Tomás Vega had signed up for the party of gypsies led by his brother Melchor that was on its way to the coast near Málaga to receive the tobacco from Gibraltar. The two of them led the march, chatting, apparently carefree yet with all their senses alert to the slightest sign of patrols of soldiers or members of the Holy Brotherhood. Behind them were four young men from the Vega family leading some horses by their halters, which were fitted out with pack harnesses for the load: packsaddles, surcingles and breast-straps; the King had prohibited using horses for transport—it could only be done with donkeys, mules or billy-goats with bells—but he had exempted Seville from that prohibition. The young men joked and laughed, as if their uncles’ presence guaranteed their safety. Caridad brought up the rear, walked drenched in sweat beneath her dark cape and hat, constantly worried about revealing a single stitch of her red dress, just as Melchor had warned her before they set out. It must be the red color, thought the woman, because the gypsies wore their colorful garb with no problems. She walked uncomfortably in the old sandals with thin leather soles that Melchor had got for her from the settlement beside the Carthusians; she had never worn anything on her feet before. They had been walking for four days and had already entered the Ronda mountains. On the first day, during a break, Caridad had untied the leather straps that held the soles to her ankles, to keep them from rubbing. Melchor, seated on a large rock beside the road, watched her and shrugged when their eyes met, as if giving her permission to do without them. Then he drank a long sip from the wineskin they were carrying.
The gypsy’s attitude didn’t shift when the next day, after spending the night out in the open, Caridad changed her mind and tied on the sandals before beginning the day’s walk. She knew how to walk barefoot. In Cuba, especially after the sugar harvest, she was careful not to step on any of the sharp edges of the canes that remained hidden, but those Sevillian paths were nothing like the Cuban plantations and fields: they were rocky, dry, dusty and during the dog days of an Andalusian summer they were burning hot, so much so that it seemed few people had much interest in traveling along them, and the trip went off without a hitch.
Despite Melchor taking the rough goat paths, the ascent into the mountains gave them a rest from the heat, and, more important, allowed the two Vega brothers to relax from the tension of the countryside. An encounter with the authorities along the way would have meant the confiscation of their weapons and horses and surely their imprisonment, but the mountains were theirs; they were the territory of smugglers, bandits, criminals and all types of fugitives from justice. There the gypsies moved freely.
“Negress!” shouted Melchor as they ascended in single file through the thickets, without even turning toward her. “You can show your colors now, maybe it will scare off the bugs.”
The others laughed. Caridad took the opportunity to take off the cape and hat and breathed deeply.
“I wouldn’t let the Negress go around showing off that marvelous dark flesh,” Tomás commented to his brother, “or we’re going to have problems with the other men.”
“In Gaucín we’ll cover her up again.”
Tomás shook his head. “You can start already, right now even a blind man could see her.”
“That would be a nice first sight,” joked his brother.
“The men will be all over her. She knows about tobacco, but was it so important to bring her?”
Melchor was silent for a few seconds. “She sings well,” was all he said when he finally spoke.
Tomás didn’t answer and they continued their ascent, yet Melchor heard him grumble under his breath.
“Sing, Negress!” he then yelled.
Sing, Negro! Caridad remembered. That was the overseers’ shout in the sugar mills before cracking the whip against their backs. If a Negro is singing, he’s not thinking, she had heard the whites say on numerous occasions, and the slaves were always singing: they sang in the cane fields and in the sugar factories at the request of the overseers, but also when they wanted to communicate with each other or complain about the master; they sang to express their sadness and their rare joys; they sang even when they didn’t have to work.
Caridad intoned a monotone, deep, hoarse, repetitive song that blended with the beating of the horses’ hoofs against the stones and struck a chord in the spirits of the gypsies.
Tomás nodded as he felt his legs trying to match the rhythm of that African song. One of the young men turned toward her with a surprised expression.
Meanwhile, Sing, Negress, thought Caridad. It wasn’t the same order that the overseers used in Cuba. The gypsy seemed to enjoy her voice. Those nights when he went to the apartment to sleep and found Caridad working the tobacco on the plank, he would drop down on his mattress after taking off his clothes and ask her: Sing, Negress, in a whisper. And without pausing in her work under the candlelight, cutting the tobacco leaves and rolling them one over the other, Caridad would sing with Melchor lying behind her. She never dared turn her head, not even when the man’s snores and slow breathing indicated that he was sleeping. What was that gypsy thinking about when he listened to her? Melchor didn’t interrupt her, he didn’t sing along; he just remained attentive, still, soothed by Caridad’s sad lullaby. He had never touched her either, although on a few occasions she had perceived something similar to the lust so many others showed in their eyes when they ran them over her body. Would she have liked it if he did, if he touched her, ended up mounting her? No, she answered to herself. He would have become just one more. Now he was the first man she had ever known, that she’d had dealings with, who had never laid a hand on her. Throughout her entire life, since they’d ripped her from her homeland and her family, Caridad had worked with tobacco, and yet on those nights when she did so with Melchor lying behind her, the aroma of the plant took on subtleties that she had never noticed before. Then, listening to herself and watching her long fingers handle the delicate leaves, Caridad discovered feelings that had never surfaced in her before, and she breathed deeply. Sometimes she had even stopped her labors until her hands ceased trembling, seized by anxiety in the face of sensations she was unable to recognize and understand.
“Freedom,” declared Milagros one day, reflecting briefly after Caridad explained it to her. “That’s called freedom, Cachita,” she reiterated with a seriousness that was unusual in her.
“LOOK, NEGRESS, that is the land where you were born: Africa.”
Caridad looked down on the horizon, toward where Melchor was pointing, and made out a blurry line beyond the sea. She covered herself with the cape and the slouch hat pulled down to her ears while the gypsy beside her shimmered in the sun in his sky-blue silk jacket and his silver-edged trousers. In his right hand he held a flintlock musket he had taken out of the saddlebags of one of the horses as soon as they arrived in Gaucín after three days of walking along paths and treacherous cattle tracks.
“And that rock there, by the sea”—Melchor pointed with the barrel of the shotgun, addressing them all—“is Gibraltar.”
The stately burg of Gaucín, nestled on the King’s Highway from Gibraltar to Ronda, was an important enclave in the mountain range. It had close to a thousand inhabitants, and above it, on a hard-to-reach cliff, rose Águila Castle. Caridad and the gypsies enjoyed the view for a few minutes, until Melchor gave the order to head toward the Gaucín inn, a league away from the town, beside the road: a single-story construction erected on an open field and provided with stables and haylofts.
It was midday, and the smell of roasted young goat reminded them how long it had been since they’d eaten; a long column of smoke rose from the chimney of a large oven bulging out of one of the building’s walls. A couple of brats ran from the stables to take care of the horses. The nephews grabbed their belongings, handed over the horses to the boys and hastened to join Melchor, Tomás and Caridad, who were already crossing the inn’s threshold.
“I was starting to worry that they’d stopped you on the road!” The shout came from one of the rough tables.
Light streamed into the inn. Melchor recognized Bernardo, his galley mate, seated in front of a nice plate of meat, bread and a jug of wine.
“Haven’t seen you around here for a while, Melchor,” greeted the innkeeper, extending a hand that the gypsy squeezed tightly. “They told me you preferred to work on the Portuguese border.”
Before answering, the gypsy glanced around the inside of the inn: only two other tables were occupied, both by several men who were eating with their weapons on the tabletops, always close at hand: smugglers. Some greeted Melchor with a nod, others scrutinized Caridad.
“May God be with you, gentlemen!” said the gypsy. Then he turned to the innkeeper, who was also examining the woman. “You work where you can, José.” He raised his voice to get his attention. “Yesterday it was with the Portuguese, today it’s with the English. Your family well?”
“Growing.” The innkeeper pointed to a woman and two girls who toiled in front of the large wood stove.
The gypsies, Caridad and the innkeeper walked toward the long table where Bernardo was waiting for them.
“Are they arriving already?” asked Melchor, seeing the women’s bustling around the stove and the scarce guests for all that was roasting there.
“They were spotted passing Algatocín a little while ago,” answered José. “A league away. They’ll be here before long. Eat and drink now, before everything’s turned upside down.”
“How many are they?”
“More than a hundred.”
The gypsy frowned. That was a significant group. Still standing beside the table, he questioned Bernardo with a look.
“I told you that several boats had arrived at the rock,” he explained, turning over the goat leg he was holding, as if he gave it no importance. “There’s a lot of merchandise. Don’t worry, our part is guaranteed.”
Before taking a seat, looking toward the entrance, Melchor placed his long musket across the table, banging it perhaps harder than he should have, as if he wanted to make clear that the only thing that could guarantee his business was weapons.
“Sit down next to me, Negress,” he indicated to Caridad as he hit the bench that surrounded the table.
The innkeeper, curious, lifted his chin toward the woman.
“She’s mine,” declared the gypsy. “Make sure everyone knows that and bring us some food. You,” he added to Caridad. “You heard it: here you are mine, you belong to me.” Caridad nodded, remembering Milagros’s words: Don’t leave Grandfather’s side. She noticed the tension in the gypsies. “Stay well covered, but you can take off your hat. And as for the rest of you …” At that moment the gypsy smiled at Bernardo and served himself a brimming glass of wine that he downed almost entirely in a single gulp. “The rest of you be careful with the wine!” he warned, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. “I want you alert when the men from Encinas Reales arrive.”
Encinas Reales, Cuevas Altas and Cuevas Bajas were three small towns close to each other and deep in the old borderlands, beside the Genil River, some thirty leagues from Gaucín. The three towns had become a refuge for smugglers who acted with total impunity. Most of their inhabitants were in that business—primarily with tobacco—and those who weren’t were either harboring them or profiting from it. In those towns, the women and clergymen collaborated in the business, and the authorities, for all their efforts, couldn’t impose order in those enclaves of rough, violent, hardened men among whom the laws of silence and mutual protection ruled. The people of the three towns organized constant smuggling parties, sometimes to Portugal, along the route of Palma del Río and Jabugo, in order to cross the border toward Barrancos or Serpa, and on other occasions to Gibraltar, through Ronda and its mountain range. They sought safety in these large groups, bringing together backpackers and other criminals from Rute, Lucena, Cabra, Priego, and put together small, fearsome armies that were larger in number and strength than any patrol of royal soldiers, who were mostly corrupt, and often poorly paid, old or crippled.
The only person in the Gaucín inn who didn’t notice the uproar of the smugglers before their shouts and laughter flooded the surroundings of the inn was Caridad; the others could hear the murmur from the distance becoming a clamorous riot as the men and horses drew nearer. The four young Vega men stiffened, nervous, looking at each other, searching in Tomás for the calmness their inexperience denied them. Melchor and Bernardo, on the other hand, received the men from Encinas Reales with their hunger sated, with good cigars between their fingers, enjoying the strong young mountain wine, as if with each silent sip, looking at each other in perfect harmony, they sought to reclaim part of those horrific years they had spent fettered to the oars of the royal galley ships.
While all the other diners at the inn moved restlessly on their benches, Caridad nibbled enthusiastically on the bones of the young goat roasted over the wood fire and seasoned with aromatic herbs. She couldn’t remember ever having eaten anything so exquisite! Not even the bluish mouthfuls of smoke the gypsy exhaled beside her were distracting, much less the racket made by an approaching party of smugglers. The gypsies didn’t usually eat well: their meats were often almost rotten and the vegetables were overripe, but at least there was more variety than the gruel with salt cod that the master fed the slaves day in and day out at his plantation. A little glass of spirits, that was what he gave them in the mornings so they’d be awake and willing to work. No, Caridad certainly wouldn’t stay on with the gypsies for the food, although that plus a place to sleep … “Cachita, you can leave whenever you want, you are free, you understand? Free,” Milagros told her time and again. And what would she do without Milagros? A few days before leaving with her grandfather’s smuggling party, during a lazy twilight that seemed to resist leaving Seville in darkness, the girl had once again raised the subject of her grief over having to marry Alejandro Vargas. She wanted Pedro García; I love him, she had sobbed, the two women sitting on the bank of the Guadalquivir, looking out out over the river instead of at each other. Later, Milagros had rested her head on Caridad’s shoulder, just as Marcelo used to do, and she had stroked her hair in an attempt to console her. Where would she go without Milagros? The mere memory of what had happened with the potter fogged her thinking; Caridad mentally transported herself to the day she had sat beneath that orange tree waiting for death to overtake her. That night she’d seen Eleggua, the god who governs men’s fates, he who decides their lives according to his whims, approaching. How long had it been—she thought at that moment—since she had spoken to the Orishas, since she had made them any offerings, since she had been mounted by them? Then she made an effort and sang to him, and capricious Eleggua spun around her, smoking a big cigar, until he was satisfied with that humble offering and sent the gypsy to help her keep on living. Melchor respected her. He had also been the one who had taken her to San Jacinto and introduced her to Fray Joaquín. There, in that church under construction, was the Virgin of Candlemas: Oyá to the Cuban slaves. Oyá wasn’t her Orisha, that was Oshún, the Virgin of Charity, but it was always said that there was no Oyá without Oshún or Oshún without Oyá, and since then Caridad went to pray to the Virgin of Candlemas. She knelt in front of her and, when no one was watching, switched her Hail Marys for the murmuring of the sacred songs to the Orisha the Virgin represented, rocking forward and back. Before leaving, she dropped a stolen tobacco leaf, the only thing she had to offer her. Over the time she’d been in Seville she had seen the free black people of the city: most of them were miserable wretches begging for alms on the streets, lost amid the hundreds of beggars who swarmed the capital, fighting for a coin. She was fine with the gypsies, concluded Caridad, she loved Milagros, and Melchor took care of her.
“Negress, there’s no more bone to gnaw on.”
The gypsy’s words brought her back to reality and with it came the ruckus going on outside. Caridad found herself with a picked-clean shoulder blade in her hands. She left it on the plate just as the doors of the inn opened and a flood of loud-mouthed, dirty, armed men came in. Caridad made out several mulattoes and even a couple of friars. The innkeeper struggled to accommodate them, but it was impossible to fit them all in. The smugglers shouted and laughed; some unceremoniously lifted others who had taken seats, imposing an authority that was reinforced by the compliance of the displaced. There were some women also, prostitutes who followed them, brazenly selling their charms to those who seemed to be the captains of the various groups that made up the party. The innkeeper and his family started to bring over jugs of wine, liquor and trays brimming with goat to the tables; he worried about serving those who shouted the most and his wife and two young daughters trying to avoid slaps on the arse and unwanted embraces.
Four men went to take the free seats on the long benches adjacent to the gypsies’ table, but they failed to do so before three others showed up and stopped them.
“Out of here,” a short, fat man ordered them in a reedy voice. He had a round face with hairless cheeks, and was dressed in a little jacket that looked about to burst, just like the red sash that held back his enormous belly and from which peeked the handles of a knife and a pistol.
Caridad, just like the young gypsies, felt a shiver when she saw how those four rough smugglers had come over to them, full of their own importance, and they stood up with an obedience bordering on servility. The fat man dropped heavily onto the bench beside Bernardo, in front of Melchor; the other two took the spots that were empty. A couple of prostitutes quickly came over. The fat man pulled out of his sash a double-edged cutlass and a miquelet lock pistol with lovely golden arabesque carvings on the barrel. Caridad observed how the man’s small, thick fingers meticulously lined up the two weapons on the table, beside Melchor’s shotgun. When he seemed satisfied, he spoke again, this time addressing the gypsy.
“I didn’t know you were in this business too, Galeote.”
The innkeeper, with no need for shouts or waving, had come over promptly to the gypsies’ table to serve the new guests. Melchor waited for him to finish before answering.
“I heard that you were one of the captains and I rushed over. If El Gordo’s going, I said to myself, there must be good tobacco.”
One of the men accompanying the captain shifted restlessly on the bench: for some time, ever since he’d started to lead his own band, no one had dared to use that nickname when they spoke to him; there were many who had paid dearly for such slip-ups. They called him “El Fajado” now, referring to his sash instead of the belly behind it.
El Gordo smacked his tongue. “Why do you insult me, Melchor?” he then said. “Is it something I’ve done?”
The gypsy narrowed his eyes in his direction. “I’ll trade you all the pounds of fat on your belly for my years at the oars.”
El Gordo straightened his thick neck almost imperceptibly, thought for a few seconds and smiled with blackish teeth. “No deal, Galeote, I prefer my fat. I’ll let it go this time, but be careful about calling me that in front of my men.”
Then it was the Vega gypsies who tensed their backs on the benches, wondering how Melchor would react to that threat.
“It’d be best that our paths don’t cross again, then,” he suggested.
“It’d be best,” the other agreed, after nodding. “You are using a Negress as a backpacker now?” he asked, gesturing toward Caridad, who was witnessing the argument with her mouth and eyes wide.
“What Negress?” asked the gypsy, stock-still, regal.
El Gordo was about to point to her but he stopped himself. Then he shook his head and grabbed a shoulder of goat. That was the signal for the others to pounce on their food and for the prostitutes to approach and start flattering the newcomers.
THE INN at Gaucín was the place chosen to await news of the contraband merchandise from Gibraltar landing on the coast of Manilva, a small town some five leagues from the inn that belonged to the municipality of Casares, devoted to fishing and grape and sugarcane growing. Through their various agents—Melchor had done it with the help of Bernardo—all the parties of smugglers had already acquired the goods they wanted in the British enclave, for a low price, thus evading the Spanish monopoly. Once the deals were struck, the products remained stored and conveniently secured in the warehouses of Gibraltar ship owners, waiting for the right climatic conditions to move them from the rock to the Spanish coasts.
Two warnings had been sent to Gibraltar: the parties were gathered in Gaucín. They were just waiting for the ship owners operating on the rock beneath different flags to confirm the night when the disembarking would take place. Meanwhile, the music of guitars, flutes and tambourines sounding in the inn and the wide field that opened out around it grew in momentum along with the jugs and wineskins that were passed from hand to hand. The men, gathered in groups, bet their future earnings on cards or dice. Quarrels started here and there, but the captains made sure they didn’t go any further: they needed their porters. Merchants and traders from the surrounding areas, as well as some prostitutes and criminals, came around in the hopes of easy money.
Melchor, Bernardo and their companions strolled amid that throng noting the cool of the night that drew near. The gypsies weren’t going to sleep on the floor in front of the stove, like the captains and their lieutenants would, nor even in the stables or haylofts: they refused to sleep near payos; it was their law. They would head off to take shelter among the trees and sleep out in the open; but until that moment came, Melchor, leading the procession, stopped to listen to music in a corner, to watch the betting in another and to chat here and there with acquaintances among the smugglers.
“Want to bet your Negress in a game of dice with me, Galeote?” proposed the captain of a small party from Cuevas Bajas, crammed with other men around a wooden plank.
Caridad’s head turned in fear toward the smuggler. Would he accept the bet? crossed her mind.
“Why do you want to lose, Tordo?” That was what they called the captain. “You’d lose your money if I won, and your health if I lost. What would you do with a woman like this?”
El Tordo hesitated for a moment before replying, but he ended up adding a forced smile to the guffaws of the men playing with him.
Melchor left the improvised dice table behind and the nasty comments still audible around it and continued strolling.
“Melchor, have you gone crazy? We are going to end up with problems,” Tomás whispered, making a gesture toward Caridad.
Despite the cape that covered her, the woman was unable to hide her large breasts and the voluptuous curves of her hips, which excited the imagination of all who watched her move.
“I know, Brother,” answered Melchor, raising his voice so the other gypsies could hear him. “That’s exactly why. The sooner we have those problems, the sooner we can rest. Besides, this way I’ll be the one who chooses who to have them with.”
“Are you that interested in the Negress?” asked Tomás, surprised.
Caridad pricked up her ears.
“Didn’t you hear her sing?” answered the gypsy.
And Melchor chose: a backpacker old enough to be obliged to defend his manliness, the value that earned them a place in the tacit hierarchy of criminals; he was grim-faced, with a shabby beard and bloodshot eyes that showed how much wine and liquor he had consumed. The man was chatting in a group, but he had turned his attention toward Caridad.
“Stay alert, Nephews,” alerted Melchor under his breath while he handed his musket to Bernardo. “What are you looking at, you pig?” he then shouted at the backpacker.
The reaction was immediate. The man put a hand to his dagger and his companions tried to do the same, but before they could, the four Vega nephews had pounced on them and were already threatening them with their weapons. Melchor remained immobile before the backpacker, with his hands empty, challenging him only with his gaze.
Silence fell around the group. Tomás, a step behind his brother, grabbed the handle of his knife, still in his sash. Caridad was trembling, to one side, with her eyes fixed on the gypsy. Bernardo was smiling. Some distance away, out in the field, someone called El Gordo’s attention, who turned his gaze toward where they pointed. He’s got some guts! he admitted.
“She’s my Negress,” muttered Melchor. The backpacker moved his extended dagger threateningly toward the gypsy. “How dare you look at her, you rascal?”
The new insult made the man charge at Melchor, but the gypsy had the situation under control: he had seen him move clumsily, inebriated, and it was so crowded that the man could only move in a straight line, toward him. Melchor stepped aside nimbly and the backpacker passed to one side, stumbling, with his arm awkwardly extended. It was Tomás who put an end to the quarrel: with rare speed he pulled his dagger from his sash and launched a stab at the attacker’s wrist, making him fall to the floor, disarmed.
Melchor approached the wounded man and stepped on his already bleeding wrist. She’s mine!” he announced in a loud voice. “Anyone else planning on imagining her in his arms?”
The gypsy ran narrowed eyes over the scene. Nobody answered. Then he released the pressure of his foot, while Tomás kicked the backpacker’s knife out of his reach. After a sign from Melchor, the nephews stopped menacing the other smugglers and they all disappeared as one into the crowd. Caridad felt her knees grow weak; she was still terrified but above all confused: Melchor had fought for her!
A few paces past where the altercation had taken place, Bernardo returned the musket to his companion. “So many years in the galleys,” he commented then, “so many years struggling to stay alive, watching so many fall by our side, on our very benches, after unbearable agony, and you risk your life for a Negress. And don’t tell me she sings well!” he said, anticipating his response. “I haven’t heard her yet.”
Melchor smiled at his friend.
“Can she outdo you?” asked Bernardo then. “Does she sing better than you?”
They both were lost in their memories, of when Melchor, as they rowed out at sea in the silence of a calm wind, started an interminable gloomy wailing lament as if pulled from the spirits of all those unfortunates who had died in the galleys. Even the slave driver stopped whipping the rowers then. And Melchor sang without words, modulating his cry and intoning the lament of men destined to die and adding their souls to the many left chained to the oars and the timbers of the galley forever.
“Better than me?” wondered the gypsy aloud after a pause. “I don’t know, Bernardo. What I can tell you is she sings with the same pain.”
THE TOWER built on Chullera Point for coastal observation and defense was used, as on so many other occasions, as an improvised lighthouse to guide the smugglers’ ships through the night from Gibraltar. The lookout on the watchtower, more concerned with tending the garden that surrounded it, was pleased to get the money the smugglers paid him, as were the local magistrates, corporals and justices of the nearby towns and garrisons.
And while a man waved a lantern from the top of the tower, at his feet, on the beach, the hundred smugglers who had come from Gaucín with their horses waited in the darkness of the night for the boats to arrive. They had spent two days at the inn, playing, singing, drinking and fighting as they waited for news from Gibraltar, but on the beach most of them were scanning the black horizon, because while they could act with impunity on land, it wasn’t the same at sea, with the Spanish coastguard ships controlling the shoreline. The most delicate moment of the operation had arrived and they all knew it.
Caridad, among whispers and the occasional whinny from the horses, heard the murmur of the waves breaking on the shore and repeated the gypsy’s instructions to herself over and over: “Some faluchos will show up,” he had told her, “perhaps, for this amount of people, even a xebec …”
“Faluchos?” she’d asked.
“Ships,” Melchor had clarified brusquely, nervous. She didn’t dare ask anything more and kept listening. “They will unload leather bags filled with tobacco onto the beach. Eight are ours, two per horse. The problem is that each vessel will unload many more, so we have to divide them up on the beach. That’s where you come in, morena. I want you to choose the highest quality ones. Did you understand me?”
“Yes,” she answered, although she wasn’t very sure. How long would she have to smell and feel the leaves? “How much time will I have …” she started to ask. One of the gypsies’ horses launched a kick at another who was nibbling on his rump.
“Boy!” muttered Melchor. “Deal with the animals!”
Caridad stopped paying attention to the horses when his nephews separated them.
“Were you saying something, morena?”
She didn’t hear him. And how was she going to check the color and the different tones on the leaves? It was pitch black; you couldn’t see a thing. Besides, there were all those men waiting impatiently beside them. Caridad sensed the pent-up tension on the beach. Would they give her enough time to choose the tobacco? She knew she was able to recognize the best plants. Don José always called her over to do it, and then even the master remained silent during the time it took, while she, now the lady of the plantation, savored the aromas, textures and colors.
“Melchor …” She tried to clear up her doubts.
“Let’s go!” he interrupted.
The order caught her off guard.
“Get going, morena!” urged the gypsy.
Caridad followed them.
One of the nephews stayed behind, guarding the animals, just as one in each of the other groups did. Only the men went down to the shore, since it was so chaotic that the horses would get frightened, kicking each other and squandering the goods.
Suddenly, many lanterns were lit along the beach. No one was being cautious any longer; the lights could betray them to any coastguard boat in the area. They just had to hurry. In the footsteps of the gypsies, surrounded by smugglers, Caridad made out several boats around which crowded the most diligent. She stopped a few steps from the shore, beside Melchor, amid shouts and splashing. Bernardo moved quickly in search of his merchandise. He called them, waving a lantern, and they all headed over to where they were piling up the leather bags unloaded from one of the several boats that had come close to the beach.
“Get started, morena!” urged Melchor as he pushed aside several smugglers and cut the cords that bound one of the sacks with his knife. “What are you waiting for?” he shouted after he had cut the cords off the next one and Caridad still hadn’t moved.
Protected by Tomás and the three remaining nephews, who tried to keep the others from making off with the tobacco before Caridad could check the merchandise, she tried to get close to the first bag. She couldn’t see. The shouting distracted her and the pushing was annoying. She still managed to introduce a hand into the first leather sack. She was hoping to get to feel the leaves, pick up one of them and … It was Brazil tobacco! She had first encountered it in Triana, although she had heard about it before that. Rope tobacco: black Brazilian tobacco leaves wrapped in big rolls. Caridad smelled the cloying sweet treacle syrup used to treat the leaves so they could be rolled. The Spaniards liked it: they ground up the rolls and wrapped another leaf around it. It could also be chewed, but it didn’t compare to good tobacco …
“Negress!” This time it was Tomás who called her attention, his back up against hers, to withstand the pushing of the other men. “Hurry it up or one of these men is going to mistake you for a leather bag and load you onto one of the horses.”
Then Caridad cast aside that first sack and a couple of smugglers pounced on it. In the lantern light and confusion, the Vega nephews looked at their Uncle Tomás in surprise. He shrugged. Brazil tobacco, the most sought-after smoking tobacco on the market!
After looking through a couple more sacks, Caridad found leaves. They weren’t Cuban, it was Virginia tobacco. It pained her to rip the leaves roughly, but Tomás and Melchor were constantly rushing her while Bernardo tried to calm the agent who had unloaded them. She rejected the ones that seemed too dry or too damp; she quickly sniffed them, trying to calculate how long ago they’d been harvested, she held them up to the faint light to check their color, and she began to choose: one, two, three … And the nephews took them aside.
“No!” she corrected. “Not this one, that one.”
“For crying out loud!” one of them shouted at her. “Make up your mind!”
Caridad felt tears come to her eyes. She hesitated. Which was the last one she had chosen?
“Morena!” Melchor shook her, but she couldn’t remember.
“That one!” she pointed without being sure, her eyes flooded with tears.
Some distance away, on a dune, while his men had taken care of the contraband that belonged to them, El Gordo and his two lieutenants watched with interest the huge commotion the gypsies had started. Caridad continued with her selection, crushing the tobacco leaves, barely knowing which bag they had come out of. The nephews set aside the ones she pointed to and the other smugglers made off with the rejected sacks. Melchor and Tomás hurried Caridad, and Bernardo argued with the agent who was wildly pointing to the other ships already leaving the beach, all eyes on the horizon, looking out for the lights of a coastguard vessel.
Finally, the gypsies managed to gather their eight leather bags. The agent and Bernardo shook hands and the agent ran toward a boat that was already starting to row toward the faluchos. The ruckus continued over the tobacco Caridad had discarded. That was when El Gordo squinted his eyes. Each bag could weigh more than a hundred pounds and there were only six men: five gypsies and Bernardo. He looked toward where the other gypsy was waiting for them with the horses. They had to cover a good stretch of beach, each of them with a bag; they couldn’t carry any more. Then he turned to his lieutenants, who understood him without the need for a single word.
“Wait here, morena,” ordered Melchor while he threw one of the bags onto his back with difficulty and joined the line headed by Tomás, each with his own bundle.
Caridad was sobbing, terrified. Her body was drenched in sweat and the red of her dress showed through her open cape. Her legs trembled and she still clenched pieces of tobacco leaf in her hands. El Gordo watched as the line of gypsies set off, then he shifted his gaze to his lieutenants: one of them, with the help of two other smugglers, drove an unloaded horse on through the water, behind Caridad’s back; the other walked over to her.
“Distract her,” El Gordo had ordered him. “You don’t have to hurt her,” he added at the man’s surprised expression.
However, seeing how his henchman drew closer to Caridad, the lanterns gradually going out as the parties left the beach with their goods, he understood that if the woman realized the trick and put up a fight, his caution would have been in vain. When the smuggler was only a few steps away from Caridad, El Gordo again calculated the timing: the gypsies hadn’t yet reached their horses. He smiled. He was about to let out a laugh: they advanced slowly, as erect as they could walk beneath the bags, haughty and proud as if they were strolling down the main street of a town. The men who were driving the horse through the water had already disappeared into the darkness, so they must be very close to the bundles. They had little time, but he was already rubbing his thick hands together: he sensed it was going to be easy.
Caridad jumped. The smuggler who had shouted did as well: her breasts, large and firm, struggled to burst through her red shirt with each labored exhalation of breath. The man forgot the speech he’d prepared, absorbed in the sight of her and his sudden desire for those voluptuous curves. Caridad lowered her gaze and her submissive attitude inflamed the man’s passions. Beneath the increasingly dim light, the woman shone from the sweat that ran down her body.
“Come with me!” the smuggler proposed naively. “I’ll give you … I’ll give you whatever you want.”
Caridad didn’t answer and, all of a sudden, the smuggler saw how his companion, who had already arrived, was waving wildly with open hands, incredulous at what he had just overheard. El Gordo shifted restlessly on the dune and turned toward the gypsies: they were already loading up the horses, but it was unlikely they could see Caridad from where they were. The one behind the woman waved his hand, wanting nothing to do with it, and picked up one of the leather bags. Caridad noticed and was about to turn around, but then the lieutenant reacted and pounced on her, immobilizing her with a hand on the nape of her neck and bringing the other to her inner thigh. For a moment he was surprised that she didn’t scream or defend herself. She only wanted to turn toward the tobacco. He didn’t let her and bit her lips. They both fell onto the sand.
El Gordo made sure the other lieutenant and the men he had with him were quickly loading the leather bags onto the horse and disappearing into the darkness. The first shouts were heard from the gypsies. Only one of his men remained … Good-for-nothing! he thought. If the gypsies caught him, they would know that he was behind the theft, and he didn’t want that. He was relieved to see that the lieutenant reappeared in the night and grabbed the man by his hair, almost lifting him off the ground, and separated him from the woman. They escaped shortly before Melchor and his men got to Caridad. It was unlikely that they had recognized them.
“You’re old, Galeote,” murmured El Gordo before turning his back to the sea and disappearing into the night as well, trying mockingly to imitate the gypsies’ gait.