The Manuscript Found in Saragossa (4 page)

Curiosity prompted me to go in. I knocked on the door but, seeing that it was not closed, I pushed it open. I called out, and searched everywhere, but found nobody. It looked to me as though everything of value had been removed already; the objects left behind on tables and in cupboards were of little worth. But in the corner several handwritten notebooks caught my eye; I cast my eyes over the contents of the manuscript. It was in Spanish; I knew very little of that language, but I knew enough to see that the book might well be entertaining. It was all about brigands, ghosts and cabbalists; nothing could be more suitable to divert my mind from the rigours of the campaign than to read a novel full of strange adventures. As I was convinced that the book could no longer be restored to its rightful owner, I did not hesitate to possess myself of it.

Later we were forced to abandon Saragossa. I found myself by mischance separated from the main body of the army, and was taken prisoner by the enemy together with my detachment. I thought that was the end of me. Once we had reached the place where they were taking us, the Spanish began to strip us of our possessions. I pleaded to be allowed to keep only one object, which could not be of any use to them: it was the manuscript I had found. They at first raised objections, but in the end consulted their captain who, having cast his eyes over the book, came to me and thanked me for preserving intact
a work to which he attached great value, as it contained the history of his ancestors. I told him how it had fallen into my hands. He then took me away with him, and during my quite lengthy stay in his house, where I was treated civilly, I asked him to translate the work for me into French. I wrote what follows as he dictated it.

But that was not all. Travellers who ventured into that wild country found themselves assailed, it was said, by countless terrors which would make even the stoutest of hearts tremble. Piteous wailing could be heard above the roar of the torrents and the howling of the storm; travellers were lured from their path by will-of-the-wisps, and invisible hands propelled them towards bottomless abysses.

There were in fact a few
ventas
³
or isolated hostelries scattered along that calamitous route, but ghosts who were even more diabolical than the innkeepers themselves had forced these last to flee and to leave them in control. Such ghosts struck bargains with the innkeepers, who retired to more peaceful parts of the country where they were disturbed only by the pangs of their consciences. The innkeeper at Andújar swore by St James of Compostella to the truth of these fantastic stories; he went on to say that the constables of the Holy Inquisition had refused to undertake any expedition into the Sierra Morena, and that travellers took the road through Jaen or Estramadura.

I replied to him that this choice of route might suit ordinary
travellers, but that as King Philip V
⁴
had graciously bestowed on me a commission in the Walloon Guards, I was bound by the sacred laws of honour to take the shortest route to Madrid without considering whether it was the most dangerous.

‘Señor,' the innkeeper said, ‘a young military gentleman such as yourself will permit me to point out that if the king has entrusted him with a company of Walloon Guards at an age at which his chin is still as smooth as a girl's, it would be wise of him to show prudence in such matters; now I maintain that once devils have taken over part of the country…'

He would have gone on, but I spurred my horse forward and did not stop until I thought I was out of earshot of his protestations. Only then did I turn round, and saw that, though distant, he was still indicating by his gesticulations that I should take the Estramadura road. My valet Lopez and my
zagal
⁵
Mosquito gave me pathetic looks which carried roughly the same meaning. I pretended not to understand them, and pressed on into the heathland in which the settlement called La Carlota has since been built.

Where there now stands a post-house, there was then a shelter which was well known to muleteers, who called it Los Alcornoques or the holm oaks, because two fine specimens of that tree gave shade to a copious spring which flowed into a marble trough. It was the only water and shade to be found between Andújar and the hostelry called the Venta Quemada, which was built in the middle of a wilderness, although it was tall and spacious. It was in fact an old Moorish fort which the Marqués de Peña Quemada had had repaired: hence the name Venta Quemada. The marqués had leased it to a citizen of Murcia who had turned it into an inn, the finest indeed of all the inns on that route. It was usual for travellers to leave Andújar in the morning, stop at Los Alcornoques in the middle of the day to consume the provisions they had brought with them, and pass the night, and often the following day as well, at the Venta Quemada, to prepare for the crossing of the mountains and to take
on fresh provisions. That was the way I had planned my journey too.

But as we came close to the holm oaks and I was speaking to Lopez about the light meal that we were counting on eating there, I noticed that Mosquito was no longer with us; nor was the mule bearing our provisions. Lopez told me that Mosquito had stopped about a hundred paces back to adjust the saddle of his horse. We waited for him; we then took a few paces forward; we stopped to wait for him again; we called him; we turned back to look for him, but all to no avail. Mosquito had vanished and had taken with him our most cherished hopes, that is to say, our lunch. I alone had not eaten at all, for Lopez had been gnawing away throughout the journey at a Toboso cheese with which he had provided himself; but he was no more the merrier for that, and did not stop muttering under his breath that the innkeeper at Andújar had warned us, and that devils had surely carried off the unfortunate Mosquito.

When we reached Los Alcornoques, I found a basket full of vine leaves on the trough; it appeared to have once been full of fruit, and to have been left behind by a traveller. I plunged my hand into it out of curiosity and discovered to my delight four fine figs and an orange. I offered two figs to Lopez, but he declined them, saying that he could wait until evening; so I ate the fruit myself, and then turned to a nearby spring to quench my thirst. Lopez stopped me, however, claiming that the water would be bad for me after the fruit, and said that he had a little Alicante wine left which he could offer me. I accepted, but no sooner had I swallowed the wine than I felt a great heaviness come over me, and earth and sky began to spin round and round my head. I should certainly have fainted if Lopez had not hurriedly come to my assistance; he helped me recover from my attack of dizziness and told me that it was only the effects of exhaustion and lack of food, and nothing to be disturbed about.

Indeed, not only did I soon recover completely, but I found myself in a state of restless energy which was almost uncanny. The countryside appeared to me to be painted in the most glowing colours; as I looked at them, objects sparkled like stars in a summer night; I could feel my pulse pounding in my temples and my neck.

Lopez saw that my momentary weakness was past and could not restrain himself from continuing his lamentations. ‘Alas!' he said.
‘Why didn't I listen to Fray
⁶
Gerónimo de la Trinidad, monk, preacher and confessor, the oracle of our family? He is the brother-in-law of the sister-in-law of the father-in-law of my mother-in-law, and therefore is the closest relative we have; so nothing is done in our family without his advice. I refused to follow his counsel, and now am being justly punished for it. He warned me that the officers of the Walloon Guards were all heretics, as can clearly be seen from their fair hair, blue eyes and pink cheeks; proper Christians have the complexion of Our Lady of Atocha as depicted by St Luke.'
⁷

I put a stop to this torrent of impertinent remarks by ordering Lopez to give me my double-barrelled gun and to stay with the horses while I found some nearby outcrop from which to look for Mosquito, or at least signs of where he had gone. At this suggestion Lopez burst into tears and, throwing himself at my knees, begged me by all the saints not to leave him alone in a place so full of danger. I offered to look after the horses while he went to look for Mosquito, but he seemed even more terrified by this proposal. I gave him, however, so many good reasons for searching for Mosquito that he let me go. Then he took a rosary from his pocket and began to pray beside the trough.

The heights which I intended to climb were more distant than I had thought. It took me nearly an hour to reach them, and, when I got there, I saw nothing but a wild and desolate plain; there were no signs of men, animals or dwellings, no road apart from that by which I had come, and no other travellers in sight; nothing but a deep all-pervading silence which I broke with my shouts. Only the echoes of my own voice in the distance replied. At last I turned back and retraced my steps to the trough; there I found my horse tied to a tree, but Lopez had vanished.

Two courses of action were open to me: to return to Andújar or to continue on my journey. I did not even consider the former. I
jumped on my horse and, spurring it to a gallop, reached in two hours the banks of the Guadalquivir, which is not at this point in its course the calm river which flows majestically round the walls of the city of Seville, but rather, as it emerges from the mountains, a deep, powerful, roaring torrent, difficult of access, constantly thundering against the rocks which confine it.

The valley of Los Hermanos
⁸
begins where the Guadalquivir joins the plain. This valley is so called because three brothers, even more united by their taste for banditry than by their ties of blood, had for a long time made it the scene of their exploits. Two of the three brothers had been caught and their bodies could be seen hanging from the gallows at the entrance to the valley; Zoto, the eldest, had escaped from prison in Córdoba and was thought to have taken refuge in the Alpujarras mountains.

Very strange tales were told about the two brothers who had been hanged; they were not said to be ghosts, but it was claimed that at night nameless demons would possess their bodies, which would break free from the gallows and set out to torment the living. This was taken to be so well attested that a theologian from Salamanca had written a thesis proving that the two hanged brothers were species of vampire, and that the supposition that one of them should be a vampire was no less implausible than that the other should be so: an argument that even the most sceptical were forced to agree was sound. There was also a widespread rumour that the two brothers were innocent and that, having been unjustly executed, they took vengeance on travellers and other wayfarers with the consent of heaven. As I had heard these stories in Córdoba, curiosity prompted me to approach the gallows. The spectacle that met my eyes was made all the more revolting by the fact that the ghastly corpses were swung in eerie gyrations in the wind, while hideous vultures tore at their flesh. Horrified, I averted my gaze and hurried along the track leading to the mountains.

The valley of Los Hermanos, it must be acknowledged, seemed very well suited to fostering the activities of bandits and affording them refuge. The way forward was barred here and there by large boulders which had fallen down the mountainside, and by trees uprooted by storms. The track frequently crossed river-beds or passed by the mouths of ominous-looking deep caves which put travellers on their guard.

I emerged from that valley and entered another in which I saw the
venta
which was to serve as my resting-place; but from the moment I caught sight of it in the distance, I was filled with foreboding. For, as I could see, it had no windows or shutters, no smoke was rising from the chimneys, there were no signs of life nearby and no dogs barking to mark my approach. I concluded from this that the inn was one of those which had been abandoned, as the innkeeper at Andújar had told me. It seemed to me that the closer I came to the
venta
, the deeper the silence grew. When finally I reached it, I saw an alms box oh which the following words were inscribed: ‘Good travellers, of your charity pray for the soul of Gonzalez of Murcia, sometime innkeeper of the Venta Quemada. I entreat you above all else to continue on your way and not to spend the night here, for any reason.'

I decided at once to face the dangers with which the inscription threatened me. It was not that I did not believe in ghosts, but, as will subsequently become clear, honour had been the focal point of my whole upbringing, and I took honour to mean that one should never show any signs of fear.

As the sun had only just set, I wanted to take advantage of the fading light to explore all the hidden recesses of the building, less to reassure myself about any infernal powers which might have seized possession of it than to look for food, for the little I had eaten at Los Alcornoques had dulled but not satisfied the great hunger which I then felt. I passed through many rooms and apartments. Most were decorated with mosaic up to the height of a man; the ceilings were fashioned in that beautiful panelling which is the splendour of Moorish buildings. I searched the kitchens, store-rooms and cellars, which were hewn out of the solid rock. Some were connected to underground passages which appeared to lead far into the mountain. But nowhere did I come across any food.

Eventually, as the last light was fading from the sky, I went to fetch my horse, which I had tethered in the courtyard, and led it to a stable in which I had seen some hay. I myself settled down in the room in which was the only pallet bed left in the whole inn. I would very much have liked to have had a light, but the one good thing about the hunger which still tormented me was that it prevented me sleeping.

None the less, as the night grew darker, my thoughts grew also more sombre. For some of the time my mind was occupied by the disappearance of my two servants; at other moments by thoughts of how I might obtain food. I formed the opinion that robbers had jumped out from behind some bushes or had emerged from some underground hiding-place and had taken Mosquito and Lopez captive one after the other; I had only been spared, I thought, because my military uniform had suggested that I might not have been so easily overpowered. My hunger preoccupied me more than all the rest of my thoughts. I had noticed some goats on the mountainside; they must be tended by a goatherd who would no doubt have a small amount of bread to eat with his milk. I was also counting somewhat on my gun. But the one thing I was not prepared to do was to turn back and face the mockery of the innkeeper of Andújar. On the contrary, I was resolutely set on continuing my journey.

Having exhausted all my thoughts on such matters, I could not stop myself going over in my mind the well-known tale of the counterfeiters and others of the same kind which I had been told at bedtime when I was a child. I also thought about the inscription on the alms box. I did not believe that the devil had wrung the neck of the innkeeper, but I could not make any sense of his tragic end.

Hours went by in this way in deep silence, when suddenly the unexpected chiming of a bell made me start up with surprise. It tolled twelve, and as everyone knows, ghosts are only active from midnight to cock crow. I say that I started up with surprise; I had good reason to, for the bell had not tolled the other hours, and as well as that, it seemed to me that there was something lugubrious about its tolling.

A moment later the bedroom door opened and I saw a totally black figure come in; not a frightening apparition, however, but a beautiful, half-naked negress holding a torch in each hand.

She came up to me, bowed low and said in very good Spanish, ‘Señor caballero, you are invited to partake in the supper of two foreign ladies who are spending the night at this hostelry. Please be so good as to follow me.'