“You payos, your women included, have the wrong idea about gratitude.”
They stayed in the tobacco seller’s place and, just as at the inn in Gaucín, Melchor made sure to make it clear to every backpacker and smuggler who showed up that Caridad was his and therefore untouchable. Melchor spent the first three days in meetings with Méndez.
“Don’t go too far, morena,” the gypsy told her. “There are always bad people wandering around here.”
Caridad listened to him and hung around the stables and the surrounding area, looking at the landscape that stretched away from her feet and thinking of Milagros; watching the people that came and went with their sacks and backpacks, and remembering Milagros again; taking refuge from her pain in the tobacco that was plentiful there and thinking of her … and of Melchor.
“Who was the woman who saved you from El Gordo?” she asked one night as they lay on adjoining straw mattresses in a large room they shared with other smugglers. She didn’t have to lower her voice; at the other end of the room, a backpacker was enjoying one of the many prostitutes who followed the scent of money. It wasn’t the first time that had happened.
For a few moments only the sound of the couples’ panting was heard.
“Someone who helped me,” answered Melchor when Caridad had already given up waiting for an answer. “I don’t think she’d do it again,” he added with a twinge of sadness that didn’t go unnoticed by Caridad.
The panting turned into muffled howls before reaching ecstasy. Those women enjoyed being with men, thought Caridad, something that seemed out of her reach.
“Sing, morena,” said the gypsy, interrupting her thoughts.
Could he have known what she was thinking? She wanted to sing. She needed to sing. She wanted everything to be the way it used to be.
THEY WERE awaiting the arrival of a shipment of French snuff, explained Melchor when Caridad asked him how long they would be there and why they weren’t going to Madrid to get Ana freed.
“It usually comes in through Catalonia,” continued the gypsy. “But the tobacco patrol is getting more and more vigilant and it’s complicated. It is very difficult and expensive to get, but we’ll make a good profit.”
The consumption of snuff, the thick powdered tobacco produced in France, was illegal in Spain; only the very fine Spanish powder was allowed, the color of gold and perfumed with orange-flower water in the tobacco factory in Seville, better than any snuff according to many. Although there were other types of powders—one made with stems and ribs, one mixed with mud, one doused with a diluted aromatic vinegar, one mixed with red ocher—the gold-colored one was the best. However, the appeal of all things French, including snuff, won out over even the orders from the Crown, and the first ones to disobey them were the courtiers themselves. The King had ordered severe penalties for snuff consumption: aristocrats and noblemen could be punished with stiff fines and four years of exile for the first offense; twice the fine and four years of prison in Africa for the second; and perpetual exile and loss of all assets for the third. The others, the common people, were sentenced with fines, whippings, galleys and even death.
But the elegance of sniffing snuff instead of Spanish powder, together with the risk and appeal of the forbidden, meant that in the parlors of most courtiers and noblemen, they continued to do so. How could a fop bear to humiliate himself with Spanish powder, despite its quality being recognized throughout Europe? And snuff consumption was so high in the court itself that the authorities naively began to allow secret denunciations: the denouncer had the right to receive the fine imposed on the accused and the judge had to hand it to them personally and keep their identity secret; but Spain was no place for keeping secrets, and snuff continued to be smuggled in and sniffed.
Méndez had promised them a good variety: dark powder as thick as sawdust, made in France using techniques that each factory kept confidential. The thickest, fleshiest tobacco leaves were mixed with some chemical elements (nitrates, potash and salts) and natural elements (wine, liquor, rum, lemon juice, treacle, raisins, almonds, figs …). The tobacco and the mixture from each factory was wet down, cooked, allowed to ferment for six months, pressed into rolls and aged again for another six or eight months. The French aristocrats personally scraped the rolls or carottes with small rasps, but that wasn’t the style in Spain, so the snuff came already prepared and ready to blacken the nostrils, beards and mustaches of those who consumed it, to the extent that in the court they no longer used white handkerchiefs, but gray ones instead, to hide the mucus brought on by the constant sneezing.
“Are we going to bring it to Madrid?” asked Caridad.
“Yes. We’ll sell it there.”
Melchor hesitated, but finally decided to hide from her what could happen to them if they were arrested with a shipment of snuff in their possession. They were both sitting in the sun, on a large rock from which they could see the entire Múrtiga River valley, indolently whiling away the hours.
“How long do we have to wait?”
“I don’t know. It has to arrive from France, first in a boat and then get here.”
Caridad sucked her tongue in annoyance: the sooner they got to Madrid, the sooner they would free Ana and Milagros’s mother could fix things. Melchor misinterpreted the gesture.
“Do you know what, morena?” he said then. “I think we could do something useful while we’re waiting.”
As dawn was breaking the next day, in the first light, loading sacks on their backs like simple backpackers, Caridad and Melchor crossed the border and entered Spanish territory. Méndez informed the gypsy that the priests in Galaroza needed tobacco.
“From now on, morena,” warned Melchor as soon as they started the descent from Barrancos along a steep hidden goat path, “silence, watch your step and … don’t even think about singing.”
She couldn’t hold back a nervous little giggle. The idea of smuggling with Melchor thrilled her.
They were perhaps the most wonderful days of Caridad’s life. Magic, intimate days: the two of them walking in silence along lonely paths, among trees and fields of crops, listening to the sound of each other’s breathing, brushing against each other, hiding when they heard horses approaching. Then they smiled at each other when they were sure it wasn’t the tobacco patrol. Melchor told her about the paths, the tobacco, smuggling and its people, explaining things to her in more detail than he ever had with anyone before. Caridad was captivated; every once in a while she stopped to gather some herbs with the intention of drying them once they returned: rosemary, pennyroyal … and many others she was unfamiliar with but whose aroma convinced her to pick them as well. Melchor let her do her thing; he put down the sack and he sat to observe her, drawn by her movements, her body, her voluptuousness. His apprehension over the José matter was gradually fading.
They were in no rush. Their time was theirs. The roads were theirs. The sun was theirs, and the moon that illuminated their first night out in the open, which they shared with the distant howling of wolves and the busy nocturnal animals.
It took almost a month, which to them seemed too short, for the promised snuff to arrive. Melchor and Caridad went back out smuggling through the area several times.
“Sing, morena,” the gypsy requested.
They had stopped for the night on their way back from Barrancos, already freed of their load of tobacco and the risk that the patrol might catch them with it. The spring was in full bloom and they could hear the flowing waters of the brook Melchor had decided to set up camp by. After eating some meat with sauce, bread and some sips of the wine they carried in a leather wineskin, the gypsy lay down on the ground, atop an old blanket.
Caridad smoked by the side of the brook, a few paces away. She turned to look at him. She had agreed to sing every time Melchor asked her to since she had first decided to sing shortly after reaching Barrancos. However, as soon as she began the first laments, the gypsy would lose himself in his own world and his presence would fade. Ca
ridad had spent days sharing his lively company. She didn’t want him to plunge into that hole that seemed to demand his attention so anxiously; she wanted to feel him alive.
She approached him, sat by his side and offered him a smoke. The gypsy took a drag and gave her back the cigar. The murmur of the brook’s waters mingled with the thoughts of each. Gradually, her breathing made her desire known.
“And what if everything changes and you don’t sing the same way?”
Caridad couldn’t find the words to answer. It would change, undoubtedly, but it was something that she yearned for with her entire body.
“Do you mean that my singing won’t be sad anymore?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“I would like to be happy. A happy woman.”
Melchor was surprised to find himself approaching her with a tenderness he had never shown any woman: delicately, as if afraid to break her. Caridad surrendered herself to his kisses and caresses. She delighted in it, discovering a thousand hidden corners of her being that seemed to want to respond passionately to the mere brush of a fingertip. She knew she was loved. Melchor made love to her gently. Melchor spoke sweetly to her. She cried, and the gypsy remained stock-still until he realized that those tears weren’t tears of grief, and he whispered in her ear lovely things she’d never been told before. Caridad panted and howled just like the wolves in the mountain’s thick vegetation.
Later, in the light of the moon, naked, with the brook’s water licking her knees, she insisted until she got Melchor to come over. She kicked water onto him, just as Marcelo did with her on the plantation as soon as they stepped into a puddle. The gypsy complained and Caridad splashed him again. Melchor pretended he was about to lie down again, but then turned suddenly and leapt on her. Caridad let out a shout and ran off down the river. They played naked in the brook, running and splashing like little kids. Exhausted, they drank and smoked, gazing at each other, getting to know each other, and they made love again and stayed in each other’s arms until the sun was high in the sky.
“You don’t sing the same anymore.” He reproached her in the room at Méndez’s house. They had brought their straw mattresses together, but, as if they had agreed on it without ever having discussed it, they didn’t make love there where the smugglers and backpackers slept with the prostitutes. They preferred to go out in search of the cover of sky.
“Would you rather I stopped?” she asked, interrupted her song.
Melchor thought about his answer; she gave him an affectionate punch on the shoulder to get him to reply.
“Morena, never hit a gypsy.”
“Negro slaves can hit our gypsies,” she declared categorically.
And she continued singing.
THERE IS a coach road that links Madrid with Lisbon via Badajoz. From Barrancos it would have been easy to head to Mérida through Jerez de los Caballeros, follow it to Trujillo, Talavera de la Reina, Móstoles, Alcorcón and enter the capital through the Segovia Gate; they were little more than seventy leagues from Madrid, almost two weeks of walking. It took them almost the same amount of time moving quickly along solitary paths that were new to Melchor. They left behind the tranquillity they had enjoyed in Barrancos; they had the snuff and they needed to free Ana. However, a gypsy dressed in yellow, a Negress and a mule loaded with a large sealed earthenware jar that smelled of perfumed tobacco couldn’t travel along the main roads.
But while the gypsy had to use all of his instincts, often leaving Caridad and the mule in a safe place while he went to inns or farmhouses to ask for directions, it wouldn’t be the same in Madrid: he had been there twice. “I know Madrid,” he assured her. Besides, it was often the subject of conversation among the smugglers, who exchanged all types of experiences, addresses and contacts. A great deal of money moved through Madrid: that was where the King lived surrounded and served by a large court; almost the entire Spanish nobility; ambassadors and foreign traders; thousands of clerics; a veritable army of high-ranking officials with sufficient resources and a burning desire to feign a high birth they lacked, and above all countless Frenchified fops whose only objective seemed to be enjoying life’s pleasures.
They stopped less than half a league from Madrid. Melchor took a good sample of the snuff and they buried the earthenware jar in a thicket.
“Are you going to remember where …?” Caridad was worried when she realized that the gypsy planned to leave the jar hidden there.
“Morena,” he interrupted her seriously. “I assure you that I’ll remember how to get back to this place faster than how to return to Triana.”
“But what if someone—?” insisted Caridad.
“Jinx!” interrupted the gypsy again. “Don’t invite bad luck!”
Further on, at an inn, they sold the mule.
“We’ll attract enough attention with you at my side without pulling along that animal,” joked Melchor sweetly. “Besides, I don’t think we can cross by night with the mule.”
With the city in their sights, they hid among the vegetable gardens on the outskirts. Melchor sat against a tree and closed his eyes.
“Wake me up when it gets dark,” he said after an exaggerated yawn.
From the other side of the lowlands of the Manzanares, Caridad ran her gaze over the Madrid that rose before them. Its highest point was a palace in construction at whose feet she could make out a large city with all sorts of jumbled houses. What awaited them there? Her thoughts returned to Milagros … and to Ana. Was Melchor right when he maintained that Ana would fix everything?
A couple of hours passed before the sun began to set over Madrid, tinting its buildings and bringing up reddish glints from its belfries and the pointed tips of the towers that projected above them.
In the moonlight they headed toward the Toledo Bridge. Since they were coming from Portugal, they should have crossed the Segovia Bridge, but Melchor ruled it out.
“It’s very close to what was the citadel of the kings and many noblemen and important courtiers live there, and there is always more vigilance in those areas.”
They crossed the bridge stealthily, hunched over, up against the parapet, so much so that instead of traveling in a straight line they followed the little semicircular balconies that opened over the Manzanares River. There was no vigilance, although between the river and the Toledo Gate that led to the city there was a considerable area covered with vegetable gardens and hills both small and large, over which the last buildings of Madrid rose.
Since Madrid didn’t have suburbs, its outline was perfectly delineated by those last buildings: it was forbidden to build beyond the wall that surrounded the city, and the growing population accrued inside. Melchor remembered that wall well. It wasn’t wide like the one around Seville and many of the kingdom’s cities and even humble towns, but just a simple masonry wall. And the truth was that Madrid’s walls, which were interrupted by and combined at many points with the very faces of the city’s last buildings, was only respected by the citizens in the case of epidemics. In those cases they did close the entrances into the city, but while there was no such danger, the wall offered countless gaps along its length, and as soon as they were repaired, more showed up in another stretch. It was as easy to open up a hole in a wall as it was to count on the complicity of one of the owners of the houses whose façades made up parts of it.
Melchor and Caridad crossed the vegetable gardens and arrived at the Toledo Gate: a couple of simple rectangular openings, closed at night, without any decoration and set into the wall that enclosed the street with the same name. To the right, instead of the wall, there was a slaughterhouse for cattle and rams, with several doors that opened out and allowed the animals to enter directly from the field.
You just have to wait until some runner who knows how to get in shows up, Melchor remembered hearing from a smuggler, in an inn. Then you join him, you pay and you go in. Someone asked, And what if nobody shows up? The first guy laughed out loud. In Madrid? There’s more traffic at night than d
uring the day.
They stationed themselves in front of the slaughterhouse and waited hidden beside a corral that was used as a place to store straw and dry skins; Melchor remembered being assured that many people slipped in through the doors of that slaughterhouse.
However, time passed and nothing indicated that anyone planned on going through the Madrid wall that night. And what if they are quieter than we are? thought Melchor.
“Morena,” he then said aloud, willing to attract the attention of anyone moving about there but indicating with a finger to his lips that Caridad remain silent. “If I didn’t hear you breathing, I’d think you weren’t with me. You are so black and silent! Behind these doors and the slaughterhouse are the neighborhoods of El Rastro and Lavapiés. They stretch over this whole part of Madrid. Good people live there; manolos they call them. What a name! Arrogant and reckless, ready to get into a knife fight over a wrong word or an indiscreet glance at their women. And what women!” He sighed as he opened his knife, making sure to silence the clicking of the mechanism; he had heard suspicious noises. Then he moved closer to Caridad and whispered, “Be on the lookout and don’t approach anyone. And what women!” he repeated almost in a shout. “I tell ya, they’d only be better if they were gypsies! The last time I was in Madrid, after the King honored me by allowing me to row his galleys …”
The attackers thought they were going to catch the gypsy unawares. Melchor, in a state of tension, with his senses alert and gripping his knife, didn’t want to kill either of the two men who he thought were approaching; he needed them.
“You …!” one of the bandits interrupted Melchor’s speech.
He didn’t have a chance to say anything more. Melchor turned and dealt him a stab to the hand in which he saw the flash of a blade, and almost before the weapon hit the floor he was already behind the man and pressing his knife against his throat.
The gypsy wanted to threaten him but the words wouldn’t come out: he was panting. I’m not so young anymore! he thought resignedly. And, as if wanting to refute his own weakness, he pressed the knife against his captive’s neck so it was he, in the end, who screamed instead.