The Mapmaker’s Opera

Hoy se sacan ánimas, the churches proclaimed. On this day souls will be set free. To those tourists who were puzzled by things Spanish, nothing seemed more ridiculous than the thought of the numerous Masses paid by a man not yet dead in order that he be assured a place up above.

“Simply barbarous,” the more critical would point out. “Proof indeed that Spain sits on the periphery of a distant century and that to Europe she surely does not belong.”

To Remedios, Emilio’s mother, these Masses were proof not of the barbarism of her compatriots but of another and more sinister truth, and that was this: only the rich ever secured a place for themselves in heaven. Those like her, who could not, had no choice but to find other means to ascend. It was in this spirit then that she offered up Emilio, for there was no greater reward, she knew, than the one saved for women who produced sons dedicated to the word of God.

Emilio had no desire to dedicate his life to God. Not even ten years old when his mother first informed him of her wish, he had determined from that moment on that his lot in life would be to escape, writhing and screaming if need be, from the stultifying clutches of the Church.

“Don’t despair just yet,” his friend Camilo would say to him years later when Emilio complained of his future as a priest in a city made for music, for gaiety—vamos hombre, let’s just come out and say it—a city made for love.

“For remember, amigo,” Camilo would continue, “in Spain only the clergy eat well.”

For the purposes of our story, Remedios’s obstinacy would prove fortuitous in the end. If she had not insisted on her son’s adopting the clerical robes, Emilio would have never chanced upon Mónica Clemente as she bowed her head in prayer every day inside the great cathedral walls. Mónica and Emilio, born hundreds of miles apart in a time when people lived and died within miles of the dot that marked their entry into the world, should never have even met. And had it not been for a series of unforeseen circumstances, it would indeed have turned out that way; but fate had other things in store for them.

Mónica Clemente, a bit thin of lip, a tad long in the nose, was nevertheless blessed with a sweet face—the face of an angel, Emilio would say—though as we shall soon see, she was made of more complex matter than any angel with a golden halo and alabaster wings.

When Emilio spotted Mónica inside the cathedral for the first time, the girl had been living in Seville for less than a year. It had not taken long for the city to bewitch her with its narrow, ever-winding streets and its houses of pink, blue and yellow stucco; it was a fairy-tale setting, with its Arabic patios, its majestic fountains half-glimpsed from open gates, the weight and colour of the roses that hung from the balconies and the orange and lemon trees that perfumed its streets. Already, Seville was considered one of the true marvels of the world, immortalized in countless plays, poems and operas composed by the great European minds of the day.

To a young girl from a sleepy village in the region of La Mancha, Seville was like a magical apparition—a dream she found herself in almost by accident and in which she roamed with half-issued breaths. To breathe too deeply, she feared, would dissolve the dream in an instant, leaving her trapped once again inside the quiet village of her birth.

And how had she come to be there? Through misfortune, of course. For it is not from happiness that opportunities arise for fates to change and paths to diverge but from within the realm of the tragic—that which leaves us scrambling for solid ground, overwhelmed and lost. Caminante, the poet now declaims from stage right. Walk, for the path is made by walking.

Mónica Clemente had been sent to Seville, far from the fields of her beloved Crocus sativus, upon the death of her father and, with that death, had begun travelling a path that would change the direction not only of her own life but that of our mapmaker as well.

Seville was the home of Don Ricardo Medina, her mother’s cousin, who was in need at the time of her father’s demise of what the English called a governess. Mónica’s skills were not extraordinary—embroidery, simple crochet, a tune or two played on the piano—but she performed them with reasonable technical skill and the lack of enthusiasm that was expected then from a proper lady.

“How lucky you are,” her aunt had told her, when she was offered a place in the home of Don Ricardo, “to have found a saviour, even one so far removed from La Mancha.” And, saying this, her aunt had sniffed at her own words, stopping to peruse Mónica with a look that said she was clearly undeserving of such beneficence.

Mónica herself would come to believe that it had not been luck but fate that had guided her way to the great city, because fate was like a giant serpent that coiled itself around your neck and dragged you towards your destiny without mercy or restraint. Escaping it was as useless as trying to stem a tidal wave with a fingertip. It was fate that had seen fit to free her from the dismal life that awaited many in her position, an existence lived within the confines of a convent or, worse, in a marriage arranged in haste to an old man with oxen and land to spare but with the spirit of decay emanating from his bones and breath like the steam that rose up from the earth during the hottest days of summer.

Instead, Mónica had been sent here, to Seville, to a city brimming with life, a city bustling with possibilities, as far away from the quiet plains of La Mancha as she could imagine. And although she was thankful, there were times when the city overwhelmed her, when it seemed too large, when its heartbeat was too penetrating, and then she would bring her fingers up to her nose and summon the comforting memory of Bautista’s saffron stews with their fifteen ingredients that blended and brewed for hours.

So it was, then, that Emilio and Mónica chanced upon one another inside a cathedral that sat on an ancient mosque, with its spectacular Gothic retablo carved with the forty-five scenes from the life of Christ, the Capitular with the magnificent domed ceiling mirrored in marble on the floor, paintings by Murillo, silver reliquaries and monstrances and the keys—above all, those tear-stained keys—handed over reluctantly in the thirteenth century by the Moors to the Castilian king, Fernando III, after they were forced to surrender their beloved city to him. There, every day, Emilio would linger as long as he could near the kneeling figure of Mónica Clemente, providing the English with every detail of the enormous cathedral so astounding it could only have been built by madmen, all the while staring at the young girl who never failed to materialize here, always at the same time, always alone, it seemed. A Spaniard for sure, he thought, for she wore a proper lace mantilla upon her head and not one of those infernal rose bonnets favoured by the English. It was true, the young women from the good families of Seville were lately succumbing to such fashions—bonnets from England, cretonnes from Alsace, crinolines from Paris, malakofs they called them. But this, he knew, was a proper Spanish señorita. A bit long in the nose, a tad thin of lip, but a Spanish señorita nonetheless, mantilla on head, rosary beads in hand, prayers regularly offered to the virgin—a woman, Emilio supposed, who would make a splendid wife one day. And once his mother died—and forgive me Lord, but let it be soon, Emilio thought, now looking up at the roof by Borja—it would be a woman like this Emilio would be courting.

Ah, and there she was now, head bent, eyes closed.

“Bueno, señores,” Emilio said to his group, his eyes fixed on the young woman’s face. “Let us now take a final walk around the cathedral to inspect its jewels in all their magnificence.”

“What did he say?” an old man, exhausted already by Emilio’s first frenetic run around the building, asked his wife. “Not another damned walk around the cathedral!” he added furiously, beneath his breath.

Ah, but the English. Let us just admit this one thing now, shall we? Among their greatest virtues are their impeccable manners. So the unhappy man circled and then circled again, breathing in the damn “jools” of this magnificent cathedral, never suspecting that the tall, hawk-nosed seminarian who was leading them about was inspecting a young girl with all of this to-ing and fro-ing, this vamos-ing and venga-ing.

In the meantime, oblivious to Emilio and the English in his charge, Mónica Clemente continued, head bent over rosary, to issue her prayers. Who was she praying for? Emilio wondered, eyes glued to her face. Was it for a mother, ailing and near death? Perhaps her prayers were being said for a sickly brother. Pray God, let them not be meant for a suitor, he now thought, and thinking this, suddenly stumbled.

Mónica Clemente, sweet of face yes, but not, as he would later find out, so sweet of tongue, was not praying for a father or a mother, a brother or, thank God, a suitor. Mónica Clemente was praying, as she did every day, in order that she be granted her most cherished desire. And what is this, you ask? Ah, in a million years you will never guess. For Mónica Clemente, thin of lip and long of nose but sweet of face nonetheless, was praying fervently that the wife of Don Ricardo Medina—Doña Fernanda—be sent to her death.

“And it would be better if it were sooner rather than later,” she whispered between her many Padre Nuestros, her countless Ave Marías.

“And not without a little pain,” she added, as an afterthought.

But this, claro, only if the good Lord Himself should think it best.

SCENE TWO (#ulink_58251249-5079-55c6-9488-0a8608d799d2)

We listen to the woes of Doña Fernanda (#ulink_58251249-5079-55c6-9488-0a8608d799d2)

Enter stage left now Doña Fernanda Olivares—the woman whose death Mónica prayed for so fervently—an imposing figure in possession of her own map, though not, it is true, a map any cartographer would easily make sense of. This map was a catalogue of treachery, one she created in the darkest hours of the night and which she brought into the light at dawn. Mira, she would whisper to herself, fingering the imaginary parchment, these are the places where the heart has withered bit by bit. In the corner is the house that lies west of the Calle San Vicente, home to many of Seville’s booksellers and several women of ill repute. Moving east—the house of Doña Alicia first, and almost next to it, that of Doña Lucía. And then there is the city of Malaga, all sun-drenched and blue water, a dot so brimming with affronts that it threatens to spill into the sea and blur away the details of the parchment.

The dots that were scattered across this map were responsible for making Doña Fernanda a very unhappy woman, a fact she used like a shield, revealing it at opportune moments to gain the upper hand. She was—in Mónica’s words—imperious, domineering and hard on the eyes, but Mónica had good cause to dislike her, so it is best, perhaps, to try to get at her through other means. What was true, because it had been passed on from generation to generation like a canker gnawing in the family mouth, was that Doña Fernanda had forever lamented having known only fourteen days of happiness in all of her life. For years, her family had waited for her to add one day to that count, but no fiesta, wedding or family celebration ever made an impression on her, and she died leaving those two weeks firmly imprinted in her children’s minds.

What did make her happy (or at least less rancorous) were the visits of Don Pedro, her parish priest, a corpulent fellow with a knack for attracting all of the city’s gossip, and a ferocious appetite for kidneys and stewed beef. Every weekday afternoon, at exactly half past three, Don Pedro would amble over to the house of Doña Fernanda, making sure that all of Seville knew where he was headed and the ceremony with which he would be received.

And what ceremony! The Seville of the time was not so much a city as a medieval court with rules of conduct that would have made even the most enamoured knight desist his courting in despair. Take the visiting hours as an example. Why was Don Pedro so insistent that he must arrive at the gates of the Medina house at no later than a quarter to four? The answer resided in the rules of etiquette that governed the lives of the Sevillanos of the time, for it was strictly held that all visits should occur between the hours of three and six, with the most formal visitors being received in the first hour, the semi-formal in the next and the most intimate arriving in the final hour between five and six.

Don Pedro had been visiting Doña Fernanda for a decade and should have graduated to the final visiting hour long before, had he himself not strenuously objected. Claiming the hour between three and four was the only part of his day with some time to spare, time to be provided “to you, of course, Doña Fernanda,” he would say, hands on his chest, “to which I add all my attentiveness and my respect,” at which point the corpulent priest would attempt, with some difficulty, to bow and kiss Doña Fernanda’s hand, a hand that would be quickly retrieved before the cleric’s flaccid lips ever once managed to raze the lady’s clammy skin.

The master servant of the house, a certain Don Raimundo, who hated the Church and, more than the Church, all of the priests, never failed to rail against the pompous prelate in the privacy of the kitchen at the back of the house.

“That pious ass says he lacks the time to come visiting at a later hour,” he would complain to the other servants of the house. “I’ll tell you what he does with his time. The weasel spends it inside the bars of Triana, rubbing shoulders with the gypsies and thieves—drinking and laughing it up when he should be saying a Mass to save some poor bastard’s soul from the pit of purgatory. It’s just like a priest, isn’t it? A bleeding wound on the corpse of Spain.” Ay sí, Amén the servants would all respond with gusto, for Don Pedro had few admirers among the members of the group, a group who resented his daily visits, his disdaining gaze, his insistence on a cold drink of agraz and most especially, the special treatment he demanded for his hat.

Ah, his hat. In the whole history of Seville, nothing had ever generated more conversation than Don Pedro’s black felt hat. It was an ordinary top hat, much like the ones worn by the men of the day, but it sat rather uneasily atop the priest’s head, contrasting oddly with his clerical collar and his long, black cape. That he should be demanding special privileges for his hat—“a cushion no less,” the master servant had guffawed to the cook, outraged, when first told of it, “That barrel of a priest is looking for a cushion for his hat”—was unheard of. Raimundo himself could hardly believe it, would not have believed it, had he not heard it from Doña Fernanda’s own mouth: “Raimundo, make sure Don Pedro’s hat is placed on that chair cushion by the door,” she had said.

“I beg your pardon,” he had replied, earnestly confused, for many were the archaic customs in this land bottled for antiquarians, a land where one of its ancient kings—finding himself seated too close to the fire—preferred burning to death than breaking the rules of decorum by moving away from the fire or shouting for help. In this land of hierarchies, titles and entitlements, the worth of a man could indeed be determined by the treatment accorded to his hat.

But never had a cushion been reserved for the head covering of a simple priest!

Doña Fernanda had repeated her command on that day and had done so in such a way that the servant, no fool himself, knew that she too realized the idiocy of her request, that she hated giving the command nearly as much as the good servant hated receiving it, but that some things in life came at a steep price. What those things were, Raimundo could not even hazard a guess, but he could think no improper thoughts of her—not out of any respect, but because it seemed inconceivable that even a character as decrepit and despicable as Don Pedro could want anything improper with the lady of the house. And so Raimundo placated his ire by complaining unendingly about the situation to the servants under his command.

As the scene began, Don Pedro was arriving at a quarter to four, late for his customary appointment with Doña Fernanda. It was a hot day in Seville, hotter than usual for May and the unseasonable heat, coupled with Doña Fernanda’s anxiety over the appearance of yet another dot on her imaginary map, had stewed inside of her to such an extent that by the time Don Pedro rolled in—not, in the end, more than ten minutes late—she had almost resolved to decline receiving him at all.

If only she didn’t need him so.

It is tragic to be burdened with a lack of confidants on whom anxieties can be deposited and whose kind words can erase fears, those imagined and those real, but Doña Fernanda—with her curt demeanour and imperious ways—had managed to alienate everyone but the priest and thank God for the sanctity of his robes, she thought, for many were the secrets she shared with him, always in confessional tones, so that the sanctity of his own vow to secrecy would compel him to keep her words guarded deep inside his breast.

(It did not. Don Pedro did not consider Doña Fernanda’s confessions to be received in his capacity as a priest but as a respected guest who—ojo, señores—was even offered a cushion for his hat. Indeed he poured fuel on many a good hostess’s fire who—for the price of a paltry dish of garbanzos and beef—could learn of the goings-on inside the house of Don Ricardo Medina as if from the mouth of Doña Fernanda herself.)

What ailed Doña Fernanda on most occasions were those dots—markers of her husband’s infidelities—and her husband’s infidelities were the stuff of legend in Seville, a city well accustomed to legends of the sort because it was home, after all, to Carmen, the Barber and Don Giovanni himself.

Madamina, il catalogo è questo. One thousand and three and counting still.

It was yet another indiscretion that had the señora in a state on this day, that had her brimming with anxiety and despair, that hardened her to the many entreaties of Don Pedro to “please forgive me for being late” and “Señora, I am at your feet” and so on until he finally tired of entreating and she tired of hearing him beg.

(“It is amazing, Rosita,” he would tell his sister later, speaking of Doña Fernanda, “that our fair Seville ever produced a slab of stone such as this!”)

“Give your hat to Raimundo,” Doña Fernanda told the priest gruffly, “and sit down quickly, as we have little time and much to discuss.”

“I am at your service, Señora, as always of course,” Don Pedro replied with relief, for he would have hated not to have been forgiven especially because this exchange had been conducted before the insufferable master servant of the house. The same servant had just smirked at him—I am sure of this, he would tell his sister later—as he placed the priest’s hat on the cushion, bowing his way in such an exaggerated manner that Don Pedro knew for sure Raimundo was having a laugh at his expense. And though his blood boiled at the thought of the man’s impertinence, he knew nothing could be said. Some exchanges are conducted so that only the parties involved recognize all the undertones. Doña Fernanda, blind to anything that did not affect her directly, would frankly not have cared had she perceived the injury in any case.

For the next hour the priest paid for his tardiness by having to sit there immobile (not even a drink of agraz was offered this time) as Doña Fernanda embarked upon one of her more vicious tirades—her waiting having made her mood all the more virulent—in which every bone of her husband’s body was put at risk through the enumeration of an impressive array of threats, none, of course, which would ever be realized—this was nineteenth-century Spain after all, and Andalucía yet, where well-to-do men spend Sunday afternoons promenading with wives and children and the evenings with mistresses or whores inside the brothels of Granada and Seville.