Don Quixote [Trans. by Edith Grossman] (115 page)

Everyone was quiet and still, waiting to see who would break the silence, and it was the Dolorous Duenna, with these words:

“I am confident, most powerful lord, most beautiful lady, most discerning company, that my most grievous affliction will find in your most valiant bosoms a refuge no less serene than generous and pitying, for it is such that it would be enough to soften marble, and dulcify diamonds,
and bend the steel of the hardest hearts in the world; but before I bring it to your hearing, so as not to say ears, I would be most happy if you would tell me if in this group, circle, and company there is to be found that most unblemished knight Don Quixote of La Manchissima, and his most squirish Panza.”

“Panza,” said Sancho before anyone else could respond, “is here, and Don Quixotissimo as well, and so, most dolorous duennissima, you can say whatever you wishissima, for we’re all ready and most prepared to be your most servantish servantissimos.”

At this point Don Quixote rose to his feet, and directing his words to the Dolorous One, he said:

“If your travails, anguished lady, promise some hope of relief through the valor or strength of a knight errant, then here are mine, which, although weak and frail, will be used entirely in your service. I am Don Quixote of La Mancha, whose profession it is to succor all manner of people in need, and this being the case, as it is, it will not be necessary for you, Señora, to win over our benevolence or search for a preamble, but simply and plainly to state your woes, for ears will listen to you that will know, if not how to remedy your troubles, then at least how to feel sorrow for them.”

Hearing this, the Dolorous Duenna showed signs of wanting to throw herself at the feet of Don Quixote, which in fact she did, and struggling to embrace them, she said:

“Before these feet and legs I throw myself, O unvanquished knight, for they are the bases and columns of knight errantry! I want to kiss these feet on whose steps all the remedy of my misfortune relies and depends! O courageous errant, whose true deeds leave behind and obscure the extraordinary exploits of Amadís, Esplandián, and Belianis!”

And leaving Don Quixote, she turned to Sancho Panza, and taking his hands, she said:

“O you, the most loyal squire who ever served a knight errant in present or past ages, whose goodness is greater than the beard of Trifaldín, my attendant here present! Well may you boast that by serving the great Don Quixote, you somehow serve the entire troop of knights who have wielded arms in the world. I implore you, for the sake of what you owe your most faithful goodness, to intercede for me with your master so that he may favor this most humble and most unfortunate countess.”

To which Sancho responded:

“That my goodness, Señora, is as long and great as the beard of your squire isn’t very important to me; just let my soul have a beard and mustache when it leaves this life, which is what matters;
²
I don’t worry very much, or at all, about the beards in this world; but without any tricks or entreaties, I’ll ask my master (for I know he loves me dearly, especially now when he needs me for a certain piece of business) to favor and help your grace in every way he can. Your grace should unburden yourself, tell us your troubles, and let us take care of it, and we’ll all understand one another.”

The duke and duchess were bursting with laughter, as were those who realized the nature of this adventure, and to themselves they praised the astute dissembling of Trifaldi, who, taking her seat again, said:

“The famous kingdom of Candaya, which lies between great Trapobana and the Southern Sea, two leagues beyond Cape Comorín,
³
was ruled by Queen Doña Maguncia, widow of King Archipiela, her lord and husband, and in this marriage they conceived and gave birth to Princess Antonomasia,
⁴
heir to the kingdom; this Princess Antonomasia was brought up and reared under my teaching and tutelage, for I was her mother’s oldest and most distinguished duenna. And so the days came and went, and the girl Antonomasia reached the age of fourteen, with a beauty so perfect that nature could do nothing to improve it. And her intelligence was in no way insignificant. She was as intelligent as she was beautiful, and she was the most beautiful girl in the world, and still is if an envious destiny and a hardhearted fate have not already cut the thread of her life. But they can’t have, for heaven would not permit so much evil to be done on earth: to pick prematurely a cluster of grapes from the most beautiful vine on the land. Her beauty, which can never be adequately praised by my clumsy tongue, caused an infinite number of princes, both native and foreign, to fall in love with her, and among them an impoverished knight at court dared to lift his thoughts to the heaven of so much beauty, confident of his youth and gallantry, his many talents and abilities, and the ease and liveliness of his wits; because your
highnesses should know, if you don’t find it too tiresome, that he played the guitar so well he could make it speak, and was a poet besides, and a fine dancer, and could fashion birdcages so beautiful that in case of necessity he could have earned his living making them; all of these talents and graces are enough to conquer a mountain, not to mention a delicate maiden. But all his gallantry and charm, and all his talents and gifts, would have done little or nothing to defeat my girl’s fortress if the brazen thief had not resorted to defeating me first. First the wicked and heartless scoundrel tried to win me over and influence my mind so that I, a poor warden, would hand him the keys to the fortress I was guarding. In short, he flattered my understanding and overcame my will with all kinds of trinkets and pendants, but what overpowered me and threw me to the ground were some verses I heard him sing one night at one of the latticed windows that faced a lane where he was standing, and if I remember correctly, they said:

The song seemed like pearls to me, and his voice like honey, and after that, I mean from that time on, seeing the harm that came to me because of these and other verses like them, I have believed that from virtuous and harmonious republics poets must be banished, as Plato advised, at least the lascivious ones, because they write verses that are not like those of the Marquis of Mantua, which entertain children and women and make them weep, but are sharp, like tender thorns that pierce your soul and, like bolts of lightning, wound you there without tearing your clothes. And another time he sang:

And other little verses and couplets of this kind that charm when they are sung and enthrall when they are read. And when they humbled themselves to compose a kind of verse that was popular in Candaya at the time, which is called
seguidillas?
It meant that souls were leaping, laughter bubbling, bodies restless, and finally, all the senses turned to quicksilver. And so I say, my lords and ladies, that these versifiers very rightly ought to be banished to lizard-infested islands. They, however, are not to blame, but the simpletons who praise them and the foolish women who believe them; and if I were the virtuous duenna I should have been, his hackneyed concepts would not have moved me, nor would I have believed it to be true when he said: ‘I live in my dying, I burn in ice, I tremble in fire, I hope without hope, I depart and I stay,’ and other impossibilities of this sort that fill their writings. And when they promise the phoenix of Arabia, the crown of Aridiana,
⁷
the horses of the Sun, the pearls of the South, the gold of Tibar, and the balm of Pancaya?
⁸
Here is where they most exaggerate with their pens, since it costs them little to promise what they never can nor intend to fulfill. But I digress!

Oh, woe is me, unfortunate woman! What madness or foolishness moves me to recount other people’s faults, when I have so much to tell about mine? Oh, woe is me, again, luckless creature! Verses did not defeat me but my own simplemindedness; music did not soften me, but my own flightiness: my great ignorance and small foresight opened the way and cleared the path for the footsteps of Don Clavijo, for that is the name of the aforementioned knight; and so, I acted as intermediary, and he found himself, not once but often, in the chamber of Antonomasia, who was deceived by me, not him, for he claimed to be her true husband; although I am a sinner, without a promise of marriage I would not have consented to his touching the welt on the soles of her slippers. No, no, not that! Matrimony must be the principal thing in any affair of this kind that I am involved in! There was only one difficulty, and that was inequality, Don Clavijo being an impoverished knight and Princess Antonomasia the heiress, as I have said, to the kingdom. For some days this tangle was concealed and hidden by my wise precautions, until it seemed to me that it would soon be revealed by a certain swelling in the belly of Antonomasia, whose fear made the three of us confer, and the
result was that before this unhappy matter came to light, Don Clavijo would ask for Antonomasia’s hand in marriage before the vicar on the basis of a document that the princess had written promising to be his wife, which I had dictated and made so strong that not even the strength of Samson could have broken it. Preparations were made, the vicar saw the document, the same vicar heard the lady’s confession, her confession was plain, he ordered her placed in the house of a very honorable bailiff of the court—”

At this point Sancho said:

“So in Candaya there are also bailiffs of the court, poets, and
seguidillas,
which makes me swear that I imagine the whole world’s the same. But, Señora Trifaldi, your grace should hurry; it’s late, and I’m dying to know how this very long history ends.”

“I will,” responded the countess.

CHAPTER XXXIX

Every word that Sancho said pleased the duchess as much as it caused despair in Don Quixote, and ordering him to be quiet, the Dolorous One continued, saying:

“Finally, after many questions and answers, and because the princess never wavered and did not depart from or vary her original statement, the vicar judged in favor of Don Clavijo and gave her to him as his legitimate wife, which so troubled Queen Doña Maguncia, Princess Antonomasia’s mother, that in three days’ time we buried her.”

“No doubt she must have died,” said Sancho.

“Of course!” responded Trifaldín. “In Candaya we don’t bury the living, only the dead.”

“It has been known to happen, Señor Squire,” replied Sancho, “that someone in a faint has been buried because people thought he was dead, and it seemed to me that Queen Maguncia ought to have fainted, not died; if you’re alive, many things can be remedied, and the princess’s
recklessness wasn’t so great that she had to die over it. If the lady had married one of her pages, or another servant in her house, as many others have done, or so I’ve heard, there would have been no remedy for the damage; but marrying a knight who was so much the gentleman and so clever, like the one who’s been described here, really and truly, even though it was foolish, it wasn’t as bad as all that, because according to the rules of my master, who is present and will not let me lie, just as they turn lettered men into bishops, they can turn knights, especially if they’re errant, into kings and emperors.”

“You are correct, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “because a knight errant, if he has even an iota of luck, is very close to being the greatest lord in the world. But let the Dolorous One continue, for it is clear to me that she still has to recount the bitter part of this history, which so far has been sweet.”

“Oh yes, the bitterness is still to come!” responded the countess. “And it is so bitter that in comparison bitter cucumbers are sweet and oleander is delectable. The queen, then, being dead and not in a faint, was buried, and as soon as we had covered her with earth and said our final
vale,
¹
then

over the grave of the queen, seated on a wooden horse, there appeared the giant Malambruno, Maguncia’s first cousin, who was both cruel and an enchanter, and with his arts, to avenge the death of his cousin and punish the audacity of Don Clavijo and castigate the excesses of Antonomasia, he left them all enchanted there on the grave; she was turned into a bronze monkey and he into a fearsome crocodile of an unknown metal, and between the two of them stands an inscribed pillar, also of metal, and on it are written some letters in the Syrian language, which, having been translated into Candayan, and now into Castilian, read as follows:
These two daring lovers will not recover their original form until the valiant Manchegan comes to do battle with me in single combat; for his great valor alone have the fates reserved this never-before-seen adventure.

And having done this, he drew from his scabbard an enormous broad scimitar, and seizing me by the hair, he made as if to slash my throat and
cut off my head at the root. I became distraught; my voice caught in my throat; I was utterly dejected; but, even so, I made the greatest effort I could, and in a trembling and doleful voice I told him a number of different things that made him suspend the execution of so harsh a punishment. Finally, he had all the duennas in the palace brought before him, the same duennas here present, and after having exaggerated our faults and censured the character of duennas, their wicked schemes and even worse intrigues, and laying on them all the blame that I alone deserved, he said that he did not want to inflict capital punishment on us but would impose other more protracted penalties that would cause us an ongoing civil death; and at the very moment and instant that he said this, we all felt the pores on our faces opening, and all over our faces it felt as if we were being punctured by needles. We brought our hands to our faces, and found ourselves in the condition you will see now.”