The Mapmaker’s Opera

By the time little Diego was one, he was spending most of the day inside the shop—the Librería Alfonso—hiding among the books, a happy prisoner of dust and ticks, mesmerized by the feel of heavy paper, the smell of glue and ink. There he would be taught how to read, first in Spanish and then, under the spell of Emilio’s enthusiasms, in English, as it appeared in the poems of the Romantics. His knowledge of English was forever coloured with elegies and odes, things less useful than they were beautiful, and he came to share Emilio’s belief that English was the language not of progress, as its native speakers believed, but the language of beauty and of life itself.

Uncle Alfonso, a lifelong bachelor and a man of many ill moods, never ceased to complain about the child. “There he is again, the scamp, eating the books,” he would accuse, pointing a shaky finger his way. Emilio would respond by laughing and removing little Diego from the scene of the crime, bits of paper hanging still from the edges of his tiny mouth, screaming at the indignity of being moved until he could crawl back to his spot and resume his meal of words and rhymes.

In his more impatient moments, Uncle Alfonso would try to move the boy with the end of a broom, poking at him until Diego’s screams filled the store and Emilio appeared to rescue him from the old man. But eventually Diego came to view the episodes with the broom as a game and, growing stronger as his aged great-uncle grew weaker, he would pull it from the old man’s hands and swat it back at him until Alfonso’s curses drained the store of all the fine poetry lodged inside.

“The boy belongs with his mother,” he would tell Emilio, who would nod but keep Diego close by his side because there was always something amiss with Mónica. She was either weak because she was pregnant, mourning a dead baby when she was not, and with no energy whatsoever in-between all the births and all the deaths. It was all she could do to keep the house in a semblance of order and cook the occasional meal.

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.

Could she not be quiet for just one moment? Something was always wrong: the house was too dark, the city too lit up. It was too hot, at times it seemed dreadfully cold. There was no money in books, no money to buy a new mantilla, not a real to spare with which to buy Diego some proper shoes. How long was she supposed to live like this? Nothing in her past had prepared her for the disappointments that visited day after day with no respite visible on the horizon, no light left to guide her way through the dark.

“You hear that, Emilio?” Uncle Alfonso would shout from his attic, interrupting Mónica’s litany of complaints. “This is what you get for your ridiculous love of English words. That’s right, my son. Congratulate yourself, for you’ve managed to find a proper Shakespearean shrew!”

And then the arguing would begin in earnest. “The old man, that sick and useless old man,” she would scream at Emilio, as if Emilio had suddenly lost his hearing, and Uncle Alfonso would shout back, “More useless than the señorita of La Mancha? Impossible!” And the night would continue like this, one shouting up the stairway, the other down, both cursing and reproaching, both indifferent to what Emilio thought or felt, both oblivious when he quietly slipped through their venom and went downstairs to the store for a bit of quiet, some peace of mind. And there, in the corner, crouched tightly as if he were attempting to disappear, was Diego—a fugitive too of the war of words upstairs, book in hand. When he caught sight of Emilio, his hands flew up in the air as if to say, there they go. There they go again.

It was hard for Emilio not to resent the child at times, though it always sickened him later, his resentment, because he did love Diego. The child’s enthusiasms were his own. He was the only bright light existing in his universe, next to his tours and his books. But it was hard to bear the fact that Mónica could carry Don Ricardo’s child without incident, could give birth to this boisterous, happy boy and not manage to supply him, Emilio, the man who had sacrificed himself for her (that’s how he came to see it, as a sacrifice) with a child of his own flesh and blood capable of surviving beyond the first three weeks.

Not even the English poets could now bring him relief. His days were too long and too full to permit himself the luxury of reading any of the books he sold. At least he could still depend on the friendship of those who, like el Señor Raleigh, brought some much needed light into his world. The Englishman stopped by the bookstore often, where he entertained Emilio and little Diego with his magnificent maps and his towering tales of the New World.

“Did I tell you how truly admirable your Columbus was?”

El Señor Raleigh always referred to Columbus as “your Columbus,” a statement that flattered Emilio and Diego both, though they knew it was not Columbus who belonged to them but his discovery of the New World. Yet, it was a fine discovery and it pleased them enormously that an Englishman should remember that it was indeed “theirs.”

“The Spanish conquistadores were indeed a fanciful lot. Upon returning to Spain, they told of the extraordinary sights to be found in the New World—whales with breasts, flying fish, and beaches covered not with sand but pearls. The mermaids were a disappointment though. They had imagined extraordinary creatures and were dismayed when they failed to be as beautiful as their imaginations had conceived them to be. Columbus himself believed in the existence of Saint Bernard’s Island, where the daughters of Atlas guarded a luscious garden filled with golden apples.

“They were men in search of mythical cities. Some they found and some remained trapped in their imaginations for all time—the seven cities of Cíbola, for example. Have you never heard tell of this?”

Emilio knew the story well enough but he encouraged its telling for Diego’s sake.

“Around those fanciful times, legend had it that during the Moorish invasion of Spain, seven bishops and their congregations had sailed west and founded seven great cities of gold in the New World. These cities were known as the seven cities of Cíbola.

“Many men planned expeditions to find these fabled cities, but it was Francisco de Coronado who ventured into the American Southwest in 1540 in search of them. He did not find them in the end, but the dream of their discovery nurtured the aspirations of many other men in the centuries that followed.”

El Señor Raleigh lowered his voice to a whisper. “There is a rumour in Madrid that a map exists of the seven cities of Cíbola, drawn by the one man who made it there but took the secret with him to his grave. That man was an Andalusian and it is thought that his map is in the possession of one of the booksellers of Seville. Is it you, Don Emilio?” he asked with a chuckle.

“Ah, if only I were in possession of such a map! How much easier it would be to live my life. No, it is not I, Señor Raleigh. Regrettably, it is not I. Nor anyone that I have ever come into contact with.”

For years, Diego would be haunted by the thought of that map. More than years—for that map, the thought of that map, inflamed Diego’s imagination, haunting him throughout his life. Who was that Andalusian, who was that bookseller and what of the seven cities of Cíbola? Were they indeed made of gold? Did they boast the most beautiful mermaids in the world? Were they the cities where one could find the key to eternal life?

Diego’s own mind was fanciful. He had read the dreams of those who had gone before him and was convinced that his future lay there. On the other side of the ocean, in a world not only new but golden, not only alive but overflowing with life. How he longed to travel the yellow waters of the Guadalquivir until they deposited him in the vast ocean, to ride the waves like Phaeton in his golden carriage as he dragged the sun across the sky.

Ah, but you, Abuela, who lived so long, know more than anyone how the world sags under the weight of our intentions. How our dreams, once realized, are dreams no longer. Dreams and nightmares—two sides of the same coin; he who dreams of knights will live to see them transformed into monsters in the morning.

In the meantime, under the cover of darkness, Emilio had stumbled upon the tiny spark that would ignite his life for one brief moment before the curtains fell on his spot on the stage. A song. A dance. A lament worthy of the name, where voices carry for eternity and ruptured hearts find a way, through the intensity of the jaleo, to mend.

To his shame, it was a tourist who alerted him fully to this glory, a foreigner who arrived intent on imbibing Andalucía’s riches inside the confines of a dimly lit café, for these were the great days of the cafés cantantes in Seville. Oh, how your eyes would once shine, Abuela, when describing these days, how you seemed to float back in time as if you had been there yourself witnessing the rebirth of flamenco inside those rooms lit by oil and paraffin lamps.

In those days, a man by the name of Silverio Franconneti, half-Italian, half-Spanish, but with the spirit of the gypsies coursing through his blood, opened the Café de Silverio on the calle del Rosario, with a view to waking his countrymen up. He opened the doors in order to stoke the passion that lay dormant in their bones, to unearth the unuttered howls that clouded minds in a land filled with so much sun. He opened the doors to music that soaked the organs with quicksilver and found its way right to the pit of the soul. He opened the doors so as to sing, his voice as powerful an instrument as there ever was—a mixture, in the words of the great poet of flamenco, García Lorca, of Italian honey and lemon from Andalusian soil—a man who knew all the songs and sang them until those who listened wept in despair and begged him to stop.

Inside the Café de Silverio—a Sevillian patio with a fountain in the centre, Moorish columns, multicoloured tiles and the sacred platform, the tablao, from where guitarists, dancers and singers conducted their incomparable Mass at the front—Emilio sat night after night until the amber voices of the singers insinuated themselves into his blood, displacing the hallowed words of the English poets with the sighs of the seguiriyas and the howls of the soléas.

There, on that sacred stage, the singers intoned and declaimed what he himself could not, the frustrations, the deceptions, the ache that surged from the weight of all life’s unfulfilled promises, an existence where there were only scant minutes of happiness, scattered pages where one had expected more substantial tomes. It was as if the singer and he were strings tuned to the same pitch, and when one was plucked, the other could not help but vibrate sympathetically to the touch. It was as if something had been unearthed from that part of himself that had once seen the potential in everything, that had been able to fashion dreams from specks, universes from three lines of a poem.

Inside the café, a cup of wine in his hand, his eyes heavy from the sounds, the smells, the view of a dancer’s bare leg as a foot came down furiously on the floor, Emilio felt himself transported to a kingdom outside of space and time. Olé, he whispered at first, unable just yet to let the word rise forcefully from its birthing place in the pit of his gut.

(Was he aware, we ask ourselves, that the mathematical proportion of the distances between the planets from the Sun out to Saturn is exactly that of the notes on a guitar string? And if he did know, did he attribute this relationship to the ethereal nature of the music, to its capacity for invoking the heights of heaven and the depths of hell below? Alas, this we will never know.)

He now arrived back home in the early hours of the morning—the hours of indecency, Mónica called them, for she was afraid of this new Emilio, this stranger who arrived humming to himself, eyes lost inside mysterious landscapes, sour wine emanating from skin and breath. She was afraid that she was losing her grip on her husband, that he had gone the way many others have before and since, was spending the little they had on pleasures she abhorred. Above all, it enraged her that he was siphoning resources from their already inadequate stocks.

“You have turned out as rotten as the rest,” she spat at him when he stumbled in, uncaring, tired, needing only the comfort of silence and a partial night’s rest. And so he would climb into bed alongside her and offer her his back, falling into sleep almost immediately, leaving Mónica to nurse her bitterness and reproaches until the morning light announced the day and then Emilio would slip away quickly again, leaving her with all of her unexpressed rage stored corrosively inside.

She thought: How has this come to pass? How has this respectable man, once a servant of God, managed to degenerate into this lamentable state? How has he come to wander so perilously down this shameful path?

She blamed it on the old man on top. Uncle Alfonso in his attic with his miserly ways and his venomous tongue. She was sure that the old man was hoarding the profits from the bookstore, that there was much more to be had than the old swindler would admit, that he meant to keep them like this, dressed in rags, living from hand to mouth like peasants, beholden to him, when he gave them so little and he himself had so much. She was convinced that this, above all else, was driving Emilio into the arms of disgrace, driving him into the darkest hours of the night in search of respite from the unappeasable sorrows that plagued him in the harsh light of day.

She cried, full of pity for herself, not yet thirty years old and an old woman already, with little to look forward to—nothing but the endless drudgery of cook, clean and mend. And the unbearable sun to contend with, and the smells of Seville, the burning charcoal, the horse manure, the grease and the sweat. And the noises, the infernal conflagration of noises, yells, barks, the sobbing of children, the clanging of church bells. When would it all stop, dear God, when would the misery end? She brought her fingers up to her nose then and summoned the scent of the fifteen ingredients from her aunt’s stew, the memory of a distant childhood, uncomplicated, secure.

And Emilio thought: How lucky I am to find myself in this city filled with life, this city that bears witness to el compás, to the beat that makes all music ring truthfully, ring loud, ring straight through to the heart. He thought this because it was night, because darkness had descended and the voices would soon cease to utter mere words and be overtaken by song instead and the pain would rise to the surface then, would be experienced and then expunged. He had, for the first time in his life, found a way to balance body and spirit, to cope with the disappointments of the morning by receding with the singers into the underworld.

Estoy viviendo en el mundo

Con la esperanza perdida.

No es menester que me entierren

Porque estoy enterrao en via.

(I am living in the world

with no hope to speak of.

Don’t bother to bury me

for I am buried alive already.)

Emilio thought: There is much in the world left to me. The bejewelled night, the endless river of song, the hope I carry in my heart for Diego, the brightest star in the heavens, my beloved son.

And Mónica thought: There is much in the world to despair of. The sorrowful days, the smells and the noise, the fear I hold in my heart for Diego, fruit of my one true love, my only son.

In the meantime, Diego himself, now eleven years old—lost until then in a world circumscribed by books and maps, a sanctuary in which to hide from his mother’s bitterness, the ill moods of his Great-uncle Alfonso, the unhappiness that radiated from his father’s eyes, all the disappointments that seeped from their hearts and into the very walls of the house—was moments away from placing another piece in the puzzle that would become his life, moments from adding bits of earth and sky to a hitherto uncharted bit of his map.

It was around this time that a book arrived at the Librería Alfonso for el Señor Raleigh. The Englishman had recently settled in Seville, hoping the climate would soothe the aches in his aged bones and that the proximity to the Archives of the Indies—the impressive building that housed the history of the Discoveries—would satisfy the unquenchable curiosity that continued to course through his blood.