“This is no strain whatsoever, don’t you worry,” he replied, continuing to fling the tables and chairs into the corner.
Don Pedro’s family had come out into the yard and were shouting at him to stop, to go back inside where it was warm and so forth, but he merely shook his head, without answering them at all. At one point, however, he turned to us, and I was stunned by his appearance — he was standing there before us smiling, flushed, huge. I turned to the doctor.
“I know what you’re going to ask,” he nodded. “I know what this is, but I don’t know the word for it. It is the opposite of a complication. Rather, the opposite of a ‘severe complication.’ We don’t have a word for that in our profession.”
“Improvement,” I suggested.
“Let’s say,” the doctor shook his head hesitantly. “A severe improvement.”
Don Pedro continued piling up the odds and ends from the tavern. They had been accumulating there for years, tossed into a heap, their quantity was enormous. There was no longer any doubt in my mind that he would clean up that whole jumble that had accumulated over the years in one afternoon or even less — in an hour or two, just like that, before our very eyes.
“Wow, this fellow just doesn’t quit, huh, señor? He’s not of German descent or something, is he?” I asked.
“Well no, of course not, I’ve known him since childhood!” Dr. Monardes snapped. “I shouldn’t think so,” he added a short while later. And then he said: “Go get him, Guimarães.”
“Go get him, señor?” I repeated.
“Yes,” the doctor replied. Short and to the point.
Now this was something I had no desire whatsoever to do. I imagined how Don Pedro would grab me and toss me on top of those tables and chairs. I slowly headed towards him. But no matter how slowly you walk, sooner or later you cover one hundred yards. It goes without saying that contrary to my hopes, no miracle occurred and Don Pedro continued, puffing and snorting, to work away at his task. When he noticed me, he said: “So you’ve come to help out, eh?”
Yes, you’re telling me, I thought to myself. I shan’t be a minute.
Then I waited a short while for him to turn towards me, but he seemed to have forgotten me. I stepped closer and tapped him on the shoulder as he bent down to pick up an old vise.
“What is it, boy?” He turned his head towards me, still bent over.
“Señor,” I answered, “the doctor says you need to come back inside. He sent me to get you.”
“Is that so?” he replied, straightening up. Then he looked around at the objects scattered on the ground and said: “Very well then.”
I set off and several steps later I snuck a glance over my shoulder. And indeed, Don Pedro was following me. This time I covered the distance to the house’s entrance much more quickly. When we got inside, Don Pedro agreed to put on his shirt and lie down in bed. He even let us tuck him under the covers.
“Good, Pedro,” the doctor turned to him. “The treatment is producing results.”
“Amazing results,” Don Pedro nodded animatedly. “If only I’d known to turn to you years ago, my friend!”
“Since things are going better than I had expected,” Dr. Monardes went on, “we will change the plan. I will come to see you tomorrow and change your bandages. After that, we will repeat the procedure only if you start experiencing aches and pains again.”
“Fine. Whatever you say, doctor,” Don Pedro replied.
The doctor stroked his beard pensively and asked, after what seemed to me some hesitation: “Pedro, is there some German in your family tree?”
“No. Why?” Don Pedro asked, surprised.
“Oh, I was just asking,” the doctor replied. Let me say here, by the way, since I’ll hardly have the opportunity later on, that this answer has always seemed like something big to me: they ask you “Why?” and you answer “I was just asking.”
We left after that. The next day we changed his bandages, but only once, and without having him inhale tobacco vapors, and that was the last time, and I mean the absolute last time, we ever needed to treat Don Pedro’s joints. He didn’t feel bad at all anymore, not because of his joints in any case, they got better once and for all. It goes without saying that Don Pedro was exceptionally grateful to Dr. Monardes and always spoke of him with nothing but praise. I also think that he harbored good feelings towards me, too. It’s true that he later threw me out of the Three Horses on several occasions, but he threw me out somehow carefully, with a certain concern, I would say. I don’t even think “thrown out” is the precise term for it. He more took me from one side of the door and dropped me on the other. I’ve seen him throw other people out — take Rincon, for example — and that is another thing altogether. Incidentally, Don Pedro might find himself in hot water with Rincon in particular — Rincon is very handy with a knife, and even though Don Pedro could strangle him with three fingers, he might come to grief, as they say, with Rincon. But on the other hand, Rincon knows when to watch his step and is very sly. You could live with him your whole life and never even know he had a knife. When it comes to money, however, everything suddenly changes. It changes drastically. If you happen to cross his path at such a moment, you are in dire straits, literally in mortal danger.
Crazy José crosses my path this evening. Crazy José is completely harmless, however. He is bent over some beams by the side of the road and is speaking to the cats that are hiding under them. He is trying to lure them out, clapping his hands. One might imagine that the cats love him and play with him, but this is not the case at all. In fact, they don’t pay him any attention whatsoever, they don’t come out from under the beams. If you want them to come out, you need to toss them something to eat. Then they’ll pay attention to you, they’ll start playing with you, fawning all over you, rubbing against your legs with their tails in the air, they’ll stand still and let you pet them and they’ll purr. Cats. Nature has made them that way. Crazy José stands bent over the beam in vain, trying to lure them with a cajoling, childlike voice, clapping his hands. He lifts his head and looks at me with a foolish grin as I pass by him.
“You have to give them something, José,” I tell him.
He keeps looking at me with that same foolish grin. I doubt he understands what I’m telling him at all.
10. For Long Life
While we were in England, Mr. Frampton had planned to take us to a 110-year-old granny who had smoked tobacco for decades and who had not given up her pipe even to that very day, according to Mr. Frampton. What better proof of the wondrous longevity resulting from tobacco use? Of course, Dr. Monardes, and myself as well, were extremely intrigued by this. The granny was called Goody Jane, and she lived in North Witch. As the name of the hamlet in question implies, it lay quite far to the north, and we had the opportunity to go there only after our visit to Eton, which I mentioned a bit earlier in this medical work.
Mr. Frampton recounted to us veritable miracles about this Goody Jane. He claimed that although she was bent double by the years, practically like a ring-shaped bun, she was fully in her right mind, all of her mental abilities if not entirely, then to a great extent preserved, and that she smoked a pipe every morning upon rising. As she had done, like I said, for decades on end.
“She’s been smoking longer than you’ve been alive, Guimarães,” Mr. Frampton said to me on the way, and those words, like Urbi et Orbi and other such things, imprinted themselves deeply upon my memory. Perhaps forever.
Indeed, what a granny she was! We travelled all night so as to catch her in the morning as she smoked her first pipe — and so it was. Her family led us to a small one-room shack next to the house — she lived in said shack (since her family had taken over the house) — and we found there an unbelievable creature, with a recognizably human appearance, despite everything, truly bent double nearly to the ground, almost like a small ring, dressed in something difficult for me to define, but undoubtedly with a wool sweater-vest on top, sitting on a bed next to a metal stove, which pleasantly warmed the entire space, which incidentally was not larger than two by three yards and which included, besides the stove, a small low table and yet another bed on the opposite side, covered in woolen blankets. The floor, just like the entire structure itself, was made of the most ordinary dirt. In other words, if someone reckons that the good granny’s longevity was due to an especially wholesome quality of life, he is sorely mistaken.