Cervantes Street (31 page)

I was getting tired of repeating my story for the benefit of Doña Juana’s guests.

Seeing me demur, Catalina remarked: “I’m afraid you’ll find me very dull, Don Miguel. I have seen little of the world. I’ve been to Toledo, and went with my mother once to Madrid on business, after my father died. I accompanied her only because my two brothers are too young to be good traveling companions for her. A gentleman who has seen the world like yourself must find it so unexciting to talk to a provincial like me. What’s more,” she blushed, “I confess I don’t read much poetry and have never seen a play. But I do like pastoral novels. So you can count on me to read yours.”

She held my gaze and spoke with a directness that was unusual among Spanish ladies.

* * *

The following afternoon, I took advantage of Doña Catalina’s invitation to stop by her house. During my first visit, she sat with Catalina and me in their parlor, the furniture of which was of good quality, but from another century. Afterward, in what became daily visits, Catalina’s little brother, Francisco, chaperoned us.

As the late-September afternoons had become cooler, I proposed going for walks. We would head not to the church or the town’s fountain, as most couples did in Esquivias, but away from the town, into the countryside, accompanied by Francisco, who always ran ahead of us chasing lizards or aiming at birds with his sling. Catalina was devoted to her little brothers. After her father died, her mother had come to rely on her help in managing the housekeeping as well as the family’s finances. Despite her beauty and her pleasant disposition, she did not seem to have any suitors. When I remarked on this, she said abruptly: “I don’t care for the good-for-nothing men of Esquivias, Miguel. I’d rather become a spinster than marry one of our irresponsible men.”

Catalina asked me many questions about the adventurous life I had led. I was flattered that this beautiful young woman relished my company; and the direct way in which her burning eyes looked at me, a penniless man with a bad arm, made me feel hopeful about the future. When she peered at me, I saw admiration and respect in her eyes. Not since Zoraida had a woman gazed at me in that way.

I had sworn off love after coming to understand that both Mercedes and Zoraida were unattainable ideals. The only women I had known in a carnal way were whores, or women like Ana de Villafranca, whose bed had been shared by more men than bedbugs. Catalina’s gentle manner made me want to be around her constantly. During the day, as I sat at the desk of my late friend Pedro, I felt more inclined to write love poetry than to work on deciphering his manuscripts. Or, when I managed to do a little work, I would come upon one of Pedro’s love poems that expressed so well the feelings I had for my Esquivian beauty.

Maybe Doña Juana was right, after all. Perhaps the time had come for me to marry and grow roots in one place. All I needed to settle down to write was an understanding wife who had the means to support us while I did my great work, which I was convinced lay ahead of me. But what were the chances that a fine young woman of noble lineage, and with properties, would become interested in me?

* * *

One afternoon in October, Francisco was unable to accompany us on our walk due to a cold. But the weather was so balmy that Doña Catalina insisted we take advantage of the perfect conditions. Catalina and I reached one of our favorite places, a secluded hill to the south of town rarely visited by the locals. Up to that point, Catalina and I had held hands furtively, whenever Francisco was distracted, looking for bugs under rocks. To rest our limbs after the climb, we sat on a patch of grass beneath an oak tree. The moment we were alone, and our hands brushed, the first kiss followed and every feeling that had been held in abeyance flared up in abundance. The skin of Catalina’s face, and her hair, smelled of ripe grapes. Her warm and soft lips lacked experience kissing but searched mine with eagerness, as if they had been waiting for this moment for a long time. When we lay on the grass pressed against each other, and I buried my nose in her dewy breasts, I knew that what had been started could not be stopped. Afterward, as we lay panting and sweating, I suddenly remembered the saying that a pickle cannot be turned back into a cucumber. After what had happened that afternoon, the only honorable thing to do was to marry Catalina.

That I was twice her age, with only one good arm, could bring no dowry to the marriage, and was a member of a notorious family whose purity of blood was in dispute, were no longer obstacles under the circumstances. In a village like Esquivias, a dishonored daughter was the worst of all stains on the name of a family of good stock.

On December 12, 1584, barely three months from the moment we first met, Catalina de Palacios and I were united as husband and wife by her uncle, Juan de Palacios, at the Church of Our Blessed Lady of Milk. The wedding happened with so little preamble that no member of my family was able to make the journey from Madrid to attend it. Besides Doña Juana and Catalina’s mother and brothers, the only other people in attendance were Rodrigo Mejía, Diego Escribano, and Francisco Marcos, Doña Catalina’s Esquivian neighbors who served as witnesses.

* * *

Several days before the wedding, I presented Doña Juana a clean and corrected manuscript of Pedro’s poetry. In addition to the twenty escudos we had agreed upon as my fee, Doña Juana gave us another twenty escudos as our wedding present. Forty escudos was a handsome sum with which to begin our married life.

The idea of returning to Madrid became unappetizing. For the time being, I was content to stay in Esquivias with my beautiful young wife. I wanted to rent a house where we could settle down to a life of domestic happiness that would be conducive to writing, but Catalina was reluctant to move away from her family. “My mother and my little brothers need me too much, Miguel,” she said. “Our house is large enough so that we can still have privacy as husband and wife.”

We installed ourselves on the second floor of the Palacios’s ancestral home, which was shaped like an L. Three large rooms with high ceilings offered views in every direction of the village and the Manchegan countryside. It was a tranquil place where I could have devoted myself to writing, except that now that I had finished cataloguing Pedro’s poetry, and the impending publication of
La Galatea
became all too real, I was apprehensive about beginning a new project. It took great determination to scribble a few inert lines of verse.

Catalina was eager to learn every trick I had mastered in bed from countless whores of many nationalities. I had also picked up a few new tricks from Ana de Villafranca’s vast repertoire; but Catalina’s youthful and virginal body, her desire to please me and please herself, were a delicacy of which I could never tire. Late at night, when Esquivians were immersed in their deep slumber, Catalina and I made love with such abandon that the dogs in the town, and the wolves in the countryside, answered my groans and her ecstatic yelps with excited barking and howling. In the mornings, when I went to the kitchen for my breakfast, Doña Catalina couldn’t look at me, or talk to me, without blushing. As I walked around town children would follow me, agog at anything I did. When women alone, or accompanied by other females, saw me going up the street, they would hurriedly cross to the other side and walk by quickly, their eyes on the ground. And the old men who sat outside their front doors, smoking a pipe and saying hello to the passersby, would blurt out: “Hostias! Hombre! Joder!” and blow plumes of smoke as I greeted them.

Many Spanish women covered their faces with a veil while their husbands made love to them; Catalina, on the other hand, lit all the tapers in our chamber so that we could admire and explore each other’s bodies from head to toe. While most Spanish women made love in the horizontal fashion, Catalina, after I had shown her a few variations, wanted to ride me, bobbing up and down my crotch as if she were riding a camel; or she made me sit on a straight-backed chair and, pressing her breasts to my chest, impaled herself on my organ, until I felt I was deeper in her than I had been in any other woman. Whereas the whores I’d made love to performed in every position known to man, their pleasure felt feigned and they never asked for more; with those women lovemaking ended when I climaxed, but Catalina was not satisfied until she had pleasured herself. Whereas all the whores I had known had allowed me to penetrate them, Catalina was eager to penetrate me as well—with pickles and cucumbers and carrots; with the whores, affection ended when I had sated myself, but Catalina loved to stay awake, whispering the parts of her story I didn’t know, and now and then pausing to nick my nipples, slap my ass, or give my manhood a moist suck. We cuddled until exhaustion made us close our eyes and they opened again only to greet the new day. All the lovemaking I had known before expired by the end of the night. With Catalina I had found a woman whose love did not vanish in the daylight. I was never again as happy as that winter of my honeymoon in Esquivias, when our lovemaking made the chilly nights of La Mancha as warm and embracing and supple as the sands of the Sahara just after sunset.

* * *

If Catalina had been an orphan, we might have found lasting happiness as man and wife. But she had a mother, and not just any mother. Soon after our wedding, I realized that Doña Catalina was desperate for a man to take charge of the properties and precarious finances of the family. At his death, three years earlier, Catalina’s father, the late Fernando de Salazar Vozmediano, an improvident man and a gambler, had left large debts, and the family’s financial affairs were in disarray. Fortunately, Catalina’s properties were inherited, and Don Fernando’s many creditors could not claim a piece of them. But my mother-in-law expected me to collect the rents from the houses in Toledo and other villages of La Mancha, and to oversee the planting, harvesting, and selling of the produce from the orchards and vineyards.

My newly acquired duties as the head of the family kept me away from the writing desk. My dream of a bucolic life in which I could devote myself to writing began to seem like another chimera. At first, I went along with my new responsibilities without complaining. I hoped the publication of
La Galatea
would make me financially prosperous so that I could hire a man to oversee the family business. I failed miserably at collecting the rents owed by Doña Catalina’s tenants in Toledo and nearby villages. Extracting money from these families was like trying to squeeze milk from a rock. These were people who barely managed to survive. In the best cases, most of them paid their rent in the form of chickens, eggs, a few bottles of wine or olive oil, and—this was indeed a miracle—a piglet, or a kid goat.

Upon my return to Esquivias with a menagerie in place of money, Doña Catalina showed her displeasure at my lack of experience in dealing with her tenants. “If these people can’t pay their rent, you must put them out on the street, Miguel. By force, if necessary. If I were a man I’d do it myself with my own hands. I’m not made of gold. I, too, must feed my family, and now you!”

But how could I evict old people from their homes when they could have been my own parents?

“Miguel, try to understand my mother,” Catalina told me one Sunday on our way to Mass. “My father couldn’t tell a maravedí from an escudo. To him money was there to be spent. When it comes to finances, my little brothers have more sense than he did. Mamá is no longer young, she’s tired, and she feels overwhelmed. She needs a man who can relieve her of her duties. I know you are a poet, and you have a compassionate heart, but you must make an effort, Miguel. Our livelihood depends on collecting the rents owed to us. If
La Galatea
, as we all hope and pray, turns out to be a success, we can hire a man to take care of business, as you want, so you can devote yourself to writing without annoying interruptions.”

I didn’t want to disappoint my lovely wife, who was a lady in the parlor and a whore in bed, and who treated me with tenderness and respect.

* * *

My blissful marital life was in imminent danger of deteriorating if Catalina and I continued to live with her mother. The house of the late hidalgo Don Alonso Quijano de Salazar had been recently put up for rent. Many years ago it had been regarded as the grandest house in the village and one of the finest in the environs of Toledo, but it was now dilapidated. Its walls were crumbling, and it was too large and expensive for most Esquivians. At the risk of displeasing my wife, I decided to use the money Doña Juana had paid me, and I rented it. The house’s main appeal for me was that it was on the other side of town, as far away as possible from my mother-in-law.

Father Palacios had told me about the bachelor Alonso Quijano at Doña Juana’s first supper party. He had been a rich landowner and a distant relative of Doña Catalina who went mad, Esquivians said, from reading too many chivalry novels, and in his old age he regained his sanity, ending his life as a friar. The room that Don Alonso had used as his library became my writing room. It was the first time in my life that I’d had a room that was mine to use exclusively for writing. On the library shelves there were a handful of dusty novels of chivalry. Marianita, an old, half-blind servant who still lived in the house, had saved them when Don Alonso’s niece, in an effort to restore her uncle’s sanity, had thrown all his books out the window and planned to burn them in the street. With the squire’s sturdy desk in front of the same window, all I needed was a chair, a quill, a pot of ink, writing paper, and the muse to shower me with inspiration.

From the desk there was a view of endless tawny fields where lentils and chickpeas were cultivated. Sitting there every day, staring at the ochre and treeless Manchegan landscape, I indulged the fantasy that I was a well-off country squire who wrote good, but popular novels that made me prosperous. In view of my financial success, my mother-in-law had finally shut her mouth and left Catalina and me in peace. In my fantasy, my aged parents lived with us in comfort, and my wife and I were blessed with many children who were my parents’ joy in their old age.