On this subject he showed signs of fierce patriotism: he would rather see his country sunk in the obscurantism of the Middle Ages, he said, than awake to the triumph of modern ideas if they were imposed by foreigners. He could not forgive Napoleon, who had forced the king of Spain to abdicate and then replaced him with his brother, Joseph Bonaparte, whom the people had nicknamed Pepe Botellas after his love of the bottle.
“All tyranny is abominable, my boy,” the captain concluded. “Napoleon is a tyrant. What good was the revolution if an emperor replaced the king? Nations should be governed by a council of learned men who must answer to the people for their actions.”
“The kings’ authority is divine in origin, Captain,” Diego argued weakly, repeating his father’s words without really understanding what he was saying.
“Who has proved that? As far as I know, young de la Vega, God has not spoken to that subject.”
“According to the Holy Scriptures ”
“You have read them?” Santiago de Leon interrupted decisively.
“Nowhere in the Scriptures does it say that the Bourbons are to rule in Spain, or Napoleon in France. Besides, there is nothing holy about Holy Scriptures. They were written by men, not God.”
It was night, and the two were walking back and forth on the bridge.
The sea was calm, and above the eternal creaking of the ship Bernardo’s flute could be heard with hypnotic clarity, seeking his mother and Light-in-the-Night in the stars.
“Do you believe that God exists?” the captain asked Diego.
“Of course, Captain!”
With a sweep of his arm, Santiago de Leon indicated the dark firmament sprinkled with constellations. “If God exists, I am sure He is not interested in designating kings for every star in the heavens,” he said.
Diego de la Vega protested in horror. Doubting God was the last thing on his mind, a thousand times more serious than doubting the divine mandate of the monarchy. The feared Inquisition had burned people at the stake for much less, something that seemed not to worry the captain in the least.
Tired of winning beans and shells from the sailors, Diego turned to frightening them with spine-chilling tales drawn from the captain’s books and fantastic maps, which he embellished by drawing from his inexhaustible imagination, in which there were gigantic octopuses with tentacles capable of destroying a ship as large as the Madre de Dios, carnivorous salamanders the size of whales, and sirens that from a distance looked like seductive maidens but were in fact monsters with snakelike tongues. Never go near them, Diego warned the sailors, because they hold out their smooth arms to embrace an unwary seaman, kiss him, and then slip their lethal tongues down the poor fool’s throat and devour him from the inside out, leaving nothing but a skeleton covered with hide.
“Have you seen those glittering lights on the waves? You know, of course, that they signal the presence of the living dead, Christian sailors who have drowned in attacks by Turkish pirates. Since they were not able to receive absolution for their sins, their souls could not find the way to purgatory. They lie trapped in the wrecks of their ships on the bottom of the ocean and don’t even know that they are dead. On nights like this, those wandering souls rise to the surface. If by any chance a ship sails past, the living dead climb on board and steal anything they can find: anchor, wheel, the captain’s instruments, ropes, even the masts. But that isn’t the worst, my friends they also need sailors. Any they can catch, they drag down to the depths to help them salvage their boats and sail to Christian shores. I hope that doesn’t happen on this voyage, but we must be on guard. If you see any stealthy black figures, you can be sure they are the living dead. You will know them by their capes, which they wear to cloak the rattling of their poor bones.”
Diego found, to his delight, that his eloquence produced collective terror. He told his tales at night, after dinner, at the hour when the men were savoring their pint of rum and chewing their tobacco, because it was much easier to make their hair stand on end when it was dark.
After laying the groundwork with several days of hair-raising stories, he was ready for the coup de grace. Dressed entirely in black, wearing gloves and the cape with the buttons from Toledo, he made sudden brief appearances in the darkest corners of the ship. In that getup he was nearly invisible at night, except for his face, but Bernardo had the idea of covering it with a black kerchief in which he cut two holes for the eyes. Several sailors swore they saw at least one of the living dead. Instantly, word traveled that the ship was bewitched, and they laid that at the door of the auditor’s daughter, who had to be possessed by a devil, since she never used the chamber pot. She was the only one who could have attracted the ghosts. The rumor reached the ears of the nervous spinster and triggered such a brutal headache that the captain had to sedate her for two days with massive doses of laudanum. When Santiago de Leon learned what had happened, he summoned the sailors to the bridge and threatened to cut off all liquor and tobacco if they continued to spread such poppycock. Those dancing lights, he told them, were a natural phenomenon caused by weather, and the apparitions they thought they were seeing were the products of suggestion. No one believed the captain, but he had imposed order.
Once a semblance of calm had been restored, he led Diego by one wing to his stateroom and when they were alone warned him that if any living dead turned up again on the Madre de Dios, he, the captain, would have no reluctance to have Diego flogged.
“I have the right of life or death on my ship; and I’m even more entitled to scar your back for your lifetime. Do we understand one another, young de la Vega?” he growled between clenched teeth, accentuating each word.
It was as clear as day to Diego, but he didn’t answer because he was distracted by the glimpse of a medallion hanging around the captain’s neck; gold and silver, it was engraved with strange symbols. When Santiago de Leon noticed that Diego had seen it, he hurriedly tucked it inside and buttoned his jacket. His action was so abrupt that the boy was afraid to ask the significance of the jewel. Once his anger was spent, the captain was gentler.
“If we have favoring winds, and do not run into pirates, this voyage will last six weeks. You will have more than enough opportunity to be bored, my boy. I suggest that instead of terrorizing my men with childish pranks, you spend your time studying. Life is short; there is never enough time to learn.”
Diego rapidly figured that he had read nearly everything on board that interested him and by now had conquered the sextant, nautical knots, and sails, but he nodded in agreement; he had another science in mind.
He went down to the suffocating hold of the ship, where the cook was preparing Sunday dessert, a pudding of molasses and nuts that the crew eagerly awaited all week. The cook was a man from Genoa who had signed onto the Spanish merchant marine to avoid going to prison, where in all justice he should be for having hacked his wife to death. He had an unsuitable name for a sailor: Galileo Tempesta. Before he took over the galley on the Madre de Dios, Tempesta had been a magician, earning his living wandering from market to fair with his sleight-of-hand tricks. He had an expressive face, prominent eyes, and the hands of a virtuoso, with fingers like tentacles. He could make a coin disappear so smoothly that standing only a hand span away, it was impossible to discover how the devil he did it. He used breaks in his labors in the kitchen to practice; when he wasn’t palming coins or cards and making daggers disappear, he was sewing secret pockets into hats, boots, linings, and jacket cuffs that he used for hiding multicolored handkerchiefs and live rabbits.
“Senor Tempesta, the captain sent me to ask you to teach me everything you know,” Diego blurted out in one breath.
“I don’t know much about cooking, boy.”
“But I was referring to your magic.”
“You don’t learn that talking, that you learn doing,” Galileo Tempesta replied.
The rest of the voyage he devoted himself to teaching Diego his tricks for the same reason that the captain told the boy about his voyages and showed him his maps: because those men had never enjoyed as much attention as they received from Diego. At the end of the crossing, forty-one days later, Diego, among other amazing feats, could swallow a gold doubloon and pull it whole from one of his notable ears.
The Madre de Dios left the city of Portobelo behind and, taking advantage of the Gulf currents, swung north, sailing along the coast of the United States. At about the latitude of Bermuda, she headed into the Atlantic and three weeks later called at the Azores to stock up on water and fresh food. That archipelago of nine volcanic islands belonging to Portugal was an obligatory stop for whalers of every nationality. They arrived at Flores Island well named, since it was covered with hydrangeas and roses on the day of a national fiesta.
First the crew filled up on wine and the island’s typical hearty soup, then played around a while getting into fistfights with American and Norwegian whalers, and finally set off in a group to take part in the running of the bulls. The whole male population of the island, plus visiting sailors, raced in front of the bulls through the steep streets of the town, yelling the obscenities that Captain Santiago de Leon prohibited on board. The beautiful local women, with flowers in their hair and at their necklines, cheered from a prudent distance, while the priest and two nuns prepared bandages and the sacraments to tend the wounded and dying. Diego knew that any bull is always quicker than the swiftest human, but if it charges blind with anger it is possible to outwit it.
The boy had seen so many bulls in his short life that he was not overly afraid. Thanks to his experience, he saved Galileo Tempesta by a hair when a pair of horns aimed at his backside were ready to spear him.
Diego ran and whipped the beast with a stick to head it off as the magician dived headfirst into a clump of hydrangeas amid the applause and laughter of the crowd. Then it was Diego’s turn to bolt like a buck, with the bull at his heels. Although there was a lot of battering and bruising, no one died of being gored that year. It was the first time in history that had happened, and the people of the Azores did not know whether to take it as a good omen or a warning of disaster. That remained to be seen. In any case, the bulls made a hero of Diego. And Galileo Tempesta, deeply grateful, gave the boy a Moroccan dagger fitted with a hidden spring that allowed the blade to retract into the handle.
The Madre de Dios sailed with the trade winds for a few weeks more.
Coasting Spain, she passed Cadiz without stopping and headed toward the Strait of Gibraltar, the entrance to the Mediterranean controlled by the English, who were allies of Spain and enemies of Napoleon. With no major alarms, they followed the coast without putting into port, and finally arrived at Barcelona, the end of Diego and Bernardo’s journey.
To their eyes, the ancient Catalan port resembled a forest of masts and sails. There were ships of every origin, shape, and size. If the youths had been impressed by the little town of Panama, imagine the effect Barcelona had on them. The city lay proud and massive against a leaden sky accented with turrets, towers, and walls. From the harbor it looked like a splendid city, but in the dark of night the face of Barcelona changed. They were not able to debark until the next morning, when Santiago de Leon lowered dinghies to ferry his impatient crew and passengers ashore. In the greasy harbor hundreds of little launches were circulating among the larger vessels, and thousands of gulls filled the air with their squawking.
Diego and Bernardo bid farewell to the captain, Galileo Tempesta, and the sailors who were pushing and shoving to get into the yawl, in a frenzy to spend their pay on liquor and women. The auditor, meanwhile, had to carry his daughter, who had swooned from the foul odors in the air. And with good reason. When they reached shore, a beautiful and lively but unhealthful port awaited; deep in garbage, it was crawling with rats as big as dogs that boldly darted between the legs of a hurried throng. Wastewater ran in open gutters where barefooted children splashed in play and women emptied chamber pots from upper-story windows, yelling “Heads up!” to passersby, who had to jump aside to keep from being drenched with urine. Barcelona, with its hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, was one of the most densely populated cities in the world. Encircled by thick walls, guarded by the sinister La Ciudadela fort, and trapped between the ocean and the mountains, it had nowhere to grow but up. Garrets were added to houses, and rooms were subdivided into tiny cubicles where tenants crowded together without fresh air or clean water. Foreigners in assorted attire walked around the docks, insulting one another in incomprehensible tongues: sailors wearing striped stocking caps and sporting parrots on their shoulders, stevedores rheumatic from carrying too-heavy loads, rude vendors selling jerked beef and biscuits, beggars bubbling with lice and pustules, derelicts with ready knives and desperate eyes. Prostitutes of the lowest degree mingled with the crowd, while the more pretentious among them rode in carriages, competing in splendor with distinguished ladies. French soldiers trooped around prodding pedestrians with the butts of their muskets for the pure pleasure of annoying them. Behind their backs, women cursed them and spit on the ground. Nothing, however, could dim the incomparable elegance of that city bathed in the silvery light of the sea. When they stepped onto shore, Diego and Bernardo were so unaccustomed to walking on land that they staggered and nearly fell, just as they had on Flores
Island. They had to hold one another up until they could control the trembling of their knees and focus their eyes.
“And what do we do now, Bernardo? I agree with you that the first thing would be to rent a coach and try to locate the home of Don Tomas de Romeu. You say that first we ought to claim what is left of our luggage? Yes, you’re right.”
So they pushed their way through the crowd, Diego talking to himself and Bernardo a step behind, alert, fearing that someone would grab his distracted friend’s purse. They passed the market, where bovine old women were selling the produce of the sea, standing in puddles of fish heads and guts that were soaking into the ground beneath a cloud of flies. It was here they were intercepted by a tall man with the profile of a buzzard. In Diego’s eyes, judging from the blue velvet uniform, the gold epaulets of his jacket, and three-cornered hat perched on his white wig, he had to be an admiral. He greeted the man with a deep bow, sweeping the cobbles with his California sombrero.