shook his head.
“I have a good bit of powder. Quality. For a good price.”
“OK. We are low on tobacco, and the brothers get very nervous when they don’t have enough. Let’s meet in the same place as always, at noon.” The gypsy nodded. “Melchor, why didn’t you wait? Why did you interrupt …?”
He wasn’t given time to finish his question. The doorman, the friar who was overseeing the construction and two more brothers burst into the room.
“What are you doing here?” shouted the doorman.
Melchor extended his arms with his palms open, as if he wanted to halt the horde that was coming toward him. Fray Joaquín watched him curiously. How was he going to get out of this one?
“Allow me to explain,” requested the gypsy calmly. The priests stopped a step away from him. “I had to tell Fray Joaquín a sin, a very grave sin,” he said in explanation. Fray Joaquín half closed his eyes and held back a sigh. “One of those sins that send you straight to hell,” continued the gypsy, “the kind not even a thousand prayers for lost souls helps with.”
“And you couldn’t have waited?” interrupted one of the friars.
The five boys looked at each other in astonishment.
“With such a serious sin? A sin like that can’t wait,” Melchor defended himself.
“You could have said that at the entrance …”
“Would you have listened to me?”
The friars looked at each other.
“Well,” interjected the oldest one. “So have you confessed yet?”
“Me?” Melchor feigned surprise. “Not me, your eminence! I am a good Christian. The sin was committed by a friend of mine. It’s just that he’s shearing some sheep, you understand, and since he was very worried, he asked me to see if I could come by and confess in his name.”
One of the boys laughed. Fray Joaquín made a gesture of impotence toward his brothers before the friar questioning the gypsy exploded, his face flushed.
“Out of here!” shouted the oldest friar, pointing to the door. “What were you thinking …?”
“Gypsies!”
“Despicable!”
“They should arrest you all!” he heard behind his back.
“THIS SNUFF is adulterated, Melchor!” complained Fray Joaquín as soon as he saw the reddish color of the ocher the gypsy had mixed in with the tobacco. They were on the bank of the Guadalquivir, near the shrimping boat port. “You told me …”
“Of the finest quality, Fray Joaquín,” replied Melchor. “Fresh from the factory …”
“But I can see the red!”
“They must have dried it badly.”
Melchor tried to see the tobacco the friar was holding up. Had he really gone too far? Perhaps the young friar was learning.
“Melchor …”
“I swear on my granddaughter!” The gypsy crossed his thumb and index finger to make a cross that he then lifted to his lips and kissed. “Top quality.”
“Don’t swear in vain. And we need to talk about Milagros, too,” noted Fray Joaquín. “The other day, at the blessing of the candles, she was mocking me as I preached …”
“Do you want me to scold her?”
“You know I don’t.”
The friar lost himself in the memory: the girl had put him in a difficult spot, that was true. He knew that his voice had turned shaky and he’d lost his train of thought, but he also remembered her chiseled, proud face, as lovely as they come, and that virgin body …
“Fray Joaquín.” The gypsy pulled him from his musings. He drew out his words, his brow furrowed.
The friar cleared his throat. “This snuff is adulterated,” he repeated to change the subject.
“Don’t forget that she is my granddaughter,” insisted the gypsy.
“I know.”
“I wouldn’t like you to get on my bad side.”
“What do you mean? Are you threaten—?”
“I would kill for her,” Melchor broke in. “You are a payo … and a friar as well. You could renounce your vows, but not your race.”
Their eyes met. The clergyman knew that, at just a single sign from Milagros, he woul
d be willing to leave behind his habit and swear loyalty to the gypsy race.
“Fray Joaquín …” Melchor interrupted his thoughts, knowing what was going through the friar’s head.
Fray Joaquín lifted a hand and forced Melchor to be silent. The gypsy was the real problem: he would never accept that relationship, he concluded. He banished his desires.
“None of that gives you the right to try to sell me this tobacco as good,” he scolded.
“I swear to you …!”
“Don’t swear in vain. Why don’t you tell me the truth?”
Melchor took his time answering. He slipped an arm over Fray Joaquín’s shoulder and pushed him a few steps along the riverbank. “Do you know something?”
Fray Joaquín nodded with an unintelligible mumble.
“I will only tell you this because it’s a secret: if a gypsy tells the truth … he loses it! He can never get it back.”
“Melchor!” exclaimed the friar, shrugging off his embrace.
“But this snuff is top quality.”
Fray Joaquín clicked his tongue, giving up. “OK. I don’t think the other friars will notice anyway.”
“Because it’s not red, Fray Joaquín. See? You are wrong.”
“Don’t insist. How much do you want?”
Adulterated or not, Melchor made a good profit on the tobacco. Uncle Basilio would be pleased.
“Do you know of any new contraband tobacco arriving in port?” asked Fray Joaquín when they were about to part.
“I haven’t been told of any. There must be, as always, but my friends aren’t involved. I trust that now, from March on, with the good weather, work will start up again.”
“Keep me informed.”
Melchor smiled. “Of course, Father.”
After closing the profitable deal, Melchor decided to go have some wine at Joaquina’s tavern before heading over to the gypsy settlement to deliver the money to Uncle Basilio. What a curious friar! he thought as he walked. Beneath his preacher’s habits, behind the talent and eloquence that people praised so, hid a young man eager for life and new experiences. He had proven that the year before, when Fray Joaquín insisted in accompanying Melchor to Portugal to receive a tobacco shipment. At first the gypsy hesitated, but he found himself forced to allow it: the priests were the ones who financed the contraband operations and, besides, many of them acted as smugglers and could be found loaded down with tobacco on the borders and roads. All the clergy were involved in tobacco contraband, either directly or as consumers. Priests were so fond of tobacco, their consumption was so high, that the Pope had had to prohibit their taking snuff while they officiated at services. However, they were unwilling to pay the high prices that the King established through the tobacco shops. Only the royal tax office could deal in tobacco, so the Church had become the biggest swindler in the kingdom: it participated in the contraband, buying, financing and hiding the smuggled goods in temples and even growing it in secret behind the impenetrable walls of the convents and monasteries.