He could just disappear, as he used to do in Triana. Nobody had ever asked him for any explanations. He could do it right then, while Nicolasa was in Jabugo. She would return, find the shack empty and she would understand that he had finally followed through on his threats. Didn’t you tell me never to trust a gypsy? You’re lying, you’ll stay with me.… Those were the woman’s replies, sometimes when she wanted to downplay the importance of Melchor’s threats, and other times as if she were searching in his eyes for his true intentions. He had told her to let him die. He had actually said that! He was prepared for it. He’d warned her that he would leave her and she’d decided to ignore him: she’d brought him to the shack, at death’s door, as Nicolasa told him when he regained consciousness after quite a few days of fevers and flirting with death. She had found a surgeon for him, she also said, and she’d spent all of the money from El Gordo that Melchor had left on paying him.
“All of it?” shouted Melchor from the mattress he was lying on. The pain over the loss of his stash was worse than the excruciating tear he felt in the sutures of his wound.
“Surgeons don’t want to heal gypsies,” she answered. “In the end, what does it matter? If you had died you wouldn’t have it either. I did what I thought was best.”
“But I would have died rich, woman,” he complained.
“Who knows what lies beyond death? I’m sure they let us gypsies come back for what’s ours so we can pay the devil.”
Two months later, when Nicolasa could carry him from the mattress to the chair beside the door to the shack for some air and the surgeon stopped visiting because he considered him cured, the woman confessed to Melchor that she had also had to give him El Gordo’s horse … and her two gold coins.
“He threatened to denounce you to the constable.”
Enraged, Melchor made as if to get up from the chair, but he couldn’t even move his legs and almost fell to the floor. The dogs barked before Nicolasa scolded him. It would still be another couple of months before he was walking with ease.
“Wait until spring arrives,” she recommended after another attempt to leave. “You are still very weak, winter is hard and the mountains dangerous. The wolves are hungry. Besides, perhaps they’ve freed some of your people; take your time.”
Nicolasa had been passing along to him the news she’d gathered in Jabugo about the gypsies’ fate; backpackers and smugglers knew things. First she was forced to confirm El Gordo’s words that had almost cost Melchor his life: yes, all the gypsies in the kingdom had been arrested at the same time; Seville, and Triana with it, had been no exception. Melchor didn’t ask her why she hadn’t told him at the time: he already knew the answer. In November, however, Nicolasa came running to tell him the good news: they were freeing them!
“I’m positive,” she reiterated. “People are talking about parties of gypsies from Cáceres, Trujillo, Zafra and Villanueva de la Serena who have returned to their people and to the tobacco trade. They have seen them and talked to them.
“Take your time,” she again begged him that day.
Nicolasa was only asking for time. Why? she asked herself—to no reply. Melchor’s mind was made up; she saw it in his eyes, in the efforts that the lazy gypsy, who used to spend hours sitting by the door of the shack, made to walk again; in the melancholy tangible in him when he looked out onto the horizon. And what about her? She just prayed for one more day … she prayed that, when she returned from wherever she’d gone, she would still find him there. Secretly, she had ordered the dogs to stay with Melchor, but the animals, sensitive to her uneasiness, disobeyed her and stayed glued to her legs, as if promising her that they would never let her down. What did she want that time for? she asked herself whenever she had a fateful feeling and came running from the pigpen or the salt house to make sure, hiding in the shadows, that he hadn’t yet abandoned her? But she loved him; she had cried over him the tears she had denied her own children during the endless days when she was forced to nurse their fevers and delirium; she had fed him like a baby bird; she had washed his body and dressed his wound and sores, made a thousand promises to Christ and all the saints if they let him live! Time … she would have given one of her hands for just another day by his side!
“OK,” yielded Melchor after reconsidering. He felt he should leave even with the risk of cold and his weak state. His instinct told him that this was the moment, but Nicolasa … the woman’s dirty face convinced him. “I’ll leave when spring comes,” he stated, sure that would be the end of the discussion.
“You aren’t tricking me?”
“You don’t seem to want to understand, woman. How would you know that I’m not lying if I reassured you about that?”
BEFORE SPRING arrived, Milagros heard—without daring to look out of the window—the pandemonium grow in the San Miguel alley with the hundreds of gypsies who had come for her wedding. Despite the circumstances, the Garcías and the Carmonas inviting their scattered families brought on a massive influx of gypsies from all corners of Andalusia and even further: some had even come from Catalonia! Milagros looked at her simple dress: white, like the paya brides, adorned with some colorful ribbons and flowers; after the mass she would change it for a green and red one that her father had given her.
A few tears ran down the girl’s cheeks. Her father came over to her and took her by the shoulders.
“Are you ready?”
José Carmona had supported the commitment made by Inocencio; he was aware that his freedom was a result of that wedding and he wouldn’t break the patriarch’s word.
“I wish she were here with me,” answered Milagros.
José squeezed his daughter’s shoulders, as if he didn’t dare come closer and dirty her white dress. Just as La Trianera had predicted, Ana had not been freed and José had received the news with concealed satisfaction. Ana Vega would never have allowed the wedding, and the arguments and problems would have multiplied. With Ana in Málaga and Melchor absent, José enjoyed his daughter as he never remembered having enjoyed her in his life. Overjoyed with her engagement to Pedro García, Milagros had shared her happiness with her father; since he had come back from La Carraca, José lived enraptured by the affection his daughter constantly showed him. Why would he want them to free his wife? Yet, in order to calm Milagros, they both went to make claims to the authorities, though their attempts were in vain. What did it matter that this Ana Vega was married and there were witnesses who swore that she had lived according to the laws? Impossible! They were lying! She had been condemned by the Málaga courts and since then the list of denunciations and punishments she had racked up was endless.
“The day before the Chief Magistrate of Málaga answered our letter,” a functionary told them as he tapped on the papers spread out on his desk, “your wife pounced on a soldier and bit off half of his ear. How do you expect them to release such an animal? Be careful about what you say, girl!” the man said before Milagros replied. “Be careful it isn’t you who ends up in the city jail and your father back in La Carraca.”
Milagros asked her father if they could go to Málaga to try to see Ana.
“We aren’t allowed to travel,” he objected. “In a little while you are going to be married, what would happen if they arrested you?”
She lowered her eyes. “But …”
“I’m trying to get to her through third parties,” lied José. “We are all doing everything possible, my girl, don’t you doubt it.”
José Carmona was one of the last gypsies freed. Beginning in 1750, reports of pressures from the gypsies to influence the secret files were brought before the Council, and the authorities considered that all those who hadn’t passed the test before the month of December, should be considered guilty … of being gypsies. From that point on, thousands of them, Ana Vega included, were facing lifelong slavery.
“Your mother will always be with us,” said José on the day of her wedding, trying to sound convincing. “She’ll come back one day! I’m sure of it!”
Milagros frowned; she wanted to believe her father. His assertion echoed strangely inside the Carmona house, unlike the rest of their conversation where they’d battled to hear each other over the noise. Father and daughter looked at each other: silence reigned in the alley.
“They’re coming,” announced José.
Reyes and Bartola for the Garcías; Rosario and another old woman named Felisa for the Carmonas. The four gypsy women had solemnly crossed the alley toward the house of the father of the bride. The people made way for them and fell silent as they approached the building. The moment their figures vanished beyond the shared courtyard at the entrance, men and women crowded around in silence beneath Milagros’s window.
“I love you, my girl,” said José Carmona in farewell when he heard the gypsy women’s footsteps already at the open door. He didn’t need the women to send him away. “Let’s go, morena,” he added to Caridad, already heading down the stairs.
Caridad gave Milagros a forced smile—she knew why the old women were coming, the girl had told her—and she followed in José’s footsteps. After finding out about how she’d helped his daughter during the arrest and subsequent flight, José had finally accepted Caridad’s living with them.
La Trianera didn’t beat about the bush. “Are you ready, Milagros?” she inquired.
She didn’t dare to look the women in the eyes. How different it would have been if Old María were among them! She would be grumbling and complaining, but in the end she would treat her with a tenderness Milagros wasn’t expecting from those women. She had begged her father to search for María, to find out what had happened to her. She also kept asking any new gypsies who appeared in Triana about the healer, in case she had decided to go somewhere else. Nobody knew anything; nobody confirmed her suspicions.
“Are you ready?” repeated La Trianera, interrupting her thoughts.
“Yes,” she stammered. Was she ready?
“Lie down on the mattress and lift up your skirt,” she heard them order her.
That young scoundrel in Camas had hurt her with his groping, when he stuck one of his disgusting fingers inside her. She had felt disgraced … and guilty! And at that moment she was overtaken by fear again.
“Milagros,” Rosario Carmona spoke sweetly to her, “there are a lot of people waiting in the alley. Let’s not make them impatient, thinking that … Lie down, please.”
And what if that boy in Camas had taken her virginity? She couldn’t marry Pedro; there would be no wedding.
She lay down on the mattress and, with her eyelids trembling from the effort of keeping them closed, she lifted her skirt and petticoats and revealed her pubis. She felt someone kneel beside her. She didn’t dare to look.
A few seconds passed and no one did anything. What …?
“Open your legs,” La Trianera said, interrupting her thoughts again. “How do you expect …?”
“Reyes!” Rosario reprimanded her for her tone. “Girl, open your legs, please.”
Milagros half opened them timidly. La Trianera lifted her head and shook it in Rosario Carmona’s direction: What do I do now? she asked with an impertinent gesture. A few days earlier, Rosario had tried to talk to Milagros. “I already know what it is,” she answered, avoiding the conversation. Every gypsy girl knew that! Besides, Old María had told her what it involved, but she had never prepared her for it or gone into detail, and now, lying on the straw mattress, naked from the waist down, she was immodestly showing her private parts to four women who at that moment felt like total strangers to her. Not even her mother had seen her like that!
“Girl …” Rosario was starting to beg.
But La Trianera interrupted her, grabbing Milagros’s legs and opening them as best she could.
“Now pull up your knees,” she ordered, accompanying her words with a firm hand movement.
“Don’t bite your lip, girl!” warned another of the women.
Milagros obeyed and stopped doing it just as La Trianera’s fingers, wrapped in a handkerchief, began touching her vulva until they found the entrance to her vagina, where she drove them in with such force that she felt like she’d been stabbed: she arched her back, with her fists tightly closed at her sides and tears mixing with the cold sweat that soaked her face. As she felt the fingers scratching at her vagina she held back a howl of pain. She opened her mouth extremely wide when La Trianera dug inside her.
“Don’t scream!” demanded Rosario.
“Bear it!” admonished another.
A sharp prick. The fingers came out from inside her.
Milagros let her back drop down onto the straw mattress. The heads of the four gypsy women hovered over the handkerchief while Milagros filled her lungs with the air she had desperately needed from the very beginning. She kept her eyes closed and moaned as she shook her head from side to side on the straw mattress.
“Good, Milagros!” she heard Rosario say.
“Bravo, girl!” the others congratulated her.
And while Rosario pulled down her skirt and petticoats, Reyes García headed to the window and triumphantly showed the bloodstained handkerchief to the gypsies waiting below. The cheers were immediate.
MILAGROS HAD kept them hidden and surprised Caridad with them before leaving for the church, after La Trianera and the other three gypsy women allowed her father and her friend back into the apartment: a coral necklace, a little gold bracelet and a mantilla of black satin patterned with colorful flowers that she had borrowed for the wedding. The girl’s mouth widened into a smile when she entered the Santa Ana church and saw Caridad, seated in the front row beside her father, trying to remain as erect as the gypsies who surrounded her. She was wearing her red dress, the mantilla over her shoulders and the jewels on her neck and wrist. What the girl didn’t notice was how forced the smile Caridad gave her was: the morena sensed that after she was married, their friendship would wane.
“Will we still be friends after the wedding?” Caridad had dared to ask her, in a trembling voice, after a long circumlocution plagued with throat clearing and stammering, a few days before the wedding.
“Of course!” declared Milagros. “Pedro will be my husband, my man, but you will always be my best friend. How could I forget what we’ve been through together?”
Caridad stifled a sigh.
“You will live with me,” Milagros had then assured her.
The gratitude and affection in her friend’s little eyes was so deep that she couldn’t admit that she hadn’t even broached the subject with Pedro.
“I love you, Cachita,” she whispered instead.
Nevertheless, it was true that they had been growing apart. Milagros hadn’t sung in the parish again, or even in the inn, after the Christmas service. Once in a while Rafael García would hire her out for private parties in the homes of nobleman and illustrious Sevillians, which made more of a profit than the paltry coins she got from Bienvenido’s customers. Caridad had been excluded from those parties by order of La Trianera. With that money and more that the parents of the bride and groom had borrowed, they could pay for the pageantry of a three-day-long wedding; there wasn’t a gypsy family in Spain that didn’t spend their last dime when celebrating a marriage.
In the fleeting exchange of glances, Milagros couldn’t tell that her friend’s smile was faked: her attention was focused on Pedro García; the young gypsy was a magnificent presence, dressed in a short purple jacket, white britches, red socks, square-toed shoes with silver buckles and a montera hat in his hand, and filled her with confidence as he reached her side, before the altar. Was she that lovely and elegant? she wondered.
Pedro stretched out a hand and her apprehension over her appearance vanished amid a thousand sparks, as if the embers of the largest forge in Triana had burst around her. He squeezed her hand as they turned toward the priest and Milagros blocked out everything that wasn’t the touch of his hands, his scent, his thrilling closeness; she hadn’t been able to sense all that in the whirl of the gypsy ceremony they had just celebrated, in which Pedro’s grandfather had split bread in two parts so that, once it was salted, they could exchange them and be considered married according to their law. There, in the church, the respectful silence of the place contrasting with the shouts of congratulations that still echoed in her ears, Milagros remained distant from the sermons and prayers, and she listened to the mass with mixed feelings. In front of the altar, about to marry a García, her mother, grandfather and Old María attacked her soul; none of them would have consented to that marriage. Never forget that you are a Vega echoed in her memory. At each wave of doubt, Milagros took refuge in Pedro: she squeezed his hand and he responded; a happy future opened out before them, she could feel it, and she looked at him to rid herself of her grandfather’s vexed face. He was so handsome! I told you, Mother, I love him, what can you reproach me for? I warned you. I love him, I love him, I love him.
The peal of the bells marking the end of the celebration put an end to her internal struggle. She looked at the ring she wore on her finger; Pedro had put it on her, smiling at her, caressing her with his gaze, his presence promising her happiness. Her man! From the church she was carried almost through the air to the alley. She didn’t have time to change her clothes as she had planned. As soon as she arrived, the women received her with baskets of cakes that the gypsies ended up throwing at each other. She danced with her new husband in the Garcías’ courtyard, on a bed of egg-yolk sweets that they stomped on until their feet were sticky and they were splattered all over. Pedro kissed her passionately and she shivered with pleasure; he kissed her again and Milagros thought she was melting. Later, in the same courtyard, on top of the egg sweets, she danced with the other members of the two families. She had no time to think before she found herself forced out into the alley packed with gypsies drinking, eating, singing and dancing. There, at a frenetic pace, as if the world was ending, she was passed from hand to hand until nightfall; she didn’t even see Caridad, she didn’t even get a chance to dance with Pedro again and to dissolve in another of his wonderful kisses.
The large influx of guests meant that all the houses on the alley were filled to bursting. But they had reserved a room for the newlyweds in El Conde’s apartment. As soon as Pedro grabbed her by the hand and pulled her, publicly interrupting one of her dances with yet another stranger, they were bombarded with obscene comments from the young gypsies following them to the apartment door. But Milagros, who was exhausted, dizzy from the wine, the shouting and all the spinning she had been subjected to throughout the day, could barely make them out.
She tried to sit down somewhere when they were alone; she was afraid of collapsing, but her young husband didn’t allow it.
“Take off your clothes,” he urged as he removed his shirt.
Milagros looked at him without seeing him, amid a thick cloud, her head whirling.
Pedro started to take off his trousers. “Come on!”
Milagros could hear him urging her amid the deafening roar of those young gypsies who were now beneath the window.
Pedro’s member, large and erect, made her react and she stepped back.
“Don’t be afraid,” he told her.
Milagros didn’t hear any tenderness in his voice. She saw him approach her and struggle to get her dress off. His penis brushed against her again and again as he wrestled with her clothes. Then she was naked once more, like that morning with La Trianera, but this time above the waist as well. He squeezed her breasts and brought his mouth to her nipples. He ran his hands over her buttocks and inner thighs. He was panting. He sucked some dried remains of sugared yolk that was stuck to her skin as his fingers played with the lips of her vulva searching for … A shiver ran through Milagros’s body when he reached her clitoris. What was that? She felt her vulva grow wet and her breathing speed up. The tiredness that kept her at a distance vanished and she dared to throw her arms around her husband’s shoulders.
“I’m not afraid,” she whispered.
Without separating their bodies, they staggered and laughed until they were lying on a bed with legs that Rafael and Inocencio had borrowed for the occasion. Milagros opened her knees, as she had done with Reyes that morning, and Pedro penetrated her. The pain she felt was lost in her labored declarations of love.
“I love you … Pedro. How … how I’ve dreamed of this moment!”
He didn’t answer the promises that came from Milagros’s mouth. Leaning on the bed with his hands, his torso raised over her, he looked at her with his face flushed as he secured maximum contact with her pubis, pushing firmly, trapping her to merge with her. Milagros’s pain disappeared along with her words. A pleasure hitherto unknown, impossible to imagine, began to flow from her lower belly to install itself in the most secret corners of her body. Pedro continued pushing and Milagros shivered at a pleasure that seemed terrifying … because it was never-ending. She panted and sweated. She felt her nipples stiffen, as if they were trying to burst and couldn’t manage it. She pushed against him and clawed her nails into his forearms, trying to free herself of sensations that threatened to drive her crazy. What end could there be to that pleasure that required satisfaction, that demanded she reach an unknown pinnacle? Suddenly Pedro exploded inside her with a howl that extended through his final thrust and Milagros’s uncontrollable anxiety ended up vanishing, disappointed amid the shouting that hadn’t stopped and which again filled the room to remind her that it was over. Pedro dropped down on her and covered her neck with kisses.
“Did you like it?” he asked, bringing his lips to her ear.
Had she liked it? She wanted more, didn’t she? What was she supposed to expect?
“It was wonderful,” she answered in a whisper.
Suddenly, Pedro got up, put on his britches and with his torso still bare he leaned out of the window, and greeted the gypsies waiting below. The second time in the same day that someone had bragged publicly through the window over her, lamented Milagros when she heard the cheers intensify. Then he came over to the bed and stroked her cheek with the back of his hand.
“The most beautiful gypsy in the world,” he flattered her. “Sleep and rest, my lovely, you still have two more days of festivities ahead of you.”
He finished dressing and went down to the alley.
“COME WARM me up, morena,” ordered José Carmona.
Caridad stopped twisting the cigar. She had been working for José since practically the very day when, after the wedding party, El Conde had flatly refused to let her remain by Milagros’s side and live with the Garcías. Then José Carmona had taken her into his house, moved by his daughter’s sobs, although Caridad wasn’t sure if her friend’s tears were over her or from the smack that La Trianera had given her to shut her up. Later, José got tobacco leaves for her to twist as a way to fatten up his extremely empty pockets. Less than a week passed between that and his calling her over to his bed to keep him warm.
“Didn’t you hear me, morena?”
Caridad’s skillful fingers tightened around the leaf that was the cigar’s wrapper. She always chose the best leaves for the wrappers, since that was what the buyer noticed first. She had never done anything like that: ruining a good tobacco leaf, but it was as if her fingers had a life of their own, and she watched in astonishment as her fingernails tore into it.
She got up from the table where she was working and headed to the mattress where José Carmona lay. She knew that the gypsy would grope her for a while, mount her from the front or from behind, then again complain about her indifference. “It’d be better to fornicate with a mule,” he had told her the last time, and then he would end up snoring, still clutching her.
She removed her slave shirt with her teeth clenched and her eyes damp and lay down beside the gypsy. José stuck his head between her breasts and pecked at her nipples. His little bites hurt her and yet she did nothing to stop them; she deserved that punishment, she repeated night after night. Caridad had changed. What had previously not aroused any feeling in her—being passed from one hand to the next like the animal she had been taught to be on the tobacco plantation—now disgusted and repulsed her. Melchor! She was betraying him. José Carmona ran his hands over her body. Caridad couldn’t help shrinking back, tense. The gypsy didn’t even notice. What had become of Melchor? Many assumed he was dead, among them Milagros. The rumors of a clash between smugglers that he seemed to have been involved in had reached Triana, but no one was able to confirm anything for certain. They all were talking about what someone else had told them, news that had in turn been obtained from third parties. However, she knew that Melchor wasn’t dead. José didn’t let her sing, he said that Negro songs annoyed him, although he gave up trying to keep her from softly humming those rhythms that, along with the tobacco’s aroma, took her back to her roots. And Caridad sang softly as she worked, imagining that the man lying behind her was Melchor. In the darkest hours of the night, when José was sleeping deeply, she searched for her gods: Oshún, Oyá … Eleggua, he who arranges men’s lives at his whim, he who had allowed her to live when Melchor found her beneath a tree. Then she would smoke and sing until her senses were intoxicated and she was able to receive the presence of the greatest of the gods. Melchor was alive. Eleggua confirmed it for her.
José Carmona slithered on top of Caridad, trying to enter her. She didn’t want to open her legs.
“Move it, damn darkie!” the gypsy demanded tonight, yet again.
And she did, with guilt destroying the last corner of her consciousness. But what else could she do? She would lose Milagros. José would kick her out. Rafael García would banish her from the alley without a second thought. It was there, with his people, with the gypsies, close to his granddaughter, where she should wait for Melchor. She closed her eyes, resigned to the reencounter with the feeling that was so new and strange to her as a man mounted her: repugnance.
Caridad half opened her eyes. The burgeoning light of dawn still left most of the house in shadow. She struggled to understand. José was snoring, hugging her. She tried to clear her vision. A yellow spot, blurry, was standing beside her.
“What are you doing there?”
Caridad leapt up when she recognized the voice.
“And my daughter? Where is Ana?”
Melchor! Caridad sat on the mattress before him, her breasts exposed. She pulled on the blanket to cover them; a wave of suffocating heat rushed to her face. José grumbled in his dreams.
The old gypsy wasn’t able to keep his gaze from focusing on those black breasts and the large areolas that surrounded their nipples. He had desired them … and now …
“Why are you sleeping with that … that …?” He couldn’t get the words out; in their place he pointed to José with a trembling hand.
Caridad remained silent, hiding her eyes.
“Wake that scoundrel up,” he then ordered.
The woman shook José, who was slow to understand.
“Melchor,” he greeted him with slurred voice as he got up, disheveled, and tried to fix his shirt. “About time you came back. You’ve always had a talent for disappearing in the most—”
“And my daughter?” the grandfather interrupted him, his face flushed. “What is the morena doing in your bed? And my granddaughter?”
José brought a hand to his chin and stroked it before answering. “Milagros is well. Ana is still in prison in Málaga.”
José turned his back to his father-in-law and headed to the cupboard to serve himself a glass of water from a pitcher that Caridad always kept filled.
“They won’t let her out,” he added, facing him after drinking a sip. “It seems that Vega blood always causes problems. The morena?” he added with a contemptuous gesture toward Caridad. “She warms my nights; not much more could be expected of her.”
Caridad surprised herself by daring to scrutinize Melchor: the wrinkles that lined his face seemed to have multiplied, but despite the yellow dress coat that hung from his shoulders like a sack, he hadn’t lost his proud gypsy bearing or that gaze that could cut through stone. Melchor felt Caridad’s interest and turned his head toward her. She couldn’t hold his gaze and lifted the blanket covering her breasts up higher. She had failed him, his eyes reproached her.
“She sings well,” said Melchor then with a tremendous sadness that made Caridad’s hair stand on end.
“You call that singing?” laughed José.
“What would you know!” muttered Melchor, dragging out the words, his eyes still on Caridad. He had come to desire her, but he had renounced her body in order to continue hearing those songs that oozed pain, and now she was in José’s hands. He shook his head. “What have you done to free my daughter?” he suddenly spat in a weary voice.
With that question Caridad knew that she was no longer the focus of Melchor’s attention and she lifted her gaze to watch the two gypsies in the light of dawn: the gaunt grandfather in his yellow dress coat; the blacksmith, with his strong chest, neck and arms, planted arrogantly in front of the old man.
“For my wife …” José corrected him slowly. “I have done all that can be done. It’s your fault, old man: the stigma of your blood has been her undoing, like all Vegas. Only a pardon from the King would get her out of jail.”
“What are you doing here then, enjoying my Negress, instead of at the court getting that pardon?”
José just shook his head and pursed his lips, as if what Melchor suggested were impossible.
“Where is my granddaughter?” Melchor then asked.
Caridad trembled.
“She lives with her husband,” answered José, “as is her duty.”
Melchor waited for an explanation that didn’t come.
“What husband?” he finally asked.
The other man straightened up, threateningly. “Don’t you know?”
“I walked day and night to get here. No, I don’t know.”
“Pedro García, El Conde’s grandson.”
Melchor tried to speak but his words came out in an unintelligible stammer.
“Forget about Milagros. It’s not your problem,” spat out José.
Melchor gasped in search of air. Caridad saw him raise a hand to his side and double over with a grimace of pain.
“You’re old, Galeote …”
Melchor didn’t listen to the rest of his son-in-law’s words. You’re old, Galeote, the same words El Gordo had spat at him on the Barrancos road. Caridad in the arms of José, his daughter imprisoned in Málaga, and Milagros, his girl, whom he loved most in this damn world, living with Rafael García, obeying Rafael García, fornicating with the grandson of Rafael García! The wound he’d thought was healed now struggled to burst his stomach. He had renounced taking revenge on Rafael García for Milagros, the baby that Basilio put in his arms when he came back from the galleys. What good had it done? His blood, the Vega blood, that very girl’s, would mix with that of those who had betrayed him and stolen ten years of his life. He twisted in pain. He wanted to die. His girl! He stumbled. He searched for some place to rest. Caridad leapt up to help him. José took a step forward. Neither of them reached him. Before they could, the pain shifted to wrath; berserk, blind with rage, he pulled his knife from his sash and as soon as he opened it he pounced on his son-in-law.
“Traitor! Son of a bitch!” he howled as he sank the weapon into José’s chest, into his heart.
He only realized the magnitude of what he had done when he saw José Carmona’s surprised eyes, knowing his death was near. He had just murdered his granddaughter’s father!
Caridad, naked, remained still, out of reach, and watched the convulsions that announced the gypsy’s death, lying on the floor with a large pool of blood forming around him. Melchor tried to stand up straight, but he couldn’t quite manage it, and he brought the bloody hand that held the knife to the wound that El Gordo had given him.
“Traitor,” he then repeated, more for Caridad than the corpse of José Carmona. “He was a traitorous dog,” he said to defend himself against the terror in her face. He thought for an instant. He ran his eyes over the room. “Get dressed and go get my granddaughter,” he urged. “Tell her that her father wants to see her. Don’t tell her about me; nobody should know that I’m here.”
Caridad obeyed. As she crossed the alley and returned with Milagros, worried by the Negro woman’s persistent silence in response to her questions, Melchor dragged José’s corpse with great difficulty over to the next room to hide it. How would Milagros react? Carmona was her father and she loved him, but he had asked for it … Melchor didn’t have time to clean up the trail of blood that streaked the floor, or the large stain that shone damply in the middle of the room, or his knife blade, or his yellow dress coat; Milagros only saw him and leapt into his arms.
“Grandfather!” she screamed. Then her words caught in her throat, mixed with sobs of joy.
Melchor hesitated, but in the end he hugged her too, and rocked her. “Milagros,” he whispered again and again.
Caridad, behind them, couldn’t help following the trail of blood with her eyes, before focusing again on granddaughter and grandfather, and then back at the bloodstain in the middle of the room.
“Let’s go, girl,” said Melchor suddenly.
“But you just arrived!” responded Milagros, leaning back from him with a wide smile on her lips, her arms still holding him, to get a better look at him.
“No …” corrected Melchor. “I mean let’s leave … Triana.”
Milagros saw her grandfather’s stained coat. Her expression soured and she checked her own clothes, impregnated with blood.
“What …?” The girl looked beyond Melchor.
“Let’s go, girl. We’ll go to Madrid, to beg for your mother’s freedom—”
“What’s that blood?” she interrupted him.
She pulled away from her grandfather and kept him from tugging her back. She discovered the trail. Caridad saw her first tremble and then bring her hands to her head. Neither Caridad nor Melchor went into the next room, from which a shriek emerged, blending with the hammering of the blacksmiths who had already begun their working day. Caridad, as if her friend’s heart-rending scream was pushing her, backed up until she was against the wall. Melchor brought a hand to his face and closed his eyes.
“What have you done?” The accusation emerged cracked from Milagros’s throat; the girl searched for support in the lintel of the doorway between the rooms. “Why …?”
“He betrayed us!” reacted Melchor, raising his voice.
“Murderer.” Milagros was dripping with rage. “Murderer,” she repeated, dragging out each syllable.
“He betrayed the Vegas by marrying you—”
Melchor straightened his neck and squinted his eyes toward his granddaughter.
“No, it wasn’t him, Grandfather. It was Inocencio. And he did it to free Mother from prison in Málaga.”
“I … I didn’t know … I’m sorry …” Melchor managed to say, awed by his granddaughter’s pain. Yet he rallied instantly. “Your mother would never have accepted that arrangement,” he declared. “A García! You married a García! She would have chosen prison. Your father should have done the same!”
“Families and their quarrels!” sobbed Milagros, as if detached from her grandfather’s words. “He was my father. He wasn’t a Vega or a García or even a Carmona … he was my father, do you understand? My father!”
“Come with me. Leave behind those—”
“He was all I had,” she lamented.
“You have me, girl, and we will get your mother’s free—”
Milagros spat at her grandfather’s feet before he could finish his sentence.
The contempt in that gob of spit, from the person he most loved in the world, made his face quiver and his eyelids tremble. Melchor was silent even when he saw her shout and pounce on Caridad.
“And you?”
Caridad couldn’t move; frozen in that spot as she was, she wouldn’t have anyway. Milagros screamed in her face.
“What did you do? What did you do?” she demanded again and again.
“The morena didn’t do anything,” intervened Melchor in her defense.
“That’s it!” shrieked Milagros. “Look at me,” she demanded. And since Caridad didn’t lift her eyes, she smacked her. “Fucking nigger! That’s it: you never do anything. You’ve never done anything! You let him murder him!”
Milagros started to beat her breasts with both fists, up and down. Caridad didn’t defend herself. Caridad didn’t speak. Caridad couldn’t look at Milagros. “You killed him!”
For the first time in her life Caridad felt pain in all its intensity and she realized that, unlike the wounds inflicted by the overseer and the master, these would never heal.
One girl screamed and hit; the other cried.
“Murderer,” sobbed Milagros, letting her arms fall to her sides, unable to hit her even one more time.
For a few seconds the only sound to be heard was the hammering that came from the forges. Milagros collapsed on the floor at the feet of Caridad, who didn’t dare move; nor did Melchor.
“Morena,” she heard him say. “Gather your things. We’re leaving.”
Caridad looked at Milagros, hoping, yearning for her to say something …
“Go,” was all she spat out. “I never want to see you again as long as I live.”
“Gather your things,” insisted the gypsy.
Caridad went to find her bundle, red outfit and straw hat. While she grabbed her few belongings, Melchor, without daring to look at his granddaughter, calculated what effect his actions would have: if they caught them in the San Miguel alley or in Triana, they would kill them. And even when they fled, the council of elders would pronounce a death sentence against him and most likely the morena as well, and they would let all the families in the kingdom know about it. It was in Milagros’s hands whether they would be able to escape Triana alive.
Caridad returned with her things and looked for the last time at the only friend she had ever had. She hesitated as she passed by her, huddled, crying, cursing between moans. She couldn’t have stopped Melchor. She remembered running toward him, and the next thing she had seen was José’s badly injured body.
Milagros had told her that she didn’t want to ever see her again. She tried to tell her that it hadn’t been her fault, but at that moment Melchor pushed her out of the apartment.
“I’m sorry for you, girl. I trust that someday your pain will ease,” he said to his granddaughter before leaving.
Then they both left the building, hastily. They needed time to flee. If Milagros sounded the alarm, they wouldn’t even make it out of the alley.