Catalina

by Markus Orths

  Miguel de Erauso was inspecting the new troops. He shook hands with each man, exchanging a few words with him, asking him his name and where he was from.

  “Let’s go,” said Juan.

  “What?” asked Catalina.

  “He’s welcoming the new soldiers. We’re not part of that.”

  “No. He’s welcoming all the passengers. Let’s stay‘

  As Miguel de Erauso drew nearer, Juan saw that a clerk was scribbling down the names of the new arrivals in a book.

  “There you are!”

  “What?”

  “Do you see them noting the names down in that book?”

  “So what?”

  “It’s a register of the new soldiers!”

  “Do be quiet, Juan!”

  Miguel had a thick beard, and a small nose. His eyes still had the same piercing brightness, but his body was considerably more powerful-looking than Catalina remembered it. A hat covered his hair. His clothes were new, as if he had bought them especially for the purpose of bidding the new men welcome. Catalina’s thoughts were in turmoil. Miguel was only a few steps away. Sometimes his eyes strayed from the task in hand and turned towards her, unmistakably, as if guided by some intuition. Now just one more hand separated them—it was a young man from Seville who had made a name for himself back home as a bullfighter. Catalina counted every word he spoke. Then at last Miguel reached her. He held out his hand. Stepped back a pace. Gave her a more searching look.

  “Where are you from?” asked Miguel.

  With all the others he had asked their name first. To Catalina, it was as if she could actually see time winding back in Miguel’s mind. He was searching for something in her eyes. Now he only needed to see through her clothes.

  “From San Sebastian,” said Catalina.

  Then Miguel stepped towards her and put his arms around her. Catalina could not let go of him. “It’s me,” she longed to whisper, and she held her brother tight until Miguel released himself from the embrace.

  “San Sebastian!” he said. “That’s my home town! Have you any news from there? Of my family? My father? My mother? My brothers and sisters?”

  Catalina said not a word.

  “What’s your name?” asked Miguel.

  To Catalina it seemed that her heart went into reverse and started to beat backwards.

  Chapter nineteen

  Wasted

  She watched her brother as he slowly moved on, away from her. He was asking all the men the same questions; innocuous, simple, straightforward questions about their origin and identity, questions they could all answer without thinking, because the answers were established facts and as much a part of them as their vital organs. Catalina had given her brother her false name. She had not lowered her mask. And Miguel de Erauso had invited his two ‘Basque friends’ to spend the evening at his house, saying that he would lay on a supper for them, that he wanted to hear everything, all the news from Euskal Herria and from San Sebastian, where his parents lived. Catalina had nodded. She was still nodding as Miguel disappeared from view. Before leaving the harbour she turned back just for a moment, her eyes lowered as though she had dropped something, a handkerchief or a coin.

  She spent the whole day in torment. Leaving Juan behind, she went in search of solitude. That’s not the end of the matter, she thought. How could it be? How could he have recognized her? Was it not presumptuous to expect him to? Eleven years: she could not blame Miguel. She must give him another chance. She had lived for this moment for too long to let it slip away just like that. This evening, she told herself, tonight, when we’ve eaten and drunk and talked together, three Basques in distant climes united by the bond of a common homeland, three citizens of Navarra in foreign parts, tonight, when darkness descends on the town, I’ll put Miguel, my brother, on the right track, give him signs and clues, for I want Miguel himself to take off my mask. There’ll be a high price to pay, I shall have to sacrifice Francisco Loyola, cast him off even though I’ve grown so fond of him, even though I’ve become him, but it must be done and I will do it.

  Catalina wandered around the town, went to the fortifications, sat down on a tree stump, looked at the water, dried her hands on her breeches, jumped up again and picked some plant stalks which she poked between her teeth, climbed a tree and looked out in all directions, then returned to the harbour, to the spot where the soldiers had been welcomed. Evening came, then night. She went back to their quarters, and found Juan already waiting to leave.

  “Where have you been all day?” he asked.

  “Let’s go,” said Catalina.

  “There’s everything here that you can think of,” Miguel said as he greeted them. “You won’t have seen food like this in a long while. And all the wine you want. Have a seat, we’ll be eating right away. But first—a toast! We shan’t run out of drink, I promise you. Boozing, my friends, is the only way to keep sane. So you want to join the army?”

  “Yes,” said Catalina.

  “No,” said Juan, “I don’t think the life of a soldier is what I want.”

  “There’s nothing finer,” said Miguel.

  “It’s quite a step from being a doctor to being a soldier.”

  Miguel pricked up his ears. “You’re a doctor?” he asked, and Juan nodded.

  While they were talking a slave had brought various pots and dishes of food into the dimly lit room. They piled their plates high and started to eat.

  “What’s this, Miguel?” asked Catalina.

  “Maize risotto. It takes a bit of getting used to.”

  “Perhaps you’re in need of a secretary?” asked Juan. “Someone to write everything down—the number of troops, the attacks, the battles, the casualties, descriptions of what happens. For posterity, for all those who come after us. It needs to be recorded.”

  “Why?” asked Miguel.

  “They’ll be interested in what we do. They’ll want to know how we acted, what mistakes we made.”

  “If you make mistakes out here you end up dead.”

  “Well, what do you say?”

  “A secretary ? Here? In Concepcion?”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, yes. I could do with a secretary who can bandage wounds and pull arrows out of men’s bodies.”

  And what’s this?“ Catalina asked again.

  “The strongest wine you can get. It tastes bitter to start with, but after three glasses it’s like honey.”

  Catalina drank.

  “All the soldiers who turn up here are sent to Paicabi for a few years. To ensure the security of the district, so they say. But I can tell you, it’s a nightmare. There’s nothing to do there. You just sit around waiting for something to happen, but nothing does. Nothing at all. Not a single Indian tries to attack you. And you can’t go hunting for them either. The Indians are too strong and we’ve got too few troops. The only killing you can do there is killing time.”

  Catalina was observing her brother closely. That coarse laugh. Furrows in his brow. The thick, woolly hair. The fleshy hands which at that moment were lifting a chicken leg to his mouth. His teeth, tearing the skin and meat from the bone.

  “You’ve changed,” she suddenly said.

  Miguel choked. “What? Who? Me?” he cried.

  “Yes, you,” said Catalina.

  “You know him?” cried Juan.

  “You know me?” cried Miguel.

  “I saw you once. I was young at the time. I was standing on the quayside, watching the San Marco sail. I dreamed of being on a ship like that myself one day. Your face stuck in my memory. You were looking back at the shore as though you were searching for someone. Who were you searching for?”

  “How on earth have you managed to remember a thing like that?” asked Miguel, wiping his mouth.

  “My memory,” said Catalina, stabbing the air with each separate word as if it were a needle, “my memory has never let me down.”

  “I can’t believe that! It was more than ten years ago!”

&nbs
p; “If you have a dream you remember every detail.”

  “I did look back at the shore,” Miguel said, “because my family were standing there, waving me goodbye. I can hardly remember what their faces looked like.”

  “They were all at the harbour?”

  “I imagine so.”

  “All of them?”

  “What’s the point of all these questions, Francisco?” asked Juan.

  “What are you getting at?” asked Miguel.

  “I need some more wine!“ shouted Catalina.

  “That’s the way,” said Miguel, refilling her glass. “Now tell me everything, Francisco! Do you know my family?”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Have you got news of them?”

  “I know certain things.“

  “About my parents?”.

  About your sister.“

  “Which one do you mean?”

  “Catalina. Do you still remember her, Miguel?”

  “Well, vaguely. When I left San Sebastian she was just a child. She must be over twenty now. I haven’t thought of her for a long time. And yet I was the one who pulled her out of our mother’s belly.”

  “How was that?” asked Juan.

  “We were on an outing. Mother was heavily pregnant. The baby started coming although it wasn’t due. I had to set to and pull it out of my mother’s innards. It was dreadful. I had nightmares about it for ages. The blood, all that stuff, even shit, my mother’s shit, everything just gives. I had to bite through the umbilical cord with my teeth. I still had the taste of it in my mouth years later. And after that—yes, some memories are dimly coming back now—after that she clung to me like a burr. She really did, she would only let me change her, she’d only sleep in my bed, only do what I told her. I was glad when I could finally get away, to the New World.”

  “And that’s all?” asked Juan.

  “Out here you forget things quickly.”

  “How old was she then?” asked Juan.

  “I’ve no idea, six, seven, eight…so tell me, Francisco, what about her? What’s the news about my sister?”

  Catalina took a bite out of a piece of meat.

  “Come on, let’s have it!”

  Catalina chewed the meat and swallowed it.

  “Is she dead?” asked Miguel.

  Catalina was staring into space.

  “She died?”

  Catalina nodded.

  “When?”

  Catalina shrugged.

  “When, roughly?”

  About…about three years ago,“ she said.

  “What of?” asked Miguel.

  “You obviously aren’t much upset by the news,” said Catalina.

  “I’ve been out here for ages. What do you think can still upset me?”

  “It was an illness,” said Catalina.

  “Did she suffer much?” asked Juan.

  “A quick death.”

  “And apart from that?” asked Miguel.

  “What do you mean, apart from that?” Catalina threw the question back at him.

  “What about my parents? My father? Don’t tell me he’s still alive. He must be an old man by now.”

  “I don’t know. He was still alive a few months ago.”

  “Then I’ll just have to go on waiting.”

  “What for?”

  “For a piece of news that basically doesn’t interest me any more.”

  “I don’t understand you,” said Juan.

  “You’ll understand all right when I tell you the whole story.”

  As Miguel went on eating, he told them all that had happened to him since he had left his homeland. Catalina ate too, silently, full of her own thoughts but still following every word her brother said, and feeling, with every word, a little further removed from him, and from Juan too.

  After two months at sea and weeks of travelling across country,“ Miguel said at last, ”I reached the place I was meant to go to, and became the leaseholder of a mine.“

  “In Potosi‘?” asked Juan.

  “Exactly.”

  “Do you know a man called Miguel Loyola?” cried Juan. “He must have had a mine up there at one time.”

  “Miguel Loyola? Never heard of him. Why?”

  “We’re looking for him. He’s Francisco’s brother.”

  “Yes,” said Catalina. “My brother.”

  “No, but up there in Potosi there are as many people as there are stones.”

  Miguel continued his story. On his arrival in Potosi he had been met by his grandfather, who had been charged with the running of the mine until then. Miguel soon became aware that something was seething inside his grandfather: anger, hatred, directed against none other than his own son, Miguel’s father. For he was enjoying a life of leisure in San Sebastian, where it was warm and pleasant, while making his own father, and now his own son, slog their guts out for him in the freezing cold of Potosi. At first Miguel defended his father, quarrelled with his grandfather, called him a liar, a slanderer—no, Miguel shouted, it was just the opposite, his father had sent him here because this country, because the New World was the most wonderful of all imaginable worlds, because this was where life could ripen to its greatest beauty. In those days he still used that kind of flowery language. His grandfather laughed at his naivety and said he would soon see for himself what sort of a life awaited him here.

  Miguel threw himself into the work, still seeing everything through the rose-tinted spectacles that his father had placed on his nose. This went on for over a month, until he could no longer avoid facing the truth. “It really was a terrible time. Eight whole years. It was obvious that the mine was long past its heyday. There wasn’t much to be made out of it any more. Our profits were pitiful. A lot of the mine owners were getting richer and richer, but we were getting poorer. As well as handing over a fifth of what we made to the Crown, I had to send the greater part to my father. When the mine was finally shut down—my grandfather was dead by then—I left Potosi. Since then I’ve always been glad to meet any Basque who comes from San Sebastian, because I hope he’ll be bringing news of my father’s death. More wine?”

  “What about your brothers and sisters, and your mother?” asked Catalina.

  “Time has grown like a layer of bark between me and them,” Miguel said, looking for something on the table. Then he murmured, “The stuff, and was about to turn round to the slave but then stopped. ”Listen!“ he said. ”Have you ever owned slaves?“

  “What, me?” asked Catalina. “No.”

  “I’ll show you what to do. Wait. He’s standing back there in the corner. Do nothing yet. Don’t look straight at him. He doesn’t deserve your attention. Act as though your mind is really on other things. Above all, remember to spare your voice as much as possible. In the art of giving orders, perfection is when no words are needed. Watch this. He’ll do whatever you want. I’ll show you. Give me your hand.”

  “My hand? Why?”

  “Don’t ask questions. Give it me!”

  “Here you are.”

  “Right. Now you hold your hand out horizontally, quite far out, that’s it, palm upwards. You hold it away from your body. This is only practice, so point it towards me this time. And now quickly flip the four fingers upwards, not the thumb, with a little jerk. If your arm is pointing in his direction he’ll come running at once, you’ll see. Now wait, we haven’t finished yet. Once you’ve got him here you also have to know how to get rid of him, otherwise he’ll be standing beside you the whole time, and we don’t want that. You let the lower part of your arm hang down and give your wrist a quick shake, moving it sideways a bit, in a casual, absent-minded way as if you were shooing away a fly, and, I can tell you, he’ll be gone at once. Yes. That’s right. So here we go. Give it a try. He’s over there. That’s it, hold your hand out, keep it held out towards him, now, don’t catch his eye, that’s right. Do you see how he responds in a flash, how he comes running? And now he’s trotting off again. Do you want to have another go
? It’s dead easy. We forgot to ask for the stuff.”

  While Catalina summoned the black slave for a second time and Miguel said, “The stuff” and dismissed the man again, Juan’s face gradually darkened.