The Life of Lazarillo of Tormes: His Fortunes and Misfortunes as Told by HimselfAnonymous
General
The Life of Lazarillo of Tormes: His Fortunes and Misfortunes as Told by Himself
Anonymous
Picaresque literature, Spanish; Spain -- Social conditions -- 16th century -- Fiction; Spanish fiction -- Translations into English
And it happened that as we were coming to a place called Almorox
when they were gathering the grapes, a grape picker gave him a
bunch as alms. And since the baskets are usually handled pretty
roughly and the grapes were very ripe at the time, the bunch
started to fall apart in his hand. If we had thrown it in the
sack, it and everything it touched would have spoiled. He
decided that we'd have a picnic so that it wouldn't go to waste--
and he did it to please me, too, since he'd kicked and beat me
quite a bit that day. So we sat down on a low wall, and he said:
"Now I want to be generous with you: we'll share this bunch of
grapes, and you can eat as many as I do. We'll divide it like
this: you take one, then I'll take one. But you have to promise
me that you won't take more than one at a time. I'll do the same
until we finish, and that way there won't be any cheating."
The agreement was made, and we began. But on his second turn,
the traitor changed his mind and began to take two at a time,
evidently thinking that I was doing the same. But when I saw
that he had broken our agreement, I wasn't satisfied with going
at his rate of speed. Instead, I went even further: I took two
at a time, or three at a time--in fact, I ate them as fast as I
could. And when there weren't any grapes left, he just sat there
for a while with the stem in his hand, and then he shook his head
and said, "Lazaro, you tricked me. I'll swear to God that you
ate these grapes three at a time."
"No, I didn't," I said. "But why do you think so?"
That wise old blind man answered, "Do you know how I see that you
ate them three at a time? Because I was eating them two at a
time, and you didn't say a word."
I laughed to myself, and even though I was only a boy, I was very
much aware of the sharpness of that blind man.
But, so that I won't talk too much, I won't tell about a lot of
humorous and interesting things that happened to me with my first
master. I just want to tell about how we separated, and be done
with him.
We were in Escalona, a town owned by the duke of that name, at an
inn, and the blind man gave me a piece of sausage to roast for
him. When the sausage had been basted and he had sopped up and
eaten the drippings with a piece of bread, he took a coin out of
his purse and told me to go get him some wine from the tavern.
Then the devil put an idea in my head, just like they say he does
to thieves. It so happened that near the fire there was a little
turnip, kind of long and beat up; it had probably been thrown
there because it wasn't good enough for stew.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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