The Dialogue of the Dogs Read online

  THE DECEITFUL MARRIAGE WAS FIRST PUBLISHED IN SPANISH AS EL CASAMIENTO ENGAÑOSO; THE DIALOGUE OF THE DOGS WAS FIRST PUBLISHED IN SPANISH AS EL COLOQUIO DE LOS PERROS. BOTH FIRST APPEARED IN NOVELAS EJEMPLARES IN 1613.

  TRANSLATION © DAVID KIPEN 2008

  MELVILLE HOUSE PUBLISHING

  145 PLYMOUTH STREET

  BROOKLYN, N Y 11201

  WWW.MHPBOOKS.COM

  THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED

  THE PAPERBACK EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

  CERVANTES SAAVEDRA, MIGUEL DE, 1547–1616.

  [COLOQUIO DE LOS PERROS. ENGLISH]

  THE DIALOGUE OF THE DOGS / BY MIGUEL DE CERVANTES;

  TRANSLATED BY DAVID KIPEN.

  P. CM.

  eISBN: 978-1-61219-252-9

  I. KIPEN, DAVID. II. CERVANTES SAAVEDRA, MIGUEL DE, 1547–1616. NOVELAS EJEMPLARES. ENGLISH. SE LECTIONS. III. TITLE.

  PQ6329.C613 2008

  863′.3—DC22

  2008009845

  v3.1

  FOR ISA

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  The Deceitful Marriage

  The Dialogue of the Dogs

  Other Titles in The Art of the Novella Series

  THE DECEITFUL MARRIAGE

  On the soldier’s face as he limped out of Resurrection Hospital, beyond Fieldsgate in Valladolid, a yellowish pallor had set in. He emerged leaning on the haft of his broadsword, and the weakness in his limbs showed anyone who saw him that, despite the chilly weather, he had spent twenty days sweating out what it had taken him but an hour to acquire.

  He had just tottered through the gate of the city when he noticed an old friend approaching, whom he hadn’t seen these last six months. “What’s this then?” the friend asked, crossing himself as if he had seen a ghost. “Are you really Ensign Campuzano? Am I really seeing you around here? I thought you were in Flanders making free with your pikestaff, not hobbling along here with your cutlass for a walking stick. How pale and scrawny you look!”

  “As to whether I’m here or someplace else, my fine Peralta, the fact that you see me now is a pretty good clue,” replied Campuzano. “As for your other questions, all I can tell you is that I’ve just come out of that hospital, where I’ve been confined for a while in godawful health—all brought on me by a woman I was reckless enough to make my wife.”

  “You got married?” said Peralta.

  “I did.”

  “So suddenly? It must’ve been for love. That love is strong medicine, and often carries a strong chaser of regret.”

  “How strong the medicine is, I couldn’t say,” answered the ensign. “All I know is, I wound up with a dose all right. My marriage poisoned me, body and soul—so much that it took forty sweatbaths to purge my body, and my soul still isn’t right. But forgive me if I’m not up to a long conversation in the street. I’ll gladly tell you my misadventures, which have got to be wilder and more wondrous than anything you ever heard in all your born days, but another time, when I’m back on the beam.”

  “I won’t hear of it,” said Peralta, who was a scholar. “Come to my house, and we’ll scrape together a decent meal. I know there’s some stew, which is just the thing for a sick man. It’s barely enough for two, so my servant will just have to make do with a pie, but there should be a few slices of that fine ham from Rute left if your system can take it, plus, more than anything, my heartfelt hospitality—not just now, but any time you like.”

  Campuzano took him up on the invitation, but first they stopped at the church of San Llorente and attended Mass. Then Peralta took his friend home, gave him dinner as promised, made clear it was a standing invitation, and finally asked him to share his story. Campuzano didn’t need much encouragement, and so it began:

  “You remember, good master Peralta, how I kipped in this city with Captain Pedro de Herrera, who’s in Flanders now?”

  “I remember it well,” said Peralta.

  “Well, one day when we were finishing lunch in the Posada della Solana, where we were staying, two well-turned-out women came in with two ladies-in-waiting. One huddled with the Captain over by the window, and the other sat down in a chair by me. Her veil hung low and hid her face, save what I could see through the cloth. I implored her to do me the courtesy of revealing herself, but I got nowhere, and that only inflamed my desire to see her all the more. As if to inflame my curiosity even further, whether innocently or on purpose, she had a hand as white as fine porcelain—and rings just as expensive. That day I was cutting a very dashing figure myself, with that fine chain you’ve seen me wear, and my hat with the feathered band, and my flashy dress uniform. Through the eyes of my own lunacy, I looked so sharp that no woman could resist me so I entreated her to lift the veil.

  “ ‘Not now,’ she whispered. ‘I have a house. Have a servant follow me there. I’m a better woman than my reply would lead you to believe, and, if only to see whether your discretion matches your fine physique, I’ll gladly let you see me.’

  “I kissed her hands for the great favor she had granted me, in return for which I promised mountains of gold. The Captain ended his conversation too. The women took their leave, and a servant of mine followed them. The Captain told me that his lady wanted him to bear some letters to yet another captain in Flanders who she claimed was her cousin, though of course he was really her swain.

  “As for me, I was all on fire for those snow-white hands I’d seen, and dying for a peek at her face, so I presented myself the next day at the door my servant pointed out to me and was ushered in. I found myself in a house very handsomely decorated and furnished, and in the presence of a lady of about thirty. There was no mistaking those hands. She didn’t quite paralyze you with her beauty, but enough that her conversation did the rest. Her voice had a plangent savor that won its way through the ears to the soul.

  “I sweet-talked her till my lips went numb. I bragged and swaggered, offered and promised, and made all the professions I thought necessary to finagle myself into her inmost heart. But she had heard it all and more before, and listened to me attentively but not without a certain skepticism. In short, during the four days I continued to visit her, our intercourse remained stubbornly social, and her tantalizing fruit swayed just out of reach.

  “In the course of my visits Doña Estefanía de Caycedo (for that was the name of my enchantress) was always alone, without any dubious relatives or even a real friend. A maid danced attendance, and had more of the sneak than the simpleton about her. Finally, pressing my suit like a soldier shipping out in the morning, I pushed my luck with Doña Estefanía, and she answered like this:

  ‘Good Ensign Campuzano, to pass myself off as a saint would be to flirt with idiocy. I have been a sinner and still am, but not so much that I occasion gossip among either strangers or my neighbors. I’ve inherited no fortune from either my parents or anyone else, but the furniture in my house is worth a good twenty-five hundred ducats. If put up for auction, it would fetch that sum in a heartbeat. With this dowry I’m looking for a man I can devote myself to with complete deference, who can help me lead a better life if only I set my mind to pleasing and serving him with all my heart. No master chef can claim a more refined palate than I, nor season a stew any better. I can be a majordomo in the household, a scullery maid in the kitchen, and a perfect lady in the parlor—in short, I know how to give an order and see it carried out. I waste nothing and save a great deal. Reales go much further when I’m the one spending them. I didn’t buy all my fine linens off the rack, or wholesale. My maidservants and I stitched them all, and we would have woven them at home too, if we could.

  ‘I’m only lavishing
all this praise on myself because it would be wrong to deceive you. I just want to say that I’m looking for a husband to protect me, to command and honor me, and not some silvertongue who’ll butter me up and then run me down. All this is yours for the asking. Here I am, ready and willing to surrender myself to you completely rather than advertise myself in the public square. To do that, I might as well hire a matchmaker, and why not eliminate the middleman?’

  “My brains no longer resided in my head just then, but somewhere farther south. All this tickled me no end. I also pictured her property transformed into cash on the barrelhead—not, I hasten to assure you, that I was thinking about anything but the allure that was holding my brains hostage.

  “I told her that lady luck and the lord of heaven must be smiling on me to provide, as if by some miracle, a helpmeet like her to become the mistress of my fortune. That fortune of mine wasn’t too small to hope that, what with the chain I wore around my neck and other baubles I had at home, and by selling off some of my military decorations, I could scare up at least two thousand ducats. These, alongside her twenty-five hundred, would be enough for us to settle down in my hometown where I had family and a little land. The income from that, together with our grubstake, would allow us to lead a joyful life, and no one would dare say a word against us.

  “To make a long story short, we set a date that very day. We posted the necessary legal announcements on the first three available holidays (which chanced to fall together). On the fourth we celebrated our marriage with two friends of mine and a young man Doña Estefanía introduced as her cousin, whom I greeted as a kinsman with a great show of flowery language. I’d got into that habit while pitching woo at my bride—just how dishonestly, I blush to say. Even though I’d never lie to you, you’re not my confessor either, and I prefer to husband the truth.

  “My servant removed my trunk from my lodgings to my new wife’s. I put away my beloved chain and showed her three or four others, not so large but better made. Showing off my best clothes and accessories, I also gave her about four hundred reales to defray the household expenses. Then, for six days, I drank the sweet wine of wedlock, lolling around like an impoverished bridegroom in the house of his rich father-in-law. I walked on deep carpets, lounged in high-thread-count sheets, lit my path with silver candlesticks, enjoyed breakfast in bed, got up at eleven, ate lunch at twelve, and at two took my siesta in the parlor.

  “Doña Estefanía and her serving girl indulged my every whim. My servant, who’d always struck me as lazy, suddenly grew nimble as a deer. If Doña Estefanía left my side even once, it was only to go into the kitchen and devote all her care to preparing enticing fricassees—first to whet my appetite, and then to satisfy it.

  “My shirts, collars, and handkerchiefs smelled like a florist’s shop, so drenched were they with perfumes. Those days flew by fast, just as subject to time’s hasty dominion as the years. Such devoted ministrations were even beginning to transmute my base intentions.

  “Then one morning, while I was still in bed with Doña Estefanía, a loud knocking and shouting sounded at the street door. Her serving girl popped her head out the window and immediately pulled it in again, saying, ‘There she is, sure enough. She came sooner than she mentioned in her letter the other day, but who are we to turn her away?’

  ‘Who, girl?’ I asked.

  ‘Who?’ she replied. ‘Why, my lady Doña Clementa Bueso, and with her Don Lope Melendez de Almendarez, two other servants, and Hortigosa the chaperone.’

  ‘Run, wench, and open the door for them,’ Doña Estefanía cried. ‘And you, señor, as you love me, don’t overreact, or reply to anything you hear said against me.’

  ‘Who would dare say anything to offend you, especially with me here? Tell me, who are these people whose arrival’s upset you like this?’

  ‘Not now,’ said Doña Estefanía. ‘Just know that whatever takes place here is all part of a plan, which I’ll tell you about later.’

  “Before I could answer, in walked Doña Clementa Bueso dressed in lustrous green satin richly laced with gold, a hat with green, white, and pink feathers, and a fine veil covering half her face. Don Lope came in with her, wearing a traveling suit as elegant as it was rich. Hortigosa broke the silence: ‘Saints and angels, what’s this! My lady Doña Clementa’s bed occupied, and by a man, too! I swear, Doña Estefanía has taken advantage of milady’s friendship!’

  ‘That she has, Hortigosa,’ replied Doña Clementa, ‘but I blame myself for trusting people who only act like friends when it suits them.’

  “To all this Doña Estefanía replied, ‘Please don’t be mad, milady Clementa. I promise you there’s more to this than you think, and when you hear it you’ll forgive me completely.’

  “By now I’d put on my stockings and doublet, and Doña Estefanía, taking me by the hand, led me into another room. There she told me that this friend of hers wanted to play a trick on her fiancé, this Don Lope who’d come with her. The trick was to make him believe that the house and everything in it belonged to Doña Clementa. Once the couple married, when the truth came out it would hardly matter, that’s how confidently Clementa had Don Lope wrapped around her finger. Doña Estefanía would then get her property back, and who could blame Clementa—or any woman—for procuring a good husband, whatever subterfuge it entailed?

  “There’s friendship and there’s friendship, I said, and Estefanía ought to think twice about this. She might wind up having to sue to get her own things back. But she gave me so many reasons, and said she owed Doña Clementa so much that, very much against my will and my better judgment, I played along and agreed for us to stay with another friend of hers, provided the whole affair wouldn’t last more than a week.

  “We finished dressing, and when she went to make her goodbyes to Doña Clementa Bueso and Lope Melendez de Almendarez, I ordered my servant to follow her with the luggage. Without taking leave of anyone, I followed too. Doña Estefanía stopped at another friend’s house and stayed talking with her for a while, leaving the servant and me in the street, till at last a girl came out and told us to come in. We went upstairs to a small room with two beds so close together they looked liked one. The two sets of bedclothes actually touched each other.

  “There we stayed for the better part of a week, and not an hour passed when we didn’t fight. I kept telling her what a stupid thing she’d done to give up her house and everything, whether to a friend or to her own mother.

  “One day when Doña Estefanía had gone out to check on things, our host asked me why I was always quarreling so much with my bride. What had she done for me to accuse her of colossal stupidity rather than selfless friendship?

  “I told her the whole story of how I’d married Doña Estefanía and the dowry she’d brought me, and the mistake she’d made in lending her house and goods to Doña Clementa, even to catch such a prize husband as Don Lope. The woman began to cross herself and repeat, ‘O, Lord! O, the harlot!’ at such a clip that she made me very nervous. At last she said, ‘Ensign, I shouldn’t be telling you this, but my conscience would bother me even more if I kept it to myself. By God, here goes—honesty is the best policy whatever happens, and devil take the rest! The truth is, Doña Clementa Bueso really owns the house and estate that you think is your dowry. Every word Doña Estefanía told you is a lie. She has no house, no goods, no clothes save the ones on her back. Doña Clementa went to visit a relative in Plasencia and perform a novena in the church of our Lady of Guadalupe. She left her great friend Doña Estefanía to look after her house, which gave Estefanía this whole idea. Depending on how you look at it, can you blame Doña Estefanía? After all, it got her a gentleman such as you for a husband.’

  “Here she finished, leaving me almost frantic. I would’ve become completely desperate if my guardian angel hadn’t sustained me and made me remember that I’m a Christian, and that the greatest sin men can commit is despair, since from it all other sins grow. This thought comforted me, but not so much that I didn�
��t take up my sword and cape and go looking for Doña Estefanía, ready to make an example of her that nobody could forget.

  “But fate, whether for or against me I don’t know, saw to it that I couldn’t find her in any of the places that I expected to. So I went to the church of San Llorente, commended myself to Our Lady, sat down on a bench, and in my distress fell into such a deep sleep that I’d have been out quite awhile if the passersby had let me.

  “So I slunk back to Doña Clementa’s and found her at ease—as well a woman might be, in her own house. Not daring to say a word to her with Don Lope there, I went back to our innkeeper, who had already told Doña Estefanía that the jig was up. Apparently, Estefanía had asked how I took the news. The landlady said that I’d taken it very badly and gone out to look for my wife with mayhem in mind, and so Doña Estefanía had made off with everything in my trunk but one suit, unfit to wear except on the road. I dashed to my trunk and sure enough found it open, like a coffin awaiting a dead body. If I’d fully grasped the fix I was in, the coffin might as well have been mine.”

  “Quite a fix all right,” the scholar Peralta put in. “And to think that Doña Estefanía absquatulated with all your beautiful chains! That just goes to show you it never rains but it pours.”

  “I can’t really complain,” answered Ensign Campuzano, “since I feel like Don Simueque’s son-in-law in the old story: ‘He tried to marry off his one-eyed daughter to me, but on our wedding night she wished she was blind.’ ”

  “What does that have to do with you?” asked Peralta.

  “Only this: all my shiny chains and armor might barely tally some ten or twelve florins.”

  “Impossible!” exclaimed the scholar. “The chain alone must have cost more than two hundred ducats.”

  “So it must,” answered the ensign, “if all were as it seemed. But all that glitters isn’t gold, and my finery only counterfeited the real thing—although so expertly that only a touchstone or a crucible could have detected the forgeries.”