One morning, guards went about the bagnio announcing to the surviving slaves that Arnaut Mamí was preparing his ships to leave for Constantinople. The slaves taken to Turkey never made it back to Christian soil and were not heard from again. There was no more fight left in me; I resigned myself to my fate.
* * *
On October 10, 1580, shortly before the ship carrying me away from that city where I had known the greatest depths of misery sailed off for Constantinople, a group of Dominican monks, who had arrived just as the locusts moved on, came aboard with my ransom. Mamí was eager to let me go: I had the body of a decrepit of old man, was useless as a worker, and had caused him too much trouble. Mamí grabbed the ransom money, and my days as a captive came to an end.
* * *
“There is no happiness on earth equal to that of liberty regained,” I wrote upon my return to Spain. But the happiness I had yearned for over five years was puny compared to my infinite sorrow. My grief-filled heart had no room left in it for the balm of joy.
In the erosion caused by time and memory loss, the colors of those years have shed some of their hues, the faces of many of the main characters have blurred down to a single expression, a tone in which they spoke, a hardness or softness in their eyes, the shapes of their noses or the lack of noses and ears and sometimes even lips. The pain and the anguish of those years have lost much of their sting; the few happy moments I experienced in Algiers seem happier now than they were in reality.
Many years later, in Spain, I could hardly believe that part of my past had really happened, because it seemed like a fantastical chapter in a chivalric novel written by a capricious historian with no regard for the truth. Former captives lucky enough to return from Algiers tell me that the ignominious Bagnio Beylic, filled with an ever changing fresh supply of unfortunates, stands in the same place; that captives still go there to suffer, and many to die; that the oval window where I saw Zoraida’s hand for the first time is still there, though its shutters have remained closed since her death; that the tale of the tragic love affair between the Moorish woman and the Christian has endured. I’ve been told, too, that some leagues to the west of the city, on the rocky, hilly coast bordering the azure-green Mediterranean, her father’s house still stands; and in the orchard, that sacred stage of the final act of our love, visitors can find the weeping willow under which Zoraida’s father killed what was most precious to us both. What nobody tells is that when Agi Morato took the life of my beloved, he also robbed me of half of mine. It is said, too, that the stream by which Zoraida died is now a bed of sand, of the same color as blood that has dried in the desert and turned to rock. But what does not remain in that land across the sea, only in my dimming memory, is the feel of her warm, smooth skin, and the taste of her scarlet lips, as sweet as currant juice, fleshy and delicate and unlike any lips that ever touched mine again.
BOOK TWO
People are the way God made them, and often they are much worse. —Cervantes
Chapter 6
A Fair and Gentle Wife
1580-1586
Luis
My experience with Miguel de Cervantes taught me that hatred of an ex-friend who has betrayed our trust—or a woman who has deceived us—outlasts love. Once in a while, I imagined revenge scenarios in which I would hire somebody to travel to Algiers to cause him grave harm. These thoughts frightened me, but I also drew comfort from them. As the years passed, and it began to look as if Miguel would end his days in captivity, my hatred lessened. By the time the news of his liberation from the bagnio reached Madrid, he was a blurry figure of my youth.
But the reports of the red-carpet treatment the city of Valencia lavished upon Miguel and the other liberated prisoners reawakened my odium with an intensity that surprised me. What was so heroic about being ransomed? My aggravation swelled when I learned that the good-hearted Valencianos created a fund to provide the ex-prisoners, whose families had few resources, with the means to return to their hometowns.
In the ten years since Miguel had fled Madrid, I had not answered a single one of his letters. Even somebody as shameless as Miguel de Cervantes must have realized I was no longer his friend. If he ever approached me again, I would discourage—forcefully, if necessary—any attempt to reestablish our old friendship. The chances we would meet again were few, since I had withdrawn from the world of Madrid’s would-be versifiers. I decided to continue living exactly as I had before, as if Miguel were still across the Mediterranean, held captive in a Moorish prison.
Not long after Miguel arrived in Spain, I was relieved to hear that he had been sent on a diplomatic mission to the city of Oran in North Africa. Then, a year later, a letter from my old friend Antonio de Eraso arrived from Lisbon, with the news that Miguel was at the Spanish court in the Portuguese capital looking to get a position in the Indies.
Antonio was a high-ranking official in charge of important business in the Royal Council of the Indies, an agency that made judicial decisions regarding the king’s territories in the New World. As a reward for my loyal service to the crown in the Department of Collections of the Guardas of Castile, I, too, had become an official in the Royal Council, and I had resolved to work indefatigably so that I would make myself indispensable to my king. Corruption was widespread in all the offices of the council. Nepotism was the norm; many officials enriched themselves with the crown’s funds. Influence could make a man wealthy. But the men who worked under my supervision were expected to behave ethically and to remain above reproach.
Miguel had informed Antonio that we had been school friends at the Estudio de la Villa. Since I worked in the headquarters of the council in Madrid, Antonio asked if I would recommend Miguel for a post in the Indies as compensation for his heroism at Lepanto. There was nothing unusual in Antonio’s request: in Spain, only the well connected were awarded government positions. For men without prospects of employment in the service of the crown, and for all sorts of adventurers and rogues, the New World was the Promised Land.
Along with his letter, Antonio also enclosed Miguel’s letter to him. The calligraphy was beautiful and elegant. His years at the Estudio de la Villa had not been a complete waste. The document was a lamentation about waiting for many years to receive his wounded soldier’s pension or employment in the court. Besides his service as a soldier, he stressed his diplomatic mission to Oran. The letter concluded with Miguel’s boast that he was working on a novel called La Galatea. Was this a hint to Antonio de Eraso that he would be acknowledged as one of his patrons if he helped Miguel to get employment? Miguel obviously had not forgotten how to ingratiate himself with important people who could help him.
Although Miguel had failed at everything he’d attempted in life, I could not take the chance that he might prosper in the New World. I was not yet ready to return his evil with good. But if I was going to thwart his plan to start a new life, I would have to use impeccable logic to ensure that Antonio did not suspect that personal motives had influenced my decision not to endorse Miguel’s request. In my answer to Antonio’s letter I pointed out that although I was aware of my old friend’s diplomatic mission to Oran, as far as I knew it had been a minor assignment that Miguel had inflated to make himself appear more important than he was. Yet the main reason I could not endorse his petition, I wrote, was that there were still questions about the purity of blood of the Cervantes family. As long as that was the case, granting him a government position would risk the displeasure of the church and, potentially, might embroil the crown in controversy. I concluded my letter: “Let Miguel de Cervantes look for employment here in Spain.”
It did not occur to me that by denying his petition I would force Miguel to return to Madrid. The following winter he was back in our city. His mere proximity was enough to reawaken the beast of jealousy. I was tormented by the thought that Mercedes would cuckold me with Miguel once more, and make me the laughing stock of Madrid. It was imperative that I sever at the root whatever connection they had. Though Merce
des and I had continued to live in the same house after I discovered her betrayal, we maintained very separate lives, and there was no one I could ask to spy on her for me. If my suspicions proved correct, I would have to catch the two of them in the act myself. So I would leave for work at the usual time in the morning and then return to the house a few hours later, making sure to tell one of the servants that I had forgotten an important document in my chamber, or that I needed to consult a law book in my library. This strategy, however, revealed nothing in the behavior of the servants, or in their eyes, to indicate anything was amiss.
My son was too small and fragile for his twelve years, so he was tutored at home. Little Diego already knew Latin and Greek, and had finished his studies of the trivium: grammar, rhetoric, and logic. His tutor, Father Jerónimo, and I were both aware that my son was a prodigy. But Father Jerónimo was against Diego embarking too early on his studies of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy, the quadrivium necessary as preparation for attending the university.
I decided to mention to Diego that I was leaving Madrid for several days to journey to Toledo on business. I returned with an excuse two or three days before expected, but the unchangeable routines of our home did not reveal any disturbances. I thought of intercepting Mercedes’s mail, yet this meant I would have to make an accomplice of one of the domestics, and I could not bear to let a domestic know what was perturbing me. I could not even confide in the faithful Juan, who had been my personal servant since I was a child.
At night, after I had supped, I would ask Diego about the events of the day, hoping that in his innocence he would tell me whether Miguel had visited the house. I hoped, too, that he would inform me if Mercedes had left the house unaccompanied, or accompanied by Leonela, and stayed away for hours.
No matter how much time I devoted to my duties at the council, my jealous feelings toward Miguel threatened to devour me like a voracious leprosy.
One day I returned home at noontime and asked Isadora, a young domestic who did the cleaning, if her mistress was at home.
“Doña Mercedes left the house with Señorita Leonela, Your Grace,” she said.
“How long ago was that?” It was a simple question, but the girl seemed perturbed and did not reply. “Well, was it more than an hour?”
She lowered her head and mumbled, “I don’t know, Your Grace.”
“Don’t you know how to read the clocks? Be gone,” I said. The girl curtsied, and I was left alone in the hall.
I summoned Juan to my chamber and asked that I not be disturbed. I paced with increasing agitation; it felt as if an incubus were trapped inside my chest, banging with closed fists to be let out. I considered leaving the house to look for Mercedes. But where would I start? Despite my impatience, I would have to wait for her to return home. The clock on the wall of my chamber ticked, and each minute was an interminable agony. What if she took hours to return? I felt like a prisoner in my own chamber. I did not want to disturb Diego’s lessons, or let him see my agitation.
I left for the council, hoping to lose myself in work. Once I was settled behind my desk, I gave word to my assistant not to disturb me for the rest of the day. I forced myself to read obtuse reports and take notes, until my head pulsated, my neck felt as rigid as marble, and my vision blurred. I closed my eyes and sat immobile at my desk; I pretended I was dead so I would not have to move or to think. I lost all sense of where I was. When I opened my eyes, late-afternoon light poured through the windows.
I exited the council building and dismissed my carriers, thinking that a brisk walk in the cool spring air might help quell my agitation and rage. The building that housed the Council of the Indies was in the vicinity of the Plaza Mayor. Beginning in late March, when the first daffodils broke the ground and the weeping willows turned from gold to light green, large crowds took up residence on the public benches. The women sat on the sunny spots of the plaza and picked lice from each other’s hair. The splendidly attired gentlemen who rode their prize horses, and the ladies who passed by in their carriages in their showiest finery, their heads covered in black lace mantillas, were the targets of sarcastic comments from the unsavory crowd. Gone were the days when the common people showed respect to their superiors. I was convinced that this deterioration of our society had begun with the discovery of the Indies. It had given the poor and ignorant the belief that if they just went to the New World, and encountered a bit of good luck, they might return as rich as the wealthiest marquis. Money had become the true new sovereign. Lineage did not count half as much as the weight of the gold coins in your pockets.
As I walked, I told myself that if Mercedes and Miguel were meeting surreptitiously, it was my right to defend my honor and kill him, even though this would mean my eternal damnation. If Mercedes and Miguel were lovers, she and I could no longer live in the same house. But Diego loved his mother and I would not do anything to hurt my son. Miguel was a different matter: the thought of thrusting the tip of my sword through his throat excited me.
I had walked as far as the bridge over the Manzanares River. The balmy sun dawdled in the sky. Then I spotted the scandalous women who, on warm afternoons, bathed nude in the Manzanares. A number of them were sunning themselves on the rocks, their long hair loose, their legs spread apart. One of them saw me staring and yelled, “You, the one who looks like a Jesuit!” I stood still, paralyzed by her brazenness. The woman cupped her breasts in her hands, squeezed them, and said, “Come and taste these juicy melons. Have a taste of life. Your wife can’t give you this sweetness.” I fled; the women’s laughter and their jeers trailed after me.
The bells of the Church of San Nicolás de los Servitas were tolling nine times when I arrived at my front door. I could no longer remember where I had been or what I had seen after I left the bridge. I was in a cold sweat; my mind was racing; my hands shook; my mouth and throat were parched.
Once inside my chamber, I locked the door. Candles were lighted and the coals in the brazier blazed. My usual supper was laid out on the dining table: a smoked trout, a small loaf of bread, a square of Manchegan cheese, olive oil, salt, an orange cut in half, and an ewer filled with red wine from my grandparents’ vineyards in Toledo. I poured myself a cup of wine, drank it in one gulp, and sat on the chair next to the brazier to warm my hands and feet. But the proximity to the live coals made me feel feverish, and the lack of air in the chamber was oppressive.
I opened the glass panes that faced the patio and sat on the windowsill. It was a moonless starry night; the frosty breeze stung my face. The dark-leafed fig trees, swathed in black shadows, encircled the drinking well in the center of the patio; the bed of white roses was heavy with dew. An eerie quiet gave a funereal air to the scene: the patio reminded me of a secluded portion of a cemetery, a spot that even night owls shunned. A chill raced down my spine. The longer I sat on the windowsill, the more agitated I became. It was imperative that I speak with Mercedes; it was a discussion that could not be postponed. I would not have any peace until I heard from her own lips what had transpired between her and Miguel.
I knocked on Mercedes’s door and entered her chamber without waiting for an answer. She was kneeling at her pew, praying to a figure of Christ on the wall. When she saw me, Mercedes made the sign of the cross and got up. She stood, dressed in a black chemise; a Rosary dangled from her hands. She didn’t seem surprised by my unannounced visit—it was as if she had been expecting me. As she removed the black mantilla that covered her head I almost gasped: she had shorn her beautiful golden mane almost to the roots. It looked as if she had used garden shears.
I closed the door behind me and approached her. Candleholders illuminated the shrine to the wood crucifix that had been in the family for generations. The rest of the room was bathed in darkness. The Christ figure was rachitic, the body and face distorted with extreme pain. I hadn’t been to Mercedes’s living quarters in . . . could it be years? The walls were bare; she had removed all mirrors; the drapes that covered the canopy of
the bed were the color of a funeral shroud. It looked as if a mystic lived in the chamber; it would not have surprised me to see blood marks splattered over the walls. Yet the serene expression in Mercedes’s eyes, and her peaceful demeanor, were disconcerting. Had I made a dreadful mistake?
“Luis, to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?” Her tone was detached, as if she were speaking to a distant acquaintance.
“I came home early from the council and was informed you were out. I waited for you for hours. What could have kept you away from your home so long?”
“I went out to do some errands,” she said softly.
“What kind of errands can take you away from your home for hours? It pains me to say that I don’t believe you. Stop lying to me, Mercedes.” Then the words came out of my mouth: “You went to rendezvous with Miguel de Cervantes, didn’t you?”
Mercedes smiled. “Is that the reason you’ve barged into my chamber like this? Are you mad, Luis? I haven’t seen Miguel de Cervantes since he left Spain many years ago.”
“I’m sorry you think this is an amusing matter. Do not mock my gentleman’s honor. Why would I believe you? You spent my trust in you when you betrayed me with Miguel. You robbed me of the right every man has to trust his wife.”
“I haven’t forgotten how I deceived you when we were young, Luis. But you forget we were not yet married. It’s true that our families intended you and me for each other, but we had never discussed matrimony among ourselves. What Miguel and I did was a thoughtless and unforgivable indiscretion of youth.” She paused. When she started speaking again it was with gravity in her voice. “Your false accusation forces me to inform you about a decision I have made. I went to see my Father confessor today, and we talked for hours.”
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