The Mapmaker’s Opera

SCENE FIVE: Two birds in hand (#litres_trial_promo)

THE CURTAIN CALL

Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

ACT ONE (#ulink_1299c191-5128-5494-807c-2a7f69d93a5f)

Overture (#ulink_9f79e7db-7054-5178-8759-1db0e609f07f)

It begins in a once-upon-a-time land, on a remote plain, far from the place we call home. It begins with a dreamy voice, closed eyes, and a glass of warm milk to tame the chill of a too-cold night.

In the background, the first notes sound out, preparing to lure us in.

A seguiriya tonight, perhaps?

“No, something livelier,” she says, “something irrepressible, something joyous.” She stops to think. “Ah, yes, I have it, niños! A bulería sung by the incomparable Lola Flores, all passion, all grit, a voice with which to tame the wind!”

She begins—

In a town in the heart of La Mancha, home to Don Quijote and his windmills, to long afternoons and silent, silent nights, the Clemente family lived for centuries, their fortunes tied to those of a plant: the Crocus sativus—from whose dried stigma comes saffron, the world’s most precious spice. What you may not know is that it takes 160,000 flowers to produce just one kilogram of this culinary bit of gold. When Mónica Clemente left La Mancha for the narrow streets of Seville, she carried the taste of saffron forever on her tongue. More than any bucolic recollections of childhood, Mónica’s memories were imbued with the taste of saffron soups, saffron stews and most of all, the sublime paellas of her Aunt Bautista, who always knew instinctively the precise amount to be placed into the olla, where the chicken, chorizo and thirteen other ingredients blended and brewed. …

Ah, here it was, the opening bars of our grandmother’s favourite story, the one she would tell most often because it was full of the beautiful—forbidden love, unbearable grief, a country lost and another one found and moments of true transcendence. It was the story she would tell most often because it was true, because it was full of joy and sadness too, and the poetry, she would argue, was in the pity most of all, in all the tears shed for life’s pain and life’s losses.

In her accented English, with Spanish peppering the narrative—“because Spanish,” our Abuela would insist, “is not only the language of love, oigan bien, but the language of life itself”—our grandmother would transport us to a world where we would easily lose all sense of time. With her words, the streets of nineteenth-century Seville would come alive and we swore we could see the señoritas, with their long black hair and their tortoiseshell combs, flirting with the men from opened windows; that we could hear the call of the water-sellers, hear the steady strokes of the brooms as the cleaners made their way through the narrow streets; that we could smell the oranges and the jasmine and even the pungent olive groves, though there were no olive groves for miles but just the hint of their scent in the air; that we could feel the taconeo of the flamenco dancers’ feet deep inside our hearts; that we could taste the saffron in Bautista’s famous paellas and stews.

And when she was all done with Seville she would carry us over the ocean, across a tumultuous sea—“because this is a story without borders,” our Abuela would say, “a story that although rooted in place and time manages to transcend both”—and suddenly we would find ourselves in Mexico, melting in the unbearable heat of the Yucatán, tasting the tortillas that arrived still warm inside a hollow gourd, gazing at the sky to catch a glimpse of the area’s splendid birds.

In our Abuela’s capable hands we would wander into uncharted territory, passing from century to century, from vivid descriptions of a bal costumé to landscapes we had never seen but could depict down to the last shrub and tree—an often rocky terrain of recipes, seguiriyas, soleares, tonás, the poetry of Antonio Machado, the philosophical musings of Ortega y Gasset.

“A world, niños, a world!” she would proclaim. And we would agree, nodding our heads, seated side by side on a basement floor feasting on galletas imported from the distant Carmelite convents of Southern Spain.

All that is left now is the memory of her voice escaping from her empty room where her books and papers are scattered about as they have always been and where ghosts still linger on the sheets.

“Vamos,” she urges us from the grave. “Forget the mess left behind and get on with the tale.” Because the only things you really leave behind, we hear her say, are the things that obsess you, that give meaning to your life, the things that fill you with the energy to rise up in the morning and keep you on your toes throughout the long days and even longer nights. Because we are meant to tell stories, to relate the tales that make living bearable and, when all is good and gone, there is only this, a hushed voice, a lingering note, a tale that will outlive our little selves until the last generation is done.

With that in mind we sit down to retell the story with the help of our Abuela’s most cherished prop—a century-old map. Beneath the lines of longitude and latitude there is a deep blue ocean that turns reddish where land meets sea. On either side we scan the two continents—the old and the new, the past and the present, the beginning and the end. We bring forth also a black-and-white picture of the mapmaker, a certain Diego Clemente, the tenor who resides at the heart of this tale. The photograph is yellowed with age so that Diego’s face appears jaundiced, as if he were suffering from one of the myriad diseases common in the tropics where he played out the last scenes of his life. But he is handsome, that we can see, his eyes are large, his bearing is refined, there is no hint of the abusive girth that has accompanied many a splendid voice but has made a mockery of a well-loved part.

We return once again to the map. It is an exquisite specimen drawn on parchment, minutely detailed with mountains, rivers, oceans and a wealth of symbols waiting to be transformed into music by our trembling, excitable minds. Along the map’s borders lie the spectacular birds that beckoned to Diego from across an ocean and that accompanied him until the very moment of his death. The names of those birds had tumbled easily from our lips as children, as familiar to us as the seguiriyas, the arias and the soléas that played on our grandparents’ ancient turntable with its large knobs and its heavy wooden lid. Back then, we would take turns naming the birds one by one: an Aztec Parakeet in the west, a Turquoise-Browed Motmot in the north, a Ferruginous Pygmy Owl in the east, a Violaceous Trogon to the south.

Even as children, we could see something else in the map—that it was weighed down by secrets, that there was a dark stain lying beneath the pinks and the yellows, that the oceans were murky and that shadows were cast upon the earth.

It would take us almost twenty years to piece the story together, with all of the ups and downs, the good and the bad. It would take us that much time to unearth the mysteries, to plug the holes that our Abuela had left behind, the bits and pieces that would alter the tempo of the music, allowing a tone of lamentation to weave its way through the score.

In the background we now hear our Abuela urging us along from the grave. “Vamos,” she says in her familiar, impatient way. We smile, remembering, and together begin to trace a path on the map—from the yellow waters of the Guadalquivir River in Seville to the alabaster jewel that is the city of Mérida—travelling happily along the musical latitudes of our childhoods as if our Abuela were here beside us once again.

SCENE ONE (#ulink_7997b9cb-82b5-5af4-b72e-cd21138c14e6)

As we walk on sacred ground (#ulink_7997b9cb-82b5-5af4-b72e-cd21138c14e6)

As always, it is best to begin with the map.

Once, centuries ago, a map was a thing of beauty, a testament not to the way things were but to the heights scaled by men’s dreams. Mapmakers were not just artisans, they were artists intent on creating universes where the magical and the mythical were very much alive. On the corners of their maps they placed the wondrous creatures that guarded the entrances to heaven and hell. The world was a more mysterious place and everything was more beautifully drawn, more beautifully imagined, more beautifully named. In Europe a man would gaze uneasily to the West, fearful of drowning in the unknown sea—the mare ignotum. To the East lay Eden with its promise of everlasting innocence.

In the sixteenth century, a Spanish king, Philip II, obsessed with a love of God and in need of enough gold to prove it, instructed the royal cartographers to map his kingdom. Make the invisible visible, he told them, and let every European know who reigns over the New World. Within a few short years he was dead, but through engravings and woodcuts, the cartographers continued fashioning territories, travelling the spaces they sought to make real with measuring chains, wooden goniometers, compasses and their vivid fantasies—because before a land can hope to be mapped, it must first take root in our dreams.

Diego Clemente’s map is to be read carefully, from east to west, from right to left, beginning at 5°59’W, 37°23’N—the red spot that marked his birth in Seville—and ending at 89°39’W, 20°58’N—Mérida, his final resting place.

It is a beautiful map, more beautiful yet when you consider the sorrows he must have conquered in order to leave behind this final testament of symbols, lines and grids. A man should wait until he is close to death before attempting to draw conclusions about the meaning of his life—so you once said, Abuela, and we cannot help but wonder if Diego had been furnished with the opportunity to inspect his handiwork, to reflect one final time on his journey from his beginnings in Seville until that very last day at a Mexican hacienda an ocean away.

Like Columbus, who believed the New World contained mysterious islands brimming with wondrous gardens and golden apples, Diego’s mind had a touch of the fanciful in it, a penchant for concocting magical kingdoms, for imagining perfection, for clawing at the edges of mortality, attempting to map with his quill the mystery of existence, trying to keep death and, what is more, extinction itself at bay. We pause briefly to remember those who have disappeared forever from the skies—the Carolina Parakeet, the Passenger Pigeon, the Labrador Duck—and we lament, oh how we lament, the absence of dreamers like Diego who dared to stand up to the throngs, to the beliefs and disbeliefs of his own day and age.

But the lights begin to dim now, the words of the program become harder and harder to make out. A hush falls over the audience, a sense of expectation rises until it is met at its peak by the lowering of the baton as the first notes sound out. The curtains slowly rise and we find ourselves seated before the heavenly streets of nineteenth-century Seville. Picture a city bathed in the smell of orange blossoms in spring, jasmine in the fall. Imagine the women, their long dark hair covered by lace mantillas—black or white depending on the occasion—their fiesta dresses boasting trains, ribbons, frills and polka dots. In the distance the sounds of a guitar escape from a half-opened window—a song of love and death, for as any Spaniard will tell you, any love worth having must meet with a tragic end. Imagine too the tap-tap-tap of the flamenco dancer, arms intertwined, the music evaporating like steam, for the notes will not submit themselves to transcription and the dance vanishes forever once the passion of the dancer has been fully spent. And imagine then the heat, languorous, sultry, unbearable, the kind to be escaped in the early hours of the afternoon as shutters are closed and all retire inside for the siesta—those two hours of well-needed rest.

Inside the city’s cathedral a tall, thin man with a prominent nose is hurrying towards the main door, dressed entirely in black, his ardent eyes focused on a distant horizon, his mind lost in unknown thoughts. See him? It is Emilio García—the man who will eventually marry Mónica Clemente—at this point a seminarian, though he will end his life as a humble bookseller in Seville.

It was Emilio’s knowledge of English that would bring him much of his renown in his later days and it was this knowledge that also provided the means for the fateful meeting between Mónica Clemente and himself inside the city’s great cathedral. It was here that Mónica came to say her daily prayers and it was here too that Emilio spent his mornings shepherding about the English tourists who had begun arriving in Andalucía in small numbers around this time.

Darkly dressed, sallow-skinned, large dark eyes peering out intently from beneath an unruly head of hair, the young man appeared almost cadaverous until he began to speak and then he seemed to suddenly ignite, as if a spark had entered his body and granted him the gift of life. “Venga, venga,” he would urge his charges, gathered dutifully by the Puerta de la Asunción. “Inside,” he would enthuse, “await paintings by Murillo, Valdés Leal, Jordaens and Zurbarán. But that, gentlemen, is not all—shrines decorated with amethysts and emeralds, gold in abundance, the precious stones of Cardinal Mendoza and silver work the likes of which you have never seen before.” And then he would wave them forward as if waiting inside that building were the keys to the heavens themselves, the enthusiasm in his voice increasing with every step until it reached a crescendo from where he would only slowly and reluctantly descend.

“Notice, if you will, the roof by Borja, señores,” he would point out to the tourists first. “A beauty, no? A marvel to behold.”

“Ah yes, indeed,” the tourists would respond, necks stretched awkwardly upwards trying to get a good look, their efforts interrupted abruptly by Emilio, who had already moved on to other more important things.

“And before you, the sculpture of Santa Veronica by Cornejo. Yes, splendid it is. I have no words to adequately describe such works. Magnificent, tremendous. Señores, you must admit that they simply fill the heart with awe.”

“So true,” the English would agree, shaking their heads, eyebrows arched in wonder as their young tour guide charged earnestly ahead.

Emilio, to all appearances oblivious to those who trudged faithfully behind him, would continue to point out the delights of the cathedral. “On your right, the Virgin with the Christ, St. John and the Magdalena, all by Pedro Roldán. And, my personal favourite—notice, please, the stupendous statues and Corinthian pillars designed by Juan de Arce. Magnificent, señores, outstanding beyond compare.”

The English would nod. Ah yes, ah no, of course and indeed, they would say, walking dutifully behind the young man who would saunter ahead as if fearing the great building itself was on the verge of disappearing into thin air and it was all they could do to catch this one final glimpse of it.

Later, alone in the cramped rooms of their pensiones, it was not the ostentatious delights of the cathedral the tourists would remember, but the enthusiastic young man who had been their guide: his passion, the quickness of his stride, his facility with English, which he spoke with such flourish and drama that it seemed in some ways a totally new language.

In the evenings too, alone in his dark room at the seminary, Emilio would pore over his books, trying with all his might to block out the gaiety of Seville. The sounds and the smells drifted into his room from the streets outside as people played, sang and declared their love for each other; because there, outside, were the sounds of life, he would tell himself and, thinking this, he would sink into despair at the sight of his narrow bed, the stained walls, the brass cross hanging over his desk and even his own pale hands turning the pages of a book by the dim candlelight.

On that particular evening, Emilio was reading the poetic works of Shelley, stumbling over the words but determined to get them right for if there was one thing that Emilio loved above all it was the sound of the English language.

English—yes, it seems strange indeed that a man who had been raised speaking the sonorous language of Lope de Vega and Cervantes felt such passion for the language he often accused of driving a person mad with its incomprehensible grammatical rules and its impossible pronunciation. But Emilio had been ensnared, seduced by English words, English cadences. Even more than the language, he loved the writers: Sir Walter Scott, above all, whose novels Emilio spent hours admiring, dictionary at the ready, or the heady outpourings of the English Romantics.

Inside the cathedral of Seville—not so much a building as a city in itself, with its staff of more than one hundred priests and sacristans, the comings and goings of peasants, tourists and nuns, the thirty Masses heard and the thirty yet to be heard in honour of Count this and estimado señor that, dead but nobly buried with seven priests and the most important families of Seville in attendance—Emilio would saunter along the hallowed aisles, savouring those English words as they rolled roughly from his tongue, all the while lamenting every moment that took him closer to a union with God.

It was his mother’s wish that he become a priest. “You were conceived with that in mind,” she had told him once. He had been born long after her other sons and shortly before the death of Emilio’s father—yet another sign, she had argued, that he was meant for God, that he had come into this world to guarantee his father’s passage from purgatory to heaven above and to ease the pain of her own life, a life she forever threatened was coming to an end, though the years passed and no end ever appeared imminent to those around her.

A tiny woman with a commanding voice, in her later years Emilio’s mother had taken to spending much of her free time inside the churches of Seville. This habit had made her something of an authority, not, as you would think, on the architecture of these beautiful buildings, but on the many sins of the prominent dead of the city, in whose names Masses were said, bells rung and souls siphoned from purgatory by the prayers of those below.