The Carmona family’s blacksmith shop was located on the lower level of a cluster of apartments in the San Miguel alley. It was a three-story rectangular building built around a tiny courtyard with a well in the center. The workshop and the families who lived on the upper floors all made use of its water. However, getting to the well often proved a difficult task, since both the courtyard and the corridors that surrounded it were used to store the coal for the forge and the iron scraps the gypsies gathered to work with: a ton of twisted and rusty pieces piled up because, unlike the Sevillian payos who had to buy their raw material in Vizcaya, the gypsies weren’t subject to any ordinances or the inspectors who controlled product quality. Behind the courtyard with the well, through a narrow corridor covered by the roof of the first floor, was a small courtyard with a latrine and, beside that, a small room originally used as a laundry; that was the room Melchor Vega had taken as his own when he returned from the galleys.
“You can stay there.” The gypsy pointed Caridad to the floor of the little courtyard, between the latrine and the entrance to his room. “You have to keep drinking this remedy until you are cured. Then you can go,” he added, handing her the wineskin. “The last thing I need is for Old María to think I didn’t take care of you!”
Melchor went into his room and closed the door behind him. Caridad sat on the ground, with her back resting against the wall, and organized her scant belongings carefully: the bundle to her right, the wineskin to her left, the straw hat in her hands.
She was no longer trembling and her fever had subsided. She vaguely remembered the first moments of her stay in the hut in the gypsy settlement: first they gave her water, but they didn’t allow her to sate her burning thirst. They put cold compresses on her forehead until Old María knelt beside the mattress and forced her to drink the thick concoction of boiled barley. Behind her, two women prayed aloud, speaking over each other, entrusting themselves to countless virgins and saints as they drew crosses in the air.
“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 problem 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 would 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.
As he mused Melchor polished off his first glass in one gulp.
“Good wine!” he said aloud to anyone who wanted to listen.
He ordered another, and then a third. He was on his fourth when a woman came up to him from behind and put an affectionate hand on his shoulder. The gypsy lifted his head to find a face that tried to conceal its true features behind rancid, smudged makeup. Nevertheless, the woman had generous breasts emerging from her plunging neckline. Melchor ordered a glass of wine for her as well while he gripped one of her buttocks with his right hand. She complained with a false and exaggeratedly modest pout, but then she sat down with him and the rounds began to flow.
IT WAS two days before Melchor showed up at the San Miguel alley.
“Can you take care of the Negress?” Ana begged her daughter when she noticed that her father hadn’t returned that afternoon. “It seems Grandfather has decided to take off again. Let’s see how long it’s for this time.”
“And what do I do with her? Should I tell her she can leave?”
Ana sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t know what he was planning … what your grandfather is planning,” she corrected herself.
“She is determined to cross the pontoon bridge.”
Milagros had again spent most of the morning in the small courtyard. She rushed there as soon as her mother allowed her to, with a thousand questions on the tip of her tongue about all Caridad had told her, everything she’d been wondering about throughout the night. She felt drawn to that black woman, to her melodious way of speaking, to the deep resignation that emanated from her entire being, which was so different from the proud, haughty character of the gypsies.
“Why?” asked her mother, interrupting her thoughts.
Milagros turned, confused. They were in one of the two small rooms that made up the apartment they lived in, on the first floor of apartments off the courtyard. Ana was preparing lunch on a coal stove lodged in an open niche on the wall.
“What?”
“Why does she want to cross the bridge?”
“Ah! She wants to go to the Brotherhood of the Negritos.”
“Is she over her fevers?” asked Ana.
“Well, after lunch, take her.”
The girl nodded. Ana was tempted to tell her to leave her in Seville, with the Negritos, but didn’t.
“And then bring her back. I don’t want Grandfather to come back and find his Negress gone. That’s the last thing I need!”
Ana was irritated: she had argued with José. Her husband had scolded her harshly over the fight she’d had with La Trianera, but he especially condemned her slapping the old woman’s grandson.
“A woman hitting a man. Who does that? And he’s the grandson of the head of the council of elders!” he shouted at her. “You know how vindictive Reyes can be.”
“As for the first, I will hit anyone who insults my daughter, whether they’re grandsons of La Trianera or the King of Spain himself. Otherwise, you take care of her and keep a close eye out. As for the rest, I don’t know what you can tell me about the Garcías’ character …”
“I’ve had enough of the Vegas and the Garcías! I don’t want to hear anything more about it. You married a Carmona and we’re not interested in your disputes. The Garcías rule in the settlement and they are influential with the payos. We can’t let them take a disliking to us … especially not over the old feuds of some crazy old man like your father. I’m fed up with my family throwing it in my face!”
On that occasion, Ana bit her lip to keep from answering back.
The never-ending argument! The same old song and dance! Ever since her father had come back from the galleys ten years earlier, her relationship with her husband had gradually deteriorated. José Carmona, the young gypsy taken by her charms, had been willing to forgo the religious wedding to have her. “I will never submit to those dogs who didn’t move a finger for my father,” she had said. The humiliating disdain with which the priests had treated her and her mother was burned into her memory. Yet, José hadn’t been able to stand Melchor’s presence, accusing him of stealing Milagros’s affection. Milagros saw her grandfather as indestructible: a man who had survived the galleys, a smuggler who outsmarted soldiers and authorities, a free, rambling gypsy. José felt he couldn’t compete: he was a simple blacksmith forced to work day in and day out under the orders of the head of the Carmona family and he didn’t even have a son to boast about.
José envied the affection between grandfather and granddaughter. Milagros’s immense gratitude when Melchor gave her a bracelet, a trinket or the simplest colorful ribbon for her hair, her spellbound look as she listened to his stories … With the passing of the years José ended up taking out the bitterness and jealousy that was eating away at him on his own wife, whom he blamed. “Why don’t you say that to him?” Ana had replied one day. “Is it that you don’t dare?” She didn’t have time to regret her impertinence. José had slapped her across the face.
And at that moment, as she was talking to her daughter about the black woman her father had brought home, Ana was cooking food for four on that small, uncomfortable stove: the three people in her family plus young Alejandro Vargas. After keeping her mouth shut when her husband once again threw the disputes between the Vegas and the Garcías in her face, she was surprised at how easy it was to convince José that Milagros’s problem lay in that she was no longer a girl. Ana thought that if they engaged her to be wed, the girl would put aside her feelings toward Pedro García, since she was sure that the Garcías would never court a Vega. José told himself the bond between Milagros and her grandfather would fade once she was married, and he supported the idea: the Vargas family had been showing an interest in Milagros for some time, so José lost no time and the next day Alejandro was invited over to eat. “For the time being there is no commitment, I just want to get to know the young man a little more,” his wife had announced. “His parents have agreed to it.”
“Go to Uncle Inocencio’s house and borrow a chair,” Ana ordered her daughter, interrupting her thoughts of the pontoon bridge Caridad wanted to cross and the Brotherhood of the Negritos that she wanted to reach.
“A chair? For whom? Who …?”
“Go get it,” insisted her mother. She didn’t want to tell her daughter about Alejandro’s visit beforehand, knowing it would surely lead to an argument.
At lunchtime, Milagros realized why Alejandro was there and received the guest sullenly. She didn’t hide her dislike for him—he was timid and danced clumsily—although only Ana seemed to notice her rudeness. José addressed him as if neither of the women existed. The third time the girl used a curt tone, Ana’s expression twisted, but Milagros endured the censure and looked at her with her brow furrowed. You already know which boy I like! her look said. José Carmona laughed and banged the table as if it were an anvil. Alejandro tried to keep up, but his laughter came out shy and nervous. “It’s impossible,” was Ana’s almost inaudible refusal. Milagros tightened her lips. Pedro García. Pedro was the only boy she was interested in.… And what did she have to do with her grandfather’s and her mother’s old quarrels?
“Never, my daughter. Never,” her mother warned her through her teeth.
“What did you say?” her husband asked.
“Nothing. Just—”
“She says I won’t marry this …” Milagros moved her hand toward Alejandro; the boy’s mouth was agape, as if shooing away an insect. “Him,” she finished her sentence to avoid the insult that was already on the tip of her tongue.
“Milagros!” shouted Ana.
“You will do what you are told,” declared José gravely.
“Grandfather—” the girl began to say before her mother interrupted her.
“You think your grandfather is going to let you get anywhere near a García?” spat out her mother.
Milagros got up abruptly and threw the chair to the floor. She remained standing, flushed, with her right fist tightly closed, threatening her mother. She stammered out some unintelligible words, but just as she was about to start yelling, her gaze fell on the two men staring at her. She growled, turned around and left the room.
“As you can see, she’s a filly who badly needs to be tamed,” she heard her father laughing.
What Milagros didn’t hear, slamming the door with Alejandro’s stupid giggle behind her, was Ana’s reply.
“Boy, I’ll rip out your eyes if you ever lay a hand on my daughter.” The two men’s faces shifted. “On my honor as a Vega,” she added, bringing her fingers in the shape of a cross to her lips and kissing them, just as her father did when he wanted to convince someone.
CARIDAD WALKED stiffly, her gaze fixed on the bridge keeper who was collecting the tolls at the entrance to the pontoon bridge: the same man who had kept her from crossing the last time.
“Come on,” Milagros had called to her shrilly from the corridor, at the entrance to the small courtyard.
Caridad obeyed instantly. She jammed her straw hat on her head and grabbed her bundle.
“Leave them!” The girl hurried her along when she saw her efforts to organize Old María’s wineskin, now empty, the colorful blanket and the mattress. “We’ll be back later.”
And now she was again approaching the busy bridge, walking behind a girl as silent as she was determined.
“She’s with me,” Milagros proffered, pointing behind her, when she saw the bridge keeper about to address Caridad.
“She’s not gypsy,” stated the man.
“Anyone can see that.”
The man was about to turn on her for her impertinence, but he thought better of it. He knew who she was: the granddaughter of Melchor “El Galeote”—the Galley Slave. The gypsies had always refused to pay the toll—why would a gypsy pay to cross a river? Many years earlier the owner of the rights to the pontoon bridge had been paid a visit from several of them, grim-faced, armed with knives and willing to work out the problem their own way. There was no room for discussion, because really it didn’t matter much if a few mavericks crossed from Triana to Seville and vice versa among the three thousand on horse- or muleback each day.
“What do you say?” insisted Milagros.
All gypsies were dangerous, but Melchor Vega more than most. And the girl was a Vega.
“Go ahead,” he conceded.
Caridad released the air she had unconsciously been holding in her lungs and followed the girl.
A few paces on, amid the bustle of sheep and mules, muleteers, porters and merchants, Milagros turned and smiled at her in triumph. She forgot about the argument with her parents and her attitude shifted.
“Why do you want to go to the Negritos?”
Caridad lengthened her stride and in a few paces she was beside her. “The nuns said they would help me.”
“Nuns and priests, they’re all liars,” declared the gypsy girl.
Caridad looked at her in surprise. “They aren’t going to help me?”
“I doubt it. How can they? They can’t even help themselves. Grandfather says that before there were a lot of dark-skinned folk, but now there are only a few left and all the money they get they waste on Church nonsense and the saints. Before there was even a Negro brotherhood in Triana, but it didn’t have enough members and it folded.”
Caridad again fell behind as she turned the girl’s disappointing words over in her head, while Milagros continued past the bridge and resolutely southward along the wall on the way to the district of San Roque.
At the height of the Torre del Oro, the girl stopped and turned suddenly. “What do you want them to help you with?”
Caridad opened her hands in front of her body, confused.
“What is it that you think they’ll do for you?” insisted the gypsy girl.
“I don’t know … The nuns told me … They are Negroes, right?”
“Yes. They are,” answered the girl resignedly before taking up the path again.
If they are Negroes, Caridad thought, again following in the footsteps of the gypsy girl, keeping her eyes on the pretty colored ribbons in her hair and the bright scarves that twirled in the air around her wrists, then that place had to be something like the old living quarters where they’d gathered on holidays. There everyone was friends, companions in misfortune even though they didn’t know each other, even when they didn’t even understand each other: Lucumís, Mandingas, Congos, Ararás, Carabalís … What did it matter the language they spoke? There they danced, sang and enjoyed themselves, but they also tried to help each other. What else was there to do in a gathering of Negroes?
Milagros didn’t want to go inside the church with her. “They’d kick me out,” she declared.
A white priest and an old Negro, who introduced himself proudly as the elder brother and the caretaker of the small chapel of Los Ángeles, looked her up and down without hiding their disgust at her dirty slave clothing, so out of place in the pageantry they strove for in their temple. “What did you want?” the elder brother had asked her peevishly. In the flickering light of the chapel’s candles, Caridad wrung the straw hat in her hands and faced the Negro like an equal, but both her spirit and her voice were stifled by the cruel way they were staring at her. The nuns? continued the elder brother, almost raising his voice. What did the Triana nuns have to do with it? What did she know how to do? Nothing? No. Tobacco, no. In Seville only men worked in the tobacco factory. Yes, women worked in the Cádiz factory, but they were in Seville. Did she know how to do anything else? No? In that case … The brotherhood? Did she have money to join the brotherhood? She didn’t know she had to pay? Yes. Of course. You have to pay to join the brotherhood. Did she have any money? No. Of course. Was she free or a slave? Because if she was a slave she had to have her master’s authorization …
“Free,” Caridad managed to state as she stared into the Negro’s eyes. “I am free,” she repeated, dragging the words, trying in vain to find in his eyes the understanding of a blood brother.
“Well then, my daughter …” Caridad lowered her gaze when the priest, who had remained silent up until that moment, finally spoke. “What is it you expect from us?”
WHAT DID she expect?
A tear ran down her cheek.
She went running out of the church.
Milagros saw her cross Ancha de San Roque Street and enter the field that opened up behind the parish church, heading toward the Tagarete stream. Caridad ran confused, blinded by tears. The gypsy girl shook her head as she felt a stab in the stomach. “Sons of bitches!” she muttered. She hurried after her. A few steps further on she had to stop to pick up Caridad’s straw hat. She found it on the banks of the Tagarete, where she had fallen to her knees, ignoring the fetidness of the stream that absorbed the entire area’s sewage. She was crying in silence, just like the previous evening, as if she had no right to do so. This time she was covering her face with her hands and she rocked back and forth as she falteringly hummed a sad, monotone melody. Milagros scared off some raggedy little kids who approached curiously. Then she extended a hand toward Caridad’s black curly hair, but she didn’t dare to touch it. A tremendous shiver ran through her body. That melody … Her arm was still outstretched and she watched how the depth of that voice made its little hairs stand on end. She felt tears welling up in her eyes. She knelt down beside her, hugged her awkwardly and sobbed with her.
She had been waiting attentively for more than a day before she saw Melchor returning to the alley. She had run all the way to the settlement by La Cartuja to see if she could find him there, but they had given her no news of him. She came back and leaned against the door to the courtyard; she wanted to talk to him before anyone else did. Melchor smiled and shook his head as soon as he heard his granddaughter’s tone of voice.
“What is it you want this time, my girl?” he asked her as he grabbed her shoulder and moved her away from the building, further from the Carmonas who were bustling about.
“What are you going to do with Caridad … with the black woman?” she clarified when she saw his confused expression.
“Me? I’m tired of saying she’s not mine. I don’t know … she can do whatever she wants.”
“Can she stay with us?”
“With your father?”
“No. With you.”
Melchor squeezed Milagros against him. They walked a few steps in silence.
“You want her to stay?” the gypsy asked after a short while.
“Yes.”
“And does she want to stay?”
“Caridad doesn’t know what she wants. She has nowhere to go, she doesn’t know anybody, she has no money … The Negritos …”
“They asked her for money,” he said before she had a chance to.
“Yes,” confirmed Milagros. “I promised her I would talk to you.”
“Why do you want her to stay?”
The girl took a few moments to respond. “She is suffering.”
“A lot of people are suffering these days.”
“Yes, but she’s different. She’s … she’s older than me and yet she seems like a child who doesn’t know or understand anything. When she speaks … when she cries or sings, she does it with such feeling … You yourself say she sings well. She was a slave, you know?”
Melchor nodded. “I guessed.”
“Everybody has treated her so badly, Grandfather. They separated her from her mother and her children. They even sold one of them! Then—”
“And what will she live off?” interrupted Melchor.
Milagros remained silent. They walked a few steps, the gypsy squeezing his granddaughter’s shoulder.
“She’ll have to learn how to do something,” he conceded after a little while.
“I’ll teach her!” The girl was bursting with joy, turning toward her grandfather to hug him. “Give me time.”