DAMAS Y CABALLEROS, this is a fine specimen. A negro from Azemmur, twenty to twenty-five years of age. Tall and broad-shouldered. A bit thin, but you can tell from his bearing that he is very strong. Good teeth. Do not be alarmed by his stained gums: the Moors clean their teeth with walnut root; it leaves behind an orange tint. What else? Let me see. The ledger says that he used to work for merchants. He is fluent in Portuguese, and can also manage some words in our idiom. A bargain at twenty-five ducats. Twenty-five ducats!
THAT I HAD ENDED UP on the auction block of my own volition did not lessen my fear. My breath quickened at the sight of the raised platform. The auctioneer’s voice mixed with that of children laughing, dogs barking, and hammers beating, in a cacophony that had started long before my arrival and would continue long after my departure. Somewhere, a musician played the flute, but the cheerful tune failed to stand out from the other sounds or to distract me from my surroundings. The sun glinted off the metal platters of the silversmith across from me and I had to turn my face away. My eyes met those of a little boy in dark clothes who had been staring at me. He wanted to get a closer look, for he took off his short-brimmed hat. With a swift movement, his mother put it back on his head. Por Dios, she said in a voice ringing with annoyance.
Among the slaves waiting their turn, I noticed many who had two marks on their cheeks — one in the shape of a coiling snake and the other in the form of a cross. I ventured to ask an Andalusian woman, whom I had heard whisper some words in Arabic to her daughter, what the brand on her face meant. It means esclavo, she said, peering at me with curious eyes. Looking around me, I noticed that none of the black people in the marketplace had been marked with the brand. In Seville, the color of their skin — the color of my skin — was a sign in itself.
My group was led onto the platform and made to face the crowd. For a few moments, all of us, buyers and slaves, regarded one another appraisingly. The buyers looked for the slaves that were most likely to fulfill their needs: a domestic, a farm worker, a porter, a concubine. They all wanted a good bargain — the strongest, healthiest, or prettiest for the least amount of money. The slaves, too, looked at the buyers, trying to guess who among them seemed the least demanding, the least avaricious, or the least cruel, even though their guesses were of no import to the outcome.
The auctioneer’s voice was as loud and strong as that of the town crier in Azemmur. I remembered all the times I had seen slaves in the marketplace of my hometown. I had never thought about these men and women, had never wondered how they had ended up in chains, had never worried about who they had left at home and who would miss them and pray for their return. I had passed them and gone about my business, delivering wax to a merchant or buying flour for the evening meal, without dwelling on the sight. Later, out of sheer greed for more gold, I had sold slaves myself. But now it was I on the auction block, while, in the distance, people went about their business without giving me a second look.
The first man in our group, the man who had tripped on the stairs of the cathedral, sold for less than ten ducats. He was swiftly taken off the platform by a grimy farmer, and in my mind’s eye I saw the backbreaking work that awaited him, the leftovers he would be fed, the barn where he would sleep. I tried to suppress my fear. Perhaps I would be luckier. Perhaps I would end up with a better master.
Swatting flies, the auctioneer looked displeased with the price he had received. He called out for the first of the four women in our group. Without warning, he lifted her dress up. He held her breast in his palm and said she was young and healthy and could bear many children. In her shame, she could only stare at the ground as the boys in the crowd jeered and the girls muffled their giggles. At that moment, I gave many thanks to God that I was not born a woman and did not have to suffer her humiliation.
Next was a little girl who, moments earlier, had been digging in the dirt with a stick. The auctioneer said she could make a fine domestic, that she was young enough to be trained, but old enough not to need much care. As if realizing that she, too, could take part in the performance on the raised platform, she twirled around on one toe and smiled at the crowd. The auctioneer chuckled and called out a price, but he had to lower it twice before the woman with the hatted boy raised her hand.
Suddenly I remembered what my employers in Azemmur sometimes did when they received too large a shipment of cotton or glass. They quietly stored the goods in the warehouse to prevent prices from falling down in the face of so much supply. The less a customer paid for the goods he purchased, they said, the less he valued them. I am ashamed to say that, after watching the other slaves be taken away in such a manner, I stood tall and tried to look as healthy as I could.
It was my turn. The auctioneer’s voice was getting hoarse from all the shouting. A fine specimen, he cried. The rope that tied my hands had cut through my skin, but I resisted the urge to chase flies away because I did not want to draw attention to them. Two buyers raised their forefingers. The auctioneer paced on the platform, pointing to my shoulders, my arms, my legs, and the price went up and up, and up again. The auction’s winner, the man with whom I would spend the next four and a half years of my life, was a merchant by the name of Bernardo Rodriguez. When he took custody of me, Rodriguez asked the auctioneer to untie me. He might run away, the auctioneer warned.
This Moro? Look at him, Rodriguez said, he could not go far.
IN THE EYES OF his people, Bernardo Rodriguez was not an unkind man. He departed for work every day trailed by the perfumed blessings his wife, Dorotea, asked the good Lord to bestow upon him. When he was at the shop, he easily struck up a conversation with his customers, always remembering to ask after the health of an old aunt or the fortune of a traveling son. Sometimes, he played with his three children — Isabel, Sancho, and Martín — in the shaded patio of his house, and let them ride on his back as he went around the small fountain. At church, he sang with a clear voice and offered an unburdened Amen to the priest’s prayer. Rodriguez had two unforgivable habits, however, and it was because of his unquenchable desire to satisfy both that he sold me. But I must not get ahead of myself.
Rodriguez was born and bred in Seville, and he knew many of its natives. For years, he had been a small merchant, eking a living out of a narrow shop much like those in the Qaisariya of Azemmur, with nothing but a few dozen rolls of poor-quality velvet to his name. But Rodriguez was also a dreamer. He liked to watch the arrival of ships from the Indies, a newly discovered land at the far reaches of the empire, and fantasize about the treasures in their holds. At the Torre del Oro, he had seen so much gold, silver, and precious stones coming from México that it had once taken three days to unload just one caravel. There were other goods, too, goods that anyone with enough funds could freely purchase: bales of cotton, woven cloth, rich tapestries, small ornaments, exotic edibles.
It so happened that, one day, as he was wistfully strolling along the Arenal, Rodriguez came face-to-face with Cristóbal Díaz, a friend of his he had not seen in almost a decade, when they were both young lads looking for cheap wine and cheaper women. While Rodriguez had dutifully apprenticed to a merchant, Díaz continued to visit taverns until he turned into a lout and eventually disappeared from the neighborhood. Yet now he was dressed in a fine doublet and good boots and had the worldly look of a soldier about him. Where have you been all these years? Rodriguez asked him.