Thrown into Nature

16. For the Elimination of All Indecision, the Resolution of All Doubts, and So On

I memorized those lines by Baltasar del Alcazar not so much because they are particularly good — frankly, they are not — but primarily because they relate to my personal experience. My heart, too, has been caught by, or is at least strongly attached to, both a lass named Anna, as well as cured ham. I have found myself torn by indecision about which of the two to go to. One evening, after a long day with Dr. Monardes, I felt like seeing pretty Anna, yet at the same time I was also very hungry and felt like going to the Three Horses to eat cured ham. Unfortunately, the two things could not be combined. It’s either one or the other. That’s how it is in Sevilla with the pretty lasses, or at least with the honorable lasses, as they say, when you are not yet married. And once you’re married, they are no longer pretty lasses, but your wife. So in any case, it was pointless to take her to the Three Horses.

I found myself torn by great indecision. I froze in my tracks and simply did not know which way to go. Because pretty Anna and the Three Horses lie in different directions. And not just symbolically, but very literally. If it had been symbolic, I would have easily figured out some way around it. But in this case, it was literal. For this reason, I lit a cigarella, wondering what to do. Both things strongly attracted me. I would say, in the spirit of philosophy, that I resembled Buridan’s ass, who starved to death while wondering which stack of hay to head towards. On the one hand, Anna; on the other, cured ham. Given the circumstances described above, such a dilemma is in fact something completely natural. Nature herself has made it such that in man, especially in his younger years, both drives are very strong. Without realizing it, I have once again fallen back on tobacco as a means for correcting Nature — as I now see. Everyone knows what cured ham is. But certainly not everyone could possibly know Anna. She is a pretty girl, tall, healthy. As the doctor once said when he saw her: “She will produce a healthy line.” The doctor approved of her highly.

When I finished smoking my cigarella, I felt firmly resolved, beyond any shadow of a doubt, to go see Anna. I even wondered how such a question could ever have entered my mind. There was no trace of my former indecision. And of course, I acted rightly. The human female must be honored! Dr. Monardes is right that she is Nature’s highest creation. In any case, she is something far from, and incomparably more than, the animal from which ham is made. It is even indecent to note this fact. Even though, on the other hand, it is simply a fact. The question is — how could such a thought possibly cross one’s mind?! I don’t know either. It just did. I suspect that this is connected to my longtime study of medicine and the science of biology. As far as I know, people have recently begun calling this a “professional deformation.” A nice, useful concept, which, like many other such useful concepts, was probably thought up by some French philosopher, and I accept it readily and with enthusiasm. I hate to digress, yet I would nevertheless like to note that had it been thought up by some German philosopher, it certainly would have been called by at least two or three different names, since nobody would be able to understand which pronoun below refers to which concept above and this would become the subject of endless debates and misunderstandings.

I will give yet another example, also connected, albeit indirectly this time, with pretty Anna. I have already said that Dr. Monardes lives on Sierpes Street, which, by the way, in typically Spanish fashion, means nothing more and nothing less than “Snake Street.” Only in this insane country would they name the city’s main street in such a way. And only there would they place the Duke of Medina Sidonia’s palace right across from the royal prison. But that’s as may be. Getting back to Anna. Anna lives on Feria Street, near the Monastery of the Holy Spirit. Many times, upon leaving the doctor’s house, I have wondered whether to take Imagen and to turn at Incarnation Square, or whether to go down Amor de Dios and then to turn onto Morgado. It is extremely difficult to say which route is shorter. Finally, one day I stopped on the corner of Imagen and Amor de Dios and lit a cigarella, trying to settle this question once and for all. I pondered it intently for almost ten minutes, pacing back and forth. I mentally reviewed almost every house, every cross street, every building that I would pass by on one or the other route. I didn’t manage to solve the problem, but when I finished smoking the cigarella, I continued straight down Amor de Dios, somehow freed of all indecision. Since then I have always taken that route, with a completely light heart. Of course, the reader may inquire why I did not simply measure both routes in steps. I attempted to do so twice, without success. The problem is that for this purpose, one must be fully concentrated on counting one’s steps and must not think about anything else whatsoever. If your mind wanders even for a second, everything comes to naught. “Where was I again?” you say to yourself. “335? 435? Or perhaps 353?” This, in fact, is very difficult to do. Especially since I was going to see pretty Anna, and not, for example, the Franciscan brothers. My mind would often wander along the way, imagining various things. What kinds of things? Things primarily connected with lasses. And for a man with medical interests, fully given over to science, knowledge, and so forth, it is extremely difficult to keep such things completely out of mind. In a certain sense, he falls victim to his professional interests. And this applies, incidentally, not just to a man dedicated to science, medicine, etc., but to everyone else as well. People are inquisitive in principle, especially in certain spheres, and if I were a French philosopher, I would call this “sexual interest — sexual inquisitiveness — sexual knowledge,” where said inquisitive drive is also predetermined by Nature. Being fully nonverbal in comparison to the aforementioned virtuosos, she has issued this as a vague, unconscious, unformulatable, yet nevertheless absolutely categorical and effective command. As a rule, Nature somehow gets by without language, that great human creation, fearsome logos. Yet she is too wild and primitive, as I have noted more than once.

This is why in the end I cannot measure the two routes in steps. But after the incident in which I lit a cigarella, I have always taken Amor de Dios and all of my doubts and indecisions have vanished, which is by far the most important thing in this case.

And in closing, a third and final example. Let the reader treat this as the Holy Trinity of the wisdom tobacco inspires — a wisdom that expresses itself in decisiveness, the elimination of indecision, and the ability to make decisions quickly. I have the feeling that an insightfulness of sorts lies hidden behind all this, which tobacco provides or unleashes.

I have a friend in the army who invited me to recruit men for a new campaign against the Dutch. This work is temporary — lasting around a month, sometimes two — and is very well-paid. Your job is to stand at the recruiting posts for soldiers in Sevilla or to travel around the nearby countryside and to enlist volunteers. One needs a certain gift of gab for this, whereas the people in the army, especially among the lower ranks, are dumb as stumps. To them, I, as a student of Dr. Monardes and a learned man in general, was practically a gift from God. None of them, of course, had ever heard of Pelletier du Mans. The interesting thing is that you can’t gather people together on the square in Dos Hermanas and convince them to join the army simply by telling them they’ll make money from it. Those who would find this argument convincing have already gone and joined the army on their own. No, it doesn’t work like that. You, of course, have to mention this as well, but you also have to say that with the army they will see foreign countries they would likely never set foot in otherwise, that a life of adventure and conquest awaits them, you must also somehow hint that the job is actually far less dangerous than it may seem, you must impress upon them what a grand thing brotherly friendship between soldiers is, you must convince them that as soldiers in the army they will enjoy great respect, that the army will never abandon them and other such hogwash. Yet even this is not sufficient and is far and away not the most important thing. The most important thing, as a person such as myself established with surprise, is to fire up their patriotism. You must speak to them — and convincingly, too, of course — about how great our nation is, how good, just, and holy its aims are, how noble our nation is, how we are all part of one indivisible whole, which the good king carefully watches over. How great Spain is, our homeland. (I no longer have any accent whatsoever, incidentally.) This produces striking, unbelievable results, especially if repeated long and emphatically enough. So that’s what I did. The doctor gave me two months off, and I went around to the nearby villages and towns and spoke on the squares while we recruited soldiers. I was hugely successful. Yet inwardly, all of this troubled me greatly. As a man of medicine, I, of course, do not believe such patriotic nonsense at all. I found myself extremely torn as to whether to continue. I had the feeling that while I spoke, a person inside of me was listening to and laughing at me, he was downright convulsed with laughter. I, of course, suppressed this person, and did not give voice to him even for a second, but this is quite difficult to do all day long for an extended period of time. The reader, who has not had such an experience, will be surprised at how difficult this is. I kept telling myself: “It’ll just take me some time to get used to it,” but I had trouble getting used to it and felt somehow extremely strained and exhausted, more than I would be just from the travelling itself or if I had been talking about something else. How lucky, I thought to myself, that I live and work with Dr. Monardes, whom I can tell exactly what I’m thinking. With rare exceptions, of course, where at most he might take a swipe at you with his cane or toss some biting (sometimes very biting) criticism your way. But those people from the army wouldn’t let you get away merely with biting criticism or even just a cane. Oh no, not a chance! Once you’ve joined their game, you’ve got to say what needs to be said, otherwise you’re thrown to the dogs. If I were crazy enough to say what I actually thought, I would be lucky only to end up in the Sevilla prison like Cervantes, but unlike him I wouldn’t get out after a year, but would rot away there.

This, then, was the reason for my hesitation, for my intense indecision. On the one hand, the ducats; on the other, I had the feeling that it was impossible for me to continue constantly saying things that I didn’t believe at all, especially since on top of everything you have to do it enthusiastically and convincingly, as if you believe it with your whole heart, in order to get results. Because if you don’t get results, they start looking askance at you, and they could even get rid of you. So either you do it or you don’t do it.

One evening, on the way back from Carmona, when I was already thoroughly sick of the whole business, I lit a cigarella with the firm intention of making a final decision about whether to continue or to quit the campaign. I was leaning towards quitting. What nation, I said to myself, what nonsense! Your biggest enemies are here in your own country. There, where you live, where you work, where you take part in dividing up the money. There, where the money is divvied up — that’s where you’ll find your biggest enemies. Someone gets in your way, and you get in someone’s way. There you’ll find your most terrifying enemies, and it’s usually in your own country, perhaps even in your own city, and not in faraway Holland. What stuff these crooks have cooked up, I thought to myself furiously. The nation, the Christian world. . Whereas you are simply an animal, living all alone on the earth. Perhaps you have a family and loved ones, and they are the only real things that tie you to anyone. They are created by Nature. The rest is pure chance, without meaning. You could belong to one nation or another. You could speak one language or another. It’s a pure accident. Nothing connects you to those others who call themselves your countrymen or who speak the same language. Absolutely nothing. The world is very, very simple, as Dr. Monardes says. They, however, can’t stand this simplicity and constantly think up various things so as to pull the wool over their own eyes. And of course, there are also shysters who have an interest in that. They think such things up — even though in most cases they have already long since been thought up — and trumpet them left and right, as if they were the indisputable truth. But they’re not. And no nation exists anywhere except in people’s imaginations. There is no nation. There isn’t anything at all. Except you, Nature, and money. This is the true scientific view of the world. The medical view.

After smoking my cigarella while thinking about these things, I could suddenly sense a weight being lifted from my shoulders. What a fool you are, I said to myself, to turn down the ducats they’re giving you just to blather nonsense loudly on the squares. Well now, I suddenly clearly realized that this was easy money! Much easier, for example, than what I earned with Dr. Monardes. God had been so good as to give me the gift of gab and I could make use of it! What is this mania for truth? I thought to myself, suddenly alarmed. The mania for truth is like every other mania from a medical point of view — it is an illness, a foolish illness. I personally have always been sufficiently levelheaded so as not to give myself over to it.

From that moment on, I did not feel any indecision whatsoever. I continued on with the campaign and stayed with it until the end. That person inside me kept laughing at me, but I laughed right back at him. In the end I had the feeling that we were starting to get along, that we were patting each other on the back. Just like that, as we laughed.

I now no longer have any doubts that I acted rightly. I saved the ducats. I soon forgot my so-called torments, yet the ducats remained. I acted rightly, as a man of medicine, a man of science. I am completely sure that Dr. Monardes, if I were ever to take the liberty of bothering him with my foolish indecisions, would definitely approve of my actions. This is somehow so clear to me that I didn’t even consider it necessary to ask him. I also think — if we must delve a little deeper into things — that this hesitation, this “voice of conscience,” as it’s called, is also something that comes from Nature. It is some manifestation of inertia, of spiritual indolence, of a lack of desire to use one’s will in order to force oneself to speak and act in a certain way. It is precisely this necessity to exercise one’s will that Nature seeks to avoid. Nature is spontaneous and lazy, not organized and strong-willed. But tobacco overcomes that. With the help of tobacco, we break Nature. We push her in the direction she ought to go. Just as during a medical procedure, dear reader. You may say: “Leave Nature alone!” Yes, but afterwards you will come to us for treatment.