Don Quixote [Trans. by Edith Grossman] (21 page)

“Would that I were able, O beauteous and exalted lady, to repay the great boon thou hast granted me with the sight of thy sublime beauty, but Fortune, which never wearies of pursuing the virtuous, hath chosen
to place me in this bed, where I lie so bruised and broken that even if I, with all my heart, desired to satisfy thine own desires, I could not. Further, added to this impossibility is another even greater, which is the promise of faithfulness that I have sworn to the incomparable Dulcinea of Toboso, the sole mistress of my most hidden thoughts; if this great obstacle did not loom between us, I would not be so foolish a knight as to turn away from so gladsome an opportunity as this that thy great kindness affords me.”

Maritornes, extremely agitated and perspiring freely at finding herself held so firmly by Don Quixote, and not understanding or paying much attention to what he was saying, attempted, without saying a word, to break free. The good muledriver, whose sinful desires had kept him awake, heard his bawd come through the door and listened attentively to everything Don Quixote was saying; jealous at the thought that the Asturian had broken her word for the sake of another man, he moved closer and closer to Don Quixote’s bed and stood there in silence to see what that talk, which he could not understand, would lead to. But when he saw the girl struggling to free herself and Don Quixote endeavoring to hold on to her, and thinking that the joke had gone far enough, the muledriver raised his arm on high and delivered such a terrible blow to the narrow jaws of the enamored knight that he bathed his whole mouth in blood; not content with this, he jumped on his ribs, and with his feet moving faster than a trot, he stomped them all from one end to the other.

The bed, which was rather flimsy and not on a very firm base, could not support the addition of the muledriver and collapsed, and the great crash woke the innkeeper, who imagined that Maritornes must be involved in some dispute, because he had called for her and she had not responded. With this suspicion in mind he got up, lit a small oil lamp, and went to the place where he had heard the disturbance. The girl, seeing that her master was coming and was in a terrible rage, became so fearful and distressed that she took refuge in the bed of Sancho Panza, who was still asleep, and there she hid, curling up into a little ball. The innkeeper came in, saying:

“Where are you, you whore? I know this is your doing.”

At this point Sancho awoke and, feeling that bulk almost on top of him, thought it was a nightmare, and he began to throw punches in all directions, and I don’t know how many of them struck Maritornes, but she, feeling the pain and tossing all modesty aside, hit back at Sancho so many times that he lost all desire to sleep; seeing himself treated in this way, and not knowing by whom, he struggled to his feet, threw his arms
around Maritornes, and the two of them began the fiercest and most laughable scuffle the world has ever seen.

By the light of the innkeeper’s lamp, the muledriver saw what was happening to his lady, and leaving Don Quixote, he hurried to give her the help she needed. The innkeeper also approached, but with a different purpose, because he went to her to punish the girl, believing, no doubt, that she alone was the reason for so much harmony. And, as the old saying goes, the cat chased the rat, the rat chased the rope, the rope chased the stick: the muledriver hit Sancho, Sancho hit the girl, the girl hit Sancho, the innkeeper hit the girl, and all of them acted so fast and furiously that they did not let up for an instant; then, the best part was that the innkeeper’s lamp went out, and since they were in darkness, everyone hit everyone with so little mercy that wherever their hands landed they left nothing whole and sound.

It so happened that staying in the inn that night was an officer of what is called the old Holy Brotherhood of Toledo, and he, hearing the noise of the fight, seized his staff of office and the tin box that held his documents and entered the darkened room, saying:

“Stop in the name of the law! Stop in the name of the Holy Brotherhood!”

And the first one he came across was a badly beaten Don Quixote, who lay face-up and senseless on his collapsed bed; and groping in the dark until he had grasped Don Quixote’s beard, the officer did not stop saying:

“You must assist the law!”

But seeing that the man he had seized did not move or stir, he assumed he was dead and that those in the room were his killers, and with this suspicion he shouted even louder, saying:

“Lock the door of the inn! Make sure no one leaves, a man’s been killed here!”

This shout startled all of them, and they abandoned the fight at the point where they had heard the voice. The innkeeper withdrew to his room, the muledriver to his packsaddles, the girl to her cot; only the unfortunate Don Quixote and Sancho could not move from where they were lying. The officer let go of Don Quixote’s beard and went to find a light so that he could look for and arrest the criminals, but he did not find one because the innkeeper had intentionally put out the lamp when he went to his bedroom, and the officer was obliged to turn to the fire-place, where, with great difficulty and after a good deal of time, he managed to light another oil lamp.

CHAPTER XVII

By this time Don Quixote had recovered from his swoon, and in the same tone of voice he had used the day before to call to his squire when he was lying in the vale of staffs,
¹
he began to call to him now, saying:

“Sancho my friend, are you sleeping? Are you sleeping, friend Sancho?”

“How could I sleep, oh woe is me,” responded Sancho, full of sorrow and despair, “when it seems that all the devils in hell had their way with me tonight?”

“You undoubtedly are correct about that,” Don Quixote responded, “because either I understand little, or this castle is enchanted. For you must know…But what I wish to tell you now you must swear to keep secret until after my death.”

“I swear,” Sancho responded.

“I say this,” replied Don Quixote, “because I do not wish to take away anyone’s honor.”

“I say that I swear,” Sancho said again, “to keep quiet about it until your grace has reached the end of your days, and God willing, I’ll be able to reveal it tomorrow.”

“Have I acted so badly with you, Sancho,” Don Quixote responded, “that you wish to see me dead so soon?”

“That’s not the reason,” Sancho replied, “but I don’t like keeping secrets, and I wouldn’t want them to spoil because I kept them too long.”

“Whatever the reason may be,” said Don Quixote, “I have great confidence in your love and courtesy, and so you must know that tonight I have had one of the strangest adventures one could ever imagine; to make the story brief, I shall tell you that a short while ago the daughter of the lord of this castle came to me, and she is one of the most elegant and beauteous damsels to be found anywhere on earth. What can I say of the grace of her person, the nobility of her understanding, the other hidden things which, in order to keep the faith I owe to my lady Dulcinea of Toboso, I shall keep inviolate and pass over in silence? I wish only to say that heaven, envious of the good that Fortune had placed in my hands, or perhaps, and this is more likely, the castle, as I have said, being enchanted, as I was engaged in sweet and amorous conversation with her, without my seeing or knowing whence it came, a hand attached to the arm of some monstrous giant came down and struck me so hard a blow on the jaws that they were bathed in blood, and then beat me so badly that I feel worse than I did yesterday when the Yanguesans, because of Rocinante’s audacity, committed the offense against us which you already know. And from this I conjecture that the treasure of this maiden’s beauty must be guarded by some enchanted Moor and is not intended for me.”

“Not for me either,” responded Sancho, “because more than four hundred Moors gave me such a beating that the attack by the staffs was like cakes and icing. But tell me, Señor, how can you call this a good and singular adventure if it left us the way it left us? Not so bad for your grace, because you had between your hands that incomparable beauteousness you mentioned; but what did I have except the worst cudgeling I’ll ever get in my life? Woe is me and the mother who bore me: I’m not a knight errant and don’t ever plan to be one, and so I get the worst of all our calamities!”

“Then, you have been beaten as well?” responded Don Quixote.

“Didn’t I just tell you I was, to the sorrow of me and my whole family?” said Sancho.

“Do not be distressed, my friend,” said Don Quixote, “for I shall now prepare the precious balm with which we shall be healed in the wink of an eye.”

By now the officer of the Holy Brotherhood had lit the lamp, and he came in to see the man he thought was dead; as soon as Sancho saw him come in wearing his nightshirt and nightcap and holding a lamp in his hand and with a very grim expression on his face, he asked his master:

“Señor, can this by any chance be the enchanted Moor, come back to hit us some more in case there’s anything left in the inkwell?”

“He cannot be the Moor,” responded Don Quixote, “because those who are enchanted do not permit themselves to be seen by anyone.”

“If they don’t permit themselves to be seen, they do permit themselves to be felt,” said Sancho, “as my back can tell you.”

“As could mine,” Don Quixote responded, “but that is not sufficient evidence for believing that the man you see is the enchanted Moor.”

The officer was perplexed when he discovered them engaged in so peaceable a conversation. It is certainly true that Don Quixote still lay on his back, but he was unable to move simply because he was so badly beaten and so covered with poultices. The officer came up to him and said:

“Well, how goes it, my good man?”

“I would speak with more courtesy,” responded Don Quixote, “if I were you. Is it the custom in this land to speak in that manner to knights errant, you dolt?”

Finding himself treated so abusively by someone whose appearance was so unprepossessing, the officer could not bear it; he raised the lamp filled with oil, brought it down on Don Quixote’s head, and dealt him a serious blow; since everything was now in darkness, he left immediately, and Sancho Panza said:

“There’s no doubt, Señor, that this man is the enchanted Moor, who must be guarding the treasure for others, but for us he only has fists and blows with lamps.”

“That is true,” responded Don Quixote, “and one must not take notice of such matters in enchantments, nor is there reason to become angry or enraged at them, for, as these beings are invisible and magical, we shall find no one on whom to take our revenge no matter how much we try. Get up, Sancho, if you can, and summon the warder of this fortress, and persuade him to give me some oil, wine, salt, and rosemary so that I may prepare the health-giving balm; for, in truth, I believe I have great need of it now, since I am losing a good deal of blood from the wound this phantom has inflicted on me.”

Sancho stood, all his bones aching, and began to walk in the darkness to find the innkeeper, but he encountered the officer, who had been listening to hear what his adversary would do, and Sancho said to him:

“Señor, whoever you may be, do us the kindness and favor of giving us a little rosemary, oil, salt, and wine; they are needed to heal one of the
best knights errant on the face of the earth, lying in that bed badly wounded at the hands of the enchanted Moor who’s in this inn.”

When the officer heard this, he thought Sancho was out of his mind, but since day was beginning to break, he opened the door of the inn, called to the innkeeper, and told him what the good man wanted. The innkeeper gave him what he asked for, and Sancho carried it to Don Quixote, who was holding his head in his hands and moaning at the pain of the blow from the lamp, which had done him little harm other than the raising of two rather large bumps; what he thought was blood was nothing but the sweat pouring out of him because of the distress he had experienced in the tempest that had just passed.

In short, he took his simples and made a compound of them, mixing them all together and cooking them for a while until it seemed to him they were ready. Then he asked for a flask to pour the potion into, but since there was none in the inn, he decided to put it into a cruet or oil container made of tinplate, which the innkeeper gave to him at no charge. Then, over the cruet, he said more than eighty Pater Nosters and an equal number of Ave Marías, Salves, and Credos, and he accompanied each word with the sign of the cross, in a kind of blessing, all of which was witnessed by Sancho, the innkeeper, and the officer; the muledriver, in the meantime, had quietly gone out to tend to his animals.

Having completed this, Don Quixote himself wanted to test the virtue of what he imagined to be the precious balm, and so he drank it down, and the portion that could not fit into the cruet and was left in the pot where it had cooked amounted to almost a liter; as soon as he finished drinking it, he began to vomit until nothing was left in his stomach, and with the nausea and agitation of vomiting, he broke into a copious sweat, for which reason he ordered them to wrap him up well and leave him alone. This they did, and he slept for more than three hours, and when he woke his body felt much relieved and so much better after his beating that he considered himself cured; he truly believed he had found the balm of Fierabrás, and that with this remedy he could from now on, and with no fear whatsoever, engage in any combat, battle, or contest no matter how perilous it might be.

Sancho Panza, who also deemed the improvement in his master a miracle, requested the portion that remained in the pot, which was no small quantity. Don Quixote agreed, and Sancho picked up the pot in both hands, and with a good amount of trust and even greater optimism,
he gulped the potion down thirstily, swallowing only a little less than his master had. It seems, however, that poor Sancho’s stomach was not as delicate as his master’s, and so, before he vomited, he endured so much nausea and felt so sick to his stomach, and sweated so much and felt so faint, that he really and truly thought it was his final hour, and finding himself in so much pain and anguish, he cursed the balm and the villain who had given it to him. Seeing him in this state, Don Quixote said: