The Manuscript Found in Saragossa (43 page)

Sanudo did not come to supper. He spent the evening in prayer, and towards eleven o'clock he heard a knock at his door. He opened it. A young lady rushed into his cell and upset his lamp, which instantly went out. At that moment the voice of the Father Prefect was heard, summoning Sanudo.

‘Please allow me to give a few moments of my time to this man,' replied the gypsy chief. ‘As soon as I have finished, I'll begin again.'

We all shared Rebecca's impatience. Then the gypsy chief, after his conversation with his man, continued his story as follows:

I have told you that we heard the voice of the Father Prefect calling Sanudo, who only had time to double-lock his door and go down to see his superior. It would be an insult to the intelligence of my listeners if I were to suggest that they had not already guessed that the supposed Mendoza was none other than Veyras, and that the pretty Lirias was the same person whom the Viceroy of Mexico wanted to marry, in other words, myself. So it was that I found myself in Sanudo's cell in the dark, not knowing how to bring the drama I was playing to an end, a drama that hadn't altogether turned out as we had wished. For we had indeed found out that Sanudo was gullible, but never weak or hypocritical. We would perhaps have done best to let our drama have no ending at all. The marriage of Señora de Lirias, which took place a few days later, and the happiness of the married couple, would have been for Sanudo inexplicable mysteries which would have tormented him for the rest of his life. But we wanted to enjoy our teacher's embarrassment, and I was only uncertain as to whether to finish the last act by shouting with laughter or by some witty and ironical comments. I was still preoccupied by this malicious plotting when I heard the door open.

Sanudo appeared. The sight of him made a deeper impression on me than I had expected. He was dressed in stole and surplice. In one hand he held a candlestick, in the other an ebony crucifix. He placed the candlestick on the table, held the crucifix in both hands and said to me, ‘Señora, you can see that I have put on my holy vestments, which must remind you of the character of the priesthood imprinted on my whole person. As a priest of a redeeming God I can fulfil my ministry in no better way than to hold you back from the abyss. The evil one has disturbed your reason in order to lead you into evil ways. Turn your steps from them, Señora. Return to the paths of virtue. For you it was strewn with flowers. A young husband stretches out his hand to you. He is given to you by a virtuous old gentleman whose blood flows in your veins. Your father was his son, and that father, having gone before both of you to the place where pure souls dwell, is marking out for you the path to follow. Lift up your eyes to the light of heaven. Fear the spirit of untruth which has cast a spell on your eyes and drawn them to look upon the servants of the God of whom he is the eternal enemy…'

Sanudo said many other fine things designed to bring about my conversion, if I had been a certain Señora de Lirias, who was in love with her confessor, but I was only a young wretch decked out in a dress and a mantilla who was very keen to know how it would all end.

Sanudo caught his breath and then said, ‘Come, Señora, a way of getting you out of the monastery has been found. I shall take you to the gardener's wife and we shall tell Señora Mendoza to take charge of you there.'

At the same time, Sanudo opened the door for me. I rushed forward to leave the cell and flee as fast as I could. That indeed is what I should have done, but at that very moment an evil demon gave me the idea of taking off my veil, throwing my arms around the neck of Sanudo and saying, ‘Cruel heart. Do you want to put an end to the days of the lovesick Lirias?'

Sanudo recognized me. His consternation was at first very great. Then he wept and, showing signs of the deepest pain, he said again and again, ‘My God, my God, have pity on me. Dispel my doubts. My God, what must I do?'

The poor teacher inspired me with pity. I embraced his knees, begged him to forgive me and swore that Veyras and I would not say a word about the matter.

Sanudo raised me up, bathed me with his tears and said, ‘Unhappy child, do you think it is the fear of being laughed at which is making me so upset? Miserable child, I am crying for you. You have not shrunk from profaning what our religion holds most holy. You have mocked the holy tribunal of penitence. It is my duty to denounce you to the Inquisition. Imprisonment and torture will now be your lot.'

Then he embraced me with an expression of deep sorrow and said, ‘No, my child, do not surrender your soul to despair. I may be able to have us administer your punishment. It will be severe but it will not mark you for the rest of your days.'

After these words Sanudo went out, double-locking the door behind him, and left me in a state of mental turmoil that you can easily imagine for yourselves. I will not try to describe it. The idea that what we were doing was criminal had not once entered my head. Our sacrilegious tricks had seemed to us like innocent pieces of mischief. The punishment with which I was threatened plunged me
into a state of depression which even deprived me of the ability to weep. I do not know how long I remained in this state. Eventually the door was opened and the father prefect came in, followed by the father penitentiary and two lay brothers who took hold of me by the arms and led me along all the corridors of the house to a remote cell. They pushed me in but did not enter themselves, and I heard several bolts being shot, locking me in.

I caught my breath and inspected my prison. The moon shone right through the bars of the window. I could see only walls blackened by graffiti and some straw in the corner.

My window looked out on to a cemetery. Three bodies, wrapped in their shrouds and lying on biers, had been placed under a portico. The sight of them frightened me. I dared neither to look out of the window nor into my room.

Soon I heard noises in the cemetery. I saw a Capuchin monk and four grave-diggers enter it. They approached the portico. The Capuchin said, ‘Here is the body of the Marqués de Valornez. You will place it in the embalming chamber.
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As for these two Christians, you will throw them in the new grave that was dug yesterday.'

No sooner had the Capuchin finished his sentence than I heard a long wail and three dreadful ghosts appeared on the cemetery wall.

The gypsy promised to fulfil her wish and indeed it was not long before he returned to take up the thread of his story as follows:

I then saw two ghosts jump into the cemetery from the top of the wall and offer their hands to the third, who had some difficulty climbing down. Then other ghosts, up to ten or twelve of them, appeared and jumped down into the cemetery. The one who had been helped down then went under the portico to inspect the three dead bodies. He turned to the other ghosts and said, ‘Friends, this is the body of the Marqués de Valornez. You have seen the treatment which those asses my colleagues made him undergo. But they were all wrong in taking the marqués's illness to be a hydropsy of the chest. I alone, Dr Sangre Moreno, hit the mark. I alone recognized his illness as angina polyposa, which the masters of our art have described so well.

‘But I had no sooner identified this case of angina polypsosa than those prize asses my colleagues shrugged their shoulders and turned their backs on me as if I were unworthy to be one of their number. Yes, indeed! Dr Sangre Moreno was not born to be one of their number! It's the likes of Galician donkey-herds and Estremaduran muleteers whom they need to guide them and make them see sense. But heaven is just. Last year we saw a high mortality rate among beasts. If epizootia is seen again this year too you can be sure that none of my colleagues will survive it, whereas Dr Sangre Moreno will remain master of the battlefield and you, dear disciples, will arrive there to raise the banner of chemical medicine. You have seen how I saved the young Lirias girl simply by the effects of a happy mixture of phosphorus and antimony. For the heroic remedies whose property is to fight and overcome all diseases are semi-metals and well-balanced compounds of them, and not those herbal roots fit only for grazing on by those prize asses my honourable colleagues.

‘My dear disciples, you have witnessed the attempts I made to persuade the Marquesa de Valornez to let me do no more than to pierce the artery of the trachea of the famous marqués with the point of my scalpel. Misled by my enemies, the marquesa refused to let me do this, but now I am at last able to offer proof that I am right. Ah – if only it were possible for the famous marqués to be present himself at the dissection of his own body! It would have been such pleasure to show
him the hydatic and polypous matter, with its roots in the bronchi and its branches extending as far as the larynx!

‘But what can I say? That miserly Castilian, wholly indifferent to scientific progress, denies us things of which he himself has no further use. If the marqués had had the slightest taste for medicine he would have left us his lungs, liver and viscera, which aren't of any benefit to him. But, oh no! We must come here at the risk of our lives to violate the resting-place of the dead and disturb the peace of these tombs!

‘Never mind, my dear disciples! The more obstacles we encounter, the greater will be our glory in overcoming them! Take courage! Let's bring this great undertaking to an end! When you whistle three times, your comrades on the other side will pass the ladders over the wall and we will abduct our famous marqués. Dying of so rare an illness was already a cause for self-congratulation; but falling into the hands of capable men who can recognize the illness and give it its proper name was even greater cause.

‘The day after next we will be in a position to fetch from here a famous person who died from the effect of… shhh! There are things we mustn't say.'

As the doctor finished his speech one of his disciples whistled three times, and I saw ladders passed over the wall. Then the marqués's body was bound with ropes and passed across. The ghosts followed it and the ladders then disappeared.

When no one was left in sight I laughed heartily at the fright I had had.

Before going on, I must tell you about the manner of burial which is peculiar to some Spanish and Sicilian monasteries. Small, dark vaults are built, in which, however, the flow of air is very strong through the skilful creation of draughts. Bodies which are intended to be preserved are placed there. The darkness protects them from insects, and the air desiccates them. After six months the vault is opened. If all has worked well, the monks go in procession to the family to congratulate them on the outcome. Then they dress the body in a Capuchin habit and place it in a vault reserved for the bodies of saints, or at the very least for those who have reached a certain degree of beatitude. In the monasteries, the funeral procession accompanies the
body to the cemetery, where lay brothers take charge of it and bury it according to the orders of their superiors. Normally, bodies are fetched in the evening. Superiors then deliberate about them and at night they are carried to their final resting-place. Many bodies are not suitable for preservation.

The Capuchins wished to desiccate the Marqués de Valornez's body and were on the point of setting about this process when the ghosts put the grave-diggers to flight. These tiptoed back at daybreak, huddling close together. They were extremely alarmed to discover that the marqués's body had disappeared, and decided that the devil had carried it off. Soon afterwards all the monks appeared, armed with aspergillae, and set about sprinkling holy water, exorcizing and braying at the tops of their voices. As for me, I was exhausted so I threw myself down on the straw and fell asleep at once.

The first thing I thought about the next day was the punishment with which I was threatened; the second was the way I could escape it. Veyras and I had so often stolen food from the pantry that we were very used to climbing up buildings. We also knew how to remove bars from a window and put them back without being noticed. I used the penknife I had in my pocket to take out a nail from the wooden part of my window. With the nail I worked away at the place where the bar had been set into the wall. I continued without a break until midday.

Then the peep-hole in the door opened and I caught sight of the face of the lay brother who served our dormitory. He passed me through some bread and a jug of water and asked me if he could do anything for me. I asked him to see Father Sanudo on my behalf and to ask him to give me sheets and a blanket since, although it was fair that I should be punished, I did not think it fair that I should not be clean. This point was well taken, and I was sent what I asked for, together with some meat to sustain me. I asked discreetly what Veyras was up to, and learnt that he had not been troubled. So it was that I found out that the guilty were not being sought. I asked when my punishment would begin. The lay brother answered that he did not know, but usually three days of meditation were left to go by. I did not need more than this, and was quite calm.

I used the water I had been given to wet the setting in the wall,
which I wanted to loosen. The work went ahead at a good rate, and the bar was completely free on the morning of the second day. Then I cut up my sheets and blankets and made a cable which was quite like a rope-ladder. I waited for nightfall before making good my escape. It was not a moment too early, for the lay brother on duty at the door told me that I was to be sentenced the next day by a tribunal consisting of Theatine monks presided over by a member of the Inquisition.

Towards evening a body, covered by a black shroud decorated with a rich silver fringe, was brought in. I guessed that this was the great nobleman of whom Sangre Moreno had spoken.

When it had become quite dark and there was no noise to be heard I took out the bar, secured the end of the ladder and was on the point of climbing down when the ghosts appeared again on the wall. As you will have guessed, they were the doctor's pupils. They went straight to the dead nobleman and removed his body without disturbing the black, silver-fringed shroud.

When they had gone I opened my window and climbed down with ease. Then I decided to put one of the biers up against the wall to act as a ladder.

As I was on the point of doing this I heard the cemetery gate open. I ran and hid in the portico. I stretched myself out on the bier and covered myself with the silver-fringed sheet whose corner I folded over so I could see who was coming in.

First came an equerry dressed in black, holding a torch in one hand and his sword in the other, then valets wearing mourning; finally a remarkably beautiful woman dressed in black crêpe from head to toe.

The grieving beauty came up to my bier, fell to her knees and uttered the following pitiable words: ‘Oh dear mortal remains of the dearest of husbands! If only, like Artemisia, I could mix your ashes with my libation they would circulate in my bloodstream and would revive a heart which beat only for you! But although my religion will not allow me to be your living sepulchre I want at least to remove you from this place of dusty death. I want daily to bathe with my tears the flowers which will grow on your grave, in which I shall soon join you when I breathe my last.'

Having uttered these words, the lady turned to her equerry and
said, ‘Don Diego, remove the body of your master. We will then bury it in the garden chapel.'

Four strong valets took hold of the bier. They thought they were carrying a corpse and were not far wrong, for I was half-dead with terror.