“He gobbles down his food. He’s a friar.”
Father Núñez had unwittingly passed the test. There was yet another.
Spanish cuisine is loaded with spices, and this naturally makes one thirsty. It was fashionable to place on the table large Guadalajara earthenware vessels that have the property of keeping water cool and give it a most agreeeable taste.
After consuming as dessert a big helping of macaroons, pastries, and sweets made by nuns, the guest couldn’t help but feel an imperious thirst; he who has a dry gullet neither growls nor sings.
“Show us how you go about this!” the countess murmured.
This was the decisive proof she was waiting for. If her guest was not what he revealed himself to be by his habit, he would drink the water down sparingly, with a neatness not customary in the refectory.
The friar took the heavy Guadalajara pitcher, raised it almost as high as his head, which he leaned on the back of his chair, tipped the pitcher, and began to drink his fill.
The vicereine, seeing that his thirst was like that of a sand dune and his way of satisfying it typical of a friar, said to him with a smile:
“Drink, father, drink, it will keep you alive!”
And the friar, taking the advice to be a friendly interest in his health, did not take his mouth from the pitcher until there wasn’t a drop left. His Paternity immediately passed his hand across his forehead to wipe away the sweat that was pouring out of him, and gave a belch like the snort of a harpooned whale.
Doña Ana got up from the table and went out on the balcony, followed by the judges.
“What do Your Lordships think?”
“That he’s undeniably a friar, Your Ladyship” the judges answered as one.
“So I believe, in the name of God and my soul. Let the good priest go in peace.”
Now, then, it’s up to you to say whether or not the woman who governed Peru was very much a man!
1Manuel de Mendiburu (1805–1888) was a Peruvian soldier and political figure who authored the Diccionario histórico–biográfico del Peru(8 vols., 1874–1890).—Ed.
2Manuel de Odriozola (1804–1889) was director of the Biblioteca Nacional during the War of the Pacific and the compiler of the Colección de Documentos históricos del Perúen las épocas del Coloniaje después de la Conquista y de la Independencia hasta la presente (10 vols., 1863–1877).—Ed.
3Umphrey’s translation, 113.
4Before the populace [Latin].
The Countess Who Was Summoned
A Chronicle of the Era of the Archbishop Who Was the Viceroy
Iconfess that among the many traditions that I have brought to light, none has caused me more trouble than the one that I am consigning to paper today. The plot of it is so thorny and delicate that the ink turns to sediment on the tip of my pen. But to Rome for everything, and may a good numen permit me to come through with flying colors and cover with a veil of decorum, although not a very thick one, this, my faithful account of an event that echoed all over Lima more resoundingly than the loudest nose blowing.
I
Doña Verónica Aristizábal, despite her 40 flowering Easters, was, around the year 1688, what in every land, of heretics and Christians alike, is called a good–looking woman. Never was ham better preserved, not even in Westphalia.
The widow of the count of Ellipsis Dots—a title like any other, for I don’t care to set the real one down in print—had been named on the death of her husband the tutor of their two sons, of whom the elder was five years old at the time. The count’s fortune was what is called a sizeable one, and consisted, in addition to a town house and valuable city properties, of two magnificent haciendas situated in one of the most fertile valleys near this City of Kings. And kindly forgive me, reader, if I change the names and do not specify where the action took place, for if I did so I would be dotting my i’s and perhaps mischievously cause you to point out, quite accurately, the descendants of the countess of Ellipsis Dots, as we have agreed to call this interesting widow. As for discretion, I am the keeper of the seal of secrecy.
Once the first months of mourning had passed and all the polite formulas of social etiquette had been observed, Verónica abandoned the house in Lima and went off with trunks and valises to live on one of the haciendas. In order that the reader may have some idea of the importance of this country fiefdom, it will suffice us to note that the number of slaves came to 1,200.
Among them was a robust and attractive mulatto 24 years old, for whom the deceased count had stood as godfather at his baptism, and as his godson he had always been treated with special affection and favor. At the age of 13, Pantaleón, for this was his name, was brought to Lima by his godfather, who set him to learning the everyday empiricism that in those days was called medical science, a very clear idea of which has been bequeathed to us by Juan de Caviedes, the Quevedo1of Lima, in his most amusing Diente del Parnaso.2 Perhaps Pantaleón, who was the contemporary of Caviedes, belonged to one of the types that stand out in this book of our original, caustic poet.
When the count decided that his godson now knew enough to correct a prescription of Hippocrates himself, he sent him back to the hacienda as doctor and apothecary, assigning him a room outside the quarters occupied by the other slaves, permitting him to dress decently and fashionably, and allowing him to occupy a seat at the table where the steward or administrator, a dimwitted Galician; the head overseer, who was cast in the same mold as the latter; and the chaplain, a chubby Mercedarian friar with a fatter neck than a Bujama deer, took their meals. Though not without muttering under their breath, the three of them were obliged to accept the doctor with the brand–new medical degree; and to make a long story short, either because of the useful services that the latter offered them, rescuing them from more than one brawl, or because they found him likable on account of his sharp wit and the distinction of his manners, the fact is that chaplain, steward, and overseer could not do without the company of the slave, whom they treated as a close friend and equal.
Around that time milady the countess arrived at the hacienda to live, and along with the chaplain and the two Galicians, who were the most notable employees on the estate, she admitted the slave to her nightly social gathering, for to her, apart from his being the godson and protégé of her late husband, he had the reputation of being don Exactly the Right Man to administer a sedative against a headache or a potion for any one of the complaints to which our frail nature is so prone.
Pantaleón not only enjoyed the prestige accorded him by science, but in addition his politeness, his youth, and his vigor and handsomeness were a contrast to the coarseness and the physical appearance of the Mercedarian friar and the two Galicians. Verónica was a woman, and this said, I have said that her imagination must have made the contrast seem still greater. The idleness and isolation of life on a hacienda, the ever impressionable nerves of the daughters of Eve, the trust that lemon balm water will calm them, especially if the doctor who administers it is young, good looking, and intelligent, the frequency and degree of intimacy of their relations, and—all the rest: what do I know?—caused Cupid to plant a well–aimed dart in the very center of the countess’s heart. And just as when the devil has no need to make a fly swatter of his tail, and loves tricks know no measure, there happened ... what you readers, without being soothsayers, will already have guessed. As the song rightly has it:
The sun suffers few eclipses
and the moon a thousand;
for women are apt to go wrong
more often than men.3
II
Reader, a cigar or a toothpick, and let us speak of colonial history.
Don Melchor de Liñán y Cisneros entered Lima as archbishop in February, 1678, but with the groundwork so well laid in the court of Madrid that five months later Charles II, removing the count of Castellar from his post, named His Reverence viceroy of Peru as well; and among other rewards, he later gave him the title of count of Puebla de los Valles, a title that the archbishop later transfer
red to one of his brothers.
His arms were those of the Liñán family: a shield, banded gules, and gold.
The viceroy and count of Castellar handed over the royal treasury with well–filled chests, and the archbishop and viceroy took care not to fall into the category of spendthrift. While the country was not rich, its state under the rule of Liñán y Cisneros was not one of penury; as he very wittily put it, speaking of the Treasury, it was necessary to guard it against the many who guarded it, and defend it against the many who defended it.
Unfortunately, his hauteur and the spirit of petty rivalry that he harbored against his predecessor, harassing him despicably in the trial over residence, detract from the name of the archbishop and viceroy in the eyes of history.
It was under his administration that the residents of Lima sent casks of gold for the “queen’s necklace,” the name given to the gift that the various peoples gave the monarch when he married: It was, let us say, the wedding present offered by his vassals.
The Brazilians took possession of a part of the terrritory bordering on Buenos Aires, and His Reverence promptly sent troops that, under the command of Field Marshal don José de Garro, the governor of Río de la Plata, dislodged them after a hard–fought battle. The Peace of Utrecht put an end to the war, with Portugal obtaining advantageous concessions from Spain.
The freebooters Juan Guarín (Warlen) and Bartolomé Chearps, abetted by the Indians of Darién, made incursions into the Southern Sea, took a number of important prizes in Panama, such as the vessel Trinidad, sacked the ports of Barbacoas, Ilo, and Coquimbo, razed Serena, and on February 9, 1681, disembarked in Arica. Gaspar de Oviedo, a royal lieutenant and supreme magistrate of the province, placed himself at the head of the people, and after eight hours of bloody combat, the pirates were forced to take refuge on their ships, leaving Captain Guarín behind among the dead and 11 men taken prisoner. Liñán y Cisneros hurriedly had two ships fitted out in Callao, armed them with 30 pieces of artillery, and gave command of them to General Pantoja; and although it is true that our squadron did not give chase to the pirates, its maneuvers played an important role in causing the latter, already demoralized by the disaster of Arica, to abandon our waters. As for the 11 prisoners, they were executed in the main square of Lima.
This era was one of great religious controversies. The rivalry between friars and Jesuit fathers in the missions of Mojos, Carabaya, and Amazonas; a stormy chapter in the history of the nuns of Saint Catherine in Quito, many of whom abandoned the cloister; and the dispute between Bishop Mollinedo and the canons of Cuzco over details of discipline, could be written about at length. But the most serious upheaval was that of the Franciscans of Lima who, on December 23, 1680, at 11 at night, set fire to the cell of the general commissar of the order, Friar Marcos Terán.
During the rule of Liñán y Cisneros, the 21st viceroy of Peru, the first copies of the Recopilación de leyes de Indias,4printed in Madrid in 1680, was received in Lima; the distilling of brandy not made from the pure dregs of wine was forbidden; and the little convent of Saint Rose of Viterbo for Franciscan lay sisters was founded.
III
Jealousy, The Greatest Monster is the title of a famous comedy of the Spanish Golden Age, and the poet certainly hit the nail on the head.
A year after the countess had established herself on the hacienda, she brought to it from a convent of nuns in Lima a little slave girl, 15 or 16 Aprils old, as fresh as a sherbet, as mischievous as an elf, as joyful as a Christmas Mass, and with a pair of black eyes so black that they seemed made of the darkness of night. She was Verónica’s pampered favorite. Before sending her to the convent to complete her education by learning needlework and other arts in which the good nuns are so skillful, her mistress had paid for her music and dance teachers, and the girl took such good advantage of the lessons that in Lima there was no harpist more expert, no timbre of voice purer and more pliant for singing the arias Bella Aminta and Pastor Feliz, no feet more nimble for tripping a sajuriana,5no waist more slender and patriotic for dancing a little dance of this homeland of ours.
It would be a Herculean task for me to describe Gertrudis’s beauty. Any portrait of this girl of color that I were to draw would be a pale one beside the original, and it suffices for the reader to imagine a mixture of one of those sorts of refined sugar and Ceylon cinnamon that caused the licentious blind friar of the Order of Our Lady Of Mercy to sing, in a ballad that I shall take care to reproduce exactly:
canela y azúcar fué
la bendita Magdalena...
quién no ha querido a una china,6no ha querido cosa buena.7
The arrival of Gertrudis on the hacienda awakened in the chaplain and the doctor all the appetite that a tasty morsel awakens. His friarly Reverence began to be distracted when he opened his breviary; and the doctor–apothecary’s mind was so preoccupied with the girl that, on one occasion, he administered jalap to one of his patients instead of gum arabic and thereby came within an inch of dispatching him to the land of skulls without a postillion.
Someone has said (and in case no one has thought of saying something so nonsensical I shall do so) that a rival has eyes like a telescope to discover, not a comet with a tail, but a flea in the heaven of his affair of the heart. This explains why the chaplain soon tumbled to the truth and acquired proof that between Pantaleón and Gertrudis there existed what, in politics, one of our eminent leaders called criminal complicity. The resentful rival then decided to take his vengeance, and went to the countess with the piece of gossip, hypocritically maintaining that it was a scandal and a disgrace for such an honorable house that two slaves should be involved in knavery that morality and religion condemn. Nonsense! Bells are not cast to make people frightened when they ring.
It is probable that if the Mercedarian had suspected that Verónica had made of her slave something more than a doctor, he would have refrained from accusing him. The countess had enough strength of will to control herself, thanked the chaplain for his piece of Christian information, and simply said that she would be able to put her house in order.
Once the friar had left, Verónica shut herself up in her bedroom to allow the storm that was roiling in her soul to do its worst. She, who had deigned to descend from the pedestal of her pride and preoccupations to raise a miserable slave to her own height, could not forgive him for treacherously deceiving her.
An hour later Verónica, affecting a serenity of spirit, went to the sugar mill and summoned the doctor. Pantaleón, thinking that the summons had to do with coming to the aid of someone who was ill, appeared at once. The countess, in the stern tone of voice of an examining magistrate, questioned him about his relations with Gertrudis, and exasperated by the lover’s stubborn answers in the negative, ordered the blacks to tie him to an iron ring and whip him mercilessly. After half–an–hour’s torture, Pantaleón was almost lifeless. The countess put a stop to the punishment and questioned him once more. The victim did not back down from his denials, and more exasperated than before, the countess threatened to have him thrown into a cauldron of boiling honey.
Even in the face of this cruel threat the unfortunate Pantaleón persisted in answering in the negative, and abandoning the respectful air with which up to that moment he had answered his mistress’s questions, he said:
“Do that, Verónica, and within a year, on the same day as today, at five in the afternoon, I shall summon you before God’s tribunal.”
“Insolent wretch!” the countess shouted in a fury, lashing the hapless Pantaleón across the face with her riding crop. “To the cauldron! To the cauldron with him!”
Horrors!
And the terrible command was immediately obeyed.
IV
The countess was taken to her apartments in a state of total delirium.
The months went by, her illness grew worse, and science declared defeat. In her frightful attacks the furious madwoman kept shouting:
“I am summoned!”
And there th
us arrived the morning of the day when the fateful appointed date came round, and wonder of wonders, the countess’s delirium was gone when she awakened. The new chaplain, who had replaced the Mercedarian friar, was summoned and heard her confession, pardoning her in the name of Him Who is ever merciful.
The priest gave Gertrudis her letter of emancipation and a sum of money from her mistress. The unfortunate girl of color, whose fatal beauty was the cause of the tragedy, left an hour later for Lima, and took the habit of a lay sister in the convent of the Poor Clares.
Verónica spent the rest of the day in peace. The bell of the hacienda sounded the first stroke of five. On hearing it the madwoman leapt from her bed shouting:
“It’s five o’clock! Pantaleón! Pantaleón!”
And fell dead in the middle of her bedroom.
1Francisco de Quevedo, a Spanish Golden Age satirist (1580–1645).—Ed.
2Juan del Valle Caviedes (1652–1694) was a notable satirist whose most famous work is El diente del parnaso (Tooth of Parnassus).—Ed.
3Pocos eclipses el sol / y mil la luna padece; / que son al desliz más prontas / que los hombres las mujeres.
4The official law code for the Indies.
5A traditional Peruvian dance.
6A girl of colo.
7the blessed Magdalena / was sugar and cinnamon.../ he who has not loved a china / hasn’t loved a good thing.
A Mother’s Love
A Chronicle of the Era of the Viceroy “Silver–Arm”
(To Juana Manuela Gorriti)1
We have considered it advisable to alter the names of the principal characters in this Tradition, a venal sin that we have committed in “The Countess Who Was Summoned” and several others. Names matter little if one takes care not to falsify historical truth, and the reader will readily guess the very powerful reason we had for rebaptizing our fellows.
Peruvian Traditions Page 10
