Chapter 2
The Stain
Luis
Knowing it would be hard for Miguel’s parents to obtain funds overnight, I decided to help my friend finance his flight. I lived on the generous allowance my father gave me to attend the university in Alcalá de Henares, so I could not go to him to ask for a large sum of money. Like any good Castilian, he was thrifty. My grandfather, Carlos Lara, was my only hope; Papá Carlos always indulged me. Appreciative of his generosity, I never imposed on him.
He was not in his bedroom. I looked for him in the library, and he wasn’t there either. Next I looked for him in the family chapel, where he went twice a day for his devotions. Through the keyhole, I saw him on his knees, hands clasped, head bowed, lost in prayer. While I waited outside the door, I feared that one of my parents would find me standing by the chapel’s entrance and I would have to explain the situation. I shifted from one foot to the other to make time fly faster. As Papá Carlos exited the chapel, serene after the absorption of his morning prayers, I accosted him without any preamble. “Papá Carlos, I need money to help a friend in grave danger.”
“Is it for Miguel Cervantes?” he asked, without the slightest surprise.
I nodded. From the start, Papá Carlos had frowned upon my growing intimacy with Miguel.
“I knew the boy’s grandfather well when our monarchs held court in Valladolid,” Papá Carlos said. “Mark my words: like grandfather, like grandson. Juan Cervantes was a spendthrift—slaves, horses, and clothes fit for a nobleman. He was a clothmaker, a commoner with pretensions, who looked down on his Jewish brethren and sought to befriend the rich, the powerful, the Christian nobility.” He shook his head and narrowed his eyes. “It’s true he ended his life respected and prosperous. One hates to think how he achieved a high station in life.” My grandfather emphasized every word, the way he did when he wanted to teach me a lesson. “He was a true member of his nationless, Semitic race. Luis, it behooves us Christians not to get too close to people with the stain.” He rested a hand on my shoulder, and looked me directly in the eye. “Never forget this: even when a Jew swears to be a devout Christian—centuries after their so-called conversion—at heart he always remains a Jew.”
I had nothing against the Jews who had converted. What’s more, the conversos’ secretive life held a fascination for me. Besides, from the very beginning, Miguel and I had shared so many joyous moments that I would have disobeyed my parents—whom I otherwise respected and heeded, as was my duty—if they had forbidden our friendship.
Yet, in spite of his disapproval, there was not even a look of reproach from my grandfather. “Come with me,” he said.
I followed Papá Carlos into his sleeping chamber, where he opened a wooden box inlaid with Moorish designs carved in ivory, the kind made by the artisans of Toledo. He removed a handful of coins, and counted out sixty gold escudos which he placed in a leather pouch. Not another word was said, then or later. I understood his extraordinary generosity was due to his unspoken wish that Miguel would use the money to travel far, far away from me and from Spain, so that I could escape his influence. It was certainly enough money to pay for Miguel’s passage to the New World, a place he dreamed of reaching one day.
* * *
I had met Miguel at the Estudio de la Villa, the municipal school in Madrid where students prepared for entrance to the university. For two years Miguel had been the brother I didn’t have. For two years, during that period of youth when we dream our purest dreams, and no dream seems too improbable to attain, we had shared the hope of becoming poets and soldiers, like many of the great warrior poets of Spain, like our beloved Garcilaso de la Vega. Those two years before I turned twenty, Miguel and I had enjoyed the communion of twin souls. Everyone referred to us as “the two friends.” Our friendship seemed to me the perfect embodiment of the ethical union of souls that Aristotle describes in his Nicomachean Ethics. That ancient ideal of friendship was one of the goals I pursued in life.
Madrid was a small village during the reign of Philip II. Soon after Miguel’s family arrived from Sevilla, rumors spread that his father, Don Rodrigo Cervantes, had been jailed many times for his inability to honor his debts. Another rumor, even more shameful, preceded the family.
At Estudio de la Villa, my teachers and classmates held me in the highest esteem. Studying came easily to me. Knowledge was prized in my family; it was expected that after I left la Villa I would attend the Universidad Cisneriana in Alcalá, where many of the sons of the best families in Castile studied theology, medicine, literature, and other appropriate professions for an hidalgo, before taking their place in the world.
Miguel enrolled at la Villa during my last year there. His father must have used an important connection to get him accepted. Miguel hadn’t been brought up to be a caballero like the rest of my classmates. Among the finest youth of Castile, of the world, he stood out like a wild colt in a stable of thoroughbreds. I hadn’t met anyone like him before. His boisterousness, unrefined charm, and extroverted nature earned him the nickname of El Andaluz. Like an Andalusian, Miguel spoke Castilian as if he could not quite grasp the language: he chopped off the last syllable of every word, and his enunciation was harsh—the way Arabic sounded to my ears. Miguel had that swagger, brio, and spontaneity of the people from the south, who cannot be called true Iberians since they have a mixture of Spanish and Moorish blood. He behaved as if he didn’t know whether to act like a Gypsy or a nobleman. In both roles, he was an impersonator. He would exhibit the confidence of a noble; while at the same time displaying the wild spirit and manner of the Gypsies, who would arrive in Madrid each spring along hosts of chirruping swallows, then flee to the warmer climates of Andalusia and the Mediterranean as soon as the first dusting of gold painted the leaves of the madroños.
Miguel made a memorable impression on me when I heard him declaim in class Garcilaso’s “Sonnet V.” It was a poem I recited to myself as I ambled along the streets of Madrid, or wandered by myself in the woods, or lay in my bed at night, after I said my prayers but before I went to sleep. I recited those verses thinking of my cousin Mercedes, the woman I had been in love with since childhood. Until I heard Miguel reciting the sonnet in class, I thought I was the only person alive who understood the full import of Garcilaso’s words.
The instant he began, “Your face is engraved on my soul,” I was rapt. He wasn’t merely saying the words, the way my other classmates did when we were asked to recite poems we had to memorize. With Miguel, it was as if he had experienced the feelings Garcilaso described. He felt each word deeply, the way only a true poet could. With mounting passion he recited the next thirteen lines:
when my verses invoke you
you alone deserve credit for them: they are
inspired by your perfection.
This is how it is now and shall be forever.
I am unworthy of your grace,
and of comprehending your splendors—
a divine gift to a mere mortal like me.
I was born only to love you;
your face is the object of my adoration;
the sole purpose of my soul is to mirror yours.
Everything I am belongs to you.
I was born in you, you gave me life,
I shall die for you—for you, I’m dying.
When Miguel finished his recitation, his pupils shining as if he were consumed by fever, his lips quivering, his hands trembling as if they had a life apart from him, his forehead dewed with perspiration, his shoulders curving inward to nestle all the words and sounds of the poem in his chest, retaining the emotion they awakened in him, it was as if a sword had pierced his heart and he were dying of unrequited love. I knew right away that, even though we came from different worlds, worlds that in the Spain of our youth were nearly irreconcilable, I had to become Miguel’s friend. The way he made Garcilaso’s verses pulsate with fervor told me that here was someone who loved poetry, and Garcilaso, as much as I did.
This recitation surprised all of us who, until that point, had seen him as just another rustic Andalusian. A few of my classmates whooped and applauded his heartfelt display. I saw Miguel rise instantly in the esteem of Professor López de Hoyos, famed for his knowledge of the classics. Overnight, he became the professor’s protégé—even though Miguel was an indifferent student in all other subjects. He seemed to live for poetry, which I found to be an admirable trait—since poetry was for me the highest of all the arts.
Not long afterward, I overheard Professor López de Hoyos talking to another of our instructors and referring to Miguel as “my treasured and beloved disciple.” A twinge of jealousy gripped me, as I realized that from this moment on I would take second place in the professor’s affections. I will be a true caballero, I said to myself, and rise above petty jealousies. I offered my friendship to Miguel with an open heart.
That day, we left school together and went for a walk. As soon as we were far enough from school, Miguel put a pipe between his lips, with no tobacco in it. (When I knew him better, I came to see how important it always was for him to create an affect.) He insisted we go to a tavern to talk about poetry over a mug of wine. I resisted the invitation because my parents expected me at home every day at the same hour, and I couldn’t come back smelling of alcohol and tobacco. Instead, quoting Garcilaso’s verses, we walked the streets and plazas of Madrid until nightfall. That night my friendship with Miguel was founded on our love of Garcilaso de la Vega—the great bard of Toledo, the prince of Spanish poetry. Not one of my other classmates shared with me this passion. Garcilaso’s freshness of language, sincerity of sentiment, and stylistic innovations—incorporating Italian lyricism into Spain’s stagnant poetic tradition—plus the fact that he had been a soldier, contributed to making him our hero. That night, as we rhapsodized about the noble Toledano, Miguel remarked, “He died still young, before he was corrupted by the world.” I wondered then whether that, too, was Miguel’s ambition.
At that time, only young bards and poetry lovers knew Garcilaso’s work. On that first walk, we pledged we would be like Garcilaso and Boscán (Garcilaso’s best friend, a great translator and poet). We were both sick of the sentimental poetry filled with stilted conventions that was then in vogue, and swore—with vehemence—to dethrone the official poets, whose surnames were so detested we would not soil our lips by mentioning them. We shared the same aspiration: to write only about love that arose from a living, breathing woman, a tangible reality—not the vaporous, affected love of the poets that preceded Garcilaso.
“We will cultivate the lyric,” I said. “Our poems will be a questioning of our minds and hearts. Not the tearful rubbish that’s so popular today.”
“Yes, yes,” Miguel concurred. “We are manly poets. Poet warriors like Garcilaso, like Jorge Manrique. Not like the weeping poetasters of today.”
The torches were beginning to be lit on street corners. I started heading for my house, but Miguel continued to walk alongside me. When we reached the front door of my home in the neighborhood of the Royal Alcázar, he made no comment, yet I could see he was in awe of the imposing front door, and the antiquity of the bronze family shield emblazoned on it. I invited him to come in.
“I appreciate your kind invitation,” he said, “but I should be heading back home. Next time.”
* * *
We became inseparable, to the exclusion of all the other students. Almost every day, we took long walks in El Prado Park. Miguel kept an eye on the ground for chestnuts, which he picked up and put in his school satchel. To me, they were merely food to fatten pigs. To Miguel, they were a delicacy. I soon discovered that despite his sensitive soul, and his complete devotion to poetry, there were vast gaps in his literary education. He knew Garcilaso’s poetry, and very little else. His ignorance of the classics, of Virgil and Horace, for example, was inconceivable in someone with ambitions of becoming not just a poet, but Court Poet. Garcilaso had held this post in the court of Carlos V and I knew how hard it would be for Miguel to achieve this, if his family, as was rumored, as my grandfather had confirmed, were converted Jews. The nobility in the court of Philip II would not have accepted this. Long gone were the days of the Catholic kings, when Isabella’s court had been a haven for Jewish scientists, doctors, and scholars—before she expelled all Jews from Spain, pressured by the Vatican. We lived closer to the days when Jews were routinely burned at the stake in Madrid and all over Spain.
My Lara ancestors hailed from Toledo. As far back as the times of the Holy Roman Empire, my relatives had lived in houses and castles with library shelves containing, in Castilian, Greek, Latin, Italian, and Arabic, all the books considered essential for a gentleman’s education.
Among my ancestors I count warriors, illustrious writers, and noble adventurers who gave their lives defending our faith on the battlefields of Europe and in the conquest of Mexico. My father was twice a marquis. My grandfather made his name in the Battle of Pavia in which our Emperor Charles V defeated François I of France. In 1522, my grandfather also participated in an expedition against the Turks on the island of Malta. It was there he had gained the friendship of Juan Boscán and Garcilaso, soldiers in that campaign. So I grew up hearing about these great poets not as distant figures, but as men of flesh and bone, people that I myself might have known.
My mother was a countess; her family, the Mendinuetas, was every bit as ancient and noble as Father’s. Mother liked to remind me, “For generations, both sides of our families have ridden in carriages pulled by two mules. That’s the kind of people we come from.”
Notwithstanding Miguel’s gregarious nature, he was reticent when it came to talking about his family, pecheros with meager financial resources. Even having ink, paper, and quills to do his homework was a luxury for Miguel. I invited him to visit our library to read. It became his second home. When he entered our house for the first time, it was obvious to me that he felt he didn’t belong there. Around the members of my family he became tongue-tied.
Books were like a treasure to Miguel. To be sure, he had read Jorge de Montemayor’s pastoral romance La Diana, and was acquainted with a few of the Spanish classics, but in our library he held for the first time an edition of Petrarch’s sonnets, Erasmus’s Colloquia and Copia, and Boscán’s translation of Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier. We spent hours reading aloud Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso. When I showed Miguel the first edition of Garcilaso’s poetry, which had been published in the same volume with Boscán’s poems in 1543, Miguel could not control his tears as he caressed the cover. Then he fell silent for the rest of the evening.
Miguel stroked the old editions of the classics as if they were not just precious objects, but frail living forms. His index finger would trace the lines on the pages, grazing over them the way one does the skin of one’s beloved for the first time. His appetite for literature was voracious. He could read a book in a matter of hours, as if that were the last time he would ever have access to it. He had the thirst for knowledge that a camel has for water after completing a long trek in the desert. He would read by the light of the candelabrum, until the wicks burned out.
Although my mother extended Miguel invitations to stay for supper, he always claimed his parents were expecting him. At first, it was unclear to me where he lived. When I showed interest in his domicile, he waved in the direction of the center of town, away from the towers of the Alcázar—our lofty neighbors. Going in and out of our house, it was an everyday occurrence to see carriages accompanied by corteges, transporting the royal family and other important personages as they made their way to and from the Alcázar. Notable Madrileños, carried by their slaves on the finest palanquins, went by our door as frequently as peddlers hawking their wares in the poorer neighborhoods.
Months after we had become close, Miguel finally invited me to visit his home. His family lived in a crumbling two-story house near the Puerta del Sol, on a gloomy street reeking of cabbage soup, urine, and excrement. These were dwellings without cisterns, whose inhabitants collected their water from the public fountains. The shuttered windows kept a wood strip open to peek out on the street life. This was a part of Madrid hardly frequented by hidalgos and duennas; instead, it was home to beggars, to mutilated, suppurating, shoeless people, and grown men and children who walked about practically naked, fighting with the street dogs and rats for a bone without flesh.
Miguel had mentioned that his father was a surgeon. But on my first visit to the Cervantes home, I discovered Don Rodrigo Cervantes was not a university-educated doctor, but one of those barber/doctors who bled penniless ill people. Don Rodrigo’s barbershop and clinic were housed in one large, dark, pestilent room on the first floor of their home. When we came in, Don Rodrigo was busy with a patient. Miguel said, “Good afternoon, Papá,” and his father nodded in our direction without acknowledging me, as if he were so distracted he hadn’t seen me.
We walked across the airless room—where you could practically breathe in sickness—housing people asleep or moaning in makeshift beds that were no more than wooden planks covered with dirty straw. Then we ascended the broken wooden steps that led to the family’s living quarters on the second floor. One smoky oil lamp burned in the parlor, shedding its weak light on a threadbare carpet with a few worn-out cushions on it, a table made of crude wood, and a wooden crucifix hanging above the entrance. Everything in the room was impregnated with the acrid smell of the cabbage used as the main ingredient in poor man’s soup.
Miguel led me to his bedroom, a windowless area off the main chamber, with a curtain of rough cloth full of holes in place of a proper door. I had to bend my knees and lower my head to enter it. Miguel shared the one cot with his brother Rodrigo, the youngest of the family.
When we returned to the parlor, we found seated on a cushion, with a crying baby in her arms, a young woman who Miguel introduced as Andrea, his older sister. He mentioned that Magdalena, the other sister, was in Córdoba visiting relatives. Miguel was finishing the introductions when his mother, Doña Leonor, came out of the kitchen. My presence took her by surprise, I could tell, from which I deduced that the family was not used to visitors coming upstairs. Miguel’s mother was tall and thin, with the haggard look of an ascetic. In her youth, she must have been good-looking, but now her face resembled a frieze of tiny mosaics broken and reassembled, to expose a landscape of crushed hopes.
When Miguel mentioned my full name, she became slightly awkward. “Don Luis Lara,” she said, pronouncing each syllable slowly as if to make sure she had heard right. “Welcome to our humble home. Your visit honors us.” Despite her disheveled state and modest garments, Doña Leonor had the good manners of a woman of some education and refinement. I learned later, she came from landed gentry of old stock. She turned to Miguel, “You could have mentioned you were bringing Don Luis to visit. I would have at least prepared a refreshment for him.”
“It’s my fault, Doña Leonor,” I interjected. “Miguel didn’t know I was coming. I insisted on stopping by to pick up a schoolbook. Forgive me for my rudeness.”
At that moment a boy came running up the stairs yelling, “Miguel, Miguel, Father needs you downstairs!”
“Rodrigo, what happened to your manners?” Doña Leonor reprimanded him. “Don’t you see we have a visitor? Don Luis must think we scream in this house all the time.”
“This is my little brother. I’ll be back soon,” Miguel said to me as he left with his brother.
Doña Leonor insisted that I stay for a refreshment. Before returning to the kitchen, she addressed Andrea: “Let me take the young one to her crib. Keep Don Luis company while I prepare him a cup of chocolate.”
Andrea handed the now quiet baby to her mother. We were left alone in the parlor, sitting on cushions across from each other. She was the first one to break the silence. “Don Luis should know that the baby girl my mother took to her crib is Constanza, my own daughter, though my parents tell everyone that the baby is theirs.” Her astonishing revelation came out of her lips with a bluntness that was almost savage.
Andrea’s hair hung down to her waist like a black silk mantilla. She was dressed plainly in a gray dress, and wore no adornments. Her features were classically perfect and the skin of her face unblemished. Her eyes shot the same steely shafts of defiance that the women who prowled the seamy alleys of Madrid hurled at men, demanding that you engage their services. Andrea had a dimple on her chin that was like a well where men’s desires went in and didn’t come out again.
“It’s not my fault, Don Luis, that God, if I am to believe what people say of me, made me beautiful. For a girl of humble parentage, beauty is her only dowry.” She paused and grimaced. Because she whispered her words, I had to lean in her direction until I was so close I could feel her breath brushing back my eyelashes. Her proximity was perturbing. She was indeed exceptionally beautiful. But hers was a beauty etched in acid. Smoothing the hair around her face with both hands, she took a deep, sorrowful breath. With an exaggerated lisp, penciling the air with the pink tip of her tongue, she went on: “I met a lad in Sevilla who delighted my eye and whom my heart chose as the object of its adoration. Yessid was his name. His intentions toward me were honorable. My love for him was as true love is: undivided and unconstrained. He was a carpenter, but what made him unacceptable as my husband in my father’s eyes was that he was of Moorish descent. This, despite the fact that Yessid’s family had converted to our religion, and he was a true Christian. Nonetheless, my family forbade me to see him. That’s all we need, my father said to me when I informed him that Yessid wished to ask for my hand in marriage. After many generations, we still haven’t been able to establish our own purity of blood. If you marry a Moor, our family will never be free of the stain. I’d rather see you dead. I forbid you to see Yessid alone again. And that young man had better not show his face around here anymore.” She paused, pained by her confession. Then Andrea took another drawn-out breath before she continued, “Don Luis is young, but I’m sure you’re already acquainted with the enslaving tyranny of love. Yessid was broken-hearted, and he returned to the mountains near Granada to live with his parents. Later, I heard the news that he had taken his own life by hanging.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
Andrea didn’t seem to have heard me. She studied her hands, caressing her shapely fingers for a moment. She had more to say. “From the time I was old enough to help my father with his patients,” she went on, raising her face and holding my gaze, “I’ve worked with him taking care of ill people. If I had had a dowry, I would have joined a religious order and gone to the Indies to succor the ill and to spread our faith among the natives. In his infinite wisdom, God had something else in store for me. That’s how I met my evil seducer, a rich Florentine merchant by the name of Giovanni Francesco Locadelo, the father of my daughter. He had been wounded at sea near our coast by Turkish corsairs, and was taken to Sevilla where he required a nurse by his side all the time. I took the work, happy to have an opportunity to help my parents, and to distract myself from my loss.
“I nursed the Florentine through his long convalescence, staying up many nights cooling his forehead with wet rags to bring down his fever. When his health improved, he was grateful to me. At first, he said that I was like a daughter to him. I didn’t know this was his first step in his malevolent plan to seduce me and rob me of my virginity, the only prize I owned.”
I wanted to look away, to stare at the smoky ceiling, but Andrea’s eyes were glued to mine.
“One day he told me he had grown to love me and asked me if I would consent to marry him. I said no without giving him explanations. I had vowed secretly to remain Yessid’s widow for the rest of my life.
“However, as the Italian’s entreaties continued over a period of months, to punish my father, I let him seduce me. Weeks later, when I told Don Giovanni I was gravid with his child, he announced he was well enough to return to Florence where he had been recalled on urgent business.”
I began to perspire, and she noticed.
“Forgive me, Don Luis, for making you uncomfortable with my woeful tale. But I’ve never told this story to anyone, and I feel I cannot go on another day without unburdening myself.” She looked in the direction of the kitchen to make sure her mother was not in the room. Then she continued with urgency, “So, before he left Sevilla, to assuage his conscience—though to everyone else he explained he was doing it out of gratitude and because I helped him to regain his health—he presented me with a jacket made of silver cloth, and one of crimson gold; a Flemish desk; a table made of walnut wood; sets of the finest bed linen; silk sheets; pillows made in Holland; embroidered tablecloths; silver fountains; gold candelabra; Turkish carpets; braziers; one convex mirror, framed in gold leaf; paintings by Flemish masters; a harp; two thousand gold escudos; and many, many other gifts. In other words, he gave me a rich woman’s dowry to attract unscrupulous men who would not mind that I was not virginal anymore. This was enough to appease my father. He was more content to see me a dishonored wealthy woman than a happy one married to an honest lad of Moorish ancestry.
“Where are all these riches? you are probably asking yourself,” she said, with a sweep of her hand, to call my attention to the pitiful furnishings of the room. “Not for the first time, Don Luis, my father accrued major debts from gambling, and was in danger of being sent to jail until he was an old man. He sold what he could of the spoils of my disgrace, and pawned the rest. That’s how he was able to pay his creditors and still have enough money leftover to move the family to Madrid.
“As you know, Don Luis, honor and virtue are the only true ornaments a woman has. Without them, a beautiful woman becomes hideous. To save my honor—by which they meant to save the honor of the family—before we left Sevilla my parents tried to convince me to give away my daughter as a foundling. I swore I’d kill her, and then kill myself, if they did that. Everyone in Sevilla knows what happens to those pitiful babies left at the door of a convent in the cover of night: the wild pigs and dogs that roam the streets before dawn are likely to eat the infants before the nuns find them in the morning. Usually, all that’s left of those unfortunate angels are the dark bloodstains on the ground, and sometimes little chips of bone and tiny pink pieces of flesh.”
I felt faint. I wanted to run away from that room and her awful confession. But Andrea would not stop. “You know how it is, if a girl loses her virginity outside of marriage: she’s labeled a hideous fiend, a basilisk. I offered to take my daughter with me and go to the mountains near Granada and become a shepherdess. That way, my parents would not have to be shamed by my disgrace. Thank God and His Holy Mother, my parents relented in their plan to give away my daughter, and so we left Sevilla together. In Madrid, no one knows us. My parents invented the absurd story that I am the widow of a man named Nicolás de Ovando who died in Sevilla of a violent fever. That’s why you find me here, Don Luis, buried alive, my heart turned to wood. I tell you, if I didn’t have my daughter, I would have—God forgive me!—killed myself long ago.”
When she had finished her dreadful tale, Andrea rose from her cushion. Her beautiful face was as livid as the head on a marble statue—perfect, but lifeless. Without saying another word, she vanished down the dark corridor that led to the back of the living quarters, where her child was crying once again. Sitting there alone by the lamp’s weak light, I felt that in that room I had been introduced to some unspeakable darkness of the world. I shook my head, trying to expel the evils to which I had been exposed. Why had Andrea confided her awful secret? How did she know I would not use this shameful story to ruin her family’s honor? All that occurred to me was that she seemed to blame her father for her tragedy.
I decided not to mention what had transpired to Miguel, or to anyone else. By confiding in me, my friend’s sister had entrusted me with an unwanted burden; worse yet, her monstrous secret had made me her prisoner.
Almost thirty years later, reading Miguel’s Don Quixote Part I, I recognized Andrea as the original of Marcella, the beautiful shepherdess who is blamed for the death of a man madly in love with her. I wondered whether Andrea ever read her brother’s novel, and how much it must have stung to have her sibling reveal to the world her disgraceful past. There you have the main difference between Miguel and me as writers. Miguel de Cervantes (he had added the de by then) lacked imagination; he was just a borrower from life, whereas I came to develop the conviction that true literature is not an excuse for poorly disguised autobiography. In the degenerate times in which I had been condemned to live, that was not apparent to anyone. But in the future, I was convinced, the truly great writers would be those who wrote anew—and not just rewrote—stories that needed to be perfected. In the future, all long, tedious novels—including Miguel’s Don Quixote—would be whittled down to their essence, so that the whole story could be told in a handful of pages.
The next time I visited Miguel’s home, many of the objects Andrea had mentioned as part of her “dowry” were on display. The shabby main room had been transformed into an elegant, colorful chamber. Miguel’s father must have had a windfall at the gambling tables, for he had reclaimed the articles he had pawned.
* * *
I learned what true domestic unhappiness was after I set foot in Miguel’s home. Doña Leonor constantly displayed her contempt toward her impractical, spendthrift husband. He was an avid reader, and prided himself on his knowledge of Latin. Don Rodrigo (as people called him, though he had no right to that honorific title) made more money writing sonnets commissioned by young men to woo their ladies than as a doctor. He entertained the young lovers who engaged his services, as well as his neighbors, by reciting poetry and playing the vihuela. His consulting room and barbershop, he reminded everyone, served as a cultural gathering place for superior minds. It was something to hear him sing the couplets he composed, which he would do without much prodding, to the friends and customers who dropped by to drink and talk.
“Don Luis, people heal quicker when there’s music and poetry around,” he explained to me. “Gaiety is the best cure for all illnesses.” To put his philosophy in practice, while he bled his patients, he would sing romances to them, accompanied by the vihuela. No wonder more people trusted him with their beards than with their health. The wounded men who came to have their gashes sewn up looked like dangerous criminals who could not go to a hospital. The fascination Miguel had all his life with low-life characters began with the people who patronized Don Rodrigo’s barbershop. I was repelled and yet also attracted by this rabble, whom I had always seen from afar, and whom, without knowing Miguel, I would never have come in contact.
“Don Luis,” Don Rodrigo said to me once, after he had gotten to know me better, “this is what I have to do to keep body and soul together. But I’m really a poet at heart. I know you can see that.”
During holidays, and after school every day, Miguel was supposed to help his father bleed patients, kill flies, and wash the chamber pots and blood-splattered floor. He was deeply ashamed of these tasks and had no interest in learning his father’s skills. “Why should I learn about leeches and hair?” he confided in me once, bitterly. “When I am Court Poet, I will not have to bleed people to relieve them of their bad humors. The beauty of my verses will cure them of all their illnesses.”
Miguel inherited his love of poetry from his father. But he was determined to make something of himself, not to be a failure like his progenitor. “You don’t know how many times I’ve had to take soup to my father in jail,” Miguel told me one night in a tavern after he had had too much wine. “Sometimes my mother and my little brothers and sisters went hungry so he could keep his big belly full.” I felt sorry for my friend that his life had been so harsh.
Though Doña Leonor prized an education, and was proud that nuns had taught her to read and write, she begrudged Miguel the cost of the paper to write his compositions. Buying paper for his classes meant there were other things the household would have to do without. Doña Leonor lost no chance to remind everyone within earshot that it was her dwindling inheritance that supported the family. She had inherited a vineyard in Arganda, which provided a small income to feed and clothe the Cervantes children.
Years later, when I was ready to begin my Don Quixote, I modeled some of its most important characters after Miguel’s parents. Here I would like to stress the difference between autobiography (cannibalizing one’s own life) and biography (which relies on the writer’s powers of observation). It was from the figure of the father that I began to hatch the idea of a dreamer who ruined his family. Don Rodrigo was the model for the mad Don Quixote, and Miguel’s mother would be transformed into the realistic housekeeper and the practical niece. I repeat, it was I who conceived of turning these people into fictional characters. The grave mistake I made was that one night when we were out drinking, and I had imbibed a little too much wine, I mentioned my brainchild to Miguel (keeping to myself that my characters were based on his parents). He then went ahead and stole the idea from me, publishing the rambling and inartistic first part of his Don Quixote before I had a chance to complete mine.
Yet despite all our differences, the fire of poetry strengthened my friendship with Miguel. Two friends united forever in literary history, that’s how I saw us. Whenever we pondered what the future might bring us, we recited the opening verses of one of Garcilaso’s most famous sonnets, which expressed to perfection the uncertainty of our young lives:
When I pause to contemplate my life
and study the steps that have led me to this place . . .
In October 1568, the third wife of King Philip II, the French princess Isabel de Valois, died after miscarrying a five-month-old fetus. Not yet twenty-three years old, Isabel had been known as the “Princess of Peace” because her betrothal to our king sealed the peace between France and Spain in 1559, and gave our kingdom domination over Italy. Like all Spaniards, I adored her.
Isabel was still playing with dolls when she arrived in Spain. The king had to wait two years, until Isabel menstruated for the first time, to consummate their marriage. The newlywed couple did not speak a language in common (our king did not speak Latin). He was twice her age, and was having an affair with a lady-in-waiting for his sister Princess Joan. Isabel was heartbroken because her own father had had a mistress, Diane de Poitiers, who had made Isabel’s mother miserable. Isabel pretended to be ignorant of the king’s infidelity. But the queen endeared herself to the Spanish people by learning Castilian to perfection. She became a patroness of the arts—especially of painters—and wrote musical compositions. During her all too brief reign, Isabel turned Philip’s court into one of the most refined in Europe.
Isabel’s subjects prayed for the birth of an infante. Her first attempt at childbirth resulted in miscarrying twins. She fell gravely ill, and all of Spain feared for her life. During those agonizing weeks, Spaniards of all social classes crowded cathedrals and churches to light candles and pray for their queen. Prayer meetings attended by large crowds were held in Madrid’s plazas and squares. Thousands of candles were lit near the gates of the Royal Alcázar where the young queen’s life was an extinguishing flame. In our chapel, we said Masses twice a day, praying to the Almighty to save her. The prayers of the people in the plazas and churches were so fervent that they rose toward heaven in a sonorous cloud and echoed throughout the city all night long. The devotion that humble Madrileños felt for Isabel moved me deeply.
An Italian surgeon visiting the court saved her life. After she recuperated from her near-death experience, the king, the court, and all Spaniards lived for the day she would become gravid again. When she remained infertile, the archbishop of Toledo recommended that the uncorrupted remains of Saint Eugene be brought from France to Madrid, so that Isabel could pray to him in person to cure her infertility. Such was her desire to give an heir to the Spanish throne, and such was her pure devotion to God’s saint, that Isabel slept naked in bed with the corpse of Saint Eugene until she became pregnant again. The Spanish people rejoiced in the birth of two princesses. It was a matter of time, everyone believed, before she gave birth to a male heir.
Instead, Isabel suffered a disfiguring illness. A rumor spread that she had contracted syphilis from the licentious king. Her doctors diagnosed chicken pox and, to prevent her disfiguration, they recommended she be kept in a tub filled with she-donkey’s milk, her face covered with a paste made of pigeon stool and butter. When Isabel recovered, and her skin was unblemished, the people believed that, because of her suffering and her miraculous recoveries, the spiritual queen might be one of God’s saints on earth. After a long convalescence, Isabel became pregnant again, and it was the miscarriage resulting from this pregnancy that killed her. The grief we all felt was worse than if we had been reconquered by the Moors or had lost our armada. The entire nation went into mourning. No music was heard in Madrid for thirty days; the theaters were closed, bullfights forbidden, birthday celebrations canceled, and marriages postponed for six months. The women in my family wore black, and covered their faces with veils of gold cloth for three months. I wrapped a mourning band around my right arm. My grief was more personal than most: I had met the princess at a court function. My aunt, the countess of La Laguna, had introduced me to her saying I was one of the future glories of Spanish poetry. Her Royal Highness invited me to send her, via my aunt, some of my poems. The princess sealed her invitation with a smile. I never found out what she thought of my verses; but it made me happy just to know that she might have read my words.
* * *
King Philip announced a literary competition to reward the best sonnet written to commemorate the beloved late queen. Winning a literary tourney was one of the few ways open to an ambitious young man to gain fame and prestige; and it could lead to the patronage of a vain and wealthy nobleman, or, in some cases, to an appointment as Court Poet.
I wrote a sonnet about Isabel, but did not submit it to the competition. Like Horace, I believed a poem should be nurtured and burnished for nine years before being sent out into the world for publication. Besides, I was not hungry for fame, nor did I need the monetary reward.
I hope I don’t sound arrogant when I state that my elegy for the queen was crafted with more rigor, rhymed with more delicacy and refinement, and infused with loftier sentiments than Miguel’s crude versifying in the sonnet he wrote for the occasion. I knew how important it was for my friend to win this competition. His future might depend on it. The least I could do for him was not to become an obstacle in his hunt to achieve a piece of literary glory.
We were in the habit of showing our poems to each other. I read Miguel’s middling sonnet to Isabel. When he asked for my opinion, I said, “I think you will win the competition.” That made him happy. He was too self-assured to ask for any suggestions; still, I tried to improve his lusterless choice of words and to furnish his lines with a mellifluous and classic rhyme scheme. Next, Miguel sought the help of Professor López de Hoyos, whose devotion he had secured with unceasing flattery.
Then the sole judge of the literary tourney, in a drunken state, fell from his horse and cracked his skull on the cobblestone street where he lived. Professor López de Hoyos was appointed as his replacement. It did not surprise me that he awarded Miguel first prize, as all literary competitions, to begin with, are held: 1) to reward the friends of the judges; and 2) to punish their enemies. I will quote the first quatrain, just to give you an idea of the quality of Miguel’s winning sonnet:
When our Motherland had finally
bid adieu to war, in a chariot
of fire headed for the sky, earth’s
loveliest flower departed from us.
The sonnet was nothing but a feeble imitation of Garcilaso, the laughable effluvium of an ambitious young poet desperate for recognition.
Miguel’s little literary success brought out his true personality: he acted as if he believed he was the brightest bard in the kingdom, and he boasted to everyone who would listen: “I am the true successor of Garcilaso de la Vega.” The day after the winner was announced, many of Miguel’s remarks were prefaced with, “When I become Court Poet . . .” This kind of bragging was ridiculous, but since I am not a cruel person, I did not point out that Jews were, de facto, excluded from such a post. In those days, blinded by Miguel’s charm, I forgave him everything; the things that united us were stronger than those that eventually opened a chasm between us.
* * *
After I concluded my preparatory studies at the Estudio de la Villa, I had no desire to linger in Madrid, fighting for crumbs of literary glory. I was ready to commence my studies in classic literature at the Universidad Cisneriana in Alcalá de Henares. I chose it over the more famous university in Salamanca because it was the most select of our institutions of higher learning, and I wanted to remain close to Toledo and Madrid. In spite of my growing misgivings about Miguel’s lack of modesty, I was sorry to see him remain behind in Madrid. Poor families could, at great sacrifice, send their sons to study at a university. The parents of the wealthy students, on the other hand, rented them houses, furnished with servants and horses, while they completed their studies. The less-privileged students paid for their education by working for the scions of Castile. When I hinted to Miguel that this was a possibility, he snapped, “I’d rather remain an ignoramus than be one of those starving students begging for a hunk of bread; or one who has to depend on cast-off clothing to be warm in winter.”
“May I remind you that you’ll be living in my house, Miguel, where you’ll be treated as a brother, not as a servant.”
“I know that. And I’m not ungrateful to you for your generous offer. But the other students would know about the situation and treat me as an inferior.”
I did not press the issue, hoping that in time he would see the advantages of my proposition. Without an education, Miguel’s prospects—despite the ephemeral fame that had befallen him as a poet—would be few. I suspected that he did not accept my offer because there was pressure from his parents to start earning money and contribute to the expenses of the Cervantes household. I did cajole Miguel into accompanying me to visit the grounds of the university and to help me search for a suitable house. “Wouldn’t you like to see the town where you were born?” Miguel had left Alcalá de Henares when he was a boy, but he often spoke of it with fondness and nostalgia. “On the way back,” I added, “we can stop in Toledo to visit Garcilaso’s tomb.” I knew Miguel was eager to see the city where Garcilaso de la Vega was born, and to visit his tomb at the cathedral. “We’ll stay at my grandparents’ home and you’ll meet my cousin Mercedes, who lives with them. I am eager for Mercedes and you to meet.” I wanted to bring together the woman I adored and the best friend I had ever had. Such was my innocence of heart, and my affection for Miguel, that I added, “I mentioned our friendship to Mercedes, and she wrote back saying she looks forward to meeting you. I want the two of you to be as close as brother and sister.”
* * *
When Miguel and I stood in front of the white marble façade of the Universidad Cisneriana, I hoped he would change his mind and accept my invitation to live together during my university years. But when the offspring of the great families arrived to attend the day’s lectures wearing dark velvet cloaks and hats adorned with fancy feathers, armed with daggers and swords, mounted on fine horses, and accompanied by their pages, valets, and footmen, who set up camp in the plaza to wait while their masters attended classes, I knew that Miguel must have compared himself to them and felt inferior, knowing he could not aspire to such displays of wealth.
The scions of Spain’s nobility stood in marked contrast to the other students milling about, the ones known as the capigorristas, who wore capes made of humble material and cloth caps that could barely protect their heads in the cold weather.
We spent a few pleasant hours visiting the august buildings. Miguel admired in particular the Great Hall’s golden wooden ceilings carved with Moorish motifs; its stained-glass Gothic windows; the imposing chapel; the patios with Romanesque arches and columns flanked by tall cypresses; and the various flower gardens among the buildings. Birds stopped to drink, splash, and sing in their marble fountains.
Later that day, I inspected a few houses that were available as residences. Afterward, I insisted we go visit the house where Miguel was born, which he told me was a short distance from the grounds of the university. I had heard Don Rodrigo Cervantes talk about the family’s former days of glory, before bad fortune befell them, when they lived in a fine residence in Alcalá. The two-story building, with a garden big enough for a few rosebushes, was situated on the corner that separated the Moorish from the Jewish neighborhood, and was adjacent to the hospital, where the sick, the dying, and the mad coexisted, as was the case with such places all over Spain. I pitied Miguel, who had to grow up listening to insane people raving day and night; the moaning of lepers; and the lamentations of patients dying in pain. The pestilential fumes emanating from the hospital made me nauseous. It was inconceivable to me how anyone could have pleasant memories of that place.
We walked to the schoolhouse where Miguel learned to read and write. It was a tiny abandoned medieval building. Through a broken window, I peered into a room with a low ceiling whose walls were covered with broken Moorish tiles. That visit to Alcalá gave me a new understanding of Miguel, made me feel compassion for the way he grew up, and made it easier for me to overlook his grating ambition. We spent the night in an inn near the university where students went to drink. Miguel consumed carafes of wine in desperation. Twice, I had to intervene to prevent him from starting fights. His volatile temperament, I knew, would get him in trouble, sooner or later.
* * *
My love for my cousin Mercedes was a well-guarded secret. Although she and I had never discussed our attachment to each other, I didn’t need any proof that my feelings for her were returned. From the time of our childhood it was understood by my parents, our grandparents, and everyone else in our family that we would eventually be united in marriage after I finished my studies.
Mercedes had come to live with my maternal grandparents in Toledo while still an infant. Her mother, Aunt Carmen, had died in childbirth. My cousin’s father, Don Isidro Flores, was so overcome with grief at the death of my aunt that he left Mercedes in my grandparents’ care and went to the New World, where he was killed during a skirmish against the savages in an inhospitable jungle.
It was midmorning when we arrived at my grandparents’ home. I was impatient to see Mercedes. A servant led Miguel to a guest chamber to wash off the dust from the road. I wiped my face with a wet rag, combed my hair, dusted off the sleeves of my jacket, brushed the dirt from my boots, and went to Mercedes’s chambers. She knew of my arrival and was expecting me. Leonela, her lifelong maid, opened the door. My cousin rose from her drawing desk and rushed toward me. We held each other in a tender embrace. When Leonela left us alone, I kissed Mercedes’s smooth rosy cheeks, which smelled of jasmine.
She led me by the hand to the cushions by the window overlooking the orchard. Her blond hair was covered with a scarf, but little threads escaped along her temples, gleaming like flecks of gold. “Did you find a house in Alcalá? I heard you went there to look for one.” Her exquisiteness was so enthralling, I hardly heard what she was saying. A fleeting cloud of melancholy swept over her face. “I hope you don’t find me too immodest, when I say that I wish I could be a student at the university myself.” Before I could comment, she asked, “How long can you stay with us?”
I took her soft hand and studied her delicate fingers. “I promised Miguel’s parents we’d be back in Madrid by tomorrow. And I have to return to school right away. But I’ll come back soon and I promise to stay a few days.” She closed her eyes and then smiled.
* * *
Grandmother Azucena had ordered a fine dinner in my honor, which included many of my favorite dishes: pottage of chickpeas and partridge, roast leg of baby lamb, serrano ham, trout stuffed with mushrooms, a salad of fruits, almonds, quail eggs, and a spread of olives, cheeses, and turrones. We washed all this down with vintage wines from the family’s vineyards near Toledo. Throughout the meal, Mercedes was the picture of reserve, purity, and refinement. She kept her gaze lowered and only looked at me and at my grandparents.
Despite my grandparents’ warm welcome, Miguel said little during the delicious meal and only spoke when he was addressed. I had never seen him so quiet around others, but I attributed it to his lack of social sophistication. He favored the serrano ham and was served an extra portion, which he ate heartily. Was this his way of showing my family that he was not a Jew?
When the meal was over, we retired to our chambers for a siesta and agreed to reconvene at four to stop by the cathedral to visit Garcilaso’s tomb.
We rode in my grandparents’ coach, with Leonela as the fourth member of our party. As soon as we were inside the coach Mercedes removed her veil. Her beauty illumined the inside of the carriage.
She asked Miguel how he had liked the Estudio de la Villa. His mood changed immediately: he started to mimic some of our eccentric teachers’ demeanor in the classroom, and told off-color jokes about their appearance. His bawdy sense of humor was uproarious, though perhaps inappropriate in a lady’s company. But Mercedes seemed to enjoy his antics.
She asked, “Do you sing, Señor Cervantes?”
As Miguel demurred, I said, “Yes, he has a very fine voice. You should hear him singing Andalusian ballads.”
Miguel started to protest, but Mercedes interrupted him. “Then you must sing for us. You wouldn’t refuse a lady’s request, would you?”
Miguel’s face turned scarlet. He cleared his throat and began to accompany himself by clapping his hands as he started singing a love ballad. The thought crossed my mind that Miguel’s coyness was a form of seduction; it was almost as if he had set out to make an impression on Mercedes. Though nothing in my cousin’s behavior gave me pause for suspicion, I felt a twinge of jealousy. When Miguel finished singing, we all cheered and clapped; then silence reigned inside the coach for the rest of the ride. Mercedes stared out the window, all the way to the cathedral.
After we said our prayers in front of the main altar, we went to see Garcilaso’s tomb. I was eager to show it to Miguel. He dropped to his knees in front of the marble sarcophagus and kissed the cold stone. I, too, had been overcome with emotion the first time I visited Garcilaso’s resting place. Leonela gave Mercedes a small bouquet of roses she had been carrying and my cousin laid it at the base of the poet’s sepulcher. Miguel offered to recite a sonnet he had written in honor of the great Toledano. The less I say about that sonnet, the better. But Mercedes seemed to approve of it.
I was relieved when we left Toledo together. On the ride back to Madrid, Miguel raved about Mercedes and proceeded to ask me questions of a personal nature. I was careful not to reveal too much.
“She’s so beautiful, and intelligent, and vivacious,” Miguel said.
I nodded but said nothing.
He went on, “Her spontaneity is so captivating.”
Before he had a chance to continue talking about her, I said: “My parents and grandparents have always expected us to get married.” Miguel’s face could not hide the disappointment my news caused him. He had little to say on the remainder of our trip back to Madrid.
* * *
I started classes at the university and was kept busy, delighted with my studies and my new acquaintances. One day a letter from Mercedes came in the mail giving me the usual news about my grandparents’ health and full of questions about university life. In a postscript, as an apparent afterthought, she added that Miguel had stopped by to visit them. At first I thought nothing of it. However, I wrote to Miguel without mentioning the visit; he didn’t answer back. A week passed, then two. His silence preoccupied me. Then the poison of jealousy began to well up in my heart. Immediately, I repudiated the thought that my best friend would try to make love to my intended. As for Mercedes, I knew she was too noble and pure to be capable of betrayal. I had my doubts about Miguel, though. Jealousy began to consume me to the point that I became increasingly distracted and could not study, could not sleep, could not eat. I took residence in the student taverns of Alcalá, where I drank by myself in a corner, until I fell into a stupor. My servants would carry me home before I was robbed and stabbed. I could not continue in that state. I owed an obligation to my family’s name to behave always like the caballero I was. One dawn, after an interminable sleepless night, I got dressed and, on an impulse, woke up the man in charge of the stable and asked him to saddle my fastest horse. I left for Madrid determined to . . . what was it I hoped to find out? I prayed that my suspicions were unfounded.
I rode directly to Miguel’s house and found Don Rodrigo changing smelly bandages on a patient. “Don Luis,” he exclaimed, “to what do we owe the honor of your visit?”
I was too impatient for his usual foolishness, so I said, “Good morning to you, Don Rodrigo. Is Miguel at home?”
My abruptness seemed to startle him. He continued changing the bandages as he spoke. “Come to think of it, I haven’t seen Miguel since . . . yesterday? I thought he had gone to Alcalá to visit you. Is there anything wrong?”
I shook my head.
“My wife is at the market, Don Luis, but why don’t you go upstairs and ask Andrea? She might know where Miguel is. He should be here this morning, helping me. That’s where he should be.”
I found Andrea breast-feeding her baby. “Please don’t get up,” I said. “I need to find Miguel. It’s urgent.”
“Miguel left for Toledo yesterday,” Andrea responded, hoisting the baby to cover her exposed breast. “He’s been much distracted lately.”
“Excuse my bad manners, but I’m in a hurry.” I bowed to Andrea and ran down the stairs, past Don Rodrigo, and into the street. I was choking for lack of breath.
Insane with jealousy and murderous rage, I left for Toledo later that morning. I had to find out the truth once and for all. I entered my grandparents’ home, our ancestral home, as a burglar: I jumped over the wall in the back of the orchard and then climbed to the balcony of Mercedes’s chambers. The door was open and the room was empty. As if I were a criminal, I hid behind a wall tapestry in her bedchamber and decided to wait for her. I had lost my mind, but I couldn’t help myself. I didn’t have long to wait.
Mercedes and Leonela entered the room followed by Miguel. I almost gasped. Leonela soon left the room and closed the door behind her. Miguel tried to grab Mercedes’s hand. My first impulse was to draw my sword and drive it through his heart, but I had been taught to value restraint.
“I am promised to another man,” she said emphatically. “Now please leave this room and never come to visit me again. You are not welcome in this house anymore. Leonela!” she called.
Her maid entered immediately, as if she had been standing guard just outside the door.
Mercedes said, “Miguel is leaving now.”
Standing at the door’s threshold, the wretch asked if there was any hope for him.
“No,” Mercedes said firmly. “None whatsoever.”
He persisted: “I will never give you up. I will wait for you the rest of my life, if necessary.”
Mercedes approached him, placed her palm on his chest, and pushed him, until he was on the other side of the door. Then she closed it in his face. Her admirable behavior appeased me. I felt ashamed of ever having doubted her. I didn’t have to stay hidden behind the tapestry—I had seen all I needed to see. Mercedes need not ever know what I had witnessed. She threw herself on the bed and started sobbing, burying her face in a cushion. I tiptoed to the balcony and climbed down to the garden below, then I rode back to Alcalá with a mortally wounded heart: I would never again believe in friendship.
Later, in Don Quixote Part I, Miguel gave a version of his betrayal in the novella The Curiosity of the Impertinent Man, one of those tedious stories he inserted without the least regard for artistry within the main novel. In that narrative he tried to absolve himself of his guilt by implying that I, like Anselmo, had encouraged him to woo Mercedes to test her purity.
As the days passed, my rage swelled and became a living entity that festered in my heart. I had to retaliate in some way, so my life would belong to me once more. I would punish Miguel Cervantes for his impudence and his unforgivable betrayal.
I left Alcalá and went to Madrid. My parents were surprised to see me. I said I had a school project that required my presence in Madrid for a few days. I wrote an anonymous sonnet exposing Andrea’s secret, made a dozen copies, and asked my personal servant to post them on the doors of churches and other important public buildings of Madrid. Then I went to see Aurelio, the man in charge of the stables and pigpen. “I want you to cut off the head of our biggest pig,” I said, “and deposit it in front of a house.” I gave him Miguel’s address. “Do it at dawn. Make sure that nobody sees you.” This was something that was commonly done when you wanted to expose publicly a family of conversos.
It would just be a matter of time before someone insulted Miguel by calling him a Jew, or the brother of a whore, and he would have to fight a duel to defend his honor.
A few days later, I sent word to Miguel with a servant, asking him to meet me at a tavern where poets and other rough types met. When Miguel arrived at the tavern that night, he was in a sullen mood and looked genuinely troubled. We started a game of cards. A man named Antonio de Sigura asked if he could join us. I had seen de Sigura around; he was an engineer who had arrived in Madrid to work for the court, building new roads. De Sigura lost a considerable amount of money quickly, then Miguel refused to keep playing. The inevitable insult came, Miguel wounded de Sigura, and he became a fugitive. My plan had worked! The way he was living his life, it would not be long before Miguel was a dead man.
I left for Toledo at dawn the day after Miguel escaped from Madrid; tumultuous emotions raging inside me. As the golden rays of the rising sun began to warm me up, I felt myself slowly returning to my own life. Sunlight intensified the starkness of the rocky soil of Castile, which spread endlessly toward the south. It made me think of the corrugated skin of a monstrous dragon left out to dry in the open. Flocks of partridges flew above the woods in thick brown clouds, then disappeared in the thicket of low encinas. An intoxicating smell infused the air, as if the earth released it to awaken all the creatures of La Mancha. It was the same smell of rosemary and sweet marjoram from my grandmother’s herb garden in Toledo.
Though now I hated Miguel, my most fervent wish was not that he would get caught, but that he would manage to escape to the Indies, that he would settle in a foreign land, far away from Castile, and from Mercedes. It would be even better if he died on the other side of the world.
As Toledo appeared in the distance, I held back the reins and sat still atop my horse. The pale morning light spilling upon the hills and fields of La Mancha painted them terra-cotta. It was a sight that only a painter could capture. It wouldn’t be until many years later, when El Greco settled among us, that an artist existed who could do justice to those skies.
The windmills in the distance, crowning the hills of reddish soil and limestone, resembled giants awakening, rotating their arms to shake off the morning stiffness, preparing to guard La Mancha for the rest of the day, ready to hold back any invading hordes from the wild, unchristian world that lay to the south—where Miguel was heading, and where he truly belonged, because in Castile he would always be an interloper, never one of us.
By providing Miguel with ample funds for his escape, I had done the honorable thing—even though he didn’t deserve it. Fray Luis de León’s verses, which I had read in a copy of a manuscript that circulated in Madrid among poetry lovers, echoed in my mind:
I want to live by myself
to enjoy alone, without witnesses,
the blessings heaven bestows on me
free from false love, from jealousy
from hatred, suspicion, and illusive hopes . . .
Realizing my happiness with Mercedes would forever be in jeopardy as long as Miguel was around, I made a promise to myself: If Miguel de Cervantes ever again returns to Castile, I swear to destroy him.
END OF EXCERPT