Bea Gonzalez - The Mapmaker’s Opera

They lived above the store and below Uncle Alfonso, who hovered above them in a room in the attic, from which he shouted at them to be quiet, couldn’t they see he was an old man, infirm and weak, and couldn’t they be thankful, for it was he who had given them a roof to live under and bread to eat? And where was his meal? That’s all he ever asked for, a meal and not a good one at that because Mónica of La Mancha had no talent in the kitchen and from what he could see, little talent to boast of when it came to everything else as well. What a shame to have been burdened with such a woman, Emilio, he would shout down at them. That you should have abandoned God for such a woman is more than a shame, it is an unpardonable sin.

Mónica, her body spent from pregnancy or childbirth, yes, but her lungs made of sterner stuff, would scream up to the attic, “ Cállate, viejo. Be quiet for once, you silly fool.” And then, bitter from having to deal with the old man upstairs, from having to live in three small, darkrooms with no fine linen, no kitchen help, nothing to compare to those hallowed days inside the house of Don Ricardo Medina, with its proper courtyard with decorative fountains and plenty of fresh air, she would turn her anger to Emilio.

“Patience, Mónica, patience,” Emilio pleaded with her, though in truth he was the only one with patience, a patience he nurtured by escaping with Diego at every opportunity, to the store, to the street, hiding behind a book that he read by the dim light of a candle, retreating to any corner in search of a moment of quiet, a bit of peace.

It was to escape from the weight of Mónica’s bitterness that Emilio dreamed up the idea of offering tours of the city to the English, for if they had expressed interest in the cathedral, how much more would they express for the city as a whole? “Because Seville is not only a city of oranges,” he would tell Uncle Alfonso, “but a city dreamed of by Hercules and founded by none other than Julius Caesar himself—one, oye, of the greatest men to have ever lived.” And then, to underscore this, he would embark upon reciting the well-known refrain:

Raised by Hercules,

Julius Caesar fortified me,

with high walls and towers,

I was conquered for the king

of heaven by Garcí Pérez de Vargas

to which Uncle Alfonso would respond by rolling his eyes and saying, “That, sobrino, is a load of rot, but if it pleases you and brings in the English money, so be it.”

The tours began slowly at first, but their popularity grew because Emilio not only spoke English but he was also a good story-teller and always knew what to leave out and what to tell. It was his theory that the English people, from whose minds sprang such glorious poetry, had of late been prone to a certain surliness born of industry and that for this condition, stories of love were the only cure. And so along with the tales of the Romans and the Visigoths and eight centuries of Arab rule, he never failed to tell them of Pedro I’s unrequited passion for Doña María Fernández Coronel, who suffered immeasurably at the hands of this cruel king, so desperate to have her that he imprisoned her husband and had him tortured to death. Inside the kitchens of the Convent of Santa Clara, the poor woman rid herself of Pedro’s advances by throwing boiling oil over her face. Emilio would tell his group, his eyes raised upwards, passion in his breath, that, thus disfigured, she became venerated for her chastity and her mummified body lay in the choir of the Convent of Santa Inés.

The English liked the story well enough but preferred visiting the great Álcazar and the Giralda to perusing the remains of a virtuous woman disfigured by the obsessions of an ancient Spanish king. In any case, stories of love did not inflame their industrious hearts as Emilio had hoped, but reminded them instead of the unruly passions of the Spanish—and especially the Andalusians—who were responsible for keeping their country mired in the brackish waters of tradition, ignorance and economic despair. A city concerned only with the carnal pleasures of love could not hope to ascend the world’s stage, could not expect to lift itself from its lethargic existence of sleep and song. City of a thousand roses, yes. City of heat and light, that too. But also the city that lost a continent, lest you should ever forget.

And as if to underscore their suspicions, Emilio would then trot the tourists over to the Plaza de los Refinadores to show them the bust of Don Juan Tenorio himself, which astounded the English even more because their busts and statues were of weighty persons like Shakespeare and the great Elizabeth I and not of fictitious libertines.

Ah, but the Spanish—and the Andalusians, above all. Oh dear, oh well. No, no please, Don Emilio, do go on.

These tours would not be worth a mention had they not turned out to be especially important to the history that followed, and more than the history, the means to depict it as well. It was through these tours that Diego stumbled upon the two obsessions that would define his life, driving him like an ancient conquistador across an ocean and into the arms of a spectacular New World—the twin obsessions that have weaved their way through the generations of this family like a hereditary virus capable of infecting even those of us who sit here so far removed from the coordinates of Diego’s own life.

The vector for this virus chanced upon them during one of Emilio’s English tours. His name was Mr. Raleigh and he appeared in their lives when Diego was just nine years old—armed to the teeth with copies of ancient maps and eager to share the stories they told, stories so full of wonder, so brimming with the steps and missteps of the human race that their mere mention today never fails to bring a chill to our spines.

Little Diego, enamoured already of the books that lined the walls of the Librería Alfonso, found himself battling a greater obsession yet, just like Pedro I, but not for a woman, no, no woman was worthy of a passion such as this. The maps that Mr. Raleigh traded were not just beautiful, they were much more than that—their brilliance truly did shame the stars, the stories they told more majestic than the words of Lope de Vega and the delusions of Don Quijote combined. The maps made Diego nervous, anxious to possess them, jealous of those men, like el Señor Raleigh, who had the means to travel the world in search of these ancient treasures and who, upon finding them, could make them theirs.

It was here, in one of Mr. Raleigh’s maps, that Diego first saw the country that would eventually beckon him forth.

“Mexico—did I tell you how Charles V first learned about the nature of Spain’s distant colony?”

“No, Señor Raleigh. Please do tell.”

“Very well, then. An envoy of Hernan Cortés appeared at the Spanish court and when asked by Charles V to describe what the new land was like, he picked up a sheet of paper, crumpled it into a ball and then unfolded it in his palm saying, it is like this, sire. ”

Sire, it is like this . A paper, twisted and creased, a land with unkempt borders but, when straightened and flattened, capable still of piercing the skin.

He had an intuition then—would remember it much later on—that this crumpled paper would be his future too.

In the meantime, Diego’s father was sinking every day further under the weight of all his unfulfilled dreams.

Poor Emilio. The brighter a man’s light, the darker the shadow, and Mónica’s ill moods had done their work on him. He had been nodding apologetically for much too long. His head felt weary from all that movement, his heart heavy from the love that had once changed his life but was now siphoning it from his very bones.