Don Quixote [Trans. by Edith Grossman] (22 page)

“I believe, Sancho, that this affliction has befallen you because you have not been dubbed a knight, for I am of the opinion that this potion is not suitable for those who are not knights.”

“Curse me and all my kin! If your grace knew that,” replied Sancho, “why did you let me taste it?”

At this point the concoction took effect, and the poor squire began to erupt from both channels, and with so much force that the reed mat on which he lay, and the canvas blanket that covered him, could not be used again. He was perspiring and sweating and suffering such paroxysms and mishaps that not only he but everyone else thought his life was coming to an end. This tempest of affliction lasted almost two hours, at the end of which he was left not as his master had been, but so bruised and battered he could barely stand.

Don Quixote, however, who, as we have said, felt cured and healthy, wanted to leave immediately to seek adventures, it being his opinion that the time he spent in that place meant he was depriving the world, and all those in it who were in need, of his help and assistance, especially now when he had so much trust and confidence in the balm. And so, impelled by this desire, he himself saddled Rocinante, and put the packsaddle on his squire’s donkey, and helped Sancho to dress and climb on the animal. Then he mounted his horse, and as he rode past a corner of the inn, he picked up a pike he found there to use as a lance.

All those in the inn, amounting to more than twenty people, were watching him; the innkeeper’s daughter looked at him as well, and he did not take his eyes off her, either, and from time to time he heaved a sigh that seemed to come from the bottom of his soul, and everyone thought this must have been on account of the pain he felt in his ribs; at least, those who had seen him covered with poultices the night before thought so.

When he and Sancho were both mounted and standing at the entrance to the inn, he called to the innkeeper, and in a very calm and serious voice he said:

“Many and great are the kindnesses, Señor Warder, which I have re
ceived in this thy castle, and it is my deepest obligation to show thee my gratitude for all the days of my life. If I can repay thee by taking vengeance upon some arrogant villain who may have offended thee, know that my profession is none other than to defend those who are defenseless, and to avenge those who are wronged, and to punish malfeasance. Search thy memory, and if thou findest anything of this nature to entrust to me, thou hast only to say it, for I promise, by the order of chivalry which I received, to give thee as much satisfaction and redress as thou mayest desire.”

The innkeeper responded with the same calm:

“Señor Knight, I have no need for your grace to avenge any offense, because I know how to take the revenge I think fit when I am offended. All I need from your grace is that you pay for the night you spent in the inn: straw and feed for your two animals, and your supper and your beds.”

“Then, this is an inn?” replied Don Quixote.

“And a very honorable one,” the innkeeper responded.

“Then I have been deceived all along,” responded Don Quixote, “for in truth I thought this was a castle, and not a bad one; however, since it is not a castle but an inn, what you can do now is forgive the debt, for I cannot contravene the order of knights errant, about whom I know it is true, not having read anything to the contrary, that they never paid for their lodging or anything else in any inn where they stayed, because whatever welcome they receive is owed to them as their right and privilege in return for the unbearable hardships they suffer as they seek adventures by night and by day, in winter and in summer, on foot and on horseback, suffering thirst and hunger, heat and cold, and exposed to all the inclemencies of heaven and all the discomforts on earth.”

“That has nothing to do with me,” responded the innkeeper. “Pay me what you owe me, and leave off your stories and chivalries; I don’t care about anything but earning my living.”

“You are a fool and a bad innkeeper,” responded Don Quixote.

And spurring Rocinante, and grasping his pike, he left the inn and no one stopped him, and he, not looking to see if his squire was following, rode for a fair distance.

The innkeeper, who saw him leave without paying, turned for payment to Sancho Panza, who said that since his master had not wanted to pay, he would not pay, either, for as the squire of a knight errant, the same rule and law applied to him as to his master with regard to not paying anything in hostelries and inns. This greatly displeased the innkeeper, who warned him that if he did not pay, he would collect his
money in a way Sancho would regret. To which Sancho replied that by the law of chivalry his master had received, he would not pay a
coronado
²
even if it cost him his life; for the virtuous and ancient customs of knights errants would not be brought down by him, nor would the squires of future knights have reason to complain of him or reproach him for breaking so just a law.

It was unhappy Sancho’s misfortune that among the people staying at the inn were four wool carders from Segovia, three needlemakers from El Potro in Córdoba, and two residents of La Feria in Sevilla, people who were good-natured, well-intentioned, rough-mannered, and playful, and they, almost as if impelled and moved by the same spirit, approached Sancho and pulled him off his donkey, while one of them went to get the blanket from the innkeeper’s bed, and, after placing him on it, they looked up and saw that the roof was a little too low for the work they had in mind, and they decided to go out into the corral, where the sky was the limit. And there, with Sancho in the middle of the blanket, they began to toss him and make merry with him as if he were a dog at Carnival.
³

The shouts of the wretch being tossed in the blanket were so loud and so many that they reached the ears of his master, who, deciding to listen carefully, believed some new adventure was under way, until it became clear that the man who was shouting was his squire; after he turned his horse around and reached the inn at a laborious gallop, and found it closed, he rode around it to see if he could find a way in, but as soon as he came to the walls of the corral, which were not very high, he saw the bad turn being done to his squire. He saw him going up and down in the air with so much grace and speed that if his wrath had permitted it, I think he would have laughed. He attempted to climb from his horse to the top of the wall, but he was so bruised and stiff he could not dismount; and so, standing in his stirrups, he began to call those who were tossing Sancho in the blanket more insults and abusive names than it is possible to write down, but this did not stop them from laughing and doing their work, nor did the flying Sancho leave off his complaints, sometimes mixed with threats and sometimes with pleas; none of it did much good, however, until the men stopped from sheer weariness. Then they brought Sancho his donkey and placed him on it and his overcoat on him. And the compassionate Maritornes, seeing him so exhausted, thought it
would be a good idea to help him with a pitcher of water, and so she brought him one from the well because the water there was colder. Sancho took the pitcher, raised it to his mouth, and stopped when he heard his master call to him, saying:

“Sancho my son, do not drink water! My son, do not drink it, for it will kill you! Do you see? Here I have the blessed balm”—and he showed him the cruet filled with the potion—“and if you drink only two drops, you surely will be healed.”

At these words Sancho looked at him askance and said in an even louder voice:

“Has your grace by chance forgotten that I’m not a knight, or do you want me to finish vomiting up whatever guts I have left from last night? You can keep your potion or send it to the devil; just leave me alone.”

And saying this and beginning to drink were all one, but at the first swallow he saw that it was water and did not wish to continue, and he asked Maritornes to bring him wine; she did so very willingly and paid for it with her own money, because it can truly be said of her that though she followed the trade that she did, she bore a remote resemblance to a Christian woman.

As soon as Sancho finished drinking, he dug his heels into his donkey, and the gate of the inn was opened wide for him, and he left, very pleased at not paying anything and having his way, though it had been at the expense of his usual guarantor, which was his back. The truth is that the innkeeper had kept his saddlebags as payment, but Sancho was so distracted when he left that he did not miss them. The innkeeper wanted to bar the gate as soon as he saw them outside, but the blanket tossers did not agree, for they were people who would not have cared an
ardite
⁴
even if Don Quixote really had been one of the knights errant of the Round Table.

CHAPTER XVIII

When Sancho reached his master, he was so weak and enfeebled that he could not even prod his donkey. Seeing him in this state, Don Quixote said:

“Now I am convinced, my good Sancho, that this castle or inn is undoubtedly enchanted, because what else could those who so brutally took their amusement with you be but phantoms or beings from the next world? And I can attest to this because I saw, when I was at the wall of the corral watching the events in your sad tragedy, that it was not possible for me to climb over the wall or even to dismount Rocinante, and therefore they must have enchanted me, for I swear to you, by who I am, that if I could have climbed over or dismounted, I should have avenged you in a way that would have made those varlets and knaves remember the experience for the rest of their days, even though by so doing I should have contravened the laws of chivalry, which, as I have told you so often, do not permit a knight to raise a hand against one who is not a knight, except in defense of his own life and person in circumstances of urgent and great necessity.”

“I would have taken my revenge, too, if I could have, knight or no knight, but I couldn’t, though in my opinion the ones who had so much fun with me weren’t phantoms or enchanted beings, as your grace says, but men of flesh and blood, like us; and all of them, as I heard when they were making me turn somersaults, had names, and one was Pedro Martínez, and the other Tenorio Hernández, and I heard that the innkeeper’s name was Lefthanded Juan Palomeque. And so, Señor, your not being able to get over the corral wall or off your horse was due to
something besides enchantments. And what’s clear to me in all this is that in the long run, these adventures we’re looking for will bring us so many misadventures that we won’t know our right foot from our left. And the better and smarter thing, to the best of my poor understanding, would be for us to go back home now that it’s harvesttime, and tend to our own affairs, and stop going from pillar to post and from bad to worse, as they say.”

“How little you know, Sancho,” Don Quixote responded, “about the matter of chivalry! Be quiet and have patience, for the day will come when you will see with your own eyes how honorable a thing it is to exercise this profession. If not, then tell me: what greater joy can there be in the world, what pleasure can equal that of conquering in battle and defeating one’s enemy? None, most certainly there is none.”

“That must be true,” responded Sancho, “though I don’t know anything about it; all I know is that ever since we’ve been knights errant, or your grace has been one (because there’s no reason to include me in so honorable a company), we haven’t won a single battle except for the one with the Basque, and even there your grace came out missing half an ear and half a shield; since then it’s been nothing but cudgels and more cudgels, beatings and more beatings, and for me the extra advantage of being tossed in a blanket by enchanted beings, but I can’t take my revenge on them so I’ll never know how great the pleasure is of defeating my enemy, as your grace says.”

“That is my sorrow, and it surely is yours as well, Sancho,” responded Don Quixote, “but from this moment on I shall try to have at hand some sword so artfully made that whosoever carries it will be immune to any kind of enchantment; it well might be that fortune will grant me the one Amadís had when he was called
The Knight of the Blazing Sword,
¹
that being one of the best swords any knight in the world ever had, because, in addition to the virtue I have already mentioned, it cut like a razor, and no armor, no matter how strong or enchanted, could withstand it.”

“I’m so lucky,” said Sancho, “that when that happens and your grace finds such a sword, it’ll be exactly like the balm and only work for and benefit dubbed knights, while squires can just swallow their sorrows.”

“Do not be afraid, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “for heaven will deal more kindly with you than that.”

As Don Quixote and his squire were having this conversation, Don
Quixote saw a large, thick cloud of dust coming toward them along the road they were traveling, and when he saw it, he turned to Sancho and said:

“This is the day, O Sancho, when the good fortune that destiny has reserved for me will be revealed! This is the day, I say, when, as much as on any other, the valor of this my arm will be proved, and I shall perform deeds that will be inscribed in the book of Fame for all time to come. Do you see that cloud of dust rising there, Sancho? Well, it conceals a vast army, composed of innumerable and diverse peoples, which is marching toward us.”

“If that’s the case, there must be two,” said Sancho, “because over in the opposite direction there’s another cloud of dust just like it.”

Don Quixote turned to look, and he saw that it was true; he was overjoyed, thinking, no doubt, that these were two armies coming to attack and fight each other in the middle of that broad plain. Because at all times and at every moment his fantasy was filled with the battles, enchantments, feats, follies, loves, and challenges recounted in books of chivalry, and everything he said, thought, or did was directed toward such matters. The dust clouds he saw had been raised by two large flocks of ewes and rams traveling along the same road from opposite directions, which could not be seen through the dust until they were very close. But Don Quixote insisted so fervently they were armies that Sancho believed him and said: