Cervantes Street

by Jaime Manrique

  I was relieved when we left Toledo together. On the ride back to Madrid, Miguel raved about Mercedes and proceeded to ask me questions of a personal nature. I was careful not to reveal too much.

  “She’s so beautiful, and intelligent, and vivacious,” Miguel said.

  I nodded but said nothing.

  He went on, “Her spontaneity is so captivating.”

  Before he had a chance to continue talking about her, I said: “My parents and grandparents have always expected us to get married.” Miguel’s face could not hide the disappointment my news caused him. He had little to say on the remainder of our trip back to Madrid.

  * * *

  I started classes at the university and was kept busy, delighted with my studies and my new acquaintances. One day a letter from Mercedes came in the mail giving me the usual news about my grandparents’ health and full of questions about university life. In a postscript, as an apparent afterthought, she added that Miguel had stopped by to visit them. At first I thought nothing of it. However, I wrote to Miguel without mentioning the visit; he didn’t answer back. A week passed, then two. His silence preoccupied me. Then the poison of jealousy began to well up in my heart. Immediately, I repudiated the thought that my best friend would try to make love to my intended. As for Mercedes, I knew she was too noble and pure to be capable of betrayal. I had my doubts about Miguel, though. Jealousy began to consume me to the point that I became increasingly distracted and could not study, could not sleep, could not eat. I took residence in the student taverns of Alcalá, where I drank by myself in a corner, until I fell into a stupor. My servants would carry me home before I was robbed and stabbed. I could not continue in that state. I owed an obligation to my family’s name to behave always like the caballero I was. One dawn, after an interminable sleepless night, I got dressed and, on an impulse, woke up the man in charge of the stable and asked him to saddle my fastest horse. I left for Madrid determined to . . . what was it I hoped to find out? I prayed that my suspicions were unfounded.

  I rode directly to Miguel’s house and found Don Rodrigo changing smelly bandages on a patient. “Don Luis,” he exclaimed, “to what do we owe the honor of your visit?”

  I was too impatient for his usual foolishness, so I said, “Good morning to you, Don Rodrigo. Is Miguel at home?”

  My abruptness seemed to startle him. He continued changing the bandages as he spoke. “Come to think of it, I haven’t seen Miguel since . . . yesterday? I thought he had gone to Alcalá to visit you. Is there anything wrong?”

  I shook my head.

  “My wife is at the market, Don Luis, but why don’t you go upstairs and ask Andrea? She might know where Miguel is. He should be here this morning, helping me. That’s where he should be.”

  I found Andrea breast-feeding her baby. “Please don’t get up,” I said. “I need to find Miguel. It’s urgent.”

  “Miguel left for Toledo yesterday,” Andrea responded, hoisting the baby to cover her exposed breast. “He’s been much distracted lately.”

  “Excuse my bad manners, but I’m in a hurry.” I bowed to Andrea and ran down the stairs, past Don Rodrigo, and into the street. I was choking for lack of breath.

  Insane with jealousy and murderous rage, I left for Toledo later that morning. I had to find out the truth once and for all. I entered my grandparents’ home, our ancestral home, as a burglar: I jumped over the wall in the back of the orchard and then climbed to the balcony of Mercedes’s chambers. The door was open and the room was empty. As if I were a criminal, I hid behind a wall tapestry in her bedchamber and decided to wait for her. I had lost my mind, but I couldn’t help myself. I didn’t have long to wait.

  Mercedes and Leonela entered the room followed by Miguel. I almost gasped. Leonela soon left the room and closed the door behind her. Miguel tried to grab Mercedes’s hand. My first impulse was to draw my sword and drive it through his heart, but I had been taught to value restraint.

  “I am promised to another man,” she said emphatically. “Now please leave this room and never come to visit me again. You are not welcome in this house anymore. Leonela!” she called.

  Her maid entered immediately, as if she had been standing guard just outside the door.

  Mercedes said, “Miguel is leaving now.”

  Standing at the door’s threshold, the wretch asked if there was any hope for him.

  “No,” Mercedes said firmly. “None whatsoever.”

  He persisted: “I will never give you up. I will wait for you the rest of my life, if necessary.”

  Mercedes approached him, placed her palm on his chest, and pushed him, until he was on the other side of the door. Then she closed it in his face. Her admirable behavior appeased me. I felt ashamed of ever having doubted her. I didn’t have to stay hidden behind the tapestry—I had seen all I needed to see. Mercedes need not ever know what I had witnessed. She threw herself on the bed and started sobbing, burying her face in a cushion. I tiptoed to the balcony and climbed down to the garden below, then I rode back to Alcalá with a mortally wounded heart: I would never again believe in friendship.

  Later, in Don Quixote Part I, Miguel gave a version of his betrayal in the novella The Curiosity of the Impertinent Man, one of those tedious stories he inserted without the least regard for artistry within the main novel. In that narrative he tried to absolve himself of his guilt by implying that I, like Anselmo, had encouraged him to woo Mercedes to test her purity.

  As the days passed, my rage swelled and became a living entity that festered in my heart. I had to retaliate in some way, so my life would belong to me once more. I would punish Miguel Cervantes for his impudence and his unforgivable betrayal.

  I left Alcalá and went to Madrid. My parents were surprised to see me. I said I had a school project that required my presence in Madrid for a few days. I wrote an anonymous sonnet exposing Andrea’s secret, made a dozen copies, and asked my personal servant to post them on the doors of churches and other important public buildings of Madrid. Then I went to see Aurelio, the man in charge of the stables and pigpen. “I want you to cut off the head of our biggest pig,” I said, “and deposit it in front of a house.” I gave him Miguel’s address. “Do it at dawn. Make sure that nobody sees you.” This was something that was commonly done when you wanted to expose publicly a family of conversos.

  It would just be a matter of time before someone insulted Miguel by calling him a Jew, or the brother of a whore, and he would have to fight a duel to defend his honor.

  A few days later, I sent word to Miguel with a servant, asking him to meet me at a tavern where poets and other rough types met. When Miguel arrived at the tavern that night, he was in a sullen mood and looked genuinely troubled. We started a game of cards. A man named Antonio de Sigura asked if he could join us. I had seen de Sigura around; he was an engineer who had arrived in Madrid to work for the court, building new roads. De Sigura lost a considerable amount of money quickly, then Miguel refused to keep playing. The inevitable insult came, Miguel wounded de Sigura, and he became a fugitive. My plan had worked! The way he was living his life, it would not be long before Miguel was a dead man.

  I left for Toledo at dawn the day after Miguel escaped from Madrid; tumultuous emotions raging inside me. As the golden rays of the rising sun began to warm me up, I felt myself slowly returning to my own life. Sunlight intensified the starkness of the rocky soil of Castile, which spread endlessly toward the south. It made me think of the corrugated skin of a monstrous dragon left out to dry in the open. Flocks of partridges flew above the woods in thick brown clouds, then disappeared in the thicket of low encinas. An intoxicating smell infused the air, as if the earth released it to awaken all the creatures of La Mancha. It was the same smell of rosemary and sweet marjoram from my grandmother’s herb garden in Toledo.

  Though now I hated Miguel, my most fervent wish was not that he would get caught, but that he would manage to escape to the Indies, that he would settle in a foreign land, far away from Cast
ile, and from Mercedes. It would be even better if he died on the other side of the world.

  As Toledo appeared in the distance, I held back the reins and sat still atop my horse. The pale morning light spilling upon the hills and fields of La Mancha painted them terra-cotta. It was a sight that only a painter could capture. It wouldn’t be until many years later, when El Greco settled among us, that an artist existed who could do justice to those skies.

  The windmills in the distance, crowning the hills of reddish soil and limestone, resembled giants awakening, rotating their arms to shake off the morning stiffness, preparing to guard La Mancha for the rest of the day, ready to hold back any invading hordes from the wild, unchristian world that lay to the south—where Miguel was heading, and where he truly belonged, because in Castile he would always be an interloper, never one of us.

  By providing Miguel with ample funds for his escape, I had done the honorable thing—even though he didn’t deserve it. Fray Luis de León’s verses, which I had read in a copy of a manuscript that circulated in Madrid among poetry lovers, echoed in my mind:

  I want to live by myself

  to enjoy alone, without witnesses,

  the blessings heaven bestows on me

  free from false love, from jealousy

  from hatred, suspicion, and illusive hopes . . .

  Realizing my happiness with Mercedes would forever be in jeopardy as long as Miguel was around, I made a promise to myself: If Miguel de Cervantes ever again returns to Castile, I swear to destroy him.

  Chapter 3

  Lepanto

  1571

  Once we had crossed the Pyrenees, where they taper off at the shoreline of the Mediterranean, I felt optimistic that I could make it to Italy. I put all my hopes on an invitation Cardinal Giulio Acquaviva had extended to me to visit him in Rome. Perhaps he would help me out of respect for his friendship with my professor. It had been a defining stroke of luck to become the protégé of Professor López de Hoyos, a man of personal integrity who seemed to have read all the great books. His belief in my talent gave wings to my ambition. “Reach for the highest stars in the literary firmament, Miguel. Aim for no less!” he had said to me on a number of occasions.

  At the recommendation of my professor, Cardinal Acquaviva had asked to see some of my poems. He was only a few years older than me, but his tall, aristocratic presence; his aura of power; his worldly manners; the precision and elegance of his speech; his white, soft hands and elongated musician’s fingers garnished with impressive blood-red stones that matched the hue of the princely vestments he wore—it all made me feel like a mere boy in his presence. I memorized his compliments about my poetry: “Professor López de Hoyos speaks of you as one of the future glories of Spanish letters,” he said to me one evening at dinner. “He raves about the elegance of your verses, the originality of your conceits, and your persuasive flourishes. I dabble a little in poetry myself. Will you show me some of your verses?”

  At the professor’s house I left for the cardinal a selection of my poems rolled up and tied with a ribbon. When I saw him next, Acquaviva said, “Cervantes, you must come to Rome to learn the language and study Italian poetry. You will always have a job waiting for you in my household.” I took his invitation to mean that he liked my poems. I clung to that casual offer as the only bright spot in my dire circumstances, the one beacon of light on my shadowy horizon.

  That autumn, as I traveled with the Gypsies through the leafy valleys of southern France, the weather was mild, the foliage afire, and the languid afternoons were filled with buzzing, inebriated golden-gloved bees. We camped in idyllic chestnut and cork tree forests that reminded me of the settings in pastoral novels. The French countryside teemed with rabbits, hedgehogs, deer, pigeons, partridges, pheasants, quail, and wild boars. By day the women and children rummaged in the wooded areas for berries, pine nuts, eggs, snails, mushrooms, wild herbs, and truffles. The older women stayed in the camp minding the smallest children and tatting lace, looping multicolored threads of cotton and linen to make the tablecloths that were highly esteemed as decorations for the dining rooms of the prosperous homes in Spain.

  We camped on the banks of cold, burbling streams or narrow but fast-flowing rivers, thick with fat trout that we caught from the mossy banks with our bare hands. At night we bivouacked around a bonfire. New mothers squatted on the ground breast-feeding their babies; they displayed their bursting teats in front of the men without any shame. This custom added to the reputation the Roma had of being immoral. As the night wore on, the clapping of hands and the ringing notes of the tambourines charged the air of the camp; caskets of red wine were uncorked; pipes with aromatic hash were smoked. The dancing and singing went on until everyone—the very young and the old included—collapsed on the ground exhausted and intoxicated.

  I never let out of my sight the few gold escudos I had left after I paid El Cuchillo. Before I went to sleep, I hid the leather pouch between my scrotum and my undergarment. Perhaps I need not have been so vigilant. Maese Pedro had introduced me to the Gypsies as a criminal poet wanted for numerous murders. Once my murderous identity was established, I was always called “Brother Miguel” or “Poet.” The children could not hide the awe my reputation inspired in them.

  My lifelong fascination with Gypsies was cemented by that trip. Their love of drinking, dancing, making love, and fighting, and their ferocious attachment to their customs and their people, were qualities I held dearly. They spoke Castilian—and a little bit of many European languages—but they communicated among themselves in Calo. I passed many of my waking hours talking to the children, trying to learn the rudiments of their language. I was speaking from direct experience when I wrote in The Gypsy Girl, “It seems that Gypsies, both male and female, are born into the world to be thieves: their parents are thieves, they grow up among thieves, study to become thieves, and graduate with honors in the arts of thievery. The desire to steal and the act of stealing are inseparable traits that only death can part.”

  * * *

  I said goodbye to my Roma friends in Italy, as they continued on their way to their ancestral land in the Carpathians. I rode to Rome as fast as my horse would take me, afraid to run out of money before I reached my destination. Six days later, my exhausted horse rode under the arch of the Porta del Popolo. I dismounted and, with tears clouding my vision, I kissed one of the columns that marked the entrance to the city of the Caesars.

  Without delay, I headed for the residence of Cardinal Acquaviva, near Vatican City. I didn’t care that I was dirty and close to collapsing when I came knocking on the door of the cardinal’s grand residence and was brought into his presence. Acquaviva received me with an open smile that dissipated my worst fears.

  “I was afraid Your Excellency would have forgotten me,” I mumbled, as a way of apologizing for my unannounced visit.

  “Of course I remember you, Cervantes,” he said. “I don’t ever forget a promising young poet. How good of you to remember me. Welcome to Rome and to my, and your, house.”

  I kissed the white-gloved hand he offered me. No questions about my precipitous arrival in the city were asked, to my great relief. I was wondering if he had heard anything about the incident in Madrid, when he put me at ease, saying, “I have a pressing need of a secretary who can answer my correspondence in Spanish. How is your calligraphy?”

  “I speak the truth when I say to Your Excellency that my handwriting, though small, is clear, and has been praised by my teachers.” I was flabbergasted by his offer. “And I hope not to embarrass you with my spelling.”

  He motioned to his aide de chamber. “Take Signor Miguel’s bags to the visitor’s apartment on this floor.” Addressing me, Cardinal Acquaviva added, “Cervantes, I can put you to work immediately. In the meantime you’ll have your meals here. How does five florins a month sound to you?”

  * * *

  Besides his love of poetry, the cardinal was interested in painting, music, philosophy, history, and both loca
l and world politics. He liked stimulating conversation, especially when accompanied by good food and the finest red wines. Talk of religion seemed to bore him, making him distracted and impatient. Even though at that point I had written little and published less, he treated me with the respect due a serious poet.

  Those first months in Rome, I took every free moment I had from my duties to explore the magnificent, immortal city. As a new pilgrim, I vowed to love Rome with tender affection, humble devotion, and an open heart, and soon surrendered to her bewitchment. The streets and sun-filled piazzas on which I walked, bedazzled, had been soaked with the blood of Christian martyrs and were sacrosanct ground to me. The footsteps of Michelangelo still echoed in the parks, avenues, and narrow streets. His frescoes on the ceiling and altar of the Sistine Chapel seemed more the work of a deity than a single artist. Admiring their vastness, their beauty, and their perfection for hours, I began to comprehend what it meant to create a work of art that, like Dante’s Comedy, was a summa of all that could be said about the human spirit.

  There was no part of Rome—no gigantic marble column or broken arch, no ancient tomb, no mysterious alley, no ancient wall, no venerable cemetery, no crumbling church, no fading fresco, no vandalized palace, no penumbrous forest of cypresses, no romantic piazza where lovers met at night—that was not an example of the endless bounty of marvels that God had bequeathed men.

  Memories of my troubled past in Spain receded, as well as nostalgia for the life I had left behind. Visiting Rome’s churches, chapels, shrines, and basilicas, studying the statues and the paintings adorning their walls, the frescoes gracing their ceilings, the intricate gold-work of their altars and domes, I felt a perpetual intoxication.

  Determined to succeed at something at least once in my life, I worked assiduously for the cardinal. My parents had sacrificed themselves to send me to the Estudio de la Villa, and I had failed them. In my letters home, I talked at length about the duties I performed in the house of the great man (magnifying their importance) as well as the important people who visited the cardinal’s palazzo. I wrote to my parents that Pope Pius V had blessed me. I did not mention he had blessed—at the same time—thousands of other believers from his balcony. I hoped this would lighten the burden of shame I had caused my parents and make them proud.