Cervantes Street Read online

  The troopers laughed, and ogled me. A dribble of urine snaked down my legs.

  Doña Matilde started yelling, “Pedro, may God forgive you! You’re much too cruel to the poor girl. If she’s bad, it’s because you’re bad. Come here, hija mia.” She enveloped me in her arms and shoved my nose between her gelatinous and sweaty breasts. “With a father so cruel it’s a wonder she hasn’t run away from us,” she said to the troopers. Doña Matilde patted my wig. “There, there, Nicolasita.”

  The snickering troopers moved on to search the wagon behind ours. It wasn’t until we were given the sign to continue on our way that I dared hope I might reach Sevilla undetected after all.

  * * *

  The following day, and the next day after that one, my spirits sank and soared, plunged to Hades and spiraled to the heavens. But as we traveled away from autumn, as we entered the lush and dense gardens and forests of Andalusia, so bursting with green that I imagined the jungles of the New World must be like this, I felt hopeful and revived.

  My heart beat faster the more ground our caravan covered on that verdant world, that land of towns and cities planted with palm trees and flaming pomegranate bushes and orange trees, always in fruit; that land whose forests and meadows were filled with the music made by the endless variety of songbirds of that region of mirth and sunlight. As a boy, I had loved the first days of March on Andalusian soil when the hot breezes gusting from the Sahara, cooling as they sweep the surface of the Mediterranean, arrive on Spanish soil, breathing life into dormant trees and brown grasses, awakening the seeds and bulbs in the ground, spurring the growth of buds in the fruit orchards, painting the hills and hillocks a light olive with the first leafing of the trees. By early April, the song of the returning nightingales, serenading the oncoming evening, promised a trove of sensual pleasures that the hours of darkness would uncover. As the sun set, its silken light draped first the tops of the mountains, then the valleys, and released, as it fell, the scent of honeysuckle, intoxicating you by the luxurious promises hidden in the approaching darkness. The whole of Andalusia was a beckoning land that mesmerized you, like the seductive thrusts of the hips, the eyes, hands, and feet of the dancers in the teahouses of Córdoba, with bells rasping around their ankles and wrists as they shed veil after veil and wrapped the heads of gawking men with supple, translucent fabrics.

  My heart filled with delight when, in the distance, I spotted the vast wheat fields to the east of Córdoba. If the wheat was in full ripeness, one could believe they were fields of gold. Delight turned to pure happiness when the hills of the Sierra Morena to the west of the city spread before my eyes with the soft shapes of a curvaceous odalisque lying naked on a carpet in a seraglio.

  But my heart grew sad when I remembered the year before Andalusia’s Moorish people had started the rebellion of the Alpujarras to protest the treatment they received in Spain. Now they were fighting ferociously in the mountains near Cádiz and Málaga. If my childhood friend Abu were still alive, surely he would be fighting with the rebels. And his sister Leyla, on whom I had a boyhood crush, must be a married woman and a mother.

  This time, however, Maese Pedro’s troupe was bypassing Córdoba as my best chance to escape the law was to get to Sevilla as soon as possible and hide myself among the throngs of the city. So it was with a heavy heart that I left behind the city of ancient palaces and great mosques, the court of the Umayyads; the city where I saw large numbers of Moors for the first time.

  * * *

  Two days later, we camped on the outskirts of Sevilla. Four years had passed since my family and I had left the city in disgrace. Now I was returning to Sevilla as a fugitive.

  Sadness and joy, dread and hope, all commingled in my chest as we set up our camp that first night. Could the bailiff have gotten to Sevilla ahead of me? I wallowed in despair contemplating the wreckage of my future. Without my right hand, there was no point in going to the Indies; without my right hand, I had no chance of climbing the highest mountains of the Andes to find the treasure of El Dorado that would make me the richest man in Christendom. Without my right hand, I might as well be flogged to death or burned at the stake. How I wished there was some kind of magic that could transform me into a new person, the way actors metamorphosed themselves into characters. Then I would have chosen to become, once again, a young man with an unblemished past, and I would have stayed in Sevilla.

  My turbulent state of mind was relieved somewhat when I reminded myself that this was no dream, that I was once more in Sevilla, city of wonders. While I felt in danger of being discovered, I was happy to have returned to the city where my literary vocation was born. Although I had seen Maese Pedro’s troupe perform in Córdoba, the actors on the stage in Sevilla were marvelous, and the pasos and plays they produced were things of beauty, written by our great writers. I fell under the spell of the artistry of these fabulous performers—I did not care that actors were held as low in esteem as the Gypsies, that to most people the theater was to be enjoyed but also to be mistrusted, because it was believed to incite depraved behavior. My favorite playwright was Lope de Rueda, whose fictional creations—gossipy barbers, wanton priests, miserly hidalgos, dissolute students, rogues, lewd whores—were more vivid and interesting than their counterparts in real life. There was nothing higher to aspire to, I told myself, than to create people like these. I could only imagine how powerful Lope de Rueda must have felt creating characters out of his observations of humanity. I wanted the fame and financial rewards of the successful writers of comedies, who were greeted at street corners by Sevillanos with cries of “Victor! Victor!”

  Years later, I poked fun at Sevilla and its citizens through the snouts of two talking canines, Cipión and Berganza, in my Exemplary Novel, The Colloquium of the Dogs. “Sevilla,” says Berganza, “shelters the destitute and gives refuge to the worthless. In its magnificence, it has ample room for all sorts of scoundrels, but no use for virtuous men.”

  That first night camping outside the city gates, the uncertainty of my situation kept me awake, staring at the starry sky and remembering how when I was young in Sevilla, the scent of orange trees in permanent bloom attenuated the sweet reek of bodies buried under rose beds, or at the foot of trees. Sevillanos believed that the loveliest and most fragrant roses and sweetest oranges were those fertilized by the flesh of Nubian slaves. This tang of human decay and fruit trees in bloom was the first thing a visitor noticed upon nearing the city.

  The Guadalquivir was barely more than a sandy stream as it ran past Córdoba; but as it got close to Sevilla, it swelled into a wide olive-colored river. At dawn, the river bustled with barges, swift sloops, feluccas, shallops, tartans, and piraguas. The smaller vessels carried merchandise destined for the bellies of big ships that sailed to the West Indies and beyond.

  The river fed my wanderlust, making me hunger for the world beyond the confines of the Iberian Peninsula. The river was the road that led to the Mediterranean and the West, to the Atlantic Ocean and the Canary Islands, halfway to the wondrous New World. Young Sevillanos who became sailors—often for the rest of their lives—were referred to as those who had been “swallowed by the sea.”

  There was no more thrilling sight than the fleets of cargo ships, accompanied by powerful galleons to protect them from English corsairs and privateers, sailing off twice a year for the world Columbus had discovered. The ships sailed away with the hopes of the Sevillanos, who would send off their men with festive songs of farewell. When fortune smiled on these adventurers, they returned from the Indies laden with gold and glory.

  As a boy, my imagination was set afire, my eyes bulged, as I watched the ox-drawn carts on their way to the royal chambers, carrying open trunks that brimmed with glowing emeralds, shining pearls, and stacks of blinding bars of silver and gold. Other carts transported bales of tobacco, furs of animals unknown in Europe, spices, coconuts, cocoa, sugar, indigo, and cochineal. For weeks after the arrival of the ships, I remained intoxicated by these sights. A great
desire awakened in me to visit New Spain and Peru.

  In the heart of the city, buildings faced each other so closely that I could run down the cobblestone passageways with arms outspread to touch the walls on either side. These were the streets that schooled me in the customs and costumes, religions and superstitions, foods, smells, and sounds of other nations. Merchants arrived in Sevilla with white, black, and brown slaves from Africa. The names of the countries they came from—Mozambique, Dominica, Niger—were as exotic as their looks. I would get dizzy from hearing so many languages that I didn’t understand, whose origins I couldn’t pinpoint. What stories did they tell? What was I missing? Would I ever get the chance to learn a few of them and visit the places where they were spoken?

  During those years, I felt as though I were living in the future, in a city that had nothing to do with the rest of Spain. Pícaros from every corner of the world—false clerics, false scholars, impostors of every imaginable and unimaginable kind, pickpockets, swindlers, counterfeiters, sword swallowers, gamblers, assassins for hire, soldiers of fortune, murderers of every sort, whores, Don Juans (whose profession was to ruin the most beautiful and chaste maidens), Gypsies, fortune-tellers, fire-eaters, forgers, puppeteers, ruffians, bon vivants, and snake charmers—came to Sevilla and made the city their stage. Life there was dangerous and thrilling, as festive and bloody as a bullfight. Successful gamblers were as admired as the bullfighters or famous military heroes. It was common to hear a child say that when he grew up he wanted to be a gambler like Manolo Amor, who on one occasion had gambled away an entire fleet of galleons that was not his.

  Sevilla was the place where I belonged. It was created for me and I wanted to be its historian. Sevilla was mine and it owned me.

  Most Sevillanos stayed inside during the hottest hours, and went out only at night, when the evening breezes, sweeping up the Guadalquivir from the Mediterranean, cooled the city by a few degrees. Then it was as if a curtain rose, and the proscenium that was Sevilla became a magical stage for the theater of life. Lying there on my blanket in the outskirts of the city, I imagined I heard in the recesses of my brain the clacking sounds of castanets, coming from every street and plaza. The clacking was a reminder to strut with the arrogant elegance of a peacock displaying all its colors. People rushed out of their homes to sing on the plazas and dance the salacious zarabandas, which were forbidden by the church. In the plazas, illuminated by torches, beautiful and lascivious women dancers (young and old alike) wiggled their behinds with impudence and rapped their castanets with fury, turning the instruments into weapons that could seduce and then snuff the life out of you.

  The dancers’ looks were an invitation to dream about the countless pleasures of the body; and the movements of their hands spoke intricate languages and summoned the spectators with seductive signs to caress the dancers’ amber-flushed cheeks. It was thrilling to see the male dancers leap high in the air, spinning in circles, as though to exorcize demons that were eating them from the inside out. Midair, these men seemed half-human, half-bird. From midnight until dawn, the loveliest señoritas were serenaded by their inflamed wooers. Brawls often broke out during these serenatas, and the corpses of unfortunate lovers were found in the mornings, beneath the balconies of their inamoratas, glued to puddles of coagulated blood.

  Sevilla was a city of witches and enchanters. You had to be careful not to cross a woman, because any female, aristocratic or peasant, married or unmarried, old or young, beautiful or ugly, Christian or Moor, slave or free, could have satanic powers. Witches made red roses bloom in their homes in December. They could make or break marriages, could make grooms hang themselves or evaporate on the eve of the wedding, could make pregnant women give birth to litters of puppies.

  Unlucky men who crossed the enchantresses were turned into donkeys. As husbands and lovers disappeared, new donkeys materialized and the women who owned these donkeys took delight in making them carry heavy loads. It was common to see a woman whose husband had vanished go around the city addressing every donkey she saw by her husband’s name. When an ass brayed in response, the woman would drop on her knees, cross herself, and give thanks to God that she had found her husband. If she wanted her man back, she had to buy the donkey from its owner. Then she would go back home, happy to have found her spouse, and spend the rest of her life trying to undo the enchantment. Or she might be just as happy to keep her husband in donkey form. It was said that some of the happiest marriages in Sevilla were between a woman and her ass.

  The Holy Office whipped many women in public plazas for the extraordinary pleasures they boasted of receiving from their equine lovers. Debauched cries and crescendos of lust traveled to remote villages in the mountains where herds of wild asses brayed with envy. Gypsies took to bringing donkeys that brayed anytime a desperate woman addressed them. If a donkey became erect and tried to mount a young wife who called him by her husband’s name, or a donkey tried to kick an old, withered harpy who claimed him as her husband, or scurried away when an ugly one threw her arms around his neck, that, too, was considered proof of having found her husband. When a Sevillano allowed inflated notions to swell his head, he was told, “Remember, today you are a man, but tomorrow you may well be a donkey.”

  During Holy Week people did penance for all the sins they indulged the rest of the year. Then alone would Sevillanos fast and drag themselves on their knees to the cathedral. But Sevilla’s cathedral was not oppressive. Instead, it was filled with light, color, ostentatious displays of gold and jewels, illuminated as much by its oil lamps and its candles as by the iridescent light that poured in through stained-glass windows. It was a place where we went to experience the splendors of the world, not a glum building where we expiated our sins. It seemed to me, as a young man, that God had to be more receptive to our prayers in a place like this, where everybody knew that hope, joy, and beauty were part of His covenant with us. I used to walk out of Sevilla’s cathedral content, as if I had just eaten a mariscada and washed it down with wine.

  Often, in those days, I escorted my mother on her visits to the cathedral. Our enjoyment of the place was a secret between the two of us that excluded the rest of the family and gave us respite from our dingy house, with its worn-out, secondhand furnishings and leaks in the ceiling of every room. The cathedral’s sumptuous altars seemed to relieve Mother, momentarily, of the pain caused by Father’s impecuniousness. She loved music above all things. It’s true Father played the vihuela at home, but nothing he did gratified her. Only in the cathedral could she listen to music. Her face glowed, her eyes gleamed as the sounds of the clavichord or spinet swelled. Singing made Mother happy. Her untrained voice was clear, and it could hit many of the high notes. I’d only heard it when she sang romances in the kitchen, as she went about her chores, on those occasions when my father left to visit relatives in Córdoba. In the cathedral she would let her voice spill out and rise, with the same abandon and ecstasy I heard in the lament of the singers in Andalusia.

  After church, she would hook my arm in hers, and we would stroll along the banks of the Guadalquivir and stop to gaze at the foreign ships and glorious armada galleons. One evening, grabbing my hand by the wrist, she implored me, “Don’t stay in Spain, Miguel. Go far away from here to someplace where you can a make a fortune for yourself. In the Indies you will have a brilliant future awaiting you, my son.”

  She did not mention my father’s name, yet I sensed she was pushing me to look for a life completely different from his. Because I was a dreamer, like my father, she feared that, like him, I would become a ne’er-do-well. She had begun to see me as another unrealistic Cervantes male: I would live surrounded by criminals, constantly borrowing reales from my friends and relatives, incapable of understanding how to put food on the table. But if I let my imagination flow, the wide waters of the Guadalquivir would eventually lead me to the Indies in the West, or to Italy in the East, or to burning Africa in the South, or to the Orient, beyond Constantinople, to the splendors and
mysteries of Arabia, and perhaps even to the fabled court of the emperor of China.

  Those dreams of my youth had been pulverized by my immediate reality. The next day, Maese Pedro returned from Sevilla with the news that the bailiff was looking for me and there was a reward for my capture. I said goodbye to my dream of going to the New World. “Miguel,” he said, “I think your best chance of escaping lies with asking the help of my friend Ricardo, El Cuchillo. He is the chief of a caravan of Gypsies leaving for the Carpathians tomorrow; every year they pass through Italy on their way home. Get ready and I’ll take you to him as soon as it gets dark. And remember, don’t haggle over the price he charges you and you’ll get to Italy safely.”

  The Gypsies had set up an encampment in the woods west of Sevilla, on the bank of a stream. Maese Pedro pointed at a man sitting by a bonfire who wore a hat that resembled a crow spreading huge wings over his head. Children surrounded him, listening raptly to what he was saying. We dismounted and walked toward him.

  When he recognized his visitor, El Cuchillo clapped loudly, and the children scampered squealing into the darkness. The men embraced with the affection of old friends. Maese Pedro spoke first: “Ricardo, I’ve never asked a favor from you before today. I’ve known Miguel,” he said, throwing an arm around my shoulders, “since he was a boy.” He proceeded to explain the gravity of my circumstances.