Don Quixote [Trans. by Edith Grossman] (149 page)

“A man who pays his debts doesn’t care about guaranties,” responded Sancho. “I plan to lash myself so that it hurts but doesn’t kill me: that must be the point of this miracle.”

Then he stripped down to his waist, and seizing the whip he had fashioned, he began to flog himself, and Don Quixote began to count the lashes.

Sancho must have given himself six or eight lashes when the joke began to seem onerous and the price very low, and he stopped for a while and said to his master that he withdrew from the contract because each of those lashes should be worth a half-
real,
not a
cuartillo.

“Continue, Sancho my friend, and do not lose heart,” said Don Quixote, “for I shall double the stakes on the price.”

“In that case,” said Sancho, “let it be in God’s hands, and rain down the lashes!”

But the crafty scoundrel stopped lashing his back and began to whip the trees, from time to time heaving sighs that seemed to be torn from his heart. Don Quixote’s was tender, and fearing that Sancho might end
his life and because of that imprudence not achieve the knight’s desire, he said:

“On your life, friend, let the matter stop here, for this remedy seems very harsh to me, and it would be a good idea to take more time: Zamora was not won in an hour. You have given yourself more than a thousand lashes, if I have counted correctly: that is enough for now, for the donkey, speaking coarsely, will endure the load, but not an extra load.”

“No, no, Señor,” responded Sancho, “let no one say of me: ‘Money was paid and his arms grew weak.’ Your grace should move a little farther away, and let me give myself another thousand lashes at least: two more rounds of these and we’ll finish the game and even have something left over.”

“Since you are so well-disposed,” said Don Quixote, “then may heaven help you; go on with your whipping, and I shall move away.”

Sancho returned to his task with so much enthusiasm that he had soon stripped the bark from a number of trees, such was the rigor with which he flogged himself; and once, raising his voice as he administered a furious blow to a beech, he said:

“Here you will die, Samson, and all those with you!”

Don Quixote immediately hurried to the sound of the doleful voice and the pitiless flogging, and seizing the twisted halter that served as a whip, he said to Sancho:

“Fate must not allow, Sancho my friend, that in order to please me you lose your life, which must serve to support your wife and children: let Dulcinea wait for another occasion, and I shall keep myself within the bounds of proximate hope, waiting for you to gain new strength so that this matter may be concluded to everyone’s satisfaction.”

“Señor, since that is your grace’s wish, may it be for the best, and toss your cape over my shoulders because I’m sweating and don’t want to catch a chill: new penitents run that risk.”

Don Quixote did so, and in his shirtsleeves he covered Sancho, who slept until he was awakened by the sun, and then they continued their journey, which they brought to a halt, for the time being, in a village three leagues away. They dismounted at an inn, which Don Quixote took to be an inn and not a castle with a deep moat, towers, portcullises, and drawbridges, for after he was defeated he thought with sounder judgment about everything, as will be recounted now. He was lodged in a room on the ground floor, and hanging on its walls were the kind of old painted tapestries still used in villages. On one of them was painted, very badly, the abduction of Helen, at the moment the audacious guest stole
her away from Menelaus,
⁴
and the other showed the history of Dido and Aeneas: she stood on a high tower and signaled with a large cloth to her fugitive guest, who fled by sea on a frigate or brigantine.

He noted in the two histories that Helen did not go very unwillingly, for she was laughing, slyly and cunningly, but the beautiful Dido seemed to shed tears the size of walnuts, and seeing this, Don Quixote said:

“These two ladies were extremely unfortunate because they were not born in this age, and I am the most unfortunate of men because I was not born in theirs: if I had encountered these gentlemen, Troy would not have been burned, nor Carthage destroyed, for simply by my killing Paris, so many misfortunes would have been avoided.”
⁵

“I’ll wager,” said Sancho, “that before long there won’t be a tavern, an inn, a hostelry, or a barbershop where the history of our deeds isn’t painted. But I’d like it done by the hands of a painter better than the one who did these.”

“You are right, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “because this painter is like Orbaneja, a painter in Úbeda, who, when asked what he was painting, would respond: ‘Whatever comes out.’ And if he happened to be painting a rooster, he would write beneath it: ‘This is a rooster,’ so that no one would think it was a fox. And that, it seems to me, Sancho, is how the painter or writer—for it amounts to the same thing—must be who brought out the history of this new Don Quixote: he painted or wrote whatever came out; or he may have been like a poet who was at court some years ago, whose name was Mauleón; when asked a question, he would say the first thing that came into his head, and once when asked the meaning of
Deum de Deo,
he responded: ‘Dim down the drummer.’
⁶
But leaving that aside, tell me, Sancho, if you intend to administer another set of lashes tonight, and if you wish it to take place under a roof or out of doors.”

“By God, Señor,” responded Sancho, “considering how I plan to whip myself, a house would be as good as a field, but even so, I’d like it to be under the trees, because they seem like companions and help me to bear this burden wonderfully well.”

“It should not be like this, Sancho my friend,” responded Don
Quixote. “Instead, so that you can regain your strength, we should save this for our village, where we shall arrive the day after tomorrow at the latest.”

Sancho responded that he would do as his master wished but would like to conclude this matter quickly, while his blood was hot and the grindstone rough, because in delay there is often danger, and pray to God and use the hammer, and one “here you are” was worth more than two “I’ll give it to you,” and a bird in hand was worth two in the bush.

“By the one God, Sancho, no more proverbs,” said Don Quixote. “It seems you are going back to
sicut erat;
⁷
speak plainly, and simply, and without complications, as I have often told you, and you will see how one loaf will be the same as a hundred for you.”

“I don’t know why I’m so unlucky,” responded Sancho, “that I can’t say a word without a proverb, and every proverb seems exactly right to me, but I’ll change, if I can.”

And with this their conversation came to an end.

CHAPTER LXXII

Don Quixote and Sancho spent the entire day in that village and in that inn, waiting for nightfall, the latter, to conclude a round of whipping in the open air, and the former, to see it completed, for this was all his desire. In the meantime, a traveler on horseback arrived at the inn, along with three or four servants, one of whom said to the one who seemed to be their master:

“Señor Don Álvaro Tarfe, your grace can spend the hottest part of the day here: the inn seems clean and cool.”

Hearing this, Don Quixote said to Sancho:

“Look, Sancho: when I leafed through that book about the second part of my history, it seems to me I happened to run across this name of Don Álvaro Tarfe.”
¹

“That might be,” responded Sancho. “We’ll let him dismount, and then we can ask him about it.”

The gentleman dismounted, and the innkeeper gave him a room on the ground floor, across from Don Quixote’s lodging, which was hung with other tapestries like the ones in Don Quixote’s room. The newcomer, dressed in summer clothes, came out to the portico of the inn, which was spacious and cool, and seeing Don Quixote walking there, he asked:

“Señor, may I ask where your grace is traveling?”

And Don Quixote responded:

“To a nearby village, which is where I live. And your grace, where are you going?”

“I, Señor,” responded the gentleman, “am going to Granada, which is my home.”

“A fine home!” replied Don Quixote. “But would your grace please be so kind as to tell me your name, because I believe it will be more important for me to know it than I can ever tell you.”

“My name is Don Álvaro Tarfe,” responded the guest at the inn.

To which Don Quixote replied:

“I think beyond any doubt that your grace must be the Don Álvaro Tarfe whose name appears in the second part of the
History of Don Quixote of La Mancha,
recently published and brought into the light of the world by a modern author.”

“I am,” responded the gentleman, “and Don Quixote, the principal subject of this history, was a great friend of mine; I was the one who took him from his home, or, at least, persuaded him to come with me to the jousts being held in Zaragoza; and the truth of the matter is that I became very friendly with him and saved him more than once from tasting a whip on his back because of his insolence.”

“And, Señor Don Álvaro, can your grace tell me if I resemble in any way the Don Quixote you have mentioned?”

“No, certainly not,” responded the guest, “not at all.”

“And that Don Quixote,” said our Don Quixote, “did he have with him a squire named Sancho Panza?”

“He did,” responded Don Álvaro, “and though he was famous for being very amusing, I never heard him say any witticism that was.”

“I can believe that,” said Sancho at this point, “because saying amusing things is not for everybody, and the Sancho your grace is talking about, Señor, must be a great scoundrel, a dullard, and a thief all at the same time, because I’m the real Sancho Panza, and I have more amusing
things to say than there are rainstorms; and if you don’t think so, your grace can put it to the test, and follow after me for at least a year, and then you’ll see whether or not amusing things drop off me at every step, so many of them that without my knowing what I’ve said most of the time, I make everybody who hears me laugh; and the real Don Quixote of La Mancha, the one who’s famous, valiant, intelligent, and enamored, the righter of wrongs, the defender of wards and orphans, the protector of widows, a ladykiller with maidens, the one whose only lady is the peerless Dulcinea of Toboso, he is this gentleman here present, my master; every other Don Quixote and any other Sancho Panza are a trick and a dream.”

“By God, I believe it!” responded Don Álvaro. “You have said more amusing things, my friend, in the few sentences you have spoken than the other Sancho Panza did in all the ones I heard him speak, and there were many! He was more gluttonous than well-spoken, and more foolish than amusing, and I believe beyond any doubt that the enchanters who pursue the good Don Quixote have wanted to pursue me along with the bad Don Quixote. But I don’t know what to say, because I would swear I left him in the House of the Nuncio
²
in Toledo to be cured, and now suddenly here’s another Don Quixote, though one very different from mine.”

“I,” said Don Quixote, “do not know if I am good, but I can say I am not the bad one, and as proof of this I want your grace to know, Señor Don Álvaro Tarfe, that in all the days of my life I have never been in Zaragoza; rather, because I had been told that this imaginary Don Quixote had gone to the jousts there, I refused to enter the city, thereby revealing the lie to everyone; instead, I went directly to Barcelona: fountain of courtesy, shelter of strangers, hospice to the poor, land of the valiant, avenger of the offended, reciprocator of firm friendship, a city unique in its location and beauty. And although the events that befell me there are not pleasing, but very grievous, I bear them better simply for having seen Barcelona. In short, Señor Don Álvaro Tarfe, I am Don Quixote of La Mancha, the same one who is on the lips of Fame, and not that unfortunate man who has wanted to usurp my name and bring honor to himself with my thoughts. I implore your grace, for the sake of what you owe to your being a gentleman, to please make a statement to the magistrate of this village, saying that your grace has not seen me in
all the days of your life until now, and that I am not the Don Quixote published in the second part, nor is this Sancho Panza, my squire, the one known by your grace.”

“I shall do that very gladly,” responded Don Álvaro, “although it astounds me to see two Don Quixotes and two Sanchos at the same time, as alike in their names as they are different in their actions; and I say again and affirm again that I have not seen what I have seen or experienced what I have experienced.”

“No doubt,” said Sancho, “your grace must be enchanted, like my lady Dulcinea of Toboso, and if it please heaven, I could disenchant your grace by giving myself another three thousand or so lashes the way I’m doing for her, and I would do it without charging interest.”

“I don’t understand what you mean by lashes,” said Don Álvaro.

And Sancho responded that it was a long story, but he would tell it to him if they were traveling in the same direction.

At this point it was time to eat, and Don Quixote and Don Álvaro dined together. The magistrate of the village happened to come into the inn, along with a scribe, and Don Quixote submitted a petition to him saying that under the law it would be a good idea if Don Álvaro Tarfe, the gentleman here present, should declare before his grace that he did not know Don Quixote of La Mancha, also present, and that he, Don Quixote, was not the one who had appeared in a history entitled
Second Part of Don Quixote of La Mancha,
written by someone named Avellaneda, a native of Tordesillas. In brief, the magistrate gave his legal decision; the statement was made with all the juridical force that could be brought to bear in such cases, which made Don Quixote and Sancho very happy, as if such a statement mattered a great deal, and as if the difference between the two Don Quixotes and the two Sanchos could not be clearly seen in their actions and words. Many courtesies and offers of service were exchanged by Don Álvaro and Don Quixote, and in them the great Manchegan showed so much intelligence and sense that Don Álvaro was convinced he had been in error, and even came to believe he must have been enchanted, for he had touched two such antithetical Don Quixotes with his own hand.