by Markus Orths
After the musical prelude an actor stepped onto the stage and made a speech in praise of his own troupe, who were about to start their performance. The man spoke of the ‘genius of the actors’, of the ‘wealth of content’, the ‘sublimity of the author’ and the unstinting effort that had gone into rehearsing this difficult play. His words were directed towards the benches at ground level. These were the seats taken by the so-called ‘musketeers’, who were more feared in theatrical circles than anyone else. They were traders and craftsmen—the shoemakers were the worst of all—who closed their shops for the afternoon, turned up for the performance with their cloaks, swords and daggers, and thought themselves great connoisseurs of theatre. The opening eulogy was designed to put them in a gracious mood, for their clapping or their whistles would decide the fate of the play. Indeed, many writers tried to secure the musketeers’ favour in advance by offering them money in return for applause—but quite often the musketeers retorted that they would judge for themselves whether the play was good or not.
Catalina had come not for the sake of the play but to observe the actors. She took note of where they placed the stresses in their lines, how they gesticulated, laughed and bellowed, cursed, wept or sang, and how they danced or strode across the stage. All at once she could see herself standing on the stage, or rather she felt as if she were looking out at the audience from the stage: in a flash she had changed places, and instead of looking up at the stage she was looking down from it, she was an actor, an actress, both at once, and suddenly she had no doubts: ‘This is what I want!“ It had come to her the previous day, following her conversation with Juan: had she not always, all her life, done what an actor does? Pretend, put on a show? She had done it in the convent and had been doing nothing else from the moment she had crawled out of the cave. Being someone she was not was what she did best. If you were as good at something as she was at acting, you had to make it your profession. As Juan’s assistant she would have to slave away for a hundred years to save up the money she needed. But as an actor, a born actor, the best of all possible actors, she would earn the money for the voyage in a matter of weeks. Her decision was made: she would stake everything on a single card, exploit her innate talent and become an actor.
Catalina set about it without delay. Coolly, unhesitatingly, certain of what she wanted. She asked Juan for some leave, and spent the next few weeks watching the theatre folk at their rehearsals. And not only watching: she helped them put up or change the sets, was there if anyone needed anything, and would always willingly lend a hand. She talked and ate with them, and the theatre people soon got to know and like her. She also attended every performance, absorbed everything she saw and then, finding a place where she could be alone, tried to copy what she had seen. And then she had a stroke of luck: her friend Juan Bautista de Arteaga was called to attend one of the actors, who was complaining of syphilitic symptoms. Instead of the usual lignum vitae, Juan prescribed mercury ointment and cures using the fumes of particular kinds of incense. He told Catalina that it was unlikely the man would be able to carry on acting for much longer. And Catalina turned this piece of information to her advantage. She learned the sick man’s part and memorized all his accompanying gestures. The part made Catalina laugh, being, as one might say, tailor-made for her: it was a part that called for no pretence, since she already carried it within her, underneath her clothes—for in this play the sick actor was playing a woman. Catalina even resuscitated her old voice. It was a bit rusty with disuse, but it still sounded better than the actor’s shrill, artificial falsetto. When, a few days later, he did indeed collapse during a rehearsal, Catalina, who was sitting somewhere in the background, could see the other cast members’ disconsolate faces: while they were sorry for their colleague and wished him a speedy recovery, they felt even sorrier for themselves, facing a financial loss for which there was no remedy. Catalina, apparently just happening to wander over to them, threw out a line of the part they thought was doomed and done for, and when the actors looked up at her with new hope in their eyes, she switched into her female voice and recited the key speeches.
She was relying on the effect of surprise, and soon she could tell that they had decided to have her. Only a few hours remained before the performance. Catalina had no time for anxiety, agitation or stage-fright. In any case, she was confident of achieving a triumph: she thought she would bowl them all over with her acting, the men and women in the audience would cheer and throw flowers, and in the next few weeks she would earn enough money to take her to the West Indies three times over.
But, as so often in life, the wish and the reality were two different things. For Catalina’s acting was unspeakably bad—or so the audience decided, at any rate. They had always been able to make out, under the female costume, the man who was acting the woman’s part. The humour of the role lay precisely in the fact that they knew there was a man inside that dress. But now there was no clear separation. “What’s going on?” the audience shouted. This was amateurish, an actor who blurred the distinctions, a hybrid, a mongrel, it was unheard-of! They wanted to see a man imitating a woman, not one who entered completely into the female role. They wanted to laugh at the disparity, not see it obscured. After Catalina’s first scene had ended amid whistles from the shoemakers, people began whistling every time she appeared. By the end of the first act, Catalina had to flee from the theatre, so great was the uproar. Before she was even properly outside, she closed that short chapter in her life with a vow never to set foot on the stage again. She knew that she had failed, that she had proved herself unable to do what she was born to do—to play the part of a woman. She was glad no one had seen who she really was, who really lurked beneath that layer of makeup and women’s clothes. She was glad no one knew that the person concealed under the costume was Francisco Loyola, assistant to the doctor. And it was to the doctor that she ran. She did not want to be with anyone else. Juan opened the door.
“Yes?” he said.
“It’s me,” said Catalina.
“Who are you?” asked Juan.
Catalina was still wearing her female clothes, together with heavy makeup—a base of white lead an inch thick, plus some lurid vermilion and pink—and a wig. She came in, pushed past Juan and took off her dress. Removed the wig, washed her face, wiped away the makeup and with it the woman, and stood there in her men’s breeches and shirt, which she had kept on under her costume.
“You?” asked Juan.
“Yes, it’s me,” said Catalina.
Then she noticed that Juan had something in his hand.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“This,” said Juan, “is my mother’s hair.”
Chapter nine
Fear, relief, horror
It was a duel: on one side stood Juan with every available medical remedy, with knowledge and theory, experience and books—and on the other, marsh fever, creeping, taking its time. At the start the illness was not alarming; it pulled out two clumps of his mother’s hair, neither more nor less. But then the marsh invaded her hands: a fever, they called it fever without knowing where it came from, a symbol—the very quintessence—of the unknown, a screech of mocking laughter hurled, in the name of all illness, into the faces of doctors. Not only did Juan’s mother’s hands grow stiff, she became so weak that she was bedridden throughout the long struggle, which dragged on for six months.
After the tried and tested milk treatments had indeed brought some relief, Juan began to massage his mother’s hands every two hours, very firmly, like someone kneading dough, because he thought it was vital to take immediate action and surrender nothing to the illness, least of all the patient’s hands. He applied compresses, prescribed sweat cures, baths and diets, and if one treatment proved ineffective he turned to another. He was almost constantly at his mother’s bedside, leaving it only to find out from his books what other cures had been tried by the doctors of his day. He sent his friends to the universities of Sahagun, Estella and Onate to enquire a
bout the latest research. Whenever one of them came back with news of some novel approach, Juan immediately tried it, following the instructions to the letter. He bombarded the fever with every remedy at his disposal, firing from all the barrels of knowledge and experience, keeping the illness on the run and engaging it in bitter battles until at last he forced it into retreat.
His mother’s condition improved. The fever subsided. But Juan knew that the campaign was not yet over. He could positively see the illness holding a council of war in his mother’s body, forging new weapons and gathering its forces. During this pause in hostilities, Juan poured all kinds of tinctures into his mother to arm her for the decisive engagement. Then he waited for two days at her bedside while she slept, breathing peacefully. Her temperature was normal and she lay there, with slightly reddened cheeks, as if she had no idea of the ordeal still to come.
It was on the third day of his vigil that Juan saw the first ulcer. It erupted from his mother’s skin like a molehill. At once Juan took measures to force it back; applied salves, herbs, dressings, uncovered his mother so that he could examine her for more ulcers, felt all over her body, regardless of how embarrassing it was for her to feel her son’s fingers between her legs. No sooner had he applied a dressing than the ulcer seemed to slip away elsewhere, forcing a way through the subterranean cavities of her body, indeed creating these as it ate its way through, excavating passages and tunnels so that it could keep throwing up its hills at different points on the skin. Meanwhile, the fever and gout returned with redoubled strength. Juan washed his mother, wiped off the new perspiration that instantly appeared on her freshly-washed body, changed the bedclothes and the chamberpot soiled with diarrhoea, gave her finely mashed food, and had not the heart to refuse her water to quench the raging thirst caused by her dropsy, although most doctors would have said this was bad for her. But what did they know? And he himself—what did he know? Juan could hardly think about a cure, he had his hands full simply applying dressings as fast as new lesions appeared; he could only try to limit the scope of the defeat, he could only hope that it would not be final. And then suddenly he fell asleep, just like that, from sheer exhaustion, with his head resting on his mother’s naked breast as she slept: his eyes fell shut, he could not help it.
What awakened him, after some hours of sleep, was a hideous smell. He opened his eyes and did not move, for beside him, inches away, just below his mother’s right collarbone he at last saw the enemy, the cause of the illness. The mole had stuck its head out of the rotten flesh and was looking boldly back at him. The first ulcer had burst open, and some thick yellowish-red pus was oozing out of the open wound. For the first time his opponent was showing his true face. And Juan knew that the battle was lost. Though he refused to acknowledge the fact, though he tried everything and left none of the ulcers that burst each day uncovered, though he soon had his mother so tightly swaddled that the skin itself nearly suffocated, though he called upon powers greater than himself—whatever he did, he always saw before him the face of the mole that had ploughed its way through his mother’s body and ambushed them both in their sleep.
When Juan finally gave up the fight, he could see that his mother had already made her peace with the enemy. Despite the pain, her eyes were filled with pride in her son, who had done everything he could. She had only a few more hours to live. Juan took off all the dressings, letting the frightful smell engulf him; he washed off the pus and blood, sent out for huge quantities of white lead and began to paint the wounds, one after another, while his mother lay on the bed, nodding because she could no longer speak. Finally he painted over the craters in her face and the holes in her forehead, applied pink and vermilion to her cheeks and mouth, and gave her lips an additional coating of wax to make them shine. He smoothed almond paste and pomade of ambergris into her hair. When he had finished, he put a bottle of rose water to his lips, took a mouthful of the liquid and sprayed his mother’s body with it, forcing it out between his teeth, Anna Bianca Arteaga closed her eyes for the last time after looking in the mirror at her white, smoothed face, and the last breath she drew was filled with a red flowery scent which disguised the foul odour of death.
Meanwhile, Catalina’s life was undergoing some changes. After her debacle in the theatre, she withdrew to lick her wounds, crouching abjectly in her room like a dog. The woman she had played had been rejected by the audience—on no account must the same thing happen to the man she was playing. To ensure that people continued to accept her as a man, she must be even more of a man than she had been up to now. And so she carefully nurtured Francisco, and did exercises which Ramon Baroja had taught her, to further develop and improve this body of hers. It suited her that Juan was neglecting his work as a doctor and requiring her help less and less often. It gave her more time for herself. However, after a while she realized that Juan was not merely neglecting his work, but had stopped doing it altogether. His patients were having to find another doctor—Juan was not available to anyone. He had no time. He was devoting every spare minute to his mother, or to searching out new ways of effecting a cure. It was obvious where this left Catalina. No doctor—no assistant. No visits to patients—no money for her. She urgently needed a new job.
This state of affairs had been going on for two months when she met her uncle by marriage, Rafael de Cerralta, in the street one Sunday. She recognized him at once. He had lived in San Sebastian for a long time, and as a child she had seen him every so often, even during her time at the convent. It was only three years since this uncle and his wife, a sister of Maria Perez’s, had moved to Vitoria; now he worked there as a doctor of theology, writing texts of his own, translating others from Latin, publishing commentaries on the Scriptures and earning his living—or so he claimed—by performing various commissions for the Church. Catalina’s parents knew better: they said he still lived on the money that had come from his wife, who was now dead.
Catalina gave a violent start when she saw him. But as he drew nearer and showed no sign of recognition, despite looking closely at her, boldness gained the upper hand and she spoke to him.
“Senor de Cerralta,” she said.
“How do you know my name?” asked her uncle.
“Who doesn’t know it?”
Her uncle eyed her, mistrustfully for the most part and yet— already somewhat flattered—with a quickly suppressed twitching at the corners of his mouth.
“I heard you were looking for someone who speaks Latin,” said Catalina, and she quoted a few lines from St. Thomas, St. Augustine and other Fathers of the Church that she knew by heart.
“Why should I—‘
“For the work that you have to manage all alone,” said Catalina. “I’m sure you could do with some help. And for me it would be the greatest honour to be permitted to work with you, the author of the famous Compendium theologiae.”
Now she had achieved her aim. Her uncle beamed. No one had ever come up to him before to talk about his work. He asked the young man when he had read the book.
“The first time was when I was eighteen,” said Catalina, “and the second time when I was twenty-one, a year ago.”
In reality she had only skimmed through it once in the convent, and could vaguely remember one or two of the chapter headings, which she now threw out to her uncle as additional pieces of bait. Eventually he said, “Come round at about midday tomorrow!” In this way Catalina gained an entree into her uncle’s house.
Once there, a curious misunderstanding arose. Catalina had been given—or so she thought—a position, a job, an assistantship similar, she assumed, to the one she had with Juan, but in any event, a post in which she would be paid. She had to sift through texts, read proofs or produce initial rough translations from Latin, but she also had to sit for hours listening to her uncle as he expatiated endlessly on every kind of religious topic. These hours were exceedingly boring, but at least, she reflected, it was easy money. However, it turned out that her uncle saw the situation quite differently: he
regarded this young man, Francisco Loyola, as a student, drawn to his house by an interest and a delight in theology. As far as Rafael was concerned, the theological lectures that he delivered to Francisco were the main thing, they were what mattered, what it was all about. Francisco Loyola, Rafael thought, was there to learn. And you did not pay a student—on the contrary, it was eminently fair that Francisco should do something in return for what he, the famous Doctor of Theology, was teaching him, and it was in this light that he viewed all the trifling tasks that the young man performed for him.
When a month had elapsed and Catalina asked, as a matter of course, for her first four weeks’ wages, Rafael de Cerralta burst out laughing. Undeterred, Catalina listed all the things that she had done for him during the past weeks. He replied by reminding her of his lectures, through which, he said, his pupil was acquiring knowledge which could one day be turned into hard cash, so that there could be no question of a wage here and now.