A TEI Project

Chapter XVI

About what happened to the ingenious hidalgo in the inn that he imagined to be a castle.

The innkeeper saw don Quixote slung across the donkey’s back, and asked Sancho what was the matter with him. Sancho responded that it was nothing—he’d just fallen down from a boulder and his ribs were a bit bruised.

The innkeeper had a wife, one who was not of the usual kind in that business, because she was by nature kind-hearted and was concerned about the misfortunes of her fellow creatures, so she immediately attended to don Quixote and had her daughter, a very good-looking girl, help. An Asturian girl served in the inn as well, wide in the face, flat at the back of her head, with a wide nose, blind in one eye, and not very sound in the other. The truth is that the gracefulness of her body made up for her other defects: she was only seven palms tall from head to foot, and her shoulders weighed her down a bit, making her look at the ground more than she would like.

This graceful servant girl assisted the maiden, and the two of them prepared a very bad bed for don Quixote in a garret that, in by-gone times, so it seemed, had been a hayloft for many years. There was a muleteer in the same loft who had his bed on the other side of don Quixote’s. Although it was made of the pack saddles and blankets of his mules, it was much better than don Quixote’s, which was made of only four not-very-smooth planks on two not-very-even trestles, and a mattress that seemed to be a quilt, because it was so thin. It was filled with lumps, which, if you didn’t otherwise know they were wool, you would think they were pebbles, because they were so hard. There were two sheets made of shield leather and a cover which was so threadbare that if you wanted to count every thread, you wouldn’t miss a single one.

On this wretched bed don Quixote lay down. Then the innkeeper’s wife and her daughter applied plasters to him from head to foot. Maritornes— that’s what the Asturian girl’s name was—held the light. As she was putting the poultices on, the innkeeper’s wife noticed that parts of don Quixote were very bruised, and she said that it looked more like bruises from blows than from a fall.

“Those weren’t blows,” said Sancho, “but rather the boulder had sharp edges and protrusions, and each one left a black and blue mark.” And he went on to say: “Make sure that there’s a few bandages left over since there’ll be someone else who needs them, because my back hurts me, and not a little.”

“So,” responded the innkeeper’s wife, “did you fall as well?”

“I didn’t fall,” said Sancho Panza, “but the fright I got when I saw my master fall made my whole body hurt, as if they’d given me a thousand whacks.”

“That can easily be,” said the maiden. “It’s happened to me that I dreamed that I was falling down from a tower and never hit the ground, and when I awoke, I was as beaten up and pounded as if I’d really fallen.”

“But the funny thing is, señora,” responded Sancho Panza, “that I wasn’t dreaming, but more wide-awake than I am right now, and I have almost as many bruises as my master don Quixote.”

“What’s the name of that fellow?” asked Maritornes.

“Don Quixote de La Mancha,” responded Sancho Panza. “He’s a knight errant, and one of the best and strongest that the world has seen in a very long time.”

“What’s a knight errant?” replied the servant.

“Are you so young that you don’t know?” responded Sancho Panza.

“Well, sister, a knight errant in two words is this: first he gets cudgeled, then he gets to be a king. Today he’s the most unfortunate and neediest creature in the world, and tomorrow he’ll have two or three kingdoms to give his squire.”

“Well, how come you—since you’re the squire of this good man—” said the innkeeper’s wife, “aren’t even a count yet?”

“It’s still too soon,” responded Sancho, “because it’s just been a month since we’ve been out looking for adventures, and up to now we haven’t run across any that has been a true adventure. And it sometimes happens that you look for one thing and find another. The truth is that if my master don Quixote gets healed from this wound or fall, and I’m not crippled from it, I wouldn’t exchange my aspirations for the best title in Spain.”

Don Quixote was listening very attentively to all of this conversation, and sat up in his bed as well as he could. Taking the hand of the innkeeper’s wife, he said to her: “Believe me, beautiful señora, that you can call yourself fortunate for having me in this your castle, and if I don’t praise myself, it’s because they say that self-praise demeans, but my squire will tell you who I am. I’ll just say that I’ll have eternally etched in my memory the service you’ve done me, and I’ll be grateful to you as long as I live. And if the laws of heaven hadn’t bound me to that beautiful ingrate whom I mention under my breath, the eyes of this maiden would now be ruling over my freedom.”

The innkeeper’s wife and her daughter, as well as the good Maritornes were baffled when they heard these words, which they understood about as well as if he’d been speaking Greek, although they gathered that he was offering them services and flattering them. Since they weren’t used to such language, they stared at him in astonishment, for he seemed to them to be a different type of man from those they were accustomed to. They thanked him in the words innkeepers use, and left, but the Asturian Maritornes stayed behind to tend to Sancho, who needed no less help than his master.

Now, the muleteer had arranged to sport with her that night, and she’d given her word that when everyone was fast asleep, including her master and mistress, she would come to him to satisfy his pleasure in whatever way he might ask. They say of this good lass that she never made a promise she didn’t keep, even though she might give it in the forest and without any witnesses, because she prided herself on being well-bred; and she wasn’t ashamed to work as a servant in the inn, because she said that certain misfortunes had brought her there.

Don Quixote’s hard, narrow, inadequate, and unreliable bed came first in the middle of this starlit stable, and then, next to it Sancho made his own bed, which consisted of only one rush mat and a cover that seemed to be more a piece of threadbare canvas than wool. After these two beds came the one belonging to the muleteer, which was made, as has been said, of the pack saddles and all the trappings of two of his best mules—he had twelve in all. They were sleek, well fed, and fine, because he was one of the rich muleteers of Arévalo, according to the author of this history. He mentions this muleteer particularly because he knew him well, and there are those that say he was a distant relative of his. Besides, Cide Mahamate Benengeli was very careful and diligent in everything, and this is easy to see because those things already related, as small and trivial as they are, are not passed over in silence. Let this be an example to those grave historians who report actions in so few words that we hardly get a taste of them, and they leave the most substantial parts of the history in the inkwell, either by carelessness, mischievousness, or ignorance. A thousand blessings on the author of Tablante de Ricamonte and on him who wrote that other book where the deeds of Count Tomillas are related. They describe everything so accurately!

So, as I was saying, after the muleteer took care of his mules and gave them their second feeding, he stretched out onto the pack saddles and began to wait for his very punctual Maritornes. Sancho was already in plasters and in bed, and although he tried to sleep, the pain in his ribs wouldn’t let him. And don Quixote, because of the pain in his own ribs, had his eyes wide open like a hare. The whole inn was still and there was no light other than what came from a hanging lamp burning over its entrance. Owing to this marvelous stillness and the thoughts our knight always had about the goings on in the books responsible for his plight, one of the strangest delusions that can be imagined came to him: he thought that he’d come to a famous castle (since—as has been said—he considered all the inns that lodged him to be castles), and that the daughter of the innkeeper was the daughter of the lord of the castle; and that she—overcome by his graces—had fallen in love with him, and had promised that that night, without her parents knowing, would come and lie with him a good spell. And being convinced that all this chimera—which he’d dreamed up—was true, and starting to get worried, and thinking of the dangerous crisis his virtue was about to face, he resolved in his heart not to betray his señora Dulcinea del Toboso, even if Queen Guinevere herself with her lady Quintañona placed themselves in his hands.

As he was mulling over this nonsense, the fatal moment—for him—came as the Asturian girl arrived. She was barefoot, in a nightshirt, and her hair was gathered in a hairnet, and with very quiet and careful little steps she went into the room where the three were lodged, looking for the muleteer. When she got to the door, don Quixote heard her and sat up in bed, in spite of his plasters and the pain in his sides, and opened his arms wide to receive the beautiful maiden. The Asturian, crouching over and keeping very quiet, was moving forward with her hands in front, trying to find her lover, when she ran into the arms of don Quixote, who seized her firmly by the wrist and drew her toward him. Without her daring to utter a word, he made her sit on the bed. He felt her nightshirt, and although it was made of burlap, it seemed to him to be of the finest silk. She was wearing some glass beads on her wrist, but he thought they were oriental pearls. Her hair, which seemed quite like the mane of a horse, in his mind was dazzling threads of Arabian gold, the luminescence of which outshone the sun. And her breath, doubtless reeking of yesterday’s stale cold cuts, to him seemed to be a sweet and aromatic fragrance. Finally, he painted her in his imagination in the same way he’d read in his books, just like other princesses who went to visit badly wounded knights, madly in love with them, adorned the way he’d imagined. And such was the blindness of the poor hidalgo that neither the touch, nor the smell, nor anything else about the girl was enough to make him see how she really was, which was that she would make anyone but a muleteer vomit. He thought he had in his arms the goddess of beauty. And still clutching her, he began to say in a soft, amorous voice: “I’d like to have found myself in a position, beautiful and high-born lady, to respond to the favor that you’ve done me just by letting me see you. But Fortune, which never tires of persecuting good people, has placed me in this bed, where I lie beaten-up and broken, so that even if my inclinations would allow me to satisfy yours, it would be impossible. And what makes this impossibility even more impossible is that I’ve promised fidelity to the peerless Dulcinea del Toboso, the only lady of my most hidden thoughts. If all this didn’t prevent me, I wouldn’t be so foolish as to let such a wonderful opportunity as this one that your great goodness has given me, pass me by.”

Maritornes was very distressed and sweating profusely, seeing herself so firmly grasped by don Quixote. Not understanding or paying attention to the words he was saying, she tried, without uttering one herself, to get free. The good muleteer, whose lascivious desires kept him awake, heard his concubine as soon as she came through the door. He was listening attentively to everything don Quixote was saying and, suspicious that the Asturian had broken her word with him for another, went over to don Quixote’s cot and remained still until he saw where those words—which he couldn’t understand—were leading. But since he realized that the girl was struggling to get away, and don Quixote was doing his best to restrain her, he thought the caper had gone far enough. He raised his fist high in the air and gave such a terrible punch on don Quixote’s narrow jaw that he bathed his whole mouth in blood. And not content with this, the muleteer got on top of don Quixote’s ribs, and with his feet he stomped all over them faster than a trot. Now the bed, which was a bit weak and didn’t have a very firm foundation, unable to withstand the additional weight of the muleteer, came crashing to the floor, the noise of which woke the innkeeper up. He immediately figured that it must have had something to do with Maritornes, because she didn’t answer when he called her name. So he got up and lit a lamp and went to where he’d heard the scuffle. The girl, afraid and agitated, realizing that her master was coming and in a very bad mood, took refuge in Sancho Panza’s bed—he was still sleeping—where she curled up into a ball.

The innkeeper came in saying: “Where are you, you whore? All this has to be your doing!”

At this point Sancho woke up, and feeling that bulk on top of him, thought it was a bad dream and began to punch in all directions and hit Maritornes I don’t know how many times. When she felt the pain, casting aside her modesty, she returned so many of them to Sancho that, to his dismay, she woke him up, and, seeing himself being beaten up in that way and not knowing by whom, he sat up and wrestled with Maritornes, and they began the most hard-fought and amusing skirmish in the world.

When the muleteer saw by the light of the innkeeper’s lamp what was happening to his lady, he left don Quixote and went to give her whatever help he could. The innkeeper went to her as well, but with an entirely different intention, because he went to punish the girl, believing doubtless that she alone was the reason for that harmony. So, as the saying goes, «the cat to the rat, the rat to the rope, the rope to the stick»—the muleteer hit Sancho, Sancho hit the girl, the girl hit him, the innkeeper hit the girl, and everybody was punching so hard and fast that there wasn’t a moment of rest. The best part was that the innkeeper’s lamp went out, and since they were all in the dark, and they punched so fiercely and all at once, that wherever their punches landed they left nothing sound.

It happened that there was an officer of the ancient Holy Brotherhood of Toledo staying there that night, and when he heard the extraordinary commotion caused by the fight, he took his staff of office and tin box of warrants, and went in the darkened room saying: “Stop in the name of justice! Stop in the name of the Holy Brotherhood!”

And the first person he happened upon was the pummeled don Quixote on his collapsed bed, stretched out on his back, utterly senseless. The officer felt his beard, and kept saying: “Help in the name of justice!” But seeing that the person he was grasping didn’t stir, he figured that he was dead, and that those who were in that room were his killers. With this suspicion, he said in a loud voice: “Close the gates of the inn! Make sure no one leaves— they’ve murdered someone here!”

This news terrified everyone, and everyone stopped fighting when they heard that shout. The innkeeper went back to his room, the muleteer back to his pack saddles, and the girl to her room. The unfortunate don Quixote and Sancho couldn’t move from where they were. The officer then released don Quixote’s beard and went to look for a lamp so he could find and arrest the culprits. But he didn’t find a lamp because the innkeeper had put it out on purpose when he returned to his room, and the officer had to go to the fireplace, where it took him a long while and quite a bit of effort to light another lamp.


PREVIOUS NEXT



Date: June 1, 2009
This page is copyrighted Cervantes Project