Cervantes Street (19 page)

El Dorador whispered in my ear
:
“I can help you and a small party of men escape. I have abjured my conversion to Islam. I want to return to Spain and to our faith, the one true religion. I curse the day I set foot in this land of stinking Mohammedans.” Then he showed me a cross he carried under his robe; he kissed it many times, as tears rolled down his face. He wiped his tears with the back of his hand. My desperation to escape Algiers made me blind. Besides, I had imbibed too much wine to be a good judge of the situation: El Dorador had convinced me of his sincerity.

“I want five hundred gold ducats per man to arrange your escape. Your chances of succeeding improve if only a small number of men are involved,” the renegade explained. “I won’t take more than eight of you.”

I knew a few rich Castilians in the bagnio who would be eager to take the risk, who could loan me the money in exchange for arranging their escape. I approached first Don Fernando de Caña, a wine merchant from Castile. He agreed to loan me the five hundred ducats on condition I paid him after I had settled again in Spain and found work. I asked him to finance Sancho’s escape too. Don Fernando seemed to balk at this suggestion. “We need a man like him, Your Grace,” I said. “Sancho is famous for his resourcefulness, and for his ability to sniff food miles away.”

I convinced Don Fernando. It was an exceedingly large debt to assume, but I gave him my word I would repay him. I would worry later about how I would come by so much money. Who could foretell the inscrutable future, anyway? In the meantime, I had to do whatever was necessary to arrange my escape. It fell upon me to organize the flight from Algiers. In addition to Sancho, Don Fernando, and his son Don Fernandito, I decided to enlist the Hinojosa twins, two members of the Spanish nobility, who had been studying painting in Italy; and the young hidalgo Don Diego de Mendiola, son of a wealthy merchant.

From that moment on, anything anybody said to any of us, any look they gave us, was reason enough to become suspicious. If somebody we knew did not greet us when we ran into him, that person immediately became a potential informer. The longer it took for us to leave Algiers, the greater became the possibility of something going wrong. We decided not to have verbal communication in the bagnio amongst ourselves, and never to congregate in the casbah more than two of us at a time. We agreed that all communication had to be verbal; that nothing could be put in writing; that I alone would have dealings with El Dorador.

For the first time in my life I understood what was meant by “sleeping with one eye open.” One night, soldiers burst into the sleeping quarters and took away a number of Spaniards. Did the soldiers suspect anything? Did they know there was a conspiracy afoot and they were trying to identify the conspirators? I could not betray my anxiety at such a crucial moment. Whatever misgivings I had, I had to keep them to myself. I could not share my doubts, even with Sancho. It fell on me the responsibility of assuaging everyone’s fears. And it turned out the Spaniards were members of a band of thieves.

* * *

The holy month of Ramadan fell in January that year. According to El Dorador, this was the most propitious time to attempt our escape. We began our preparations. First, he took me to inspect a secluded grotto in a rocky, steep hill not far from Algiers. I was satisfied with its size and relative inaccessibility. Seven men could hide there and wait for the caravan of Tuareg nomads who, every year at the end of January, camped in the Roman ruins of Tipasa on their journey to the city of Oran, the Spanish colony to the west of Algiers. They traveled there to sell and trade the weapons they made, along with impressive brass and copper ornaments and utensils. This particular sect of Tuaregs practiced their own brand of Islam and did not observe many religious holy days and rites. El Dorador would meet us in the cave with horses and provisions and then lead us as far as Tipasa. At which point we would have to settle on a price with the Tuaregs, to allow us to join their caravan and enjoy their protection. Don Fernando agreed to finance that part of the journey too.

The melancholy mooing of the conch shell, used as a horn, awakened all Algerians hours before dawn on the first day of Ramadan. Somnolent Muslims hurried to eat and drink before four in the morning. The rest of the day, with the exception of the sick, they fasted. But as soon as the sun dropped behind the horizon of the Sahara, people lay on their carpets to consume the delicacies that were specially prepared during the festivities. After the strict fast of the day, Algerians ate until their stomachs were so full they had to take a digestive nap. By ten o’clock, they went out on the streets for the nocturnal revelry. The guards in the bagnio observed this custom too.

During Ramadan, the casbah blazed at night with torches and crowds carrying lamps. Vocal, guitar, flute, and drum music were heard everywhere. Algerians congregated in the plazas to watch the women dancers, whose undulant movements infused the air with their sensuality. The clapping which accompanied the dancers brought memories of the Spanish castanets; the rhythmic sounds swelled up until it seemed to pour out of every interstice of the casbah, and spiral toward the heavens. The snake-charmers’ cobras swirled out of their baskets and swayed hypnotically with slithering black tongues to the rhapsodic flute music. Gaggles of children rushed screaming from one act to the next. Even slaves were captivated by the enthralling atmosphere.

As the month wore on, it was apparent the fasting had taken a toll on the Muslims. The late-night eating orgies affected their digestion, and the sleep deprivation showed on their drooping faces and the shadows under their eyes, as they stumbled in a daze through the city during the day. Toward the end of Ramadan, Algiers was a city of disoriented insomniacs with bad breath.

The middle of the fourth week of the festivities, El Dorador received word that the caravan of Tuaregs was just a day’s travel from Tipasa. The Tuaregs were famous for the fast pace of their travels through the desert. Once they were ahead of us, it would have been impossible to join them. We decided to escape the next day before the caravan moved on. We would slip out of Algiers during the first evening call to prayer, when the gates of the city were still open and the guards had their heads against the prayer mats. We counted on the severe exhaustion and indigestion of the guards to keep them from noticing our disappearance until the next day.

The night before our escape I could not sleep at all. What if things went wrong? Was I ready to die tortured, unrealized as a man? Other than fighting at Lepanto, I hadn’t accomplished any of my great dreams. If Hassan Pasha impaled me, what would have been the meaning of my life? What would I have left behind to be remembered by?

My compatriots and I prayed silently throughout the night, making sure that we did not arouse anyone’s suspicions by any erratic behavior. I lay still for hours with my eyes closed, praying to the Virgin to bless our scheme.

During the last call to prayer before the gate of Bab Azoun was closed for the night, we slipped out of Algiers, one at a time. Once we were outside the city walls, covered by the falling darkness, we hurried as fast as our chained feet would permit us for the nearby forest where we crouched in silence in the brush. When the sun finished setting, we scrambled up the hill while the famished guards, weakened and hallucinating from almost a month of daily fasting, gorged themselves. I led the way to the grotto.

We arrived at the cave. El Dorador, who was supposed to be waiting with tools to break the irons around our ankles, provisions for the journey to Tipasa, and horses, was not there to meet us.

“He has betrayed us to ingratiate himself with the beylerbey,” Don Fernando de Caña said. “Weren’t we warned never to have any dealings with renegades?”

“Cervantes, I thought you said we could trust this man. You told us he wanted to go back to Christianity,” said Don Eduardo Hinojosa.

Before the argument made us forget we were friends not foes, I replied, “I take total responsibility for what has happened.”

“Not to disrespect you, Miguel, but what good is that to us now?” asked Don Julio Hinojosa.

Sancho broke his silence. “Maybe El Dorador has been detained. In unity there’s force, my squires. Fighting among ourselves will only make matters worse. It’s quite possible he’s on his way here right now. In the meantime, let’s wait inside.”

Barbary lions roared in the bushes, and that was enough to make us listen to Sancho’s counsel. We went into the gaping hole and Sancho lit a torch. The inside of the cave was a rectangular space made of solid rock. We gathered in the front of it; in back, there was a shallow tunnel where a few men could fit in if they crouched.

It was agreed that we needed a lookout. Don Diego de Mendiola offered to climb the rock above the grotto and serve as a watchman. He went to his post armed with two loaded pistols and a dagger.

The night was getting cold and the torch was not enough to warm us. We started a fire with some pieces of wood and mounds of dry leaves we found inside the grotto, and huddled around it. The warmth of the fire was comforting, but we were hungry and thirsty. Sancho moved to the back of the tunnel and sat with his legs spread apart. With a rock, he began to hammer his chains with concentration and patience. Except for this pounding, we were silent.

We heard someone approaching, and Don Diego burst into the grotto showing great agitation. “They are coming to take us back to Algiers!” he announced.

“Let’s fight the temptation to become alarmed,” I said. “How do you know it is not El Dorador approaching with the horses?”

“Dozens of lighted torches are coming up the mountain. It looks like a small army, Cervantes. I’m afraid Arnaut Mamí has sent the Janissaries to get us.”

Every one of us shuddered. “We will not surrender,” Don Fernandito de Caña declared. “We’ll fight them.”

“Not to be disrespectful,” Sancho said, “but if we fight them, we’ll be slaughtered like lambs.”

“If they take us back, they’ll torture and then kill us, anyway,” reminded one of the Hinojosa twins.

“If we flee right now we might have the good fortune to find another cave where we can hide,” Don Fernando proposed.

I knew it was too late for that. “Let’s commend ourselves to Our Lord and pray for His mercy,” I said. I remembered my experience on
El Sol
when Arnaut Mamí had captured us. “If we are taken back alive, there’s a chance we’ll live.” I kneeled on the rocky ground.

“There!” Sancho exclaimed, startling me. “I broke the damn chains. I’m free.” He crawled to the front of the grotto, shook first one leg then the other. He took a few tentative steps, as if he had forgotten how to walk without chains. “I’m going, Miguel,” he said, “come with me. We’ll cut your chains as soon as we can get far enough away from here.”

“I can’t go, my friend,” I told him. “I can’t abandon our men. I’m responsible for this situation we find ourselves in. I should have listened to you and never trusted a renegade. I have to stay and assume the consequences. It’s the only honorable thing to do.”

“El Dorador fooled all of us, Miguel, not only you,” Sancho countered. “Who will come with me?”

“If you leave by yourself, without a guide or provisions to travel in the desert, you’ll die,” I said to Sancho. “If we stay together we have a better chance of surviving.”

Sancho shook his head. “As my late master the venerable Count of Ordóñez used to say,
Sumus quod sumus
. I’d rather be eaten by the Barbary lions, or die of thirst, or stung by scorpions, or bitten by snakes, or torn to pieces by hyenas, or fill the stomachs of wolves, than to continue this insufferable life of exhaustion, humiliation, sickness, and freezing nights. I’ve had enough of it. Basta ya!”

I got up and embraced him.

“Our paths will cross again, Miguel,” Sancho said. “I’m sure of that. And never forget,
Festina
lentil
. You know what I mean, don’t you?”

“I do,” I said.

I never saw Sancho’s stout feet exert such speed as when he ran away from the grotto, up the hill. Soon his shadow blended with the darkness of the North African night. The tar-black sky was studded with countless stars, but moonless. By the time the new day broke, wild beasts would have feasted on Sancho’s opulence of flesh and vast reserves of fat, I was sure.

“Let’s wait for the Janissaries outside the cave,” I suggested. “Lay down your arms. If we offer any resistance, they’ll kill us without mercy in this wilderness. Our only chance of survival is to surrender. And may the Lord have mercy on us.”

* * *

I returned to Algiers with my ankles still chained and my hands tied behind my back. Years later, in
Don Quixote
, I called Arnaut Mamí “an inveterate enemy to the whole human race.” Impaling, disemboweling, practicing the infamous torture method called
khazouking
, mutilating arms and legs, severing ears and tongues, gouging eyes, raping, beheading, hanging by the hook, and burning Christians at the stake gave him the pleasures other men found in food or music or making love. Even the Turks were in awe of Mamí’s cruelty. Anything could provoke him: a look, a reply, what he thought was a look or a reply, or a lack of one.

The next morning, we were brought to Mamí’s presence. He received us lying on a heap of lion skins. El Dorador sat by his feet. There were a large number of captives in the room. Were they there as spectators, to teach them a lesson on what happened to captives who tried to outsmart him?

“Who was the leader of this conspiracy?” Mamí inquired.

Before I had time to speak, El Dorador pointed at me. The traitor met my eyes impassively; I wanted to grab his neck with my good hand and smash his head against the tiles, until his eyes and teeth and brains lay at Mamí’s feet.

“Ahmed, you are now my son. I will adopt you,” Mamí said to El Dorador.

The leprous rat seemed very pleased to have been rewarded with more than the usual can of lard and gold escudo that renegades received for denouncing Christians.