Don Quixote [Trans. by Edith Grossman] (58 page)

CHAPTER XL

“That is how I remember it, too,” said the captive.

“And the one to the fort, if I remember correctly,” said the gentleman, “reads like this:

They liked the sonnets, the captive was glad to hear the news about his comrade, and, continuing with his story, he said:

“Having conquered the Goletta and the fort, the Turks ordered the Goletta to be dismantled, because it had been so damaged there was nothing left to raze, and in order to do this more quickly and easily, they mined it in three places; they could not blow up what had seemed its weakest part, that is, the old walls, but what was left standing of the new fortifications built by El Fratín
¹
came down easily. Then the fleet returned to Constantinople, triumphant and victorious, and a few months after that my master, Uchalí, died;
²
he was called
Uchalí Fartax
—in the Turkish language it means “the Renegade with Scabies”—which is, in fact, what he was, for it is customary among the Turks to name people for some fault or virtue that they have, and this is because they have only four family names, and these come from the Ottoman house;
³
the rest, as
I have said, take their first and second names from physical defects or character traits. And this man with scabies rowed in the galleys as a slave of the Great Lord for fourteen years, and when he was past the age of thirty-four he became a renegade because of his fury at a Turk who slapped him while he was rowing: in order to take his revenge, he abandoned his faith; his valor was so great that, without using the vile and devious means that most of the Great Turk’s favorites employ in order to succeed, he became king of Algiers and then admiral of the sea, which is the third position in that empire. He came from Calabria, and morally he was a good man who treated his captives very humanely; he had three thousand of them, and after his death they were divided, according to the terms of his will, between the Great Turk, who is the heir of everyone who dies and shares in the inheritance with the dead man’s children, and his renegades; I was passed along to a Venetian renegade who had been a cabin boy when he was captured by Uchalí, who was very fond of the boy and pampered him a good deal, yet he became the cruelest renegade anyone has ever seen. His name was Azán Agá, and he became very rich, and he also became king of Algiers;
⁴
I came there with him from Constantinople, rather happy to be so close to Spain, not because I intended to write to anyone about my misfortunes, but to see if my luck would be better in Algiers than it had been in Constantinople, where I had tried a thousand different ways to escape, and none had been successful; in Algiers I intended to look for other means to achieve what I desired, for the hope of obtaining my freedom never left me, and when what I devised, planned, and attempted did not correspond to my intentions, I did not give up but sought out some other hope to sustain me, no matter how weak and fragile.

This was how I spent my life, locked in a prison or house that the Turks call a
bagnio,
where they hold Christian captives, those that belong to the king as well as some that belong to private individuals, and the ones they call ‘stockpiled,’ which is like saying ‘public prisoners,’ who serve the city in public works and in other employment for the general good; these captives find it very difficult to obtain their freedom, because they have no individual master, and there is no one with whom to negotiate their ransom even if a ransom is available. As I have said, some private individuals bring their captives to these
bagnios,
principally when they are ready to be ransomed, because there they can be
kept, not working and in safety, until the ransom money arrives. The king’s captives who are about to be ransomed do not go out with the work crews, either, unless payment of their ransom is delayed, and then, to make them write more urgently for the money, they are obliged to work and are sent out with the others for wood, which is no easy labor. I was one of those waiting for ransom, for when they learned that I was a captain, though I told them of my limited possibilities and lack of wealth, they put me with the gentlemen and the people awaiting ransom. They put a chain on me, more as a sign that I was to be ransomed than to hold me, and I spent my days in that
bagnio,
with many other gentlemen and people of note who had been selected to be held for ransom. Although hunger and scant clothing troubled us at times, even most of the time, nothing troubled us as much as constantly hearing and seeing my master’s remarkably and exceptionally cruel treatment of Christians. Each day he hanged someone, impaled someone, cut off someone’s ears, and with so little provocation, or without any provocation at all, that the Turks knew he did it merely for the sake of doing it and because it was in his nature to murder the entire human race. The only one who held his own with him was a Spanish soldier named something de Saavedra,
⁵
who did things that will be remembered by those people for many years, and all to gain his liberty, yet his master never beat him, or ordered anyone else to beat him, or said an unkind word to him; for the most minor of all the things he did we were afraid he would be impaled, and more than once he feared the same thing; if I had the time, I would tell you something of what that soldier did, which would entertain and amaze you much more than this recounting of my history.

In any case, overlooking the courtyard of our prison were the windows of the house of a wealthy and important Moor, and these, as is true in most Moorish houses, were more slits than windows, yet even these were covered with very heavy and tightly woven jalousies. One day I happened to be on a flat roof in our prison with three companions; we were passing the time by trying to see how far we could jump with our chains on, for we were alone, all the other Christians having gone out to work; by chance I looked up and saw that through one of those narrow little windows I’ve mentioned a reed appeared, with a handkerchief tied to the end of it, and the reed was moving about, almost as if it were sig
naling that we should come and take it. We thought about it, and one of the men who was with me went to stand under the reed to see if it would drop, or what would happen, but as soon as he reached the spot, the reed was raised and moved from side to side, as if shaking its head no. The Christian came back, and again the reed was raised and lowered with the same movements as before. Another of my companions approached, and again the same thing happened. Then the third man approached, the same thing was repeated, and seeing this, I wanted to try my luck, too, and as soon as I placed myself under the reed it was dropped inside the
bagnio
and fell at my feet. I immediately untied the handkerchief, which had a knot in it, and inside were ten
cianiís,
which are coins of base gold used by the Moors, each one worth ten of our
reales.
It goes without saying that I was delighted with this discovery, and my happiness was as great as my amazement at the thought of where that gift had come from, and why it was directed to me, since the signs of not wanting to drop the reed for anyone but me clearly indicated that I was the object of the favor.

I took the money, broke the reed, returned to the roof, looked at the window, and saw an extremely white hand emerge and open and close the window very quickly. With this we understood or imagined that a woman who lived in that house must have done us this kindness, and as a sign that we thanked her for it we made our salaams in the Moorish manner, bending our heads, bowing from the waist, and crossing our arms on our chests. A short while later a small cross made of reeds was dangled from the window and immediately pulled back in. This con-firmed that a Christian woman was probably a captive in that house and was the one who had done us the good turn, but the whiteness of her hand and the bracelets we saw on it disabused us of the thought that she was a slave; then we imagined she must be a renegade Christian, for they are often taken as legitimate wives by their masters, who consider this good fortune since the men esteem them more than the women of their own nation. In all our speculations, however, we were very far from the truth of the matter, although from then on we spent all our time looking at the window where our north star of a reed had appeared; but two weeks went by, and we did not see it again, or the hand, or any other signal of any kind.

During this time, although we made every effort to learn who lived in that house, and if there was a renegade Christian woman there, no one would tell us anything except that it belonged to a very prominent and
wealthy Moor named Agi Morato,
⁶
who had been the governor of La Pata,
⁷
which is a very distinguished position among those people. But when we least expected another shower of
cianiís,
we suddenly saw the reed appear, another handkerchief attached to it that had an even larger knot; this occurred when the
bagnio,
as on the previous occasion, was deserted and empty of people. We made the same test: each of the three men, the same ones who had been with me the last time, went forward before I did, but the reed was not given up to anyone but me, because as soon as I walked forward, it dropped. I untied the knot and found forty Spanish gold
escudos
and a paper written in Arabic, at the bottom of which a large cross had been drawn. I kissed the cross, took the
escudos,
and returned to the roof, where we all made our salaams; the hand appeared again, I signaled that I would read the letter, and the window closed.

We were all astounded and overjoyed at what had happened, but since none of us understood Arabic, our desire to know what the paper said was immense, and the difficulty in finding someone to read it to us was even greater. Finally, I decided to trust a renegade, a native of Murcia, who claimed to be a great friend of mine and made pledges to me obliging him to keep any secrets I confided in him, because certain renegades, when they intend to return to Christian lands, take with them signed statements from important captives testifying, in whatever fashion they can, that the renegade is a moral man, and always has treated Christians well, and desires to escape at the first opportunity. Some obtain these declarations with good intentions; others use them as a possible defense when they come to plunder Christian lands: if they happen to be shipwrecked or are taken prisoner, they show their declarations and say that these papers prove their intention to remain in Christian lands, which was the reason they came on a raid with the Turks. In this way they avoid the initial violence of their captors and reconcile with the Church, and no one does them any harm, and at the first opportunity they return to Barbary to be what they were before. There are others, however, who obtain and use these papers with good intentions and remain in Christian lands.

Well, my friend was one of these renegades, and he had statements from all our comrades attesting in every way possible to his good faith,
and if the Moors had found him with these papers, they would have burned him alive. I had learned that he knew Arabic very well, and could not only speak it but write it, too, but before I told him everything, I asked him to read the paper for me, saying I had found it in a crack in the wall of my cell. He unfolded it and spent a long time looking at it, analyzing it, and murmuring to himself. I asked him if he understood it; he said he understood it very well, and if I wanted him to repeat it word for word, I should give him ink and a pen, which would allow him to do a better job. We soon gave him what he requested, he translated the letter slowly, and when he was finished, he said: ‘Everything written here in Spanish is exactly what this Moorish letter contains; you should know that where it says
Lela Marién
it means
Our Lady the Virgin Mary.
’ We read the paper, and this is what it said: