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  Dealings with such people made him uncomfortable. When he got back, he thought that he could start with a clean slate, forget the peccadilloes of the past and start anew, detached from the underhanded world of hired skullduggery, but his vow to be a new man lasted barely a few days. When Juliana had asked for another two weeks to respond to his proposal of marriage, Moncada suffered a panic very rare in him; he prided himself on dominating even the monsters of his nightmares.

  During his absence he had written Juliana several letters, which she had not answered. He attributed her silence to shyness; at an age when her contemporaries were already mothers, Juliana behaved like a schoolgirl. In his eyes that innocence was the girl’s best quality; it guaranteed that when she did give herself to him, she would do so without reserve. But with the new postponement his certainty faltered, and that was when he had decided to put on some pressure. A romantic exploit like one of those in the books she treasured would be his most effective move, he calculated, but he could not hope that the opportunity would happen on its own he had to speed things up. He would get what he wanted without harming anyone; it would not actually be deceiving her, because should footpads attack Juliana or any other decent woman he would rush to their defense. It did not seem necessary to explain those arguments to Pelayo, of course; he simply gave the orders and they were carried out without a hitch. True, the scene the Gypsies staged was briefer than he had planned because the knaves broke and ran after a few minutes, when they feared that Moncada’s sword was overly enthusiastic. That had not given him time to act with the dramatic splendor he had envisioned, which was why when Pelayo came to collect, he felt it was fair to haggle over the price. They argued, and Pelayo ended by accepting the lower amount, but Rafael Moncada was left with a bitter taste in his mouth; the man knew too much, and he might be tempted to blackmail him. Definitely, he concluded, it was bad for a man of that stripe, who respected no law or moral code, to have power over him. He must get rid of him as quickly as possible, him and his whole tribe.

  As for Bernardo, he was very familiar with the tight network of gossip that people of Moncada’s class were so in fear of. With his tomblike silence, his dignified Indian ways, and his willingness to do favors, he had endeared himself to many people: the women in the market, the stevedores in the port, the artisans in the barrios, and the coachmen, lackeys, and servants in the homes of the rich. He stored information in his prodigious memory, divided into compartments as if in an enormous archive that contained orderly facts and lists to use at the proper time. He had not stored the night he had met Juanillo in Eulalia de Callis’s courtyard under “blow received” but, rather, under “attack on Count Orloff.” He had kept in contact with Juanillo, and in that way followed Moncada’s movements from afar. The footman was not very bright, and he detested anyone who was not a Catalan, but he tolerated Bernardo because he never interrupted him, and he knew that the Indian had been baptized. Once Amalia acknowledged Moncada’s dealings with the Gypsies, Bernardo had decided to find out more about him. He made a visit to Juanillo, taking as a gift a bottle of Tomas de Romeu’s best cognac that Isabel had slipped to him when she learned that it would be used for a good purpose. The footman did not need liquor to loosen his tongue, but he was grateful nonetheless, and soon he was telling Bernardo the latest news: he himself had carried a missive from his master to the military chief of La Ciudadela, a letter in which Moncada accused the tribe of Gypsies of smuggling contraband weapons into the city and of conspiring against the government.

  “Those Gypsies are eternally cursed because they forged the nails for Christ’s cross. They deserve to be burned at the stake. Give them no mercy, that’s what I say,” was Juanillo’s conclusion.

  Bernardo knew where to find Diego at that hour. He headed straight for the open country outside the walls of Barcelona, where the Gypsies had their filthy tents and beat-up wagons. In the three years they had been there, the camp had taken on the look of a village of rags. Diego de la Vega had not renewed his trysts with Amalia because she was afraid that she would endanger her own fate forever. She had been saved from being executed by the French; that was more than enough proof that the spirit of her husband Ramon was protecting her from the Other Side. It was not a good idea to provoke his anger by continuing to bed a young gadje. It was also in her heart that Diego had confessed his love for Juliana to her; in that case they were both being unfaithful: she to the memory of her deceased husband, he to the chaste maiden.

  Just as Bernardo had supposed, Diego had gone to the camp to help his friends set up the tent for the Sunday circus, which that day would not be in a plaza, as usual, but right in the camp. They had several hours yet, since the spectacle would not begin until four. When Bernardo arrived, Diego and the other men were singing a tune that Diego had learned from the sailors on the Madre de Dios while heaving on the ropes to tighten the canvas. He had sensed his brother across the distance and was expecting him. He did not need to see Bernardo’s troubled expression to know that something was amiss. The smile that was always dancing on his lips vanished when he heard what Bernardo had learned from Juanillo. Immediately, he called the tribe together.

  “If this information is accurate, you are in grave danger. I wonder why they haven’t arrested you before this,” he said.

  “That must mean that they plan to come during the performance, when we are all together and they have an audience,” Rodolfo theorized. “The French like to set examples; this will keep people frightened, and what better way than to use us.”

  They began gathering up the small children and animals. In silence, with the stealth of centuries of persecution and nomadic living, the Gypsies tied up bundles of things they could not do without, climbed onto their horses, and in less than half an hour had ridden off in the direction of the mountains. As they left, Diego told them to send someone the next day to the old cathedral. “I will have something for you,” he told them, and added that he would try to entertain the soldiers and give them time to get away. The Gypsies lost everything.

  Behind them they left a desolate camp with its sad circus tent, wagons without horses, still-smoking bonfires, abandoned tents, and a sprawl of pots and pans, mattresses, and rags. In the meantime, Diego and Bernardo were parading through nearby streets, beating on drums and wearing clown hats to attract potential showgoers and lead them back to the circus. Soon there was a goodly number of spectators waiting beneath the canvas. When Diego appeared in the ring dressed as Zorro, with mask and mustache, he was greeted with impatient whistles. As he juggled three lighted torches, passing them between his legs and behind his back before tossing them up again, his public did not seem too impressed and began to shout crude remarks. Bernardo took away the torches, and Diego asked for a volunteer for a trick of great suspense.

  A husky, pugnacious sailor came forward and, following instructions, stood a few paces away with a cigarette in his lips. Diego snapped his whip on the ground a couple of times before flicking the tip. When the volunteer felt the air whistle by his face he reddened with anger, but as tobacco flew through the air and he realized that the whip had not touched his skin, he and the crowd bellowed with laughter. At that same moment someone remembered the story that had circulated around the city about a certain Zorro who dressed in black and wore a mask and who had dared get Le Chevalier out of bed to save some hostages. “Zorro? A fox? KfoxT flashed through the audience, and someone pointed to Diego, who made a deep bow and then scurried up the ropes toward the trapeze. At the precise instant that Bernardo gave the signal, Diego heard the horses’ hooves. They had been waiting for that. Diego did a somersault on the bar of the trapeze, dropped, and hung by his feet, swinging through the air above the heads of the audience. Instants later a group of French soldiers burst into the tent with drawn bayonets, led by an officer bawling threats. Panic broke out as people tried to escape, a moment Diego seized to slide down a rope to the ground. Several shots were fired, and a monumental panic ensued as spectators, shoving to
get out, stumbled into and over the soldiers. Diego slipped away like a weasel before they could lay a hand on him, and with Bernardo’s help cut the ropes that held up the tent. The canvas dropped onto the people trapped inside, soldiers and public alike. In the confusion the two milk brothers jumped onto their horses and set off at a gallop for Tomas de Romeu’s home. On the way, Diego shed the cape, sombrero, mask, and mustache. They calculated that it would take the soldiers a good long while to fight their way out of the tent, realize that the Gypsies had fled, and organize a party to give chase. Diego knew that the next day the name of Zorro would again be on everyone’s lips. Bernardo threw Diego an eloquent look of reproach; his arrogance could cost him dear, since the French would be moving heaven and earth to find this mysterious Zorro. The brothers reached their destination without incident, went inside through the service entrance, and shortly afterward were having chocolate and biscuits with Juliana and Isabel. They did not know that at that moment the Gypsy camp was going up in smoke. The soldiers had set fire to the straw in the ring, which burned like dry under, reaching the ancient canvas in only minutes. The following day at noon Diego took up a position in a nave of the cathedral. Gossip about the second appearance of Zorro had made the complete rounds of Barcelona and come back to his ears. In one day the enigmatic hero had captured the people’s imagination. The letter Z had been scratched with a knife on several walls, the work of small boys inflamed with the desire to imitate Zorro. ”That is just what we need, Bernardo, many foxes to distract the hunters.“ At that hour the church was empty except for a pair of sacristans changing the flowers on the main altar. It was dark and cold, and quiet as a tomb; the brutal sunlight and noise of the street did not penetrate that far. Diego sat waiting on a bench, surrounded by statues of saints and breathing the unmistakable metallic scent of incense that had impregnated the walls. Timid, reflected colors filtered through the venerable stained-glass windows, bathing the interior with unreal light. The calm of that moment brought memories of his mother. He knew nothing of how she was; it was as if she had vanished. It surprised him that neither his father nor Padre Mendoza mentioned her in their letters, and that she herself had never written him two lines, but he wasn’t worried. If something bad happened to his mother he would feel it in his bones. One hour later, when he was about to leave, convinced that no one would be coming to the rendezvous now, the slim figure of Amalia materialized like a ghost. They greeted one another with their eyes, without touching. ”What is to become of you now?“ Diego whispered. ”We’re moving on until things calm down. Soon everyone will forget all about us,“ she replied. ”They burned the camp; you have nothing left.“

  “That is nothing new, Diego. We Roma are accustomed to losing everything; it has happened to us before, and it will again.”

  “Will I see you someday, Amalia?” She smiled and shrugged her shoulders. “That I do not know, I do not have my crystal ball.” Diego gave her everything he had been able to gather in the few hours since he had seen her: most of the money he had left from an allowance his father had sent and also what the de Romeu girls had been able to contribute once they knew what had happened. From Juliana he had also brought a package wrapped in a handkerchief. “Juliana asked me to give you this as a remembrance,” said Diego. Amalia untied the handkerchief to find a delicate pearl diadem, the one Diego had seen Juliana wear several times; it was the most valuable jewel she owned. “Why?” Amalia asked, surprised. “I suppose it must be because you saved her from marrying Moncada.”

  “That may not be certain. Her destiny may be to marry him anyway ”

  “Never!” Diego interrupted. “Juliana knows now what a swine he is.”

  “The heart is fickle,” Amalia replied. She hid the jewel in a pouch tucked among the folds of her full over skirts wagged her fingers at Diego in a gesture of farewell, and faded into the icy shadows of the cathedral. Instants later she was running through the alleyways of the barrio toward the ram blas Shortly after the exodus of the Gypsies, but before Christmas, a letter arrived from Padre Mendoza. The missionary wrote every six months to send news of the family and of his mission. He would report, for example, that the dolphins had returned to the coast, that the year’s wine was acid, that soldiers had arrested White Owl because she assaulted them with her staff while defending an Indian but through Alejandro de la Vega’s intervention had been released. Since then, he added, they had seen no sign of her. Padre Mendoza’s precise and energetic style moved Diego much more than that of Alejandro de la Vega, whose letters were sermons salted with moral advice, little different from the tone Alejandro always used with his son. This time, however, Padre Mendoza’s brief missive was addressed not to Diego but to Bernardo, and the flap was closed with sealing wax. Bernardo broke the seal with his knife and sat down near a window to read it. Diego, who was watching from across the room, saw him pale as his eyes followed the missionary’s angular writing. Bernardo read it two times and then handed it to his brother. Yesterday, the second day of August of the year eighteen-thirteen, a young woman of White Owl’s tribe came to visit me at the mission. She brought her son, who was a little more than two, a boy she called simply “Nino.” I offered to baptize him, as was proper, and I explained that otherwise the soul of that innocent child would be in danger, for if God decides to take him he will not go to heaven but spend eternity in limbo. The girl declined to have him baptized. She said she would wait for the father to return so that he can choose the name. She also refused to listen to my teachings about Christ or come to the mission where she and her son would live a civilized life. She gave me the same reason: when the father of the boy returns, she will make up her mind on that question. I did not insist, because I have learned to wait patiently for the Indians to come here of their own accord, otherwise their conversion to the True Faith is a mere coat of varnish. The name of the woman is Lightin-the-Night. May God bless you and guide your footsteps always, my son. Embracing you in the name of Christ Our Lord is Padre Mendoza Diego handed the letter back to Bernardo, and both sat in silence as the daylight faded from the window. Bernardo’s face, usually so expressive in mute communications, seemed sculpted in granite. He began to play a sad melody on his flute, taking refuge in it to avoid explaining further. Diego did not ask for clarifications, he felt his brother’s pounding heart in his own chest. The time had come for them to go separate ways. Bernardo could not continue to live like a boy; his roots were calling him, he wanted to return to California and assume his new responsibilities. He had never felt comfortable away from his home country. He had lived several years counting the days and hours in that city of stone and icy winters because of the loyalty that bound him to Diego, but he could not do it any longer; the hollow in his chest was expanding into a limitless cavern. The absolute love he felt for Lightin-the-Night now had taken on a terrible urgency; he hadn’t a shadow of a doubt that the child was his. Diego accepted his brother’s unvoiced arguments though a claw was ripping through his gut, and answered with a burst of words that issued from his soul. You will have to go alone, my brother; it will be several months before I graduate from the School of Humanities, and during that time I intend to convince Juliana to marry me. First, however, before I declare myself and ask Don Tomas for her hand, I must wait for her to recover from the disillusion inflicted by Rafael Moncada. Forgive me, brother, I am very selfish; this is no time to bore you once again with my fantasies of love. We need to talk about you. All these years I have played around like a spoiled child while you have been sick with longing for Lightin-the-Night, even without knowing that she has given you a son. How have you put up with so much? I do not want you to go, but your place is in California, there can be no question about that. I understand now why my father, even you, Bernardo, have always said that we have separate destinies. I was born with wealth and privileges you do not have. It isn’t fair, because we are brothers. One day I will be owner of the de la Vega hacienda, and then I will be able to give you the half that belongs to you. In the
meantime, I will write my father and ask him to provide you with enough money to make a home with Lightin-the-Night and your son, wherever you want you do not have to live at the mission. I promise you that as long as I am able, your family will never lack for anything material. I don’t know why I am crying like a baby, it must be that I am already missing you. What will I do without you? You have no idea how much I need your strength and your wisdom, Bernardo. The two young men embraced, first emotionally and then with forced laughter; they prided themselves on not being sentimental. A phase of their youth had ended. Bernardo could not leave immediately, as he would have liked. He had to wait until January to catch a merchant ship that would take him to America. He had very little money, but the captain allowed him to pay his passage by working on board as a sailor. He left Diego a letter asking him to beware of Zorro, not merely for the risk of being discovered, but also because the character would end by taking him over. “Never forget that you are Diego de la Vega, a flesh-and-blood person, while that Zorro is a creature of your imagination,” he wrote in the letter. It was difficult for him to say goodbye to Isabel, whom he had come to love like a younger sister; he was afraid he would never see her again, even though she promised a hundred times that she would come to California the minute her father gave her permission. “We will see each other again, Bernardo, even if Diego never marries Juliana. The world is round, and if I travel around it one day I will come to your house,” Isabel assured him, blowing her nose and wiping away a torrent of tears. The year 1814 dawned filled with hope for the Spaniards. Napoleon was weakened by his defeats in Europe and the internal situation in France. In January, Le Chevalier ordered his majordomo to pack up the contents of his mansion not an easy task, since he had furnished it with princely splendor. He suspected that Napoleon had very little time left in power, and in that case his own destiny was in danger; in his position as the emperor’s trusted confidant he would have no place in any future government. Not wanting to upset his daughter, he presented the journey as a promotion in his career: at last they were returning to Paris. Agnes threw her arms around his neck, delighted. She was bored with the somber Spanish, the muted bells, the dead streets during curfew, and especially, she was tired of having garbage hurled at her carriage, and being snubbed. She loathed the war, the privation, the frugality of the Catalans, and Spain in general. She threw herself into frantic preparations for the journey. In her visits to Juliana’s home, she chattered excitedly over the prospect of the social life and diversions of France. “You must come visit me in summer, that is the most beautiful time in Paris. By then Papa and I will be in a suitable residence. We shall live very close to the Louvre palace.” In passing, she also extended their hospitality to Diego; in her opinion, he could not possibly go back to California without having known Paris. Everything important took place in that city: fashion, art, and ideas, she said. Even the American revolutionaries had been formed by France. Wasn’t California a colony of Spain? Ah! Then they must win their independence. Perhaps in Paris Diego would get over his finicky ways and his headaches and become a famous military man like that one in South America they called the Liberator: Simon Bolivar, wasn’t that his name? Meanwhile in the library, Le Chevalier Duchamp was sharing his last cognac with Tomas de Romeu, the closest thing to a friend he had had during his stay in that hostile city. Without revealing any strategic information, he gave Tomas an overview of the political situation and suggested that he might want to take advantage of the moment to take his daughters abroad. The girls were at a perfect age to discover Florence and Venice, he said; no one who appreciated culture could afford not to know those cities. Tomas replied that he would think about it. It was not a bad idea… perhaps in the summer. “The emperor has authorized the return of Ferdinand VII to Spain. That can happen at any moment. I believe it would be just as well if you were not here at that time,” Le Chevalier hinted. “Why is that, Excellency?” Tomas de Romeu replied. “You know how much I have celebrated France’s influence here, but I also believe that El Deseado, the desired one, as the people call him, will mean an end to the guerrilla warfare that has lasted six years now; that will allow this country to reorganize. Ferdinand VII will be obliged to govern under the liberal Constitution of 1812.”