Carmen
“‘No,’ said I, half choked by the effort it cost me. ‘No, I can’t.’
“‘Very good! If you make so many difficulties, I know to whom I can
go. I’ll ask your officer if he’ll come with me to Dorotea’s. He looks
good-natured, and he’ll post a sentry who’ll only see what he had better
see. Good-bye, canary-bird! I shall have a good laugh the day the order
comes out to hang you!’
“I was weak enough to call her back, and I promised to let the whole
of gipsydom pass in, if that were necessary, so that I secured the
only reward I longed for. She instantly swore she would keep her word
faithfully the very next day, and ran off to summon her friends, who
were close by. There were five of them, of whom Pastia was one, all well
loaded with English goods. Carmen kept watch for them. She was to warn
them with her castanets the instant she caught sight of the patrol. But
there was no necessity for that. The smugglers finished their job in a
moment.
“The next day I went to the _Calle del Candilejo_. Carmen kept me
waiting, and when she came, she was in rather a bad temper.
“‘I don’t like people who have to be pressed,’ she said. ‘You did me a
much greater service the first time, without knowing you’d gain anything
by it. Yesterday you bargained with me. I don’t know why I’ve come, for
I don’t care for you any more. Here, be off with you. Here’s a douro for
your trouble.’
“I very nearly threw the coin at her head, and I had to make a violent
effort to prevent myself from actually beating her. After we had
wrangled for an hour I went off in a fury. For some time I wandered
about the town, walking hither and thither like a madman. At last I went
into a church, and getting into the darkest corner I could find, I cried
hot tears. All at once I heard a voice.
“‘A dragoon in tears. I’ll make a philter of them!’
“I looked up. There was Carmen in front of me.
“‘Well, _mi payllo_, are you still angry with me?’ she said. ‘I must
care for you in spite of myself, for since you left me I don’t know what
has been the matter with me. Look you, it is I who ask you to come to
the _Calle del Candilejo_, now!’
“So we made it up: but Carmen’s temper was like the weather in our
country. The storm is never so close, in our mountains, as when the sun
is at its brightest. She had promised to meet me again at Dorotea’s, but
she didn’t come.
“And Dorotea began telling me again that she had gone off to Portugal
about some gipsy business.
“As experience had already taught me how much of that I was to believe,
I went about looking for Carmen wherever I thought she might be, and
twenty times in every day I walked through the _Calle del Candilejo_.
One evening I was with Dorotea, whom I had almost tamed by giving her
a glass of anisette now and then, when Carmen walked in, followed by a
young man, a lieutenant in our regiment.
“‘Get away at once,’ she said to me in Basque. I stood there,
dumfounded, my heart full of rage.
“‘What are you doing here?’ said the lieutenant to me. ‘Take yourself
off--get out of this.’
“I couldn’t move a step. I felt paralyzed. The officer grew angry, and
seeing I did not go out, and had not even taken off my forage cap, he
caught me by the collar and shook me roughly. I don’t know what I said
to him. He drew his sword, and I unsheathed mine. The old woman caught
hold of my arm, and the lieutenant gave me a wound on the forehead, of
which I still bear the scar. I made a step backward, and with one jerk
of my elbow I threw old Dorotea down. Then, as the lieutenant still
pressed me, I turned the point of my sword against his body and he
ran upon it. Then Carmen put out the lamp and told Dorotea, in her own
language, to take to flight. I fled into the street myself, and began
running along, I knew not whither. It seemed to me that some one was
following me. When I came to myself I discovered that Carmen had never
left me.
“‘Great stupid of a canary-bird!’ she said, ‘you never make anything but
blunders. And, indeed, you know I told you I should bring you bad luck.
But come, there’s a cure for everything when you have a Fleming from
Rome* for your love. Begin by rolling this handkerchief round your head,
and throw me over that belt of yours. Wait for me in this alley--I’ll be
back in two minutes.
* _Flamenco de Roma_, a slang term for the gipsies. Roma
does not stand for the Eternal City, but for the nation of
the _romi_, or the married folk--a name applied by the
gipsies to themselves. The first gipsies seen in Spain
probably came from the Low Countries, hence their name of
_Flemings_.
“She disappeared, and soon came back bringing me a striped cloak which
she had gone to fetch, I knew not whence. She made me take off my
uniform, and put on the cloak over my shirt. Thus dressed, and with the
wound on my head bound round with the handkerchief, I was tolerably like
a Valencian peasant, many of whom come to Seville to sell a drink they
make out of ‘_chufas_.’* Then she took me to a house very much like
Dorotea’s, at the bottom of a little lane. Here she and another gipsy
woman washed and dressed my wounds, better than any army surgeon could
have done, gave me something, I know not what, to drink, and finally
made me lie down on a mattress, on which I went to sleep.
* A bulbous root, out of which rather a pleasant beverage is
manufactured.
“Probably the woman had mixed one of the soporific drugs of which they
know the secret in my drink, for I did not wake up till very late the
next day. I was rather feverish, and had a violent headache. It was some
time before the memory of the terrible scene in which I had taken part
on the previous night came back to me. After having dressed my wound,
Carmen and her friend, squatting on their heels beside my mattress,
exchanged a few words of ‘_chipe calli_,’ which appeared to me to be
something in the nature of a medical consultation. Then they both of
them assured me that I should soon be cured, but that I must get out
of Seville at the earliest possible moment, for that, if I was caught
there, I should most undoubtedly be shot.
“‘My boy,’ said Carmen to me, ‘you’ll have to do something. Now that
the king won’t give you either rice or haddock* you’ll have to think of
earning your livelihood. You’re too stupid for stealing _a pastesas_.**
But you are brave and active. If you have the pluck, take yourself off
to the coast and turn smuggler. Haven’t I promised to get you hanged?
That’s better than being shot, and besides, if you set about it
properly, you’ll live like a prince as long as the _minons_*** and the
coast-guard don’t lay their hands on your collar.’
* The ordinary food of a Spanish soldier.
** _Ustilar a pastesas_, to steal cleverly, to purloin
without violence.
*** A sort of volunteer corps.
“In this attractive guise did this fiend of a girl describe the new
career she was suggesting to me,--the only one, indeed, remaining, now
I had incurred the penalty of death. Shall I confess it, sir? She
persuaded me without much difficulty. This wild and dangerous life, it
seemed to me, would bind her and me more closely together. In future, I
thought, I should be able to make sure of her love.
“I had often heard talk of certain smugglers who travelled about
Andalusia, each riding a good horse, with his mistress behind him and
his blunderbuss in his fist. Already I saw myself trotting up and down
the world, with a pretty gipsy behind me. When I mentioned that notion
to her, she laughed till she had to hold her sides, and vowed there was
nothing in the world so delightful as a night spent camping in the open
air, when each _rom_ retired with his _romi_ beneath their little tent,
made of three hoops with a blanket thrown across them.
“‘If I take to the mountains,’ said I to her, ‘I shall be sure of you.
There’ll be no lieutenant there to go shares with me.’
“‘Ha! ha! you’re jealous!’ she retorted, ‘so much the worse for you. How
can you be such a fool as that? Don’t you see I must love you, because I
have never asked you for money?’
“When she said that sort to thing I could have strangled her.
“To shorten the story, sir, Carmen procured me civilian clothes,
disguised in which I got out of Seville without being recognised. I went
to Jerez, with a letter from Pastia to a dealer in anisette whose house
was the smugglers’ meeting-place. I was introduced to them, and their
leader, surnamed _El Dancaire_, enrolled me in his gang. We started for
Gaucin, where I found Carmen, who had told me she would meet me there.
In all these expeditions she acted as spy for our gang, and she was the
best that ever was seen. She had now just returned from Gibraltar, and
had already arranged with the captain of a ship for a cargo of English
goods which we were to receive on the coast. We went to meet it near
Estepona. We hid part in the mountains, and laden with the rest, we
proceeded to Ronda. Carmen had gone there before us. It was she again
who warned us when we had better enter the town. This first journey, and
several subsequent ones, turned out well. I found the smuggler’s life
pleasanter than a soldier’s: I could give presents to Carmen, I had
money, and I had a mistress. I felt little or no remorse, for, as the
gipsies say, ‘The happy man never longs to scratch his itch.’ We were
made welcome everywhere, my comrades treated me well, and even showed me
a certain respect. The reason of this was that I had killed my man,
and that some of them had no exploit of that description on their
conscience. But what I valued most in my new life was that I often saw
Carmen. She showed me more affection than ever; nevertheless, she would
never admit, before my comrades, that she was my mistress, and she had
even made me swear all sorts of oaths that I would not say anything
about her to them. I was so weak in that creature’s hands, that I obeyed
all her whims. And besides, this was the first time she had revealed
herself as possessing any of the reserve of a well-conducted woman,
and I was simple enough to believe she had really cast off her former
habits.
“Our gang, which consisted of eight or ten men, was hardly ever together
except at decisive moments, and we were usually scattered by twos and
threes about the towns and villages. Each one of us pretended to have
some trade. One was a tinker, another was a groom; I was supposed to
peddle haberdashery, but I hardly ever showed myself in large places, on
account of my unlucky business at Seville. One day, or rather one night,
we were to meet below Veger. _El Dancaire_ and I got there before the
others.
“‘We shall soon have a new comrade,’ said he. ‘Carmen has just managed
one of her best tricks. She has contrived the escape of her _rom_, who
was in the _presidio_ at Tarifa.’
“I was already beginning to understand the gipsy language, which nearly
all my comrades spoke, and this word _rom_ startled me.
“What! her husband? Is she married, then?’ said I to the captain.
“‘Yes!’ he replied, ‘married to Garcia _el Tuerto_*--as cunning a gipsy
as she is herself. The poor fellow has been at the galleys. Carmen has
wheedled the surgeon of the _presidio_ to such good purpose that she
has managed to get her _rom_ out of prison. Faith! that girl’s worth
her weight in gold. For two years she has been trying to contrive his
escape, but she could do nothing until the authorities took it into
their heads to change the surgeon. She soon managed to come to an
understanding with this new one.’
* One-eyed man.
“You may imagine how pleasant this news was for me. I soon saw Garcia
_el Tuerto_. He was the very ugliest brute that was ever nursed
in gipsydom. His skin was black, his soul was blacker, and he was