“Surely the fever, although it’s hard for me to say,” replied the priest. “They both came on at the same time.”
“You mustn’t strengthen the illness, padre!” Dr. Monardes said sternly. “By trying to hold on to the visions, perhaps you are also trying to hold on to the fever as well.”
“No, no, not at all,” the priest shook his head. “I assure you.”
“Did you see anything else, father?” I asked.
“Oh, amazing things! The star called Wormwood, how it fell to the earth. It says in the Apocalypse that it turned the waters bitter and many people perished from that. I also saw a mighty angel robed in a cloud, with a rainbow above his head, his face shining like the sun. This angel had one foot on land, the other in the sea, and was holding an open book. No, I didn’t see what it was”—he quickly clarified to me—“but the visions themselves are not the most important thing, señores. I think I have understood the meaning of the prophecy. Everything must be understood in praeteritus.”
“In praeteritus?” I repeated.
“In the past,” the doctor explained, while changing the leaves.
“Yes, precisely,” the priest nodded. “It has already taken place. The prophecy is true and has already come about. The Antichrist has passed over the earth. Chapters 12 through 19 describe the Roman Empire’s rejection of paganism and acceptance of Christianity. Chapter 20 is about the persecutions of Christians by the Antichrist, who is Emperor Nero. Write out ‘Nero Caesar’ in Hebrew letters, add them up and you get 666.”
“Really?” I said.
“It’s true.” Dr. Monardes nodded after a brief pause. Yes, he surely knew. His mother was a Jewess, after all.
“My son,” the priest turned to me, “Nero ruled from the year 54 to the year 68. Two times seven. This also follows from the Apocalypse. And the final two chapters are about the triumph of the Catholic Church, the New Jerusalem.”
“You need to write this down, padre,” I said.
“That’s precisely what I’m doing,” he replied. “I will entitle my treatise Investigation of the Hidden Sense of the Apocalypse.”
“I really like your relative Baltasar,” I said, meaning it as a little joke. “Especially that poem ‘Tres Cosas’:
Three things have caught my heart:
The pretty Inés, cured ham
and aubergines with cheese.”
The doctor laughed, but the priest’s face assumed a serious and saddened expression.
“Baltasar is a wretch,” he said.
“Why call him a wretch, señor?” I objected. “He’s a soldier, a sailor. He’s travelled the world. And he’s a fine poet. He has talent.”
The priest shook his head, but said nothing.
The doctor was seized by a long and violent coughing fit.
“What’s wrong, señor?” the priest asked, slightly alarmed. “You haven’t caught my cold, have you?”
“No,” the doctor replied after clearing his throat. “I think it’s from the tobacco. From time to time it irritates the lungs, after long use. But this is nothing when compared with its benefits, of course. And this only applies to cases in which the smoke has been inhaled. It does not apply to cases of external application, such as yours. You needn’t be afraid.”
“I’m not afraid of anything, señor,” Father Alcazar replied. “I have complete faith in you.”
“Thank you,” replied the doctor. “As you should. I’ll come back tomorrow to see how the illness is progressing.”
After that we said goodbye to the priest and left.
“So that’s how it goes, eh?” the doctor said when we got out onto Sierpes. “Three things have caught my heart: the pretty Inés. .”
“Cured ham and aubergines with cheese,” I finished, and we both laughed.
“How strange that I do not know him,” said the doctor. “Where is he living now?”
“He’s here,” I replied. “He came back and is living in La Macarena.”
“Well, what do you know,” said the doctor.
The following day, the priest was much better, and after a week his fever had passed completely.
16. For the Elimination of All Indecision, the Resolution of All Doubts, and So On
I memorized those lines by Baltasar del Alcazar not so much because they are particularly good — frankly, they are not — but primarily because they relate to my personal experience. My heart, too, has been caught by, or is at least strongly attached to, both a lass named Anna, as well as cured ham. I have found myself torn by indecision about which of the two to go to. One evening, after a long day with Dr. Monardes, I felt like seeing pretty Anna, yet at the same time I was also very hungry and felt like going to the Three Horses to eat cured ham. Unfortunately, the two things could not be combined. It’s either one or the other. That’s how it is in Sevilla with the pretty lasses, or at least with the honorable lasses, as they say, when you are not yet married. And once you’re married, they are no longer pretty lasses, but your wife. So in any case, it was pointless to take her to the Three Horses.
I found myself torn by great indecision. I froze in my tracks and simply did not know which way to go. Because pretty Anna and the Three Horses lie in different directions. And not just symbolically, but very literally. If it had been symbolic, I would have easily figured out some way around it. But in this case, it was literal. For this reason, I lit a cigarella, wondering what to do. Both things strongly attracted me. I would say, in the spirit of philosophy, that I resembled Buridan’s ass, who starved to death while wondering which stack of hay to head towards. On the one hand, Anna; on the other, cured ham. Given the circumstances described above, such a dilemma is in fact something completely natural. Nature herself has made it such that in man, especially in his younger years, both drives are very strong. Without realizing it, I have once again fallen back on tobacco as a means for correcting Nature — as I now see. Everyone knows what cured ham is. But certainly not everyone could possibly know Anna. She is a pretty girl, tall, healthy. As the doctor once said when he saw her: “She will produce a healthy line.” The doctor approved of her highly.
When I finished smoking my cigarella, I felt firmly resolved, beyond any shadow of a doubt, to go see Anna. I even wondered how such a question could ever have entered my mind. There was no trace of my former indecision. And of course, I acted rightly. The human female must be honored! Dr. Monardes is right that she is Nature’s highest creation. In any case, she is something far from, and incomparably more than, the animal from which ham is made. It is even indecent to note this fact. Even though, on the other hand, it is simply a fact. The question is — how could such a thought possibly cross one’s mind?! I don’t know either. It just did. I suspect that this is connected to my longtime study of medicine and the science of biology. As far as I know, people have recently begun calling this a “professional deformation.” A nice, useful concept, which, like many other such useful concepts, was probably thought up by some French philosopher, and I accept it readily and with enthusiasm. I hate to digress, yet I would nevertheless like to note that had it been thought up by some German philosopher, it certainly would have been called by at least two or three different names, since nobody would be able to understand which pronoun below refers to which concept above and this would become the subject of endless debates and misunderstandings.
I will give yet another example, also connected, albeit indirectly this time, with pretty Anna. I have already said that Dr. Monardes lives on Sierpes Street, which, by the way, in typically Spanish fashion, means nothing more and nothing less than “Snake Street.” Only in this insane country would they name the city’s main street in such a way. And only there would they place the Duke of Medina Sidonia’s palace right across from the royal prison. But that’s as may be. Getting back to Anna. Anna lives on Feria Street, near the Monastery of the Holy Spirit. Many times, upon leaving the doctor’s house, I have wondered whether to take Imagen and to turn at Incarnation Square, or whether to go down Amor de Dios and then to turn onto Morgado. It is extremely difficult to say which route is shorter. Finally, one day I stopped on the corner of Imagen and Amor de Dios and lit a cigarella, trying to settle this question once and for all. I pondered it intently for almost ten minutes, pacing back and forth. I mentally reviewed almost every house, every cross street, every building that I would pass by on one or the other route. I didn’t manage to solve the problem, but when I finished smoking the cigarella, I continued straight down Amor de Dios, somehow freed of all indecision. Since then I have always taken that route, with a completely light heart. Of course, the reader may inquire why I did not simply measure both routes in steps. I attempted to do so twice, without success. The problem is that for this purpose, one must be fully concentrated on counting one’s steps and must not think about anything else whatsoever. If your mind wanders even for a second, everything comes to naught. “Where was I again?” you say to yourself. “335? 435? Or perhaps 353?” This, in fact, is very difficult to do. Especially since I was going to see pretty Anna, and not, for example, the Franciscan brothers. My mind would often wander along the way, imagining various things. What kinds of things? Things primarily connected with lasses. And for a man with medical interests, fully given over to science, knowledge, and so forth, it is extremely difficult to keep such things completely out of mind. In a certain sense, he falls victim to his professional interests. And this applies, incidentally, not just to a man dedicated to science, medicine, etc., but to everyone else as well. People are inquisitive in principle, especially in certain spheres, and if I were a French philosopher, I would call this “sexual interest — sexual inquisitiveness — sexual knowledge,” where said inquisitive drive is also predetermined by Nature. Being fully nonverbal in comparison to the aforementioned virtuosos, she has issued this as a vague, unconscious, unformulatable, yet nevertheless absolutely categorical and effective command. As a rule, Nature somehow gets by without language, that great human creation, fearsome logos. Yet she is too wild and primitive, as I have noted more than once.