Aztec Blood - Jennings Gary - Страница 77

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The Spanish had recorded vast amounts of facts into books. The Healer had lived history, not just that of his own days, but that of time immemorial. He slept, ate, spoke, and thought with little difference from what his ancestors had done for thousands of years. He was a walking, breathing temple of knowledge.

SIXTY-TWO

Puebla de los Angeles, the Town of the Angels, was the largest city I had ever been in. To Mateo it was a small place compared to the City of Mexico.

"Mexico is a true city, not an overgrown provincial village like Puebla, Veracruz, and Oaxaca. It is a grand place. Someday, Bastardo, I will take you there. We will sup on the finest food and the most beautiful women. One whorehouse in that city has not only brown and white girls, but a yellow one."

I was awed that a whorehouse could actually have a chino. I had seen a woman with yellow skin at the fair for the Manila galleon, and I'd wondered what she was like without her clothes.

"Are they—the chino women—are they built like other women?"

He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. "No, of course not. Everything is reversed."

What does that mean? I wondered. Was everything that was usually on the front of a person, on the backside of a chino? I did not ask the question because I did not want to expose my ignorance further.

We camped outside Puebla in the same area where traders and indio magicians had converged. We did not see the naualli among them.

I accompanied the Healer and the others to the square at the city center where a harvest festival was to be held. Even though Mateo did not consider Puebla a grande city, it was enormous to me. As I had been told about the City of Mexico, Puebla was also high above the coastline, in a broad plain shouldered by distant mountains. Mateo said that the architecture was similar to that of the great city of Toledo in Spain.

"One of the finest voices of poetry died on the streets of Puebla," Mateo had told me earlier, when the city was in sight. "Gutierre de Cetina was a poet and a swordsman who fought in Italy and the German lands for the king. He came to Mexico after the conquest at the behest of his brother. Unfortunately, his poetry was better than his sword play. He was killed in a duel by a rival for the same woman. They say he was struck down after standing outside the woman's window praising her eyes with his poem, 'Ojos claros serenos.'

Eyes of clear serenity,

If your tender gaze endear,

Why for me is your gaze severe?

If the gazer be more to. delight

When you gently stare,

Let your gaze be tender,

O torment wild!

Eyes of clear serenity,

Having gazed upon me thus,

at least now gaze at me.

I helped the Healer set up in the main square. He immediately attracted a crowd of indios, so there was no need for me to fake a miraculous recovery. I wandered about the square, unable to conceive that there could be a town enormously bigger than Puebla. What must the City of Mexico and the great cities of Spain be like?

Mateo hailed me. "Bastardo, the goddess Fortune smiles upon you. There is a comedia company in town. We are going to see their play. How many pesos do you have, compadre?"

After Mateo emptied my pockets, I followed eagerly beside him. He had never explained what happened that caused him and the troupe of players to find themselves on the wrong side of the king's justice. I picked up clues that they had been caught selling smuggled deshonesto and profano libros. From his attempt to sell Fray Juan a romantic adventure book that was on the prohibition list of the Holy Office, I knew that Mateo did these things. But for the others to be shipped off to Manila and him to be under the threat of the gallows, eh, it must have been more than a romance they were selling.

We went a few blocks off of the main street to the place of the comedia. I had expected to find a "wall" of blankets enclosing a small area, but it was much more elaborate. A vacant lot shouldered on three sides by two-story homes had been turned into a corral, a playhouse.

Against the wall of one house a wooden stage was elevated several feet above the ground. At ground level to the left and right were areas blanketed off. "Dressing rooms for the actors and actresses," Mateo said. Logs had been laid in many places for people to sit while others brought benches from home. The windows, balconies, and roofs of the adjoining houses served as theater boxes where people of quality watched the play. The stage was not protected from wind or rain. "If it rains too hard, they simply stop," Mateo said.

"So this is a theater for comedias," I said to Mateo, very impressed by the size. Several hundred people could view the performance.

"This is a temporary theater," he said, "but it is similar to corrales all over Spain. The difference is that there is often a canopy over the stage to protect from sun and rain and even canopies or roofs over some of the spectator areas. The stage would be a bit higher off the ground and wider, the dressing rooms more permanent. Empty space next to buildings are the best for creating a theater because the walls are already up on three sides. In some of the great cities, like Madrid and Seville, permanent buildings with wood walls and roofs have been constructed. Naturally, they cannot be completely enclosed as much as a house because some light is needed."

"Do you know these actors?" I asked Mateo.

"No, but I am sure they have heard of Mateo de Rosas Oquendo."

If they had not already, they would before long.

"The troupe pretends to be Spanish, but I can tell from their accents that they are not. I suspect they are Italians. Everyone wants to come to the Spanish stage. It is known everywhere that our plays and actors are the best in the world. This play is written by my amigo, Tirso de Molina. The Trickster of Seville is a comedia in three acts."

"Like what you put on—on," I stammered, "in Seville?" I almost said, 'at the fair.' I had already resolved in my mind that Mateo knew I was the boy from the Jalapa fair, but the matter remained a secret unspoken between us.

"Yes, like Seville, though a Puebla production will not be so grand."

The temporary theater was grand to my eyes. The only play I had ever seen other than ones put on by the churches during religious holidays was the one at the Jalapa fair, where a grassy knoll and some blankets served as a theater. The audience there had been rough muleteers and traveling merchants, but I could see from the balconies and rooftops that much more genteel people had come to see this play.

Mateo wanted seats on a balcony or roof, but none were left. We went to the far wall opposite the stage. Benches were available there for a few coppers more, and we stood on them to get a good look at the stage.

Close to the stage were what Mateo called the vulgos, the vulgar people.

"The mosqueteros are the lice of the theater," Mateo said. "When they step into a corral, suddenly a butcher and baker who sign their names with an X are experts on comedias. Men whose only acting has been to lie to their wives suddenly believe themselves as much a fault finder with an actor's performance as an Inquisitor with a blasphemer's denials."

The play began in a room in the palace of the king of Naples. We were told that we were in the Italian palace by an actor who indicated a hanging cloth that had an elaborate door painted on it. It was nighttime, the actor says, and Isabel, a duchess, was awaiting the arrival of her lover, Duke Octavio, in a dark room.

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