men, and two women are not as effective as a tractor. The landscape has altered, they have left the mountains and hills behind, the last undulations are disappearing from sight, and looming up before one's eyes is what looks like an endless plain with such a vast sky overhead that one begins to doubt that the sky is all one, more likely each location, if not each person, has its own sky, greater or smaller, higher or lower, and this has been an amazing discovery, yes indeed, the sky like an infinite succession of encrusted domes, the contradiction in terms is only apparent, you need only look. When Deux Chevaux reaches the summit of the last hill one thinks the world will come to an end before the earth rises again, and since it is quite common for different causes to have the same effect, we have to struggle for breath up here as if we had been carried to the top of Everest, as anyone will tell you who has also been there, unless he has had the same experience as we have had on this flat ground.
Pedro reckons without his host. But let it be said at once that this Pedro is not Orce, nor does the narrator know who he is, even if he admits that behind the aforementioned Pedro is the apostle of the same name who denied Christ three times, and these are the same calculations God made, probably because he was Triune, and not very good at arithmetic. In Portugal it is customary to say that Pedro knows his sums when the sums done by all Pedros come out wrong, this is a popular and ironic way of saying that some people should leave decisions to others, in other words, Joaquim Sassa was wrong when he estimated they would cover one hundred and fifty kilometers each day. Maria Guavaira was also wrong when she reduced it to ninety. The trader knows about trading, horses know about pulling a wagon, and just as one says, or used to say, Bad money drives out good, so the pace of the old horse moderated that of the young one, unless the latter was showing pity, kindness, human respect, because for the strong to brag about their strength in the presence of the weak is a sign of moral perversion. We have deemed all these words necessary in order to explain that we have been traveling more slowly than was predicted, concision is not a definitive virtue, on occasion one loses out by talking too much, it is true, but how much has also been gained by saying more than was strictly necessary. The horses go at their own pace, they had set off at a trot and they obey the whims or demands of the driver, but little by little, so subtly that no one even notices, Grizzly and Chess start reducing their pace, how they can manage it so harmoniously is a mystery, for no one heard the one say to the other, Slow down, or the other reply, When we get past that tree.
Fortunately, the travelers are not in a hurry. In the beginning, when they left the already distant lands of Galicia, they felt that they had dates to meet and itineraries to respect, there was even a certain feeling of urgency, as if each of them had to save a father from the gallows, to reach the scaffold before the executioner let the trapdoor fall. Here it is not a question of father or mother, for we know nothing about the one or the other, except for Maria Guavaira's mother, who is senile and no longer lives in La Coruna, unless she returned there once the danger had passed. About the other mothers and fathers, ancient and modern, nothing has been revealed, when children fall silent, questions must also be silenced and inquiries suspended, for when all is said and done, the world begins and ends with each one of us, although this statement might deeply offend the family spirit as showing disrespect for one's heritage and lineage. Within several days, the road became a world outside the world, as with any man who, finding himself in the world, discovers that he is himself a world, nor is this difficult, one need only create a little solitude around oneself, like these travelers who while traveling together travel alone. That is why they are not in a hurry, that is why they stopped measuring the distance they have covered, any stops they make are for selling or taking a rest, and they often feel tempted to stop for no reason other than that same appetite, for which there may always be reasons but we generally do not waste time looking for them. We all end up where we want to be, it is only a question of time and patience, the hare goes faster than the tortoise, perhaps it will arrive first, so long as it does not cross the path of the hunter and his shotgun.
We have left the barren plain of Leon, have entered and are traveling through Tierra de Campos where that famous preacher Fray Gerundio de Campazas was born and flourished, whose words and deeds were recounted in detail by the no less celebrated Padre Isla, as an example to long-winded orators, relentless bores who never stop quoting, compulsive rhymers and tiresome scribblers who go on and on, what a pity we have not learned from their example, which could not be clearer. Let us therefore prune this rambling exordium right at the outset, and say quite simply that the travelers will spend the night in a village called Villalar, not far from Toro, Tordesillas, and Simancas, all of them touching closely on Portuguese history in terms of a battle, a treaty, archives. A teacher by profession, Jose Anaico finds these names evocative, but little else. His knowledge of history is only general, other than the rudiments he knows only a few more details than his Spanish and Portuguese audience who must have learned some thing, or can't have forgotten everything, about Simancas, Toro, and Tordesillas, given the wealth of information and patriotic lore to be found in the history books of both countries. But no one here knows anything about Villalar except Pedro Orce who, although a native of Andalusia, has the enlightenment of someone who has traveled throughout the peninsula, the fact that he said he did not know Lisbon when he arrived there two months ago does not rule out this hypothesis, perhaps he simply did not recognize the place, just as the city would no longer be recognized today by its Phoenician founders, its Roman colonizers, or its Visigothic rulers, the Muslims might look on it with a glimmer of recognition, the Portuguese with increasing bewilderment.
They are sitting in pairs around the bonfire, Joaquim and Maria, Jose and Joana, Pedro and Constant, the night is a little chilly, but the sky is serene and clear, there are scarcely any stars to be seen, for the early-rising moon floods with light the flat countryside and the nearby rooftops of Villalar, whose friendly mayor raised no objections when this band of Spanish and Portuguese migrants sought to camp so close to the village, despite their being vagrants and peddlers and therefore likely to steal trade from local shopkeepers. The moon is not high but has already taken on that appearance we so enjoy admiring, that luminous disk that inspires trite verses and even more trite sentiments, a silken sieve sprinkling white dust over the submissive landscape. Then we exclaim, What lovely moonlight, and we try to forget the shudders of fear we experience when the heavenly body first appears, enormous, red, threatening, over the curving earth. After thousands and thousands of years, the nascent moon continues even today to dawn like a threat, like a sign of the approaching end, fortunately the anxiety lasts only a few minutes, the moon has risen, become small and white, we can breathe more easily. The animals, too, are fretful, a short time ago when the moon appeared the dog stood there staring at it, tense, rigid, perhaps it might have howled had it not been without vocal cords, but the dog bristled all over as if a frozen hand had ruffled its coat while stroking its back. There are moments when the world leaves its axis, we sense that nothing is secure, and if we could fully express what we are feeling, we would say, with an expressive absence of rhetoric, That was a close call.
What Pedro Orce knows about the history of Villalar we are about to find out once they finish their meal. As the flames of the bonfire dance in the still air, the travelers look at them pensively, stretch out their hands as if they were imposing them on or surrendering them to the flames, there is an ancient mystery in this relationship between us humans and fire, even under the open sky, as if we and the fire were inside the original cave, grotto, or matrix. Tonight it is Jose Anaico's turn to wash up, but there is no hurry, the hour is peaceful, almost gentle, the light of the flames flickers on their weather-beaten faces, the color of sunrise, the sun is of another order and alive, not dead like the moon, that is the difference.
And Pedro Orce tells them, You may not know this but many, many years ago, in 1521 there was a great battle here in Villalar, greater for its consequences than for the number of dead, because had it been won by the one who lost it, those of us who are alive today would have inherited a very different world. Jose Anaico is well informed about the great battles of history, and if the question were fired at him, he would be able to run off without a moment's hesitation some ten names, beginning classically with Marathon and Thermopylae and proceeding, without regard for chronology, through Austerlitz and Borodino, Marne and Monte Cassino, Ardennes and El Alamein, Poitiers and Alcacer Quibir, and also Aljubarrota, which means nothing to the world and everything to us, these were paired for no special reason, But I've never heard of the Battle of Villalar, concluded Jose Anaico, Well, that battle, explained Pedro Orce, took place when the communes of Spain rebelled against Emperor Charles V, a foreigner, but not so much because he was a foreigner, for in past centuries it was the most natural thing in the world for nations to find a king sneaking in through the back door, someone who spoke another language, the whole business was left to royal houses who gambled away their own countries along with those of others, I don't mean dice or cards, but they played for dynastic interests, entering into fake alliances and marriages of convenience, which is why one cannot really say that the communes rebelled against an unwanted king, nor should anyone imagine it was the eternal war of the poor against the rich, if only things were that simple, the fact is that the Spanish nobility did not approve, not in the slightest, of the Emperor's having conferred appointments on so many foreigners, and one of the first measures taken by these new masters was to raise taxes, an infallible means of paying for luxuries and further ventures, in any event the first city to rebel was Toledo, and others soon followed its example, Toro, Madrid, Avila, Soria, Burgos, Salamanca, and so on and so forth, but the motives of some were
