FIFTY-FOUR.

My eighteenth year occurred when I accompanied the Healer to a fair. The fair was once again held to sell merchandise that had arrived aboard ship but this time it was a smaller fair, and the merchandise came not from Europe but from Manila on the other side of the great Western Sea. Each year galleons, floating castles, sometimes several, other times just a single ship, made the crossing of the Western Sea, from Acapulco to Manila and back.

The Manila galleons took much longer to cross the ocean than the treasure fleet that coursed to Spain. Fray Antonio had showed me the two seas on a map of the world. The distance to Manila was several times farther than the route between Veracruz and Seville. Across the Western Sea, which the fray's map called the Southern Sea, were the islands called the Filipinas. From this outpost halfway around the world from Spain, trade was had with a land called China, where there are more chinos, people with yellow skin, than grains of sand-an island of short, brownish people who train warriors called samurai, who are the fiercest fighting men on earth-and the Spice Islands, where the beaches are composed not of sand, but of cinnamon and other spices, which can be shoved into buckets.

The incident at Veracruz was several years and many leagues away. I felt safe going to the fair and was actually eager to be around more Spaniards again. For three years I had been enmeshed in the indio culture. While I learned much, there was still much I admired and desired to learn from my Spanish side.

I had grown inches and put on over twenty pounds in weight. I was tall and slender, as I had always been for my age, but had filled in some of the bones with the good food I enjoyed with the Healer. In the House of the Poor our meals consisted mostly of tortillas and beans, but on the road with the Healer we truly feasted. Often guests at village festivals, we dined on chicken, pig, and duck, and fine indio dishes like mole, the l.u.s.ty sauce made with chocolate, chilies, tomatoes, spices and ground nuts. Eh, amigos, no king since Montezuma feasted better than the Healer and me.

While the Manila galleon fair was not as large as the one that took place in Jalapa for the treasure fleet because there were fewer ships on the Manila run, the cargo was much more exotic. The Manila galleons brought back silks, ivory, pearls and other luxuries that the rich of New Spain coveted. Best of all were the spices from the Spice Islands, pepper and cinnamon and nutmeg. The smell of the spices was exotic and tempted the thieving lepero in me. You ask if my years with the Healer had not separated me from the bad habits I learned on the streets of Veracruz? Let us just say that the Healer taught me new tricks... but I did not forget the old.

Because the products from the Far East were new and strange, there was much for me to wander about and gawk at. I bought a pinch of cinnamon and both the Healer and I tasted it on the tip of our tongues. Our eyes lit up in amazement at the strange taste. Dios mio, how many pesos would a shovelful be worth! I wondered if the sea that washed the Spice Islands tasted like spices.

But there was work to do and little time for daydreaming. The fair was held for only a few days and we had traveled far to get there. We had to make enough money in a short time to ensure the trip was worth it. The unusual sights and smells I could enjoy in stolen moments.

The Healer had come to practice his art, his healing and his magic, and I was his a.s.sistant. When business was slow, to draw a crowd I was sometimes a sick person who would loudly complain to him of pain and noise in my head. When enough people had gathered, the Healer muttered incantations and pulled a snake out of my ear. Once people saw my miracle cure, there was usually someone in the crowd who was willing to pay for a cure for themselves.

But the Healer did not take every person who stepped forward. He took patients only whom he believed he could help. And he did not require payment unless the patient could afford it. Neither practice filled our pockets. All of his patients were indios, anyway, and these people rarely had anything but copper coins jingling in their pockets. More often payment was in cocoa beans or a small sack of maize.

Like the Roman G.o.d Ja.n.u.s, there were two faces to the Healer. The snakes were a trick, but the healing was not.

I was still very loose and limber in my arms and legs, and privately I still practiced the art of twisting my joints, but I no longer performed in public, playing the cripple for alms. It was too dangerous because the man Ramon who killed Fray Antonio may have known of my skill. However, I inadvertently exposed my abilities.

Business was always better if the Healer could be elevated a bit above the onlookers. In this case there was a rocky mount about five feet off the ground. The area was heavily entrapped by large vines and other growth. I cleared away enough s.p.a.ce atop to permit the Healer and his patients to stand.

During a performance in which a crowd had formed to watch the snake come out of a person's ear, the nervous patient accidentally kicked the Healer's pipe which was laying nearby, knocking it into the vines hanging down the side of the mound. I quickly scrambled to get it, slipping into the vines, twisting and turning to wiggle in and out like a serpent.

When I got back on top, I noticed a man, a Spaniard, staring at me. The man was not dressed in the cloth of a merchant nor in the rougher garb of a hacienda boss, but as a caballero-not the fancy clothes one usually sees them wearing on the streets, but the thicker fabric and leathers they wear when they are traveling or fighting. The Spaniard had hard and unforgiving features, his lips and eyes revealing a streak of cruelty. As he stared at me, another man came up beside him. I almost gasped aloud.

It was Mateo, the picaro who had put on the play at the Jalapa fair.

The mean-spirited Spaniard spoke to Mateo, and the two looked up at me with inquiring eyes. There was no explosion of recognition in the picaro's eyes. It had been three years since I had seen him, a long time ago for a skinny beggar boy who was fifteen at the time. I had no idea whether he recognized me. The last time I saw him, he had cut a man's head off for me. Perhaps this time he was going to cut my head off.

Fearful that I had exposed myself, I left the stage and pretended to walk along the rows of merchandise lined up for sale. Mateo and the other Spaniard followed slowly behind me. I ducked down behind bales of wool and crawled along until I reached the end and then ran low down another line of merchandise. I peeked up and saw Mateo looking around, trying to find me. I did not see the other man.

Running low along the merchandise, I saw a chance to make a dash to the heavy brush outside the perimeters of the fair. When I stood up to run, a rough hand grabbed me by the back of the neck and spun me around.

The Spaniard jerked me close to his face. He stank of sweat and garlic. His eyes bulged a little, like fish eyes. He put his knife under my throat and pressed until I was standing on my tiptoes and staring at him wide-eyed. He let go of my neck and smiled at me, keeping the pressure of the dagger under my chin. He held up a peso with his free hand.

"Do you want your throat cut or the peso?"

I couldn't open my mouth. I motioned at the peso with my eyes.

He released the knife from my throat and handed me the peso.

I stared at the peso-a veritable fortune. I had rarely had a silver reale in my hand, and a peso was worth eight reales. An indio would work a week for less. Men were sometimes killed for less.

"I am Sancho de Erauso," the Spaniard said, "your new friend."

Sancho was the friend of no one, of that I was certain. A large man but not tall, bulky, there was no piety in his eyes, no mercy in his face. The picaro Mateo was larcenous but had the manners and airs of a rogue and gentleman. Sancho had no pretense of being a gentlemen-or even human. He was a cutthroat, a man who could share with you a meal and a gla.s.s of wine and then kill you for dessert.

Mateo found us. No recognition showed on his face or in his eyes. Could he really not remember the boy he had killed a man for? Yet what would be his motive for not recognizing me? Perhaps he regretted his act and feared that I would expose him as the real killer. Perhaps he was going to kill me. And it was possible that like so many Spaniards, an indio or mestizo was as distinguishable to him as one tree from another in a forest of trees.

"What do you want of me?" My tone to Sancho was subservient, an indio speaking to a master who wielded a heavy hand.

Sancho put his arm around my shoulder, and we walked along together with Mateo on my other side. My nose was close to Sancho's armpit, and it smelled worse than a sewer hole. Did the man never bathe? Or wash his clothes?

"My friend, you are most fortunate. I need a small favor. You are a poor, miserable indio with no future except to break your back for the gachupin and die young. For this little favor, you will earn so much money you will never have to work again. No more stealing, no more whoring your mother and sister. You will have money, women, and not just pulque to drink, but the best Spanish wines and Caribbean rum."

The man was evil, el diablo and Mictlantecuhtli in one. His voice had the texture of Chinese silk, his face the charm of a rattlesnake smiling. His sincerity was as genuine as a puta's l.u.s.t.

"We have a small task for you, something that only a slender youth who can twist his body like a corkscrew can do. We have to travel a few days to get to where you will perform your task. In less than a week you will be the richest indio in New Spain. How does that sound, amigo?"

It sounded like I was going to be roasted over a flame while wild dogs gnawed on my cojones. Still, I smiled at the bully. Elevating him to a man of respectability, I added the honorific "don" to his name. "Don Sancho, I am a poor indio. When you speak of great wealth, I thank all the saints that you will let me serve you."

"I don't like the looks of this one," Mateo said. "Something about him strikes me wrong-his eyes-he looks more conniving."

Sancho stopped and faced me, looking for the conniving in my eyes. "He's the best we've seen." He moved in closer and I forced myself not to be repelled by the smell. His grabbed me by the throat, and I felt his knife against my groin.

"The old man with the snakes, is that your father?"

"Si, senor."

"You can run fast, Chico, but the old man can't. Each time you annoy me, I will cut off one of his fingers. If you run away, I will cut off his head."

"We have to travel south, to Monte Alban in the valley of Oaxaca," I told the Healer later. "Spaniards have hired me to do a task. They will pay me well."

I told him that Sancho wanted me to retrieve something he had lost. I couldn't tell him what the task was because I did not know, but as was his custom, he asked no questions. At these times I had the feeling that rather than a lack of curiosity, he knew exactly what was happening. No doubt a bird had been listening to the conversation and reported to him.

It was hours before the fair would close for the night, and I spent the time wandering around, looking at the many wonders, trying to figure a way out of the trap. There was no acting troupe in evidence, and I supposed that they had separated company with the poet-swordsman or by now had taken their turn on the gallows.

Mateo seemed grimmer than when I had first seen him. And his clothes were not as fancy and well kept. Perhaps the last several years had not been good to him. I had not forgotten that I owed him my life.

As I wandered about the fair, a commotion broke out and a crowd gathered. During an archery contest, a man, an indio, had been shot by an arrow that went astray. People surrounded him to stare, and I squeezed in close to watch. The man's friend knelt beside him and started to pull out the arrow. Another man stopped him.

"If you pull out the arrow that way, you will tear his insides and he will bleed to death."

The speaker, a Spaniard about forty years old and dressed like a wealthy merchant, knelt and examined the wound. I heard someone call him "Don Julio" when he instructed men to help him move the injured man.

"Move him over here. Stand back," he told those of us crowding around.

Always fascinated by medicine, I helped Don Julio and two others move the wounded man behind the line of merchant tents so he would be out of the sight and path of people.

Don Julio knelt and examined the arrow wound.

"What position were you in when you were shot?" Don Julio spoke Spanish with a slight accent, and I recognized that he was probably Portuguese. Many Portuguese had come to the New World after the Spanish king inherited the throne of that country.