On one of my monthly trips to Esquivias, presumably to supervise the accounts of the local government, I learned that Cervantes had left his wife behind and traveled to Sevilla, where he hoped to get a job working as a collector of grain for the soldiers of the armada, which had begun the ill-fated hostilities against England that helped to precipitate the decline of our empire. This was my opportunity to visit Sevilla, a city I longed to see, so rich in history and famed for its beauty, its Alcázar, its poets and painters. Upon arrival I learned that Miguel de Cervantes had managed to secure one of those positions. He was now an employee of the government, as Don Luis and I were.
“His job title is itinerant collector for the armada,” I informed Don Luis when I returned to Madrid.
He gave me one of his rare happy smiles. I had come to understand that his greatest joy consisted of learning about the bad luck of Cervantes, though securing a position as collector for the crown seemed hardly a misfortune.
“You’ve done an excellent job, Pascual,” Don Luis said.
I could count with the digits of one hand the occasions on which he had praised me for anything I did for him, as if it were his absolute right to expect nothing but perfect service from those who worked under him. I was sitting across from him, sipping a Jeréz. It was late afternoon; his large office was almost dark. Twilight was the favorite time of day for Don Luis, as if the deepening shadows reassured him.
“As someone whose purity of blood has not been established,” he continued, after sipping his glass, and pointing his almost fleshless pinky at me, “this is the perfect occupation for him. I don’t need to remind you that when it comes to extracting money from people, Jews are leeches with an insatiable appetite.”
I chuckled, but immediately straightened my back and assumed a serious expression. The look Don Luis gave me was not of disapproval.
“There is rampant corruption in that world of people who collect taxes for the king, Pascual. Even the most honest man—which, let’s face it, Miguel is not—sooner or later will join the thieves and lowlifes who work with him. He will have to do as they do, if he wants to keep his job. Then he’ll get what he deserves.”
He sipped his sherry slowly, staring at a point behind me. His lips were stretched in the faintest of smiles, but there was something almost frightful in the dreamy eyes. With a wave of his hand, not bothering to make eye contact with me, he bid me to leave the room.
* * *
I became a bloodhound tracking Cervantes’s footsteps in the godforsaken villages he visited in Andalusia. I thanked my lucky stars: it was a much better existence than being glued to a desk. Additionally, I had escaped the sepulchral building of the council, and daily coexistence with my coworkers, who made me think of solitary souls doing penance in purgatory. Also, and this was no small advantage, I got to see more of Spain, which had always been a dream of mine.
One day, after I had finished giving him a report of Miguel’s travels, Don Luis confessed to me: “You don’t know what comfort I derive when, before I close my eyes to go to sleep, I imagine Miguel—dusty, hungry, worn-out, holding the staff of justice in his good hand—entering on an old mule one of those desolate towns in the Andalusian countryside where, as tax collector of the crown, he must be met with hostility and hatred.”
I was glad I would never be important enough in his eyes to become a target of his hatred.
For three years there was little new to report, though Don Luis demanded to know the names of every insignificant village Cervantes visited and how he had been received by the peasants whose grain he had to extract in the name of the armada. Then I learned through one of my contacts in Sevilla that Cervantes had applied for permission to travel to the Indies. I asked my informant for a copy of the document and left for Madrid, riding as fast as I could, barely stopping to eat or relieve myself or sleep. In his petition to the court, Cervantes was specific about the four posts he wanted to be considered for: the comptrollership of the viceroyalty of New Granada, the governorship of the province of Soconusco in Guatemala, the post of auditor of the galleys in Cartagena de Indias, or that of magistrate of the city of La Paz. All of these were important positions, usually given as rewards to those who had distinguished themselves in the service of the king; but often they were secured by the influential families of good-for-nothing señoritos, who were an embarrassment to their kin in Spain. To me it showed that despite the setbacks of his life, Cervantes had a very high notion of his importance. But he didn’t seem to have considered that, at forty-three years of age, he was asking for employment that required the energy of a much younger man.
Don Luis had never shown so much delight to see me as he did on the day I delivered, at his office in the Council of the Indies, the copy of Cervantes’s petition. He extended me an invitation to sup with him that night, at the finest inn in Madrid, the Mesón de los Reyes, where many of the personages who came to the court on business stayed. Though we had taken many walks in public places over the years, and I had often walked with him to his home, he had neither invited me inside for a libation nor suggested a drink at a tavern where we could be seen socializing as equals.
While we waited for our first dish to arrive, Don Luis said to me, “Pascual, I want to show you my appreciation for the work you’re doing for me. As of next month, your salary will be raised by one hundred maravedíes.”
“Thank you, thank you, Your Grace,” I said, shocked. “I kiss your generous hands a thousand times.” My salary was already higher than those of my pitiful coworkers.
“I want to make clear to you, Pascual, that this compensation will not be coming out of the treasury of the council. That would be embezzlement.”
I hurried to say, “I would never have thought such a thing, Don Luis. I—”
“Let me finish. I’m not done yet. I know perfectly well my conduct is above all reproach. I just want you to know that the extra maravedíes will be taken out of my own coffers. I will continue to fight assiduously against corruption in our public employees.”
As the soup arrived, I couldn’t help but wonder if it had ever occurred to him that paying me more than my coworkers, and keeping me busy tracking down Cervantes’s every move, was itself an abuse of his power. But I already understood that Don Luis Lara was the sort of man who would never see flaws in himself. Like all Spanish aristocrats, he thought his excrescencies smelled better than those of his inferiors in rank.
The rest of the evening we talked about the new volumes of poetry that had arrived at the city’s bookshops. Thanks to Don Luis, I could now purchase any new book that interested me, or copies of the classics I hadn’t read. I still kept up with the output of new poets, but I did it to please him, and to continue to have access to the world of writers—not because I drew the same pleasure I had experienced from poetry before I started working for Don Luis and learned how ruthless these sensitive men who wrote beautiful poems and novels could be.
* * *
Cervantes’s petition was denied, and soon after he was again on the road collecting grain. I didn’t find out what role Don Luis played in this scheme, and the truth was I didn’t want to know: that way it was easier for me to continue working as his spy. But after Cervantes experienced what must have come as a crushing failure, Don Luis seemed to have lost all interest in his activities. Regularly, I continued giving him my brief reports, which he listened to with a bored expression—making me feel as if I cared more about Cervantes than he did.
“What a sad creature the cripple of Lepanto has become,” Don Luis once said to me. “To think that at one time he was considered the great hope of Spanish letters. To think we were good friends! That miserable life he’s living will kill him before too long, you’ll see.”
As there was less cause for me to travel to Andalusia to keep abreast of Cervantes’s peregrinations, I became Don Luis’s factotum at the council. Yet he did not ask me to stop spying on the man I secretly began to call the Commissioner of Sorrows.
&n
bsp; Then, while retaining his position at the council, Don Luis was appointed as prosecuting attorney for the Holy Office. With a zeal that struck me as fanatical even for such a religious man, he became immersed in his work for the church. His responsibilities kept him in Toledo a great deal of the time; it must have been painful for him to spend so much time in the city where his wife lived in the Lara’s ancestral home, which she had converted into a hospice. Later, though he did not mention this to me, I learned through an acquaintance that young Diego Lara had abandoned his studies in theology at the Universidad Cisneriana in Alcalá de Henares to join an order of the Carmelites in Toledo. I learned, too, that a maid named Leonela, who had been in Don Luis’s service since the days of his marriage, had left his home to join Doña Mercedes. Was I now spying on Don Luis?
It was around this time that I became his confidant, which speaks volumes about his loneliness. He did not seem to have close friends, but like all of us he had a need to share his intimate thoughts with other human beings. In that regard we were similar: my position with Don Luis was the closest I came to intimacy with another person.
One day he said to me: “Pascual, I’m not sure I am the right person to act as prosecuting attorney for the Holy Office.” He explained: “Do you know that my main duty is to go before the tribunal of the Holy Office with the evidence I’ve gathered about the accused, and then to make a case for an auto-da-fé? It troubles me that the accused are not informed of the charges against them. Years can go by before these unfortunates are informed of the reasons they’re imprisoned.”
About the workings of the Holy Office I knew only what people whispered. No one dared to openly try to find out how the trials worked. I said nothing; I waited for him to unburden himself of the thoughts that pained him.
“I thought I was going to help the church purge Spain, and the Christian world, of the infidels who seek to undermine our religion with their heretical views.” Don Luis paused, his face locked in a scowl. “But from what I can tell, the only crime of some of these people is to be wealthy.”
So it was true what people whispered about the Holy Office: they burned so that they could eat.
“The worst part of it,” he continued, “is that I have to be present at the torture of these people and then their burning.” What he said next surprised me: “Pascual, I wonder, how long can I continue working for the Holy Office and exposing myself to so much suffering?”
That day I felt sympathy for him. Behind the cold façade he projected, and the nature of his hatred for Miguel de Cervantes—which seemed to be the motivating force of his life—he was not untouched by the suffering of others.
Like thousands of Madrileños, I had attended the autos-da-fé in the Plaza Mayor. They were one of the few free distractions for the people. There was a public procession of those found guilty, and when one was formally charged and his sentence was read, the mob jeered at the accused, threw garbage, and hurled insults. At the autos-da-fé the pestilential rabble released the anger they bottled up over their own wretched lives. These ceremonies lasted for hours, and many people brought food and drink to while away the time. At the end a Mass was said, followed by prayers for the souls of the damned. The condemned were executed later, out of public view, which incensed the masses, who felt cheated that they could not see the condemned being burned to death in public.
I have no sentimental notions about the human race; I believe we are God’s most flawed creations, that He was extremely tired and distracted the day He created Adam and Eve, and used His cheapest and most damaged fabric to fashion us.
* * *
I was once again trapped in my office, which felt like a kind of death. During those years, whenever Don Luis came to Madrid from Toledo, he invited me to dine at the Mesón de los Reyes. He counted on me to give him a detailed account of how the department worked in his absence. I reported on my coworkers, who were too broken by life, and lacking in imagination, to create any trouble. These creatures’ major source of happiness was to sit at their desks all day long, shuffling papers and wasting ink. At the council, everyone knew of my friendship with Don Luis and treated me as a superior.
At one of our dinners, I noticed that Don Luis looked more downcast than usual. All I could do was wait, and hope he would tell me what was troubling him. That night, he barely touched his food but drank more wine than I had ever seen him drink. This surprised me because he was not a man of excesses. We were still in the tavern well after midnight, and I became concerned that he was visibly inebriated, beginning to slur his words. I was reassured that his carriers were waiting for him outside. I tried to cheer him up by offering bits of gossip about my coworkers and the poetry world, spicing them up a bit to distract him from his gloomy mood. Though he was sitting across from me, it was as if he were so far away my voice could not reach him.
He stared at me with heavy eyes; his silence made me feel ill at ease. Then he said: “You never met my son.” Why had he referred to him in the past tense? I knew Friar Diego Lara lived in Toledo. This was most unusual: Don Luis never talked about his private life. Tears fell from his eyes. “Well,” he said, “Dieguito, my beloved son, the only joy I have in this world, left for the New World to convert the Indians. He sailed from Sevilla two weeks ago. Had I found out about his plan,” he continued, his words slowed by all the wine, “I would’ve stopped him. Oh, yes,” he exclaimed, shaking his fists, “I would’ve moved heaven and earth to keep him here in Spain!”
He broke down and started to weep, uncontrollably. It was so late that we were the only diners left in the Mesón de los Reyes. The young woman who had served us approached our table; with a flick of my hand I waved her away.
“Pascual,” he grabbed my hand and went on, “as long as Diego was in Spain, and I could see him, there was a spark of happiness in my life. Now, now,” he raised his voice and shook his head, “I probably won’t see him again. Oh Pascual, maybe God has punished me for the way I’ve lived my life.”
I said, “Don Luis, it’s very late. You should go home.”
With the help of one of the workers at the inn, I carried him outside to his chair. When I placed my hand on his rib cage to steady him, his bones protruded through his skin. The man we put in his chair, a grandee of Spain, had as much life left in him as a broken marionette.
* * *
Don Luis’s prediction about Miguel de Cervantes came true: late in 1592, I learned through one of my contacts that in the month of September Cervantes had briefly been thrown in jail in the village of Castro del Río. I barely understood the nature of the accusation, and getting the details secondhand did not help to clarify what had happened. But Cervantes had been accused of mishandling the royal accounts and taking some funds for his personal use. That was all I cared to know. I kept the news to myself since Don Luis hardly ever mentioned him anymore.
Two years after young Diego Lara sailed for the New World, the news reached Spain that he was killed and eaten by cannibals in the viceroyalty of New Granada. His shrunken head was found in a Motilón Indian village and sent to the governor of Cartagena, who forwarded it to Luis. All of Madrid was horrified.
Don Luis never returned to work. It was announced that Don Carlos Calatrava, a scion of a noble Spanish family, had been appointed to replace him. I feared for my future. If I were fired, how would I support my ancient mother and aunt? Would this man replace all of us (as was customary) with his own people and his friends’ friends? Would I ever see Don Luis again? Now that he had no use for me, would he still be interested in cultivating our acquaintanceship? I knew perfectly well that I could not approach him. I did, however, send a letter of condolence.
Long weeks went by. Then, for the first time in the years we had known each other, I received a note from Don Luis thanking me for my letter and, to my utter disbelief, inviting me to stop by his house on Sunday afternoon. After years of waiting to be invited inside the august Lara house, legendary for its elegance, the important paintings and magnific
ent tapestries hanging on its walls, I barely paid attention to the furnishings of the mansion as the majordomo led me to the library, a vast rectangular space, with shelves that went all the way to the ceiling and were accessible by a ladder leading to a metal corridor that wrapped itself around the room.
Don Luis sat by an open window facing the courtyard. As I approached, he greeted me. “Pascual, how good of you to come see me. Please sit down.”
I took my seat and noticed a horrible object encased in glass on the table beside Don Luis. I could not tear my eyes away from it. He noticed my interest.
“It’s little Diego’s head,” he said softly. “This is how the savages he was trying to bring into the fold of God repaid him.”
His voice was feeble, yet filled with anger. I felt nauseated, and fixed my gaze on Don Luis. I could not bear to look at the monstrous head again. It had been just a few months since the last time I had seen Don Luis, but if I had run into him on the street I might not have recognized him.
“Two days ago, I sent a letter to the cardinal resigning from my position as procuring attorney for the Holy Office,” he began. “You know, Pascual, at first I thought work would be a distraction. But it’s become apparent I can’t think about anything except the fate of my son. I’m not fit for this world anymore.” He sighed. “I spend my days praying in the family chapel, but praying cannot bring relief from my pain. It just helps me to pass the hours. I’ve lost my appetite; I cannot sleep; even to talk is often excruciating. I cannot bear the presence of most people. Unless they have gone through the tragedy of losing their only son, they will never know the depths of my sorrow. The only person I talk to with any regularity is Father Jerónimo, who was Dieguito’s teacher. He’s the only person who understands how I feel. He knows what I’ve lost.”
Cervantes Street Page 27