Don Quixote [Trans. by Edith Grossman] (124 page)

“Paint as much as you like,” said Sancho, “because I’m enjoying the picture, and if I had eaten, there couldn’t be a better dessert for me than your portrait.”

“I still have that to serve to you,” responded the farmer, “but a time will come when we’re ready for it, if we aren’t now. And I say, Señor, that if I could paint her elegance and the height of her body, it would be something amazing, but that’s impossible, because she’s stooped and hunched over, and her mouth is down to her knees, and even so, it’s clear to see that if she could stand up, her head would touch the ceiling;
she would have given her hand in marriage to my bachelor by now, but she can’t extend it because it’s withered, and with it all, by her long grooved nails, you can see how well made and shapely it is.”

“That’s fine,” said Sancho. “You should realize, brother, that now you’ve painted her from head to toe. What is it that you want? And get to the point without beating around the bush or going around in circles, or taking anything away or adding anything on.”

“Señor, I would like,” responded the farmer, “for your grace to be so good as to give me a letter of support for her father, asking him kindly to allow this marriage to take place, for we are not unequal in our fortunes or our natures; to tell you the truth, Señor Governor, my son is possessed, and not a day goes by that evil spirits do not torment him; because he fell once into the fire, his face is as wrinkled as parchment, and his eyes are somewhat teary and runny, but he has the disposition of an angel, and if he didn’t beat and punch himself, he would be a saint.”

“Is there anything else you want, my good man?” replied Sancho.

“I would like something else,” said the farmer, “except I don’t dare to say it; but, well, after all, whether I get it or not, it shouldn’t fester inside. And so, Señor, I would like your grace to give me three hundred or six hundred
ducados
to help with my bachelor’s dowry, I mean, to help him set up a house, because, after all, they have to live on their own and not be subject to the interference of in-laws.”

“See if there’s anything else you want,” said Sancho, “and don’t be too shy or too embarrassed to say it.”

“No, I’m certain, there’s nothing else,” responded the farmer.

And as soon as he said this, the governor rose to his feet, picked up the chair where he had been sitting, and said:

“I swear, Don Crass and Crude, if you don’t leave and get out of my sight right now, I’ll break and crack your head open with this chair! Scoundrel and whoreson, the demon’s own painter, is this the right time to come and ask me for six hundred
ducados?
Where would I have them, you unbearable pest? And why would I give them to you if I did have them, you shifty fool? And what do I care about Miguel Turra and the lineage of the Perlerín? Get away from me, I say, or by the life of my lord the duke, I’ll do what I said! You can’t be from Miguel Turra, you must be some sly devil sent here from hell to tempt me. Tell me, you merciless man, I haven’t had the governorship for a day and a half yet, and you want me to have six hundred
ducados?”

The butler signaled to the farmer to leave the hall, which he did,
head lowered and apparently fearful that the governor would act on his rage, for the great scoundrel knew his trade very well.

But let us leave Sancho and his rage, dear reader, with no argument or quarrel, and return to Don Quixote, whom we left with his face bandaged and treated for his feline wounds, which did not heal for eight days, and on one of them something happened that Cide Hamete promises to recount as exactly and truthfully as all things in this history are recounted, no matter how trivial they may be.

CHAPTER XLVIII

A badly wounded Don Quixote, his face bandaged and marked not by the hand of God but by the claws of a cat, was far too dejected and melancholy at the misfortunes inherent in knight errantry. He did not go out in public for six days, and on one of those nights, when he was sleepless and awake, thinking about his misfortunes and his pursuit by Altisidora, he heard someone opening the door of his room with a key, and then he imagined that the enamored maiden was coming to assail his chastity and put him in a situation where he would fall short of the faith he was obliged to keep with his lady Dulcinea of Toboso.

“No,” he said in a voice that could be heard, believing what he had just imagined, “the greatest beauty on earth will not influence me to stop adoring the one I have engraved and impressed deep in my heart and at the very center of my being, no matter, my lady, if you are transformed into an uncouth peasant, or a nymph of the golden Tajo weaving cloth of gold and silk, or are being held by Merlin or Montesinos wherever they wish, for wherever you may be, you are mine, and wherever I go, I have been and shall be yours.”

The conclusion of these words and the opening of the door were all one. He stood on his bed, wrapped from head to toe in a yellow satin bedspread, a two-cornered beretta on his head, and his face and mus
tache bandaged: his face on account of the scratches, his mustache so that it would not droop and fall, and in this garb he seemed the most extraordinary phantom that anyone could imagine.

He fixed his eyes on the door, and where he expected to see the overwhelmed and lovesick Altisidora come in, he saw instead a most reverend duenna wearing white veils so long and intricate that they covered and enshrouded her from head to foot. In the fingers of her left hand she carried half a burning candle, and with her right hand she shadowed her face so that the light would not shine in her eyes, which were covered by very large spectacles. She stepped very softly and moved her feet very quietly.

Don Quixote looked down at her from his observation post, and when he saw her manner of dress and noticed her silence, he thought that a witch or a sorceress had come in that attire to commit some villainy against him, and he began very quickly to cross himself. The terrifying vision continued to approach, and when she reached the middle of the chamber, she raised her eyes and saw with what urgency Don Quixote was making the sign of the cross; and if he was fearful at the sight of her figure, she was terrified at seeing his, because as soon as she saw him, so high, and so yellow in the bedspread, and with the bandages that disfigured him, she screamed, saying:

“Jesus! What am I seeing?”

And she was so startled that she dropped the candle, and finding herself in the dark, she turned to leave, and in her fear she tripped on her skirts and fell with a great noise. A fearful Don Quixote began to say:

“I conjure thee, phantom, or whatever thou mayest be, to tell me what thou art and to tell me what it is that thou wantest of me. If thou art a soul in torment, tell me, and I shall do for thee all that is in my power, for I am a Catholic Christian and partial to doing good to everyone; for that reason I took on the order of knight errantry which I profess, whose exercise extends even to doing good to souls in purgatory.”

The dumbfounded duenna, who heard herself being conjured, associated Don Quixote’s fear with her own, and in a low and grieving voice she responded:

“Señor Don Quixote, if your grace happens to be Don Quixote, I am no phantom or vision or soul in purgatory, as your grace must have thought, but Doña Rodríguez, the duenna-of-honor to my lady the duchess, and I have come to your grace because I am in the sort of need your grace usually remedies.”

“Tell me, Señora Doña Rodríguez,” said Don Quixote, “by any chance has your grace come to act as a go-between? For I must tell you that I am not available to anyone, thanks to the peerless beauty of my lady Dulcinea of Toboso. In short, Señora Doña Rodríguez, I say that if your grace sets and puts aside all amorous messages, you may light your candle again, and come back, and we shall speak of anything you like and desire, except, as I have said, any invitation to the affections.”

“I, serve as anyone’s messenger, Señor?” responded the duenna. “Your grace does not know me very well; indeed, I have not yet reached so advanced an age that I resort to such foolishness, for, God be praised, I still have my soul in my body, and all my teeth and molars in my mouth except for a few that were taken by the catarrh, which is so common in this land of Aragón. But wait for me a moment, your grace, and I shall go out to light my candle and return in an instant to tell you of my cares, as if you were the one to remedy all the cares in the world.”

And without waiting for a reply, she left the room, where Don Quixote remained, calm and pensive, waiting for her; but then he had a thousand thoughts regarding this new adventure, and it seemed to him that he had behaved incorrectly and shown worse judgment by placing himself in danger of breaking the faith he had promised his lady, and he said to himself:

“Who knows if the devil, who is subtle and cunning, wants to deceive me now with a duenna when he has failed with empresses, queens, duchesses, marquises, and countesses? For I have often heard it said by many wise men that, if he can, he will give you a snub-nosed woman rather than one with an aquiline nose. And who knows whether this solitude, this opportunity, this silence, will awaken my sleeping desires and cause me, at this advanced age, to fall where I never have stumbled? In cases like this, it is better to flee than to wait for the battle. But I cannot be in my right mind, saying and thinking such nonsense, for it is not possible for a duenna in long white veils and spectacles to provoke or stimulate lascivious thoughts in the world’s most susceptible bosom. Can there be a duenna on earth whose flesh is chaste? Can there be a duenna on the planet who is not insolent, affected, and pretentious? Be gone, then, duennaesque horde, useless for any human pleasures! Oh, how wise the lady who, they say, had two figures of duennas with their spectacles and pincushions, as if they were doing needlework, at the end of her drawing room couch, and the statues did as much for the authority of the room as real duennas did!”

And saying this, he leaped out of bed, intending to close the door and not allow Señora Rodríguez to enter, but as he was about to close it, Señora Rodríguez returned, holding a lighted candle of white wax, and when she saw Don Quixote more closely, wrapped in the bedspread, with his bandages and his cap or beretta, she became afraid again, took two steps backward, and said:

“Is my safety assured, Señor Knight? Because I do not take it as a sign of modesty that your grace has gotten out of your bed.”

“I could very well ask the same question, Señora,” responded Don Quixote, “and so I ask if I shall be safe from assault and violation.”

“From whom or to whom, Señor Knight, do you ask for that assurance?” responded the duenna.

“From you and to you,” responded Don Quixote, “for I am not marble and you are not bronze, and it is not now ten in the morning but midnight, or even a little later, I imagine, and this is a chamber more hidden and secret than the cave where the traitorous and reckless Aeneas enjoyed the beautiful and compassionate Dido. But give me, Señora, your hand, for I wish no greater assurance than that of my own continence and modesty, and that offered by these most reverend veils.”

And having said this, he kissed her right hand and held it in his own, and she did the same, with the same ceremony.

Here Cide Hamete offers an aside and says that, by Mohammed, he would give the better cloak of two that he owns to see them holding and grasping each other as they walked from the door to the bed.

Don Quixote at last got into his bed, and Doña Rodríguez sat in a chair at some distance from the bed, not removing her spectacles or setting down the candle. Don Quixote concealed and hid himself completely, leaving only his face uncovered, and when the two had regained their composure, the first to break the silence was Don Quixote, saying:

“Now, Señora Doña Rodríguez, your grace can reveal and disclose all that is in your troubled heart and care-ridden soul, for it will be heard by my chaste ears and remedied by my compassionate deeds.”

“I do believe,” responded the duenna, “that from your grace’s gallant and pleasing presence one could expect only this Christian response. The fact, then, Señor Don Quixote, is that although your grace sees me sitting in this chair, in the middle of the kingdom of Aragón, and in the dress of an exhausted duenna in decline, I am a native of Asturias de
Oviedo,
¹
and my lineage is crossed with many of the best in that province, but my bad luck, and the imprudence of my parents who became impoverished too soon, not knowing how or why, brought me to the court, in Madrid, and for their peace of mind and to avoid greater misfortunes, my parents arranged for me to do needlework in the service of a noblewoman; I want your grace to know that no one has ever outdone me in the hemstitch or needlepoint. My parents left me in service and returned home, and in a few years they left there and must have gone to heaven, because they were very good Catholic Christians. I was an orphan, and dependent on the miserable salary and grudging favors that maids like me receive at court; at this time, without any sort of encouragement from me, a squire of the house fell in love with me, a man somewhat advanced in years, bearded and imposing and, above all, as noble as the king because he was from the mountains.
²
Our courtship was not so secret that it did not come to the attention of my lady, who, to avoid gossip and talk, married us with the approval and blessing of our Holy Mother Roman Catholic Church, and from our marriage a daughter was born, putting an end to what good fortune I had, not because I died in childbirth, for I delivered safely and on time, but because not long afterward my husband died of fright, and if I had time now to tell you about it, I know that your grace would be astounded.”

And at this she began to cry very piteously and said:

“Señor Don Quixote, your grace must forgive me, but I cannot help it, because every time I remember my poor husband my eyes fill with tears. Lord save me! With what authority did he carry my lady on the hindquarters of a powerful mule, as black as jet itself! For in those days they did not use coaches or saddles, as they do nowadays, and ladies rode behind their squires. This, at least, I must recount, so that you can see the breeding and manners of my good husband. Just as they were entering Calle Santiago in Madrid, which is rather narrow, a court magistrate, with two bailiffs riding in front of him, was coming out, and as soon as my good squire saw him, he turned the reins of the mule, indicating that he would turn back and accompany him.
³
My lady, who was riding on
the hindquarters of the mule, said in a low voice: ‘What are you doing, you miserable wretch? Have you forgotten that I am here?’ The magistrate, out of courtesy, pulled on the reins of his horse and said: ‘Señor, continue on your way: it is I who should accompany Señora Doña Casilda,’ for that was the name of my mistress.