The Dialogue of the Dogs Page 7

  When she finished this long harangue, she got up and, taking the lamp, entered another, narrower room. I followed her, beset by a thousand competing thoughts and astonished at what I’d heard—and what I expected to see. Canizares hung her lamp on the wall and hastily stripped down to her slip. Taking a beaker from the corner, she put her hand in it, murmured under her breath, and anointed herself from her feet all the way to her crown, since she’d already removed her wimple. Before finishing she told me that her body would either remain in that room insensate or disappear completely, but to have no fear, nor leave off guarding her till morning, because then I’d learn what had to befall me before I could become a man. By lowering my head I told her that I’d do exactly that, and at this she finished her unction and lay down on the floor as if dead. I sniffed at her lips and saw that she wasn’t breathing at all.

  I’ll confess the truth, friend Scipio. It gave me the fantods to discover myself cooped up in that narrow room with such a ghastly figure beside me, which I’ll describe to you as best I can. She was more than seven feet long, a bag of bones overgrown with black, hairy, leathery skin. Her belly, which looked like cowhide, covered her privates, and even hung halfway down her shanks. Her breasts looked like two dried and wrinkled udders, her lips were pallid, her teeth clenched, her nose pointy and crooked, eyes mismatched and staring, hair disarranged, cheeks sunken, neck ropy, chest concave and, finally, everything skeletal and demonic. Slowly I began to look her over, and at once a fear seized me as I thought about the lamentable condition of her body and the similar state of her soul. I wanted to bite her to see if it’d resuscitate her, but I couldn’t find any part of her that didn’t repulse me.

  Ultimately I bit her instep, and dragged her by the heel into the courtyard. Still she gave no sign of regaining consciousness. There under the heavens, out in the great wide open, the fear left me—or at least it let up enough that I found the heart to wait and see what would come of all that she-devil’s to-ing and fro-ing, and what tidings of my fate she’d bring back. At which point I asked myself: Who made this evil woman so wise and yet so wicked? How does she know which sufferings are senseless and which tragic? How can she understand and speak so much of God, yet work so much for the Devil? How can she sin so deliberately without even ignorance for an excuse?

  The night came and went, consumed by these considerations, and day found the two of us in the middle of the patio, she motionless and me with her, crouching, attentive, enduring her fearfully ugly form. The patients of the hospital came out and, seeing this scene, some said, “Poor, peaceful Canizares is dead. See how disfigured and skinny her penance has left her.” Others, more considerate, felt for a pulse and, finding she had one, that she wasn’t dead, assumed she had entered an ecstasy, and that her pure goodness had entranced her. Others said, “This old whore must doubtless be a witch, and she’s anointed herself. Saints never lapse into such shameful raptures, and until now, among those who know her, she’s had a bigger reputation as a witch than as a saint.” Some sank pins into her flesh, burying them all the way in, but not even then did the sleeper awake.

  She didn’t come to until seven in the morning, when she belatedly found herself perforated with pinpricks, bitten on her heel, and bruised from being dragged across the floor. When she felt so many eyes on her she thought, not wrongly, that I’d been the author of her dishonor. She flew at me, throwing both hands around my throat and trying to choke me, crying,

  “Oh, wretched ingrate, disgraced, ignorant, malicious! Is this the thanks I get for the good turns I did your mother, and that I was thinking of doing for you?” Feeling myself in mortal danger under the talons of that vicious harpy, I wriggled free and, taking hold of the loose flesh around her midsection, I shook her and dragged her all over the courtyard. She screamed, pleading with somebody to free her from the jaws of that evil spirit.

  After hearing this rant from the evil old woman, most of them mistook me for one of those Satanists who’ve taken a vow of neverending enmity against all Christians. Some doused me in holy water, but others wouldn’t come anywhere near me. Some demanded an exorcism. The harridan groaned, and I gnashed my teeth, confusion reigned and rose, and my master the drummer, drawn by all the noise, despaired at hearing me called a demon. Others had no truck with exorcisms, preferring to wander over with three or four flails and just beat the stuffing out of me.

  I didn’t share their amusement, so I let loose of the old woman and in three bounds I made the street. I hightailed it out of there with a pack of delinquents in hot pursuit hollering, “Save yourselves! The Learned Dog is rabid!” Others yelled, “He’s not rabid! He’s a demon posing as a dog!” With this sendoff, I tore out past the city limits as if the whole town was after me. My pursuers doubtless thought I was a demon, not just from what Canizares said when she woke up from her spell, but from all the tricks they’d seen me do. I ran so fast to shake them that they thought I’d disappeared into thin air, which surely made them think me a devil all the more.

  In six hours I’d logged a dozen leagues, and soon arrived at a gypsy camp outside Granada. I got a little of my strength back there, since some of the gypsies recognized me as The Learned Dog and gave me a hearty welcome. So nobody looking for me would luck into a reward, they hid me in a cave. I realized later that they meant to cash in on me in the same way my master the drummer had. I spent twenty days with them, and I absolutely have to tell you about their life and customs, too.

  Scipio: Before you keep going, Berganza, better we should mull over what the witch said to you, and see if this great lie you believe could really hold water. Look, it’s a total joke to believe that Camacha could turn men into animals, and that the sacristan served her all those years in a mule’s body. All these things and anything like them are hoaxes, lies, or the Devil’s work. If we feel like we can think and understand now because we can talk, even though we still look like dogs, I hope we’re agreed that this is an amazing, unprecedented event and that, even as it’s happening, we can’t believe it until we see where it’s all heading.

  Do you need me to spell it out for you? Think about what stupid, pointless conditions Camacha said our restoration depended on. What sound like prophecies to you are just old wives’ tales, like the one about the headless horse or the magic wand, made for stretching out by the fire on long winter nights—otherwise, they’d’ve already happened.

  That’s unless her story is what they call allegorical, which means they stand for the same things they usually do, only different. For example, to read

  They’ll revert to their rightful guise

  When they descry with their own eyes

  The high and mighty dunked in suet

  And the humble lifted to the skies

  By a hand with strength enough to do it.

  as an allegory seems to mean that we’ll get our shape back when we see that somebody riding high yesterday looks down and out today, flicked away by the people whose rings he used to kiss. Or when somebody who two hours ago was only good for padding out the census, is now so lofty that he barely reaches the ground, beneath notice instead of above reproach. If this is all it takes to turn us into men, well, we’ve already seen it, and we see it every day. This makes me think that we’re supposed to take Camacha’s poem literally, not as an allegory. We can’t count on it to restore us, since what it envisioned happens all the time, and we’re still as doggish as ever. Camacha was a phony sorceress and Canizares a liar, and Montiela stupid, malicious, and vicious. Pardon me for saying so, just in case she’s our mother—or yours, since I don’t want her. I mean, this rhyme doesn’t signify anything more than a game of ninepins, where the ones standing always eventually fall and the ones on the ground always get set back up “by a hand with strength enough to do it.” Just look how often in life we’ve seen somebody bowl. Have we become men again, if that’s indeed what we really are?

  Berganza: I have to admit you’re right, brother Scipio, and you’re even more learned than you l
ook. From what you’ve said, I’ve come to believe that everything that’s happened to us so far and everything now is but a dream, and that we’re dogs after all. But that’s no reason not to enjoy this windfall of speech, and the blessing of human faculties that goes with it. So hang on, and let me tell you what happened to me with those gypsies who set me up in the cave.

  Scipio: I’m all ears—so long as you listen to me when, God willing, I tell you the events of my life.

  Berganza: I spent my time with the gypsies observing their great craftiness, their conniving and deceit, the talent for thievery among men and women both, almost from the moment they forsake their security blankets and learn to walk. Have you noticed them all over Spain? They all know each other and keep in touch, passing their loot around and stowing it for each other. Instead of the king, they serve somebody called the Count, whose successors all share the name Maldonado—and not because they come from that noble line, but because the page of a paladin by this name once fell in love with a gypsy, who withheld her love unless he became a gypsy too and married her. The page did, and the other gypsies came to like him so much that they enthroned him, placed themselves in thrall to him and, as a sign of deference, tithed him part of their choicest loot.

  To conceal their laziness, they all pick up work as tinkers, meantime fabricating picklocks and other tools of their trade. You’ll always see them out in the street hawking tongs, drills, and hammers. The women go in more for trivets and shovels, and they’re all midwives—better than ours, since they deliver their young patients without cost, or help. They wash the little nippers in cold water at birth so that, for the rest of their lives, they can take anything an outdoor life dishes out. Notice how they’re all healthy and nimble, too, runners and dancers every one. They marry among themselves, since they don’t want their evil customs discovered. The women stand by their husbands, and would never dream of cuckolding them except with a relative. When they beg for charity, they get more handouts with jokes and puns than with Hail Marys, and since nobody trusts them, they couldn’t work if they wanted to. If I remember right, no matter how often I go to church, rarely if ever have I seen a gypsy at the communion rail.

  They have but one thought—imagining how they can bamboozle us and what they can steal. They’re always comparing notes on their thefts and how they pulled them off. One day a gypsy was boasting within earshot about a swindle he’d pulled on some peon. The gypsy had a mule with a docked tail, and he’d pinned a fake tail to its bald hindquarters that looked like a natural one. He took the animal to the market and sold it to the peon for ten ducats. After he’d pocketed the money, he then offered this peon the mule’s brother—as good as the first, and cheaper too. The peon couldn’t believe his luck, and sent the gypsy to fetch that one too, meanwhile leading the one he’d already bought to his inn. The gypsy followed the poor peasant there and somehow contrived to sneak out the mule he’d just sold him, at the same time palming the phony tail and leaving the ass bare. He changed out the saddle and halter and then, sure enough, had the gall to go looking for the peon to sell it back to him. Wouldn’t you know, the gypsy found him before the first mule had been missed, and sold him the second in two shakes.

  The peon went back to the inn to fetch money to pay for it and found the first one missing. Though he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, the peon finally had an idea he’d been robbed, and didn’t want to pay. The gypsy went for witnesses, bringing in the clerks who’d collected the taxes on the first sale. The taxmen swore up and down that the gypsy had sold the peon an ass very different from the second one, one with a very long tail. A beadle had witnessed the first transaction too, and vouched for the gypsy, so that in the end the peon had to pay for the same ass twice.

  The gypsies retailed lots of other robberies too, most if not all involving animals. They know them intimately, and use them in most of their grifting. In a word, they’re an especially tricky people, and though many very prudent judges have spoken against them, they never take the hint to mend their ways.

  After twenty days, the gypsies wanted to take me along to Murcia. On the way I passed through Granada, where the captain that my master drummed for had already arrived. Since the gypsies knew this, they shut me away in a room at the inn where they were lodging. I heard them plotting a trip that didn’t sound like my idea of a good time, so I resolved to get out of there as soon as I could.

  It was easy, and leaving Granada I fetched up at an orchard belonging to a descendant of the original Moors, who took me in out of pure goodwill. I accepted with even better will, since it seemed like he didn’t want me for anything more than protecting his fruit—a more restful job, to my way of thinking, than protecting sheep. Since we couldn’t exactly haggle over salary, soon enough the Moor had a new servant to order around, and I a new master to serve. I stayed more than a month not for fun, but for the sake of learning about my master, and through him about the lives of all the moriscos, these converted Moors of ours.

  Oh, friend Scipio, the things I could tell you of these morisco gangsters, but I fear that even two weeks wouldn’t suffice me to finish. If I went into detail, I wouldn’t finish in two months! Still, I’ll say a little, and this should give you a general idea what I saw and remarked in this esteemed people.

  It’s a miracle if you find one among them who really believes in sacred Christian law. They just want to pile up and hoard money, and to get it they work almost without eating. Once a coin strays into their clutches, no matter how small, they condemn it to life imprisonment and eternal darkness. In this way, always acquiring and never spending, they’re amassing Spain’s biggest fortune. They are its strongbox, its vault, its guardians and custodians. They gather everything, hide everything, and swallow everything.

  Just think of their numbers. Every day they prosper and tuck some away, whether a little or a lot, and they’re in no greater hurry to die than the rest of us. The more they all multiply, the more the misers among them do. They don’t know the meaning of chastity, nor do they take religious orders—the men or the women. They all marry and breed, because temperance increases fertility. War doesn’t concern them, and they don’t especially care for taxing work. They rob us without risk and, by selling the fruits of our patrimony back to us, make themselves rich. They have no servants, because they serve themselves. They don’t waste their sons on studies, because their sole science is how to rob us.

  I’ve heard that when Moses brought the Jews out of captivity they tallied six hundred thousand men, not counting women and children—up from just a dozen when they entered Egypt. There are so many more of these ex-Moors, you can about guess how fast they’ll multiply.

  Scipio: The authorities are working on a fix for all the problems you’ve roughed out. I know perfectly well that you’ve omitted more and worse than you’ve included, and so far no solution. Yet our republic has wise guardians who understand that Spain is breeding and sheltering all these morisco vipers and will, with divine help, grant us sure, swift and certain relief. Go on.

  Berganza: Since my new master was stingy, like all of his caste, he fed me on cornbread and leftover porridge, his own usual fare. But heaven helped me endure this misery in a strange way, as you’ll now hear.

  Each morning at dawn, there would appear seated at the foot of a pomegranate tree—one of many in the orchard—a youth with the air of a student, dressed in a baize suit no longer black and velvety, but grayish and shiny. He occupied himself writing in a notebook, and from time to time he’d slap his forehead and bite his nails, mooning at the sky. Other times he’d be so lost in thought that he didn’t move hand or foot—not even his eyelashes, such was his enchantment.

  Once, I went up to him without being seen. I heard him murmuring under his breath, and after a lengthy pause he said in a loud voice, “By God, this is the best octet I’ve written in my life!” Jotting quickly in his notebook, he looked deeply satisfied. All this gave me to understand that the poor unfortunate was a poet. I made
my accustomed caresses to assure him of my harmlessness and settled myself at his feet. Reassured, he pursued his thoughts, again scratched his head, again surrendered to his woolgathering, and again set down what he had thought up.

  In the middle of all this, another youth entered the orchard, handsome and well-dressed, with some papers in his hand that he consulted from time to time. He came up to the first one and asked, “Have you finished the first act?”

  “I’ve just finished it,” answered the poet, “and it’s as elegant as can be imagined.”

  “How so?” asked the second one.

  “Like this: His sanctity the Pope enters dressed in his robes with a dozen cardinals, all outfitted in purple because the episode in my play takes place at the time of mutatio caparum, when cardinals dressed in purple, not red. So it’s most desirable, for the sake of propriety, that my cardinals wear purple.

  “This point has a great bearing on the play, and you can be sure that others would mess it up, and create a thousand mistakes and infelicities at every turn. I’m not wrong about this, because I’ve read the whole Roman liturgy just to get these vestments right.”

  “And where,” replied the other, “is my manager going to find purple vestments for a dozen cardinals?”

  “If he leaves out even one,” the poet responded, “I’ll sooner fly than give him my play. Gadzooks, is this great scene to be lost? Just marvel how it’ll look in a theater to have the solemn pontiff with all his dozen grave cardinals, plus the other ministers they’ll have to bring with them. God in heaven, it’ll be one of the greatest spectacles ever seen on a stage, even including The Nosegay of Daraja!”