This incident, however, reminded me, that I was in perhaps the most dangerous part of the entire journey. At night, Sevilla is a terribly dangerous city. That’s all I need, I thought, to have walked all this way through field and forest in the middle of the night, unmolested, only to have something happen to me at the end in Sevilla. But it could happen as easy as anything. At night, Sevilla is far more dangerous than Nature. This is the case because Nature is frequently deserted, while Sevilla is full of people. It began to drizzle. I ran ahead through the streets. Luckily, nothing happened to me. When I reached Dr. Monardes’ house, I saw Jesús walking a mare in front of the barn.
“It’s about time, señor,” he called, “we thought that you’d gotten lost somewhere.”
“I’ll give you what for. . What’s wrong with her?” I nodded at the mare.
“She’s sad,” Jesús replied and stroked her on the neck.
Jesús is crazy.
I walked past him and went into the barn. Clearly, I would have to sleep here tonight. Pablito snorted when he heard me come in.
“Hey, Pablito,” I said and tapped him lightly on the forehead with my staff. He was here even before me, for five or six years now, and he’s as good as gold.
I found a dry, level place at the far end of the barn and blissfully relaxed onto the straw. The straw is old, it’s been rained on, it’s slightly rotted and has a peculiar smell. I lit a cigarella, inhaled the smoke with pleasure, and listened to the raindrops murmuring softly on the roof beams. I felt the exhaustion draining out of my limbs along with the soft murmur of the rain, with the smoke of the cigarella. In Sevilla, it almost never really rains, it merely sprinkles like now. “La lluvia en Sevilla es una pura maravilla,” as they say. Yes, a pure marvel! Some hazy female face emerged in my consciousness, leaned over me, and said “Good night, good night” several times. Who was she? I didn’t recognize her. I tried to discern her features more clearly, but could not. I went over to the window and drew the curtain so as to see her more clearly. At that moment the door opened and Francisco Rodrigues entered the room, bathed in light. “Womenfolk, brats. .” he said and shook his head. I turned toward the window and looked outside. But it was not Sevilla. There were fields, low hills scattered with olive groves and a dirt road which wound between them off into the distance, lit up by the bright sun. “How hot it is,” I said and wiped the sweat from my brow.
6. On the Connection That Some Representatives of the Common Folk See Between Tobacco and the So-Called “Devil.” A Concrete Example of the Driving Out of the Latter and How He Flees from Tobacco As from Incense
After the barn burned down, I did not go out with the doctor for some time. I stayed at the house to help Jesús build a new one. Many details surrounding the fire remain obscure, but let me first state that which is known: thanks to Pablito’s squealing and the fact that Jesús was outside, the fire was noticed right away. Jesús came into the barn and woke me up — it is a true miracle that I escaped unscathed, since the fire was raging all around me, and its poisonous smoke could have killed me in my sleep. When I woke up, my first thought was that I’d ended up in hell — flames curled all around me and a suffocating black smoke was drifting about. My second thought was that Jesús, whose sweaty and somehow enormous-looking face was bending over me, had ended up there, too, but this surprised me far less. Fortunately, I managed to come to my senses quickly and got out of the barn after helping Jesús free the frantic Pablito. It’s no accident that they say something “burns like straw.” The fire was crackling and swallowing up the barn with unbelievable swiftness, almost like the wind, and if it hadn’t been for the rain, which, as luck would have it, had begun in earnest, and if Jesús hadn’t been awake, thus allowing us to take measures quickly, not only would the barn have burned down, but the house next to it, too, and perhaps the neighboring ones, as well. To say nothing of me. I got extremely lucky, indeed — I must admit that the rain, Pablito, and most of all Jesús saved my life.
Other troubles awaited me, however. I hardly need describe how Dr. Monardes looked when he saw his barn burning and what kind of mood he was in thereafter. As we put out the fire in the barn, he was occupied with that thought alone, but on the following morning he began to ask himself — and to ask us, as well — how the fire had come about. I had expected something of the sort. I was also not surprised by Jesús’ ugly insinuation that I was to blame for the fire. He suggested that I had lit a cigarella, fallen asleep, and that the cigarella had set fire to the straw. Of course, I categorically denied this. To be perfectly honest, I remembered that I had lit a cigarella, but I also remembered clearly that I extinguished it. If I were to admit this, however, the doctor would never believe me and I would pay very, very dearly. Farewell, studies! Farewell, medicine! Back out on the streets and into the pubs to earn my keep doing tricks with smoke. . No, I couldn’t let that happen.
The doctor, however, was very inclined to believe Jesús. I raised one eyebrow skeptically, cocked my head to the side, made a face which is very difficult for me to describe, but which I intuitively felt was very convincing, and said (all of that simultaneously): “Señor, a bit of logic, please! If I had really fallen asleep with a lit cigarella, it would have first set fire to the straw around me and I would’ve been the first to burn. But as Jesús himself said, the fire did indeed start at the far end of the barn where I was, but from the other side.”
“It could’ve rolled over there or something,” Jesús objected.
“Bah!” I said, waving my hand dismissively. “What is this, a hill by the river? That’s not the way things work.”
I will risk digressing here for a moment with the suggestion, which may come as a surprise to the reader, that my highly developed facial musculature, perfected via my masterful smoking in pubs, played an exceptionally important role in this case. Naturally, given the situation, I pushed its possibilities to the limit and tried to accompany my words with such convincing expressions so that no one would be able to resist them. Happily, I must say that this appeared to have had an effect.
The doctor lowered his eyes from me, slowly turned towards Jesús, and fixed him with his heavy, icy gaze. I felt the rage growing within him.
“Oh no, no, señor,” Jesús said in a frightened voice, waving his hand in front of his face.
“That was a big mistake,” I thought to myself.
“I’ll kill you, you lout!” the doctor cried. “Just what were you doing awake at that hour?”
Jesús took off running and the doctor chased him with his cane in hand. As I have noted on a previous occasion, the doctor carried that cane only for elegance and, in fact, ran quite quickly.
But Jesús also runs quickly, and he is quite a bit younger, besides. The two of them crossed the lawn in front of the house and disappeared around the other side. I leaned against the pear tree I was standing near and lit up a cigarella, relieved. I had a slight headache. I wondered whether Jesús really had started the fire. But no, to be frank, that seemed rather farfetched to me.
In any case, the doctor finally got us together and said: “I don’t know which of you good-for-nothings caused that fire and what exactly happened. If one of you is guilty, he can consider himself very lucky. Very lucky! The two of you will get to work immediately, this instant! I want that barn rebuilt within a month. In the meantime I’ll hire a new coachman to make my calls, since you won’t be available, idiot,” the doctor cried, and he took a swing at Jesús with his cane, but the latter quickly jumped back. “And you both,” the doctor continued, a bit more calmly, “will work day and night if need be, but in one month I don’t want to see any sign that there was a fire here. No fire at all! Not a trace! Like an ice rink! Like Denmark!”