Don Quixote [Trans. by Edith Grossman] (44 page)

Sancho, with his eyes on the ground, went to ask for his master’s hand, and his master gave it to him with a serene bearing, and after Sancho had kissed his hand, Don Quixote gave him his blessing and told him to walk ahead a little, because he had to speak to him and ask him things that were very important. Sancho did so, and the two of them moved ahead of the others, and Don Quixote said:

“Since your return I have not had the occasion or opportunity to ask you many details about the message you carried and the reply you brought back; and now, since fortune has granted us both the time and the place, do not deny me the happiness you can afford me with this good news.”

“Your grace can ask whatever you want,” responded Sancho, “and I’ll finish off each question as easily as it was begun. But, Señor, I beg your grace not to be so vengeful from now on.”

“Why do you say that, Sancho?” said Don Quixote.

“I say it,” he responded, “because the blows you gave me just now were more because of the dispute the devil started between us the other night than because of what I said against my lady Dulcinea; I love and worship her like a relic, even if she isn’t one, just because she belongs to your grace.”

“As you value your life, Sancho, do not speak of this again,” said Don Quixote, “for it brings me grief; I forgave you then, and you know what they say: a new sin demands a new penance.”
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While Don Quixote and Sancho were engaged in this conversation, the priest told Dorotea that she had shown great cleverness not only in the story, but in making it so brief and so similar to the tales in books of chivalry. She said she had often spent time reading them but did not know where the provinces or the sea ports were, and that is why she had made the mistake of saying she had disembarked at Osuna.

“I realized that,” said the priest, “which is why I hastened to say what I did, and that settled everything. But isn’t it strange to see how easily this unfortunate gentleman believes all those inventions and lies simply because they are in the same style and manner as his foolish books?”

“It is,” said Cardenio, “and so unusual and out of the ordinary that I don’t know if anyone wanting to invent and fabricate such a story would have the wit to succeed.”

“Well, there’s something else in this,” said the priest. “Aside from the foolish things this good gentleman says with reference to his madness, if you speak to him of other matters, he talks rationally and shows a clear, calm understanding in everything; in other words, except if the subject is chivalry, no one would think he does not have a very good mind.”

While they were having this conversation, Don Quixote continued his and said to Sancho:

“Panza my friend, let us make peace and forget about our quarrels, and tell me now, without anger or rancor: where, how, and when did you find Dulcinea? What was she doing? What did you say to her? What did she reply? What was her expression when she read my letter? Who transcribed it for you? Tell me everything you saw that is worth knowing, asking, and answering, not exaggerating or falsifying in order to give me pleasure, and not omitting anything, for that will take my pleasure away.”

“Señor,” responded Sancho, “if truth be told, nobody transcribed the letter for me because I didn’t take any letter.”

“What you say is true,” said Don Quixote. “I found the notebook where I wrote the letter in my possession two days after you left, which caused me great sorrow; I did not know what you would do when you dis
covered that you did not have the letter, and I believed you would return when you realized you did not have it.”

“That’s what I would have done,” responded Sancho, “if I hadn’t memorized it when your grace read it to me, and so I told it to a sacristan, and he transcribed it point for point from my memory, and he said that though he’d read many letters of excommunication, in all his days he’d never seen or read a letter as nice as that one.”

“And do you still have it in your memory, Sancho?” said Don Quixote.

“No, Señor,” responded Sancho, “because after I told it to him, and had no more use for it, I set about forgetting it; if I do remember anything, it’s that part about
sullied,
I mean
sovereign lady,
and the last part:
Thine until death, the Knight of the Sorrowful Face.
And between these two things, I put in more than three hundred
souls,
and
lives,
and
eyes of mine.”

CHAPTER XXXI

“All this does not displease me; go on,” said Don Quixote. “When you arrived, what was that queen of beauty doing? Surely you found her stringing pearls, or embroidering some heraldic device in gold thread for this her captive knight.”

“I didn’t find her doing anything,” responded Sancho, “except winnowing two
fanegas
¹
of wheat in a corral of her house.”

“Well, you may be sure,” said Don Quixote, “that, touched by her hands, the grains of wheat were pearls. And did you notice, my friend, if it was white wheat or ordinary spring wheat?”

“It was just buckwheat,” responded Sancho.

“Well, I assure you,” said Don Quixote, “that winnowed by her hands, it undoubtedly made the finest white bread. But go on: when you gave her my letter, did she kiss it? Did she place it on her head?
²
Did she engage in some ceremony worthy of such a letter? What did she do?”

“When I was about to give it to her,” responded Sancho, “she was in the middle of shaking a good part of the wheat that she had in the sieve, and she said to me: ‘Friend, put the letter on that sack; I can’t read it until I finish sifting everything I have here.’”

“A wise lady!” said Don Quixote. “That must have been so that she could read it slowly and savor it. Go on, Sancho. And while she was engaged in her task, what discourse did she have with you? What did she ask about me? And you, what did you respond? Come, tell me everything; do not leave even a half-note in the inkwell.”

“She didn’t ask me anything,” said Sancho. “But I told her how your grace, to serve her, was doing penance, naked from the waist up, here in this sierra like a savage, sleeping on the ground, not eating your bread from a cloth or combing your beard, crying and cursing your fate.”

“When you said that I cursed my fate, you misspoke,” said Don Quixote. “Rather, I bless it and shall bless it all the days of my life for making me worthy of loving so high a lady as Dulcinea of Toboso.”

“She’s so high,” responded Sancho, “that by my faith she’s a whole span taller than I am.”

“How do you know, Sancho?” said Don Quixote. “Did you measure yourself against her?”

“I measured myself this way,” responded Sancho. “When I went over to her to help her load a sack of wheat onto a donkey, we were so close that I could see she was a good span taller than me.”

“Well, it is true,” replied Don Quixote, “that her great height is accompanied and adorned by a thousand million graces of the soul! But there is one thing you will not deny, Sancho: when you approached her, did you not smell the perfume of Sheba, an aromatic, somehow pleasing fragrance whose name I cannot recall? I mean, an essence or scent as if you were in the shop of some rare glover?”

“What I can say,” said Sancho, “is that I smelled a mannish kind of odor, and it must have been that with all that moving around, she was sweaty and sort of sour.”

“That could not be,” responded Don Quixote. “You must have had a head cold or else you were smelling yourself, because I know very well the fragrance of that rose among thorns, that lily of the field, that delicate liquid ambergris.”

“That may be,” responded Sancho, “because very often the same smell comes from me, though at the time I thought it was coming from her grace the lady Dulcinea, but there’s no reason to be surprised, since one devil looks like another.”

“All right, then,” Don Quixote went on, “she finished sifting the wheat and sent it to the mill. What did she do when she read the letter?”

“She didn’t read the letter,” said Sancho, “because she said she didn’t know how to read or write; instead, she tore it into tiny pieces, saying that she didn’t want to give it to anybody else to read because she didn’t want people in the village knowing her secrets, and she was satisfied with what I had told her about the love your grace had for her and the special penance you were doing for her sake. Finally, she told me to tell your grace that she kissed your hands, and had more desire to see you than to write to you, and so she begged and commanded, in view of your letter, that you leave these wild places, and stop doing crazy things, and set out right away for Toboso, if something more important didn’t come along, because she wanted to see your grace very much. She laughed a lot when I told her that your grace was called
The Knight of the Sorrowful Face.
I asked her if the Basque we met so long ago had come there, and she said he had, and that he was a very fine man. I also asked her about the galley slaves, but she said that so far she hadn’t seen a single one.”

“Everything is fine to this point,” said Don Quixote. “But tell me: when she said goodbye, what jewel did she give you as a reward for the news of me that you brought to her? Because it is a traditional and ancient custom among knights errant and their ladies to give the squires, maidens, or dwarves who bring the knights news of their ladies, or the ladies news of their knights, the gift of a precious jewel in gratitude for the message.”

“That may be true, and I think it’s a good custom; but that must have been in the past; nowadays the custom must be just to give a piece of bread and some cheese, for that’s what my lady Dulcinea handed me over the corral fence when she said goodbye; and it even looked like the cheese was made of sheep’s milk.”

“She is liberal in the extreme,” said Don Quixote, “and if she did not present you with a jewel of gold, no doubt it was because she did not have one near at hand, but it is never the wrong time for a gift: I shall see her and you will have your reward. Do you know what astounds me, Sancho? It seems to me that you flew there and back, because it has taken you a little more than three days to go to Toboso and come back here again, a distance of more than thirty leagues; which leads me to believe that the wise necromancer who watches over my affairs and is my friend (because perforce there is one, there must be one, else I should not be a good knight errant), I say that he must have helped you on your journey
without your realizing it, for there are wise men who pick up a knight errant sleeping in his bed, and without his knowing how or by what means, the knight awakens the following day more than a thousand leagues distant from where he went to sleep. If not for this, knights errant could not help each other when they are in danger, as they do constantly. For one may be doing battle in the mountains of Armenia with a dragon, or a fierce monster, or another knight, and matters are going badly for him and he is on the point of death, and then, when you least expect it, another knight appears on a cloud or in a chariot of fire, a knight who is his friend and was in England just a short while before, and who comes to his aid and saves him from death and that night finds himself at home, enjoying his supper; and the distance between the two places is usually two or three thousand leagues. All of this is accomplished through the skill and wisdom of the wise enchanters who watch over these valiant knights. And so, Sancho my friend, it is not difficult for me to believe that you have traveled back and forth in so short a time between here and Toboso, for, as I have said, some friendly sorcerer must have carried you through the air without your realizing it.”

“That must be it,” said Sancho, “because, by my faith, Rocinante was galloping like a Gypsy’s donkey with quicksilver in its ear.”
³

“And not just quicksilver,” said Don Quixote, “but a legion of demons, too, who can run and make others run, without growing tired, whenever they want to! But, leaving that aside, what do you think I ought to do now with regard to my lady commanding that I go to see her? For, although it is clear that I am obliged to obey her command, I am also prevented from doing so by the boon I have promised to the princess who is traveling with us, and the law of chivalry demands that I keep my word before I satisfy my wishes. On the one hand, I am pursued and hounded by the desire to see my lady; on the other, I am stirred and called by the promise I have made and the glory I shall gain in this undertaking. But what I intend to do is to travel swiftly and come without delay to the place where this giant is, and as soon as I arrive I shall cut off his head, and restore the princess peacefully to her kingdom, and immediately return to see the light that illumines my senses, and to her I shall give such excuses that she will come to consider my delay as a good thing, for she will see that it all redounds to her greater glory and fame, for everything I have achieved, achieve now, and shall achieve by force
of arms in this life, comes to me because she favors me, and because I am hers.”

“Oh,” said Sancho, “those ideas of yours do you so much harm! Tell me, Señor: does your grace intend to make this trip for nothing, and let slip away and lose a marriage as profitable and distinguished as this one, where the dowry is a kingdom? The truth is I’ve heard it’s more than twenty thousand leagues around, and overflowing with all the things needed to sustain human life, and bigger than Portugal and Castilla together. Be quiet, for the love of God, and shame on what you’ve said, and take my advice, and forgive me, and get married right away in the first town where there’s a priest, or else here’s our own licentiate, and he’ll do a wonderful job. Remember that I’m old enough to give advice, and the advice I’m giving you now is exactly right, and a bird in the hand is better than a vulture in the air, and if you have something good and choose something evil, you can’t complain about the good that happens to you.”
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