For a few months, I sold nourishing tobacco with unbelievable success. What is this pleasant fairytale, I asked myself, what is this legend? Everything was going very well until that idiot, that scoundrel Duvar, Pablo the Loser, started meddling. Like that fly or whatever it was in the Bible, which spoils all the flour. I can’t imagine it was a fly — how could a fly spoil flour? Maybe it wasn’t flour. Or maybe it wasn’t from the Bible. But what I mean is this: Duvar, from whom I’d taken the better part of his business and whom I’d magnanimously left only to perform deliveries — just enough so as not to starve to death, and most of all because I didn’t feel like bothering with that — Duvar told the peasants that this wasn’t any kind of nourishing tobacco at all, but the most average, ordinary tobacco, which they could buy for themselves five times cheaper at the port of Sevilla. Such things get around very quickly amongst the peasants and they soon began looking askance at me and I began losing clients. Things continued going well more or less, although nothing like before, for about a month, until Señor Espinosa’s people showed up. Espinosa had somehow gotten wind that the peasants in the vicinity of Sevilla and even further away in Andalusia were buying tobacco in droves, and he sent his people there to sell it to them — far cheaper than I could sell it to them — thus saving them the trip to Sevilla. Espinosa’s people poured out like a waves, like water — uncontainable, getting in everywhere, flooding everything. Wherever I went, they’d already been there. They travelled the roads in carts, taking orders and delivering tobacco. Sometimes Jesús and I would come across them. Lots of people, well organized. As far as I could gather, Duvar, unlike before, had begun saying that ordinary tobacco — even though it is ordinary and not nourishing — was very good for animals. I can guess why he changed his opinion.
My business completely dried up. I continued driving around the environs of Sevilla with Jesús for some time, going farther and farther afield, but in vain. Nourishing tobacco was sunk, at least for me. I had to give up.
“Jesús, I thought it all up,” I told him once, one afternoon as we were returning to Sevilla. “It was my discovery.”
“Bravo, señor,” Jesús replied. “It sure was a good idea. A big thing.”
“Yes, I thought up nourishing tobacco. And what did I get for that? Nothing!”
“Well, not absolutely nothing, señor.”
“It’s nothing,” I waved dismissively. “Espinosa will reap all the rewards. Espinosa owes me!”
“You should tell him that, señor,” replied Jesús.
I studied him for a long time. Was this good-for-nothing making fun of me? Jesús was staring straight ahead at the road, expressionless. Had he perhaps gotten too sly?
“Yes, definitely,” I said in a moment and leaned back.
But I didn’t plan on just leaving things as they were. That scoundrel Duvar would have to pay! I would talk to Rincon about fixing him good! Rincon could knock some sense into his head, arrange for him to spend some time at Dr. Bartholo’s hospital thinking over what had happened to him and why, the stupid fool. One afternoon I was already on my way to the Three Horses to look for Rincon when I started having second thoughts. The problem was that after they took care of Duvar, he could pay to have them take care of me. Rincon would never turn anybody down as long as they could pay. And if not him, then he’d find someone else. You can find plenty of people for that sort of thing in Sevilla. And what would happen, I thought, if I paid Rincon to make him disappear? That way Duvar couldn’t take revenge. Because he would have disappeared. I had earned a little something from nourishing tobacco, after all — yes, Jesús was right — and I could easily pay Rincon to make Dr. Duvar disappear. Reason suggested that this would be the most correct, least dangerous move with an eye to the future. Yet some murky force within me, some superstition desperately opposed this thought. I started wandering through the streets near the Three Horses, wondering what to do. But I couldn’t decide. So I decided to ask Dr. Monardes instead.
“Such things are not done,” Dr. Monardes answered sharply, looking at me seriously. “Otherwise someone, let’s say Dr. Bartholo, could pay for us to disappear. If you pay to make Duvar disappear now, later someone might pay to make you disappear. For some reason, that’s almost always how it turns out. The devil does not exist, of course, he is simply a foolish superstition, but don’t bank too much on that. Certain things are not worth verifying. If you verify it and it turns out you were wrong, what then? And there are two more problems, which you certainly would have seen, if irritation hadn’t clouded your mind. First, Dr. Duvar’s disappearance at the present moment would not change anything. That trade has already been taken over by Espinosa, and it will continue, with or without Duvar. In the practical sense, you have nothing to gain from Duvar’s disappearance. And you can’t make Señor Espinosa disappear, too,” the doctor laughed.
“Yes, of course,” I quickly agreed. “There was never any question of that at all.”
“So that means that besides satisfying your thirst for revenge, you don’t stand to gain anything. And second,” Dr. Monardes continued, “even Rincon wouldn’t be able to work on Duvar’s disappearance without first letting that boss of theirs in on it, what’s his name, Ma. . Mo. .”
“Monipodio,” I said.
“Yes, Monipodio. And what problem does the thieves’ guild have with stupid old Pablo? Most likely none at all. Otherwise he would’ve disappeared long ago without your help,” Dr. Monardes waved his hand. “So it is highly likely that Monipodio wouldn’t agree to it. And if he does agree to it, then it’s no longer between you and Duvar, but between Duvar and the thieves’ guild. So then you’ll have to pay not only Rincon, but the whole guild. That will turn out to be much more expensive than you think. Much, much more expensive,” Dr. Monardes repeated. “You should have talked to Dr. Duvar from the very beginning,” he continued after a bit, seeing my despairing look, I suppose. “As soon as you decided to sell that nourishing tobacco.”
“I didn’t think of it then,” I said.
“No, you didn’t think of it,” Dr. Monardes nodded.
“I just thought to kick him out,” I said after a short pause.
“That could have been arranged, too,” the doctor shook his head, “but in a different way. You shouldn’t have just pretended Duvar didn’t exist, instead you needed to convince the peasants that he couldn’t be trusted about anything. About anything whatsoever. That way when he told them that nourishing tobacco is not nourishing tobacco, but rather the most ordinary tobacco from Trinidad, which everyone can buy from the port of Sevilla, they simply would not have believed him. But then you would’ve had to take up deliveries, too, and all those other things you had left to Duvar. You needed to supplant him completely, to not give him any chance at all, not a single inch of space. I, for example, would do exactly that with Dr. Bartholo, if it were at all possible. Unfortunately, it is not. What, do you think I have any need to give lectures at the university or to do rounds three times a week at Charity Hospital? Those things hardly make you any money. I make more off my clients in three or four days. Yet the minute I’m somewhere, it means that Dr. Bartholo is not there. That’s how these things are done.”