Prevod

Some of my readers may have forgotten that the ground now occupied by the station of the Lima–Callao railway was, not so very long ago, the site of the church, convent, and hospital of the Brothers of Saint John of God.

In the days of Viceroy Avilés, that is to say, at the beginning of the century, there lived in the aforesaid convent of San Juan de Dios an aging lay brother known among the people as Father Carapulcra, a nickname earned by the ravages smallpox had wrought upon his face.

Father Carapulcra enjoyed a reputation for exceedingly sharp wit, and many popular sayings and spicy remarks are attributed to him. Though the hospital brothers had taken a vow of poverty, our lay brother was no such pauper as not to have five thousand pesos in gold onzas buried in a corner of his cell.

A frequent visitor to the convent was a young fellow of the sort who wore a little gold hoop in the left ear and sported a Philippine silk handkerchief in a jacket pocket, spoke with a lisp, and were indispensable at every second-rate carousal; fellows who soaked up more liquor than a sponge and strummed so beautifully that they made the guitar strings speak wonders.

He had his suspicions that the lay brother was not quite the utter pauper the rules of his order required him to be, and managed matters so adroitly that Father Carapulcra finally confided to him that he did, in fact, have a few maravedís tucked away in a safe place.

“Then they’re mine already,” said young Cututeo to himself, for such was the nom de guerre with which the lad had been solemnly christened among those merry, mettlesome, hard-living souls.

These last lines positively cry out for an explanation. Let us dash one off. The christening of a young rake was performed before an earthenware jar of aguardiente adorned with ribbons and flowers. The aspirant broke it with a stone thrown from three yards away, and the trick was to spill no more than a liter of liquor on the ground. The godfather then served all those present, lads and lasses alike, and, before draining the first glass, delivered a speech bestowing upon the candidate the nickname under which, from that moment forward, he was enrolled in the brotherhood of true chuchumecos. Once this ceremony was over, there began a debauch of the sort to set the world and its surroundings trembling.

Among those bohemians of vice, it was a great honor to be able to say: “I am a true, duly admitted chuchumeco, and no ordinary one, either: I was received by Pablo Tello himself, in person, with an opened jar, harp, guitar, and cajón.”

We could write at length on this subject, and on the technical language or jargon spoken by the initiates; but the business is compromising and thorny, and we had better leave it for another time, for Zamora was not taken in an hour.

One afternoon, when some feast or other had occasioned a grand spread in the refectory of the Brothers of Saint John of God, the lay brother and the chuchumeco set to drinking, glass after glass; and when the former was already somewhat tipsy, the latter thought the moment ripe to venture the finishing stroke.

“If Your Reverence would entrust me with some of those little coins you have lying idle and gathering mold, may God turn the liquor I have drunk to arsenic in my belly, or to pond water full of toads and vermin, if I have not tripled your money within a year.”

The demon of greed took a bite out of the lay brother’s heart. “Look, Your Reverence,” the young fellow went on, “I was an apprentice in Don Silverio’s apothecary shop, and I have the pharmacopoeia at my fingertips. With two thousand pesos we can set up an apothecary shop that will put the Gato’s to shame.”

“With so little, man!” stammered the brother. “With even less, indeed; but I name a round sum because I like to do things on a grand scale, without skimping. A brass mortar, a little stone one, a retort, a still, a jar of leeches, a few ounces of gum, linseed, chicory, and marshmallow root, some handsome bottles, most of them empty and a few with medicines in them, and that is the lot... It is all we need. Believe me, Your Reverence. With four simples—four medicinal herbs—I can have Lima’s finest apothecary shop up and running in no time.”

And he continued with variations on the same theme, stirring up the hospital brother’s greed and flattering his vanity by calling him Your Reverence at every turn. It seems the scoundrel had committed this couplet to memory:

To rise, you need but flatter and praise; flattery is soap that never wears away. A flatterer can accomplish a great deal, especially when he knows how to lay it on thick. Speaking of flattery, I cannot remember in which old chronicle I read that one of the viceroys of Peru was a man who took boundless pleasure in being thought omnipotent. One evening, the palace company was discussing the Apocalypse and the Last Judgment, and the viceroy turned to a young, witty magistrate from Lima, who until then had not opened his lips on the subject, and said: “And you, learned sir, when do you believe the world will end?” “Why, plainly,” replied the gentleman addressed, “when Your Excellency orders it to end.” The chronicler adds that the viceroy took this sharp, epigrammatic answer for exquisite flattery. What a conviction the man must have had of his own omnipotence!

In the end, the good lay brother swallowed the bait and began by digging up a hundred gold peluconas. The apothecary shop was opened, displaying on its counter four flasks of colored water and a large glass jar containing little river fish. A few elegant bottles of medicines also graced the display cabinets; but on the pretext that today they needed this balm and tomorrow that concoction, the apothecary managed to extract from his partner every last gold tooth he had buried underground.

Months went by, and the young fellow, who knew more tricks than a serpent, kept regaling him with rosy accounts, until Carapulcra, weary of it all, said:

“Well, sir, we must draw up a balance sheet, and the sooner the better.” “Agreed,” Cututeo replied without turning a hair. “We shall attend to it tomorrow.”

And that afternoon he sold everything in the display cabinets to others in the trade at half price, leaving the apothecary shop swept clean without the aid of a broom.

When Carapulcra went looking for his partner the next day to begin drawing up the balance sheet, he found that the bird had flown, and that the only stock remaining was the jar of fish.

The lay brother flew into a rage and, in his fury, seized the jar and hurled it into the water channel, saying: “Off you swim, fish!” And there, should you not know it, is the origin of that expression.

Then Father Carapulcra, taking his head in his hands, sank into a leather armchair, muttering: “Ah, the rogue! He told me it took four simples to set up an apothecary shop... Liar! He set his up with just one simpleton... and that was me!”