“But if we were guided by that principle, señor,” I objected, “we would never have discovered the Indies, we would never have discovered tobacco, that great medicine.”
The doctor shook his head, but merely said: “Remember what I told you.”
“All right,” I nodded.
We rode in silence for some time. And then who knows what came over my tongue — boredom probably — and I said: “Perhaps things are not that simple, señor.”
I could hardly have picked a worse thing to say. Telling the doctor that what he is saying is simple is practically a mortal insult to him.
“So you think that I speak about rather simple things, is that it?” the doctor replied, keeping his face deceptively calm. I’ve learned to recognize that expression. “You think that I talk about superficial things?”
I had expected something like that and had even come up with what to say. I meant to say, “What I mean is that perhaps science has not yet understood certain things completely. What’s more, they go beyond the sphere of medicine and in that sense do not concern us greatly.” But instead I said: “No, señor. I only wanted to say that we cannot close our eyes to the obvious. There was something in that church that was rattling the dishes. Isn’t that so? To call it a misunderstanding means to pretend that we didn’t see it. It may not be a spirit, like the ignorant peasants think, but it is hardly just a misunderstanding. It could be something else, something more complicated. What’s more, I know that when a cat crosses my path, I really do have bad luck. By God, señor, that’s the truth. And old Agrippa was right, too, when he said that if a bird flies overhead from your left, from behind your back when you step outside, it’s a bad sign. But if it passes to your right side, from front to back, then it’s good. I’ve noticed that, too, señor, and if I see a bird to the left, I always go back inside.”
“Guimarães, do you hear what you’re saying?” the doctor exclaimed. “I can’t believe my ears! Is this why I’ve been teaching you all these years? What is this nonsense? And by the way, Agrippa didn’t say that, but Pliny the Elder in his Natural History, the said Pliny being the biggest fool in the world and his books a load of cock-and-bull. What have I come to — you citing Pliny to me! It appears I have been wasting my time with you.”
“But how should we call such things?” I insisted.
“I told you: misunderstandings,” the doctor replied categorically. “You don’t understand the meaning of the word, since you only see as far as your nose, like all ignoramuses.”
“I understand it, señor,” I objected. “Three apples, five apples. . But it seems too simple to me.”
The doctor smacked himself hard on the forehead, then rapped twice on the ceiling of the carriage with his cane — a sign to Jesús to stop — reached past me, opened the door, and said: “Get out! Get out, get out!” he repeated, seeing my disbelieving stare.
“But señor, that’s absurd!” I exclaimed.
“Which means it’s just like nearly everything else,” the doctor replied. “Now you’ll have something to think over as you walk back to Sevilla. Get out! Your head needs a little airing out as it is.”
I toyed with the idea of taking slightly tougher measures. But at that moment I heard the voice of Jesús, who was standing near the door: “Come on, amigo, you heard what the señor doctor said.”
The two of them would have been too much for me. So I simply got out and stood motionless, watching the carriage drive away from me. I will not describe here the thoughts that were running through my head. They cannot even be called “thoughts” exactly.
The carriage stopped unexpectedly, perhaps fifty yards from me. Jesús climbed down and came towards me with a staff in his hand.
Has it really come to this? I looked around and saw a serviceable rock by my right foot. It would do the trick nicely if need be. But there was still time. Jesús stretched the staff out in front of him, shook it, and yelled: “This is for you.”
In what sense? I waited for Jesús to get closer. He stopped two or three yards away, held the staff out to me, and said: “The doctor sent me to give this to you. You might need it.”
Then he turned around and went back to the carriage with quick steps. It took off again shortly and sank into the night, only the clattering of the wheels and the horses on the road could be heard.
I could hear it getting farther away from me for a long time. At night these roads are completely deserted and the sound carried long and far in the silence. The dark mass of the trees rustled along the road. The moon was in its second quarter and lit up the road in front of me well enough, but the woods on either side sank into the darkness. I again fell to thinking about that misunderstanding, that so-called “spirit.” I imagined it floating over the trees, watching me from behind. It seemed that I could feel some presence behind me with absolute certainty. The carriage could still be heard in the distance, very faintly, very far away. Yes, I could’ve sworn there was someone behind me. I grasped the staff firmly, counted to ten, and suddenly turned around by enormous effort of will. My heart seemed to leap to my throat. Nothing. Of course, there was nothing there, no one. Some sort of apprehension had wormed its way deep into my mind, however. If I can only reach the bend above Borsetto, where the forests end and bare hills begin. I lit a cigarella. The crackling thundered in the night like a musket — which the Spaniards discovered some time ago and which is now very much the fashion — sparks flew from the far end. I felt my tranquility starting to return. I felt certainty taking hold of me with every subsequent step. What a silly thing superstition is! You are a fool, Guimarães, I thought to myself. Here you are, supposedly a doctor, supposedly a man of medicine, yet deep in your mind lurks the most rustic, ignorant superstition. The cigarella crackled again, as if to confirm my thoughts. I felt my so-called “soul” growing light, my bodily fluids settling in their proper places, steadily taking up their preordained paths. You must be fearless — that is the most important thing in life, I said to myself. Nothing and no one notices you, it is only your fears which frighten you. Everything calmly follows its path, and as long as you don’t get in the way too much or you don’t accidentally end up crossing it at the wrong time, nothing will happen to you. It happens only very rarely, very rarely, but you are constantly consumed by apprehensions and fears, since your fears envelop you like a cocoon. “You scatter their wrapping/ and before the shimmering l’Amour/ fear flies away toujours.” Eh, Pelletier? I wonder whether anything like this ever happened to him? I doubt it. Such things only happen to fools who don’t have the good sense to hold their tongues.
I lifted my gaze. During the day it’s not so, but at night the sky looks huge, strangely deep, high and remote, filled with huge voids, with vast distances. This is the true sky — the day lies. It’s because of the stars, scattered on its black background at night. How many times would the road to Sevilla fit into the distance to the closest of them? I imagined someone who had to travel to, say, Andromeda. This thought filled me with a certain amount of courage. Compared to him, I was in a far better situation. Far better. What would I do in his place? What would I do if they told me: “Guimarães, here’s food, water, everything you need, you have to go to Andromeda,” for example? What if there were no way to get out of it? I think I would fall into despair. Perhaps I would simply lie down by the road and wait to die. Or else I would set out and endlessly trudge along the roads like the Wandering Jew. What a terrible fate the Wandering Jew had! Only now do I realize that. And these people, these pilgrims, who shuffle along the roads for years to get to Jerusalem or somewhere — what kind of people are they? Or else in the opposite direction, like Jesús’ father. . But they know how long the way is — from Spain it will take them about two years. Besides, they seem to find it interesting to go from city to city, from country to country, to see the world. They walk for two years and afterwards talk about it their whole lives. But that wouldn’t be interesting for me. Compared to them as well, I am in a much better situation. And what about Francisco Rodrigues? What to say about Francisco Rodrigues? He travelled for not two but three years, surrounded by water most of the time, no less — the monotonous blue ocean, where you can’t see much of anything except water from one end to the other and some waves, say, which could swallow you up at any moment. Boring and terrifying. And when he got back, he pricked himself on a nail and died. Compared to him, I am in a much better, infinitely better situation, without any doubt whatsoever. Francisco Rodrigues had just made up his mind to get married when he died. He strung a lass along for two or three years, but kept putting off marrying her. I would often tell him: “Francisco, you’ve strung the girl along long enough. Marry her.” But he would say: “Nothing of the kind! She’d only gobble up all my money. Womenfolk, brats, now there’s the expense of a lifetime!” But in the end he’d made up his mind and kept saying: “When I get back from this voyage and bring home a little money, then I’ll get married.” I told him that the girl wasn’t so wild as to wait for him another two years while he sailed, and we argued about that quite a bit — would she wait for him or not? And afterwards he pricked himself on that nail and suddenly died.