"We are to stand in the pit?" I asked. "With the mosqueteros."
Ay, the gleam in their eyes told me that I was in the hands of Mateo-style maniacs. Except I was soon to discover that his dementia had nothing on these two women-in-men's clothing.
The play was regarded as second only to the tale of Don Quixote as a great masterpiece of Spanish literature. But it was also controversial.
"The Holy Office vacillates about La Celestina, and it is on and off the Inquisition's banned list," Ana said. "And when they do ban it, their edicts are ignored, troubling them to no end. The familiars would not dare take the autor or his cast into custody. The people would not permit it. Don Quixote incited us to laughter by mocking the hidalgos and the insane chivalry that dominated their writing, but La Celestina touched our souls. The people of Spain are made of blood and fire. They are greedy and generous, foolish and brilliant. They have God in their hearts and the devil in their thoughts. The devious slut, Celestina, and the two lovers represent the best and the worst of us."
Referred to generally as La Celestina, the Comedia de Calisto y Melibea was not a new play. It was first presented eons ago, in 1499, seven years after the discovery of the New World and over twenty years before the fall of the Aztec Empire. The tragedy of the two lovers was set forth in an astounding twenty-one acts.
Celestina was a bawd who served as a go-between for two young lovers, Calisto and Melibea. Calisto was from the minor nobility; Melibea was of higher status and wealth, making them unsuitable marriage partners. But they came together as lovers and defied convention, not just by speaking words of love, but by physically consummating their passions.
The true star of the comedia was Celestina, who was both evil and cunning. Her coarse humor and ironic commentary fascinated audiences everywhere. But her cunning and greed ultimately betrayed her. Paid for her role as go-between, she refused to share her gold with her conspirators. After killing her, they were themselves murdered by an angry mob.
But nothing would free the lovers of their own fate. Their uncontrolled passions were the instrument of their doom. Calisto was killed in a fall from a ladder to Melibea's window. Melibea—her lover dead, her honor ruined by her virginity's loss—throws herself from a tower window.
"Their attempt to defy destiny was doomed," Ana explained in the carriage ride to the theater. "Fate and custom foreordained their end—foreordains all our ends, demonstrating the futility of opposing the gods."
"Who was the author?" I asked.
"A converso Jew, a lawyer. He first published anonymously because of fear of the Inquisition."
As I watched it, I could well understand the author's fear. The language of the play was often coarse. Celestina made bawdy comments about a young man's "scorpion tail" pene, whose sting produces nine months of swelling. A character accuses Celestina and a girl who lives with her of having "calluses" on their stomach from all of the men who visit. There are suggestions of female bestiality, though not in regard to the lovely and innocent Melibea.
Those pompous inquisitors from New Spain would throw fits were they to watch twenty-one acts of La Celestina, in which lust, vice, superstition, and evil were main characters. As a sort of heavenly justice, I imagined myself tying them up, pinning their eyes open, and forcing them to watch the play repeatedly.
The tomatoes? You wonder what they did with the tomatoes? When we entered the pit it was filled with men who chattered endlessly. All of them appeared not only to have seen the play performed before, but some appeared to have come to this particular presentation on more than one occasion. These street merchants and common laborers discussed the actors, the way they delivered their lines, their mistakes and triumphs, as if they themselves were the play's autor. The play was conducted in the middle of the afternoon in order to utilize sunlight. Why were these louts going to a play in the middle of the day instead of working?
But I, too, soon got used to expecting good performances.
"It's what we paid our money for," Ana said. "When I first acted, my pay was the coins tossed on the stage during my performance. I went hungry until I learned how to play a character. ¡Bolo!" she screamed at the actress playing Areusa and threw a tomato when she did not deliver a line to her liking.
Ana and Felicity were not the only ones who knew the exact lines from the play. Some of the favorite lines, usually those which were deshonesto, were spoken by the mosqueteros at the same time the actor uttered them.
I was quickly enthralled. Soon I was throwing tomatoes myself....
After the performance we rode back to Ana's large home. On the way I noticed Felicity looking at me more and more with a small smile and seductively bold eyes.
When we arrived back at her house, Ana instructed us, "Come, we will use my pool to refresh ourselves."
Her "pool" was an ancient Roman bath. The city had many Roman ruins, and Ana's was not the only house built upon a bath or other edifice.
I had taken many baths in the warm pool with Ana. I was startled when she suggested that the three of us enjoy a bath together.
"Felicity's lover has been in Madrid for a month," Ana said.
He was none other than the younger brother of the count who was Ana's own benefactor and lover, the brother who Ana said preferred men.
"But he has to keep up an appearance of propriety," she said. "Hence Felicity, who is a fine actor."
I did not understand what Ana meant by Felicity being a fine actor.
Ana was already in the water when I slipped into the pool, putting my towel aside as the warm water engulfed me. Felicity sat on the edge with her towel wrapped around her as Ana and I came together.
Ana leaned out of my arms and pulled aside Felicity's towel. Before she slipped into the water, I saw and understood what Ana meant when she called Felicity a good actor.
Eh, if Catalina the Bandito could fool kings and popes, why couldn't Felicity—or whatever his name was—dupe the dons of Seville?
ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN
Ana's enthusiasm for plays, parties, and lovemaking was inexhaustible, and she kept me busy with all three. My sole regret was that I saw so little of Mateo. At first his name was on everyone's tongue. Stories of a caballero who had returned from the New World with his pockets full of gold made him an instant legend. The stories they told about him! I heard that Mateo had found the lost Island of California, where an Amazon queen sits upon a throne of gold with her feet on the skulls of men who had the misfortune to shipwreck on her shores. But the most notorious tale was that he had found the Seven Golden Cities of Cíbola while exploring the deserts north of the Rio Bravo.
Ana expressed curiosity about the fabled cities, and I told her the story.
After the conquistadors had looted the Aztecs and the Incas, they looked further for more golden conquests. In 1528, a party of Spaniards landed on the peninsula that earlier Juan Ponce de León had named Florida, which meant "flowery," when he searched for the Fountain of Youth. Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca was one of them. This man with a strange name—Cabeza de Vaca, "Head of Cow"—and an africano slave named Estéban, were among sixty men shipwrecked on the coast of Florida. Núñez, Estéban, and two others traveled eight years across the continent, over a thousand leagues, to an area far north of the settled areas of New Spain. There, in a desert land beyond the Rio Bravo, near where the present settlement called Santa Fe is located, they claimed to have seen in the distance seven golden cities. Expeditions to find the cities, including one led by Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, failed to find anything but poor indio pueblos.