Cervantes Street (33 page)
From a friend who passed through town on his way to Sevilla, I heard there were openings in my beloved city for tax collectors of the crown. My friend said he knew someone who would help him secure a position. “Why don’t you come along?” he asked. Then he added, “I will intercede with my friend to help you find work too.”
I didn’t need any other argument to convince me to leave for Sevilla: I was ready to go. I did not care that tax collection was one of the few official jobs open to Jews at the time, that taking such a job would be an acceptance on my part of the impurity of my blood. I was certain that if I did not leave Esquivias, without the slightest delay, it would not be long before I, like Alonso Quijano, went mad.
Once again, I would begin a new life. Middle-aged, weary, disillusioned, a complete failure, I nonetheless remained ever the dreamer: I could not help but hope that better times were ahead. So I fled Esquivias, abandoning my good Catalina—not an unreachable or imaginary love, but my flesh-and-blood wife—and I left the only house I had ever been able to call mine.
I will let future historians tell what happened to me in the next twenty years, the continuation of disappointments in a life filled with an endless list of them. Suffice it to say that I had to go on the road so that I could see the rest of the characters that Spain—and by extension the world—contained. I had to go on the road to learn what remained for me to know about man’s nature, about life, and about my growing disillusionment with the brutal age in which I had been condemned to live.
Often during those years, I felt as if I were back in a place that was as cruel and as hope-crushing as Algiers, but upside down: in Spain the Muslims were treated as poorly as the Christians on the Barbary Coast, and the Christians were as oblivious to their suffering as the Turks were in the lands over which they ruled. The cruelty I saw was as great, as soul-killing, as that which I had experienced in Bagnio Beylic. That was the place Spain had become in the last years of the sixteenth century A.D., a country that shackled, bound, and destroyed the weak, and those who were different in race, religion, or ideas.
It might seem paradoxical how so much devastation can be a liberation, but eventually I came to understand that everything that had befallen me, the highest and lowest points, had forged in me the desire to write not just one more novel, one more book to add to the library shelves of the world, but a book that contained—and truthfully—all of life as I had known it.
Many years later, when I was an old man, when the usurper, Avellaneda, had published his cursory and insincere
Don Quixote de la Mancha Part II
, that aberration of a novel, that undigested regurgitation of the adventures of my knight and his squire, that offensive imitation written for the basest of motives: to hurt another person, its author, the man who had opened his veins to birth his characters—at that moment when I despaired to see the child of my invention stolen from me, and turned into a ludicrous parody of itself—a remarkable occurrence took place. One autumn morning, before the first decade of the new century came to an end, as I was leaving Esquivias for Toledo on business, I saw a fat man at the town’s outskirts ambling toward me on an Andalusian horse, the kind that was ridden by ambassadors and the nobility. The horse’s palomino coat was so shiny that it seemed to be powdered with gold dust. Its long neck and wide chest projected themselves like the prow of a ship with the wind behind its sails. A thick, beautifully groomed mane draped the sides of its neck and fell on its long and narrow face in two blond strands. Behind the horse trotted a donkey loaded with small trunks; on its sheepskin-covered saddle rode the rich man’s servant. The man on the horse wore pants tied above the knees, black Córdoban boots that shone like onyx, a long-sleeved velvet coat the color of the ripest grapes, and a brown cap with a visor, the kind favored by traveling gentlemen. A long, thin sword with a wooden haft hung on the left side of his sizable belly.
The noses of our horses were about to meet when I heard: “Don Miguel. Don Miguel de Cervantes. Blessed be my eyes!” The fat man leaped off his horse with astonishing speed and ran in my direction. I stopped my horse. The extravagant traveler took my hand and, without my permission, as if he knew me intimately, covered it with kisses. “Your Grace, it’s me, your friend Sancho Panza,” he said.
More than twenty-five years had passed since the night we said goodbye at the cave in the hills, outside the walls of Algiers. Many tears of joy were shed as we embraced each other anew. Despite his apparent wealth Sancho was the same salt-of-the-earth man, just a quarter of a century older and twice as bulky. We directed our horses to a grassy patch off the side of the road and sought the shade of an oak. Sancho’s servant opened one of the trunks carried by the donkey and spread on the ground a luxurious carpet with Arab designs. Then he produced silver cups, which he filled with wine. Next appeared cheese, bread, olives, and a leg of ham. We toasted Fortune for crossing our paths once more. I was dying to ask Sancho how he had survived the desert, and how he had come by his obvious prosperity. As if to prepare himself for the story he was about to tell me, Sancho bit off a chunk of bread from the brown loaf and chewed it quickly. Then he washed it down with the wine.
“Thank you, thank you, my illustrious master, most celebrated son of Alcalá de Henares,” he began, taking my right hand, which once again he kissed and washed with many tears. “Thank you for making me famous, Your Mercy. Wherever I go in Spain, as soon as I say my name, I’m recognized as Sancho Panza, the immortal and sublime creature, the faithful and loving companion of the magnificent, noble, and wise knight, Don Quixote, that creation of yours that will live as long as the sun rises over
la
madre patria
.”
He had more to say on the subject of
Don Quixote
: “You know I’m no learned man, Your Grace, and they may say that old dogs don’t learn new tricks, yet it is my firm intention to hire a local scholar to teach me how to read now that I’m back on Spanish soil, in my old beloved town of Esquivias, where I hope to retire from my wanderings and spend the rest of the time enjoying my family, and Teresa’s delicious cooking, in particular her rabbit stew. So I beg you to please forgive my immodesty, except that what I’m about to say, I say with all the respect due to the greatest living Spaniard, Your Magnificence Don Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra.”
He paused to bite on another chunk of bread and finish his cup of wine, which his servant immediately refilled. “Without delay, my old and dear friend, I urge you to continue the adventures of Don Quixote. Put him on the road to Zaragoza atop Rocinante, that noblest horse of all. And I almost don’t care whether you do it with or without me as his squire. I say this, Don Miguel, not because I hunger for more fame, but because the grave injustice and offense committed against you by that infamous thief, the accursed Fernández Avellaneda, must be set right. The world must be instructed once and for all about who the real characters are, so that the counterfeit creatures created by the devilish Avellaneda, who is a disgrace to the mother who brought him into the world, can be exposed for the pallid, malnourished inventions that they are, and his work can be ridiculed and then forgotten, as it deserves to be.”
I was about to say that I was at work on
my
Part II and hoped to finish it soon despite my poor health, but Sancho had one more piece of advice: “I respect and worship every word your incommensurable pen has set down on paper, yet I must confess that I find the tales that keep interrupting the story a bit distracting. I, for one, want to know only about Don Quixote and his squire. And now you will never again hear another word of criticism from me about your sublime book.”
I reassured him that I would consider his advice, and that other readers, too, had complained about the tales within the novel. Now it was time for me to ask questions. “Friend Sancho,” I said, “I see that fortune has smiled on you; you are the very picture of prosperity. Please tell me of your whereabouts since last I saw you.”
Sancho leaned back on the trunk of the oak, and placed both his hands on his contented belly. As I sipped the cool wine and nibbled on slices of cheese and ham, which Sancho’s servant kept cutting and feeding us, my friend regaled me with his curious story, full of twists and turns, each more fantastic than the one before.
Sancho spoke long enough for the sun to cross the line of midday into the west, so I will summarize his tale: A few days after he went off into the desert by himself, lost in the Sahara, thinking the burning sands of the North African desert would be his final resting place, he was discovered by a caravan of Berbers on camels, who abducted him. With this group of bandits, who pillaged other caravans as well as small villages, Sancho roamed the desert for a long time. Then, on a journey to a kingdom in the heart of Africa where the people were as black as midnight, he was sold to the king; in that land, where everyone was tall and lean, with long, giraffelike necks, fat white people were worshipped as harbingers of abundance. Nothing was required of Sancho but to sit in his luxurious palace made of mud and straw, where he was attended by virgins of the nobility, and received the pilgrims from all over the kingdom who came to touch him and pray to him, hoping he would grant them abundance in the form of children, cattle, or rain. During droughts, when the crops failed and starvation took a toll of infants, old people, and cows, Sancho was carried on a golden chair from village to village, until the rains came. The king’s doctors visited my friend on a daily basis to measure his girth and make sure he was not getting thinner. Over the years, Sancho filled many trunks with the gold and jewels that people brought as offerings. The old king became his best friend, and finally, when he was about to die, Sancho requested a favor of him. “I asked His Majesty for permission to return to my country because I knew that my own journey on earth must be nearing its end, and I wanted to see my wife, my dear Teresa—who I had never betrayed, despite ample opportunities to do so with the most beautiful virgins of the kingdom—if she was still alive, and my daughter, who I remembered as a toddler taking her first steps, and the good neighbors of my hometown, where I opened my peepers to the world for the first time. And that, Your Magnificence, you greatest bard of our land and our national glory, is how I chanced to run upon you again. Now, pray tell me, why were you coming from Esquivias? What is your business there?”
I told him about my marriage; how Esquivias had been, off and on, my home for over twenty years; that the best news I had for him was that both Teresa and Sanchica were in good health; that I saw them with some frequency and that he was now a grandfather because Sanchica was married and produced a large family composed only of boys: Sancho I, Sancho II, Sancho III, and so on. At this news, Sancho once more took my hand, kissed and moistened it. Then, to my utter surprise, he and his servant embraced and cried in a most disconsolate manner on each other’s shoulders. This was indeed a rare scene and I wondered what story lay behind it. When both of their eyes were dry and red, Sancho said: “This man, Don Miguel, is not my servant. He’s my former neighbor, Mohanad Morricote, a citizen of Esquivias, who left our country shortly before I was cruelly abducted and taken to the bagnio where I had the great fortune of meeting you who has made me rich, and given me immortality.”
Morricote, who had remained silent until that moment, spoke: “Don Miguel, in 1570, when I was a married young man and the proud father of Amina and Afid, my family and I were expelled from Spain by order of King Philip II, may his soul rest in peace—even though our ancestors had been on Spanish soil long before Castile and Aragon were united and this became one country—unless we converted publicly and renounced our faith and customs, which I couldn’t do, Don Miguel, as it was an offense to my ancestors. Someone as learned as Your Eminence surely knows that after the fall of Granada, when the last of the Muslim rulers were exiled, my ancestors converted to Catholicism, yet we managed to keep many of our customs, and some of us taught Arabic to our children, not because we did not love Spain, and not because we had dreams of reconquering it, as we have been accused of, but because the history of our people is written in Arabic.”
Sancho interrupted Morricote’s narration with, “My dear friend, Don Miguel must have business to attend, and we must not abuse the kindness of a man of his importance, so please do not linger upon what happened centuries ago.”
“Thank you, my friend Sancho, for your wise words of advice,” Morricote said. “So, to proceed with the history of my misfortunes: We were ordered to leave Spain with just the clothes on our back. We were forbidden to take any gold, silver, or precious stones with us. I was not a rich man, Don Miguel. But through hard toil, good fortune in commerce, and the habit of saving for unforeseen circumstances, I had become a man of property. So I did the only thing I could do: I buried two earthen jars filled with gold and other valuables behind the house of my good friend Sancho Panza. Thus we left Spanish soil without a coin to our name, and with just enough money to buy our passage to the Barbary Coast. As you well know, because I’ve heard from Sancho about your time together in Algiers, in that capital of disgrace we were not well-received. The Turks thought of us as Spaniards; and because we had converted to Christianity, we were not trusted as Arabs. After many years of suffering insults and unjust treatment, we saved enough money to move to the kingdom of Morocco, where we’ve lived ever since. It was there that I ran into my friend, Sancho, one day in the market, when he stopped at my stall in the bazaar to admire the carpets I sold. I hadn’t been so happy since the birth of my first grandchild. Though Fortune has been kinder to us in that land, my children and grandchildren and I dream of going to the New World, where, we understand, Arab people are welcome. But God has blessed me with a fertile family, and it is expensive to buy passage for fifteen people. All these years I’ve dreamed of the gold I left behind in my friend’s backyard, which could buy our passage to the Indies and allow us to settle there. When I shared this sentiment with my good friend Sancho, he convinced me that, despite the high risk, I might be able to enter Spain disguised as the Christian servant of a man of great wealth, as my friend Sancho now is. If caught, I know I will not live to see my family again. But I made up my mind to try this scheme when Sancho said:
Victory favors the bold
. But just as we set foot on our beloved Spanish soil, where my ancestors are buried, a new decree was promulgated, as you must have heard: converted or not, all Arabs must leave Spain—all Moriscos and their descendants are to be banished forever. My friend Sancho convinced me not to go back to Morocco right away, but to return to Esquivias and move forward with my plan, so that I have a chance to begin a new life, in a land where Christians and Muslims live in peace.”