The Life of Lazarillo of Tormes, Parts One and Two

R >> Robert Rudder >> The Life of Lazarillo of Tormes, Parts One and Two

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VI. How They Took Lazaro to Toledo

Man's efforts are vain, his knowledge is nil, and he has no
ability when God does not strengthen, teach, and guide him. All
my efforts only served to make my guards more wary and careful.
The outburst of the night before made them very angry, and they
beat me so much along the road that they nearly left me for dead.
They said, You damned fish--you were trying to get away. If we
weren't so kindhearted, we would kill you. You're like an oak
tree that won't give up its acorns unless it's beaten."

The fishermen took me into Toledo, pounded, cursed, and dying of
hunger. They found a place to stay, near the square of
Zocodover, at the house of a lady whose wines I used to announce.
They put me in a room downstairs, and many people came to see me.
One of them was my Elvira, leading my daughter by the hand. When
I saw them I couldn't hold back two Nile Rivers of tears that
flowed from my eyes. I sighed and wept--but to myself so the
fishermen wouldn't deprive me of what I loved so much and what I
wanted to feast my eyes on. Although it might have been better
if those men who took away my voice had taken away my sight, too,
because when I looked at my wife carefully I saw--I don't know if
I should say it--she looked like she was about to go into labor.
I sat there absolutely amazed, although I shouldn't have been if
I had thought about it because my lord the archdeacon told me
when I left that city to go to war that he would treat her as if
she were his very own. What really bothered me was that I
couldn't convince myself that she was pregnant by me because I
had been gone for more than a year.

When we were living together she used to say to me, "Lazaro,
don't think I'm cheating on you, because if you do you're very
wrong." And I was so satisfied that I avoided thinking anything
bad about her the way the devil avoids holy water. I spent my
life happy and content and not at all jealous (which is a
madman's sickness). Time and again I have thought to myself that
this business of children is all a matter of belief. Because how
many men are there who love children they think are their own
when the only thing they have in common is their name? And
there are others who hate their children because they get the
notion that their wives have put horns on their heads.

I began to count the days and months, and I found the road to my
consolation closed off. Then I began to think that my wife might
have dropsy. I didn't go on with this pious meditation very long
because as soon as she left, two old women began to talk to each
other: "What do you think of that archpriestess? She certainly
doesn't need her husband around." "Who is the father?" asked the
other. 'Who?" answered the first, 'Why, the archpriest. And
he's such a good man that, to avoid the scandal that would spread
if she gave birth in his house without a husband, he's going to
marry her to that foreigner, Pierre, next Sunday, and that fellow
will be just as understanding as my friend, Lazaro."

This was the last straw--the _non plus ultra_--of my
understanding. My heart began
to break out in a sweat in the water, and without being able to
lift a hand I fainted in that hogsty. The water began to pour
into me through every door and window, without any resistance. I
looked like I was dead (although it was completely against my
will, because I wanted to live as long as I could and as long as
God would let me, in spite of those damned fishermen and my bad
luck).

The fishermen were very upset, and they made every one leave.
Then they very quickly lifted my head out of the water. When
they saw that I had no pulse and that I'd stopped breathing, they
did, too. They started to moan over what they had lost (which
was no small amount for them), and they took me out of the cask.
Then they tried to make me vomit up all I had drunk, but that was
useless because death had come in and closed the door behind.
When they saw all their dreams gone up in smoke, they turned as
ashen as lilies on the Sunday after Easter. They couldn't think
of any way to abet or abate their trials and troubles. The
Council of Three finally decreed that the following night they
would take me to the river and throw me in with a stone tied
around my neck so that what had caused my death would also be my
grave.

VII. What Happened to Lazaro on the Way to the Tagus River

Never lose hope no matter how miserable you are, because when you
least expect it God will open the doors and windows of His mercy
and will show that nothing is impossible for Him, and that He has
the knowledge, the ability, and the desire to change the plans of
the wicked into healthful, beneficial remedies for those who
trust in Him. Those brutal executioners decided that Death
wasn't joking (it seldom does), so they put me in a sack, threw
me across the back of a donkey like a wineskin--or rather a
waterskin, since I was full of water up to my mouth--and started
out along the road of Cuesta de Carmen. And they were more
sorrowful than if they were going to bury the father who gave
them life and the mother who bore them.

It was my good fortune that when they put me on the mule, I was
belly side down. Since my head was hanging downward, I began to
spew out water as if they had lifted the floodgates on a dam, or
as if I were a drop hammer. I came to, and when I caught my
breath I realized that I was out of the water and out of that
blasted hairy mess. I didn't know where I was or where they were
taking me. I only heard them saying, "For our own safety we'll
have to find a very deep well so they won't discover him so
soon." Then I saw the handwriting on the wall and guessed what
was happening. I knew that their bark could be no worse than
their bite, and when I heard people approaching I called, "Help,
help, for God's sake!"

The people I had noticed were the night watch, and they ran up
when they heard my cries, their swords out and ready. They
searched the sack, and they found poor Lazaro--a drenched
haddock. Body and soul, they took us all off to jail on the
spot: the fishermen were crying to see themselves imprisoned, and
I was laughing to find myself free.

They put them in a cell and me in a bed. The next morning they
took our statements. The fishermen confessed that they had
carried me all over Spain, but they said that they had done it
thinking I was a fish and that they had asked for the
Inquisition's permission to do it. I told them the truth of the
matter: how those fiends had tied me up so that I couldn't make a
peep. They had the archpriest and my good Bridget come to
testify as to whether or not I really was the Lazaro of Tormes I
said I was. My wife came in first, and she looked me over very
carefully, and then said it was true that I did look something
like her good husband, but she didn't think I was him because
even though I had been an animal, I was more like a drone than a
fish, and more like a bullock than a tuna. After saying this she
made a deep bow and left.

The attorney for those hangmen said I should be burned because I
was undoubtedly a monster, and he was going to prove it.

I thought to myself: What if there really is an enchanter
following me and changing me into anything he likes?

The judges told him to be quiet. Then the archpriest came in.
He saw me looking as pale and wrinkled as an old lady's belly,
and he said he didn't recognize my face or my figure. I
refreshed his memory about some past things (many of them secret)
that had happened between us; I especially told him to think back
on the night he came to my bed naked and said that he was afraid
of a ghost in his bedroom, and then crawled into bed between my
wife and me. So that I wouldn't go on with these reminders, he
confessed that I really was his good friend and servant, Lazaro.

The trial ended with the testimony of the captain who had taken
me with him from Toledo. He was one of those who escaped the
storm in a skiff, and he confessed that I was, in fact, his
servant Lazaro. The time and place the fishermen said they had
fished me out supported that. The judges sentenced them to two
hundred whippings apiece and the confiscation of their
belongings: a third of it would be given to the King, a third to
the prisoners, and a third to Lazaro. They found them with two
thousand pieces of silver, two mules, and a cart, and after the
costs and expenditures were paid I got two hundred pieces of
silver. The sailors were plucked and skinned, and I was rich and
happy because I had never in my life been the owner of so much
money at one time.

I went to the house of a friend of mine, and after I had downed a
few pitchers of wine to get rid of the bad taste of the water and
was feeling mellow, I began to strut around like a count and to
eat like a king; I was esteemed by my friends, feared by my
enemies, and wooed by everyone. My past troubles seemed like a
dream to me, my present luck was like a port of leisure, and my
future hopes a paradise of delights. Hardships humiliate,
prosperity makes a man haughty. For the time those two hundred
silver pieces lasted, if the King had called me his cousin I
would have taken it as an insult.

When we Spaniards get a silver coin, we're princes, and even if
we don't have one we still have the vanity that goes with it. If
you ask some shabby beggar who he is, he'll tell you at the very
least that he is of noble blood and that his bad luck has him
backed into a corner, and that's how this mad world is: it raises
those who are on the bottom and lowers those who are on top. But
even though it is that way, he won't give in to anyone, he puts
only the highest value on himself, and he will die of hunger
before he'll work. And if Spaniards do take a job or learn
something, they have such contempt for it that either they won't
work or, if they do, their work is so bad that you can hardly
find a good craftsman anywhere in Spain.

I remember there was a cobbler in Salamanca, and whenever anyone
brought him something to fix, he would deliver a soliloquy,
complaining that fate had put him in such straits that he had to
work in this lowly position when the good name of his family was
so well known all over Spain. One day I asked one of his
neighbors who that bragger's parents were. They told me his
father was a grape stomper, and in winter a hogkiller, and that
his mother was a belly washer (I mean the maid for a tripe
merchant).

I bought a worn-out velvet suit and a ragged cast-off cape from
Segovia. The sword I wore was so enormous that its tip would
unpave the streets as I walked. I didn't want to go and see my
wife when I got out of jail so that she would want to see me
even more, and also to take revenge for the disdain for me that
she was carrying around inside herself. I really thought that
when she saw me so well-dressed she would repent and greet me
with open arms. But obstinate she was, and obstinate she
remained. I found her with a new baby and a new husband. When
she saw me she shouted, "Get that damn drenched fish--that
plucked goose--out of my sight because, if you don't, I swear on
my father's grave that I'll get up and poke his eyes out!"

And I answered very coolly, "Not so fast, Mrs. Streetwalker. If
you won't admit I'm your husband, then you're not my wife either.
Give me my daughter, and we'll still be friends. I have enough
of a fortune now," I went on, "to marry her to a very honorable
man."

I thought those two hundred pieces of silver would turn out to be
like the fifty silver coins of little Blessed John who, every
time he spent them, would find fifty more in his purse. But
since I was little Bedeviled Lazaro, it didn't turn out that way
with me, as you will see in the next chapter.

The archpriest contested my demand. He said she wasn't mine, and
to prove it he showed me the baptismal book, and when it was
compared to the marriage records, it was evident that the child
had been born four months after I knew my wife. Up to then I had
felt as spirited as a stallion, but I suddenly realized they had
made an ass of me: my daughter wasn't mine at all. I shook the
dust off my feet and washed my hands to show my innocence and
that I was leaving for good. I turned my back on them, feeling
as content as if I had never known them. I went looking for my
friends and told them what had happened; they consoled me--which
wasn't hard for them to do.

I didn't want to go back to my job as a town crier because my new
velvet clothes had changed my self-esteem. While I was taking a
walk to the Visagra gate I met an old woman, a friend of mine, at
the gate of the convent of San Juan de los Reyes. After she
greeted me she told me that my wife had softened when she'd found
out about all the money I had, especially now that that Frenchman
had chastened her.

I begged her to tell me what had happened. She said the
archpriest and my wife had talked one day about whether it would
be a good idea to take me back in and throw Frenchy out; and they
discussed the pros and cons of it. But their discussion was not
so secret that the bridegroom didn't hear it. He pretended he
hadn't heard a thing, and the next morning he went to work at the
olive grove. At noon, when his wife and mine brought his lunch
out to him, he pulled off all her clothes, tied her to the trunk
of a tree, and gave her more than a hundred lashes. And still
not satisfied, he made all her clothes into a bundle, took off
her jewelry, and walked away with it all, leaving her tied up,
naked and bleeding. She would undoubtedly have died there if the
archpriest hadn't sent someone looking for her.

The lady also told me she was absolutely sure that if I arranged
for somebody to ask her, she would welcome me back, because she
had heard my Elvira say, "Poor me, why didn't I take back my good
Lazaro? He was as good as could be. He was never critical or
particular, and I could do whatever I wanted."

This was the touch that turned me, and I was thinking of taking
the good old woman's advice, but first I wanted to talk it over
with my friends.

VIII. How Lazaro Brought a Lawsuit against His Wife

We men are like barnyard hens: if we want to do something good we
shout it out and cackle about it; but if it's something bad, we
don't want anybody to find out so they won't stop us from doing
what we shouldn't. I went to see one of my friends, and I found
three of them there together; because after I had come into
money, they multiplied like flies. I told them what I wanted to
do--go back to my wife and get away from wagging tongues because
"Better certain evil than doubtful good." They painted a black
picture to me and said I was spineless and that I didn't have a
brain in my body because the woman I wanted to live with was a
whore, a hussy, a trollop, a slut, and, finally, a devil's mule.
(That's what they call a priest's mistress in Toledo.)

My friends said so many things to me and gave me so many
arguments that I decided not to beg or even ask my wife. When my
good friends (damned friends, anyway) saw that their arguments
and advice had done their work, they went even further. They
said they were advising me, because I was such a good friend, to
remove the spots and the stains on my honor and to defend it,
since it had fallen into such bad times, by suing the archpriest
and my wife. They said it wouldn't cost so much as a penny since
they were lawyers.

One of them was an attorney for lost causes, and he offered me a
thousand pieces of silver from the profits. The other one was
more knowledgeable because he was a prostitutes' lawyer, and he
told me that if he were in my shoes he wouldn't take less than
two thousand. The third one assured me (and since he was a
bumbailiff, he knew what he was talking about) that he had seen
other lawsuits that were less clear, that had brought the people
who began them an enormous amount of money. Furthermore, he
thought that at the first confrontation that Domine Baccalaureus
would fill my hands and anoint the lawyers' to make us withdraw
the lawsuit, and that he would beg me to go back to my wife. So
I would get more honor and profit from it than if I went back to
her on my own.

My friends commended this business to me highly, luring me on
with high hopes. I was taken in right then. I didn't know what
to say to their sophist arguments, although it really seemed to
me that it would be better to forgive and forget than to go to
extremes, and that I should carry out the most difficult of God's
commandments (the fourth one), which is to love your enemies--
especially since my wife had never acted like an enemy to me. In
fact, it was because of her that I had begun to rise in the world
and become known by many people who would point at me and say,
"There goes that nice fellow, Lazaro."

Because of my wife I was somebody. If the daughter that the
archdeacon said wasn't mine, was or wasn't, only God, who looks
into men's hearts, knows. It could be that he was fooled just
the way I was. And it could happen that some of the people who
are reading and laughing over my simpleness so hard they slobber
on their beards might be raising the children of some ignorant
priest. They might be working, sweating, and striving to leave
the very ones rich who will impoverish their honor, and all the
time they are so sure that if there is any woman in the world who
is faithful, it's their wife. And even your name, dear reader--
Lord Whitehall--might really come from Wittol.

But I don't want to destroy anyone's illusions. All these
reflections still weren't enough, so I took out a lawsuit against
the archpriest and my wife. Since there was ready money, they
had them in jail inside of twenty-four hours: him in the
archbishop's prison and her in the public one. The lawyers told
me not to worry about the money that that business could cost me
since it would all come out of that priest's hide. So, to make
it even worse for the priest and to raise the costs, I gave
whatever they asked me. They were walking around diligent,
solicitous, and energetic. When they smelled my cash, they were
like flies on honey: they didn't take a step in vain.

In less than a week the lawsuit had moved far ahead, and my
pocketbook had lost as much ground. The evidence was gathered
easily because the constables who arrested my wife and the
archpriest caught them in the act and had taken them off to jail
in their nightshirts, the way they found them. There were many
witnesses who told the truth. My good lawyers and counselors and
the court clerk saw how thin and weak my pocketbook was getting,
and they began to falter. It reached the point where I had to
spur them harder than a hired mule to get them to make a move.

The slowdown was so great that when the archpriest and his group
heard about it, they started crowing and anointing the hands and
feet of my representatives. They seemed like the weights on a
clock that were going up just as fast as mine were coming down.
They managed it so well that in two weeks the archpriest and my
wife were out of jail on bond, and in less than one week more
they condemned Lazaro with false witnesses so that he had to
apologize, pay the court costs, and be banished from Toledo
forever.

I apologized the way I should have, since with only two hundred
silver pieces I had taken a lawsuit out against a man who had
that much money to burn. I gave them the shirt off my back to
help pay the court costs, and I left the city in the raw.

There I was, rich for an instant, suing a dignitary of the Holy
Church of Toledo, an undertaking fit only for a prince. I had
been respected by my friends, feared by my enemies, in the
position of a gentleman who wouldn't put up with a whisper of
aspersion. And just as suddenly I found myself thrown out--not
from any earthly paradise with figleaves to cover my private
parts, but from the place I loved most and where I had gotten so
much comfort and pleasure, using some rags I found in a rubbish
heap to cover my nakedness.

I took refuge in the common consolation of all unfortunates. I
thought that since I was at the bottom of the wheel of fortune I
would be certain to go back up. I recall now what I once heard
my master, the blind man (who was like a fox whenever he started
to preach), say: Every man in the world rose and fell on the
wheel of fortune; some followed the movement of the wheel, and
others went against it. And there was this difference between
them: those who followed the wheel's movement fell as quickly as
they rose; and those who went against it, once they reached the
top--even if they had to work hard at it--they stayed there
longer than the others. According to this, I was going right
with the grain--and so quickly that I was barely on top when I
found myself in the abyss of misery.

I found myself a picaro--and a real one, since I had only been
pretending up to then.
And I could really say: Naked was I born, naked am I now,
nothing lost and nothing gained.

I started off toward Madrid, begging along the way since that was
something I knew how to do very well. So there I was again, back
at my trade. I told everyone about my troubles: some felt sorry,
others laughed, and some gave me alms. Since I had no wife or
children to support, with what they gave me I had more than
enough to eat, and to drink, too. That year people had harvested
so many grapes for wine that at nearly every door I went to they
asked if I wanted anything to drink, because they didn't have any
bread to give me. I never refused, and so sometimes I would down
a good two gallons of wine before eating anything, and I'd be
happier than a girl on the eve of a party.

Let me tell you what I really think: the picaresque life is the
only life. There is nothing in the world like it. If rich men
tried it, they would give up their estates for it, just the way
the ancient philosophers gave up all they possessed to go over
to that life. I say "go over" because the life of a philosopher
and the life of a picaro is the same. The only difference is
that philosophers gave up all they had for their love of that
kind of life, and picaros find it without giving up anything.
Philosophers abandoned their estates to contemplate natural and
divine things, the movements of the heavens, with less
distraction; picaros do it to sow all their wild oats.
Philosophers threw their goods into the sea; picaros throw them
in their stomachs. Philosophers despised those things as vain
and transitory; while picaros don't care for them because they
bring along cares and work--something that goes against their
profession. So the picaresque life is more leisurely than the
life of kings, emperors, and popes. I decided to travel this
road because it was freer, less dangerous, and never sad.

IX. How Lazaro Became a Baggage Carrier

There is no position, no science or art a man does not have to
apply all his intelligence to if he wants to perfect his
knowledge of it. Suppose a cobbler has been working at his job
for thirty years. Tell him to make you a pair of shoes that are
wide at the toe, high at the instep, with laces.

Will he make them? Before you get a pair the way you asked him,
your feet will be shriveled. Ask a philosopher why a fly's stool
comes out black when it's on a white object and white when it's
on something black. He'll turn as red as a maiden who is caught
doing it by candlelight, and he won't know what to answer. Or if
he does answer this question, he won't be able to answer a
hundred other tomfooleries.

Near the town of Illescas, I ran into a fellow who I knew was an
archpicaro by the way he looked. I went up to him the way I
would to an oracle to ask him how I should act in this new life
of mine so I wouldn't be arrested. He said that if I wanted to
keep free of the law I should combine Mary's idleness with
Martha's work. In other words, if I was going to be a picaro I
should also be a kitchenhelper, a brothel servant, a
slaughterhouse boy, or a baggage carrier, which was a way of
covering up for the picaresque life. Furthermore, he said that
because he hadn't done this, even after the twenty years he'd
been following his profession, they had just yesterday whipped
him up one side and down the other for being a tramp.

I thanked him for the warning and took his advice. When I got to
Madrid I bought a porter's strap and stood in the middle of the
square, happier than a cat with gibblets. As luck would have it,
the first person to put me to work was a maiden (God forgive my
lie) about eighteen years old, but more primped up than a novice
in a convent. She told me to follow her. She took me down so
many streets that I thought she was getting paid for walking or
was playing a trick on me. After a while we came to a house that
I recognized as one of ill repute when I saw the side door, the
patio, and the beastly old maids dancing there.

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