by Markus Orths
“This isn’t like you,” he told Catalina.
“What are you talking about?” she asked.
“Come on, don’t be a wet blanket,” said Miguel.
“What do you mean?” asked Catalina, but she was not even looking at Juan as she spoke.
“I mean that fight in Trujillo,” said Juan, “and the rebellion in Potosi. All of a sudden you want to be a soldier. And now this?”
“What do you mean?” asked Catalina again.
“Yes, what do you mean?” asked Miguel.
“I don’t know, but shouldn’t we be satisfied if he serves us? Is it necessary to humiliate him?”
“To humiliate a person,” said Miguel, “he has to know what humiliation is. We can be sure that our slave here doesn’t. Take it from me, I’ve had plenty of experience with these…they’re even lower than the Indians.”
“More wine!” said Catalina.
“I’ve had enough,” said Juan, standing up.
“I’m staying,” said Catalina.
“Are you sure?” asked Juan.
Catalina nodded.
“It’s late,” said Juan.
Catalina shrugged.
“You’ll find your way back?”
Catalina did not bother to answer.
Miguel gave Juan a parting glance and raised his hand in farewell. Juan waited another moment for a word from his friend. When none was forthcoming, he left the room.
“I can see two of you,” Catalina said to Miguel, after Juan had gone.
“That’s the wine, going round and round inside you.”
“I want some more.”
“That’s good.”
“The wine…‘
“It helps you not to see anything.”
And then came the stuff: a substance ground to a mushy, yellowish-white paste. Miguel smeared some of it under his tongue, allowed it to melt, then chewed it and spat it out onto a plate. Catalina followed his example. Soon both of them were reduced to helpless laughter, they did not know what they were saying, did not know what they were hearing, I’m your sister,“ brayed Catalina, and Miguel almost choked with laughter. ”My sister,“ he roared. ”I disguised myself,“ laughed Catalina. ”Disguised,“ repeated Miguel, thumping on the table. ”I was looking for you, my brother,“ cried Catalina. ”Your brother,“ Miguel repeated like a kind of echo. ”I found you in Concepcion,“ whooped Catalina and in a single movement swept all the dishes off the table. ”It’s all on the floor now!“ spluttered Miguel, clutching his stomach in a paroxysm of laughter. ”This is good stuff,“ yelled Catalina, reaching out her arms across the table. ”Then take me to your bosom, sister of mine,“ chortled Miguel, and seizing one another by the shoulders they pulled each other up from their seats. Catalina tried to move her hands up from his shoulders towards his neck, but she had no strength or co-ordination, her hands only twitched feebly, and she fell back onto the seat. ”I need some more of that stuff,“ she said, ”You shall have it,“ yelled Miguel, and the two of them chewed and ate the mush and spat it across the room, though sometimes Catalina could not even find the strength to spit and so she let the stuff slide down her throat, a lump that pressed heavily against the walls of her stomach, and before long a darkness descended upon her eyes. It was like the closing of a curtain.
Part three
Chapter twenty
Many things come to an end
Francisco Loyola woke up. His head had crashed down onto the table, just like that, without his arms forming a protective cushion. His right cheek was lying in a pool of liquid. There was a powerful stench of wine and vomit. Francisco scoured his brain for any scraps of memory that might remain there. Catalina. A burr. Juan. Miguel. Two faces. Now he was by himself. He stood up. Felt as if his head were still on the table and somebody was sticking a fork into it. Put a hand to his forehead. It was the first time he had let himself go like that. He had never dared before, for fear that if he was not in control of his faculties he might do something that would give him away. Taking slow, careful steps he crossed the room.
On the ground floor he met no one at all. He plunged his head into a basin of water and swept his wet hair back. Then he went upstairs, holding on to the wall and counting the stairs as a distraction from the hammer-blows pounding behind his forehead.
At the top he saw five doors. Without bothering to knock, he opened them, one after another. The first two rooms were empty. In the third Miguel de Erauso was lying in bed with a woman. They were both asleep, although the room was already light. A blanket engulfed the woman’s hips and legs. The upper part of her body, which was naked, was uncovered. She was lying on her back, her right arm under her neck, her left hand on her navel. Just then her eyes opened and met Francisco’s. Very calmly he put a finger to his lips. The woman did not stir but simply lay there staring at the man standing before her. Francisco turned and left the room. When he was downstairs again he heard the patter of bare feet.
“Wait!” the woman called.
“What is it?” asked Francisco.
“You’re Francisco Loyola?”
“If you say so.”
She had only wrapped a thin blanket round herself.
“What’s your name?” asked Francisco.
Ana de Erauso.“
“You’re his wife?”
“Have been for five years.”
“There’s something I wonder about, Ana.”
“What do you wonder about?”
“I wonder where you were last night.”
“I went to bed early. I wasn’t feeling well.”
“Why didn’t he say anything about you?”
“Perhaps he did, and you’ve forgotten.”
“Or perhaps not. Perhaps you just don’t matter enough for him to mention you.”
“What makes you say a thing like that?”
“You love your husband, do you?” Francisco did not know where this question came from. There was an unpleasant lump in his stomach. Ana said nothing, but held the blanket closed around her neck. “And nothing can come between you?” asked Francisco. They exchanged a look which lasted longer than necessary. “I’ll come and visit you both quite often,” he said at last, then nodded and left the house.
He was not thinking that this was really about Miguel, about a devastating disappointment, about having reached his goal only to see it tip over like a bucket of water. He was not thinking that it had all been in vain, his whole life, the long search for what had proved to be nothing. He was not thinking of how fondness can suddenly turn to hatred. No, Francisco did not think at all. He acted. But he took things slowly. He was in no hurry. He proceeded one step at a time.
First he did the opposite of what one might have expected: he set out to curry favour with Miguel. With an unfailing instinct for what would please, he visited Miguel as often as he could, fell in with whatever Miguel proposed, and even anticipated his wishes; he laughed when Miguel laughed, drank and put the stuff into his mouth whenever Miguel did. “I want,” Francisco told him, “to be a soldier.” And Miguel arranged matters so that his fellow Basque was not sent to Paicabi like all the rest but was able to stay under his own command in Concepcion. Three weeks went by, during which something like friendship began to develop between them—or so Miguel thought, at any rate. Francisco saw it quite differently, for he was merely preparing the ground for what he really intended.
He was ensnaring his patron’s wife, exchanging ever more lingering looks with her, and not only looks but also fleeting contacts, hands brushing against each other, a leg resting against the other’s leg under the table and not pulling away, a secret caress when they shook hands, words full of hidden meaning when they said goodbye. Francisco was confident of success. He saw the expectancy in Ana’s eyes and knew that he only needed to fix a time. But his dealings with Adeida de Cardenas had taught him to keep his victim dangling.
Juan, for his part, soon realized that something was happening to Francisco. He was changing, not gra
dually but rapidly, and in a way that Juan did not like at all. Francisco seemed to have lost all interest in him: he never asked him anything, hardly talked to him any more, and took notice of him only when absolutely necessary; when Juan spoke to him or asked him a question. It was almost as if Juan had died as far as he was concerned. This change dated from the moment they had disembarked at Concepcion. After three weeks of this treatment Juan decided to make his friend explain himself. They were up on the ramparts of the fortress.
“Francisco?” asked Juan.
“What do you want?” He sounded irritable.
“I was wondering about your brother.”
“My brother? What about him?” Francisco groaned.
“Aren’t you looking for him any more? Ever since we arrived here in Concepcion you’ve not even mentioned him.”
“No, that’s all done with.”
“Why?”
“He’s dead. I made enquiries. He was in the Chilean army. One of the soldiers knew him well. My brother was killed in battle. Fighting the Indians. There’s no doubt about it. The search is over.”
But Francisco’s words did not ring true to Juan. He rattled them off glibly, as if he had learnt them by heart. There was something about them—something prepared, contrived—that made Juan suspicious.
“I don’t believe a word of it,” said Juan.
“Neither do I,” replied Francisco, with the utmost composure.
With an effort Juan managed not to raise his voice, but all the pent-up anger of the last few weeks burst out of him as he hissed, “Why are you lying?”
Francisco said nothing.
“We’ve come all this way together,” said Juan. “I want to know what’s going on. Why you treat me—‘
“How do I treat you?”
“As though I simply weren’t here any more.”
“You know, Juan, I think a lot about whether we are here at all.”
“What do you mean?”
“The one thing I want now is not to have to talk any more.”
“You’re just making it easy for yourself, Francisco. But some things need to be talked about. There are people who care about you.”
“Are there really?”
“On the ship to Concepcion you said we should stay together whatever happened.”
Francisco looked out to sea through one of the embrasures. “I wish the Dutch would come,” he said. “Right now. Corsairs. I wish I could see them. I would throw myself into the water and swim out to them. Then I would climb aboard and cut down every man who got in my way. Until one of them killed me. How many people have you killed in your life?”
Juan made no answer.
“How did it make you feel?” Francisco asked, but he was asking himself, not Juan, for before Juan had a chance to reply he went on. “I felt that the strength of the dying man was flowing into my body. After killing him I was more than just myself.”
He was still gazing out to sea.
“You’ve changed,” said Juan.
“Have I really?”
With these words Francisco stepped closer to Juan, as close as he could, as if he wanted to put his face as near to him as possible, and this gave Juan a strangely distorted impression of it, he actually felt that this was a different person, and he was unnerved by the look that Francisco gave him.
“You know nothing, Juan,” whispered Francisco, “you know nothing at all.”
During his last night in Concepcion Juan did not sleep a wink. Some days earlier he had gone to see the Bishop of Huamanga, who had come to Concepcion to officiate at a mass baptism. The bishop had appointed Juan as his personal physician, and they were to leave the next day. Francisco knew nothing of all this. Juan wondered whether he should say goodbye to his former friend, as he now thought of him, or simply leave surreptitiously, without telling him. The thought of never seeing the boy again so upset him that he spent the whole of that sleepless night reliving all their shared experiences. He sat down and wrote a letter to Francisco. Just before daybreak he crept into Francisco’s room and tucked the letter into one of his boots. As he straightened up and glanced at Francisco’s face one last time, he saw something gleaming. Loyola’s eyes were open, reflecting the faint moonlight.
Are you awake?“ asked Juan.
“I haven’t been able to sleep for a long time.”
“Won’t you tell me what’s wrong?”
“I’m grown up now.”
“But that makes no difference.”
“I’ve become a man.”
“What has that to do with us?”
Francisco avoided Juan’s eyes.
“I don’t understand you,” said Juan.
Are you leaving?“ asked Francisco.
“Yes, I’m going now.”
“Where to?—No. Don’t tell me. You won’t have fond memories of me. I wasn’t what you thought. These things happen. People are deceived in each other. People disappoint each other. Leaving is the best thing you can do, Juan. Then we’ll be alone again. On our own, each of us. And besides, by going you’re offering me a possibility for the future.”
“What sort of a possibility?”
“The possibility of searching. Perhaps one day I’ll decide to search (or you.”
“But—‘
All my life I’ve been searching for someone. Ever since I can remember. Now the search is over, and I find that hard to cope with. So go now, Juan.“
Francisco closed his eyes, the gleam disappeared, and he said nothing more, did not get up to embrace Juan, simply lay there and listened as Juan crossed the room, stepping carefully to avoid bumping into anything that might be in the way. Francisco heard Juan open the door and disappear, like an exhaled breath, into the immeasurable vastness of the New World.
As if he had needed that final spur, Francisco took action the very next morning. But first, from a small package, he got out a needle and thread and a scrap of material and sewed Juan’s letter into the inside of his doublet, without reading it. This was not the right time. Besides, he could imagine what the letter said, and that was better than actually reading it. Francisco had learned by now that imagination is less painful than reality, that a picture is more beautiful than its model. Now he wanted to do what he had to do and then disappear somewhere where he was unknown.
He took up a position close to the house where Miguel lived with his wife, and waited. The sun moved slowly across the sky. Francisco’s eyes never left the door. He thought of Juan, who must have left by now, for some unknown destination. It’s a good thing he’s not here, Francisco thought. Relief made his throat tighten. At last Ana de Erauso came out of the house. Francisco followed her, like a shark following a trail of blood. When Ana was far enough from the house for no one to be able to see her, Francisco quickened his pace. Now he was walking close behind her. She seemed not to notice him.
He took her by the arm and said: ‘Ever since I first saw you, Ana, I’ve been able to think of nothing else.“ And then it all seemed to come pouring out of him—never had he seen anyone more beautiful, her eyes, her mouth, her walk—he reeled off all the compliments he knew a woman wanted to hear. He had thought himself into the condition known as being in love. Without feeling the least trace of it within himself, he knew exactly what it looked like from the outside, the thing they called ’love‘—the gestures, the smile, the look, the agitation, the quick, shallow breathing while he spoke, the suffocating fear of being rejected, the churning emotions which made his voice tremble.
“I’ll be alone this evening,” Ana suddenly interrupted him. “Come at nine o’clock.”
That evening she was waiting at her front door and let Francisco in. Ana knew that they had about three hours. They went up the stairs, into the bedroom, and Ana immediately started talking about the image that she could not get out of her head, of herself naked in bed, and of him, the stranger, right there in the room, with wet hair and a finger to his lips; her dreams, her fantasies, her desires. By this time Franci
sco had pulled her onto the bed, unfastened her dress, his hand had slipped through the layers of underclothes and his fingers were going down to her private parts to do what he had so often done to himself. It was as if he had been practising for months in the rehearsal room of his own body, preparing himself both practically and emotionally for his big scene, and was now at last stepping onto the stage to show what he could do. And Francisco licked up everything, every drop of perspiration, every bodily fluid, the traces left behind by his own saliva; his tongue poked its head into every orifice as though looking for a place to make its home. Francisco gave Ana no chance to do anything, no intervals in which to recover, just one arousal after another.