14
‘The gentleman we are expecting is very late. Why do you think that can be, Lucrecia?’
‘My lady, I’m sure something right and proper is delaying him that’s out of his control.’
‘May the angels protect him and his person not be in danger, and his lateness be no cause for me to worry. I fret thinking of everything that might happen to him on his way here. Who can say whether he set out for the promised rendezvous at the right time, was walking along as men do, and bumped into the night-time constables. They didn’t recognise him, accosted him, he had to defend himself and attack them or be attacked. Or perhaps wild dogs bit him ferociously, since they’ll go for anyone. Or he’s fallen down a sewer or a hole and been hurt? But why do I fear the worst? What are these disasters my idea of love puts in my head or these frenzied fantasies that haunt me so? I pray to God it’s none of these things: rather let him delay as much as he wants. Listen, I hear footsteps in the street, and I think people are talking on the other side of the garden.’
‘Tristán, put the ladder there. It’s high but it’s the best place.’
‘Up you go, master. I’ll come with you, because who knows who’s in there. People are talking.’
‘You stay here, fools. I’ll go by myself and I can hear my lady.’
‘It’s your servant, your captive, the woman who values your life more than her own. My lord, don’t jump from so high up. I’ll die just watching! Come down the ladder slowly. Don’t be in such a rush!’
‘Angel face, precious pearl compared to which the world is so ugly! My lady and my joy, I hold you in my arms at last! I can’t believe it! I’m so thrilled I can’t feel all the happiness that’s now mine.’
‘My master, I entrusted myself to your arms, because I wanted to do your will, but don’t make it worse for me now I’ve yielded and not put you off. Don’t destroy me for a brief moment of delight: petty acts are easy to regret, difficult to repair. Enjoy what I enjoy, which is seeing you and being with you. Don’t seek or take something that once taken you cannot restore. Don’t damage what all the treasure in the world cannot mend.’
‘My lady, I’ve spent my whole life looking forward to this moment. How can I renounce it when it’s on offer? Don’t ask this of me, my lady. It’s beyond me. Don’t ask me to be such a coward. No man who loves as greatly as I do could ever be that. My whole life’s been coursing towards the flame of your desire. Don’t expect me now to moor quietly outside the pretty harbour and rest after all that grief.’
‘I swear your tongue may say what it wants, but your hands can’t take whatever they want. Be still, my lord. Now I am yours, be content to enjoy what you can see, because this is the true reward of lovers. Don’t try to steal the greatest gift nature has bestowed on me. Remember a good shepherd fleeces his sheep and cattle, but he doesn’t destroy and ravage them.’
‘What, my lady? Is it back to grieving? To sorrowing? Back to the beginning? My lady, forgive my shameless hands that never meant to touch your clothes. They’re so undeserving, so unworthy. But now they press on, wanting to explore and enjoy your beautiful body, your soft and pretty flesh.’
‘Go away, Lucrecia.’
‘Why, my lady? I’d like to have a witness to my moment of glory.’
‘Calisto, I don’t want anyone to witness my erring ways. If I’d thought you were going to use me so recklessly, I’d never have allowed such a rough exchange.’
‘Tristán, you can hear what’s happening. How’s he faring?’
‘From what I hear I reckon my master is the luckiest man alive. And though I’m only a young lad, I’d relish it as much as he,’ Tristán yelled back.
‘Anyone would be happy to have their hand on that jewel. But the spit’s hot and it might burn him yet. Two lads have already gone into this love’s gravy.’
‘He’s forgotten them already. You can die serving this lot, risk your all thinking they will defend you! Live with a count but don’t count on his bounty was my mother’s advice. Look at them hugging and kissing when his servants are dead and beheaded.’
‘My life and my lord! How could you take my virgin’s name and crown jewel for such a short-lived pleasure? How I’ve sinned! If my mother finds out, you must kill yourself and take me with you! You must be the cruel executioner of your own self! How I would lament the end of your days! I’ve ruined my father’s good name and given him every reason to destroy his household! I’ve betrayed them! Why didn’t I see my downfall would follow your entry here, or the great danger looming?’
‘You should have thought about that before. All women know praying to undo what’s done is pointless. And Calisto just lies there listening,’ railed Sosia.
‘Ah, dawn is about to break. It can’t be true. It feels as if I’ve been here only an hour and it’s already ringing three o’clock.’
‘My lord, for God’s sake, now I’m all yours, now I’m your lover, you can’t deny my love or deny me sight of you. You can come every night you want to our secret place at this time and I’ll be waiting for you, feeling the thrill of this lingering pleasure, waiting for the nights to come. And now may God go with you and nobody see you. It’s very dark and nobody will hear me at home, because dawn has yet to break.’
‘Boys, put the ladder in place.’
‘Master, it’s there already. Get down.’
‘Lucrecia, come here, I’m by myself. My lord has gone. He leaves his heart with me and takes mine with him. Were you listening to us?’
‘No, my lady, I was fast asleep.’
‘Tristán, we must walk quietly and not say a word, because this is a time when the rich get up, along with those on the make, worshippers in shrines, monasteries and churches, lovers like our master, farmers, peasants and shepherds bringing sheep to these pens to be milked. If not, they might glean something to dishonour him and Melibea.’
‘You little horse-scratcher, you say, “keep quiet”, then speak her name! You’d be a good captain leading your men into Moorish territory at night! That way, you prohibit yet allow; conceal yet reveal; protect yet attack; are silent, yet shout; ask yet give answers. If you’re such a clever bee, why not tell me the month in which Holy Mary falls, and then we’ll know if we’ve enough straw for your fodder this year?’
‘My concerns and yours are different. Come in silently, so nobody hears us. Shut that door and let’s all rest. I’ll go to my bedroom by myself. I’ll take my own weapons off. You both go to bed.’
‘I’m so wretched! I naturally prefer anguish, silence and darkness! I don’t know if I feel like this because I’m recalling my treachery in abandoning my lady love before daybreak, or because my dishonour’s now filling me with sorrow. Ay! Ay! That’s the wound I feel, now that it’s gone cold, now the blood that was boiling yesterday has turned to ice, now I see the collapse of my household, my lack of servants, the loss of my inheritance, and the infamy the execution of my servants brings on me! What have I done? How can I hold back now? Why didn’t I immediately show myself as the man who’d been terribly insulted, swiftly and proudly avenging the manifest injustice done to his reputation? A dire twist in this life that is so short! Who can desire you so much he wouldn’t rather meet sudden death than endure a year of being pilloried and dishonour that will spread to the fine reputations of his ancestors? Especially as there’s never any let-up, any end in sight, not for a single moment. We’re debtors with no deadline, and always being forced to pay up. Why didn’t I go and investigate the truth about the hidden cause of my downfall? Fleeting pleasures of this world, your sweet ecstasies are short-lived. And cost dear! Regret comes cheap. I’m so depressed! When shall I right my great loss? What can I do? Who can advise me? Who can I tell of my loss? Why do I hide all this from my other servants and relatives? It’s the talk of the town but my own people have yet to hear. I want to go out, but if I go out and say I was here, it’s far too late in the day. If I was away, it’s far too early. I need time to prepare my friends and old servants, relatives and colleagues, time to find weapons and other instruments to wreak my revenge.
‘Cruel judge, how poorly you repaid the bread you ate from my father’s table! I thought I could kill a thousand men and escape punishment knowing you’d turn a blind eye. You traitor, you enemy of truth, you man of little class! It’s surely right what they say that they made you mayor for lack of anyone better. You should have remembered how you served my ancestors and me and so were a colleague of those you killed. But when a criminal’s rich, he has neither friends nor relatives. Who’d have thought you’d destroy me! Nobody is more dangerous than the surprise enemy. Why do you think people say: “Lava burns the volcano’s side”, or, “I bred the crow that pecked my eyes out”? You’re the public criminal and killed men whose crimes were private. You should know private crime is less evil than public crime, and less dangerous, according to the laws of Athens, that weren’t written in blood. They show in fact that it’s a lesser failing to sentence bandits than to punish the innocent. It’s dangerous to pursue a just cause with an unjust judge! All the more so in this excess committed by servants, who weren’t blameless.
‘But if you have done wrong, there is a court on earth and in heaven: you will be a criminal before God and king, and before me you will be the principal enemy. Did one sin simply because of what the other did? Did you kill them both simply because he was his companion? What am I saying? Who am I talking to? Am I in my right mind? What’s the matter with you, Calisto? Are you dreaming, asleep or awake? Standing or supine? You’re in your bedroom. Can’t you see the culprit’s not here? Who are you speaking to? Come to your senses. That absent fellow may be in the right. Hear both sides before you deliver your judgement. Don’t you know that when carrying justice out you must forget friendship, family or servants? Don’t you know the law should be the same for everyone? Look at Romulus, founder of Rome, who killed his own brother because he ignored what the law said. Or the Roman Torquatus who killed his son because he acted outside the law of the tribunes. Many others have done as much. Imagine the judge were here, he’d say accomplice and killer deserved the same punishment, even if he killed both as a result of the sin one committed, and if he ordered their execution so quickly, it was because the crime was obvious and no investigation was necessary. They were caught in the act of murder and one had already fallen to his death. You must also think how the sad tears of Celestina’s servant must have spurred him on, and that he didn’t want to create a fuss and damage my reputation by waiting until people were up and around to hear great infamy that implicated me being proclaimed. That’s why he ordered an early morning execution, and the executioner only had to announce the execution and see justice done. If that is why he acted as he did, I think I will be in his debt as long as I live, and he’s no longer my father’s servant but a true brother.
‘Even if this weren’t the case, even if you can’t see the past in the best of lights, remember, Calisto, last night’s pleasures, your gentle lady and your joy. And your life isn’t in pawn to your servants, so you don’t have to rue their deaths, and no grieving can equal the pleasure you felt. My lady! My life! I didn’t mean to offend you by leaving so soon. Don’t think I don’t value the gift you gave me. I don’t want to think that anger or sadness is entering our friendship. What ecstasy we had! I couldn’t ask God for a greater reward than what I’ve been given! Don’t I have a right to be happy? I can’t be ungrateful to a woman who’s given me so much. I must keep this in mind. I don’t want anger to drive me crazy and endanger such a fine possession. I don’t want other honours, glories or riches, another father or mother, other friends or relatives. I shall spend my days in my chambers and my nights in that sweet paradise, in that pleasant bower on lush green grass among welcoming shrubs.
‘If only the peace of night would come quickly! Golden Phoebus, hurry along your usual path! Twinkling stars, spread out early. I see the clock burning slow in love’s bright flame! If you’d been waiting to twelve like me, you’d ignore your maker’s wishers. And wintry months, that hide now, would return with their long nights and exchange them for these eternal days! It already seems like a year since I found a blissful shelter and exquisite balm for my woes. But what do I want now? What are you asking for, you impatient fool? What never was and can never be.
Nature’s cycles can’t decide to switch their order. They have a set pace, a habitual space, a fixed term for life and death in the heavenly firmament’s secret movements above the planets and the North Star, in the moon’s monthly waxing and waning. The same restraint rules and the same spur triggers all: sky, earth, sea, fire, wind, heat, and cold. What do I gain if the iron clock strikes twelve and the sky’s clock doesn’t? However early you rise, dawn doesn’t break any the sooner.
‘But, dear imagination, you do have the power to help me. Bring to my dreams the angel presence of her radiant face, to my ears the gentle sound of her words and reluctant pleasuring, “Away from me, master, don’t come near me”, or “Don’t be so rude”. I saw her red lips say, “Don’t seek to ruin me”; and then the amorous embraces between words; the way she let me go, then seized me; fled and came; her sugared kisses; the final greeting with which she bid me farewell: how sadly it departed her lips, her puckering lips, her tears that fell like silent drops of dew from her sparkling eyes.’
‘Tristán, do you think Calisto is all right? Look how long he’s been asleep. It’s four in the afternoon and he’s still not called us or even eaten!’
‘Shush, sleep’s not in a rush. Besides, he’s sad because of what happened to his lads and full of pleasure because of what he shared with Melibea. The two extremes are bound to affect a lean fellow like him.’
‘Do you think he’s really grieving over the dead? That woman grieves more I can now see walking down our street as I look out of this window, or she’d not wear clothes that colour.’
‘Come and take a look before she turns the corner. What wailing! What wiping away of tears. It’s Elicia, Celestina’s servant and Sempronio’s friend, a very pretty lass, although that sinner woman is done for now. Celestina was her mother and Sempronio her best friend. And a very lovely, lively madam lives in the house she’s now entering, and anyone who befriends her and gets her on the cheap is a lucky man. Her name is Areúsa. And I know she gave wretched Pármeno no more than three miserable nights, she can’t be very happy that he’s dead.’
