They stationed themselves beside one of the walls of the Santa Cruz church where, above Atocha Street, rose an atrium that opened onto the temple’s main portico where some homeless people slept. At a signal from Zoilo they slipped away, going around the atrium and heading down Atocha Street. They knew they were taking a risk: in the streets of Madrid, after midnight (which the bells had announced some time ago), anyone found armed, as they were, and without a lantern lighting their way, should be arrested. However, when they’d passed the atrium of the monastery of the Calced Trinitarians and had left the jail and its many officials far behind, they began to chat carelessly, sure that no patrol would dare confront six gypsies. They laughed loudly as they crossed the small Antón Martín Plaza, where one of the district magistrates was often stationed, and they continued down Atocha Street, carefree, ignoring the drunk men and women, tripping over beggars lying on the ground and even challenging those muffled in long capes, their faces hidden in the night beneath wide-brimmed slouch hats, waiting for some dupe to rob.
At the end of the street, they passed by the General Hospital and entered the Atocha meadow. There, the wall around Madrid didn’t end with the last buildings in the city but opened out behind the gardens and olive groves to surround the Buen Retiro Palace with its many buildings and adjoining gardens. They soon heard the music and commotion: folks from Lavapiés and the Rastro got together in the open fields to drink, dance and have fun.
They had money on them. Melchor’s concern about Caridad disappeared as the party went on, with wine, liquor and even chocolate from Caracas. He heard El Cascabelero demanding the best hot chocolate, with sugar, cinnamon and a few drops of orange-blossom water. They ate the sweets hawked by the street vendors: doughnuts deemed “stupid” or “clever” depending on whether or not they were sweetened in a bath of sugar, egg white and lemon juice; rolled wafers and cream-filled pastries. Seeing that their purses seemed to never grow thin, no matter how many coins came out of them, other gypsy men joined them, along with some women. The men flirted but nothing more, since the patriarch was always vigilant about his daughters’ honor.
“You go ahead,” the others encouraged young Martín, “you’ve got money and you’re single. Enjoy those paya women!”
But he excused himself and remained beside Melchor, the galley slave who had survived torture and smuggled tobacco, who was capable of killing his own son-in-law for the honor of the Vega family. Martín listened attentively to him, laughed at his jokes, felt proud to be able to talk to him. Over the course of the night, Melchor and Martín spoke about the Vegas, about honor, about pride, freedom, the gypsy settlement and about how pleased Melchor would have been if his granddaughter had chosen someone like Martín instead of a García. “She must be confused,” declared Melchor. “For sure,” agreed the boy. Fandangos and seguidillas sounded until dawn, and they were surrounded by all types of people. The gypsies, dressed in their brightly colored clothes, mixed with manolos, in their colorful short jackets and waistcoats, silk sashes, tight britches, white knee socks, shoes with large buckles almost at the tip, striped capes and cloth caps, always armed with a good knife and a perennial cigarette between their lips; and manolas wearing bodices, fine dresses and very flouncy skirts over them, hair nets and mantillas and silk shoes.
Melchor missed the gypsy spirit more than his companions did; the bewitching spell of those cracked voices that spontaneously emerged from the most unexpected corner of the gypsy settlement by La Cartuja. Nevertheless, the joy and hubbub continued echoing in his ears when the music stopped and the light of day found them in a field where only the stragglers remained.
“Are you hungry?” Zoilo asked then.
They sated their appetites at the San Blas inn, also on Atocha Street, amid cartwrights, muleteers and carriers from Murcia and La Mancha who frequented it. Just as they had done during the party the night before, they bragged about their purses and started with toast fried in lard and sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon. This they followed with chicken stewed in a sauce of its chopped livers until the main dish was ready: a lovely lamb’s head split in half, seasoned with parsley, crushed garlic cloves, salt, pepper, and salt pork strips beneath the gristle, then tied up again to be roasted in sheets of brown paper. They made short work of the brains, tongue, eyes and attached meats, some tender, others gelatinous, all washed down with undiluted Valdepeñas wine, strong and harsh, as befitted that inn filled with dirty, loud-mouthed men who watched them out of the corners of their eyes with obvious envy in their faces and gestures.
“A round for everyone here!” shouted Melchor, sated and tipsy. Before the men had a chance to thank him for his generosity, a shout boomed through the inn:
“We don’t want to drink your wine!”
Melchor and El Cascabelero, seated with their backs to the door, saw the tension in the faces of Zoilo and his two brothers-in-law, who were facing it. Martín, beside Melchor, was the only one in the group who turned his head.
“I didn’t think they were that fast,” the patriarch commented to Melchor.
Most of the clients, intrigued by the impending quarrel, moved away from the gypsies and made space for the newcomers. Only a very few left the inn. El Cascabelero and Melchor kept their eyes straight ahead.
“The sooner, the better,” Melchor said as he stifled a sigh of regret at not having gone home sooner. If he had, he would be with Caridad, safe. Or would he? Maybe not, who knew? He clicked his tongue. “What’s done is done,” he muttered to himself.
“What did you say?”
“They’re waiting for us,” answered El Galeote, standing up, his hand already on his knife.
El Cascabelero did the same, and all the others followed suit. There must have been eight Garcías, perhaps more: he couldn’t be sure when he saw them bunched up in the doorway.
“Idiots!” spat Melchor as soon as his gaze met the eyes of the man who seemed to be leading the party. “Wine paid for by a Vega will only be spilled on the García graves, where you’ll soon all be.”
“Manuel,” said El Cascabelero, surrounded by his men, “you are about to make the biggest mistake of your life.”
“Gypsy law—” the man tried to reply.
“Shut up!” interrupted Melchor. “Come for me, if you’ve got the balls.”
One of the onlookers cheered his bravado.
The click of several knives opening at the same time was heard inside the inn; the blades shone in the penumbra.
“Why …?” El Cascabelero started to ask Melchor.
“They don’t have enough room here,” he answered. “We will be more or less even. Outside they would crush us.”
He was right. Although the Garcías pushed aside tables and chairs in their path, their group couldn’t fully spread out in front of the Vegas. Six against six, seven at the most. The rest will come later, thought Melchor as he launched the first stab, which easily cut open the forearm of the García in front of him. The others continued feinting, not really jumping into the fight. Then he realized something else, even more important: they didn’t know how to fight. Those gypsies hadn’t ranged through mountains and fields; they lived in Madrid, comfortably, and their fights weren’t with smugglers and criminals who fought viciously, with no concern even for their lives. He stabbed again, his arm extended, and the wounded García backed up into the relative behind him.
Right then, a cold sweat drenched Melchor’s back. Martín! He was still beside him, as always, and while the others still hadn’t joined the fray, he could see how the young man was launching himself, wildly, blindly, on one of the Garcías. He wasn’t experienced with a knife … He heard a terrified howl from the mouth of El Cascabelero when his adversary’s blow hit his youngest son’s wrist, disarming him.
“Stop!” shouted Melchor just as the García was about to go for the boy’s neck.
The knife stopped in midair. The entire world seemed to stop for Melchor. He dropped his weapon and sketched a sad smile toward the
frightened face of the young Vega.
“Here you have me, swine.” He then gave himself up, opening his arms.
He didn’t look at Martín, he didn’t want to humiliate him, but he knew that El Cascabelero had his eyes downcast, looking at the floor or perhaps his own knife. Melchor approached the Garcías, and before they pounced on him, he had the chance to run a hand through Martín’s hair.
“The Vega blood has to continue to flow in you, not in old men like me,” he declared before they took him out of the inn amid insults, kicks and shoves.
SHE DIDN’T dare to clear her throat, for fear of being discovered, although the stench of death had a firm grip on her dry throat. The spring night had fallen and she was thirsty, very thirsty. Yet that urgency disappeared as soon as a soft breeze began to caress her body and lift her fine hairs; then she trembled, convinced she was being surrounded by the ghosts emerging from the many tombs of that cemetery. And while the men behind the tombstone that protected Caridad made their bets and stakes in whispers that seemed to her like howls, she shivered again and again from the contact with the living dead.
They had entered the cemetery just as she was about to leave it to search for a fountain to quench her thirst. Five, six, seven men—she wasn’t able to count them—who were allowed in by the sacristan himself. Throughout the course of the night, she heard some of them leave the cemetery, probably having lost all their money, and other new ones joining the game. A simple lantern hung on a memorial cross lit up the gravestone where they had been playing cards for a couple of hours already. The sacristan acted as the lookout for the street patrol. On a couple of occasions he warned them of approaching constables and, in the sudden deepest darkness, Caridad held her breath, just as they all did, until the danger passed and they started up their illegal game again.
It was on those two occasions, when the faint light of the lantern was extinguished in haste and fear, that Caridad felt the presence of the spirits most strongly. She prayed. She prayed to Oshún and to Our Lady of Charity, because the dead not only rested in their graves, but they also mingled with the earth on which she sat, the same earth that she had played with to pass the time, on which she had dropped the rest of the loaf of bread that she distractedly wiped off before continuing to gnaw on it. She had heard it from the mouth of the furtive card players:
“This smell is unbearable,” one of them whispered.
“That’s exactly why we are here,” was the response. “This is the worst one in Madrid. Few people come anywhere near.”
“But …” the first tried to insist.
“You can go to another cemetery if you’d like,” replied a different voice calmly. “This one at San Sebastián is the best for getting around the gambling laws. They’ve run out of room to bury the dead and every spring they dig them up; the last time was just a few days ago. They take out the corpses that have been buried for two years and move them to the mass grave; a lot of the remains get mixed up with the dirt and nobody worries about it. That’s why it smells like this: like death, for fuck’s sake! Are you playing or not?”
And Caridad couldn’t do anything to free herself from all the dead that surrounded her, the stench that scratched at her throat, filling her with bad omens. Melchor! What had happened to him? Why had he left her at the hostel? Something serious must have happened to him, or …? Was he capable of …? No. Surely not. The last kiss he gave her before leaving and the happy times in Barrancos flooded her mind and banished thoughts of that possibility. And meanwhile, just as she had done in Triana, silently, with her dark hand on the stone he had given her, she tried to concentrate and summon her gods: Eleggua, come to me, tell me if Melchor is still alive, if he is well. But all her efforts were in vain and she felt that the ghosts were fondling her … All of a sudden she leapt up. She jumped up off the ground as if a large crossbow had launched her toward the heavens. She feared that the dead were coming for her. She scrubbed her hair, her face, her neck … hard. A sticky, warm liquid was soaking her head.
“Holy Mother of God!” echoed through the cemetery. “What is this?”
The exclamation came from the man who had climbed on the grave whose stone Caridad was hiding behind. He didn’t dare to move, shocked, terrified, unable to make out in the darkness what that frenetically shaking black spot was. The stream of urine that had managed to do what the ghosts had been unable to—make Caridad reveal her hiding place—gradually grew thinner until it was a tiny thread.
Caridad was as slow to react as the man was to adapt his vision to the darkness. When they both had, they found themselves face to face: she smelling her arm once she realized what had happened; he with his now shrunken penis still in his hand.
“It’s a Negro woman!” said one of the players who had come over to see what the fuss was all about.
“Black as night,” added another.
A smile appeared on Caridad’s face, revealing her white teeth in the darkness. Despite her disgust, they were humans, not ghosts.
Standing there in front of the men, the oil lamp one of them held illuminating her, she heard their comments:
“And what was she doing hiding there?”
“Now I understand why my luck was so bad.”
“She’s got some great tits on her.”
“That’s not bad luck. You don’t even know how to hold the cards in your hand.”
“Speaking of hands, are you going to hold your knob all night long?”
“What do we going to do with the darkie?”
“We?”
“She has to go and wash. She’s drenched in piss!”
“Negroes don’t mind that.”
“Gentlemen, the cards are waiting.”
A murmur of approval rose among the men and, without paying any more attention to Caridad’s presence, they turned their backs on her to gather again around the grave over which they were playing.
“A bit further down, along Atocha Street, in the Antón Martín Plaza, you’ll find a fountain. You can wash there,” said the man who’d urinated on her, hiding his member in his trousers.
Caridad turned her head at the mention of the fountain: her tremendous thirst was unrelenting and the dryness in her throat reasserted itself, along with the urgent need to wash herself. The card player was about to go with his companions when Caridad interrupted him.
“Where?” she asked.
“In the plaza …” he started to repeat before realizing that Caridad didn’t know Madrid. “Listen: you go out of the cemetery and turn the corner toward the left …” She nodded. “Good. It’s the narrow street behind here.” He pointed to the wall of niches that enclosed the cemetery. “Del Viento. Keep walking and go around the church, always toward the left, and you will reach a larger street. That’s Atocha. Go down it and you’ll find the fountain. You can’t miss it. It’s very close by.”
The man didn’t wait for a reply and turned his back on her as well. But: “Oh!” he exclaimed, turning his head. “And I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were hiding there.”
Caridad’s thirst pushed her on.
“Goodbye, Negress,” she heard the players say as she slipped briskly away from the cemetery, beneath the surprised gaze of the sacristan who was watching over it.
“Clean yourself off well.”
“Don’t tell anyone you saw us.”
“Good luck!”
Turn left twice, Caridad repeated to herself as she went around the bell tower and church of San Sebastián. And now go down the large street. She passed a new side street and she could make out the small square in the light of the street lamps from two buildings. In its center she saw the fountain: a tall monument crowned by an angel, statues of children below and water spouting from the mouth of large fish.
Caridad was only thinking about washing herself and quenching her thirst. She didn’t notice a couple of stealthy figures hiding from the gleam of the building’s torches. But they didn’t take their eyes off her when she climbed into the
fountain’s basin to bring her lips to the pipe that came out of the mouth of one of the dolphins. She drank and drank, while the two men approached her. Then, with her legs and the lower part of her slave shirt already wet, she got on her knees, stuck her head beneath the stream and let the fresh water run over the back of her neck and her hair, down her shoulders and her breasts, feeling herself purified, freed from the filth and all the spirits that had been pestering her in the cemetery. Oshún! The river Orisha, who rules over the waters; she had paid tribute to her many times in Cuba, there on the tobacco plantation. She stood, looked up at the heavens above the angel that topped the fountain.
“Where are you now, my goddess?” she prayed out loud. “Why don’t you come to me? Why don’t you mount me?”
“If she doesn’t, I’d be happy to mount you.”
Caridad turned in surprise. The two men, standing by the basin, opened their eyes widely, full of lust at the sight of the body beneath the drenched grayish shirt that stuck to her voluptuous breasts, stomach and wide hips.
“I can give you dry clothes,” offered the other.
“But first you’ll have to take those off,” laughed the first in a brazen tone.
Caridad closed her eyes, desperate. She was fleeing from a cutter who wanted to force himself on her and now …
“Come here,” they encouraged her.
“Come closer.”
She didn’t move. “Leave me alone.”
Her request was somewhere between a plea and a warning. She scrutinized the space beyond the two men: deserted, dark.
The men looked at each other and nodded with a smile, as if planning a crude game.
“Don’t be afraid,” one said.
The other waved his hand, calling her to come closer. “Come with me, little Negress.”
Caridad backed away toward the middle of the fountain until her shoulders hit the statue.
“Don’t be silly, you’ll have fun with us.”