My head was bowed, but I had fixed him with the corners of my eyes. From this distance, he wouldn’t even have time to move. I hurled the dagger at him with a lightning-quick movement, I could hardly tell myself when I’d done it. But there was no one there. It sliced through the air and disappeared into the palms in front of me.
“That won’t work”—I heard a voice behind me, turned around, and saw him about a dozen yards away from me.
“Best to wake up,” I thought to myself and tried to do so, but I couldn’t. “This arrogant Spanish self-confidence is starting to make me go mad,” I said to myself, and for the first time I felt not exactly frightened, but rather confused. At that moment he landed with a giant leap in the rose bushes to my left.
“You ought to join the travelling actors,” I told him. “With that get-up and those leaps you’d enjoy a fine career with them.”
I reached into the right side of my jacket to see whether I happened to have my second dagger, but I knew that I didn’t — I only carry it in very special cases. But my hand did run across my cigarellas and I took one out to try to pull my thoughts together.
“A travelling actor is something far grander than you think,” he replied. “I should invite you to one of my performances so you can see what real fireworks are all about. . What is that reeking thing?”
“This?” I replied, taking the cigarella from my mouth. “This is a cigarella. It’s made of. .”
“I know what it is,” he interrupted me. “But that one smells terrible.”
“Because it is made of rawer tobacco,” I said. “It’s healthier that way.”
“If I run you through,” he said, “you’ll surely stink up my whole sword. It will probably reek for a week after that.”
“Best to give it up then,” I replied, for lack of anything else to say. I didn’t know what to say or what to do. To be frank, absolutely nothing came to mind. I thought about running away, of course, but immediately rejected this idea — first, because with those leaps he used to get around, he would’ve caught up with me immediately, and second, because this was only a dream. Confusion is extremely paralyzing. I’ve noticed this other times as well.
At that moment he landed in the path in front of me with a huge leap.
“Stench or no, I’ll run you through anyway!” he said and minced towards me with tiny quick steps as in a dance, stopping abruptly from time to time.
“In England they tell about a guy like you who could jump over walls and hedges,” I told him. “They call him Spring Heeled Jack.”
“I know,” he replied. And he started running, if that’s the word, towards me with his tiny steps.
Without knowing myself what I was doing, somehow by instinct, I hurled the cigarella at him. Or rather, to be more precise, I established that that was what I had done in the following moment. He was already only five or six steps from me when I saw the cigarella smack him in the forehead. . and he vanished. He simply vanished, disappeared. I whirled around to see whether he hadn’t leapt over me again, and when I turned, I felt a sharp pain in my hip and realized that I had fallen out of bed, that I was in one of the rooms at Mr. Frampton’s house, and that I’d obviously woken up. I reached out and lit a cigarella to make sure of this. The cigarella blazed up with a merry crackle and began glowing in the darkness. Clearly, I had woken up. Yet some doubt still gnawed at me. I got up, opened the door, and stopped for a moment, hesitant, telling myself, “This is very foolish, Guimarães,” but I decided that since I’d already begun I may as well see this business through to its end, so I kept going and went into the neighboring room where Dr. Monardes was sleeping. He was there, in bed, with his white nightcap on his head. I went over and shook him by the shoulders.
“Is that you, señor?” I whispered.
“What?” the doctor replied half-asleep, but opened his eyes.
“Is that you, señor?” I said again.
He looked at me in silence, his eyes open. This continued for some time.
“No,” he yelled finally, “I’m St. Nicholas the Mariner!” And as he said this, he threw a small wooden box that had been on the nightstand next to him at me.
Fortunately, I quickly ducked, the box hit me in the shoulder and two cuff links tumbled out of it onto the floor.
“What do you want, you silly fool?” the doctor yelled angrily.
“Nothing, nothing, señor,” I replied, quickly slipping towards the door. “I just wanted to make sure that it was you.”
“And you woke me up for that?” the doctor yelled — this was most probably a rhetorical question — and felt around on his nightstand, but there was nothing else there, and in any case I had already left the room.
The doctor continued shouting various things from inside. Señor Frampton also appeared. I was forced to give an explanation, so I told them what had happened. Then I went back to my room. I could hear the two of them talking in Dr. Monardes’ room.
“You need to get rid of that fool, señor,” I heard Frampton say. The son-of-a-bitch!
“I know, I know,” the doctor replied, and he said something else I didn’t hear.
And then he began to list my virtues, he stressed my resourcefulness, my studiousness, my quick wit, my increasing and ever-deepening medical knowledge, and proclaimed his certainty that I would be a very worthy successor to him, and foretold a great career for me in the medical profession on the basis of my — as he put it — exceptional qualities. I blush as I recall this! But here are the words of Dr. Monardes, written in his own hand:
Dr. Monardes: Señor Dr. da Silva is my most remarkable and in essence my only student. All the others who declare themselves such are despicable impostors and scoundrels. No one else knows (with the exception of myself) like Dr. da Silva how to cure dozens of illnesses with the healing power of tobacco, and instead of throwing your money down the drain, if you truly would like to be cured of your ills, whatever they may be, or to hear an edifying lecture about tobacco at your college or university (for a modest fee), by all means please apply to Dr. da Silva. By all means to him.
Greetings,
Dr. N. Monardes
7. Curing Lovesickness
On July 15, 157. ., a clear sunny day, at around two o’ clock in the afternoon, I tripped over one of the beams we had brought for the new barn and very nearly hit my head on the side door of Dr. Monardes’ house. Very nearly. This dangerous incident brought back memories. The door was neglected, its paint peeling, no one used it anymore. Before, when Dr. Monardes’ daughters lived with him, they would go in and out of it. Or more precisely, only the second daughter, Magdalena, would go in and out of it. The older one, Maria, was already married and living with her husband Rodrigo de Brizuela, a merchant.
But I was talking about the younger one. What a lively girl! Thin and pretty, you really felt like snapping her in two, but at the same time you inwardly felt somehow sure that even if you folded her up in a figure eight (8), she would keep murmuring something with her sweet little mouth. I watched her scampering about, jumping around Dr. Monardes’ neck when he returned from his house calls in the evening, like a little fawn, I heard her ringing laughter. Always cheerful, always ready to laugh — at anything and everything. Even if you only lifted your finger, she would laugh (as long as it wasn’t the middle one, of course). Being, especially at that time, a young man, I was captivated by her — with her black hair, her dark eyes, her thin, perky figure, and her ringing laugh, she was one of the prettiest girls I had ever seen. Besides, she was also heiress to thirty thousand ducats, or more precisely fifteen thousand, if we subtract those which would go to her sister (who was already married, like I said). And now I see the arbor in which I declared my love to her. I had been on her scent for some time — as folks have put it ever since the distant past when everybody had dogs — looking at her amorously and so on, hence she was fully aware of my feelings. One evening, when the doctor and Jesús were out, I was pacing back and forth on the lawn under her window, hoping she would notice me. I remember I passed the time by dividing fifteen thousand by various numbers. She came out, ostensibly to get water from the well in the garden. I said to myself “Now or never!” and strode decisively — but with a love-struck look — towards her. One way or another, we finally ended up in that arbor I was talking about. I threw myself to my knees before her, banging up my knee terribly in the process, incidentally. I did not let this on in any way, of course, yet I know what I was going through. I remember very well what I said, since I had rehearsed the words many times. I said: “Señorita, I am in love with you. I love you passionately. Love is burning me up like a fire. I have tried in vain to suppress my feelings for you, dearest girl. Only you can ease my suffering, only you can extinguish this raging fire with your small white hand. Give me your hand, señorita, become my wife!”