The False Don Quixote
1587-1616
Pascual Paredes
I blame the way my life turned out on my youthful love of poetry, which, if my memory serves me, Don Quixote—rightly so—calls an incurable vice. It was the innocent remark I made to Don Luis Lara, shortly after I began to work at the Council of the Indies, about the copy on his desk of The Works of Garcilaso de la Vega with Annotations by Fernando de Herrera, that made him notice me for the first time. Had I at that moment held my tongue (the one appendage of mine I’ve never been able to control), who knows what would have become of me? That first conversation was the seed that grew into a long association that trapped me in the web of enmity Don Luis had for Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra and made me a participant in a story of revenge that cast an ominous shadow on much of my adult life.
By enlisting me as a kind of spy, Don Luis singled me out among all the other dull, unimaginative men who worked in our branch of the council. After Miguel de Cervantes left Esquivias and moved to Sevilla in 1587, my principal duty became to remain informed of Cervantes’s every move, and to pass on this information to Don Luis.
It was thus I escaped the dreary nature of my odious job, my entombment in those stuffy, penumbral, poorly ventilated rooms that smelled of rank ink and dusty documents, where my coworkers hunched over their desks for long hours every day, whispering so as not to call attention to themselves, scratching reams of paper with their quills, entering numbers on waxy parchments and moving them from one column to the other, drafting reports that no one ever read, which were destined for archives visited only by roaches and rats. These pathetic souls paused only to cough, or to scratch themselves, or to blow their noses, or to go relieve themselves, and struggled to stay awake in the afternoons, after they returned to work from dinner and their siestas. I despised their shallow lives, the tedium and sterility of the way they spent their existence, because I knew that, if chance hadn’t intervened, this would have been my own destiny in Spain.
On one of my monthly trips to Esquivias, presumably to supervise the accounts of the local government, I learned that Cervantes had left his wife behind and traveled to Sevilla, where he hoped to get a job working as a collector of grain for the soldiers of the armada, which had begun the ill-fated hostilities against England that helped to precipitate the decline of our empire. This was my opportunity to visit Sevilla, a city I longed to see, so rich in history and famed for its beauty, its Alcázar, its poets and painters. Upon arrival I learned that Miguel de Cervantes had managed to secure one of those positions. He was now an employee of the government, as Don Luis and I were.
“His job title is itinerant collector for the armada,” I informed Don Luis when I returned to Madrid.
He gave me one of his rare happy smiles. I had come to understand that his greatest joy consisted of learning about the bad luck of Cervantes, though securing a position as collector for the crown seemed hardly a misfortune.
“You’ve done an excellent job, Pascual,” Don Luis said.
I could count with the digits of one hand the occasions on which he had praised me for anything I did for him, as if it were his absolute right to expect nothing but perfect service from those who worked under him. I was sitting across from him, sipping a Jeréz. It was late afternoon; his large office was almost dark. Twilight was the favorite time of day for Don Luis, as if the deepening shadows reassured him.
“As someone whose purity of blood has not been established,” he continued, after sipping his glass, and pointing his almost fleshless pinky at me, “this is the perfect occupation for him. I don’t need to remind you that when it comes to extracting money from people, Jews are leeches with an insatiable appetite.”
I chuckled, but immediately straightened my back and assumed a serious expression. The look Don Luis gave me was not of disapproval.
“There is rampant corruption in that world of people who collect taxes for the king, Pascual. Even the most honest man—which, let’s face it, Miguel is not—sooner or later will join the thieves and lowlifes who work with him. He will have to do as they do, if he wants to keep his job. Then he’ll get what he deserves.”
He sipped his sherry slowly, staring at a point behind me. His lips were stretched in the faintest of smiles, but there was something almost frightful in the dreamy eyes. With a wave of his hand, not bothering to make eye contact with me, he bid me to leave the room.
* * *
I became a bloodhound tracking Cervantes’s footsteps in the godforsaken villages he visited in Andalusia. I thanked my lucky stars: it was a much better existence than being glued to a desk. Additionally, I had escaped the sepulchral building of the council, and daily coexistence with my coworkers, who made me think of solitary souls doing penance in purgatory. Also, and this was no small advantage, I got to see more of Spain, which had always been a dream of mine.
One day, after I had finished giving him a report of Miguel’s travels, Don Luis confessed to me: “You don’t know what comfort I derive when, before I close my eyes to go to sleep, I imagine Miguel—dusty, hungry, worn-out, holding the staff of justice in his good hand—entering on an old mule one of those desolate towns in the Andalusian countryside where, as tax collector of the crown, he must be met with hostility and hatred.”
I was glad I would never be important enough in his eyes to become a target of his hatred.
For three years there was little new to report, though Don Luis demanded to know the names of every insignificant village Cervantes visited and how he had been received by the peasants whose grain he had to extract in the name of the armada. Then I learned through one of my contacts in Sevilla that Cervantes had applied for permission to travel to the Indies. I asked my informant for a copy of the document and left for Madrid, riding as fast as I could, barely stopping to eat or relieve myself or sleep. In his petition to the court, Cervantes was specific about the four posts he wanted to be considered for: the comptrollership of the viceroyalty of New Granada, the governorship of the province of Soconusco in Guatemala, the post of auditor of the galleys in Cartagena de Indias, or that of magistrate of the city of La Paz. All of these were important positions, usually given as rewards to those who had distinguished themselves in the service of the king; but often they were secured by the influential families of good-for-nothing señoritos, who were an embarrassment to their kin in Spain. To me it showed that despite the setbacks of his life, Cervantes had a very high notion of his importance. But he didn’t seem to have considered that, at forty-three years of age, he was asking for employment that required the energy of a much younger man.
Don Luis had never shown so much delight to see me as he did on the day I delivered, at his office in the Council of the Indies, the copy of Cervantes’s petition. He extended me an invitation to sup with him that night, at the finest inn in Madrid, the Mesón de los Reyes, where many of the personages who came to the court on business stayed. Though we had taken many walks in public places over the years, and I had often walked with him to his home, he had neither invited me inside for a libation nor suggested a drink at a tavern where we could be seen socializing as equals.
While we waited for our first dish to arrive, Don Luis said to me, “Pascual, I want to show you my appreciation for the work you’re doing for me. As of next month, your salary will be raised by one hundred maravedíes.”
“Thank you, thank you, Your Grace,” I said, shocked. “I kiss your generous hands a thousand times.” My salary was already higher than those of my pitiful coworkers.
“I want to make clear to you, Pascual, that this compensation will not be coming out of the treasury of the council. That would be embezzlement.”
I hurried to say, “I would never have thought such a thing, Don Luis. I—”
“Let me finish. I’m not done yet. I know perfectly well my conduct is above all reproach. I just want you to know that the extra maravedíes will be taken out of my own coffers. I will continue to fight assiduously against corruption in our public employees.”
As the soup arrived, I couldn’t help but wonder if it had ever occurred to him that paying me more than my coworkers, and keeping me busy tracking down Cervantes’s every move, was itself an abuse of his power. But I already understood that Don Luis Lara was the sort of man who would never see flaws in himself. Like all Spanish aristocrats, he thought his excrescencies smelled better than those of his inferiors in rank.
The rest of the evening we talked about the new volumes of poetry that had arrived at the city’s bookshops. Thanks to Don Luis, I could now purchase any new book that interested me, or copies of the classics I hadn’t read. I still kept up with the output of new poets, but I did it to please him, and to continue to have access to the world of writers—not because I drew the same pleasure I had experienced from poetry before I started working for Don Luis and learned how ruthless these sensitive men who wrote beautiful poems and novels could be.
* * *
Cervantes’s petition was denied, and soon after he was again on the road collecting grain. I didn’t find out what role Don Luis played in this scheme, and the truth was I didn’t want to know: that way it was easier for me to continue working as his spy. But after Cervantes experienced what must have come as a crushing failure, Don Luis seemed to have lost all interest in his activities. Regularly, I continued giving him my brief reports, which he listened to with a bored expression—making me feel as if I cared more about Cervantes than he did.
“What a sad creature the cripple of Lepanto has become,” Don Luis once said to me. “To think that at one time he was considered the great hope of Spanish letters. To think we were good friends! That miserable life he’s living will kill him before too long, you’ll see.”
As there was less cause for me to travel to Andalusia to keep abreast of Cervantes’s peregrinations, I became Don Luis’s factotum at the council. Yet he did not ask me to stop spying on the man I secretly began to call the Commissioner of Sorrows.
Then, while retaining his position at the council, Don Luis was appointed as prosecuting attorney for the Holy Office. With a zeal that struck me as fanatical even for such a religious man, he became immersed in his work for the church. His responsibilities kept him in Toledo a great deal of the time; it must have been painful for him to spend so much time in the city where his wife lived in the Lara’s ancestral home, which she had converted into a hospice. Later, though he did not mention this to me, I learned through an acquaintance that young Diego Lara had abandoned his studies in theology at the Universidad Cisneriana in Alcalá de Henares to join an order of the Carmelites in Toledo. I learned, too, that a maid named Leonela, who had been in Don Luis’s service since the days of his marriage, had left his home to join Doña Mercedes. Was I now spying on Don Luis?
It was around this time that I became his confidant, which speaks volumes about his loneliness. He did not seem to have close friends, but like all of us he had a need to share his intimate thoughts with other human beings. In that regard we were similar: my position with Don Luis was the closest I came to intimacy with another person.
One day he said to me: “Pascual, I’m not sure I am the right person to act as prosecuting attorney for the Holy Office.” He explained: “Do you know that my main duty is to go before the tribunal of the Holy Office with the evidence I’ve gathered about the accused, and then to make a case for an auto-da-fé? It troubles me that the accused are not informed of the charges against them. Years can go by before these unfortunates are informed of the reasons they’re imprisoned.”
About the workings of the Holy Office I knew only what people whispered. No one dared to openly try to find out how the trials worked. I said nothing; I waited for him to unburden himself of the thoughts that pained him.
“I thought I was going to help the church purge Spain, and the Christian world, of the infidels who seek to undermine our religion with their heretical views.” Don Luis paused, his face locked in a scowl. “But from what I can tell, the only crime of some of these people is to be wealthy.”
So it was true what people whispered about the Holy Office: they burned so that they could eat.
“The worst part of it,” he continued, “is that I have to be present at the torture of these people and then their burning.” What he said next surprised me: “Pascual, I wonder, how long can I continue working for the Holy Office and exposing myself to so much suffering?”
That day I felt sympathy for him. Behind the cold façade he projected, and the nature of his hatred for Miguel de Cervantes—which seemed to be the motivating force of his life—he was not untouched by the suffering of others.
Like thousands of Madrileños, I had attended the autos-da-fé in the Plaza Mayor. They were one of the few free distractions for the people. There was a public procession of those found guilty, and when one was formally charged and his sentence was read, the mob jeered at the accused, threw garbage, and hurled insults. At the autos-da-fé the pestilential rabble released the anger they bottled up over their own wretched lives. These ceremonies lasted for hours, and many people brought food and drink to while away the time. At the end a Mass was said, followed by prayers for the souls of the damned. The condemned were executed later, out of public view, which incensed the masses, who felt cheated that they could not see the condemned being burned to death in public.
I have no sentimental notions about the human race; I believe we are God’s most flawed creations, that He was extremely tired and distracted the day He created Adam and Eve, and used His cheapest and most damaged fabric to fashion us.
* * *
I was once again trapped in my office, which felt like a kind of death. During those years, whenever Don Luis came to Madrid from Toledo, he invited me to dine at the Mesón de los Reyes. He counted on me to give him a detailed account of how the department worked in his absence. I reported on my coworkers, who were too broken by life, and lacking in imagination, to create any trouble. These creatures’ major source of happiness was to sit at their desks all day long, shuffling papers and wasting ink. At the council, everyone knew of my friendship with Don Luis and treated me as a superior.
At one of our dinners, I noticed that Don Luis looked more downcast than usual. All I could do was wait, and hope he would tell me what was troubling him. That night, he barely touched his food but drank more wine than I had ever seen him drink. This surprised me because he was not a man of excesses. We were still in the tavern well after midnight, and I became concerned that he was visibly inebriated, beginning to slur his words. I was reassured that his carriers were waiting for him outside. I tried to cheer him up by offering bits of gossip about my coworkers and the poetry world, spicing them up a bit to distract him from his gloomy mood. Though he was sitting across from me, it was as if he were so far away my voice could not reach him.
He stared at me with heavy eyes; his silence made me feel ill at ease. Then he said: “You never met my son.” Why had he referred to him in the past tense? I knew Friar Diego Lara lived in Toledo. This was most unusual: Don Luis never talked about his private life. Tears fell from his eyes. “Well,” he said, “Dieguito, my beloved son, the only joy I have in this world, left for the New World to convert the Indians. He sailed from Sevilla two weeks ago. Had I found out about his plan,” he continued, his words slowed by all the wine, “I would’ve stopped him. Oh, yes,” he exclaimed, shaking his fists, “I would’ve moved heaven and earth to keep him here in Spain!”
He broke down and started to weep, uncontrollably. It was so late that we were the only diners left in the Mesón de los Reyes. The young woman who had served us approached our table; with a flick of my hand I waved her away.
“Pascual,” he grabbed my hand and went on, “as long as Diego was in Spain, and I could see him, there was a spark of happiness in my life. Now, now,” he raised his voice and shook his head, “I probably won’t see him again. Oh Pascual, maybe God has punished me for the way I’ve lived my life.”
I said, “Don Luis, it’s very late. You should go home.”
With the help of one of the workers at the inn, I carried him outside to his chair. When I placed my hand on his rib cage to steady him, his bones protruded through his skin. The man we put in his chair, a grandee of Spain, had as much life left in him as a broken marionette.
* * *
Don Luis’s prediction about Miguel de Cervantes came true: late in 1592, I learned through one of my contacts that in the month of September Cervantes had briefly been thrown in jail in the village of Castro del Río. I barely understood the nature of the accusation, and getting the details secondhand did not help to clarify what had happened. But Cervantes had been accused of mishandling the royal accounts and taking some funds for his personal use. That was all I cared to know. I kept the news to myself since Don Luis hardly ever mentioned him anymore.
Two years after young Diego Lara sailed for the New World, the news reached Spain that he was killed and eaten by cannibals in the viceroyalty of New Granada. His shrunken head was found in a Motilón Indian village and sent to the governor of Cartagena, who forwarded it to Luis. All of Madrid was horrified.
Don Luis never returned to work. It was announced that Don Carlos Calatrava, a scion of a noble Spanish family, had been appointed to replace him. I feared for my future. If I were fired, how would I support my ancient mother and aunt? Would this man replace all of us (as was customary) with his own people and his friends’ friends? Would I ever see Don Luis again? Now that he had no use for me, would he still be interested in cultivating our acquaintanceship? I knew perfectly well that I could not approach him. I did, however, send a letter of condolence.
Long weeks went by. Then, for the first time in the years we had known each other, I received a note from Don Luis thanking me for my letter and, to my utter disbelief, inviting me to stop by his house on Sunday afternoon. After years of waiting to be invited inside the august Lara house, legendary for its elegance, the important paintings and magnificent tapestries hanging on its walls, I barely paid attention to the furnishings of the mansion as the majordomo led me to the library, a vast rectangular space, with shelves that went all the way to the ceiling and were accessible by a ladder leading to a metal corridor that wrapped itself around the room.
Don Luis sat by an open window facing the courtyard. As I approached, he greeted me. “Pascual, how good of you to come see me. Please sit down.”
I took my seat and noticed a horrible object encased in glass on the table beside Don Luis. I could not tear my eyes away from it. He noticed my interest.
“It’s little Diego’s head,” he said softly. “This is how the savages he was trying to bring into the fold of God repaid him.”
His voice was feeble, yet filled with anger. I felt nauseated, and fixed my gaze on Don Luis. I could not bear to look at the monstrous head again. It had been just a few months since the last time I had seen Don Luis, but if I had run into him on the street I might not have recognized him.
“Two days ago, I sent a letter to the cardinal resigning from my position as procuring attorney for the Holy Office,” he began. “You know, Pascual, at first I thought work would be a distraction. But it’s become apparent I can’t think about anything except the fate of my son. I’m not fit for this world anymore.” He sighed. “I spend my days praying in the family chapel, but praying cannot bring relief from my pain. It just helps me to pass the hours. I’ve lost my appetite; I cannot sleep; even to talk is often excruciating. I cannot bear the presence of most people. Unless they have gone through the tragedy of losing their only son, they will never know the depths of my sorrow. The only person I talk to with any regularity is Father Jerónimo, who was Dieguito’s teacher. He’s the only person who understands how I feel. He knows what I’ve lost.”
Don Luis fell silent and stared out the window at a parched garden. I tried to distract him with my usual gossip, but he remained unresponsive. Now and then he nodded to indicate he was listening. I felt sorry for him. Life’s tragedies make equals of us all.
As I got up to leave, the hand that shook mine was cold and clammy. It’s like shaking hands with a dead man, I thought.
“I’m glad to see you, Pascual,” he whispered, becoming a little more animated. “I’m afraid I’m not good company these days. But if you can bear to be around me, do come to visit again. It will comfort me to see you, even if I talk little.”
* * *
My beloved mother died, after a short illness that took her in a matter of days. My father had passed when I was still a child, and I had lived the rest of my life spared by tragedy. If there was any purpose to my life, it was to support my mother and her sister. My mother was barely in the ground when Aunt María announced she was packed and ready to go to Jaén, to spend her last days close to another of her sisters. I was relieved the morning I put her in a carriage going south, but when I returned to the empty house it was as inhospitable as a mausoleum.
My grief drew me closer to Don Luis. It comforted me to visit him after I left work at night. He seemed to tolerate my visits. He still walked and ate and talked, like any other man, but he was in another world most of the time. I no longer went to see him out of morbid curiosity; it had been a long time since I had extracted from him any news about the important people he knew. It was hard to admit, but he was the only person I was close to.
Don Luis began to talk about a novel he was planning to write. I was surprised because he had never shown any interest in writing novels. During one of my visits, he said: “Pascual, I need to keep occupied. There are those who enjoy doing nothing, but I’m not that kind of person. As you know, I’m devoted to poetry, but nowadays after I’ve read a few verses I don’t know what I’m reading. I’ve been dreaming about writing a novel since I was a student. Perhaps the time has come to attempt it.”
“What wonderful news,” I said. “May I ask, if it’s not too much of an impertinence, what it is about?”
“Oh, I only have sketches for a few characters.” He paused. “My main character is based on Rodrigo Cervantes. Yes, Miguel’s progenitor.”
He had not mentioned Cervantes’s name in a long time. In 1596, I’d heard that Miguel Cervantes had left his occupation as a tax collector. By my calculations, he had been working in that capacity for almost ten years. When I heard the news I thought: That’s the end of him. May God help this pitiful man who carries a cloud of misery over his head, wherever he goes. The following year I was astonished to hear he was incarcerated again because more serious discrepancies had been discovered in the books he had kept during his years of service to the crown. I had kept all this to myself. It seemed that for Don Luis it was as if Cervantes had already died and turned to dust.
“Pascual,” he said, breaking my recollection, “how would you like to work for me as an amanuensis? I’m looking for someone who will live in the house.”
“It would be the greatest honor of my life, Don Luis,” I was quick to respond. When he began to talk about monetary compensation for my duties, I could no longer hear what he was saying. Even in my wildest dreams, it had never occurred to me that one day I would be living in one of the great houses of Spain. How I wished my mother were alive so that she could rejoice in my great good fortune.
Working at the Council of the Indies, after Don Luis left, had become insupportable. Without him as my superior, I had returned to the bleak life he’d rescued me from when he put me in charge of spying on Cervantes. I did not have the connections to advance myself in my career as a civil servant. Any position I could obtain as a government bureaucrat would be as deadening as the one I had served in for many years at the council; it would have meant moving to another gloomy building, working with dismal people, and shuffling different stacks of dusty documents. But I needed to work. Don Luis could choose not to work, but I needed a salaried position in order to survive.
There was something else: I had turned thirty-five years old and was still a bachelor. I had become acquainted with a group of hidalgos who frequented the gambling houses, where sex of both kinds could be procured for money. The king’s secretary, Antonio Pérez, was a prominent member of that coterie.
I couldn’t tear myself away from the life I had discovered, anymore than I could stop hair from growing on my face. I rejoiced in the exquisite pleasures of the body, despite the church’s condemnation of any kind of sensory pleasure as immoral. The king’s secretary was shielded by his association and closeness to our monarch; but it was only a matter of time before insinuations would be made about me, and I was in danger of being apprehended and accused of having abandoned my interest in women and lusting after men. I was in grave danger of being burned at the stake, or assassinated in a dark alley like the notorious poet Álvaro de Luna. Early in the reign of Philip II he had begun publicly executing sodomites. Although these executions were infrequent, not a year went by that a well-known sodomite wasn’t burned in a pyre. And the men who met this fate were not members of the nobility, but men like me. Marriage was the best way to avoid any accusations, but for me, getting married would entail another kind of death. Don Luis’s offer was providential; working for an important man of irreproachable character, and being part of his household, might be what would save my life.
* * *
I closed the house in which I had lived with my mother most of my life. We possessed almost nothing worth saving: I kept a few mementos and gave the rest away to charity. At Don Luis’s house, I was given the lugubrious chambers that had formerly belonged to Doña Mercedes. I brightened the walls, replacing the morbid statues of tortured saints and bleeding figures of Christ on the cross with colorful carpets, curtains, and tapestries, which had decorated guest rooms nobody used.
Don Luis began to talk in earnest about the composition of his novel. He showed me drawings he had made of the characters, and read intricate outlines to me, explaining how they would be developed. But time passed and he did no actual writing. I was expected to meet with him in the library during the morning hours and to dine with him every day, but the rest of the time I had no responsibilities. It took me awhile to become accustomed to the fact that I lived in one of Madrid’s great houses, and could for the first time wear clothes designed especially for me, clothes that made me look like a member of the nobility. I became a regular at the most exclusive gambling establishments. Perhaps for the first time, I was happy.
Then, in 1603, Miguel de Cervantes moved to Madrid with his sisters and his daughter Isabel. It was curious to see the extinguished flame of hatred light up again in Don Luis’s heart.
One morning, when we were in the library discussing the order of the notes for his novel, Don Luis said, abruptly: “You’ve heard that he’s here, haven’t you? I understand why you didn’t mention it to me: you’re trying to protect me. But I won’t have any peace until I find out how he occupies his time here.”
I offered to resume my old spying duties.
“No, I won’t hear of it, Pascual. You have risen in your station: you are my personal secretary. To spy for me would be beneath your new rank. However, I authorize you to hire a man to follow Miguel’s every movement and to report back to you. I won’t rest until I’ve found out why he has returned to Madrid after all these years. I’m convinced he must have something up his sleeve.”
The Cervantes brood had rented a house in a neighborhood of artisans. The women supported the family by sewing garments. It was rumored that Andrea still received monetary reparations from an old lover. Of Cervantes himself, little was said. He seldom went out and no longer frequented the infamous taverns he had patronized in his youth. Every night he was seen seated at a table by the window on the second floor, with a lit candle, writing until just before dawn. One of the sisters had mentioned to a neighbor that her brother was writing a novel.
When I mentioned this to Don Luis, he said, “Miguel was a writer. Since that appalling Galatea appeared, he hasn’t published anything. And that was almost twenty years ago. No, I don’t believe he will write another novel again. Or at least one of any literary merit.”
Even as he was saying this, I sensed Don Luis doubted his own words. The thought of Cervantes never publishing again pleased him in the extreme.
Then, as mysteriously as the family had arrived in Madrid, they packed their possessions and moved to Valladolid. I informed Don Luis of this new development immediately. It was at least something to talk about, other than his would-be novel.
“Why all this moving around, Pascual? It’s costly to move to another city. They are getting too old to continue their constant peregrinations. No, I’m convinced he’s hiding something, don’t you agree? It has to be more than just writing a novel. But what could it be?”
It was around this time that it dawned on me I was working for a man whose brains were disordered. I was troubled: madness is contagious; being around a person who has lost his reason, one begins to see the world through his distorted imagination.
The news reached Madrid that a man had been murdered on the doorstep of the Cervantes’s residency in Valladolid, and the family had been briefly incarcerated.
“How sordid! How sordid!” Don Luis exclaimed. “I’m sure he killed that man, Pascual. It had something to do with those whoring sisters of his. It’s too bad the Cervanteses were cleared of the charges. Miguel should have been exiled from the kingdom for good a long time ago. He’s been a criminal since his student days.”
* * *
Then, in December of 1604, Don Quixote was published in Valladolid by Francisco de Robles. Without delay, Don Luis asked me to order the book from one of the most reputable booksellers, for fear it would sell out before he could get his hands on a copy. There was already a long list of names of customers waiting for copies to arrive in Madrid. Don Quixote had been out only a matter of weeks when it was instantly embraced by the Spanish public with a passion I had not seen in all my days. Overnight, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra became famous. Wherever I went, people were talking about the novel. Even people who hadn’t read it knew at least one funny incident from it.
When I placed a copy of the book in his hands, Don Luis went into the library, where he secluded himself for two days. During that time, when I walked past the library door, I heard him cursing Cervantes’s name, or groaning as if the Holy Office were torturing him.
The death of Don Luis’s son had been a devastating blow. On his good days, he looked like a corpse just risen from the grave. But the success of Don Quixote and Cervantes’s celebrity were almost like an affront to his honor. One day, while we were dining, he suddenly said: “I heard that even the king has been seen reading it and laughing heartily. That means all the courtiers have read it too, to ingratiate themselves with His Majesty.” His voice quivering with controlled rage, he continued: “What you don’t know, Pascual, is that many years ago, when Miguel and I were young friends, on a night in which I had imbibed too much wine, I told him of my plan to write a history of a dreamer who ruins his family with his fantastic schemes.” Don Luis paused, as if to let me absorb what he was saying. “I tell you this so that you don’t think I’m merely a jealous man. He stole his celebrated Don Quixote from me!”
That day I understood that envy and hatred were the forces that kept Don Luis rooted to this world, and the hope that one day he’d get his revenge. I pitied him. “If it is any consolation, Your Grace,” I told him, “I’ve heard he sold his rights to his publisher for a bowl of lentils. Despite his fame, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra is as poor as ever.”
“Ha!” Don Luis exclaimed. He smiled, his face glowing with satisfaction.
* * *
Some months after the publication of Don Quixote, Cervantes and his entourage of female relatives returned to Madrid.
It was our habit to meet in the library every morning, except on Sundays. Don Luis would sit in his comfortable chair by the window, I at the long table in front of a stack of writing paper and an inkwell, my quill ready to take dictation. Most of the time, he would talk about the book he wanted to write. “I will write something important,” he would say. “I’m going to produce a great work. Nothing else will do.”
I was beginning to think he would never write anything—important or not. Many mornings we sat there for hours, in total silence. Then one day, shortly after he had found out that Cervantes was settled again in Madrid, Don Luis said: “Pascual, I cannot let him have all the glory.”
I picked up my pen as if to start writing; it was a reflex.
“What are you doing, you imbecile! I’m not dictating my book.”
It was the first time he had insulted me. Despite his condescending manner, he had never mistreated me. I swallowed hard and tried to hide my humiliation.
“I’ve concluded, after much thought and prayers, that I will write the second part of Don Quixote. If other people can write second, third, and fourth Dianas and Amadises, who’s to say I don’t have the right to pen Don Quixote Part II? It’s an old and honored tradition.” He stared at me and waited for my response.
“Of course, it’s your right, Don Luis,” I rushed to say. “Besides, your second part will be better than Cervantes’s first.”
“Thank you, Pascual. Of course it will be much better. I’m an educated man, I know the classics, I went to university where I learned Latin and ancient Greek. I’m convinced I can write a better novel than Miguel’s, not just because of my superior education, but also because I am a moral person. His Don Quixote is a sacrilegious book. Yes, sacrilegious. I’m choosing my words carefully, Pascual, fully aware of their exact meaning. If our king had not endorsed it, that novel would have come under the scrutiny of the Holy Office.” He paused to catch his breath. “My novel, on the other hand, will mirror the state of immorality I see everywhere in Spanish society, of which Miguel’s Don Quixote is patent proof. You know how at the end of his novel Miguel hints at the knight’s future sallies? Well, I’ll just pick up the story where he left off.” Having concluded his tirade, Don Luis fell silent. He looked spent.
I thought we were done for the day; I was about to replace the cork on the inkwell when I heard him say: “But I’ll write it under a pseudonym, as my motives are selfless and I am not interested in glory for myself. What do you think my nom de plume should be?”
I wanted to run away from that room and his presence. His voice, dripping with more bile than usual, nauseated me. He’s a repugnant man, I thought. “I can’t think of any fitting names, Your Grace. If you give me some time to mull it over, tomorrow I’ll present you with a list.”
“You may go now,” he said.
The next morning, before I had a chance to read him the pseudonyms I had jotted down as possibilities, Don Luis said, as I took my usual chair at the table: “Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda—what do you think, Pascual?” Before I had time to say anything, he went on: “Alonso, because I want a name that starts with the first letter of the alphabet; Fernández, because every other plebeian in Spain has the surname of Gutiérrez or Fernández; and Avellaneda, because of the fruit of the avellano tree, the filbert which poor people pick from the public parks to supplement their diet. Of course,” he added with relish, “to people like us, avellanas are just food for pigs.”
He smiled to himself, deeply amused by the pseudonym he had chosen. This man is deranged! I thought. “I knew Your Grace would find the perfect nom de plume,” I said. “It’s for the ages.”
* * *
Finally, after weeks of struggle, Don Luis dictated the opening lines of Don Quixote Part II:
The sage Alisolán, a modern yet truthful historian, writes that after the expulsion of the Mohammedan Moors from Aragón (the nation where he was born), he found among certain historical records written in Arabic a narration of the third sally of the indestructible hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha, who journeyed to the renowned city of Zaragoza to participate in some tourneys being held there.
Even I, who was no literary critic but merely someone who read chivalry novels, could tell that this beginning compared poorly to Cervantes’s: “In a certain corner of La Mancha, whose name I prefer to forget . . .”
This is not an auspicious beginning, I thought. But Don Luis employed me to write down the words that passed through his lips, not to judge their merit—certainly not to his face.
Instead of continuing to dictate the rest of the narrative, Don Luis began to draw maps of the possible routes Don Quixote would follow. “In order to be truthful, Pascual,” he told me, “I need you to travel all the way to Zaragoza and bring back a report on the conditions of the roads on which my knight will travel, the different inns where he’ll stay, the quality of the food and the sleeping accommodations, and the names of the trees in the forests where Don Quixote and Sancho will sleep on occasion.”
I was all too happy to get away from him and visit the best inns on the road to Zaragoza, where I requested accommodations that were reserved for aristocrats and important travelers.
* * *
A year after he had dictated the first paragraph of his novel, Don Luis had not written another word. Perhaps to excuse his dawdling, one day he said to me: “My research must be impeccable, Pascual. I’m sure my readers will appreciate the veracity of what I write. When it comes to the creation of literature, I believe the tortoise is always superior to the hare, don’t you agree? I want my readers to know that when I set down a period, it is meant as a philosophical statement.”
Our sessions in the library were made bearable only by his madness, which now amused me. Besides, my salary allowed me to frequent the gambling houses, where many noblemen had befriended me, since my pockets were always full of escudos, reales, and maravedíes. Even so, my bad luck at the gambling tables, in addition to other costly pleasures to be purchased at these establishments, kept me in debt. But I was not inclined to give up my new life.
Don Luis kept coffers in his chambers that he filled with the revenues from the family’s vineyards and orchards near Toledo. While he prayed in the family chapel every day, I began to remove gold coins from the largest coffers. The fortune he kept in his chambers was so large he would never notice the few escudos I removed to make my life more enjoyable. I would never see the world, so the gambling houses would be my recompense.
He might have thought that, like so many novels that were the talk of each new season, Don Quixote would be forgotten. That might be one of the reasons his writing of Chapter One had not progressed beyond the opening paragraph. But when it was announced that Don Quixote had been published in translation in Brussels in 1607, and that it had become a sensation there and in France, and that translations into English and other languages were being undertaken, Don Luis rushed to dictate a second paragraph and then a third and so on, until he had completed the first chapter.
Instead of continuing the composition of his narrative, my employer announced to me that he would now write the prologue of his Don Quixote Part II, which he subsequently rewrote endless times over the years. In essence, his prologue stated that his novel would be “less boastful and offensive to its readers” than the original; that Cervantes had no right to complain about “the profit I take away from his second part,” or be angry at Avellaneda for writing a second part because “there is nothing new about different persons pursuing the same story.” He cited in his defense the many Amadices that had been written; that he could never please Cervantes because it was well-known he was “as old as the Castle of Cervantes . . . and because of his advanced age . . . he had annoyed everybody and everything”; and that he excused the errors of Cervantes’s Part I because “it was written among people in prison” and everybody knows that prisoners are “gossipy, impatient, and short-tempered”; and finally, that his Don Quixote Part II, unlike Cervantes’s Part I, did “not teach lewdness but rather not to be crazy.”
I realized this spiteful man was not my superior, except in wealth. I never again used, at least not in my head, the honorary Don. It was understandable that he had become obsessed with the friend who betrayed him in his youth, but to write a book to destroy another man’s economic future, a man who was old, crippled, and poor, was something only a heartless Spanish aristocrat would do. It was an unpardonable sin.
He must have sensed that I was drawing away from him, because shortly after he had penned his prologue, at the end of one of our working days, he said: “Pascual, for a long time now you have proven to be a faithful friend, and I’m extremely grateful to you for your steadfastness during these years when so much tragedy has befallen me. You have given me every reason to trust you. But I must ask you never to mention the book I’m writing to anyone. Do I have your promise?”
“If it is any reassurance to Your Grace,” I quickly replied, “I swear on my mother’s memory that the secret will die with me.”
Soon after this exchange, Luis announced to me he had drafted a new last will and testament. “You are remembered most handsomely,” he told me. I had no reason to doubt the veracity of his words: he was immensely wealthy and had no close relatives or friends: his wife, Doña Mercedes, had died shortly after word got to Madrid of Friar Diego’s death. I understood this was his way of buying my unconditional allegiance, making sure I kept silent about his secret and remained his loyal accomplice. I have sold my soul to the devil, I thought.
Luis Lara was almost twenty years my senior. After the death of his son, he had lost interest in his appearance. Other than attending Sunday Mass, he rarely went out for a walk; left most of his food on his plate; spent hours praying on his knees in the chapel; slept but little; and had grown so thin his body would not have withstood a serious fall or illness. I couldn’t ask him about the nature of his bequest to me, but sometimes I would let my imagination carry me away, and I believed that, at his death, I would inherit his house with all its furnishings, in addition to the revenue of at least one of his vineyards. Also, there were those coffers in his chamber filled with gold escudos. Besides his valet Juan, no one knew about them. But Juan was so old and feeble-minded that I had no reason to fear anything from him. Until the moment of his death came, all I had to do was to please Luis, and wait with patience to become a wealthy gentleman, restored to the station of my ancestors. The day would come when the shield of the Paredes family replaced that of the Laras on the front door.
Luis continued working on his novel at his unhurried pace. When a new edition of Don Quixote appeared in 1608, he seemed unperturbed. His leisurely method of composition suited me fine. As long as I continued visiting the gambling houses, and tasting their exotic and forbidden African and Moorish delights, I was content.
* * *
As the years went by, and the popularity of Don Quixote grew, Luis’s obsession with Cervantes swelled. In 1609, when he heard that Cervantes had become a member of the Congregation of the Slaves of the Very Holy Sacrament, and that his wife and sisters had entered the Third Franciscan Order as novices, he scoffed: “If they think they are going to be less Jewish by becoming devout, it won’t work.”
The following year it was announced that Cervantes had traveled to Barcelona in the retinue of the count of Lemos, who had been appointed as viceroy of Naples. “If only the count knew!” Luis screamed as I delivered the news. “It is my fault, Pascual, because I should long ago have let the world know the kind of scoundrel Miguel de Cervantes is!”
His anger was placated when he heard that Cervantes had not joined the count in Naples and had instead returned to Madrid.
Don Luis at last finished his Don Quixote Part II. As he did not want anyone, even the eventual publisher, to know he was the creator, he authorized me to arrange for its publication. I was in the process of doing so when Cervantes announced that his Exemplary Novels would appear in 1613.
“Stop all negotiations regarding the publication of my Don Quixote. We will wait until next year,” he ordered me. “If I’ve waited this long, I can wait another year to show the world my superiority as a writer. Besides, when my novel appears, I don’t want another Spanish work to compete with it!”
By then, Cervantes was so famous that the public consumed the first edition of The Exemplary Novels in just a few weeks. Like everyone else, Luis read them. His verdict was: “They are not novels, Pascual. They read like plays. In any case, they are satirical, rather than exemplary. I would be wrong not to admit they are ingenious,” he conceded. “The one about the talking dogs is quite clever, though it rambles, like everything he writes. And his lack of knowledge of Latin is evident; his erudition a sham. He will always be an ignoramus!”
I had begun to think Luis would die before the publication of his novel. When it finally appeared in 1614, he was an old man. To my surprise, though his novel was vastly inferior to his rival’s—it lacked what Cervantes possessed in excess: genius!—the false Don Quixote became a success. Many readers were amused by it, and the first edition quickly sold out.
“Its success does not surprise me,” Luis boasted. “People can see I’m an artist of the highest order, not a vulgar one. Just to give you an example, instead of saying, I took a shit, as Miguel does in so many places in his crude novel, as if taking a shit were a worthy subject, I wrote: The beehive that nature installed in my posterior distills wax. You see the great difference, don’t you? What’s more, the adventures of my heroes are more noteworthy than those gathered and published by the writer of the first part.” Usually he could not bear to mention Cervantes’s name. “In addition, ‘The Desperate Rich Man’ and ‘The Happy Lovers,’ the tales within my Don Quixote, are wholly original and better written than the meandering, boring tales by the writer of Part I. Don’t you agree?”
I concurred, “It is as you say, Your Grace.”
* * *
Luis de Lara’s moment of glory was short-lived. The following year, after a ten-year hiatus, Cervantes published his own Part II. Like everyone else, I agreed (though I never mentioned this to Luis) that Cervantes had surpassed himself. What’s more, his novel exposed the shallowness of Luis’s, and dealt it a mortal blow. If Cervantes had not written Part II, I’m of the opinion that Luis’s novel might have survived as an oddity. Its lean style allowed the action to move faster than in Cervantes’s novel; though when it came to the depiction of Don Quixote and Sancho, Luis’s lack of empathy for other human beings exposed his true nature. Worse, he had not expected—I had not expected, no one had—that in Cervantes’s Part II, the crippled soldier of Lepanto would borrow the adventures and the characters created by Luis.
When he finished reading Cervantes’s Part II, Luis had an apoplectic fit. I found him in the library, collapsed on his chair, unconscious, a copy of Cervantes’s novel at his feet. The doctor was called. Though Luis was by then mostly skin and bones, he was bled until he turned the color of wax. But the will to live was strong in him, and after a few weeks he regained his strength and was able to speak. The first thing he whispered to me was: “Pascual, he wrote Part I without my help—although he stole the idea from me— but he could not have written his Part II without me. And he has the gall to steal my character Álvaro Tartuffe, and to mock my novel! My characters helped him to develop his own feeble creations.”
He looked so pathetic, so diminished, like an ancient child, that I wished he had died. Was it pity or revulsion I felt?
“Don Luis,” I said, “you shouldn’t try to speak too much. The doctor’s orders are that you must rest and eat nourishing meals. We can talk about everything when you’ve regained your strength.”
He attempted a smile that came across as a grimace. Then he grabbed me by the lapels of my vest. “I made him a great writer, Pascual,” he whispered in my ear. “I compelled him to write Part II.”
I thought: What is unbearable for you to contemplate is that you were outsmarted; that Cervantes stole from the thief. When Cervantes made references to Avellaneda’s Quixote, and inserted Avellaneda’s characters into his own story, he had linked his Quixote to Luis’s. Now the two characters (the real and the fake one) were Siamese twins. Cervantes had written a novel that joined the two of them forever.
Before long, the Apocryphal Don Quixote (as it became known) was reviled and then forgotten. Luis spent his days praying, or in silence. He was a ghost in life. At night, he wandered down the halls of the great house in his nightshirt, barefoot, holding a burning taper and praying. One night I heard him imploring: “Help me to forgive, My Lord. Please help me to forgive him before I die.”
I had remained loyal because I knew his death was approaching, and I assumed I would come into my inheritance and would not have to work again for any man, aristocrat or not. Then, finally, it occurred to me to search his archives for his last will and testament. I was desperate to know exactly how rich I would be at his death. Luis, it turned out, had lied to me to buy my constancy: he had left all his money to his alma mater, to establish a chair in his name in perpetuity.
But I was not about to give up my nights in the gambling house, and the company of the children of the grandees of Spain whom I could address with the familiar tú, as if I were their equal. In less than a year, I practically emptied the coffers in Luis’s chambers. And I started to strip the grand mansion of everything of value: the paintings by the Italian and Flemish masters, the monumental medieval tapestries, the silverware, the gold plates, the furniture, the linen, the carpets, the old shields and lances and swords displayed on the walls. I sold everything to finance my nights of bliss. By then I was fifty years old, and I lived as a rich man.
The negative feelings I had harbored for Luis during all the years of my servitude had festered, until it poisoned every aspect of my life. If you’ve hated a person more than you have loved anyone else, the hate becomes a kind of love. Perhaps my hatred of Luis was the closest to love I had ever come. My need to destroy him was becoming as severe as his need to destroy Cervantes. I wanted to crush the man who had corrupted my soul; I wanted to twist his head and tear it from his neck. It would have given me great happiness to see him tortured by the Holy Office and then burned in a pyre. That he had been born rich and aristocratic was an accident; he could also have been born a mangy canine.
The formerly great house of the Laras was denuded of its splendors and overrun with rats. Luis’s old servant Juan was blind, but still tried to dress his master and serve him his meals. Juan was like an ancient dog that could barely crawl and yet refused to die out of loyalty to his master. And there was Maria Elena, the cook, who prepared the meals Luis didn’t touch. Her insalubrious children, who worked as servants and laborers and God knows what else, came by on an almost daily basis to be fed by her. They ate and drank and sang and danced in the kitchen, and stole whatever was left to sell or pawn.
At the beginning of 1616, I informed Luis that Cervantes had entered the Third Order of St. Francis. I expected him to say, “That will not make him any less a Jew!” But he said nothing; it was as if he had finally conceded defeat and was completely, irremediably annihilated. He had lost the feud. Cervantes was the undisputed victor.
One April morning, the news spread through Madrid that Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, the beloved and celebrated author of Don Quixote de la Mancha, was dying, and would be buried in the Convent of the Discalced Trinitarians. After all the many years I had deferred to Luis Lara—“Yes, Don Luis,” “Of course, Your Grace,” “As you say, Your Eminence,” “Kiss your ass? Lick your feet? Eat your shit? Of course, of course, of course, Your Worship”; the years when I obeyed his every command, was at his beck and call, the years of my humiliating servitude—the moment I had been waiting for had finally arrived.
I mentioned to Luis the approaching demise of his archenemy, and the news put him in a good mood. It was a sunny spring afternoon. I asked him if he would like to go out for a stroll. The body that just a few hours earlier had been as stiff as a mummy’s was now filled with energy. At the end of his block on Lara Street, I stopped and pretended to see the new sign for the first time.
“Why have you stopped, Pascual?”
I raised my arm in the direction of the new tiles adorning the corner. Fate works in mysterious ways. Lara Street, for centuries the name of the street where the Lara house stood, had been renamed Cervantes Street.
Later that night, I found Luis dead in his library, a copy of Cervantes’s Don Quixote Part II on his lap.
I lived on.