The Barefoot Queen

by Ildefonso Falcones

  The other man’s smile widened. “That’s the way it goes. New girls don’t receive a regular salary,” he explained at the gypsy’s confused expression, “paid whether they work or not. She will be paid only for the day’s work … Yes, seven or eight reals.”

  Rafael García couldn’t stifle a disappointed look. His son and the other two gypsies who accompanied him also showed their discontent.

  “In that case …” The gypsy hesitated, but ended up making the threat. “For that wage Milagros won’t go to Madrid.”

  “Listen,” announced the other seriously. “She wouldn’t be the first player who ends up in jail for refusing to accept the orders of the Chief Magistrate and the council that governs the theaters of the capital. Madrid isn’t measured in reals, gypsy. Madrid is …” The man fluttered his hands in the air. “There are many players in traveling companies and smaller theaters all over the kingdom who lose money when they are called to Madrid. You choose: Madrid or jail.”

  Rafael García chose, and a month later his grandson Pedro watched smoking as Milagros loaded the few family belongings into the wagon and Bartola, her nanny, held their daughter in her arms.

  Between bags, Milagros looked at the little girl. She was just like her mother, some said, while others were sure she took after her father and some looked for resemblances with the Garcías. No one mentioned the Vega family. She wiped the sweat from her brow with a sleeve. She didn’t dare to baptize the girl with the name Ana. Many gypsies brought news of the imprisoned in Málaga, but none for her. She never asked them to talk to Ana Vega. She couldn’t bear another response like the one she had received when she sent the Camacho! Perhaps someday … Meanwhile, she knew nothing about her mother, and that tormented her. However, she had baptized her daughter with the name María, in secret homage to the old healer who had been replaced by Bartola, who was going to accompany the family in their journey to the court.

  Twelve more people got into the wagon after them: several couriers loaded down with packages; a Frenchified dandy who looked with disgust at everything around him; a timid girl who was going to the capital to work as a servant; a man who said he was a fabric vendor; two friars and a married couple. None of the gypsies had ever traveled in a wagon, and except for the couriers, who came and went between cities, it was clear that none of the other passengers had either, such was the aversion to travel in that period. The wagon was full and they all tried to get comfortable in a space without benches, among the piles of diverse merchandise and belongings they carried with them, on a floor that wasn’t made of planks like the carts Milagros was familiar with, but instead of a network of strong cords on which the people and their baggage were randomly jumbled. They had to travel lying down, as the young woman saw one of the couriers do. Amid the pushing, the two gypsy women extended the straw mattresses they were carrying along one side of the wagon and sat down on them with their backs precariously resting against the straw mats that served as railings.

  In such a way, accompanied by a cart transporting olive oil and another muleteer at the head of a train of six animals loaded down with merchandise, they faced the long journey. Milagros took a deep breath when the carter cracked the whip over the mules and they began their march, pulling the heavy wagon behind them. Then she let herself be rocked to sleep by the jingling of the animals’ harness and the metal clatter of the pots and pans that hung outside the wagon. Every tinkle of those bells took her a bit further from Triana, from El Conde, from La Trianera, from the Garcías and from the misfortunes that had destroyed her life. Every once in a while, the crack of the whip sent the animals lurching forward for a few moments, until they resumed their apathetic gait. Madrid, she again thought. She had come to hate the capital when she found out about her grandfather’s capture, but when a month later another courier arrived with the news that he had escaped, she, amid the swearing and cursing of the members of her new family, had been reconciled with that city. Would it be the same in a Madrid theater, beside professional actors and musicians, as in the inns and parties of Seville? That uncertainty was the only thing that worried her. She remembered what torture it had been for her to sing Christmas carols in the Santa Ana parish, with the choirmaster reprimanding her constantly and the musicians looking down on her, and she feared that the same thing would happen. She was just a gypsy, and the payos … the payos were always the same with gypsies. Yet despite everything, Milagros was willing to suffer that ridicule, a hundred times over if need be, to get Pedro away from his family in Triana, from his indolent life and his nights spent … She’d rather not know where. She closed her eyes tightly and squeezed her little one against her chest. In Madrid, Pedro would only have her. He would change. What did she care about the money that the Garcías seemed so concerned with? Without it there would be no wine, no taverns, no bars, no … women.

  Pedro had strongly opposed moving to Madrid, but El Conde had not budged, even for his favorite grandson. The freeing of gypsies had been suspended not long after José Carmona was freed; many trusted that someday the King would reconsider their situation. And they were fighting to achieve that. “It’s the Chief Magistrate of Madrid!” El Conde had shouted at his grandson. Then: “Listen, Pedro,” he’d continued in a different tone, “we are all getting closer to the payos. Soon, a few months at the most, we will present the rules of what will become the Gypsy Brotherhood to the Archbishop of Seville; we have chosen as its seat the monastery of the Holy Spirit, here in Triana. We are working on it. Gypsies with a religious brotherhood!” he added as if it were madness. “Who could have ever imagined it? And we aren’t just the Garcías, but all the families in the city, united. Do you mean to spoil that … for all of us, with a person as close to the King as the Chief Magistrate of Madrid? Go there. It won’t be forever.”

  The gypsies had made such progress toward the Church, which was capable of jailing or freeing people, that even the friars who went to Triana to hear general confessions had noted, over and above the other citizens, the piety and religious spirit of those who had come to confess.

  “Refuse!” urged Milagros one day in the face of her husband’s constant complaining. “Let’s go; let’s run away from Triana. I married you against the will of my family—you can rebel too. Who is your grandfather to decide what we should or shouldn’t do?”

  But just as she had assumed, Pedro didn’t dare to disobey his grandfather and from that day on there were no more arguments, although Milagros was careful not to show her happiness.

  IT TOOK them eleven endless days to reach Madrid. Days over the course of which other vehicles and travelers with the same destination joined them while others turned off at crossroads. The roads were bad and dangerous, so people sought each other out. Besides, the carters and muleteers enjoyed certain privileges that annoyed the locals: they could allow their animals to graze, or gather firewood in communal lands, and it was always preferable to defend such rights as a group. Numb, constantly trying to quiet the pathetic crying of a one-and-a-half-year-old girl unable to stand the tedium and monotony, Milagros was encouraged when she sensed they were getting close to the big city. Even the mules quickened their weary pace as the urban noise became increasingly noticeable. The sun had just appeared on the horizon, and the wagon they were in was squeezed between the hundreds of carts and thousands of pack animals that entered the city each day to supply the capital. A multitude of laborers, farmers, merchants and porters, either driving carts small and large, or walking, heavily loaded, or leading mules and oxen, had to enter Madrid personally to sell their products and goods. To prevent the stockpiling and raising of prices, the King had outlawed dealers, traders and court suppliers acquiring edibles to resell on the outskirts of Madrid or on the roads that led to it; they could only do so after twelve noon, in the plazas and markets, after the inhabitants had had a chance to acquire them in the stalls at their original prices.

  Through a slit in the tarpaulin that covered the side of the wagon, Milagros looked out at t
he jumble of people and animals. She shrank back at the shouting and chaos. What was awaiting them in a city that, day after day, required that entire army of suppliers?

  They entered Madrid through the Toledo Gate, and on the street of the same name, in one of the many inns there, the Herradura Inn, they ended a journey that had seemed endless. They had been told to go to the Coliseo del Príncipe theater when they arrived in order to receive instructions. Milagros and old Bartola fought with the other travelers to unload the mattresses and other belongings while Pedro got information from the carter and the couriers.

  The sun of a cool but radiant day illuminated the colorful crowd that was entering the city and which they were now a part of. Pedro walked ahead, without any baggage, with the two women following behind dragging the bags and carrying little María. Not many people paid any attention to the group of gypsies as they went down Toledo Street toward the Plaza de la Cebada in one of the most populous and humble neighborhoods in Madrid. The inhabitants wandered among the inns, bars, mattress shops, wicker shops, forges and barber shops that flanked Toledo Street.

  Milagros and Bartola took turns carrying María. They were passing the girl from one to the other when Pedro, who had turned his head to see what the holdup was, pounced on them just in time to keep the little one from grabbing one of the shirts that hung from the doorway of a miserable hovel that displayed used clothing.

  “Do you want her to get sick?” he scolded them both. “Nasty piece of work!” he announced after staring into the haggard face of the shop’s owner.

  His concern arose from the fact that on Toledo Street there were several secondhand clothing shops run by dealers whose gaunt faces showed the fate of many who, out of necessity, bought the clothes taken off the deceased in hospitals. While the gypsies burned the clothes of their dead after burial, the payos bought and sold them, not caring that in their stitches and seams lingered the seeds of all sorts of illnesses, and the skirts, britches and shirts, returned again and again to the shops to await a new poor soul to transmit them to, formed a vicious cycle of death.

  Milagros hitched her girl up until she had her settled on her hip; she understood what had caused Pedro’s reaction and she nodded before continuing walking. They reached the Plaza de la Cebada, a large irregular space where, besides executing the prisoners condemned to death by hanging, they sold grain, salt pork and vegetables. Many of the farmers who had walked up Toledo Street with them turned into the plaza. Around the market stalls loitered hundreds of people. Other peasants continued toward the Plaza Mayor.

  Pedro, however, guided them to the right, toward a narrow street that bordered the church and the cemetery of San Millán; they continued along it to the plaza of Antón Martín. There, while women and children cooled themselves in the fountain that spouted water from dolphins’ mouths, he asked again for the Coliseo del Príncipe theater. With no luck. A couple of men avoided the gypsy and hurried past. Pedro’s jaw tensed and he stroked the handle of his knife.

  “What are you looking for?” he heard when he was about to question a third person.

  Milagros observed a constable dressed in black who, truncheon in hand, approached her husband. The men spoke. Some passersby stopped to watch the scene. Pedro showed him his documents. The constable read them and asked for the performer referred to in the papers.

  “My wife: Milagros of Triana,” he responded curtly as he pointed to her.

  Beside the fountain, Milagros saw herself being scrutinized up and down by the constable and the onlookers. She hesitated. She felt ridiculous with the straw mattress rolled up under one arm, but she lifted her chin and stood tall before them.

  “Pride comes before a fall!” shouted the constable in response. “We’ll see if you stay so puffed up on stage, when the groundlings boo you. In Madrid we’ve got plenty of beautiful women but we’re short on good comic players.”

  The people laughed and Pedro made to turn on them. The constable stopped him by raising his truncheon to the height of his chest.

  “Don’t be so sensitive, gypsy,” he warned, drawling his words. “In a few days, when the theater season begins, all of Madrid and the surrounding areas will criticize … or praise your wife. It’s up to her. There is no in-between. Come with me,” he offered as Pedro calmed down. “The Príncipe Theater is very close by. It’s on my rounds.”

  From the plaza itself they climbed a bit, around the Loreto school and into a narrow street to the right. Milagros struggled to maintain the same haughty bearing with which her husband paraded in front of the chorus of Madrileños who had witnessed the scene, but—weighed down with María on one side and the mattress on the other, followed by Bartola snorting and cursing into the back of her neck with the other two mattresses and the rest of the luggage—the few steps’ lead that the constable and Pedro had on them seemed an insurmountable gap. “We’ll come to see you, gypsy!” Milagros heard, and she turned toward a short fat man wearing a large black hat that made him look like a mushroom. “Don’t make us waste our money,” she heard another shout. Where is the luxury and pageantry of the Count of Fuentevieja’s palace now? she lamented, irked by the laughter and comments she heard as she passed.

  One block more and they stopped at the side street that led to where the Príncipe Theater was; a bit further on, from the corner of Prado Street, the constable pointed to his right, toward a building with straight lines and a sober stone face whose pitched roof extended far above its neighbors.

  “There you have it,” he indicated proudly. “The Coliseo del Príncipe.”

  Milagros tried to get an idea of the theater’s dimensions, but the narrowness of the street she was facing made it impossible. She turned her head to the left, toward a continuous windowless wall that extended along Prado Street.

  “The garden of the Santa Ana monastery,” explained the constable when he realized where the gypsy girl’s gaze fell. Then he pointed to the upper part of the same street. “There, in the atrium that leads to the monastery, there is a vaulted niche with a statue of the Virgin’s Holy Mother whom many of your race come to worship. You should commend yourself to her before you go in,” he said, laughing.

  Milagros left María on the dirt floor. Santa Ana! In her parish in Triana she had sung carols for the payos after being humiliated by the choirmaster and the musicians. How far off those days now seemed! Yet the same saint appeared beside the theater where she would have to sing before payos again. It couldn’t be a mere coincidence; it must mean something …

  “Let’s go!” The constable’s order distracted her from her thoughts. The gypsies were about to head to the theater when the constable stopped them with a wave of his truncheon and explained. “That’s the audience’s entrance. The players go in through the back door, on Lobo Street.”

  They went around the block until they found the door. The constable spoke with a doorman who watched the entrance and allowed them in right away.

  “Are you planning on going in with a straw mattress under your arm?” scoffed the man after inviting Milagros to follow him. “The others can’t come in!” he warned Pedro and Bartola right away.

  Pedro managed to get through, as her husband. “Who is going to stop me from accompanying her?” he said arrogantly. The mattress stayed outside, with Bartola, María and the other baggage. As soon as the door closed behind them, they found themselves in a large chamber onto which opened a series of rooms.

  “The dressing rooms,” commented the constable.

  Milagros didn’t look at them; nor did she look at the various armchairs arranged beside one of the walls that had caught her husband’s eye. The gypsy girl’s attention was fixed on the back of the set: a huge, simple white canvas that, among pieces of stage machinery, almost entirely filled the space in front of the area reserved for the audience. Through it she could make out the shadows of people: some moved and gestured with their arms, others remained still. She couldn’t make out what they were saying. Were they reciting? She heard a s
houted order and there was silence, followed by another command. The figure of a woman gesticulated wildly. A shadow approached the woman. They argued. The woman’s voice, obstinate, impudent, rose above the other until finally silencing it. The man was left alone. Milagros could see that his arms were slack at his sides. The woman disappeared from her vision, but not her shrieks, which gained strength as they approached along one side of the curtain.

  “Who does that boor think he is!” The shout preceded the inopportune appearance of a middle-aged woman, blonde, well dressed, as exuberant as she was agitated. “Telling me, me, how I should sing my role! Me, the great Celeste!”

  On her way to the dressing room, the woman passed by Milagros without even looking at her.

  “This show won’t last two days!” continued Celeste, indignant, but her discomfiture vanished as if by magic when she came across Pedro García a few paces further on.

  The constable, by his side, removed his hat in deference.

  “And who are you?” the woman questioned the gypsy, planting herself in front of him with her hands on her hips.

  Milagros couldn’t see the smile her husband received that sudden interest with: behind her, from the same place the woman had appeared, more than twenty people rushed in. “Celeste,” clamored a man, “don’t be upset.” “Celeste …” They didn’t notice her presence either; they passed her by, from right to left, until they were surrounding Celeste, Pedro and even the constable. Meanwhile, Pedro’s gypsy gaze, with his eyes slightly squinted, had managed to make the woman stutter.

  “No …” she tried to silence the requests that were coming in; she was captivated by the gypsy’s lovely face.

  “Celeste, please, think it over,” was heard. “The leading man …”

  At the mere mention of the leading man, the woman reacted.

  “I won’t hear of it!” she howled, pushing the others away from her. “Where is my sedan-chair? Send in my bearers!” She looked around until she located two scruffy men who quickly answered her call. Then she made as if to head to one of the sedan chairs, but first she drew close to Pedro. “Will I see you again?” she asked in a sweet whisper, her lips brushing the gypsy’s ear.