Masquerade Read Online Free PDF

with a haughty movement of her head. ‘Why not? Anyway, what they did to me and your uncle was not evil?’ She ran a hand through her untidy hair and turned away from him as if to hide the effect those painful memories had on her. ‘May God and all the Saints preserve you from ever being in prison. In the summer we were scorched with heat, eaten up with vermin. In the winter we slept, without either bed or rug, on the cold stone floor, with one wretched meal a day of coarse rancho or foul-tasting soup to fill our starving bellies. The place had hardly any windows, no drains worth speaking of – the stench was unbelievable. But we are gypsies and we’re not supposed to be able to feel or smell.’ She turned sharply back round. ‘Do you want me to continue my list? My brother died young, in a filthy hovel, away from his people as a direct result of that and those wretched gajos .’
    Leandro returned the look steadily. ‘Your brother knifed Don Salvador, who would probably have let you go if not for that. Don Salvador was taken to hospital. There was no choice, the police had to get involved.’
    ‘Why?’ she retorted resentfully. ‘They could have called the family doctor and let us go. After all, it was thanks to me that Don Salvador became a whole man again in the first place. If it hadn’t been for my gifted hands, he would still be lying in his bed, a shadow of himself and no use to anybody.’
    She walked over to the table to drain the last of the manzanilla in her glass and shook her head, her fiery eyes fixed on some invisiblepoint. ‘There is an old Moorish saying: “He eats the dates and then attacks with the stones.” Those people think of us as dirt. Our caste is ostracized by them and they spit on us at every opportunity.’ Her voice began to rise. ‘Do not speak to me about evil. He who sows the thorn does not reap the grape. And in this case they would be reaping only half the thorns they sowed.’ She spoke vehemently, her whole body trembling with the force of her hatred.
    Leandro guessed any other woman would be letting her tears fall but not Marujita, the gypsy queen. Instead she wore her pain like a battle shield. Suddenly, he pitied her and took her, still quivering with anger, in his arms. He smoothed her hair, trying to soothe the hurt away, and kissed her forehead tenderly. ‘Please, Mamacita ,’ he whispered hoarsely in her ear, ‘don’t make me do this, I …’
    But she pushed him away with the strength of a virago, eyeing him with contempt. ‘Huh, you’re soft like your father! I have brought a coward into this world.’ She laughed then, though it was more like a bitter cackle. ‘Un ombre de versa , a real man would be proud to take his revenge but you whimper like a woman. I will die of a broken heart before this illness kills me. What’s more, I will leave this earth ashamed to be your mother and curse you forever from my grave.’
    Leandro took another step back as though she had struck him. The force of her vitriol shook him deeply. Until then he had never realized how much his mother had been consumed by the hostility she felt towards Luz’s parents. She was as pathetic in her wrath as she was frightening yet what was more disturbing to him was the idea that some of her darkness might have infiltrated his blood, imprinting itself upon his own nature. That he was the son of this vengeful, dying gypsy queen with a duty to carry out her venganza now lay on him heavily like an iron cloak.
    He turned without a word and left his mother standing in the cave, the chain of the locket still wound tightly between her fingers, her eyes a blaze of black fire.
    * * *
    It was early morning when Luz woke up. At first, she seemed to have lost her bearings. Then, still in a dreamy state, she realized she was in her own room. A vague memory kept returning of the previous day’s incident on the beach and the time spent in the gypsy encampment. Initially in a haze, then clearer, as though