The Dialogue of the Dogs (9 page)

Once, I went up to him without being seen. I heard him murmuring under his breath, and after a lengthy pause he said in a loud voice, “By God, this is the best octet I’ve written in my life!” Jotting quickly in his notebook, he looked deeply satisfied. All this gave me to understand that the poor unfortunate was a poet. I made my accustomed caresses to assure him of my harmlessness and settled myself at his feet. Reassured, he pursued his thoughts, again scratched his head, again surrendered to his woolgathering, and again set down what he had thought up.

In the middle of all this, another youth entered the orchard, handsome and well-dressed, with some papers in his hand that he consulted from time to time. He came up to the first one and asked, “Have you finished the first act?”

“I’ve just finished it,” answered the poet, “and it’s as elegant as can be imagined.”

“How so?” asked the second one.

“Like this: His sanctity the Pope enters dressed in his robes with a dozen cardinals, all outfitted in purple because the episode in my play takes place at the time of
mutatio caparum
, when cardinals dressed in purple, not red. So it’s most desirable, for the sake of propriety, that my cardinals wear purple.

“This point has a great bearing on the play, and you can be sure that others would mess it up, and create a thousand mistakes and infelicities at every turn. I’m not wrong about this, because I’ve read the whole Roman liturgy just to get these vestments right.”

“And where,” replied the other, “is my manager going to find purple vestments for a dozen cardinals?”

“If he leaves out even one,” the poet responded, “I’ll sooner fly than give him my play. Gadzooks, is this great scene to be lost? Just marvel how it’ll look in a theater to have the solemn pontiff with all his dozen grave cardinals, plus the other ministers they’ll have to bring with them. God in heaven, it’ll be one of the greatest spectacles ever seen on a stage, even including
The Nosegay of Daraja
!”

Here I figured out that one was a dramatic poet and the other an actor. The actor advised the poet to prune some of the cardinals if he didn’t want to make it impossible to stage the play. To which the poet said that the actor should be grateful he hadn’t put in the whole conclave that assembled for this memorable episode, which he was only trying to engrave in audiences’ memories with his brilliant play. The actor laughed and left him in this chore to go to his own, which was studying a role in another new drama. The poet, after writing some more stanzas of his magnificent play, unhurriedly and with great dignity removed from a sack some breadcrumbs and about twenty raisins, which I know because I counted them. I actually doubt there were that many, because the breadcrumbs mixed in made them look like more. He blew away the crumbs and, one by one, ate the raisins—and the stems, since I didn’t see him throw anything away. He helped it all down with some moldy crusts, fuzzy with the lint of his pockets, and so stale that though he tried to soften them, shifting them around in his mouth, their dryness was too much for him. All this worked to my advantage, since he threw them to me and said,

“Here, boy. Take this and enjoy it.”

Look what nectar or ambrosia this poet gives me, I said to myself, on which they say gods and Apollo feed in heaven!

In short, the neediness of poets is enormous, but my need was greater, because I had to eat what a poet threw away. The whole time he was working on his play, he never forgot to come to the orchard, nor did I want for crusts, since he shared them with me generously. Then we’d go to the well, where, he sipping from a bucket and me just snorfling away, we quenched our thirst like kings. So when the poet moved on and my hunger remained, I decided to leave the
morisco
and enter the city to seek adventure, since you always have to go out and meet your luck halfway.

On entering the city, I saw my playwright leaving the famous monastery of St. Geronimo. When he noticed me he rushed over with open arms, and I ran to him with redoubled affection. Right away he started to pull apart pieces of bread, softer than those he used to bring to the orchard, and put them in my mouth without putting them in his first—a gesture that soothed my hunger even more. The soft crumbs, and the sight of my poet leaving that soup kitchen, made me suspect that his muses, like so many others, were proud but poor.

He walked to the city and I followed him, determined to make him my master if he’d have it so, just knowing his table scraps would suffice to support me. There’s no purse better or deeper than charity’s, whose generous hands never hold back. I disagree
with the saying “The hard-hearted give more than the poor,” —as if a hard-hearted, greedy man would ever give anything—but a generous but penniless man at least gives good wishes when they’re all he’s got.

After getting a little turned around, we stopped at an impresario’s house who, as I remember, went by Angulo the Bad to distinguish him from the other Angulo, who wasn’t a manager but the most gifted actor there ever was. The whole troupe had assembled to hear the work of my master—since that’s who he was to me by now. But halfway into the first act, in ones and twos, they all began to leave, with the exception of an audience consisting solely of the manager and me. Even to me, and I’m pretty much an ass where poetry is concerned, the play seemed as if Satan had written it to ensure the total rout and ruin of the poet, who by this time was swallowing hard as he realized his listeners had forsaken him.

This was bad enough, but his prophetic soul foretold yet another disgrace awaiting him. The actors returned, more than twelve of them, and without a word they took hold of this poet of mine and—if not for the intervention of the manager, who shouted and interposed himself—they doubtless would have pantsed him. I was speechless, the manager disgusted, the actors merry, the poet crestfallen. Patiently, wincing a bit, he took his script, clutched it to his breast and muttered, “It’s no use casting pearls before swine.” And with this, his great dignity intact, he was off.

I was so mortified, I couldn’t bring myself to follow
him. And I was right not to, because the manager petted me and hugged me so much that I felt obliged to stay, and in less than a month I was a talented physical comedian and farceur. They put a braided muzzle on me and trained me to lunge for anyone in the theater whom they singled out. Since skits generally ended in a slapstick free-for-all, the sketches in this actor-manager’s troupe all wound up with me knocking everybody over and trampling them, which made the ignorant laugh, and my owner rich.

Oh Scipio, who could do justice to all I saw in this and the two other troupes I traveled in? Because the laws of good storytelling forbid me from reducing it to succinct narration, I’ll have to leave it for another day—if we can communicate another day.

You know how long my story has been, and how far-flung my adventures? You know how many roads I’ve traveled and how many masters I’ve had? Well, all you’ve heard is nothing compared to what I observed of these show people, their habits, their lives, customs, exercises, work, laziness, ignorance and cleverness, and countless other things. Some matters I noted are unfit for public consumption and others too good not to tell, but all are worth remembering, so as to disenchant those who worship matinee idols and artificially beautiful special effects.

Scipio
: I understand completely, Berganza, that these new angles keep cropping up and extending your soliloquy, but it occurs to me that you might give it a rest and let it go for another time.

Berganza
: Whatever you say, but listen. I fetched up with one troupe here in Valladolid, where in one skit I suffered a wound that almost killed me. I couldn’t avenge myself at the time because I was muzzled, and afterward, in cold blood, I didn’t want to. Premeditated vengeance smacks of cruelty and a nasty temperament.

I grew tired of the whole calling. It wasn’t so much the work as all the things in it, which cried out for both attention and punishment. Since these matters were easier to deplore than to correct, I decided to avoid the sight of them altogether.

So, like those who give up their vices when they can no longer exercise them, I sought sanctuary—though of course, better late than never. Seeing you one night carrying the lantern with that pious fellow Mahudes, I recognized you as content, and justly employed. Filled with an honorable sort of envy, I resolved to follow your path and, with this good intention, presented myself to Mahudes, who promptly assigned me to this hospital and made me your comrade. What’s happened to me here isn’t too trivial to be worth telling either—especially what I heard from four patients whom fortune and need brought to the hospital in adjacent beds.

Bear with me, for the story is brief. It won’t keep, and it fits here like a glove.

Scipio
: I forgive you, but wind it up. It’s almost daylight.

Berganza
: As I was saying, the four beds at the end of the infirmary held an alchemist, a poet, a geometer, and an economist.

Scipio
: I remember seeing these characters.

Berganza
: Anyway, one afternoon last summer, with the shutters closed and me lolling under one of their beds, the poet started to complain piteously about his fortune, and when the geometer asked him what the matter was, said it was his bad luck.

“Don’t I have a reason to complain?” he went on. “After keeping to the rule Horace laid down in his Arse Poetica, not to publish anything that hasn’t spent ten years in a drawer, I now have one twenty years in preparation and a dozen in editing, great in subject, admirable and new in invention, stately in meter, entertaining in its episodes, the stanza breaks marvelous—all because the beginning echoes the middle and the end in a way that makes the poem high-flown, sonorous, heroic, tasteful, and substantial. And yet, despite all this, I can’t find a prince to dedicate it to! A prince I say, intelligent, liberal, and generous. What a miserable and depraved age ours is!”

“What’s it about?” asked the alchemist.

“It deals with everything that Archbishop Turpín didn’t say about King Arthur of England, with a continuation of the story about the quest for the Holy Grail. It’s in heroic verse, part in octaves and part in free verse, but all dactylic—that is, in dactylic proper nouns, and without a single verb.”

“Me,” answered the alchemist, “I understand little of poetry, so I won’t know how to judge the misfortune you complain of, save that, were it greater, it still wouldn’t
equal mine. If only I had the proper instruments, or a prince to support me with the necessities required by alchemy, I’d be lousy with gold, with more riches than Midas, than Crassus or Croesus.”

“Mr. Alchemist,” asked the geometer, “has your Excellency ever experimented with transmuting base metals into silver?”

“I …” the alchemist began, “I haven’t done it yet, but really, I know that it can be done, and inside two months I’ll have the philosopher’s stone. With that, I can produce silver and gold even from rocks.”

“Your Excellencies have exaggerated your woes,” said the geometer, “because in the end, at least one of you has a book to dedicate, and the other is on the point of discovering the philosopher’s stone.

“But what about my problem, which is so singular that I have nowhere to turn? Twenty-two years I’ve been trying to find the fixed point, the Aleph. I look for it high and low. Just when it seems I’ve found it at last, and it can’t escape me, before I know it I find myself so far away from it that I’m amazed. The same thing goes for the squaring of the circle. I’ve come so close to finding it that I can’t understand, can’t even think how it’s not in my pocket. My anguish puts me in mind of Tantalus, who was right next to the fruit but dying of hunger, and close to the water yet perishing of thirst. One minute I think I’ve found the very heart of truth, and the next I’m so far from it that I have to trudge back up the mountain I’ve just climbed down—with the boulder of my work on my back, like some latter-day Sisyphus.”

Up till then the economist had held his tongue, but here he unleashed it and said, “The four of us are kvetching as if we’d been hounded by the Grand Caliph. But we only wound up at this hospital because we’re poor, so to hell with our trades, which neither feed nor amuse their practitioners. I, sirs, am an economist, and I’ve given His Majesty various advice—all to his gain, and without disadvantage. Now I’ve petitioned him to grant me an audience for a new scheme I have that will erase the national debt. Unfortunately, to go by what’s happened to me with other petitions, I daresay this one will wind up in the wastebasket too. But so you won’t take me for a dolt, and though my proposal will now become public knowledge, I want to share it with you: The court should decree that on an appointed day every month, all vassals from ages fourteen to sixty should fast on bread and water, and swear to give His Majesty everything they’d otherwise spend that day on fruit, meat, fish, wine, eggs, and vegetables.

“In twenty years he’ll be out of debt, and the treasury won’t need to borrow a penny. If you add it up, as I’ve done, in Spain there are more than three million people in that age range, not including the sick. None of these can help spending a
real
and a half a day, but let’s limit it to one
real
, which you can’t live on even if you eat only millet. Now, does it seem to you gentlemen that it would be a small thing to have three million
reales
a month, free and clear? Even those fasting would see an advantage, because they would both please heaven and serve the King. For some,
fasting might even be conducive to their health. This is my idea in a nutshell, and it could be carried out in the parishes without employing any tax-collectors, who are destroying the republic.”

Everyone laughed at the consultant and his proposal, and he himself laughed at his own nonsense. Me, I marveled to discover that, for the most part, it’s a certain kind of person who dies in a hospital, and similar people come to similar ends.

Scipio
: You have a point, Berganza. Is there more to it?