“How is Señor Monardes?” he asked.
“Not well at all,” I replied.
“He’ll recover,” he said and changed the subject.
The notice was still not ready. I wandered here and there around Sevilla for perhaps another hour. When I returned, the job was done. I paid Señor Diaz, took the roll with the notices, and left. The notice read:
Dr. da Silva,
student of
the late Dr. Monardes,
whom we shall all remember
for his kind heart
and vast erudition,
may his memory live forever,
is accepting patients at his house
on Sierpes Street.
All are welcome!
Now I had to go back to the house to get the bone glue and paste up the notices. And first of all, of course, I had to see what Jesús was doing. He was the weakest link in the chain. During that whole time, a worrisome thought had been gnawing away at me: What was Jesús doing at that moment? If anyone were to botch the whole plan, it would be him.
The house looked quiet when I entered the yard. There were no people in sight, nor any carriages, no sound could be heard. This strongly raised my hopes.
Jesús had seen me and met me at the door, white as a sheet.
“Maria was here, señor,” he said.
This piece of news stunned me. How could that have slipped my mind — it stood perfectly to reason! Of course one of the doctor’s daughters would stop by to see him in the morning.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Thank God I heard her coming up the walk. . I told her the doctor was sleeping.”
“Didn’t she go in to see him?”
“She went in, señor. . But I had turned him on his side. And covered him up to his chin. She didn’t notice a thing. But she said she’d stop by again this afternoon.”
I ran up the stairs, Jesús at my heels. I opened the door to the bedroom. The doctor was lying with his back to us, wrapped in a blanket up to his chin. I went around to the other side. He really did look like he was sleeping. True, he was very yellow, but he was like that before, too. Well, well, Jesús! I raised my eyes and met his frightened gaze. Well, well, that Jesús!
“Well done, Jesús!” I told him and patted him on the shoulder. “You and I are going to go far. You’ve done well.”
“Well, I wasn’t born yesterday, señor,” he replied with a certain satisfaction.
I felt like laughing when I looked at his face, with his simultaneously self-satisfied and frightened expression, such an absurd combination of sorts. But I restrained myself and pulled him out into the hallway. I felt awkward speaking in the bedroom, because of the doctor’s body. I had the disconcerting feeling that he was listening to me; that he was watching me. I pictured his ghost hanging about somewhere in the air, invisible, his ghostly arms crossed, twiddling his ghostly thumbs and watching me with a slightly mocking smile, which combined a certain fondness and ridicule, an ironic smile. The curious thing is that when I went out into the hallway, I ceased to feel this concern, as if the ghost could not pass through the door.
As soon as we got out into the hallway, I showed Jesús the advertisement-obituary.
“But señor,” he said, visibly unpleasantly surprised, “weren’t you going to print up an obituary for the doctor? Don’t we have to announce that he has died?”
“Jesús, are you out of your mind?” I said. “Can’t you tell from this notice that Dr. Monardes is dead?”
“I can tell, señor, but. .”
“But what?”
“I don’t know,” Jesús replied, staring at the notice. “I’ve got the feeling that something isn’t quite right. But the more I think about it, the harder it is for me to say what exactly.”
“Oh, I’ve heard this nonsense before!” I waved dismissively and headed down the stairs. I had work to do. I couldn’t stand around listening to someone who didn’t know what he wanted to say. “Go and tell the doctor’s daughters,” I called over my shoulder. “In the meantime, I’ll go out and post up these notices.”
“Very well, señor,” he replied.
I had almost forgotten. Jesús was already going out the door when I called to him to stop and quickly ran over to him from the kitchen, with the bone glue in my hand.
“Tell them that his final wish was for them to carry him out of here and to hold his funeral at Maria’s house. Tell them,” I continued, “that the doctor hated this house and said that it had killed him.”
“So that’s it, señor?” Jesús replied. I could’ve sworn a sly twinkle flashed in his eyes.
“That’s it!” I said. “They surely will dawdle and get confused, and they may not do it, so I’m really counting on you to get the job done. Carry him out with the cart, on a stretcher. Have that blockhead de Brizuela help you.”
“Very well, señor,” he replied. Yes, without a doubt there was a sly glint in his eyes. One could simply see on his face how things were starting to become clear to him. Damn these sly peasants!
“If everything goes well, leave that red ribbon you tie around Pablito’s neck on the table in the kitchen.”
“Fine.”
“Go on, get going,” I said and patted him on the back.
He nodded and left. I went back to the kitchen, since in my haste I had taken the glue, but had forgotten the roll of notices. I had already opened the door when Jesús’ voice unexpectedly floated to me from the pathway outside: “It’ll work out, señor,” he cried.
Yes, it’ll work out! I could count on Jesús much more than I had expected. What a great thing common interest is, by the way. How it unites people! Yes, the doctor was right — money rules the world. It is the source of great friendships.
“Like a magic wand,” I thought to myself as I took the longish roll of notices from the table. “Señor del Valle, Señor Diaz, Jesús. . And the notary Serega will help, I’m sure of it. Money is like a magic wand. Just wave it — and poof! Just wave it — and poof! Just wave it — and poof! Whoever thought it up was a great conjuror indeed! A magician!”
The sun was beating down on the pathway. It was two o’clock in the afternoon.
Yet how nice, I said to myself, that I’m on this side of the magic. If you’re on the other one, in the best case scenario you merely serve it, and in the worst case, it turns against you. What would happen if that magic were turned against you? I shudder to think. You’re in for it.
I stepped out onto the street and headed towards the market. I would post the notices there first.
The market on Feria Street was still full of people. I pasted up a few notices and returned to Sierpes. Of course, I had to put some notices up near the San Juan de Dios Hospital and on San Francisco Square. From there I set out for the stock exchange and the cathedral. The stock exchange was an important place — the retailers were on Feria, and the wholesalers were here. What better clientele than them? Intense liveliness reigned in the Square of Songs — not so much due to the merchants as to the workmen who were finishing building the stock exchange. The exchange was a large, ugly building, completely in the style of Juan de Herrera — but he did the Escorial, too, now didn’t he? Someone ought to ban him from building anything whatsoever, except for perhaps tombs. What luck that the cathedral was not built by him! When I came to Sevilla for the first time, I was thunderstruck. I had never seen such a large and such a beautiful, imposing structure. I put notices up next to two of the doors. I lifted my gaze towards Giralda Tower. The Statue of the Faith on top of it looked like a small cut in the sky. The sun reflected off the shining surface of Faith’s shield as if off a small crystal of glass, as if off a grain of sand, Pelletier. But whoever had the idea to make it a weathervane was truly an imaginative person. If you catch it at the moment when the wind picks up, you can see how the statue spins, as if gradually scanning the entire city — in the evening it is turned in one direction, in the morning in another. Faith. . This world is a complete failure, it is a rotten fruit, something to be thrown out, full of the worms of money, and a captive of Nature. Only Faith isn’t aware of this and continues to spin tirelessly with the wind in all directions, with a shield in one hand and a palm frond in the other. The palm frond shows where the wind is coming from.