“Hey, amigo,” I cried out, “you almost skewered me!”
“A thousand apologies, sir,” he cried out in reply. “That’s for Mr. Perky next to you.”
I drew back, and Mr. Perky in return extended to his friend his own sword, on whose point there seemed to be a piece of pluck. At the first moment, I thought that my eyes, teary from tobacco vapors, were deceiving me, but as the sword passed just under my nose, I caught a certain unmistakable aroma, and then I saw that Dr. Monardes next to me had taken a cigarella in one hand and his Spanish dagger in the other, with a piece of pluck stuck on top of it, and was eating most happily without saying a word to me.
I turned to Ben and said, “Where is this pluck from?”
“From the servants. Two pence. Would you like some?”
“That wouldn’t be half bad,” I answered.
“Hey, boy,” Señor Jonson called out and raised his hand.
“Who’s calling me?” a voice came from behind the vapors.
“Over here, over here,” Ben cried.
“That is the question: Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them?”
“Don’t suffer! Take arms!” Mr. Perky cried out. Señor Jonson gave a piercing whistle. In a short while, everyone was whistling. I began whistling, too. The chaps in the stalls also began whistling. The man on the stage continued speaking, but nothing could be heard. Then boos were heard from somewhere. We all began booing. Someone with the voice of the Leviathan itself cried out from the stalls, “Boo! Boo!”
A few people from the stalls joined him. Then all the groundlings followed suit. One of us gallants also cried out: “Boo! Boo!”
“Boo! Boo!” I began yelling, too.
“Who called me?” My ears barely caught question. It was as if Fate itself had made me look in that direction because the boy had already turned around to leave.
“Over here, over here!” I cried out and raised my hand. The boy saw me and leaned over the table towards me. “Pluck for me, too,” I hollered to him.
“Very well, sir,” he hollered out in return, taking three steps into the vapors and suddenly disappearing like the apparition of St. Sancho at Casa de Toros, St. Anselm in Malaga, Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker in Sierra Blanca, and many others. Spain is full of apparitions that disappear.
Meanwhile, the audience had begun stamping their feet. I continued to yell and also began to stamp. Someone shook my shoulder. It was Dr. Monardes.
“Guimarães,” he yelled in my ear, “do you have more cigarellas?”
“Boo!” I yelled, shook my head affirmatively, thrust my hand into my inside pocket, brought out a cigarella, and passed it over my shoulder to Dr. Monardes.
“God bless you!” the doctor said.
“Alas, poor Yorick!” was heard from the stage when the noise subsided. “I knew him, Horatio.”
“I knew him, too,” Mr. Perky cried out, and everybody laughed.
Meanwhile, the boy had brought the pluck; a pleasant aromatic vapor hung over it. Since I wanted to try the sword trick for myself, I asked for Mr. Jonson’s sword, stuck a bit of pluck on the tip, reached past Dr. Monardes and said: “This is for you, Mr. Perky.”
Mr. Perky put his hand to his heart and gave a slight bow.
Señor Jonson, whose head was enveloped in vapor from his pipe, was talking about something with his neighbor on his other side and had been spitting on my feet for some time; inadvertently, of course. Pipes make you spit quite a bit, incidentally. After some hesitation (during which time he continued to spit on my feet), I gently tapped him on the shoulder and said: “My friend, you’re spitting on my shoes.”
“Really?” Señor Jonson said, very surprised. “A thousand apologies, mate.”
That’s what they say here—“a thousand apologies.” Who would apologize to you in Spain? If you asked for an apology, a Spaniard would take that as an insult.
“Now, listen here,” Señor Jonson said after a while, taking a drag on his pipe, “that’s a great phrase . . . That man Bill . . . he always does that . . . he puts one ingenious phrase . . . in a sea of nonsense.” He tossed two hazelnuts into his mouth. “Here is it.” Señor Jonson raised a finger. “Now!”
“What’s Hecuba to him,” the line resounded from the stage, “or he to Hecuba, that he should weep for her?”
“Marvelous!” I exclaimed, throwing up my hands.
“Isn’t it? Bravo! Bravo!” Señor Jonson cried out and broke into applause.
“Bravo!” I called out as well.
The gallants joined in. However, I suspect that our enthusiasm would soon have subsided unnoticed if that mighty voice from the stalls had not come to our aid.
“Bravo!” the Leviathan thundered and began applauding. His applause was also gargantuan, it echoed like cannon shots.
Who is that giant, who is that Gargantua? I wondered and turned to the stalls, but nothing could be seen there, since it was enveloped by smoke.
Soon everybody was crying Bravo! Bravo! and applauding. Then someone began whistling. Mr. Perky, Dr. Monardes, and Señor Jonson beat out the others, being the first to begin booing.
Naturally, I joined them immediately. Amidst the general heckling, a thunderous voice could again be heard from the pit: “Boo! Boo!”
“Boo!” we also began shouting.
Soon everybody was booing and stamping their feet.
That’s how things happen in reality, I suddenly thought, who knows why. All sorts of thoughts cross your mind in such a situation.
“With sorrow I embrace my fortune,” a spectacularly dressed man said from the stage. He approached us, grabbed Señor Jonson’s pipe, took two drags, and went back to the stage, showered by universal applause.
“That’s Fortinbras,” Señor Jonson yelled at me. “He’s one of a kind!”
“Take up the bodies,” the stylish man continued and kicked one of the men lying on the stage. “Such a sight as this becomes the field, but here shows much amiss. Go, bid the soldiers shoot.”
A moment later, the bodies got up and began bowing to the audience.
“What, it can’t be over so soon?” I cried out, extremely disappointed. An excellent play!
The audience got to its feet and began applauding wildly, accompanying that with salutatory cries.
While rising, I inadvertently overturned my plate of pluck. With almost superhuman dexterity, Dr. Monardes speared a chunk of it on his dagger in mid-air and brought it to his lips, without a word.
“Damnation!” I said, staring at the pluck scattered on the ground, clapping my hands all the while.
Well, that was all for tonight.
“What a marvelous play!” I said to Señor Jonson as we walked in the fresh, cool air of the London night.
“Yes. The audience here has good taste and is very hard to please. You can’t put on just any old play,” Mr. Jonson replied. “But this is nothing! You should see Every Man out of His Humor. Now there’s a true burlesque! Phenomenal! This was still a tragedy, after all.”
“Yes,” I said and, absorbed in the conversation, nearly bumped into the legs of some thief hanged on the Tower Bridge. “Why on earth do they have to put them here?” I exclaimed.