“Don’t be vexed, Your Paternity,” the lay brother in charge of the infirmary answered imperturbably. “I’ll wash it this minute and everything will be put right.”
And without giving the prior time to argue with him, he placed the sugarloaf in the water of the baptismal font and it came out white and dry.
So then! Don’t make me laugh, for I’ve one lip that’s cracked.
Believe it or not. But let it be clearly understood that I am not putting a dagger to my reader’s breast to make him believe. Freedom has to be free, as a journalist from my country once said. And I note here that I intended only to speak of the mice under Friar Martín’s jurisdiction, so the saint is escaping me and is on his way to heaven. An end to this introduction and on to the point of the story, the mice I mean.
Friar Martín de Porres had a special liking for mice, bothersome guests that came to us almost at the same time as the conquest, for up until the year 1552 these beasties were unknown in Peru. They arrived from Spain in one of the ships that a certain don Gutierre, bishop of Palencia, sent to our ports with a shipload of cod. Our Indians baptized the mice with the name of hucuchas, which means “come from the sea.”
In Martín’s barbering days, a mouse was still almost a curiosity, for relatively speaking, the rodent family had only just begun to multiply. Perhaps it was from that time on that he grew fond of the little rodents, seeing in them the handiwork of the Lord, and it may be imagined that, making a comparison between his person and that of these little creatures, he said what a poet has said:
El mismo tiempo malgastó en mí Dios
que en hacer un ratón, o lo más dos.2
When our Martín was fulfilling the functions of lay brother in charge of the infirmary, the mice made camp like Moors without an overlord in cells, kitchen, and refectory. Cats, which had been introduced into Peru in 1537, were rare in the city. It is a proven historical fact that the first cats were brought to Peru by a Spanish soldier named Montenegro, who sold one in Cuzco to don Diego de Almagro the elder for 200 pesos.
Growing tired of the invasion of mice, the friars invented different sorts of traps to catch them, with little success. Friar Martín too placed a mouse trap in the infirmary, and an inexperienced little mouse, attracted by the smell of the cheese, got itself caught in it. Friar Martín freed it, and placing it in the palm of his hand, said to it:
“Be off with you, little brother, and tell your comrades not to be a bother or do harm in the cells. Tell them to go live in the kitchen garden, and I will take care to bring them food each day.”
The mouse ambassador fulfilled its mission, and from that moment on the mouse population abandoned the cloister and moved out to the garden. Martín naturally visited them every morning, taking them a basketful of kitchen scraps or leftovers, and the mice came running as though they had been summoned by a bell.
Our good Fray Martín kept a dog and a cat in his cell, and had managed to make both animals live in brotherly harmony, to the point that they ate out of the same bowl or dish.
He was watching them eat in peaceful concord one afternoon, when suddenly the dog growled and the cat bristled. This was because a mouse, attracted by the odor of the meat in the dish, had dared poke its nose out of its hole. Fray Martín spied it, and turning toward the dog and cat, said to them:
“Calm yourselves, you creatures of the Lord, calm yourselves.”
He immediately went over to the hole in the wall and said:
“It is safe to come out, brother mouse. It appears that you’d like to eat. Come closer, they won’t harm you.”
And turning to the other two animals he added:
“Come, you two, leave a place for a guest, for God will provide for the three of you.”
And the mouse, without being asked twice, accepted the invitation, and from that day on ate in the love and fellowship of dog and cat.
And...and...and... isn’t this story all stuff and nonsense? No, of course not!
1And there ate out of the same dish / dog, mouse and cat.
2God wasted the same time in making me / as in making a mouse, or at most two.
Two Excommunications
Blessed be the nineteenth century, in which the principle of equality before the law is dogma, with no talk of laws or privileges.
The fact that dogma is frequently proven false in practice is none of my business. It is always a consolation to know that it exists in written form and that we are exercising our right when we loudly protest against the arbitrary acts of those in power.
This nonsense has come to mind and to my pen on taking as my subject the conflicts in which, in the middle of the last century don Nicolás de Boza y Solís, the mayor of Huamanga, found himself involved. I shall proceed to tell of them.
Next door to the residence of the bishop don Alfonso López Roldán, who was a dissenter without equal, was a tavern with a private door leading to the courtyard of His Reverence. The owner of the tavern was a Catalan, who answered to Cachufeiro, his name or his nickname of Fierceface, I don’t know which, an ill–tempered man if ever there was one.
The occupation of tavern keeper, in which one easily made money, was a privilege; according to a royal warrant issued in Peru in the era of the viceroy and count of Chinchón, only Spaniards from Spain were allowed to run a tavern. Furthermore, the number of them was limited to 1 per block in Lima, to 30 in Arequipa and Cuzco, to 15 in Trujillo, and to 12 in towns like Huamanga. A tavern keeper was thus almost a dignitary.
As a measure to keep the peace, the mayor had ordered that no tavern be open after curfew, because when those fond of the juice of the vine congregated they caused scandal and a commotion, upsetting the peace–loving neighborhood. Cachufeiro paid no attention whatsoever to the edict nor to the repeated warnings of the constables, and kept his establishment open until whatever hour he felt like closing. His Lordship’s temper finally reached the boiling point, for he made the rounds of the town after ten at night, and the insolent tavern keeper was taken to jail.
On being notified of the jailing of his neighbor, the bishop called for him to be set free, for the tavern, as he understood the law to read, enjoyed the same exemption from curfew as the episcopal residence. The mayor answered the note the bishop sent him by refusing, in respectful terms, to accede, arguing that a tavern with a door to the street was under the immediate jurisdiction of the civil authority, without the private door that led to or communicated with the bishop’s courtyard and diocesan residence being taken into consideration. And to show his respect for His Reverence, the mayor had the scribe of the town council go in person to deliver his note and also give the bishop other satisfactory explanations verbally.
Don López Roldán had, as we have said, a hot temper, and after reading the note, he said in a rage to the scribe:
“Go back, you rotter of a rogue, and tell that bamboozling mayor that if he hasn’t freed my neighbor within an hour, I shall proclaim him to be under major excommunication. Go.”
It burned the scribe like Spanish fly, though he had neither eaten it or drunk it, to hear himself called not simply a rogue, but a rotter of a rogue, which is the worst of insults, and he answered:
“Allow me to say to Your Reverence that I haven’t given him any reason to insult me.”
“Be quiet, you heretical scoundrel, and clear out of here”—the bishop interrupted him, raising his fists—“before I excommunicate you too for talking back to me.”
And the scribe turned on his heels and made his escape. Can you believe that the mayor of Huamanga, don Nicolás de Boza y Solís, trembled like a leaf as he let the prisoner go? Well, it happened just that way.
The worst of it was that he was fool enough to write to Lima, passing on all the details of the affair to the marquis of Castellfuerte,1the hard-hearted and touchy viceroy.
“What! An exemption for taverns? Do we have such a thing? We must keep a tight rein on that bishop and give that half–witted mayor a severe reprimand,” the
viceroy exclaimed.
And convoking the Royal Tribunal, the case of Bishop Roldán was tried. The trial lasted two years and ended with the bishop losing out to the civil authority.
When Boza y Solís read the dressing down the viceroy had sent him in answer to his report, he murmured:
“Now I’ve gone and done it! It was damned if I do and damned if I don’t.”
II
As for tight spots, that is what, around the year 1640, the grandson of the conquistador Jerónimo de Aliaga found himself in.
It so happened that having married doña Juana de Esquivel, the latter brought him as her dowry 50,000 good hard pesos, not to mention valuable properties, in the city and in the countryside, that she would no doubt inherit as the only daughter of parents who were both old and rich. After 12 years of marriage, doña Juana died without offspring, and in her will she bequeathed her entire fortune to her husband, with no further encumbrances than that of establishing, with the 50,000 pesos of her dowry, a benefice for a dignitary of the canons of the archbishopric of Lima.
But months and months went by without don Juan giving a thought to the matter of the benefice, until those interested in it had recourse to the will, convinced that on their own they would get nothing. And it came down to a lawsuit, whereupon don Juan looked for a lawyer who was a past master at legal chicanery. Years and years went by and the benefice was still not funded. And even to this day it would not have been funded had the matter been left to scheming pettifoggers and notaries.
But one day the archbishop had a fit of temper, and said: “Enough red tape.”
And without further ado, he ordered that the priest of the parish of San Sebastián proclaim, at High Mass on the following Sunday, a major excommunication of the lawbreaker.
In those days an excommunication weighed not drams, as excommunications do today, but many tons. Excommunications nowadays are like operettas, in which they’re a joke and make the excommunicated person a popular figure. They cause people to lose neither sleep nor their appetite. I know people who are dying to have themselves excommunicated.
It is also true that in those times, Rome abused its omnipotence with actions that today, certainly, it would not dare to carry out for fear of ridicule. It not only promoted whomever it pleased to the dignity of a saint, thereby doing no little injustice to living humanity, but also distributed high positions in the Church as it saw fit, and flattered kings to smooth the way for them. Thus in 1619, Paul V gave a cardinal’s hat and named as archbishop of Toledo the infante don Fernando, the son of Philip III, a child ten years old, heeding the signs of virtue he gave, signs that when he was a grown man turned out to be meaningless. Clement XII, in the following century, that is to say yesterday morning, promoted a child nine years old, the infante don Luis Antonio, the son of Philip V, who was as much a cardinal and archbishop as the next person, and who also belied the signs of his promotion. And who excommunicated those simoniacal popes: Who? Let us turn the page.
At the time, don Juan was about to enter into a second marriage with doña María Bravo y Maza, an aristocratic and surpassingly beautiful Limeñan, permanently ready for love, who had the luxury of having a spiritual director, with the result that she went to confession only during Lent, and that for the sake of appearances. For the sins she took aboard the ship of her life, it was enough to confess one petty theft a year.
That Sunday, unaware that that morning he had been proclaimed outside the communion of the Church, he went at two in the afternoon to make the usual Sunday visit to doña María. A maid was waiting for him in the doorway overlooking the street, and without allowing him to cross the threshold said to him:
“My mistress asks that you do her to the favor of not disgracing her house by setting foot in it, sir.”
That was the source of don Juan’s troubles. According to his friends he couldn’t have cared less about being excommunicated, but he wasn’t about to give up his lady love. He wrote, and his letter was returned without having been opened; he sent go–betweens and they were not received. The lady in question stubbornly refused to so much as acknowledge the greetings of her excommunicated lover.
What was the poor suitor to do? There was nothing for it but to strike his flag and discreetly give in, and that is precisely what he did.
Even Henry IV, a person of more importance than the Aliagas of my country, said: “Paris is well worth a Mass.”
And Mariquita, for don Juan, was worth more than Paris.
And so the benefice was funded, and there was a quiet wedding. Since little commemorative medals were not in use in that backward century, you will please excuse me if I fail to tell you the exact date of the wedding ceremony
1José de Armendáriz, marquis of Castellfuerte, was Peru’s eighth viceroy, 1724–1736.
The Major’s Calf 1
I
Fragment of a Letter from the Third in Command of the “Alejandro” Imperial Regiment to the Second in Command of the “Gerona” Battalion
Cuzco, December 3, 1822
My dear fellow countryman and comrade: I am taking the opportunity to write to you afforded me by the departure of Pedro Uriondo with letters from the viceroy to General Valdés.
Uriondo is the most entertaining native of Málaga that an Andalusian mother has ever brought into the world. I recommend him most highly to you. He has a mania for betting on anything and everything. In heaven’s name, brother, don’t give in to the weakness of accepting any bet with him, and for charity’s sake pass this warning on to your friends. Uriondo boasts of never having lost a bet, and he is telling the truth. So, then, keep your eyes open and don’t allow yourself to be trapped.
Ever yours,
JUAN ECHERRY
II
Letter from the Second in Command of the “Gerona” to His Friend in the “Alejandro Imperial”
Sama, December 28, 1822
My unforgettable comrade and kinsman: I am writing to you on a drumhead as the battalion makes ready to march on Tacna, where I consider it a sure thing that we are going to nab Martínez the gaucho before he joins up with Alvarado’s2troops, following which we propose to make him dance the zorongo.3From this day on the devil is going to carry off the insurgents. It is now time for Satan to take care of his own, and time that a colonel’s epaulettes gleam on the shoulders of this your ever–faithful friend.
I thank you for having brought me the friendship of Captain Uriondo. He is a young man worth his weight in gold, and in the few days that we have had him at headquarters he has been the darling of the officers. How well the devil of a lad sings! And how he knows how to make the strings of a guitar speak!
He will leave tomorrow on his way back to Cuzco with the general’s communications for the viceroy.
I regret to tell you that his laurels as the winner of wagers are fading. This morning he maintained that the appearance of hesitation that I have when I walk is due, not to the bullet wound I received in Upper Peru during the Guaqui campaign, but rather to a mole, the size of a grain of rice, which, according to what he stated as though he had examined me and palpated me, must be in the lower part of my left leg. He added, with an aplomb worthy of the doctor of my battalion, that that mole was the head of a vein, and that as time went by, if I didn’t get it burned off with lunar caustic, I would suffer mortal heart attacks. I am intimately acquainted with the complaints of my bulletridden body and know that I am not covered with moles, so I burst out laughing. Uriondo was a bit piqued, and bet six doubloons that he would convince me of the existence of the mole. To accept was equivalent to robbing him of his money, and I refused; but he stubbornly stuck to his assertion, and Captain Murrieta, who was a second lieutenant of Dismounted Cossacks in Callao, our fellow countryman Goytisolo, who is now captain of conscripts, Lieutent Sagado, who was with the Hussars and is now serving with the Dragoons; Father Marieluz, who is the men’s chaplain, and other officers intervened, all of them telling me:
“Come, major, win those doubl
oons that are falling to you from the heavens.”
Put yourself in my shoes. What would you have done? What I did, surely, showing my bare leg so that one and all might see that there was not even the shadow of a mole. Uriondo turned redder than a parboiled shrimp, and was obliged to confess that he was mistaken. And he handed the six doubloons over to me, which hurt my conscience, but in the end I was obliged to pocket them, for he insisted that he had lost them fair and square.
Against your advice, I was weak enough (as you put it) to agree to a bet between me and the unfortunate Malagan, and I was left, not only with my winnings of six doubloons, but also with the glory of having been the first to best the man you considered invincible.
At this moment, the bugler is blowing assembly. God keep you from a treacherous bullet, and for myself...the same.
DOMINGO ECHIZARRAGA
III
Letter from the Third in Command of the “Alejandro Imperial” to the Second in Command of the “Gerona”
Cuzco, January 10, 1823
Comrade: You... confounded me.
Captain Uriondo had bet me 30 doubloons that he would make you show your calf on the feast day of the Innocents.
Since yesterday, through your fault, there are 30 big gold cartwheels fewer in the meager purse of your friend, who pardons you for your naiveté and absolves you of having gone against his advice.
JUAN ECHERRY
IV
I the undersigned, guarantee, with all the gravity incumbent upon a collector of Traditions, the authenticity of the signatures of Echerry and Echizarraga.
1A pun. The word pantorrilla in the Spanish title also means gullibility.
2Rudecindo Alvarado (1792–1872), a high–ranking member of José de San Martín’s expeditionary force that liberated Chile and declared Peru’s independence.—Ed.
Peruvian Traditions Page 26
