Cervantes Street

by Jaime Manrique

  I hadn’t had such a tempting offer since Cardinal Acquaviva’s invitation to work for him, when I arrived in Rome as a young man.

  The widow’s words were ringing in my ears as I entered the town. Old men dressed in faded hidalgo finery strolled about with skinny white hounds on leashes. I passed Esquivias’s handsome church, built on a hillock. Its tall Mozarab tower dominated the town. Mournful and elegant cypresses, shaped like inverted exclamation points, grew in a small park next to the church.

  Every other house I rode by displayed a dusty, faded coat of arms. On the grand houses a stone cross was carved above every window. The intricate designs on the imposing doors announced the pedigree of the family within. They reminded me of the doors of the dwellings in the casbah, except that these were more austere, in accordance with the sober Manchegan landscape. I felt I had entered a place lost in time. As I followed the directions to the widow’s house, I rode with great anticipation in the golden and languid Esquivian twilight.

  * * *

  On my first night in the splendid old house the widow and I supped alone in an intimate dining room, where she must have taken her meals with Pedro in happier days. We sat at a red oak table, on high-backed armchairs whose seats were draped in burgundy velvet. Two large old paintings of saints decorated the room; I could barely make them out in the feeble light that emanated from the candles on the sideboard and the table. The window behind Doña Juana’s chair was open, revealing the starry Manchegan night; a balmy breeze blew in from the dark plain.

  “I divide my time between Esquivias and Madrid,” Doña Juana said, as the food arrived. “There’s the matter of the vineyards that have been in our family for generations, and I have to make sure my tenants pay their rent.” A sad expression came over her face. “Pedro and I had three children, but only one—named after his late father—survived childhood diseases. My son lives in New Spain, where he is an important official in the court of the Viceroy.” She made a sweeping motion with her hand. “That’s where all the silver adorning this table comes from. I’m happy for him, because it is what he wishes. But it means I’m the only one here to attend to the family properties. I’d rather have my son in Spain than own all this fancy cutlery,” she sighed.

  Although she wore a widow’s clothes, her lustrous silk dress framed to good effect her considerable bosom, on which she had pinned a brooch made of two large emeralds—one square, one hexagonal­—­set on a thick gold frame carved with fauna from the New World. Her gleaming black hair was held in a chignon and secured by a black shell comb adorned with tiny pearls. The darkness of night complimented her bewitching eyes. No wonder my good friend Pedro had been devoted to her. I had to remind myself I was there strictly on business.

  “People in Esquivias are very curious to make your acquaintance. I want you to meet the best people here,” Doña Juana said. She took another bite, savoring the succulent stew of rabbit, carrots, and chickpeas. “Otherwise you’ll die of boredom.”

  I partook of the aromatic and silky wine; its rich flavor traveled up my nostrils to my brain. The intoxicating elixir surpassed its reputation. In the future it was going to prove a great disappointment to drink any other red wine. “Doña Juana, you exaggerate, I’m sure,” I said.

  “Miguel de Cervantes, you seem to forget that you are a war hero, a man who has seen the world, a celebrated poet, and the author of a forthcoming pastoral novel. Believe me when I say that all these achievements put you in the upper echelons of Esquivian society. To enumerate your duties, my young friend: You will have the whole day to organize Pedro’s work. You may come and go as you please. But your evenings belong to me. When I come to Esquivias my neighbors expect me to liven up our provincial life. They are always eager to know the news from Madrid. I will endeavor to make sure that we have many tertulias in my house, which I want you to think of as your own. And I plan to accept every single invitation I receive from my friends.” With a conspiratorial air, punctuated with a wink, she added, “My esteemed friend, this would be a good place for you to settle and put down some roots. There are a few young women, descended from noble Esquivian families, who would make a worthy wife to a man of your standing. Let’s face it, my friend, sooner or later you’ll have to put an end to your peripatetic bachelorhood.”

  A wolf howled in the distance. Then another wolf echoed the howling of the first.

  “Yes, we have wolves here,” Doña Juana said. “As long as you don’t go walking by yourself at night in the countryside, you have nothing to fear.”

  I inquired whether she knew Sancho Panza’s family.

  “How do you know the Panzas?”

  I explained how.

  “Oh, we all know each other in our village. Poor Teresa was left with a child after those wicked corsairs abducted Sancho many years ago; he was never heard from again. She will be happy to learn that you met her husband in that dreadful land of idol worshippers. Teresa has worked for our family all her life. And now her daughter, Sanchica, also works for me.”

  After we said good night, I went out in the courtyard to smoke my pipe: Venus shone brightly and golden; it reminded me of my first night in Algiers. What would life bring me in this town during the next months? In the meantime, before the future unfolded itself, this was as good a place as any to fill my empty coffers, to mend my mangled body, and to stop striving.

  * * *

  My first morning in Doña Juana’s house I awoke to the songs of birds; their cheerful notes seemed to come from everywhere in the village. After a cup of chocolate and a slice of buttered, freshly baked bread, I went out on an exploratory walk. Flocks of sparrows, swallows, and doves fluttered in the cool Manchegan morning. I hadn’t felt so happy since I had set foot again on Spanish soil almost five years earlier. The village seemed like a kind of pastoral Paradise, far away from wars and destruction, where man and nature lived in harmony. Gentle streams coursed down the middle of the cobblestone streets; their pure water smelled as if they had sprung in a grove of orange blossoms. Perhaps this was the place where I could finally heal from the years in Algiers. Perhaps I could hide in Esquivias until I broke the chains that bound me to Ana de Villafranca and to Madrid’s underbelly, where death or incarceration seemed my likeliest end.

  I settled into my pleasant but melancholy work. Although some of Pedro’s poems were written in notebooks, most were scribbled on loose sheets. There were approximately two hundred unpublished poems, almost all undated. Many of them were signed Damon, Pedro’s pseudonym for his pastoral compositions. In the trove of poems, some of them known to me, I found the usual imitations of Petrarch and of the cancioneros. It was the echo of the music of Garcilaso that had drawn me to Pedro’s poetry. But Pedro was no mere imitator of the immortal bard: he had used the usual conventions to create works of originality and sincerity. His baroque love poems were explorations of the brevity of our passage through the world. It would take much patience to decipher his knotted calligraphy, but it would be a pleasurable task to catalogue the poems. It was almost a way of continuing the conversation with my friend beyond the grave. This was the most gratifying job I had ever had. Might my luck be about to take a turn for the better? I wondered.

  Doña Juana was happy to preside over frequent supper parties at which the Esquivian red wine flowed freely. Her cook’s meals were invariably outstanding: white beans with rabbit or partridge; carcamusa, made with the choicest veal and large quantities of onions, celery, and the freshest legumes; and the Manchegan migas, prepared with spicy chorizos, plenty of garlic, generous portions of bacon, and red peppers topped with the ripest and juiciest grapes of the harvest. In Doña Petra’s hands, a simple dish like lentil pottage was earthy, fragrant, and succulent, as satisfying as any delicacy. Her mistress’s appetite for good food insured that the fire in the kitchen was always lit, that there was always a pot simmering, and that all day long the most enticing aromas penetrated every room of the house.

  The widow loved village gossip as much as she
loved to eat. At the first supper party, which she gave in my honor, I met the town’s elderly priest, Juan de Palacios. His hair and beard were white, and his face had been furrowed by the merciless sun of La Mancha. But his small eyes sparkled with curiosity.

  “Doña Juana sings the praises of your poetry. She also says that your plays have been much performed in the Corral del Principe, and that you are a soon-to-be-published novelist. I am a lover of chivalry novels, Don Miguel. I own the four volumes of Amadis de Gaul, which in my opinion, though I’m a simple country priest and not a man of letters by any means, are the best books of their kind ever written. However, I do not care for any of the imitations.” He paused, waiting for me to respond.

  “Doña Juana is far too kind in her praise of my talent. As for the ersatz Amadises, I couldn’t agree more: I find those imitations odious.”

  Father Palacios smiled and went on, “I also own a much-leafed copy of Tirant lo Blanc, which I treasure as one of the most amusing books I’ve ever read. And I must confess to a weakness for the Diana of Jorge de Montemayor—though, here again, I do not care for any of the imitations. I have many other books, of course, but those are the jewels of my library. As for books of poetry, I’m ashamed to admit, Don Miguel, I have none, as all the poetry I need I find in the Song of Songs. At the risk of offending you, my most excellent new friend,” he continued, “for I understand your forthcoming novel is of the pastoral genre, I will admit that I don’t care for them at all. Only writers who have never plucked an onion from the ground, or milked a goat, could write such nonsense.”

  “I don’t care for most of them myself, either,” I said.

  “I can see we will be friends. We have much in common. You are welcome to stop by the sacristy for a visit anytime. I assume that as a good Christian you must go to Mass and confess with some frequency—for one never knows when the good Lord may summon us to His side, and it’s best to be prepared. You may borrow any books you haven’t read or wish to reread. It will give me great pleasure to lend them to you. We can talk about them over a glass of our never-too-highly-praised wine. I believe there’s much truth in the saying In vino veritas. You can’t imagine how starved for literary conversation I am when Doña Juana is in Madrid. The only other person of literary taste in these parts was my excellent friend, the illustrious hidalgo Don Alonso Quijano, a man of refined knowledge in books, who loved chivalry novels, and who, in his later years, became a monk. It’s hard to believe, but he has been dead for a good forty years. Ah, how time passes; so my advice to you is Carpe diem.”

  We had consumed the first course, a delicious carcamusa ladled onto our plates with such largesse I feared I would have no room left in my stomach for the second course. But from the kitchen there wafted the gamy fragrance of roasted quails.

  “Don Alonso died before I was born,” interjected Doña Juana, who was wiping her plate with a chunk of bread. “In fact, Don Alonso’s great-grandniece and Father de Palacios’s grandniece, Doña Catalina de Palacio, the mother of the delicious Catalina, our greatest beauty, will join us for supper next week. I would have invited them tonight, as I am anxious for you to meet the beautiful and virtuous Catalina, but her mother is in Toledo with her, where they went to collect the rents owed to my friend by her tenants.”

  “She does not exaggerate, Don Miguel, when Doña Juana says my grandniece Catalina is Esquivias’s greatest beauty,” said Father Palacios.

  My interest was aroused, but before I could ask a question about the beautiful Catalina, a mound of the honeyed quails was set on the middle of the table.

  * * *

  Later in the evening, after we had retired to the drawing room and reclined on comfortable cushions, Doña Juana announced: “In your honor, Miguel, to show my appreciation for having you in my house as a guest, I have committed one of my greatest sins of vanity: I’ve written a sonnet.”

  Many years have passed since that remarkable evening, but I still remember some of Doña Juana’s verses:

  Oh hero of Lepanto, that dreadful place

  Where as proof of your hidalgo’s honor

  You left behind your valorous left digits

  In defense of our Magnificent Sun King Philip,

  Our Holy Roman Catholic Church—

  The only true church—and of our Motherland;

  You noble son of Alcalá, captured

  By the infamous Barbarosa brothers and abducted

  To the hellish dungeons of Algiers . . .

  By the time she recited the third stanza, I had drunk too much wine to appreciate the rest of the lofty verses inspired by my “heroism.” The end of the recitation was met with thunderous applause.

  “Unfortunately, Don Miguel,” the priest lamented, “Doña Juana writes only one poem per year because she only sings of the most momentous events that take place in our village. If only she were as prolific as Lope, I tell you, Spain could boast of being the birthplace of the Tenth Muse.”

  His words were followed by more toasts to me, to poetry, and to Doña Juana.

  * * *

  After I had been in Esquivias for a few days, I asked my hostess for directions to the home of Sancho Panza’s family and set out one afternoon to meet his wife and daughter.

  “Pass the chapel at the end of town and stay on the path that runs alongside it until you come to a drop in the road,” said Doña Juana. “You’ll see a big rock on your right. Make a sharp turn and follow the narrow trail for a short distance. You can’t miss their home; there are no others around.”

  The chapel to which Doña Juana had directed me was a simple rectangular structure made of limestone, with a low bell tower atop. A naked cross was carved on the door of the chapel. The austere building was as striking and eerie as the dry landscape on which it was set.

  I followed her directions and walked under the warm sun on a pebbly, dusty path that led to a rombo made of stones. In its front yard grew a few grapevines, which had already been harvested. Noisy chickens pecked the red dirt of the yard. A hutch on stilts housed fat rabbits. “Good afternoon!” I shouted.

  A plump older woman, with loose, uncombed hair and pendulous teats, covered—but not disguised—by a blouse of indeterminate color, appeared at the door. Her face was sweaty and red, as if she spent a great deal of time near live coals.

  “Doña Teresa Panza?” I said.

  “At your service, Your Grace.” She stared at me with suspicious eyes, as if she was not used to having visitors come to her house.

  I told her my name. “I’m a guest at Doña Juana Gaitán’s house, and I’ve come to pay my respects. I met your husband Sancho in Algiers, where we were both captives in the bagnio.”

  Doña Teresa’s facial expression changed from one of puzzlement to one of radiant joy. She wiped her hands on her untidy skirt, rushed in my direction, and then dropped to her knees.

  “Allow this humble woman to kiss your hands, Your Lordship,” she said as she grabbed my good hand and washed it in tears.

  “My good Doña Teresa,” I responded, “please get up. It is my honor to meet the wife of my dear friend.”

  “It’s been many years since I had news of my good and honest husband,” she said, getting up. Through her tears she added, “I curse the day my Sancho went to Málaga to work for His Excellency, the count. It was near that city that he was kidnapped by those godless African corsairs. Please excuse my appearance. I was ironing. But just don’t stand there. Come inside our humble abode, which is also yours. Mi casa es su casa.”

  The inside of the rombo was almost dark, except for a fire next to which was set a table used for ironing. On the dirt floor there was a large basket heaped with laundered clothes. Doña Teresa looked around and found a wooden chair, which she offered me.

  “May I bring you a cup of our wine? It’s very refreshing at this time of day.”

  I sat on the rickety chair and accepted her offer. She filled two pewter cups, then pulled out a stool from the ironing table and rested her conside
rable buttocks on it.

  “Pray tell me, Don Miguel. What news do you have of my Sancho?”

  I told her about the last time I had seen him; and how I still remembered him with affection and gratitude. “Without your husband,” I concluded, “I would not have survived my first years in Algiers.”

  “That’s my Sancho,” Teresa Panza sighed, her eyes becoming teary once more. “He’s a simple laborer but he’s made of gold, like the king’s crown.”

  There was a commotion outside. I heard grunting pigs and a young woman’s voice calling out, “Come here, you devil! Where do you think you are going, fatso? Get inside the corral before I slap your ass.”

  “My daughter Sanchica is here. She’s the greatest blessing of my life; the biggest fortune my husband left me.” Without getting up, Doña Teresa yelled, “Pray come in, my daughter! And be hasty about it, we have a visitor!”

  A barefoot girl came in. Even from the door she smelled of dung. Her cheeks were powdered red by the dust of the road; her clothes looked as is if she had been rolling in the mud; her feet were dark in color. On top of her upper lip she had a black mole that looked like a dead beetle stuck on her face. “I just brought in the pigs and was going to feed them their slops. The big sow is ready to expel her piglets. Who is this gentleman, Mother?” Sanchica inquired, studying me.

  Teresa told her who I was, and then explained to me: “Sanchica takes care of Doña Juana’s pigs. All of us worked for her family. These hands”—they were big and scarlet, almost raw—“have washed the clothes of Doña Juana’s family since I was a young girl. And before me, my mother. Our whole family have been humble servants of the Gaitáns since anyone can remember. Before he went to work for the count, and was so cruelly taken from me, my good Sancho tended their herd of goats.”