Cervantes Street Read online

  El Cuchillo listened, pulling gently at his pointy beard with bony, weathered fingers. His fingernails bulged with dirt. The wrinkles on his face were pronounced, as if his face had been sliced horizontally with a blade, leaving it runneled and channeled—hence his nickname. The Gypsy removed his hat, shook his head to let down a thicket of silvery hair, and replied, “I want to be paid the full amount in advance. But I warn you, Don Miguel, if you do anything foolish, I’m not risking my balls for your culo. Is that understood?”

  * * *

  So in Gypsy rags, with a black kerchief tied around my forehead, and golden hoops dangling from my ears, I left Spain. The City of the Caesars was my final destination. Relieved as I was to leave la madre patria before my right hand was lopped off, I was anxious about traveling with people who dwelled in caves and wild forests and who most Christians regarded as sorcerers and cannibals. When Gypsies camped near a town, parents would keep their children indoors and sleep in the same bed with them at night. Gypsies were infamous for kidnapping children and selling them in Berber lands to the Moors. It was also said that they fattened stolen infants, roasted them during their festivities, cut them up, and tossed the tender pieces of flesh into their pucheros, a soup made with dry horsemeat, chickpeas, mushrooms, and purslane.

  The Gypsy women who practiced palmistry were feared and despised even more than the men. Their powers were said to be as formidable as the devil’s. If a Gypsy palm reader approached you, her eyes shining with seduction, and you refused to hear your fortune told, she would—without forewarning—turn into a frightful Fury, spitting out bone-chilling curses.

  As a boy in Sevilla, I saw a man refuse to have his palm read. The tumorous-faced harpy started screaming: “You son of a whoring bitch! May the devil’s curse fall on you for turning a deaf ear on an old woman in need!” When the man walked away, a big, smoking black rock plunged from the sky and thumped his head with such force that it was severed and rolled—wailing—down the street, as the body stumbled around looking for it. From that moment on, I made a point of never crossing a Gypsy woman. It was because of their devilish powers that even the forces of the king left them alone as much as possible.

  From the moment we were on the road, I kept hearing the words Maese Pedro had whispered to me as we said our goodbyes: “Miguel, always keep an eye on your purse. Make sure the Gypsies don’t leave you the way you came into the world. After you shake hands with a Gypsy, remember to count your fingers. Roma people, as you know, are the biggest thieves and rascals in the world. Other than that, they are no worse than the rest of humanity.”

  Chapter 2

  The Stain

  Luis

  Knowing it would be hard for Miguel’s parents to obtain funds overnight, I decided to help my friend finance his flight. I lived on the generous allowance my father gave me to attend the university in Alcalá de Henares, so I could not go to him to ask for a large sum of money. Like any good Castilian, he was thrifty. My grandfather, Carlos Lara, was my only hope; Papá Carlos always indulged me. Appreciative of his generosity, I never imposed on him.

  He was not in his bedroom. I looked for him in the library, and he wasn’t there either. Next I looked for him in the family chapel, where he went twice a day for his devotions. Through the keyhole, I saw him on his knees, hands clasped, head bowed, lost in prayer. While I waited outside the door, I feared that one of my parents would find me standing by the chapel’s entrance and I would have to explain the situation. I shifted from one foot to the other to make time fly faster. As Papá Carlos exited the chapel, serene after the absorption of his morning prayers, I accosted him without any preamble. “Papá Carlos, I need money to help a friend in grave danger.”

  “Is it for Miguel Cervantes?” he asked, without the slightest surprise.

  I nodded. From the start, Papá Carlos had frowned upon my growing intimacy with Miguel.

  “I knew the boy’s grandfather well when our monarchs held court in Valladolid,” Papá Carlos said. “Mark my words: like grandfather, like grandson. Juan Cervantes was a spendthrift—slaves, horses, and clothes fit for a nobleman. He was a clothmaker, a commoner with pretensions, who looked down on his Jewish brethren and sought to befriend the rich, the powerful, the Christian nobility.” He shook his head and narrowed his eyes. “It’s true he ended his life respected and prosperous. One hates to think how he achieved a high station in life.” My grandfather emphasized every word, the way he did when he wanted to teach me a lesson. “He was a true member of his nationless, Semitic race. Luis, it behooves us Christians not to get too close to people with the stain.” He rested a hand on my shoulder, and looked me directly in the eye. “Never forget this: even when a Jew swears to be a devout Christian—centuries after their so-called conversion—at heart he always remains a Jew.”

  I had nothing against the Jews who had converted. What’s more, the conversos’ secretive life held a fascination for me. Besides, from the very beginning, Miguel and I had shared so many joyous moments that I would have disobeyed my parents—whom I otherwise respected and heeded, as was my duty—if they had forbidden our friendship.

  Yet, in spite of his disapproval, there was not even a look of reproach from my grandfather. “Come with me,” he said.

  I followed Papá Carlos into his sleeping chamber, where he opened a wooden box inlaid with Moorish designs carved in ivory, the kind made by the artisans of Toledo. He removed a handful of coins, and counted out sixty gold escudos which he placed in a leather pouch. Not another word was said, then or later. I understood his extraordinary generosity was due to his unspoken wish that Miguel would use the money to travel far, far away from me and from Spain, so that I could escape his influence. It was certainly enough money to pay for Miguel’s passage to the New World, a place he dreamed of reaching one day.

  * * *

  I had met Miguel at the Estudio de la Villa, the municipal school in Madrid where students prepared for entrance to the university. For two years Miguel had been the brother I didn’t have. For two years, during that period of youth when we dream our purest dreams, and no dream seems too improbable to attain, we had shared the hope of becoming poets and soldiers, like many of the great warrior poets of Spain, like our beloved Garcilaso de la Vega. Those two years before I turned twenty, Miguel and I had enjoyed the communion of twin souls. Everyone referred to us as “the two friends.” Our friendship seemed to me the perfect embodiment of the ethical union of souls that Aristotle describes in his Nicomachean Ethics. That ancient ideal of friendship was one of the goals I pursued in life.

  Madrid was a small village during the reign of Philip II. Soon after Miguel’s family arrived from Sevilla, rumors spread that his father, Don Rodrigo Cervantes, had been jailed many times for his inability to honor his debts. Another rumor, even more shameful, preceded the family.

  At Estudio de la Villa, my teachers and classmates held me in the highest esteem. Studying came easily to me. Knowledge was prized in my family; it was expected that after I left la Villa I would attend the Universidad Cisneriana in Alcalá, where many of the sons of the best families in Castile studied theology, medicine, literature, and other appropriate professions for an hidalgo, before taking their place in the world.

  Miguel enrolled at la Villa during my last year there. His father must have used an important connection to get him accepted. Miguel hadn’t been brought up to be a caballero like the rest of my classmates. Among the finest youth of Castile, of the world, he stood out like a wild colt in a stable of thoroughbreds. I hadn’t met anyone like him before. His boisterousness, unrefined charm, and extroverted nature earned him the nickname of El Andaluz. Like an Andalusian, Miguel spoke Castilian as if he could not quite grasp the language: he chopped off the last syllable of every word, and his enunciation was harsh—the way Arabic sounded to my ears. Miguel had that swagger, brio, and spontaneity of the people from the south, who cannot be called true Iberians since they have a mixture of Spanish and Moorish blood. He beha
ved as if he didn’t know whether to act like a Gypsy or a nobleman. In both roles, he was an impersonator. He would exhibit the confidence of a noble; while at the same time displaying the wild spirit and manner of the Gypsies, who would arrive in Madrid each spring along hosts of chirruping swallows, then flee to the warmer climates of Andalusia and the Mediterranean as soon as the first dusting of gold painted the leaves of the madroños.

  Miguel made a memorable impression on me when I heard him declaim in class Garcilaso’s “Sonnet V.” It was a poem I recited to myself as I ambled along the streets of Madrid, or wandered by myself in the woods, or lay in my bed at night, after I said my prayers but before I went to sleep. I recited those verses thinking of my cousin Mercedes, the woman I had been in love with since childhood. Until I heard Miguel reciting the sonnet in class, I thought I was the only person alive who understood the full import of Garcilaso’s words.

  The instant he began, “Your face is engraved on my soul,” I was rapt. He wasn’t merely saying the words, the way my other classmates did when we were asked to recite poems we had to memorize. With Miguel, it was as if he had experienced the feelings Garcilaso described. He felt each word deeply, the way only a true poet could. With mounting passion he recited the next thirteen lines:

  when my verses invoke you

  you alone deserve credit for them: they are

  inspired by your perfection.

  This is how it is now and shall be forever.

  I am unworthy of your grace,

  and of comprehending your splendors—

  a divine gift to a mere mortal like me.

  I was born only to love you;

  your face is the object of my adoration;

  the sole purpose of my soul is to mirror yours.

  Everything I am belongs to you.

  I was born in you, you gave me life,

  I shall die for you—for you, I’m dying.

  When Miguel finished his recitation, his pupils shining as if he were consumed by fever, his lips quivering, his hands trembling as if they had a life apart from him, his forehead dewed with perspiration, his shoulders curving inward to nestle all the words and sounds of the poem in his chest, retaining the emotion they awakened in him, it was as if a sword had pierced his heart and he were dying of unrequited love. I knew right away that, even though we came from different worlds, worlds that in the Spain of our youth were nearly irreconcilable, I had to become Miguel’s friend. The way he made Garcilaso’s verses pulsate with fervor told me that here was someone who loved poetry, and Garcilaso, as much as I did.

  This recitation surprised all of us who, until that point, had seen him as just another rustic Andalusian. A few of my classmates whooped and applauded his heartfelt display. I saw Miguel rise instantly in the esteem of Professor López de Hoyos, famed for his knowledge of the classics. Overnight, he became the professor’s protégé—even though Miguel was an indifferent student in all other subjects. He seemed to live for poetry, which I found to be an admirable trait—since poetry was for me the highest of all the arts.

  Not long afterward, I overheard Professor López de Hoyos talking to another of our instructors and referring to Miguel as “my treasured and beloved disciple.” A twinge of jealousy gripped me, as I realized that from this moment on I would take second place in the professor’s affections. I will be a true caballero, I said to myself, and rise above petty jealousies. I offered my friendship to Miguel with an open heart.

  That day, we left school together and went for a walk. As soon as we were far enough from school, Miguel put a pipe between his lips, with no tobacco in it. (When I knew him better, I came to see how important it always was for him to create an affect.) He insisted we go to a tavern to talk about poetry over a mug of wine. I resisted the invitation because my parents expected me at home every day at the same hour, and I couldn’t come back smelling of alcohol and tobacco. Instead, quoting Garcilaso’s verses, we walked the streets and plazas of Madrid until nightfall. That night my friendship with Miguel was founded on our love of Garcilaso de la Vega—the great bard of Toledo, the prince of Spanish poetry. Not one of my other classmates shared with me this passion. Garcilaso’s freshness of language, sincerity of sentiment, and stylistic innovations—incorporating Italian lyricism into Spain’s stagnant poetic tradition—plus the fact that he had been a soldier, contributed to making him our hero. That night, as we rhapsodized about the noble Toledano, Miguel remarked, “He died still young, before he was corrupted by the world.” I wondered then whether that, too, was Miguel’s ambition.

  At that time, only young bards and poetry lovers knew Garcilaso’s work. On that first walk, we pledged we would be like Garcilaso and Boscán (Garcilaso’s best friend, a great translator and poet). We were both sick of the sentimental poetry filled with stilted conventions that was then in vogue, and swore—with vehemence—to dethrone the official poets, whose surnames were so detested we would not soil our lips by mentioning them. We shared the same aspiration: to write only about love that arose from a living, breathing woman, a tangible reality—not the vaporous, affected love of the poets that preceded Garcilaso.

  “We will cultivate the lyric,” I said. “Our poems will be a questioning of our minds and hearts. Not the tearful rubbish that’s so popular today.”

  “Yes, yes,” Miguel concurred. “We are manly poets. Poet warriors like Garcilaso, like Jorge Manrique. Not like the weeping poetasters of today.”

  The torches were beginning to be lit on street corners. I started heading for my house, but Miguel continued to walk alongside me. When we reached the front door of my home in the neighborhood of the Royal Alcázar, he made no comment, yet I could see he was in awe of the imposing front door, and the antiquity of the bronze family shield emblazoned on it. I invited him to come in.

  “I appreciate your kind invitation,” he said, “but I should be heading back home. Next time.”

  * * *

  We became inseparable, to the exclusion of all the other students. Almost every day, we took long walks in El Prado Park. Miguel kept an eye on the ground for chestnuts, which he picked up and put in his school satchel. To me, they were merely food to fatten pigs. To Miguel, they were a delicacy. I soon discovered that despite his sensitive soul, and his complete devotion to poetry, there were vast gaps in his literary education. He knew Garcilaso’s poetry, and very little else. His ignorance of the classics, of Virgil and Horace, for example, was inconceivable in someone with ambitions of becoming not just a poet, but Court Poet. Garcilaso had held this post in the court of Carlos V and I knew how hard it would be for Miguel to achieve this, if his family, as was rumored, as my grandfather had confirmed, were converted Jews. The nobility in the court of Philip II would not have accepted this. Long gone were the days of the Catholic kings, when Isabella’s court had been a haven for Jewish scientists, doctors, and scholars—before she expelled all Jews from Spain, pressured by the Vatican. We lived closer to the days when Jews were routinely burned at the stake in Madrid and all over Spain.

  My Lara ancestors hailed from Toledo. As far back as the times of the Holy Roman Empire, my relatives had lived in houses and castles with library shelves containing, in Castilian, Greek, Latin, Italian, and Arabic, all the books considered essential for a gentleman’s education.

  Among my ancestors I count warriors, illustrious writers, and noble adventurers who gave their lives defending our faith on the battlefields of Europe and in the conquest of Mexico. My father was twice a marquis. My grandfather made his name in the Battle of Pavia in which our Emperor Charles V defeated François I of France. In 1522, my grandfather also participated in an expedition against the Turks on the island of Malta. It was there he had gained the friendship of Juan Boscán and Garcilaso, soldiers in that campaign. So I grew up hearing about these great poets not as distant figures, but as men of flesh and bone, people that I myself might have known.

  My mother was a countess; her family, the Mendinuetas, was every bit as ancient
and noble as Father’s. Mother liked to remind me, “For generations, both sides of our families have ridden in carriages pulled by two mules. That’s the kind of people we come from.”

  Notwithstanding Miguel’s gregarious nature, he was reticent when it came to talking about his family, pecheros with meager financial resources. Even having ink, paper, and quills to do his homework was a luxury for Miguel. I invited him to visit our library to read. It became his second home. When he entered our house for the first time, it was obvious to me that he felt he didn’t belong there. Around the members of my family he became tongue-tied.

  Books were like a treasure to Miguel. To be sure, he had read Jorge de Montemayor’s pastoral romance La Diana, and was acquainted with a few of the Spanish classics, but in our library he held for the first time an edition of Petrarch’s sonnets, Erasmus’s Colloquia and Copia, and Boscán’s translation of Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier. We spent hours reading aloud Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso. When I showed Miguel the first edition of Garcilaso’s poetry, which had been published in the same volume with Boscán’s poems in 1543, Miguel could not control his tears as he caressed the cover. Then he fell silent for the rest of the evening.

  Miguel stroked the old editions of the classics as if they were not just precious objects, but frail living forms. His index finger would trace the lines on the pages, grazing over them the way one does the skin of one’s beloved for the first time. His appetite for literature was voracious. He could read a book in a matter of hours, as if that were the last time he would ever have access to it. He had the thirst for knowledge that a camel has for water after completing a long trek in the desert. He would read by the light of the candelabrum, until the wicks burned out.