“Jesu Christe!” he exclaimed.
The tobacco smoke began wafting through the air between us and over our heads.
“Light another one, Guimarães,” Dr. Monardes cried from the other end of the aisle, his head swathed in smoke as if he were walking in his very own tiny cloud of fog. I lit another cigarella. I felt like I would take flight. I even had the feeling that my feet were leaving the ground and that if I looked down I would see that I had started levitating like Simon Magus. At that moment we heard something squeaking against one of the church’s stained glass windows, as if a wad of paper were being rubbed against it. The sound lasted only an instant, and when we looked over to where it was coming from, we heard it again, only this time from the other side.
“Jesús,” the doctor cried, “open the door!”
“Right away, señor,” he shouted in a raspy voice, and I turned around, wiping my watering eyes, to see what would happen.
Jesús opened the door, it once again creaked shrilly, and a rush of cold evening air burst into the church and made the candles’ flames flutter. But no, they fluttered in the other direction, towards the outside — as I realized shortly, seeing how some gust of wind raced through the candelabra on the other side, moving from the very back near the altar and along the left wall of the church toward the door. Then it disappeared. The candles’ flames straightened up, becoming almost still.
“Praise be to God!” the padre said, pressing his palms together.
The doctor snorted and came towards me, his heels clicking, two cigarellas in his mouth, a staff in one hand, a candle in the other and that cloud of fog above his head, which looked as if it were hurrying to catch up with him.
“Señores,” the doctor said after taking the cigarellas from his mouth, “our work here is finished. I don’t think this type of illusion will happen again in this church. But if it happens again,” he turned towards the padre, “you know what to do.” He took Jesús’ staff and gave it to the priest. “Don’t cross yourself, but take a staff.” Then the doctor extinguished the cigarellas with spittle and also gave them to the padre. “Here are two cigarellas for you as well,” he added, then turned around, passed by us with brisk steps, and went outside. “Come on, Jesús,” he called from outside without turning around, walking towards the carriage. “We’re not staying here for ages.”
“I’m coming, señor,” Jesús replied, holding the door to let me pass.
It was already completely dark outside. The group of people was still there, it had even grown, and they stared at us speechlessly.
“Thank God they didn’t steal anything!” the doctor cried, already inside the carriage, leaning out through the door as he propped it open with his hand.
“What happened, what happened?” the people started asking.
“Inside there was something which. .” I began to answer.
“Science triumphed, fools, that’s what happened,” the doctor cut me off. “Science triumphed.”
I got into the carriage, the doctor shut the door on his side, I did the same on mine, then we felt the carriage sway slightly — Jesús had jumped up onto the coachbox. “Gee! Gee!” he cried and in a moment we set out.
The road from Utrera to Sevilla is long, and for lack of anything better to do, the doctor and I began discussing what had happened.
“That thing was unbelievably quick, señor,” I said. “It went from one end of the church to the other like the wind.”
“That’s true,” the doctor replied. “Spirits are like that.”
“But didn’t you say that there are no spirits?”
“In principle, that’s true. But misunderstandings always occur. There are no spirits,” Dr. Monardes nodded in assent. “But there are misunderstandings. Just as in science, Guimarães: There’s a rule, but there are also exceptions.”
“So it turns out that there are spirits after all,” I said, after a certain amount of reflection.
“How’s that?” the doctor replied. “There are no spirits! There are some confused, not-quite-fully-dead idiots, the result of a misunderstanding in the functioning of Nature, and even these are exceptionally rare. Have you seen flies that disappear?”
“No,” I admitted.
“From time to time, especially in Spain, since it is in the south,” the doctor raised his finger admonishingly, “some fly, as it is buzzing around your room, disappears. If you are in the habit, as I am, of immediately killing every fly which enters your room, sooner or later you will notice this. It’s not that it has hidden or landed somewhere out of sight. That happens, too, but that’s a different case altogether. Instead, it simply disappears. It’s flying along and it disappears. Sometimes it reappears again afterwards, other times not. This is simply a mistake in the functioning of Nature, functia erronea. It’s the same thing with these so-called spirits.” The doctor fell silent and we travelled in silence for some time, our bodies swaying from the juddering of the carriage along the rocky road. Forward and backward, left and right; forward and backward, left and right. “In principle, five is more than three,” the doctor began again. “If you don’t believe me, give me five ducats, and I’ll give you three. However, three watermelons are bigger than five apples, and sometimes even three apples can be bigger than five other apples.”
“That’s true,” I nodded, somewhat surprised. “Three apples from Pedestra are usually bigger than five apples from Roquelme. Those are places in Portugal,” I explained.
“See! But you wouldn’t say, I hope, that three is more than five. It is simply a misunderstanding. Misunderstandings are resolved when you add certain clarifications to your rule. Sometimes lots of clarifications. There are no spirits, but sometimes clarifications are necessary. This need for clarifications is what we call a ‘misunderstanding.’”
“I see,” I said.
“In any case, it is not, as the ignorant peasants think, some immortal soul which flies hither and thither through the air and which can think and perhaps even feel, which has a memory and could communicate something to you. It is simply some incorporeal animal mass, some not quite fully dead thing, which can rattle the dishes or some such nonsense, but hardly anything more. It is an exceptionally rare error on the part of Nature, something like a freak with three arms, which is best destroyed immediately, otherwise it will only cause needless problems.”
“But we don’t know how to destroy it,” I noted.
“We don’t know,” the doctor agreed, “but we can guess. With a staff. With fire. Like any other animal. I’m willing to bet that they can’t stand fire.”
“You hate spirits, señor,” I said. “You hate misunderstandings,” I quickly corrected myself.
“I hate them,” the doctor confirmed. “I hate everything that does not exist.”
I was about to say something, misled by my tongue, but managed to stop myself at the last moment, thank God. The tongue can lead you terribly astray. You have to be very careful with it.
“The non-existent is truly revolting, Guimarães,” the doctor continued. “It constantly presses towards life. It wants to come here, to this planet, which is dirty enough as it is, and to foul it with its body, to buzz about with its trifling soul, to multiply and impose itself on other existing things such as you and me. The world would be clean, simple and clear, it would be shining and sterile like a surgical knife, just like on the other planets as far as we know, if only Nature here were a little more sensible, a little more restrained. But she is not. She constantly makes mistakes. And she must constantly be watched over and assisted, which is precisely the job of medicine. Nature is female in spirit, she has feminine urges. She always wants to give birth, to multiply, to give life. To preserve all living things. She wants to preserve both the lion and the antelope; both the pig and the acorn. This is a huge misunderstanding and it gives rise to many problems, my friend. Many more than we realize,” the doctor raised his finger. “If it were up to her, she would even preserve the freaks. Because she does not differentiate between good and evil, beautiful and ugly, useful and useless. All of that means nothing to her. If it were up to her, she would give life to everything non-existent. The non-existent is enormous, Guimarães,” the doctor turned to me. “It would inundate us like an ocean, like a flood. Remember this one thing: Never give the non-existent any chance whatsoever.”