“Are you all right, señor?” the countess asked.
“There’s no need to worry. It’s from the cigarellas,” he said and lit a cigarella. “Oh, excuse me, señora,” the doctor added and quickly put it out. “You don’t like the smell. .”
“And can’t that illness also be cured with your wondrous tobacco?” the countess asked, without realizing what she was saying, I’m sure.
“Of course it can,” Dr, Monardes replied. “But it takes a long time.”
We left shortly thereafter. Our carriage was waiting in front of the gate to the estate. Jesús was sleeping, stretched out on the coachbox in the bright sun, his face covered by his wide-brimmed hat.
The doctor lifted the hat and waved his hand an inch from Jesús’ face. Jesús opened his mouth to curse, but caught himself in time and stopped. The doctor looked at him for a long time in silence, his index finger lifted in warning.
“Nice weather, eh, señor?” Jesús said, righting himself on the coachbox.
“Drive home,” the doctor replied and climbed into the carriage.
We set off. As we drove down the road, I turned around to look at the estate. It was hidden behind the park’s high hedge, only the wide entrance portal with a bronze coat of arms on its double doors was visible.
“And to think, señor, that that pack rules Spain,” I said practically to myself, almost unwittingly.
“That pack rules the world!” replied the doctor. “Not just Spain alone.”
And yet they get sick, too, they suffer physically, one migraine can darken their lives, I thought to myself. But not with sympathy. Oh not, not at all. That only makes them more pathetic, all the more irritating. They are slaves to Nature, just the same as everyone else. Examples of the human species. I’ve read that once upon a time, the Egyptian kings claimed to be immortal. That is to say — that’s why they were kings. You are mortal, but they are immortal. Immortal some other time. The Romans understood this best of all. I, he says, am the Divine Augustus. Oh really? one of the praetorians says. Let’s just slit your throat, and then we’ll see whether you are immortal or not. And so they slit your throat, and it turns out that you’re not immortal at all. They knock down your statues in the squares. And you’re no longer worth a straw, you’re nothing. It’s no wonder if later the praetorians also kill your wife, your children, and your whole immortal family. The praetorians are the people with the weapons. They quickly dispel any immortality and the fog of all sorts of ideas and ideals. There’s no fog, no clouds. The world is laid bare in the bright light. Yes, the Romans were clear on this. Nobody has ever been clearer on things than they were. But Nature. . Could she have made you immortal? I mean really immortal. Oh, of course she could’ve! At the very least she could have made it so you’d live a thousand years. Why didn’t she do this? Well, just because. She didn’t feel like it. She is your all-powerful master. Just look around: you’ll see that master everywhere around you. Featureless, hushed, the Master of Species. Endless and enormous, from horizon to horizon, it fills everything. And when you look inside, into your own body, you see it there, too. Your master has gotten inside as well, it owns the machine which works without stopping, which you look at from the outside and wonder what could be going on inside. It owns the humors, the organs, the bones, and the tendons, the blood and the veins through which it flows. Your master is all around, outside and inside, everywhere. There is no escape, no getting away, you belong to it entirely. A slave of Nature. This is why they’ve come up with the soul, books, religion, philosophy — to make it look like there’s another path as well, that there is a way around the fence, through the narrow gate of the chosen, through which you can escape, wrench yourself away, be free. But you can’t. No, you can’t. Nature is your master and possesses you entirely. Only here and there, like small islands in the ocean, are there perhaps things which are truly yours and not hers. Perhaps there are, but perhaps not. Man is too small to measure himself against her. Too small to call her to account. Why did she do things that way, and not otherwise? Well, just because. She doesn’t even hear what you’re saying. She doesn’t notice you at all. She moves somewhere like a vast flood, roaring, thundering, rushing onward. And someone perhaps might even say: How nice that I’m not in her path, she would sweep me away. Oh, don’t worry. You are drifting along with her, you are part of the wave, you are a droplet, a fleck of the foam. To find yourself in her path, you’d first have to wrench yourself free of her somehow. So there’s nothing to be afraid of.
You, too, are somehow spinning inside that wide and slow whirlwind. Thrown into nature, Pelletier would say. She could have made you differently. As well as all the pathetic, self-loving creatures around you — she could have made them differently, too. But she didn’t feel like it. She is the root of all things, the beginning and the end, the secret course of things, their secret meaning, and everything that truly has meaning. Or perhaps not, after all? Could there possibly be something else? Hardly. But still, on the other hand, who really understands Nature? Who can truly say what exists within her? What torments her, what delights her, what goes on in her head and where that head is at all? Even the physicians do not understand her. Nobody knows her completely. They don’t even know her halfway. They stumble around, speculating at the foot of the mountain, trying to measure it with two fingers.
“Señores, Sevilla,” Jesús cried.
Yes, Sevilla. A nice city. I was right to come here. Cities, buildings, they seem to have a life of their own. It seems unbelievable that all of this was made by people, I thought to myself, as we passed by the cathedral — enormous, a mountain of stone, with intricate stone decorations on the walls, with towers and turrets, with elongated arches hanging like bridges in the air, with the Giralda Tower above us and the statue of the faith on top of it, high, high, high in the sky, lit up by the sun, which was reflected in its shield. How is it possible that all this was made by creatures such as people? I thought to myself, as I looked up, shading my eyes from the sun with my hand. People. . People are strange, Pelletier.
Not strange, I hear Pelletier du Mans answer me in a dream, but different. Some are one way, while others are another. Like that parable, like pearls and swine.
Thank you, I say. I’ll keep that in mind.
18. For Protection Against the Plague and All Manner of Contagions
The plague has appeared in this stupid city. Yes, really! Cursed Sevilla. The devil himself brought me here. So now how will I get out? There’s no way! Or rather, there is a way, but it is such that it may as well not exist. I cannot give up my position, or all these years of study and hardships with the doctor — such study, such hardships! — I cannot give up the prospect of a future career as a physician because of a dirty little plague. Better to die in agony than to give up! To put it figuratively, of course.
“Calm down, Guimarães, don’t be so afraid,” the doctor told me one day, clearly having noticed the great fear and concern that had gripped me. “It’s not as terrible as you think,” he assured me. “It mainly kills off the poor from the other side of the river, in this part of the city almost no one is affected. And certainly almost none of the doctors. This will be my third epidemic, unless one has slipped my mind”—the doctor noted in passing—“and as far as I can remember the only doctor who died was Mateo Alemán’s uncle, the licensed physician Juan Alemán, back in ’68. But he was jinxed in principle.”