Don Quixote [Trans. by Edith Grossman] (80 page)

“God willing,” said Don Quixote, “we shall see when the governorship comes along, for I seem to see it right before my eyes.”

Having said this, he asked the bachelor, if he was a poet, to be so kind as to compose a few verses for him that would deal with the farewell he intended to make to his lady Dulcinea of Toboso, and he said that at the beginning of each line he was to place a letter of her name, so that when one reached the last verse and read all the first letters together, it would say:
Dulcinea of Toboso.

The bachelor responded that although he was not one of the famous poets of Spain, who, as people said, did not number more than three and a half, he would be sure to write the lines, although he found a great difficulty in their composition because the number of letters in her name was seventeen, and if he made four Castilian stanzas of four octosyllabic lines each, there would be one letter too many, and if he made the stanzas of five octosyllabic lines each, the ones called
décimas
or
redondillas,
³
there would be three letters too few; despite this, however he would attempt to somehow shrink one letter so that the name Dulcinea of Toboso would fit into four Castilian stanzas.

“It must fit in, however you do it,” said Don Quixote, “because if the
name is not there to see, patent and obvious, no woman will believe that the verses were written for her.”

They agreed to this, and to the knight’s departing in eight days. Don Quixote asked the bachelor to keep this secret, especially from the priest and Master Nicolás, and from his niece and housekeeper, so that they would not interfere with his honorable and valiant resolve. Carrasco promised he would, and then he took his leave, asking Don Quixote to keep him informed, when possible, of all his successes and failures; and so they said goodbye, and Sancho left to make preparations for their journey.

CHAPTER V

(When the translator
¹
came to write this fifth chapter, he says he thought it was apocryphal, because in it Sancho Panza speaks in a manner different from what one might expect of his limited intelligence, and says things so subtle one would not think it possible that he knew them; but the translator did not wish to omit it, for the sake of his professional obligations, and so he continued, saying:)

Sancho came home so happy and joyful that his wife could see his joy at a distance, which obliged her to ask:

“What’s the news, Sancho my friend, that makes you so happy?”

To which he responded:

“My wife, if it were God’s will, I’d be delighted not to be as happy as I appear.”

“Husband, I don’t understand you,” she replied, “and I don’t know what you mean when you say you’d be delighted, if it were God’s will, not to be happy; I may be a fool, but I don’t know how anybody can be happy not to be happy.”

“Look, Teresa,” responded Sancho, “I’m happy because I’ve decided to serve my master, Don Quixote, again, for he wants to leave a third
time to seek adventures; and I’ll leave with him again, because of my need and the hope, which makes me happy, of thinking that I may find another hundred
escudos
like the ones that have already been spent, though it makes me sad to have to leave you and my children; and if it was God’s will to give me food with my feet dry and in my own house, not leading me through wastelands and crossroads, He could do it at very little cost and just by wanting it, then of course my happiness would be firmer and truer, for what I feel now is mixed with the sorrow of leaving you; and so, I was right to say that I would be delighted, if it was God’s will, not to be happy.”

“Look, Sancho,” replied Teresa, “ever since you became a knight errant’s servant your talk is so roundabout nobody can understand you.”

“It’s enough if God understands me, my wife,” responded Sancho, “for He understands all things, and say no more about it for now; you should know, Teresa, that you have to take special care of the donkey for the next three days, so that he’s ready to carry weapons: double his feed and look over the packsaddle and the rest of the trappings; we’re not going to a wedding but to travel the world and have our battles with giants, dragons, and monsters, and hear their hisses, roars, bellows, and shrieks, and none of that would matter very much if we didn’t have to contend with Yanguesans and enchanted Moors.”

“I do believe, my husband, that squires errant don’t get their bread for nothing, and so I’ll keep praying that Our Lord delivers you soon from so much misfortune.”

“I’ll tell you, Teresa,” responded Sancho, “that if I didn’t expect to be the governor of an ínsula before too much more time goes by, I’d fall down dead right here.”

“Not that, my husband,” said Teresa, “let the chicken live even if she has the pip; may you live, and let the devil take all the governorships there are in the world; you came out of your mother’s womb without a governorship, and you’ve lived until now without a governorship, and when it pleases God you’ll go, or they’ll carry you, to the grave without a governorship. Many people in the world live without a governorship, and that doesn’t make them give up or not be counted among the living. The best sauce in the world is hunger, and since poor people have plenty of that, they always eat with great pleasure. But look, Sancho: if you happen to find yourself a governor somewhere, don’t forget about me and your children. Remember that Sanchico is already fifteen, and he ought to go to school if his uncle the abbot is going to bring him into the Church. And don’t forget that our daughter, Mari Sancha, won’t die if
we marry her; she keeps dropping hints that she wants a husband as much as you want to be a governor, and when all is said and done, a daughter’s better off badly married than happily kept.”

“By my faith, Teresa,” responded Sancho, “if God lets me have any kind of governorship, I’ll marry Mari Sancha so high up that nobody will be able to reach her unless they call her Señora.”

“Don’t do that, Sancho,” responded Teresa. “She should marry an equal, that’s the best thing; if you raise her from wooden clogs to cork-soled mules, from homespun petticoats to silken hoopskirts and dressing gowns, and from
you, Marica
to
Doña
and
my lady,
the girl won’t know who she is, and wherever she turns she’ll make a thousand mistakes and show that the threads of her cloth are rough and coarse.”

“Quiet, fool,” said Sancho, “she just needs to practice for two or three years, and then the nobility and the dignity will be a perfect fit; if not, what difference does it make? Let her be
my lady,
and it won’t matter.”

“Be content with your station,” responded Teresa, “and don’t try to go to a higher one; remember the proverb that says: ‘Take your neighbor’s son, wipe his nose, and bring him into your house.’ Sure, it would be very nice to marry our María to some wretch of a count or gentleman who might take a notion to insult her and call her lowborn, the daughter of peasants and spinners! Not in my lifetime, my husband! I didn’t bring up my daughter for that! You bring the money, Sancho, and leave her marrying to me; there’s Lope Tocho, the son of Juan Tocho, a sturdy, healthy boy, and we know him, and I know for a fact that he doesn’t dislike the girl; he’s our equal, and she would make a good marriage with him, and we’d always see her, and we’d all be together, parents and children, grandchildren and in-laws, and the peace and blessing of God would be with us; so don’t go marrying her in those courts and great palaces where they don’t understand her and she won’t understand herself.”

“Come here, you imbecile, you troublemaker,” replied Sancho. “Why do you want to stop me now, and for no good reason, from marrying my daughter to somebody who’ll give me grandchildren they’ll call
Lord
and
Lady?
Look, Teresa: I’ve always heard the old folks say that if you don’t know how to enjoy good luck when it comes, you shouldn’t complain if it passes you by. It wouldn’t be a good idea, now that it’s come knocking, to shut the door in its face; we should let the favorable wind that’s blowing carry us along.”

(This manner of speaking, and what Sancho says below, is why the translator of this history considered this chapter apocryphal.)

“Don’t you think, you ignorant woman,” Sancho continued, “that it
will be good for me to come into some profitable governorship that will take us out of poverty? Let Mari Sancha marry the man I choose, and you’ll see how they start calling you
Doña Teresa Panza,
and you’ll sit in church on a rug with pillows and tapestries, in spite of and regardless of all the gentlewomen in town. But no, not you, you’d rather always stay the same, never changing, like a figure in a wall hanging! And we’re not talking about this anymore; Sanchica will be a countess no matter what you say.”

“Do you hear what you’re saying, husband?” responded Teresa. “Well, even so, I’m afraid that if my daughter becomes a countess it will be her ruin. You’ll do whatever you want, whether you make her a duchess or a princess, but I can tell you it won’t be with my agreement or consent. Sancho, I’ve always been in favor of equality, and I can’t stand to see somebody putting on airs for no reason. They baptized me Teresa, a plain and simple name without any additions or decorations or trimmings of
Dons
or
Doñas;
my father’s name was Cascajo, and because I’m your wife, they call me Teresa Panza, though they really ought to call me Teresa Cascajo. But where laws go kings follow,
²
and I’m satisfied with this name without anybody adding on a
Doña
that weighs so much I can’t carry it, and I don’t want to give people who see me walking around dressed in a countish or governorish way a chance to say: ‘Look at the airs that sow is putting on! Yesterday she was busy pulling on a tuft of flax for spinning, and she went to Mass and covered her head with her skirts instead of a mantilla, and today she has a hoopskirt and brooches and airs, as if we didn’t know who she was.’ If God preserves my seven senses, or five, or however many I have, I don’t intend to let anybody see me in a spot like that. You, my husband, go and be a governor or an insular and put on all the airs you like; I swear on my mother’s life that my daughter and I won’t set foot out of our village: to keep her chaste, break her leg and keep her in the house; for a chaste girl, work is her fiesta. You go with your Don Quixote and have your adventures, and leave us with our misfortunes, for God will set them right if we’re good; I certainly don’t know who gave him a
Don,
because his parents and grandparents never had one.”

“Now I’ll say,” replied Sancho, “that you must have an evil spirit in that body of yours. God save you, woman, what a lot of things you’ve strung together willy-nilly! What do Cascajo, brooches, proverbs, and putting on airs have to do with what I’m saying? Come here, you simple,
ignorant woman, and I can call you that because you don’t understand my words and try to run away from good luck. If I had said that my daughter ought to throw herself off a tower or go roaming around the way the Infanta Doña Urraca wanted to,
³
you’d be right not to go along with me; but if in two shakes and in the wink of an eye I dress her in a
Doña
and put a
my lady
on her back for you, and take her out of the dirt and put her under a canopy and up on a pedestal in a drawing room with more velvet cushions than Moors in the line of the Almohadas of Morroco,
⁴
why won’t you consent and want what I want?”

“Do you know why, Sancho?” responded Teresa. “Because of the proverb that says: ‘Whoever tries to conceal you, reveals you!’ Nobody does more than glance at the poor, but they look closely at the rich; if a rich man was once poor, that’s where the whispers and rumors begin, and the wicked murmurs of gossips who crowd the streets like swarms of bees.”

“Look, Teresa,” responded Sancho, “and listen to what I want to tell you now; maybe you haven’t ever heard it in all the days of your life, and what I’m saying now isn’t something I made up on my own; everything I plan to say to you are the judgments of the priest who preached in this village during Lent last year, and if I remember correctly, he said that things which are present and before our eyes appear, are, and remain in our memory much more clearly and sharply than things that are past.”

(All the words that Sancho says here are the second of his statements that cause the translator to consider this chapter apocryphal, for they far exceed the capacity of Sancho, who continued, saying:)

“This accounts for the fact that when we see someone finely dressed and wearing rich clothes and with a train of servants, it seems that some force moves and induces us to respect him, although at that moment our memory recalls the lowliness in which we once saw that person; and that shame, whether of poverty or low birth, is in the past and no longer exists, and what is is only what we see in front of us in the present. And if this man, whose earlier lowliness has been erased by the good fortune (these were the very words that the priest said) that has raised him to prosperity, is well-mannered, generous, and courteous with everyone, and does not compete with those who have been noble since ancient times, you can be sure, Teresa, that nobody will remember what he was
but will revere him for what he is, unless they are envious, and no good fortune is safe from envy.”

“I don’t understand you, my husband,” replied Teresa, “so do what you want and don’t give me any more headaches with your long speeches and fine words. And if you’re revolved to do what you say—”

“
Resolved
is what you should say, Teresa,” said Sancho, “not
revolved.”

“Don’t start an argument with me, Sancho,” responded Teresa. “I talk as God wills, and let’s stick to the subject; I say that if you’re determined to have a governorship, you should take your son, Sanchico, along so you can teach him how to be a governor; it’s a good thing for sons to inherit and learn the trades of their fathers.”