“And their husbands allow it?” she had asked, surprised.
“Of course,” answered Marina. “Every evening they escort them to the theater and pay for a good seat,” she commented in the dressing rooms, “although sometimes the lady prefers to mingle with the women on the balcony, hidden beneath a good cloak: when she is in mourning, for example, and it isn’t appropriate for her to be seen enjoying herself in the theater or listening to the gossip of the vendors. In that case the suitor still has to buy her ticket and wait for her at the exit. Take a closer look!” she urged Milagros. “I’m sure that even though they are covered up you can recognize them.”
“What else does the suitor have to do?” asked Milagros, her interest piqued.
“Well, he has to please the object of his affections,” explained Marina. “He can only talk to her, not to any other woman, even when his lady is not present. Early in the morning, he has to go to her bedchamber to wake her up, bring her breakfast, help her to dress and converse with her while the hairdresser does her hair; then they go to mass. In the evenings, he escorts her here, to see the comedies.” Marina listed the suitor’s obligations, counting on her fingers. “Then, they take a long stroll through the San Jerónimo meadow in a fine open carriage, and at night it’s time for gatherings, card games and contradances before dropping her off at home. Basically, the suitor must have permission from his lady for anything he wants to do.”
“That’s all?” asked the gypsy in a mocking tone.
But, to her surprise, Marina continued. “No!” she responded, exaggeratedly stretching out the vowel. “I was just catching my breath.” She laughed with feigned affectation. “That is what he should do. Then there’s what he should pay for: the hairdresser, the flowers he has to send her every day and, above all, her clothes and accessories. There are some ladies who, before splurging, agree on a maximum amount for all those expenses with the suitor, but those are the cheap courtships. The true suitor has to open up an account at the best shops so that his lady can dress as is befitting, and he must also be up to date on the latest court style and everything arriving from Paris so he can offer it to her before everyone else is wearing it …”
“They must go bankrupt,” commented Milagros.
“Madrid is full of suitors who have lost their fortunes courting a lady.”
“Poor wretches.”
“Poor wretches? They enjoy the smile and company of their ladies, their conversation and their confidences … even their scorn! What more can a man aspire to?”
Remembering those words, Milagros revealed a smile that was misinterpreted by one of the young dandies invited to the marquis’s party. How much money do you have left? she was tempted to ask him just as a couple of bold ladies separated from the group and approached the marquis and Pedro flirtatiously. Milagros hesitated over stepping into their path. He was her man! Wasn’t he? There were more and more nights when he didn’t even come home, but those foolish women who surrounded her in a cloud of perfume as they passed by her didn’t need to know that. She did nothing. She turned her head and lost her gaze in the reflections of a large crystal chandelier as the two women launched their attack on Pedro.
With a party for almost two hundred guests, the Marquis of Torre Girón was celebrating the fact that the King had granted him, as a grandee, the privilege of keeping his head covered in the monarch’s presence. Milagros sang and danced with the same passion as she did in the theater. In those moments she was the queen. She could feel it; she knew it! Dukes, marquises, counts and barons surrendered to her voice, and in their eyes, then stripped of titles, money and even authority, she perceived nothing more than desire, the yearning to possess that sensual, lustful eighteen-year-old body as she danced and swirled about. And what about the ladies? Yes, the same ones who had gone after Pedro. They lowered their eyes, looking at their own hands or feet, some at their corseted breasts, probably lamenting how they fell flaccid as soon as they were released from their constraints. Even the youngest among them envied Milagros, aware that they were unable to use their charms the way she did. How could they emulate her, match her, in grotesque, ceremonial contradances? they thought. Not even in the privacy of their bedchambers would they dare to spin around and shake their hips like that.
The party was likely to last well into the night, probably until dawn. Still, Milagros was able to rest when the marquis, exultant after the coverage ceremony before His Majesty Ferdinand VI, entertained his guests with a puppet show.
So, while the marionettes performed—in front of more than one church provost—light, even comic versions of biblical stories, Pedro García was seated comfortably in the audience, beside a group of women who had come to captivate him, and Milagros and her accompanists were getting some refreshment in the kitchens after their first performance. The laughter from the audience at what more than one moralist would have deemed blasphemies, and the shouts of admiration from the ladies surprised by the cloud of smoke raised by an explosion of gunpowder when the devil appeared, echoed in the distance.
“What a disgrace!”
Some of the servants who were coming and going in the kitchens, holding trays with lit candles in the center so the guests could see what they were being offered, stumbled at the marquis’s sudden appearance. The rest shrank back at the screeching with which he had burst in.
“I cannot allow a princess such as yourself to be served in the kitchens,” he added, extending his arm to Milagros. “Come with me, I beg of you.”
The gypsy hesitated before resting her hand on the arm outstretched before her, but the nobleman insisted and Milagros felt the eyes of the servants, guitarists and dancers fixed on her. Will she be capable of refusing the courtesy the lord of the house honors her with? they seemed to be wondering. Why not? she said to herself. She tilted her head to one side mischievously, smiled and accepted the invitation.
Joaquín María Fernández de Cuesta, Marquis of Torre Girón, was close to forty years old. Cultured and charming, quick with words, he hid a barely perceptible limp due to a fall from a horse. Milagros found herself enveloped in the perfume that the nobleman gave off as they went through the halls.
“I don’t like marionettes,” he explained to her. “The puppeteers are nothing more than a bunch of dissolutes who mock and call into question the people’s most intimate convictions. They should be outlawed.”
“Then why did you have them come?” she asked.
“For the marchioness and her friends,” answered the nobleman. “They are amused by them and I must humor them. Besides, you don’t mean to compare them with the ignorant plebs!” They stopped in front of a door and Don Joaquín María announced: “My private sitting room.”
They entered the room, which might or might not have been large. Milagros could get no idea of its true dimensions because of the countless books, pieces of furniture and objects accumulated there: on one of the walls was a prie-dieu with its kneeler and various carved images; a washbasin on the facing wall; beside it, a grandfather clock with many figurines; tapestries painted with forests and fields; mirrors and sculptures of mythological goddesses; crystal figurines; tables; chairs and armchairs … Milagros was captivated by a large golden cage with several metal nightingales inside it. The marquis came over and flicked a switch. Instantly, the little birds began to warble.
“You will like everything here,” he said, taking her by the elbow.
They went past a table with drawings scattered on it and the nobleman lit a light inside a box.
“Look through here,” he indicated, pointing to a hole located in a tube that emerged from its front.
Milagros covered her left eye and placed her right up to the tube.
“Versailles,” announced the marquis.
She exclaimed at the detailed sight of the immense palace. The nobleman allowed her to enjoy it for a few moments and then introduced another slide into the slot in front of the tube.
“Fontainebleau,” he then said.
/> They looked real! The marquis continued inserting slides as he explained what they contained. “How beautiful!… Marvelous!” she exclaimed at the palaces, the immense, beautifully maintained gardens and the forests that he showed her through that box. Suddenly, with her eye still stuck to the tube, she felt the nobleman brush up against her. She held her breath and her body grew so rigid that the marquis moved away.
“Forgive me,” he murmured.
When they finished with the magic lantern, he invited her to drink sweet wine in some small crystal glasses he pulled out of a cabinet.
“To you,” he toasted, starting to raise his cup, “the Barefoot Girl, the best player in Madrid … and the most beautiful.”
After the first sip, the marquis showed her, with a care and pride he couldn’t hide, the many rare and curious objects that filled his sitting room. At first Milagros barely paid attention to the explanations that flowed from the nobleman’s mouth. After turning in her hands, with extreme care and delicacy, the figurine of a goddess, Don Joaquín María opened a book with huge pages. “Look,” he invited her.
She tried to keep her distance and she watched without getting too close; she felt uncomfortable being alone with a nobleman in his sitting room. He seemed not to see the problem and continued turning the pages, pointing out some magnificent drawings to her, while Milagros finished off the excellent sweet wine.
Why should I feel guilty? she asked herself. She had seen Pedro sitting in the audience, brazenly flirting with one of the tarts. She had done nothing wrong and the marquis seemed to respect her: he hadn’t tried to grope her or made improper remarks, as usually happened at the inns. He treated her courteously, and except for that slight brush he hadn’t shown any sign of coming near her. Milagros took a step toward the table the large book rested on and looked at the drawings. She accepted more wine, drank, and enjoyed examining all the different things in that room. She asked about the objects and furniture naively, where they were from, what they were worth, what they were used for, and she was pleased to see the efforts Don Joaquín María made to translate his cultured explanations into language she could understand, making them both laugh.
“Do you like it?”
In the palm of her hand Milagros held a gold cameo that showed the figure of a woman carved in white stone.
“Yes,” she answered distractedly, without taking her eyes off the medallion; it reminded her of the one that her grandfather gave to Old María in Triana.
“It’s yours.”
The marquis closed her hand around the cameo. Milagros remained silent for a few moments, surprised by the touch of that soft hand, so different from the rough, calloused hands of the gypsies.
“No …” she tried to refuse.
“You would do me a great honor if you would keep it,” he insisted, squeezing her fist with his hand. “Don’t I deserve that?”
Milagros nodded. Of course he deserved that. They had spent some lovely time together. No one had ever treated her with such gallantry and attention, and in a room filled with precious valuables, in a great mansion …
“It’s about time,” commented the nobleman suddenly after checking a large wall clock, releasing her hand and interrupting her thoughts.
Milagros raised her eyebrows.
“We should be getting back,” he smiled, offering her his arm, as he had done in the kitchens. “The puppeteers must be finishing up their show, and I have no intention of causing malicious rumors.”
However, the rumors spread as soon as the spectacular bouquets of flowers started showing up every day at the Príncipe, addressed to Milagros, and they multiplied when she sang and danced with her gaze set on the nobleman’s box.
“I haven’t seen him since the party!” she defended herself when Pedro demanded explanations after slapping out of her hand one of the bouquets she kept showing up with day after day.
It was true. Don Joaquín María kept his distance, as if he were waiting … Perhaps for her to make the first move? Marina encouraged her to do it, first excited and then visibly annoyed at her refusal. “Are you crazy? How can I have relations with another man, no matter how rich and noble he may be?” let fly Milagros. And yet, at night, alone, while Pedro was in the taverns of Madrid with his women, she caressed the cameo that she kept among her clothes and she asked herself what was stopping her. The dawn, the hubbub that came up from the street, María laughing and running around the house made the fantasies of the dark disappear. She was a gypsy, she was married and she had a daughter. Perhaps someday Pedro would change.
“At the party,” her husband then insisted, “you were with the marquis in his sitting room. They told me.”
“And where were you?” she replied with a weary voice. “Do you want me to remind you?”
Pedro lifted his hand with the intention of slapping her. Milagros stood tall and tolerated the ploy, motionless, her brow furrowed.
“Hit me, and I will go to him.”
Their gazes clashed, both furious.
“If I ever find you with another man,” threatened the gypsy with his hand still in the air, “I’ll slit your throat.”
She could leave, follow the golden trail that the spring night’s full moon sent over the vegetable patch and the wheat fields that spread behind the house. The town was plunged in absolute silence, and that magical glow invited her to abandon the miserable little room beside the garden that they had let her stay in, and Caridad walked toward the moon with her gaze lost in the plains that extended before her. A shadow in the fields, sometimes still, awed by the immensity, other times walking aimlessly, as if hoping to find a path that led her … where?
Her reception months earlier into the new house had been mixed. Herminia’s aunt and uncle had stifled their surprise. Too black, their eyes shouted. Antón observed her with a hint of lust that Herminia was quick to intercept by placing herself between them; Caridad didn’t entirely understand that sudden reaction. The children’s misgivings soon turned into curiosity, and Rosario welcomed her with a disgusted expression.
“Is she healthy?” she spat at Herminia. “Are you sure she isn’t going to give Cristóbal some Negro disease?”
The wet nurse’s fear banished her to the garden, to a shed filled with farming implements, attached to the house, which reminded her of the one she had stayed in during the roundup, beside the house of the good Christians Fray Joaquín took her to for safekeeping. Instead of nets and fishing poles, this one had yokes and mattocks.
Cristóbal, the son of the prosecutor … how was she going to infect him with anything? The little boy looked more like a butterfly cocoon than like Rosario’s boy, who was the same age; his mother topped up his share of her milk with bread soaked in wine and left him to be passed freely from hand to hand, when he wasn’t on the ground. Each morning, after bathing Cristóbal in cold water and spreading flour between his legs, Rosario wrapped him in white linen from his feet to his shoulders, with his little arms stuck to each side to avoid deforming him with the tight fabric. That was how, like a little white cocoon from which only his head emerged, the boy spent his days, lying in the rustic wooden crib that Rosario only lifted him out of so he could latch on to one of her nipples. Once his hunger was sated, Cristóbal dozed, but most of his day was spent howling, unable to move, irritated by the urine and excrement trapped against his skin, which were cleaned up only grudgingly because swaddling him again was such a chore. Caridad felt sorry for Cristóbal. She compared him to the other kids who ran about the house, to the gypsy kids in Triana and even to the little mulattoes born in the shacks in Cuba; their mothers nursed them for two or three months and then they were left in the care of older slave women who were no longer useful in the fields. Always naked and free.
“All the wet nurses, even the ladies, swathe babies,” Herminia explained to her one day. “It’s always been done that way.”
“But … it’s not natural!”
Herminia shrugged her shoulders. “I know,” sh
e agreed. “Nobody would think to wrap a lamb or a piglet to make it grow healthier and better. There are wet nurses who have even broken one of their arms, or legs, or ribs … Many children end up deformed or hunchbacked.”
“So why do they do it?” asked Caridad, horrified.
“Because that way they don’t have to watch them. And because they avoid accidents. If the wet nurse knows how to wrap, she will return the child alive to its parents. The deformities might show up, but always later on, over the years, and nobody will be able to say it was her fault. If they don’t swaddle, they risk having to tell the parents that their child fell or broke a bone, or swallowed something and choked, or split open his head, or …”
Caridad silenced her with a disgusted expression.
Little Cristóbal occupied her thoughts on some of those nights in the fields: she was nothing more than a slave who was now free because the “plague of the seas” had ended her master’s life, although it could well be said that the insatiable plague had come with the intention of causing her the suffering that frail Don José was unable to inflict upon her himself. And yet, she could look up at the seductive moon over the Castilian fields. And Cristóbal, the rich son of a high-ranking official, was a slave to his swaddling linen. Sometimes she felt tempted to steal the boy and let him run through the fields … would he even know how to move? She remembered little Marcelo: even as a slave with his sight and mind disabled, he had lived in greater freedom than that poor boy.
“Women of means don’t want to breastfeed their children, that’s why they hand them over to strangers,” explained Herminia. “They don’t want to lose their figure, that narrow waist they fight with their corsets to achieve, or for their breasts to harden to bursting with milk only to droop flaccid over time. They don’t want to be tied down and unable to attend social events, the comedies, the dances or the intellectual gatherings. But above all,” she added that Rosario had confessed this to her one day, “they are afraid of not knowing how to soothe their child’s crying and the possibility that their little ones could die in their hands …