“That’s the spirit of this city,” the doctor replied. “Everyone has come here to get rich quickly. Even the beggars came here for that once upon a time. There are typically lots of prisoners in such places.”
This was surely true as well, but I would add that the prison in Sevilla was not a municipal prison, but rather a royal one, so it held people from all over Spain. Señor Frampton had also spent some time there. It was a true Tower of Babel inside. I wondered where all those people slept at night. I wouldn’t be too surprised if they slept stacked up on top of one another.
No, it was not like Arcadia, as Cervantes would say. Instead of green fields and clear streams — jagged stone walls and bars; instead of pretty young shepherds and shepherdesses, called “pastors” in Arcadia, by the way — angry guards on the one side and cut-throats on the other.
We entered a clean room with whitewashed walls. This was where they examined the prisoners who were to be released. Cervantes was waiting for us inside. I was seeing him for the first time. He was of average height, with an oval visage, chestnut hair, a smooth open forehead, lively eyes, a hooked but well-proportioned nose, a coppery beard and fair complexion, somewhat stooped in the shoulders, with a pot belly and plump legs.
The doctor greeted him and shook hands with him (as did I), looked at his tooth, and started in on the treatment. First, he cleaned the tooth of impurities with a piece of cloth soaked in tobacco juice, then used tweezers to place a small ball of tobacco in the hole in the tooth.
“That,” said the doctor, “will prevent any further decay of the tooth and will leech out the puss. Spit, but be careful not to spit out the tobacco. I’ll come back tomorrow to change the tobacco. In two or three days your toothache will be gone.”
“Thank you, doctor,” Cervantes replied.
“Tell me, just between friends, did you really steal that money?” the doctor asked.
“Not a cent of it!” Cervantes replied emphatically. “If I had stolen it, they would know that by now. All the walls have ears here.”
The doctor involuntarily glanced at the wall. I did, too. Yes, of course. We should have thought of that. It makes perfect sense.
“You take after your father.” Dr. Monardes shook his head. “Back in the day, in order to practice medicine, Rodrigo claimed left and right that he was licensed, but it turned out he was only a bachelor of sciences.”
“But he wasn’t any worse than any licensed physician,” Cervantes replied.
“That’s true,” the doctor agreed. “Actually, who knows whether he was even a bachelor. But that’s neither here nor there. He really was good. In our trade, that’s the only thing that counts. And in your trade, as well.”
“That is surely the case in all trades, señor,” Cervantes said.
“Yes,” agreed the doctor.
“Absolutely!” I chimed in. Incidentally, I am not even a bachelor of sciences. It’s not necessary. It had crossed my mind to while away a year or two at the university, why not, but they want money on top of everything, which was just going too far.
The doctor continued talking to Cervantes and making little ambiguous jokes with him, which made it clear that he didn’t believe him all too much — not him, nor the so-called “honest men”—but then Cervantes said something which I have committed to memory: “That is the philosophy of the ancient cynics, señor,” he said. “As old as the world itself and with many merits. But the bad thing about it is that even if Christ himself were to descend to earth once again, you would never believe it. You would think he was simply some charlatan, who says and does those things for his own benefit, led by hidden goals and intentions. You would suspect him of hypocrisy. The cynics say that the world is bad, and that people are hypocritical, vain, and deceitful, and that everyone is only out for his own gain. When everyone believes that, the world remains just as bad as it was, if not worse. It will never get any better that way.”
“It will never get any better that way.” Dr. Monardes nodded seriously. “It will change through cold common sense. Through medicine, knowledge, and science. That’s the only way it will happen.”
“That change will hardly be very significant, señor,” Cervantes said.
“Who knows? We’ll see,” replied Dr. Monardes. “In any case, if some people had not discovered the healing power of tobacco, that little ball would not be in your mouth right now and your tooth would not be saved.”
“Well, I guess that is something,” Cervantes laughed. “Today the tooth, tomorrow the whole jaw.”
“I was just giving you a concrete example,” the doctor replied. “From now on, you can exercise your own reason and try to imagine just how far it could go. Even though that would be pointless. No one knows how far it could go, nor could anyone possibly know. The moralists keep chattering away. .”
“I’m not a moralist,” Cervantes said.
“The moralists keep chattering away,” the doctor continued, while putting his things back into his bag, “about how we can change people, rather than how we can change the circumstances. People cannot be changed, but circumstances can. By the way, our friend Ficino in Italy claims that people can be changed, too. Through education, he says. Who knows? Perhaps. In any case, circumstances certainly can be. Forget the people and change the circumstances. That will actually work. Until tomorrow, Cervantes. And be careful not to spit out the ball of tobacco.”
“Thank you, doctor,” Cervantes said and got up from the bed he had been sitting on. “I’ll be careful.”
Thus our first visit to him ended.
On our way out, I spotted Rincon among the people in the corridors and turned to him.
“What are you doing here?” I asked in surprise. At first, I thought they had thrown him in prison.
“I’ve got friends here,” he replied. “I come to visit them now and again.”
“Aha,” I said, lifted my hand in farewell, and hurried on after the doctor, who hadn’t noticed that I had made this detour and who had now stopped and was looking around for me.
“Where did you disappear to?” he asked. “I thought something had happened to you.”
“I saw Rincon,” I said.
“What? Rincon here?” the doctor said in surprise.
“He’s here for visiting hours,” I explained.
“I see,” the doctor nodded.
The next day we came back to replace Cervantes’ ball of tobacco. And on the third day, they released him. His toothache had disappeared and he no longer felt any pain. He still felt some slight tingling when he chewed on that side, but with time that would disappear as well, the doctor said. Cervantes stopped by the doctor’s house after being released, and the three of us went to drink a glass of jerez to his health at the Three Horses. Cervantes’s family had scattered, nobody lived here anymore. Most of them had gone to Madrid. He only had some distant relatives on Feria Street, and afterwards he was thinking of stopping by there as well. And after that he was going to leave the city and go to Madrid or perhaps Barcelona — he hadn’t yet decided. “I’ll decide on the way,” he said. We chatted a bit at the Three Horses and then went our separate ways — he set off towards Feria, while we went back to Sierpes. Cervantes was in a good mood, happy, as was to be expected. “Free again,” he kept saying. “Freedom is quite something.” I love seeing people in good moods, happy people. They radiate such vitality, such hope. They radiate freedom. The doctor is almost never like that. For some reason, he always looks slightly annoyed. He also radiates vitality, but his is of a different sort, a different sort entirely.
“I’ll put you in my very next work, señor. Without fail!” Cervantes cried, already a dozen feet from us, his hand raised in a parting wave. “I’ve thought up something about two dogs. It’ll be good. Keep an eye out for it.”