“Don’t be in such a hurry,” I told him. “I want you to stay here while I go print out the obituary notices, then after that you’ll go and tell the doctor’s daughters about his death.”
“But they won’t be ready until this evening,” he objected, or rather wondered, since he didn’t understand what was going on.
“They will be ready earlier,” I said. “Perhaps shortly after lunch. Then you’ll go and tell his daughters.”
“But señor. .” he began.
“Listen, Jesús,” I told him, looking him straight in the eye. I had the disconcerting feeling that the doctor was listening to me and grinning from somewhere in the sky, or from wherever he was, so I grabbed Jesús by the sleeve, and when we got out into the hall, I told him: “Listen, Jesús. You want to keep your job as a coachman, right? Otherwise, now that the doctor is dead, what will you do?”
“I don’t know, señor,” he replied.
“Everything can stay as it was,” I continued, “with some small changes. You will keep your job. Your wife and children will be well fed. Everything will be as it was. Just listen to me and do what I tell you. Got it?”
“What should I do, señor?” he replied, confused.
“Just stay here until I tell you otherwise. I will go to print out the obituaries, and when I get back, you’ll go to tell the doctor’s daughters. That’ll be around noon, dusk at the very latest. Just stay here and don’t tell anyone about the doctor’s death.”
“Very well, señor,” he replied.
That’s how it goes, when something is meant to happen, it usually starts well, starts easily.
I went back to the doctor’s study and opened the bowl in which he had left the money for his burial. I took the amount he had set aside for his obituary. I also had the money I had prepared for my own advertisement with me. That’s it, everything was ready. I patted my pockets as if to make sure everything was in place, and left the study. Jesús was still standing in the hallway.
“I’m leaving,” I told him. “I will print up the obituaries. I will also print up a advertisement for myself. You stay here and don’t move.”
“Very well, señor,” Jesús replied.
A minute later I was already out on the street.
The cold light of morning greeted me. The day had already fully dawned, the morning was clear and cool, and the cold air inspired cheerfulness in me, gave me courage. What luck, I thought to myself, that the doctor died at daybreak. It was as if he had purposely planned it that way. If he had died in the evening, for example, there would be no way of putting off telling his daughters all the way until the next evening; while in this way I had a certain chance, the whole day was before me.
Sevilla wakes up early, and there were already quite a few people on the streets, going about their business. Several carriages passed me, taking their goods to the market. A thin yellow strip of light stretched along the eastern horizon, foreshadowing a sunny day.
I was already on my way to the printing house owned by Señor Diaz — the publisher of Folk Wisdom and of Dr. Monardes’ works as well, of course — when it struck me that I could combine my advertisement and the obituary into one. That way I’d save a little money, too. I quickly composed the new notice in my mind. When I went to Señor Diaz and told him what I wanted, he immediately put himself at my service.
“Whatever you say, señor,” Señor Diaz nodded cheerfully. “You pay, we print.”
“That’s what I like to hear!” I said and patted him on the shoulder.
When something is meant to happen, it starts well. Seeming to sense my impatience, Señor Diaz led me over to the typesetter who would set my notice, gave him the sheet he had written it out on, telling me, “It won’t be ready immediately, señor, come back around noon,” and left. I began pacing impatiently between the typesetters and the presses at the other end of the shop. I felt like going over to my man and starting to line up the wooden letters on the tray in front of him myself, but I knew how annoying it was to have someone looking over your shoulder as you work. The machines thundered away loudly and the people who were talking looked strange — you see their gestures, but don’t hear anything. Like you’ve landed in a home for the mute. I couldn’t resist the temptation and glanced at my typesetter to see what he was doing. He was already setting the third line. He raised his head from the box of letters and nodded at me encouragingly, as if to say: “Relax, señor, things will work out fine.” I read the first two lines, with certain difficulty, given that the letters were reversed like a mirror reflection. Does everything look so strange when it is written like that? You get the feeling that it’s not yours, that you didn’t think it up, it looks so strange to you, so distant — and completely indifferent.
Be that as it may, there was nothing more for me to do here. It would take hours for the typesetter to set it and then to print it on some available press. In an instinctive gesture of fondness, I almost offered my man a cigarella, but then I realized that it could slow him down and decided against it. I went outside. More time seemed to have passed than I expected, since the sun was already shining brightly in the sky. I stood by the door of the printing house and lit a cigarella. The bright sun shone on my face, pleasantly warming my blood, I had the feeling that my body was softening up. I exhaled the smoke in the warm air and half-closed my eyes. Why am I so fired up about this, I asked myself, why have I grabbed at this opportunity like a drowning man clutching at the final straw? I could go back to Portugal, get married, and earn my daily bread some other way, even if that meant taking up farming — like my father, his father, and everyone before them. I could go to Madrid or Barcelona and find some kind of work there — they would take me, I was still young. I could become a sailor and cross the seas. The warm sun would always be above me, no matter what I did, it would shine on me benevolently just as now. The ancients are right — there is a place for everyone under it, indeed. Even if the sun disappears for a day, for a month, for some time, afterwards it will rise again. This is its nature. I could do so many other things, I was still young.
But was I? I thought to myself. Was I really still young? How young? The time always comes when you have to choose something, isn’t that right, Pelletier? To grab hold of it with all your might, to set off down a narrow path, from which hundreds of paths branch out through the broad field and wind enticingly off into the distance — through the field, through the hills, through the forests and mountains, far away towards the horizon and beyond. You can’t take all of them, the world is too large, and man is too small, he has only two legs and even they must walk side by side — perhaps contrary to unprejudiced expectations and even to common sense to a certain extent. In its disorderliness, Nature in most cases has created two things to do a particular job, and she has created them such that if only one remains, then usually the job can’t get done. Nature is very inefficient. Everything is done slapdash, willy-nilly. The whole world is made that way. But even made like that, it is unusually large, you cannot take all paths, and where they lead will remain forever unknown to you. This is perhaps even preferable at least half of the time. All paths look enticing at the beginning, but what lies there between those hills, where they disappear from sight — who knows? You’ll never find out.
I tossed my cigarella on the ground and set out for Señor del Valle’s.
When something is meant to happen, it starts well and continues well. I returned to Diaz’s printing house at noon with a full belly from lunch at Señor del Valle’s and a head slightly dazed from jerez. Of course, I was careful not to go overboard with the wine — right now was not the time for that at all. I had met the apothecary del Valle through Dr. Monardes, but only in passing. He turned out to be an even more sympathetic person than the doctor had made him out to be. At some point — our conversation had already gone on for quite some time, by the way — he asked me about the doctor: