“As for the coachman,” declared Quevedo, “he deserved to die for belonging to such a wretched profession.”
Then he looked again at my master and returned to the matter in hand.
“Yes, Cózar,” he said.
The captain sat impassively, watching the ebb and flow of people on the mentidero. He said nothing. The sun accentuated the greenish light in his eyes.
“They say,” added Quevedo after a pause, “that our ardent monarch is laying siege to La Castro. Would you know anything about that?”
“Why would I?” asked Alatriste, chewing on a piece of pasty.
Don Francisco drank down his wine and said nothing more. The friendship they professed for each other excluded both giving advice and interfering in each other’s affairs. A long silence ensued. The captain was still turned toward the street, his face expressionless; and I, after exchanging a worried look with the poet, did the same. Idlers stood around in groups, chatting or else strolling about and ogling the women as if trying to divine what delights their cloaks might conceal. At the entrance to his shop, the cobbler Taburca, still wearing his leather apron and holding a hammer, was holding forth to his stalwarts on the merits, or otherwise, of the previous day’s play. A woman selling lemons passed by, her basket over her arm (“Fresh and tart as you like,” was her cry), and became the object of lewd compliments from two students in cap and gown who were munching lupine seeds as they walked along, bundles of verses stuffed in their pockets, both clearly on the lookout for someone with whom they could exchange some banter. Then I noticed a dark, scrawny individual, with the bearded face of a Turk; he was standing in a nearby doorway, watching us as he cleaned the dirt from under his fingernails with a knife. He had no cloak on, but he carried a dagger, a long sword in a baldric, and wore a much-darned, tow-stuffed doublet, the floppy, broad-brimmed hat of a ruffian, and a large gold earring dangling from one earlobe. I was about to study him more carefully when someone came up behind me, casting a shadow over the table. Greetings were exchanged, and don Francisco rose to his feet.
“I don’t know if you two have met before. Diego Alatriste, this is Pedro Calderón de la Barca.”
The captain and I both stood up to greet the new arrival, whom I had seen occasionally at the Corral de la Cruz. I immediately recognized the downy mustache and the pleasant, slender face. He wasn’t grimy with sweat and soot this time, nor was he wearing a buffcoat; he had on elegant city clothes, a fine cape and a hat with an embroidered hatband, and the sword he wore at his belt was clearly not that of a soldier. Nevertheless, he wore the same smile as he had at the sacking of Oudkerk.
“The boy’s name,” added Quevedo, “is Íñigo Balboa.”
Pedro Calderón looked at me for a while, as if trying to place me.
“A comrade from Flanders, I believe,” he said at last. “Isn’t that right?”
His smile grew broader, and he placed a friendly hand on my shoulder. I felt like the luckiest young man in the world and savored the astonished look on the faces of Quevedo and my master. Calderón was claimed by some as the heir to Tirso and to Lope, and his star was beginning to shine brightly in the theaters and at the palace.
His play The Mock Astrologer had been performed with great success the previous year, and he was, at the time, putting the finishing touches to The Siege at Breda. No wonder, then, that don Francisco and my master were so astonished that this young playwright should remember a humble soldier’s page who, two years before, had helped him save a library from the flames in a Flemish town hall. Calderón sat down with us, and for a while there was much pleasant conversation and more wine, which the new arrival accompanied with no more than a bowl of olives, for he did not, he said, have much appetite. Finally, we all got up and took a turn about the mentidero. An acquaintance, who had been reading something out loud to a group of guffawing idlers, came over to us with a few of his fellows in tow. He was holding a piece of manuscript paper.
“They say this was penned by you, Señor de Quevedo.”
Quevedo cast a disdainful eye over the writing, enjoying the expectant hush. Then he smoothed his mustache and read out loud:
“The man in this dark tomb,
Who lies here dead and doomed,
Sold body and soul for a wager
And even dead he’s still a gamester . . .
“No,” he said, apparently grave-faced, but with tongue firmly in cheek. “That last line could do with a bit of work—if, of course, I had written it. But tell me, gentlemen, is Góngora such a broken man that people are already writing epitaphs for him?”
There were gales of flattering laughter, the same laughter that would have greeted a barb aimed by Góngora at Quevedo. The truth is that, although don Francisco preferred not to say so in public, he had, indeed, written those lines, just as he had many of the other anonymous verses that ran like hounds about the mentidero; although sometimes, other people’s poems, however uninventive, were also attributed to him. As regards Góngora, that quip about his epitaph was not far off the mark. Quevedo had bought a house in Calle del Niño purely in order to evict Góngora; and that leader of the ranks of culturanistas, ruined by the vice of gaming and his desire to cut a fine figure, and so short of funds that he could only just afford a miserable carriage and a couple of maidservants, was forced to submit and retire to his native Córdoba, where he died, ill and embittered, the following year, when the disease afflicting him—apoplexy, some said—finally attacked his mind. Arrogant and aristocratic in manner, that Córdoban prebendary was as unlucky at cards as he was in his choice of friends and enemies; he clashed with Lope de Vega and with Quevedo, and placed his affections as mistakenly as he placed his bets, linking himself to the fallen Duke of Lerma, the executed don Rodrigo Calderón, and the murdered Count of Villamediana. And any hopes he had of receiving favors from the court and from the count-duke—whom he asked on numerous occasions for positions for his nephews and other members of his family—had died when Olivares famously announced: “The devil take those people from Córdoba.” He had no better luck with his work. Out of pride, he had always refused to publish anything, preferring to distribute his poems amongst his friends for them to read and publicize; then, when necessity did finally force him to publish, he died before he saw his books leave the press, and the Inquisition immediately ordered them to be confiscated as suspicious and immoral. And yet, although I never warmed to the man and disliked his particular brand of Latinate gibberish—all triclinia and grottoes—I still say that don Luis de Góngora was an extraordinary poet who, paradoxically, along with his mortal enemy Quevedo, did much to enrich this beautiful language of ours. These two cultivated and spirited men, each writing in very different styles, but with equal skill, breathed new life into Castilian Spanish, one with his linguistic richness and the other with his intellectual swagger. It could be said that this fruitful, pitiless battle between two literary giants changed the Spanish language forever.
We left don Pedro Calderón with some relatives and friends of his and continued down Calle Francos to Lope’s house—this was how everyone in Spain referred to it, with no need even to mention his glorious family name—for Quevedo had some messages to pass on to him from the palace. I turned to look behind me a couple of times, to see if we were being followed by that dark, cloakless ruffian; on the third time of looking, he had gone. A mistake perhaps, I told myself; my instinct, though, attuned to the violent mores of Madrid, told me that such mistakes smell of blood and steel on some dimly lit street corner. There were, however, other matters demanding my attention. One of these was the fact that don Francisco, as well as being commissioned by the count-duke to write a play, had been charged with composing a courtly ballad or two for the queen, to be performed at a party in the Salón Dorado—the Golden Room—in the Alcázar Palace. Quevedo had promised to take these ballads to the palace himself, because the queen wanted him to read them out loud to her and her ladies-in-waiting, and Quevedo, who was, above all, a good a
nd loyal friend, had invited me to accompany him in the role of assistant or secretary or page or some such thing. I didn’t mind what title I was given as long as I saw Angélica de Alquézar—the maid of honor with whom, as you will recall, I was deeply in love.
The other matter was this visit to Lope’s house. Don Francisco de Quevedo knocked at the door and Lope’s maidservant, Lorenza, opened it. I knew the house already, and later, over the years, visited it often because of the friendship that existed between don Francisco and Lope, and between my master and certain other frequent visitors to that Phoenix of Inventiveness, among them his close friend Captain Alonso de Contreras and another younger man who was, unexpectedly, about to enter the scene. We walked into the hallway, down the passageway and past the stairs leading up to the first floor, where the poet’s little nieces were playing. (Years later, it was discovered that these were, in fact, Lope’s daughters by Marta de Nevares.) We emerged, at last, into the little garden where Lope was sitting on a wicker chair beneath the shade of a vine, next to the well and the famous orange tree that he tended with his own hands. He had just finished eating, and nearby stood a small table on which there were still the remains of a meal, as well as cool drinks and sweet wine in a glass pitcher for his guests. Lope was accompanied by three other men, one of whom was the aforementioned Captain Contreras, who wore the cross of Malta on his doublet and was always to be found at Lope’s house whenever he was in Madrid. My master and he were very fond of each other, for they had sailed together in the Naples galleys, and had met before that as youths, almost boys, when they both set off for Flanders with the troops of Archduke Alberto. At the time, Contreras was something of a ruffian, for at the tender age of twelve, he had already knifed one of his own kind and subsequently deserted from the army when the troops were only halfway to Flanders. The second gentleman, don Luis Alberto de Prado by name, was a secretary in the Council of Castile; he was from Cuenca and had a reputation as a decent poet; he was also a fervent admirer of Lope. The third was a handsome young nobleman with a youthfully sparse mustache; he must have been about twenty years old or so and wore a bandage round his head. When he saw us, he sprang to his feet in surprise, an emotion I saw replicated on Captain Alatriste’s face, for the latter immediately stopped where he was by the well and instinctively placed his hand on the hilt of his sword.
“Well,” said the young man, “Madrid really is a small world.”
It certainly was. Only the previous morning, he and Captain Alatriste, ignorant of each other’s names, had fought a duel together. Even more remarkable, as everyone was about to discover, this young fighter’s name was Lopito Félix de Vega Carpio and he was the poet’s son, newly arrived in Madrid from Sicily, where he had served under the Marquis of Santa Cruz, having enlisted in the galleys when he was just fifteen. He was the illegitimate child—albeit acknowledged by Lope—from the latter’s affair with the actress Micaela Luján; he had fought against Berber pirates, done battle with the French off the Îles d’Hyères, and taken part in the liberation of Genoa, and now he was in Madrid, hoping to sort out the papers that would confirm him in the rank of ensign. He was also, it turned out, keeping watch on a certain lady’s window. Anyway, this present situation was damnably awkward. While Lopito gave a detailed account of what had happened, his bewildered father sat in his chair, his ecclesiastical gown still sprinkled with crumbs, and looked from one to the other, not knowing whether to be surprised or angry. Once recovered from their initial shock, Captain Contreras and don Francisco de Quevedo argued the case with reason and tact; my master, however, greatly upset, offered his apologies and made ready to leave at once, convinced that he would no longer be welcome in that house. Quevedo was saying:
“The boy is, in fact, to be congratulated. Crossing swords with the best blade in Madrid and coming away with only a scratch is either a mark of skill or very good luck.”
Captain Contreras confirmed that this was so and gave further evidence. He and Diego Alatriste had been in Italy together, and he knew that the only reason Alatriste ever failed to dispatch an opponent was because he chose not to. This and other arguments continued to be exchanged, but my master was still preparing to leave. He courteously bowed to Lope, gave his word that he would never have unsheathed his sword had he known his adversary to be Lope’s son, and then turned to go before Lope could say a word. At this point, Lopito de Vega intervened.
“Please, Father, allow the gentleman to stay,” he said.
He bore him no ill feeling at all, because he had fought like a true hidalgo right from the start.
“And although that last knife-thrust may not have been exactly elegant—well, so few are—he didn’t just leave me there like a dog. He bandaged my wound and was kind enough to send someone to fetch me and take me to a barber.”
These dignified words calmed the situation. The father of the wounded man ceased frowning; Quevedo, Contreras, and Prado all praised the young ensign’s discretion, which said much for himself and his purity of blood; Lopito described the incident in more detail this time and in jovial terms; and the conversation resumed its friendly tone, thus dissipating the heavy clouds that had been threatening to spoil that postprandial gathering and bring down Lope’s displeasure on my master, something that the latter would have keenly regretted, for he was a great admirer of Lope and respected him as he did few men. Finally, the captain accepted a glass of sweet Málaga wine, concurred with everything the others had said, and Lopito and he became firm friends. They would remain so for eight years, until ensign Lope Félix de Vega Carpio met his unhappy fate when he drowned after his ship was wrecked on an expedition to Île Sainte-Marguerite. I will, however, have occasion to say more about him in this story, and possibly in a future episode, too, if I ever recount the role played by Lopito, Captain Alatriste, and myself, along with other comrades—some of whom you have met already and others whom you have not—in the attack on Venice launched by the Spanish for the second time in the century—an attempt to take the city and murder the doge and his cronies, who had given us so much trouble in the Adriatic and in Italy by ingratiating themselves with the pope and with Richelieu. But all in good time. Besides, Venice merits a book to itself.
We continued our pleasant conversation in the garden until late into the afternoon, and took advantage of this opportunity to observe Lope de Vega close to. I had met him once on the steps of San Felipe, when I was a young lad newly arrived in Madrid, and he had placed his hand on my head, almost as if in an act of confirmation. I imagine it must be difficult now to grasp just what an important figure the great Lope was in those days. He must have been about sixty-four then, and he still had a very gallant air about him, enhanced as it was by his elegant gray locks and his trim mustache and beard, which he continued to wear despite his clerical habit. He was a discreet man who spoke little, smiled a great deal, and sought to please everyone, and who concealed behind impeccable courtesy his pride at having reached such an enviable position. No one—apart from Calderón—enjoyed such fame in his lifetime, writing plays of a beauty, variety, and richness that were unequaled in Europe. He had been a soldier in his youth, seen action in a naval battle in the Azores, in Aragon, and in the war against England, and at the time of which I am speaking, he had written a good part of the more than one thousand five hundred plays and four hundred sacramental dramas that flowed from his pen. His status as a priest did not prevent him enjoying a long and scandalous life full of amorous intrigues, lovers, and illegitimate children, all of which meant, understandably enough, that despite his great literary reputation, he was never seen as a particularly virtuous man and so received none of the courtly benefits to which he aspired, such as the post of royal chronicler, which he always sought but never attained. Otherwise, he enjoyed both fame and fortune. And unlike good don Miguel de Cervantes, who died, as I said, poor, alone, and forgotten, Lope’s funeral, nine years after the dates that concern us here, was a multitudinous display of homage such as had never before bee
n seen in Spain. As for the basis for his reputation, much has been written about that, and I commend those books to the reader. I later had occasion to travel to England and learn the English tongue. I read and even saw performances of plays by William Shakespeare, and I would say that although the Englishman could plumb the depths of the human heart, and while his characters are perhaps more complex than Lope’s, the Spaniard’s sheer theatrical skill, inventiveness, and ability to keep an audience on tenterhooks, the brilliance of his intrigues and the captivating way in which each plot evolves are all incomparable. And even when it comes to characters, I’m not sure that the Englishman always succeeded in depicting the doubts and anxieties of lovers, or the crafty machinations of servants as ingeniously as Lope. Consider, if you will, his little-known work The Duke of Viseu and tell me if that tragic play is not the equal of any of Shakespeare’s tragedies. Moreover, if it is true that Shakespeare’s plays were in some way so universal that we can all recognize ourselves in them—only Don Quixote is as Spanish as Lope and as universal as Shakespeare—it is no less true that Lope, with his new approach to drama, held up a very faithful mirror to the Spain of our century, and that his plays were imitated everywhere, thanks to the fact that Spanish, then, was a language that bestrode two worlds, a language admired, read, and spoken by everyone. However, it must be said, too, that this was due in no small measure to the fact that it was also the language of our fearsome troops and our arrogant, black-clad ambassadors. Unlike other nations—and in this I happily include that of Shakespeare—only Spain has left such a clear record of its customs, values, and language, and all thanks to the plays of Lope, Calderón, Tirso, Rojas, Alarcón, and their ilk, which made such a lasting impression on the theaters of the world. At a time when Spanish was being spoken in Italy, Flanders, the Indies, and the remote seas of the Philippines, the Frenchman Corneille was imitating the work of Guillén de Castro in order to find success in his own land, and the land of Shakespeare was home only to a bunch of hypocritical pirates in search of excuses to prosper and, like so many others, nipping at the heels of the weary, old Spanish lion, who was, nonetheless, still capable of far greater things than they ever were. To quote Lope: