The Unreadable Book Club - Don Quixote 2
n the afternoon, after everyone had awakened from their naps, again they gathered in Don Quixote’s chamber, the bachelor, the priest, the barber, the physician, Teresa and Sanchica Panza and the Don’s niece and housekeeper, all arrayed around his bed. Outside, it seemed the rest of the village had gathered waiting for word as the crowd in St. Peter’s square waits for a puff of smoke.
Don Quixote arose to see this pantheon again staged before him and perhaps he imagined he also saw those that had gone before him standing behind them. His housekeeper and niece helped him to prop up on pillows and straightened his hair and beard, his body now seeming thinner than ever, like that of a famine afflicted waif.
But as he opened his mouth to speak, to perhaps say a last goodbye, the crowd at the foot of the bed parted and Sancho led a large woman into the front row, her arms akimbo, smiling with a spark in her eye. Twelve years before Don Quixote had set off on his quest, this one had been a plucky girl, a 'good likely country lass' that he seen four times and noticed once. Sancho described her as ‘sturdy as a horse’ and strong as ‘the brawniest lad in the village’ with a voice that could be heard half a league away, an affable, fun loving trollop.
Twelve years older and worse for wear, she now had coarse black hair held down by a dirty work scarf, giving the appearance of a stork’s nest atop a chimney, her neck being thick and red from the sun. Her forearms thus displayed were as those of a convict oarsman from a galley. Her bosom curved and shone at her peasant neckline and Sancho thought his entire head could be swallowed in that cleavage, which in truth was the main feature he remembered from the inn at Toboso. Teresa Panza elbowed him hard in the ribs and he quickly looked away.
The old man stared, startled and confused. “Aldonza . . .?”
She had a round red face, pocked from some youthful contagion, a nice dark mustache and peach fuzz all around her cheeks. Her ample waist and mighty trunk-like legs completed the picture. In truth, she looked as if neither pig, nor farm hand, nor the devil himself could resist her for long if she would have her way with them.
She curtsied and bowed her head, “My lord and handsome knight, Don Quixote de La Mancha, I hear you are not well, yet you have not summoned me, how can you die without kissing the hand of your lady and inspiration? Do you not know me, your Dulcinea of Toboso?
Looking at this woman who could snap his neck like a twig, Don Quixote roused and said, “Begone, thou harlot! I am no longer mad and I know you are not and never have been enchanted but appear thusly in your true form. Do not mock an old man. Take your hirsute womanhood away from my sight, thou beast of a girl! Let me die in peace with no more tricks!”
Sancho said, “But master, though beastly she certainly is, and also smokes like a fish on a chimney, did you not yourself say that it was the idea of Dulcinea that was important, not the fact of her?”
“Sancho, you idiot, your mouth moves and nothing rational comes out. One might as well say that the idea of our Savior’s resurrection is more important than the fact of it!”
“Well, master, not that I know anything, being an idiot as I am, but perhaps that is true as well. After all, the resurrection was 1,600 years ago; there have been many ideas since then and yet no repetition of the fact.”
The priest said, “Sancho, you blaspheme!”
“Well I don’t know about that father, you know what they say; necessity is the mother of strange bedfellows, but if my master can be so utterly wrong and not blaspheme, perhaps I can blaspheme and be utterly right!”
“You are inexhaustibly exhausting!”
Dulcinea interrupted, “I agree with Señor Panza, lately the wise governor of an ínsula; whether the novels are pastoral or chivalric, I know, even though I cannot read, that the men who write poetry and song for the women in them are equally inspired by muse and madness. And why should it matter which it is, if madness makes me a muse or muse makes one mad for my natural beauty, the result is the same, is it not?”
Sancho cringed; Don Quixote said, “No one knows what you are talking about, beast, you might as well be Sancho’s twin for all the sense you make.”
“Hear me, my lord, beast I may be, but your devotion has driven many suitors to my gate, and when the gate has opened, there have been no complaints, but I have kept my marriage bed unoccupied for now, because I have not run out of suitors. It is the enchantment of your words that has made me beautiful to them.”
Carrasco said, “Maybe they just want the inn and farm you will inherit from your father.”
“What of it? As long as they have the strength to plow the farm’s furrows as well as mine, I will keep them until they wear out, then the next in line may have me. So you see, Sir Bachelor, I am eternally grateful to the madness of all men for making me so desirable.”
Don Quixote said, “I did no such thing, viperess. Though you did not deserve it, I worshipped you pure and chaste from afar.”
She said, “Stop calling your lady names Don Quixote. Before you die you should know that your madness has reminded all these people here and outside, and far and wide due to your chroniclers, of the values and honor that may be longed for and aspired to in the same instant, as even Homer inspires us still.”
Sancho said, “Yes my master, Give unto Caesar where credit is due, I say, and let them halve their cake and eat it twice. Whether fiction or madness, if it does no more than remind us of the best we can be, isn’t that better than the peaceful demise of a dull old man drooling in his beard; isn’t that better than the ordinary life of Peasant Panza and the uneventful poverty of his long suffering Teresa and sweet Sanchica?”
“Father,” Don Quixote said to the priest, “What could possibly be wanted of me other than to repent my sins and await my reunion with Christ?”
“Well, that certainly is of the utmost importance . . .”
“Not so fast padre,“ Dulcinea interjected, “Don Quixote, nothing is required of you except that you do not destroy the good you have done intentionally or by accident, and die if you must, but die knowing you have lived a good life, with or without enchantment, and that I for one will mourn your passing.”
Sansón Carrasco, being struck with an idea of his own, picked up a mace that was displayed on the mantle and started to swing it at the wall in the hallway outside the bedchamber. “Look here Don Quixote, perhaps since you are no longer mad, you wondered why your library did not reappear. See, there was no enchantment involved with the miraculous disappearance of your library when you were home from your first adventure.” As he broke through the bricks in the false wall, they all could see the library, just as it had been left two years before when his questing began. “Here it is untouched. If you are to die, please leave the library to the priest to be administered for all who wish to read and drink from the font of your wisdom.”
“Well I don’t know what to say. Sancho, as a wise yet deposed governor, what do you say of this, shall we dedicate this library and all our profits from errantry to the good of the village? Do we accept this beastly Dulcinea as the hairy goddess she seems to have become?”
“For one, Master, I’m keeping my profits since your dying will keep me from being appointed a bishop or earl as you promised and all your wealth will go to your niece. As to the rest, I say, hairy or hoary, does not a cow go moo? Does the pope shit in the woods? Is a bear Catholic? As I see it, the goddess and the dirty peasant are the same, six of one cloud being the silver lining of the other. Mud wrestle with the goddess, and this one would win, but put the earthly woman on the pedestal as well.“
At that, Dulcinea, Aldonza, pushed around to the front of the bed and embraced the old man pressing his face into her bosom, and if he had died at that moment he would have died a happy man there is no doubt. But he didn’t. Having been both relieved of his madness and absolved of guilt for his actions while mad, he remained a while as a boring old man loved by all, and achieved the one accolade he had always hoped for, that being the attachment, before he died, of “the Good” to his given name Alonzo; rest in peace Alonzo Quixano, the Good.