Trafalgar (7 page)

“Dressed like that, with one of your formal gray suits, shirt and tie?”

“But no. What I wore on the trip could pass for ceremonial attire in Cathay, but in the palace I was saddled with an embroidered blue costume, with lace, that wasn’t fastened with buttons but with little ties and that was tight everywhere. All of this without being able to take a bath, which didn’t surprise me too much after having smelled the empurpled and bedamasked ones,” he sighed, “and without being able to smoke and without being able to drink coffee. When I remember, I wonder how I didn’t go crazy for real.”

The cat slept, or pretended to sleep, and the coffee got dangerously low.

“It was handy being a foreigner, you know? I was very much a foreigner, they didn’t how much, but they believed me foreign enough to excuse my blunders. They gave me an accelerated course in protocol. I didn’t understand any of it, but I kept afloat.”

“What would you like this chapter to be called? ‘My indiscretions at court’?”

“My indiscretions, you’ll forgive me, I am going to skip over; we’ll go in stages. The city was worthless: it was a maze of narrow, dirty little streets, a few of them cobbled, the majority no. When we passed the suburbs, I began to see important houses with grilles and balconies and statues of saints, but all of them shut up like tombs and the streets were still filthy and narrow until they opened into a few that were wider. Not a tree, not a plant, not a weed. Burros, horses, dogs, cows, chickens, but not a single cat. An infernal noise, that’s true. It seemed as if everyone was yelling, they were all arguing and fighting. I suppose I should have felt myself important, but I felt ridiculous and it wasn’t fun anymore, not fun at all. The soldiers went ahead, scattering the onlookers who moved aside but came back like flies and more than one received a blow to the face with the flat of the blade. With all that we advanced so slowly I thought we would never arrive. And then we arrived. The palace was almost as dirty as the streets, but more luxurious. I saw a few things that reconciled me to the trouble I was taking on account of my curiosity: tapestries, carved tables, pictures, grilles, and a black-eyed beauty who couldn’t have been more than fifteen years old, wearing an enormous dress, somewhere between orange and brown, with a rigid lace collar.”

The cat stretched, yawned, she stood up on Trafalgar’s bony knees, and she lay back down with her head facing the other way. Trafalgar waited until the process was completed and petted her behind the ears.

“Doña Francisca María Juana de Soler y Torrelles Abramonte.”

“Panchita to her closest friends,” I remarked. “Among whom you eventually counted yourself, I’ll bet anything.”

“Get out. She was married to a big man of the court. One of those smelly old men who look fat but they’re really thin with a belly, bowlegged, stuttering, with no more than two or three rotten teeth in his mouth, full of wrinkles, of snot, and of hair in the most inappropriate places. And she, unfortunately, was no more than fifteen.”

“Why unfortunately? What more did you want?”

“For her, I’m saying. Do you know I almost brought her with me? I must be crazy.”

“I have always maintained something like that.”

“I caught just a glimpse of her that afternoon and only because she leaned out to look. Keep in mind that I was the star of the day. And of the month and the year, no exaggeration. But she looked at me as much as she pleased and I knew she was looking and she knew that I knew. The others put me in a salon, more tapestries, more black carved furniture, more pictures, crosses, kneelers and grime, and they offered me an uncomfortable armchair, a work of art but uncomfortable, and a bowl with water and a napkin. I moistened my fingertips, trying to imagine I was taking a shower, but I regret to inform you that I am not very good at autosuggestion. I remained seated and then they all moved away a little and then the dance began.”

“They received you with a dance?”

“Don’t be an idiot. I’m speaking metaphorically. And you should know that in the court of the Catholic Monarchs there was no place for such frivolities. Keep in mind, they were extremely busy expelling the Moors, expelling the Jews, discovering America and all that.”

“Stop, stop, America how?”

Trafalgar has infinite patience. When he wants to.

“What year did I tell you.”

“You said five centuries behind.”

“To be exact, I told you 1492.”

“Jeez!”

“Exactly.”

And without his asking, I put more water on to heat. The cat purred under her breath, not like Doña Francisca María Juana I-don’t-know-what, but silently, the way she does.

“The dance, metaphorically, began. Which is to say that a few sourpusses dressed in black examined me. There was also a lousy little friar to whom I didn’t attach any importance, and I’ll tell you right now that was a mistake. I don’t know how it didn’t catch my attention that alongside so many big shots they let in a common, garden-variety little priest in an old habit who was always looking somewhere else, as if he understood nothing. But keep in mind that I was disoriented. No, the thing no longer seemed fun to me, but it was exciting. That’s when I thought that the universe is infinite and symmetrical and don’t tell me it can’t be because it can. And I also thought I had come across a good substitute for time travel. Too bad I ruined it.”

“I know. You told them the truth and they didn’t believe you and they delivered you to the Inquisition and Doña María Francisca saved you and the husband found out and.”

“But you’re crazy, how am I going to tell them the truth? And her name was Doña Francisca María Juana de Soler y Torrelles Abramonte, so you know. No, I didn’t tell them the truth. They knew a lot of protocol and a lot of catechism, but I have read something of history and geography and I had a five hundred year advantage. It may not be much, but it was enough. When I saw them, I was on the point of standing up to greet them and I even thought about making a bow, look, not very deep, but sufficiently courtly. And right then I thought about it and said to myself, they can drop dead, what they want to do is screw me, for sure, and the best thing will be to bully them from the outset. I put on my best Voltairian face.”

“You don’t look like Voltaire, you look like Edmundo Rivero, only handsome.”

“Much appreciated. So I looked at them arrogantly, like a know-it-all, and they greeted me and I did not even answer: I half-closed my eyes, I barely nodded my head and I waited. They didn’t beat around the bush. They wanted to know, and if I did not tell them or if I lied they would ascertain the truth by such means as they deemed necessary, first, whether I was an envoy of the Evil One; second, whether it was true that I came from Cathay; third, whether they could, following exorcism, blessing, Masses and other nonsense, visit the flying carriage; fourth, what the hell I wanted; fifth, if I planned to stay and live in Castile; and sixth and lastly, what my name was.”

“A very thorough survey. What did you tell them?”

“I gave them a speech that lasted about a half an hour and which impressed everyone save for the lousy little friar. To begin I recalled Suli Sul O Suldi, the daughter of a farmer on Eiquen, blessed be her soul for various reasons and blessed be her body for various other reasons, who had given me an ornament that I wore around my neck. It was made of a metal similar to gold but heavier and harder, very elaborately worked and of a size we’ll call respectable—some day I’m going to show it to you, I am sure you will like it. The important thing is that it is in the form of a cross. I took it out, exchanged my know-it-all expression for one of infinite sadness with a touch of the school principal’s authority and I asked them if they could believe that an envoy of the Evil One would wear that over his heart. First point in my favor. Regarding Cathay, I mixed a sophomore’s notions of geography with Marco Polo’s voyages and I chalked up the second score. And they could visit my flying carriage and the exorcisms didn’t need my authorization; rather, I said, it was a request, a demand on my part, because since it was the gift of infidels, I was a little worried. Three for me. And so on in that fashion: I wanted nothing, I did not aspire to the goods of this world, but I would like to render homage to their majesties. It was possible I would settle in Castile, the land from which my ancestors had come, but as I was an unrepentant traveler, sometimes I would go to travel the world, never forgetting to bring back part of the marvels I encountered to donate to the most illustrious religious orders of the country. By that time, those guys were about to pee themselves and the little friar kept looking into the distance with a wooden rosary between his fingers and I thought, what an asshole and it turns out the asshole was me.”

“And what did you tell them you were called?”

“I told them my name, what did you want me to say? Anyway, Trafalgar wasn’t going to mean anything to them until three hundred years later, if there was going to be a battle of Trafalgar and an Admiral Nelson. I decorated it a little, granted: I put a
de
before the Medrano, I added two names and my old lady’s maternal surname, Hispanized. Turned out better than made to order. The proof is that the sour faces sweetened, and as I knew I had them in my pocket, I stood up and condescended to chat familiarly with all of them. After a while they informed me that they would house me in the palace, which was an honor, and I regretted it because I was sure there were no baths, as indeed there were not; I consoled myself thinking that at that moment there weren’t any, I won’t even say baths, not even a toilet or a miserable septic tank in all of Castile, so I put on an enthusiastic expression.”

“In the end it turns out you’re not brazen faced, as I believed, but rubber faced.”

“It depends. When they left me alone, which means they left me with three servants who were running all over the place and as far as I could tell didn’t do anything, I stretched out on a bed that had a bunch of curtains but was very comfortable and I went to sleep.”

“How you can sleep in the midst of the things that happen to you is something that I do not understand.”

“If I couldn’t fall asleep as necessary, things would have stopped happening to me a while ago.”

“Should I make more coffee?”

“I was about to ask what you were waiting for. About two hours later, they came to wake me with a good bit of to-do and they brought me those clothes I told you about, all on top of a cushion. There was even a hat, my God. And a sword. The shoes were both for the same foot and I almost let out a yell but I realized in time that it would be many more years before they made them different. I put everything on and thus I went into the throne room or whatever it was.”

“Go on, go on, what was it like?”

“A bore, full of announcements, marches, countermarches, blows of the staff and I don’t know what. And they all had a stench of goat that would knock you over. And it was hot. And I was already up to here with the Spanish monarchy.”

“Castile and Aragon.”

“Whatever. The protocol, I don’t even remember the protocol, but do you want me to tell you something? Isabel was quite pretty, not as pretty as Doña Francisca María Juana de Soler y Torrelles Abramonte, and older, but pretty. In the face, at least; as to the rest, I have no idea, with all those infected rags. Fernando had a tic and opened and closed his eyes every five seconds. If he’d been one of the boys at the café, they’d have called him Neon Sign, bet on it. And guess who was at the side of the throne?”

“The lousy little friar.”

“Exactly.”

We heard a hissing in the garden and there was a crack of thunder but the cat was unperturbed.

“It’s raining,” Trafalgar said. “Didn’t I tell you? The combination of rain and coffee reminds me of the feast of the lightning bolts on Trudu. Do you know what Trudu is?”

“No, but I imagine it’s somewhere where it always rains and where coffee comes out of the faucets instead of water.”

“Trudu? No. To begin, there are no faucets and to continue, it rains once every ten years.”

“Great for growing rice.”

“Although you might not believe it, they grow rice, though of course not the rice you know. And in addition, the rain.”

“I don’t care!” I yelled so loud that the cat opened her eyes and even made a comment under her breath. “Keep Trudu, it’s my gift to you, but go on with your presentation at court and with the little friar and with Isabel and with Fernando.”

“Fernando you can file away without a pang of conscience. Now, Isabel,” he smiled again and two smiles from Trafalgar in a single morning is a record, “was very pretty, yes, but she was a real man with a pair of brass balls. You could see it in her eyes and in the fact that although she had a more than acceptable mouth, she could narrow it until it resembled a stab wound. And her shoulders well back, her neck straight and her hands strong. I said, this girl is going to cause me trouble.”

“And the little priest?”

“There you have it, the little priest was the one who gave me the trouble although for the moment he was lying low. That time it did catch my attention that he always appeared at the important meetings, that he was so close to the throne and that nobody seemed to pay him any attention. I went so far as to think he surely wasn’t what he seemed, but with as much care as I had to take with what I said and did, I left it for later. Don’t forget what I was in the middle of. I had to recount my adventures again, silently invoking Marco Polo, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Italo Calvino, and the annals of geography. It turned out very well: they were all hanging on what I said, they were scared when they were supposed to be scared and they laughed when they were supposed to laugh. I saw Doña Francisca María Juana again.”