the council of elders, headed by Rafael García, a man of some sixty years, gaunt, serious and curt, whom they called El Conde.
The wine and tobacco flowed. The women contributed food from their homes: bread, cheese, sardines and shrimp, chicken and hare, hazelnuts, acorns, quince jam and fruit. These parties were for sharing; when they sang and danced they forgot about the bickering and the atavistic enmity, and the elders were there to guarantee that. The smithing gypsies of Triana were not rich. They were still those same people who had been persecuted in Spain since the time of the Catholic Kings: they weren’t allowed to wear their brightly colored clothes or speak in their dialect, walk the roads, tell fortunes or deal in horses and mules. They were bannedfrom singing and dancing, they weren’t even permitted to live in Triana or work as metalsmiths. On several occasions the non-gypsy guilds of smiths had tried to keep them from working in their simple forges, and the royal proclamations and orders had insisted on it, but it was all in vain: the gypsy smiths guaranteed the supply of the thousands of horseshoes essential for the animals that worked the fields of the kingdom of Seville, so they continued smithing and selling their products to the same non-gypsy smiths who wanted to stop them but were unable to meet the enormous demand.
While the half-naked kids tried to emulate their parents at the end of the alley, Ana and Milagros started up a lively
zarabanda
along with two relatives from José’s family, the Carmonas. Mother and daughter, one beside the other, smiling when their eyes met, twisted their hips and played with the sensuousness of their bodies to the sounds of the guitar and voice. José, like so many others, watched, clapped and shouted words of encouragement. With each dance movement, as if casting out a net, the women incited the men, following them with their eyes, suggesting an impossible romance. They moved closer and backed away again, they spun around them to the shameless rhythm of their hips, flaunting their breasts, the mother’s, lush and the daughter’s, pert. They both danced erect, lifting their arms above their heads or twirling them around their sides; the scarves that Milagros wore tied around her wrists took on a life of their own in the air. Some women, in a ring, accompanied the guitars with their castanets and tambourines; many men clapped and crowed at the two women’s voluptuousness; more than one failed to contain a lustful glance when Ana grabbed the edge of her skirt with her right hand and continued dancing while revealing her bare calves and feet.
“Look up at the heavens, gypsies, God wants to come down and dance with my daughter!” shouted José Carmona.
The shouts of encouragement kept coming.
“Olé!”
“That’s the way!”
“Olé, olé and olé!”
Milagros, spurred on by her father’s compliment, imitated Ana, lifting her skirt, and they both circled their dance partners again and again, wrapping them in a halo of passions as the music reached its peak. The gypsies burst into cheers and applause as the
zarabanda
ended. Motherand daughter immediately dropped their skirts and smoothed them with their hands. They smiled. A guitar began to play, tuning up, preparing for a new dance, a new song. Ana stroked her daughter’s face and, when she drew near to kiss her cheek, the strumming stopped. Rafael García, El Conde, kept his hand slightly lifted over the guitar. A murmur traveled through the gypsies and even the children approached. Reyes “La Trianera,” El Conde’s wife, a fat woman close to sixty years old, with a coppery face scored with a thousand wrinkles, had got one of the other elders out of his chair with a simple, emphatic chin gesture and she had sat down in it.
In the firelight, only Ana was able to make out the look that La Trianera gave her. It lasted a second, perhaps less. The gaze of a gypsy woman: cold and hard, able to penetrate
The wine and tobacco flowed. The women contributed food from their homes: bread, cheese, sardines and shrimp, chicken and hare, hazelnuts, acorns, quince jam and fruit. These parties were for sharing; when they sang and danced they forgot about the bickering and the atavistic enmity, and the elders were there to guarantee that. The smithing gypsies of Triana were not rich. They were still those same people who had been persecuted in Spain since the time of the Catholic Kings: they weren’t allowed to wear their brightly colored clothes or speak in their dialect, walk the roads, tell fortunes or deal in horses and mules. They were bannedfrom singing and dancing, they weren’t even permitted to live in Triana or work as metalsmiths. On several occasions the non-gypsy guilds of smiths had tried to keep them from working in their simple forges, and the royal proclamations and orders had insisted on it, but it was all in vain: the gypsy smiths guaranteed the supply of the thousands of horseshoes essential for the animals that worked the fields of the kingdom of Seville, so they continued smithing and selling their products to the same non-gypsy smiths who wanted to stop them but were unable to meet the enormous demand.
While the half-naked kids tried to emulate their parents at the end of the alley, Ana and Milagros started up a lively
zarabanda
along with two relatives from José’s family, the Carmonas. Mother and daughter, one beside the other, smiling when their eyes met, twisted their hips and played with the sensuousness of their bodies to the sounds of the guitar and voice. José, like so many others, watched, clapped and shouted words of encouragement. With each dance movement, as if casting out a net, the women incited the men, following them with their eyes, suggesting an impossible romance. They moved closer and backed away again, they spun around them to the shameless rhythm of their hips, flaunting their breasts, the mother’s, lush and the daughter’s, pert. They both danced erect, lifting their arms above their heads or twirling them around their sides; the scarves that Milagros wore tied around her wrists took on a life of their own in the air. Some women, in a ring, accompanied the guitars with their castanets and tambourines; many men clapped and crowed at the two women’s voluptuousness; more than one failed to contain a lustful glance when Ana grabbed the edge of her skirt with her right hand and continued dancing while revealing her bare calves and feet.
“Look up at the heavens, gypsies, God wants to come down and dance with my daughter!” shouted José Carmona.
The shouts of encouragement kept coming.
“Olé!”
“That’s the way!”
“Olé, olé and olé!”
Milagros, spurred on by her father’s compliment, imitated Ana, lifting her skirt, and they both circled their dance partners again and again, wrapping them in a halo of passions as the music reached its peak. The gypsies burst into cheers and applause as the
zarabanda
ended. Motherand daughter immediately dropped their skirts and smoothed them with their hands. They smiled. A guitar began to play, tuning up, preparing for a new dance, a new song. Ana stroked her daughter’s face and, when she drew near to kiss her cheek, the strumming stopped. Rafael García, El Conde, kept his hand slightly lifted over the guitar. A murmur traveled through the gypsies and even the children approached. Reyes “La Trianera,” El Conde’s wife, a fat woman close to sixty years old, with a coppery face scored with a thousand wrinkles, had got one of the other elders out of his chair with a simple, emphatic chin gesture and she had sat down in it.
In the firelight, only Ana was able to make out the look that La Trianera gave her. It lasted a second, perhaps less. The gaze of a gypsy woman: cold and hard, able to penetrate
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