“Such things never disappear on their own,” Dr. Monardes replied. “Money disappears on its own, but such things never do.”
We went outside and set off along the sunlit walkway — Dr. Monardes and I next to each other and Jesús slightly behind us. We walked in silence, all three of us with cigarellas in hand, the only sound was our shoes crunching on the sandy ground. “How hot it is,” I thought to myself.
“Berganza. That name sounds familiar to me from somewhere,” the doctor broke the silence.
“I don’t think there is anybody around here with that name,” I said, mentally going over all the dog owners I knew, and all the dogs I’d ever seen as well.
“No, there isn’t,” Dr. Monardes agreed.
When we saw the dog, which was once again rolling around in the tobacco, the doctor froze in his tracks. I thought his heart had sunk at the sight of all that trampled tobacco and the ferocious dog in his garden, but that wasn’t it. It was something else entirely.
“That’s the king’s dog!” Dr. Monardes exclaimed. “Berganza. Good God! What is the king’s dog doing in my garden?” he turned his astonished face towards me.
I merely shrugged in reply. I myself was very surprised. The doctor went over to him, puffing on his cigarella, which was clenched in his mouth, grasping his cane firmly with both hands and holding it horizontally in front of him. The dog greeted him amicably, rolled towards him, and lay on its back, lifting its strong paws bent in the air. The doctor leaned over him and stroked his stomach. The dog rolled over onto its other side, then back again. He was playing. Jesús and I came a few steps closer.
“He seems to like the tobacco,” the doctor noted, smoke billowing over the dog’s head. “Easy, easy now,” he said as he picked up the hoop around its neck. “This dog is injured. He has a scar on his neck,” he noted. Then he drew up the dog’s obedient head with his hand and said: “On the other side of the hoop it will say ‘Felipe.’ Here, come take a look.”
I got closer to the dog. It really did say “Felipe.”
“This is the king’s dog,” Dr. Monardes repeated, getting up and exhaling a long stream of smoke from his mouth, which slowly wafted through the air over our heads. “Since the dog is here, the king surely must be here, too. You need to find him and tell his people that his dog is here with us, and that they should come and get it. No, wait!” the doctor said after a brief pause. “Better yet, don’t do anything at all. Leave things as they are. They will come looking for it themselves. Jesús, go out and find out whether the king is in the city. And let the dog stay here just as it is.”
“Señor,” I said in jest as we walked away, “what if we could sic the dog on the competition, say Dr. Bartholo. . can you imagine?”
“Ha ha!” Dr. Monardes laughed heartily. “And afterwards no one could accuse us of anything!”
With these words, he went back into the house and I sat down on the steps in front of it, relieved.
It’s no accident that the doctor had achieved such unparalleled success in his career. What is the secret of success in the medical profession? Knowledge, of course, as in every profession. But there is something else as well, which is also valid for every profession and which I must call, for lack of a better term, the ability to predict the future. Dr. Monardes was a genius in that respect. He was able to predict the future as well as those witches whom they burn at the stake, but unlike them, not only was he not burned up, he also earned thousands of ducats and fame throughout Europe. Long before he took up medicine, sailors with cigarellas were as common as blackberries in the port of Sevilla. But the doctor foresaw that tobacco had a great future, and he became grand and rich. He also foresaw that the New World would need slaves and got into that trade, together with Nuñez de Herrera, and became if not grand, then at least richer. Nobody could predict the future like he could. And it’s not that tobacco is so very curative — it is, of course, and this is important, but if you go down to the chemist del Valle’s, he can tell you dozens of substances, which, although they don’t have the healing power of tobacco, nevertheless they have many merits, but no one has ever heard of them and almost no one uses them. While almost everyone now uses tobacco, especially in the medical profession, and it is celebrated around the world. Why is it celebrated and used, while these other things are not? Lord only knows. And Dr. Monardes, as well. Thanks to his ability to predict the future.
Although in this case his conjecture was not completely true. It was, however, confirmed in its essence. Because that very evening the royal physician, Dr. Bernard, turned up at our door. Dr. Bernard was a man with kind manners and expression, whom you see and instantly remember, without quite knowing why. He had an oval visage, chestnut hair, smooth open forehead, lively eyes, a hooked but well-proportioned nose, a coppery beard, and fair complexion. His figure was midway between the two extremes, neither tall nor short, somewhat stooped in the shoulders, with a pot belly and plump legs. Despite his youthful appearance, I would bet he was around fifty. No, the king wasn’t in Sevilla. But yes, Dr. Bernard had arrived looking for the dog, Berganza.
While he was still explaining the purpose of his visit, I interrupted him, announcing with the satisfaction of a bearer of good news: “Señor, your dog is here.”
Dr. Bernard was visibly delighted, but Dr. Monardes shot me a short, withering glance. Later, as we walked over to the dog — in his impatience, Dr. Bernard had gotten a few yards ahead of us — I turned to my teacher and quietly asked: “What’s wrong, señor?”
“Idiot!” Dr. Monardes hissed. “We could’ve gotten at least one hundred ducats for searching for and finding the dog. At least one hundred.”
“But perhaps the king will reward you in any case,” I said.
“Oh yes,” the doctor replied contemptuously, “he’ll give me something that costs twenty.”
Well, that’s how you learn. Especially when you’re young. At least with Dr. Monardes you really can learn lots of things from various fields.
While walking down the pathway, Dr. Bernard informed us that his assistants had told him that passersby had seen the dog near the Hospital of the Resurrection and that someone had further told them that he had seen it take off after Dr. Monardes’ carriage. Dr. Bernard had been following the dog all the way from Toledo. Luckily, he said, it rarely went unnoticed — people usually noticed it wherever it went — so Dr. Bernard was able to follow it from town to town and from village to village all that way.
“Unbelievable!” Dr. Monardes exclaimed.
“Indeed it is, señor,” Dr. Bernard agreed. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t think we’d be able to find it despite all our efforts. Yet fate has smiled upon us! Unless Berganza has left your garden in the meantime. But I have reason to believe, especially given what you’ve said, that he will stay wherever there is tobacco.”
Yes, so it was. We found Berganza in the tobacco. Not in exactly the same place, but again in the tobacco beds. He had trampled down a new section and was now rolling around there. The dog greeted Dr. Bernard rather hostilely, but with kind words — and most of all, with the help of a cigarella — the physician managed to win Berganza’s good will.
The story which Dr. Bernard told us, his face glowing with joy as he stroked the dog sitting next to him, was almost unbelievable.
“Señores,” he said. “Berganza was chosen for an experiment. Some people at the court — Duke de Sartoza, Duke de Molina, Cardinal Gonzalez, and others, all passionate hunters — claimed that nothing could counteract the crossbow shooter’s herb. Here it must be noted as justification of their ignorance that with the help of this herb they have indeed killed many a savage beast in the Sierra Morena and elsewhere. They claimed that you need only smear the tip of your arrow or spear with the crossbow shooter’s herb and it will kill absolutely any beast it hits, even if it strikes an otherwise nonfatal place.”