Don Quixote [Trans. by Edith Grossman] (32 page)

Don Quixote was astonished at what he had heard from the goatherd
and more desirous than ever to know who the unfortunate madman was, and he resolved to do what he had already thought about doing: to look for him all over the mountains, searching every corner and cave until he found him. But Fate did what he was planning and hoping to do, and did it better, because at that very instant, in a ravine that led to the place where they were standing, the young man he was seeking appeared, walking and talking to himself and saying things that could not be understood up close, let alone from a distance. His dress was as it has been described, except that as he approached, Don Quixote saw that a torn leather jerkin he was wearing had been tanned with ambergris, which led him to conclude that a person who wore such clothing could not be of low category.

When the young man reached them, he greeted them in a hoarse and rasping voice, but with great courtesy. Don Quixote returned the greetings with no less courtesy, and, after dismounting Rocinante, with a gallant air and presence he went forward to embrace him and held him close for a long while, as if he had known him for some time. The other man, whom we can call
The Ragged One of the Gloomy Face
—as Don Quixote is
He of the Sorrowful One
—allowed himself to be embraced, then stepped back, placed his hands on Don Quixote’s shoulders, and stood looking at him as if wanting to see if he knew him, no less astonished, perhaps, at the face, form, and arms of Don Quixote than Don Quixote was at the sight of him. Finally, the first to speak after their embrace was the Ragged One, and he said what will now be recounted.

CHAPTER XXIV

The history says that Don Quixote paid very close attention to what was said by the tattered Knight of the Sierra, who began to speak, saying:

“Most certainly, Señor, whoever you may be, for I do not know you, I thank you for the demonstrations of affection and courtesy which you have shown me, and I wish I were in a position to respond with more than my desire to the goodwill you have displayed in your warm welcome; but my fate does not choose to give me anything with which to reciprocate your kindness except my sincere wish to do so.”

“And mine,” responded Don Quixote, “is to serve you; indeed, I had resolved not to leave these mountains until I had found you and learned from you if your sorrow, which your strange way of life indicates you are suffering, might have some kind of remedy, and if it did, to seek it with the greatest possible diligence. If your misfortune were one that had all doors closed to any sort of consolation, I intended to help you weep and lament to the best of my ability, for it is still a consolation in affliction to find someone who mourns with you. And if my good intentions deserve to be thanked with some courtesy, I entreat you, Señor, for the sake of the great courtesy I see in you, and I implore you, for the sake of the thing you have loved or do love most in this life, to tell me who you are and the reason that has compelled you to live and die in this desolate place like a wild animal, for you dwell among the beasts estranged from your true self, as demonstrated by your dress and your person. And I swear,” Don Quixote added, “by the order of chivalry which I have received, though unworthy and a sinner, and by the profession of knight errantry, that if, Señor, you satisfy me in this, I shall serve you with the devotion to which I am obliged by being the man I am, whether to remedy your misfortune, if it has a remedy, or to help you lament it, as I have promised you I would.”

The Knight of the Forest, who heard the Knight of the Sorrowful Face speak in this way, did nothing but look at him, and look at him again, and look at him one more time, from head to toe; and after he had looked at him very carefully, he said:

“If you have any food to give me, then give it to me in the name of God, and after I have eaten, I shall do all you ask, in gratitude for the goodwill you have shown me here.”

Then Sancho from his sack and the goatherd from his pouch took out food with which the Ragged One satisfied his hunger, eating what they gave him as if he were stupefied, and so quickly that one mouthful followed immediately on the other, for he gulped them down instead of swallowing them; and while he ate, neither he nor those who were watching him said a word. When he had finished eating, he signaled to them to follow him, which they did, and he led them to a small green meadow just beyond a nearby crag. When he reached it he lay down on the grass, and the others did the same, all of this without a word, until the Ragged One, after settling comfortably in his place, said:

“If, Señores, you wish me to tell you briefly about the immensity of my misfortunes, you must promise not to interrupt the thread of my sad history with any question, or with anything else, because the moment you interrupt will be the moment my narration ends.”

These words of the Ragged One brought to Don Quixote’s mind the story his squire had told him, when he had not kept an accurate count of the number of goats that had crossed the river, and the story was never finished. But let us return to the Ragged One, who continued:

“I give you this warning because I would like to pass quickly through the tale of my misfortunes, since bringing them to mind only serves to add new ones, and the less you ask me, the sooner I shall finish telling you about them, though I shall not fail to relate anything of importance to the complete satisfaction of your desire.”

Don Quixote promised, in the name of all the others, not to interrupt, and with this assurance the Ragged One began, saying:

“My name is Cardenio;
¹
my home, one of the finest cities in Andalucía; my family, noble; my parents, wealthy; my misfortune, so great that my parents had to weep and my family grieve, but their wealth could not alleviate it, for worldly possessions can do little to remedy the afflictions sent by heaven. In that same city there lived a heaven, in which love placed all the glory I could desire: such is the beauty of Luscinda, a maiden as noble and as wealthy as I, but more fortunate and less firmly resolved than my honorable intentions merited. I loved Luscinda, I worshiped and adored her from my earliest youth, and she loved me with all the simplicity and innocence of her tender years. Our parents knew of our intentions and were not troubled by them because they saw clearly that, in time, these intentions could have no other end but our marriage, something that was practically guaranteed by the equality of our families and our fortunes. We matured, as did our love, until it seemed to Luscinda’s father that, in deference to public opinion, he was obliged to deny me entrance to his house, almost imitating in this regard the parents of that same Thisbe praised so often by poets. And this denial added more flames to the fire and more ardor to our desire, because, although it silenced our tongues, it could not silence our pens, which, with greater freedom than tongues, tend to reveal to the person we love what is hidden in our soul, for often the presence of the beloved confuses and silences the most determined intention and the boldest tongue. O heavens, the letters I wrote to her! The delicate, virtuous responses I received! The songs and love poems I composed, in which I declared my soul and transcribed its sentiments, depicted its burning desires, prolonged its memories, and re-created its yearnings!

Finally, finding myself in such an agitated state, and seeing that my soul was being consumed with the desire to see her, I resolved to take action and to do in a moment what seemed necessary to achieve the prize I longed for and deserved, which was to ask her father for her hand in marriage; this I did, to which he replied by thanking me for the desire to honor him, which I had demonstrated, and the wish to honor myself with his beloved treasure; but, since my father was alive, it was his rightful duty to make the request, because if it were not wholeheartedly desired and wanted by him, Luscinda was not a woman to be taken or given furtively. I thanked him for his kindness, thinking that he was correct in what he said, and that my father would agree as soon as I told him, and with this purpose in mind, I went immediately to tell my father what I desired. When I entered the room I found him with an open letter in his hand, and before I could say a word he handed it to me and said: ‘In this letter you will see, Cardenio, the desire that Duke Ricardo has to favor you.’ This Duke Ricardo, Señores, as you probably know, is a grandee of Spain whose lands are the best in Andalucía. I took the letter, and read it, and it was so insistent and complimentary that even I thought it would be incorrect if my father failed to carry out what it requested, which was that he send me immediately to the duke’s estate to be a companion, not a servant, to his oldest son, and the duke would be responsible for granting me the rank that would correspond to the esteem in which he held me.

I read the letter and kept silent as I read it, especially when I heard my father say: ‘You will leave in two days’ time, Cardenio, to do as the duke desires, and you should give thanks to God for opening the way for you to achieve what I know you deserve.’ To these words he added others of fatherly advice. The time for my departure approached, I spoke one night to Luscinda and told her everything that had happened, and I did the same with her father, asking him to wait a few days and delay his response until I knew what Ricardo wanted of me; he promised he would, and she confirmed it with a thousand vows and a thousand swoons.

In short, I arrived at the estate of Duke Ricardo. I was so well-received and-treated by him that envy immediately began its work and affected the older retainers, who thought the indications the duke gave of wanting to favor me would work against them. The one who seemed happiest at my arrival was the duke’s younger son, named Fernando, a gallant, charming youth, magnanimous and inclined to fall in love, who in a very short time showed so great a desire for my friendship that everyone spoke of it, and although the oldest son was fond of me and favored me, he did not go as far as Don Fernando in his affectionate treatment.

Now, since there are no secrets between friends, and the preference shown by Don Fernando was no longer preference but friendship, he told me all his thoughts, especially one, having to do with love, which was causing him some concern. He was in love with a peasant girl, one of his father’s vassals, whose parents were very wealthy, and she was so beautiful, modest, discreet, and virtuous that no one who knew her could decide in which of these she showed greater excellence or distinction. These outstanding traits in the beautiful peasant so intensified the desires of Don Fernando that he had decided, in order to achieve his desires and conquer her integrity, to promise to be her husband;
²
otherwise, he would be striving for the impossible. Under the obligation imposed by his friendship, and using the best arguments I knew and the most vivid examples I could think of, I attempted to dissuade and discourage him from his intention, but seeing that it was to no avail, I resolved to tell Duke Ricardo, his father, of the matter; but Don Fernando, an astute and discerning man, suspected and feared this, for it seemed to him that I was obliged, as a good retainer, not to hide anything that could so damage the honor of my lord the duke; and so, to distract and deceive me, he said he could find no other remedy that would remove from his thoughts the beauty that held him captive than to leave for a few months, and what he desired was for the two of us to go to my father’s house, and he would tell the duke that this was an opportunity to see and purchase some of the very good horses in my city, which is mother to the best in the world. As soon as I heard him say this, I was moved by my own affections to approve his plan as one of the most sensible anyone could imagine, and I would have done so even if it had not been as good, because it was an excellent opportunity and occasion for me to see my Luscinda again.

With this thought and desire, I approved his idea and supported his plan, telling him to put it into effect as quickly as possible because, in truth, absence would do its work despite the most resolute thoughts. When he told me of his proposal, he had already, as I learned later, enjoyed the peasant girl by claiming to be her husband, and he was hoping for an opportunity to disclose this at a safe distance, fearful of what his father, the duke, would do when he learned of his foolishness. And it happened that, since love in young men is, for the most part, nothing but appetite, which, having pleasure as its ultimate goal, ends when that
goal is achieved, and what seemed to be love must recede because it cannot go beyond the limits placed on it by nature, such limits not being placed on true love…what I mean to say is that as soon as Don Fernando had enjoyed the peasant girl, his longings abated and his desires cooled, and if at first he pretended to want to go away in order to remedy them, now he really wanted to leave in order not to act on them. The duke gave his permission and told me to accompany him.

We came to my city, my father gave him a welcome proper to his rank, I saw Luscinda immediately, my desires were rekindled, though they had not been dead or dampened, and, to my sorrow, I spoke of them to Don Fernando, because it seemed to me that, given the great friendship he had shown me, I ought not hide anything from him. I praised the beauty, grace, and discretion of Luscinda in such a way that my praise awakened in him a desire to see a maiden adorned with so many virtues. I satisfied his desire, much to my misfortune, and showed her to him one night, by the light of a candle at a window where the two of us would talk. He saw her in a dressing gown, and the sight of her made him forget all the beauty he had seen until then. He fell silent, lost all sense of his surroundings, was entranced, and, finally, fell in love to the degree that you will see in the course of the story of my afflictions.

To further heighten his desire, which he concealed from me and revealed only to heaven when he was alone, one day he happened to find one of her letters that asked me to ask her father for her hand, and it was so discreet, so virtuous, and so loving that when he had read it he told me that in Luscinda alone one could find concentrated the gifts of beauty and intelligence that were divided among all the other women in the world. It is certainly true, and I wish to confess now that even though I saw with what just cause Don Fernando praised Luscinda, it troubled me to hear that praise from his mouth, and I began to fear and mistrust him because not a moment went by when he did not wish to speak of Luscinda, and he would initiate the conversation about her with any far-fetched excuse, which awakened in me a certain jealousy, though not because I feared any kind of change in the goodness and good faith of Luscinda; even so, I began to be apprehensive with regard to the very future about which she gave me assurances. Don Fernando always wanted to read the letters I sent to Luscinda and the ones she sent back to me, claiming that he enjoyed the wit we both displayed. It so happened that Luscinda had asked me for a book of chivalry of which she was very fond, which was
Amadís of Gaul.
”