The girl married someone else and now she’s got a wife and kids. That is, a husband and kids. . That dark and winding wide line down there must be the Guadalquivir.
I took a rock and chucked it over there. I was starting to think I’d missed when I heard it plunk into the water. Deep water, there’s something that always gives it away immediately. You can’t ever mistake it. Guadalquivir.
This stupid staff has done nothing but tripped me up. I just about killed myself. It made me so mad that I felt like chucking it down into the river after the rock. I refrained, however.
Urbi et Orbi.
Hey, that girl wasn’t named Maria, by the way. An unusual girl, her name was Juana. I pondered the human female. How different Nature has made the male and the female! (Here I must make a clarification for the reader. Despite not being as long as the road to Jerusalem, of course, the road to Sevilla was still by no means short. Hence I had time to think, or rather to run through my mind various things for which I otherwise wouldn’t have given a brass farthing.) The female is smaller, different in every possible way. Would she be able to build the Escorial Palace, for example? I highly doubt it. I try to image a group of women carrying the enormous stones necessary for its construction, but I cannot. Not that I think much of the Escorial. On the contrary, like I said, it is the biggest ugly building in the world. Or the ugliest big building. But anyway — I don’t see how the human female could build the biggest ugly building in the world. If Nature consisted solely of females, such a building would simply not exist. What does that mean? That means Urbi et Orbi, the Holy Father. The Roman Epictetus, L’Amour des amours. I wonder whether Magellan could have been a woman? Would the human female have discovered America at all? What does the woman have in common with seafaring, with crossing the oceans? She will tell you that it is utter nonsense. How would you get her to board some reeking, rolling deck and to set out “onward toward the horizon,” as Francisco Rodrigues used to say? There’s no way you can get her on board! Francisco Rodrigues even tried to write a poem on that topic (seafaring), inspired by a poem of Lope’s. This took place in the Pedro’s Three Horses Pub on San Francisco Square. But he only managed to come up with two lines, or rather, a line and a half:
We’ll chase the sun a-racing, onward o’er the wilding sea,
It’s gold we are a-chasing. .
That was it. I told him, “Francisco, you’re not cut out for this, give it up!” But he kept struggling and straining, and in the end got mad and yelled: “What more do you want? To hell with these poets, they’re complete idiots!” And I, driven from my right mind by the Jerez, started arguing with him and telling him about Pelletier du Mans. This was the second time I got thrown out of a pub. And not by Francisco Rodrigues or some such thing, but by Don Pedro himself. Pedro is built like a rock, by the way. He could lift those three horses, so to speak, with one hand. “I,” he said, “don’t want any French dogs in here.” “What does that have to do with me?” I said. “I am Guimarães the Portuguese from Portugal, the most beautiful country in the world” (like I said, I was not in my right mind). “I,” he said, “don’t want any Portuguese dogs in here either.” And so it was. No, I don’t think that females would have discovered America. “Woman,” says Pelletier du Mans, “loves the home hearth.” That Pelletier du Mans is awesome. But then they wouldn’t have discovered tobacco, either. This thought startled me so much that I stopped in my tracks. I lit a cigarella. Then I continued on my way. How cleverly Nature has done things, I thought to myself. She made both the male and the female. If she had made only one, the world would be different. . Ah, Sevilla. Sevilla is so far. Infinitely far. If I were a female, I surely would have shat myself from fear. Alone on the road at night, darkness all around, the trees rustling, and who knows what out there. But if I were a woman, I wouldn’t have found myself in this situation in the first place. If I were a woman, I would never have set foot anywhere near Dr. Monardes, that much is certain.
It can’t be! It can’t be, yet it is: that is the Maria Immaculata hill. As soon as I come out around it, I will see Sevilla. I ran up ahead. There it is. The lights, the river, the bridges, the cathedral. . With leaps, I rushed down the road. Soon I entered the city. A drunk or a tramp was lying on the road, and since the streets are narrow in this part of town, he was blocking it completely. I nudged him with my staff: “Hey, morisco,” I said, “great spot you picked to sleep, perfect for tripping people!”
He mumbled something and turned over. I jumped over him, very carefully, however, since some tramps just pretend to be drunk, and when you go to jump over them they suddenly reach out and grab you you-know-where and start squeezing and twisting until you give them your purse. This latter happens very quickly, incidentally. After that, they give you one hard, final squeeze and as you’re doubled over, they jump up and run away. I’ve also heard of one such scoundrel, who had really bad luck and was killed on the spot by a eunuch. But I’ll tell that story some other time. What I want to say is that I jumped over that good-for-nothing’s feet, very carefully, and then yelled over my shoulder: “It’s truly a miracle that Jesús didn’t run you over.”