Thrown into Nature

3. For Having a Good Time

Since I am afraid that the reader may be tired of the medical details with which this work is filled, or at least will be, I intend to cheer him up by telling him the story of my visit with Dr. Monardes to England, whence we went at the invitation of said Señor Frampton. Some time ago, Señor Frampton escaped from Cadiz on one of Dr. Monardes and Nuñez de Herrera’s merchant ships, and since then he has felt enormously in his debt.

We left Cadiz with the caravel Hyguiene on a beautiful summer day. Oceanus Occidentalis lay in front of us, to our right was Costa de la Luz, lit, as always, by the sun.

“The dunces who read Plato have been searching for Atlantis since time immemorial,” Dr. Monardes said, sitting on deck in a wicker chair, his legs crossed on a heap of gaskets, a book in his lap, “while here it is, before their very eyes.”

I looked around: Costa de la Luz, Oceanus Occidentalis, the caravel Hyguiene, Dr. Monardes.

“In what sense?” I said.

“In the sense that I’m talking about Cadiz. The island used to be called Gadeira. And that’s where the name of the town comes from. First, it was Gadir, then Gades, and later it became Cadiz. And now the island is called Isla de Cadiz. This is exactly what is meant. An island beyond the Pillars of Heracles. That is the island of Cadiz.” Noticing my incredulous look, Dr. Monardes said, “This land is very old, Guimarães. Andalusia. People have lived here practically since the world was created. In England, where we are now going, there was only the wind whistling through the hills when people were already living here.”

“Yes, but what kind of people!” I said dismissively. “What were they good for? Nothing! Monkeys, savages!”

“Better monkeys and savages than the wind whistling through your ass, believe you me,” Dr. Monardes objected. “Did you know, my friend, that I’ve found pottery from time immemorial in the yard of one of my houses near the Guadalquivir? Remind me some day to show them to you.”

“Yes, by all means,” I said, with the full knowledge that I was lying. There is hardly anything of less interest to me than pottery from time immemorial. Dr. Monardes, though a great physician, has his own peculiarities, just like every man (but not every man is a great physician).

We traveled in silence for a while, whereupon Dr. Monardes grunted, lifted his eyes from the book he was reading, and said with irritation: “Look what a Northern fool has written here: ‘To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.” In the next instant, the doctor abruptly threw the book into the sea with surprising force, shouting after it, “To have succeeded, you fool, means being rich and in perfect health. Rich and healthy! Just that and nothing more. I cannot bear these windbags any longer!” Dr. Monardes turned to me. “They blather pure nonsense to fool themselves and the rest of the world into thinking they are something besides miserable losers, and they call it philosophy.” He turned back towards the sea, adding, “These works deserve to be devoured by fish. Then perhaps some fish will begin speaking wisely.”

I laughed and said, “Like the goldfish in the tale of the fisherman, señor.”

“A goldfish? By no means!” Dr. Monardes objected. “It would have to be a clay one.”

“So why do you read these bores, señor? Read Rabelais. The greatest writer.”

“Why do you think so?” Dr. Monardes asked. He didn’t read such books, feeling a certain unjust contempt for them.

“He is a medical man just like us,” I answered. “The printing of his first three books has been halted, and the fourth has even been banned by Parliament.”

“No wonder,” the doctor nodded. “What is parliament? A place where representatives of the provinces meet. What could be expected of such provincials except the bold combination of stupidity and theft? Thank God there is not such an abomination in Spain!”

“And the greatest of the poets, señor,” I added, feeling encouraged, “is Pelletier du Mans. What a book, señor: L’Amour des amours. It consists of a cycle of love sonnets followed by verses about meteors, planets, and the heavens. Who else has written such a book? Nobody!”

“Indeed!” the doctor agreed. “But you surprise me, Guimarães. I thought you concentrated on medicine.”

“Well, I do concentrate on it, señor. I read these other things in my spare time, if something catches my interest. Why do you torment yourself with those sagacious fools?”

“Because I’m a Renaissance man and a humanist,” the doctor replied. “I must read them.”

“Renaissance man? Humanist? Who gives a damn about that?” I said. “You are a rich man, señor, very successful in your career. What do you need the Renaissance and humanism for?”

“Such is the fashion, my friend. And fashion is a great power, a mighty eagle in the sky. It is more important than you think, and it is most certainly my duty to impress upon you a correct understanding of such matters, lest you should say some day ‘The doctor told me so many other things, but not that.’ You must learn to distinguish the two kinds of fashion, Guimarães: one is short-lived, while the other yields results tomorrow. If you want to achieve a better lot in life, you must be able to recognize the latter and follow it. Tomorrow it may not make any difference that you were rich and highly successful in medicine. It may turn out that the only important thing will be whether you were a man of the Renaissance and a humanist.”

“What does it matter what matters tomorrow?” I objected. “Carpe diem, seize the day. Tomorrow never comes, as the Arabs say.”

“Yes, that is what they say, and see how they ended up,” the doctor retorted, pointing first at the shores of Andalusia and then at the African coast. “Chased out! Tomorrow will come, fear not. It always does.”

I was not particularly convinced, but preferred to stay silent. I was beginning to feel seasick in any case.

“When you vomit, be careful here,” Dr. Monardes said, pointing at the deck beside him. “This is the nail Francisco Rodrigues pricked himself on years ago.”

“Why, haven’t they gotten rid of it?” I exclaimed.

“Nothing ever disappears in Spain, my friend,” the doctor replied and headed for his cabin.

The English are nice chaps, although perhaps a bit foolish. They definitely seem more foolish than the Spaniards, perhaps even more so than the Portuguese; why, they even seem more foolish than those sorry potatoes stuck in the ground — meaning the Bulgarians, of course — although I’m not sure I would be willing to swear to this last statement. The English constantly act witty in order to look smart; although their wit is usually rather trivial. They radiate certain white-bread mediocrity. But I prefer them to the Spaniards. Spain is singed by the sun, supposedly suffused with light, but is, in fact, somehow a dark and bitter country, while England, supposedly veiled in mist and rain, looks somehow green and cheerful; more cheerful, in any case, and gentler. You can say many things to an Englishman and he will keep trying to be smart and witty, while a Spaniard will simply jump up to cut your throat. He calls it pride, but I’m a foreigner and I see it for what it really is: a morbid self-respect, enormous self-love, and an unrestrained nature. You can’t be too careful with a Spaniard. He’s dangerous. And even when he’s warmhearted, he is not cheerful.

The Englishman, on the other hand, is cheerful. I like this very much because I’m a fan of burlesque. As Dr. Monardes says, “What passes for a burlesque in Spain is considered a tragedy in England.” This is indeed the case! You can see nothing resembling English burlesque in Spain. Theater is flourishing here, and burlesques are onstage everywhere. In Spain, they call Lope a comedian! What kind of comedian is he?! Come here if you want to see what burlesque means, what a true farce is!

Señor Frampton introduced us to a remarkable man called Ben, a great connoisseur of theatre and comedy, who was also devoted to burlesques, and he showed us round the theaters. Yesterday, for example, we went to the Globe Theatre to watch a tragedy, which I didn’t mind, since, like I said, English tragedies are like Spanish burlesques. You always have a wonderful time no matter what you’re watching.

Being gallants and beaus, we took seats on the stage itself, on the stools to the side of it. According to local notions, the gallant, generally speaking, is a man who (as Señor Jonson, our friend who took us to the Globe, put it) has nice clothes, shapely legs, white hands, Persian locks, a tolerable beard, a sword, and six pence to pay for the stool. We met almost all the requirements, and certainly the most important of them — the last one.

All the local gallants smoked, though they smoked pipes, a vulgar habit imposed on them by those Anabaptist crooks, the Dutch. Dr. Monardes and I were the only ones smoking cigarellas. The very moment we sat down, the serving-boys gave us a candle each, setting them down on the tables in front of us, and everyone began lighting his pipe; the doctor and I lit our cigarellas. In the meantime, the play had begun. A cloud of tobacco smoke swirled over us and also over the stalls, because many people down there had lit their pipes as well. I heard the actors rather than saw them, because of the aromatic smoke wafting through the air.

“Our valiant Hamlet did slay this Fortinbras,” I heard somebody say at one point, so I squinted to see what was going on, but there were just two men talking about something, wrapped in smoke like angels descending from heaven.

Meanwhile, someone tapped me on the back. When I turned around, I saw a serving-boy. “Hazelnuts, sir? Apples? Walnuts?”

Señor Jonson, who was sitting next to me, said, “I want apples and hazelnuts.”

“The same for me,” I said.

“Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off, and let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.”

However, I couldn’t see any woman on the stage.[1]

“Who is this Denmark?” I said, turning to Mr. Jonson.

“Well, Denmark is. . never mind.” He waved his hand dismissively as he lit his pipe and, sucking at it with delight, said: “By this light, I wonder that any man is so mad, to come to see these rascally tits play here — they do act like so many wrens — not the fifth part of a good face amongst them all.” But he always spoke like that, wherever we went. “At least they don’t sing here,” he added. “Their music is abominable — able to stretch a man’s ears worse than ten pillories, and their ditties — most lamentable things, like the pitiful fellows that make them — poets. By this vapor — an’t were not for tobacco — I think — the very smell of them would poison me, I should not dare to come in at their gates.” He took the pipe from his mouth and munched a few hazelnuts. “A man were better visit fifteen jails — or a dozen or two hospitals — than once adventure to come near them. . Hazelnuts, sir?”

“No, thanks. I have my own,” I answered.

“Soft you now! The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remember’d,” a voice from the smoke reached my ear.

I stared and in the mist made out the vague outlines of a female figure hesitantly stepping towards the man who was speaking. At the next moment, I nearly lost my life! I spat and turned to say something to Señor Jonson and was nearly impaled by a sword whose point, fortunately, was topped with a chunk of apple. As far as I could see, some chap had leaned over and was stretching his sword in front of Señor Jonson and another man, trying to pass the apple to some other bloke sitting on the other side of Dr. Monardes.

“Hey, amigo,” I cried out, “you almost skewered me!”

“A thousand apologies, sir,” he cried out in reply. “That’s for Mr. Perky next to you.”

I drew back, and Mr. Perky in return extended to his friend his own sword, on whose point there seemed to be a piece of pluck. At the first moment, I thought that my eyes, teary from tobacco vapors, were deceiving me, but as the sword passed just under my nose, I caught a certain unmistakable aroma, and then I saw that Dr. Monardes next to me had taken a cigarella in one hand and his Spanish dagger in the other, with a piece of pluck stuck on top of it, and was eating most happily without saying a word to me.

I turned to Ben and said, “Where is this pluck from?”

“From the servants. Two pence. Would you like some?”

“That wouldn’t be half bad,” I answered.

“Hey, boy,” Señor Jonson called out and raised his hand.

“Who’s calling me?” a voice came from behind the vapors.

“Over here, over here,” Ben cried.

“That is the question: Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them?”

“Don’t suffer! Take arms!” Mr. Perky cried out. Señor Jonson gave a piercing whistle. In a short while, everyone was whistling. I began whistling, too. The chaps in the stalls also began whistling. The man on the stage continued speaking, but nothing could be heard. Then boos were heard from somewhere. We all began booing. Someone with the voice of the Leviathan itself cried out from the stalls, “Boo! Boo!”

A few people from the stalls joined him. Then all the groundlings followed suit. One of us gallants also cried out: “Boo! Boo!”

“Boo! Boo!” I began yelling, too.

“Who called me?” My ears barely caught question. It was as if Fate itself had made me look in that direction because the boy had already turned around to leave.

“Over here, over here!” I cried out and raised my hand. The boy saw me and leaned over the table towards me. “Pluck for me, too,” I hollered to him.

“Very well, sir,” he hollered out in return, taking three steps into the vapors and suddenly disappearing like the apparition of St. Sancho at Casa de Toros, St. Anselm in Malaga, Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker in Sierra Blanca, and many others. Spain is full of apparitions that disappear.

Meanwhile, the audience had begun stamping their feet. I continued to yell and also began to stamp. Someone shook my shoulder. It was Dr. Monardes.

“Guimarães,” he yelled in my ear, “do you have more cigarellas?”

“Boo!” I yelled, shook my head affirmatively, thrust my hand into my inside pocket, brought out a cigarella, and passed it over my shoulder to Dr. Monardes.

“God bless you!” the doctor said.

“Alas, poor Yorick!” was heard from the stage when the noise subsided. “I knew him, Horatio.”

“I knew him, too,” Mr. Perky cried out, and everybody laughed.

Meanwhile, the boy had brought the pluck; a pleasant aromatic vapor hung over it. Since I wanted to try the sword trick for myself, I asked for Mr. Jonson’s sword, stuck a bit of pluck on the tip, reached past Dr. Monardes and said: “This is for you, Mr. Perky.”

Mr. Perky put his hand to his heart and gave a slight bow.

Señor Jonson, whose head was enveloped in vapor from his pipe, was talking about something with his neighbor on his other side and had been spitting on my feet for some time; inadvertently, of course. Pipes make you spit quite a bit, incidentally. After some hesitation (during which time he continued to spit on my feet), I gently tapped him on the shoulder and said: “My friend, you’re spitting on my shoes.”

“Really?” Señor Jonson said, very surprised. “A thousand apologies, mate.”

That’s what they say here—“a thousand apologies.” Who would apologize to you in Spain? If you asked for an apology, a Spaniard would take that as an insult.

“Now, listen here,” Señor Jonson said after a while, taking a drag on his pipe, “that’s a great phrase. . That man Bill. . he always does that. . he puts one ingenious phrase. . in a sea of nonsense.” He tossed two hazelnuts into his mouth. “Here is it.” Señor Jonson raised a finger. “Now!”

“What’s Hecuba to him,” the line resounded from the stage, “or he to Hecuba, that he should weep for her?”

“Marvelous!” I exclaimed, throwing up my hands.

“Isn’t it? Bravo! Bravo!” Señor Jonson cried out and broke into applause.

“Bravo!” I called out as well.

The gallants joined in. However, I suspect that our enthusiasm would soon have subsided unnoticed if that mighty voice from the stalls had not come to our aid.

“Bravo!” the Leviathan thundered and began applauding. His applause was also gargantuan, it echoed like cannon shots.

Who is that giant, who is that Gargantua? I wondered and turned to the stalls, but nothing could be seen there, since it was enveloped by smoke.

Soon everybody was crying Bravo! Bravo! and applauding. Then someone began whistling. Mr. Perky, Dr. Monardes, and Señor Jonson beat out the others, being the first to begin booing.

Naturally, I joined them immediately. Amidst the general heckling, a thunderous voice could again be heard from the pit: “Boo! Boo!”

“Boo!” we also began shouting.

Soon everybody was booing and stamping their feet.

That’s how things happen in reality, I suddenly thought, who knows why. All sorts of thoughts cross your mind in such a situation.

“With sorrow I embrace my fortune,” a spectacularly dressed man said from the stage. He approached us, grabbed Señor Jonson’s pipe, took two drags, and went back to the stage, showered by universal applause.

“That’s Fortinbras,” Señor Jonson yelled at me. “He’s one of a kind!”

“Take up the bodies,” the stylish man continued and kicked one of the men lying on the stage. “Such a sight as this becomes the field, but here shows much amiss. Go, bid the soldiers shoot.”

A moment later, the bodies got up and began bowing to the audience.

“What, it can’t be over so soon?” I cried out, extremely disappointed. An excellent play!

The audience got to its feet and began applauding wildly, accompanying that with salutatory cries.

While rising, I inadvertently overturned my plate of pluck. With almost superhuman dexterity, Dr. Monardes speared a chunk of it on his dagger in mid-air and brought it to his lips, without a word.

“Damnation!” I said, staring at the pluck scattered on the ground, clapping my hands all the while.

Well, that was all for tonight.

“What a marvelous play!” I said to Señor Jonson as we walked in the fresh, cool air of the London night.

“Yes. The audience here has good taste and is very hard to please. You can’t put on just any old play,” Mr. Jonson replied. “But this is nothing! You should see Every Man out of His Humor. Now there’s a true burlesque! Phenomenal! This was still a tragedy, after all.”

“Yes,” I said and, absorbed in the conversation, nearly bumped into the legs of some thief hanged on the Tower Bridge. “Why on earth do they have to put them here?” I exclaimed.

“Oh, nobody pays them any attention.” Señor Jonson waved dismissively. “Unless they begin to smell bad.” He pointed at his pipe and added: “But with the help of this, you almost don’t smell anything at all.”

[1] This is an untranslatable pun, as the name of the country Denmark sounds like a woman’s name in Bulgarian.