Cinco.
“Why do you give your dogs numbers and not names?” Ana asked.
“I don’t give animals Christian names.”
Once a week, he joined them for supper, and when asked, Severo told stories of his travels within Spain and across the sea before he finally landed in Puerto Rico. He began life as a cobbler’s son and rose by his wits, skills, and ambition to his current position at Los Gemelos. Ramón, Inocente, and Ana understood that his work here was preparing him for someday owning his own plantation.
“ ‘If you are ambitious of climbing up to the difficult, and in a manner inaccessible, summit of the Temple of Fame,’ ” Severo once recited after a bit too much brandy, “ ‘your surest way is to leave on one hand the narrow path of Poetry, and follow the narrower track of Knight-Errantry, which in a trice may raise you to an imperial throne.’ The great Cervantes,
señores y señora
, never visited the New World, but he knew what was required to become a success in these lands.”
“You see yourself as a
caballero andante
.” Ramón smirked.
“If you insist,
señor
. Yes, a knight-errant in search of fame and fortune,
sí, señor
, that’s me.”
“But,” Inocente added, with an ironic smile, “the passage you’ve just quoted is followed by ‘With these words, Don Quixote seemed to have summed up the whole evidence of his madness.’ ”
Severo wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and laughed. “Yes, but don’t forget, that
‘de músico, poeta y loco, todos tenemos un poco,’
” he concluded, and they laughed.
That night Ana lay in bed long after Ramón had fallen asleep, thinking about the phrase. We are all a bit of a poet, a bit of a musician, a bit mad, she agreed. But she thought that Severo Fuentes, who could quote Cervantes with uncanny precision, was perhaps the maddest of them all.
A VOICE IN HIS HEAD
Back in Boca de Gato, one of the neglected hamlets north of Madrid, his parents had wanted Severo Fuentes Arosemeno to be a priest. He was the third and youngest boy in his family, and it was unlikely that their meager earnings would be enough for three cobblers in their small shop in their village. His father brought him to the parish padre, who taught Severo to read and write, and taught him Latin, the language of the learned. But while Padre Antonio doted on Severo’s quickness and intelligence, everyone else in the village ridiculed him for having ambitions greater than to sit at the cobbling bench for the rest of his life as his brothers and father were doing, as his grandfather and uncle did, as who knew how many generations before them.
In spite of Padre Antonio’s efforts to make a priest of him, Severo showed no vocation. He wanted a life away from the craggy streets and narrow alleys of Boca de Gato, and longed for a life outdoors, far from the cramped house with attached workshop where day after day his father and brothers carved hard leather into thick-soled boots and shaped pliant kidskin into ladies’ slippers.
One morning shortly after his ninth birthday, as he was getting ready to go to the parish house, Severo heard a voice inside his head. “Leave Boca de Gato,” it said. He’d heard voices before, but they were usually his own, berating him for doing something stupid or urging him to jump into what frightened him. He’d never heard a voice different from his own, or one with such specific instructions. “Madrid. Go to Madrid.”
That very day he kept walking past the parish house and beyond the boundaries of Boca de Gato. The capital was thirteen leaguesaway on the other side of a mountain range. He scrabbled his way toward the city by working odd jobs in exchange for a place to sleep and a meal. It was 1829, toward the end of a relatively stable period after the depredations of the Napoleonic era and before the First Carlist War. He was modest and hardworking, and the peasants who took him in were mostly kind. All he remembered years
“Why do you give your dogs numbers and not names?” Ana asked.
“I don’t give animals Christian names.”
Once a week, he joined them for supper, and when asked, Severo told stories of his travels within Spain and across the sea before he finally landed in Puerto Rico. He began life as a cobbler’s son and rose by his wits, skills, and ambition to his current position at Los Gemelos. Ramón, Inocente, and Ana understood that his work here was preparing him for someday owning his own plantation.
“ ‘If you are ambitious of climbing up to the difficult, and in a manner inaccessible, summit of the Temple of Fame,’ ” Severo once recited after a bit too much brandy, “ ‘your surest way is to leave on one hand the narrow path of Poetry, and follow the narrower track of Knight-Errantry, which in a trice may raise you to an imperial throne.’ The great Cervantes,
señores y señora
, never visited the New World, but he knew what was required to become a success in these lands.”
“You see yourself as a
caballero andante
.” Ramón smirked.
“If you insist,
señor
. Yes, a knight-errant in search of fame and fortune,
sí, señor
, that’s me.”
“But,” Inocente added, with an ironic smile, “the passage you’ve just quoted is followed by ‘With these words, Don Quixote seemed to have summed up the whole evidence of his madness.’ ”
Severo wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and laughed. “Yes, but don’t forget, that
‘de músico, poeta y loco, todos tenemos un poco,’
” he concluded, and they laughed.
That night Ana lay in bed long after Ramón had fallen asleep, thinking about the phrase. We are all a bit of a poet, a bit of a musician, a bit mad, she agreed. But she thought that Severo Fuentes, who could quote Cervantes with uncanny precision, was perhaps the maddest of them all.
A VOICE IN HIS HEAD
Back in Boca de Gato, one of the neglected hamlets north of Madrid, his parents had wanted Severo Fuentes Arosemeno to be a priest. He was the third and youngest boy in his family, and it was unlikely that their meager earnings would be enough for three cobblers in their small shop in their village. His father brought him to the parish padre, who taught Severo to read and write, and taught him Latin, the language of the learned. But while Padre Antonio doted on Severo’s quickness and intelligence, everyone else in the village ridiculed him for having ambitions greater than to sit at the cobbling bench for the rest of his life as his brothers and father were doing, as his grandfather and uncle did, as who knew how many generations before them.
In spite of Padre Antonio’s efforts to make a priest of him, Severo showed no vocation. He wanted a life away from the craggy streets and narrow alleys of Boca de Gato, and longed for a life outdoors, far from the cramped house with attached workshop where day after day his father and brothers carved hard leather into thick-soled boots and shaped pliant kidskin into ladies’ slippers.
One morning shortly after his ninth birthday, as he was getting ready to go to the parish house, Severo heard a voice inside his head. “Leave Boca de Gato,” it said. He’d heard voices before, but they were usually his own, berating him for doing something stupid or urging him to jump into what frightened him. He’d never heard a voice different from his own, or one with such specific instructions. “Madrid. Go to Madrid.”
That very day he kept walking past the parish house and beyond the boundaries of Boca de Gato. The capital was thirteen leaguesaway on the other side of a mountain range. He scrabbled his way toward the city by working odd jobs in exchange for a place to sleep and a meal. It was 1829, toward the end of a relatively stable period after the depredations of the Napoleonic era and before the First Carlist War. He was modest and hardworking, and the peasants who took him in were mostly kind. All he remembered years
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