Читать книгу Don Quixote and Me - Donald Barr - Страница 8

Chapter 2

In which we meet a strange knight in a strange place

I didn’t know what to do. Part of me wanted to knock my bookshelf onto the floor. It seemed as if no one understood how important those books are to me, and how important knights used to be. I knew one thing, though. I didn’t want to stay in my room any more. For all I cared, the evil wizard who had made my books disappear might as well have made my room disappear, too. I didn’t even want to be in the house. I just wanted to get outside.

Without thinking about where I was going, I started walking downtown. I was hoping I wouldn’t see any of my friends from school. They’d probably just laugh at me if I tried to explain what’d happened. I sat down on the steps of a building and began to think about Sir Edwin and Lady Hillary. Were they going to get married? What would Sir Edwin’s next challenge be? Would Hillary’s father send him off on a quest before he let him marry her?

I’ve seen what happens to stuff taken to the recycling center. It all gets shredded up and made into shopping bags. I would never see my books again, and I would never find out what was going to happen to Sir Edwin. Wikipedia thinks Sir Edwin is some guy who designs buildings.

Just about then I noticed that the people walking up and down the stairs where I was sitting were holding books in their arms. Of course! I was sitting on the steps of the public library. They’d have books about knights. My mom couldn’t stop me from reading library books, and she certainly wouldn’t take them to the recycling center. I had no idea where they would keep their books on knights, so I asked the lady at the front desk.

“Knights… Well, let’s see. You might look in the history section. Then again, maybe what you really want is the fiction section. What kind of knight books did you want?”

“You know, things like King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, and Sir Lancelot, and Sir Edwin, and Amadis of Gaul. The real stuff.”

“Oh, I see, that type of knight.” A funny look came over her face. “Why don’t you try talking with Mr. March. His desk is on the second floor.”

I went looking for Mr. March. The second floor was where they kept all the old books. I’d never been up there before, so I didn’t really know where to go. There was one big room at the top of the stairs. I looked all around the room. In one corner there was a man sitting behind a desk reading a big book with a red leather cover. He seemed kind of old—at least older than my mother. He was wearing a red sweater, but the thing I noticed most was his head. He was completely bald. When he looked up, his eyes were so gentle and sparkly it seemed as though he could see right into my thoughts.

“My, what a sad countenance!” He smiled.

“Huh?”

“Your face…it has sadness written all over it. What, pray tell, has happened?”

“Do you have any books about knights?”

“Of course I do. Is that what this grief is all about?”

“Yeah, I guess so. I used to have all these great books about knights, but my teacher and my Mom kept telling me I wasn’t supposed to read them. They said they were nothing but fantasy. My mom keeps saying there’s no such thing as knights, and that I’m wasting my time. She caught me reading one of the books at night, and my teacher caught me doing it again at school. They got together and said they were going to take all my books about knights to the recycling center. Even my favorite—the one about Sir Amadis of Gaul!”

He nodded his head and smiled. “The recycling center, eh? That must have wounded you severely.”

“I don’t know about being wounded, but I sure feel bruised and battered by it all. They had no business doing that. They were my books!”

“So now you’ve come to the library, hoping to find the same. Tell me, just why are these books so important to you?”

“Because they tell about important things about honor and dedication and chivalry and all the stuff knights used to stand for—things that people don’t believe in any more. All people think about these days is money and power. I don’t ever want to grow up and be like that. I want to find something I can believe in and strive for. That’s what knights were all about. They had something they believed in. Even if my mom and Mr. Priestly think it’s stupid, that’s what I want to be like.”

For a long time, Mr. March didn’t say anything. He just sat there looking at me, slowly tapping his fingers on the desk. Finally, he reached into a drawer and pulled out a little box. He took something out of the box and turned to look at me.

“If you’re sure that that’s what you want, then you may use this. But before you do, ask yourself if you really mean what you say, for the worst type of knight is the false knight. The true knight will stand by what he believes in and stick to his quest no matter what happens or what other people say. If you’re sure your belief is true, then this is what you’ll need.”

He held out an old key. His face had a different look on it know. Instead of smiling, his lips were pulled tight. Only the look in his eyes was the same.

It felt as though he was testing me some how. If I took the key, I would have to prove to him that I meant what I said—that I would stick to my beliefs even if my teacher got mad or my friends laughed at me. I knew deep down inside that honor and dedication were what the world needed most; that was what I was going to do. I reached out and took the key. For a key that wasn’t very big, it seemed awfully heavy. Maybe it was made of some kind of special metal.

“I believe you will find what you want in the room at the top of those stairs.” He pointed to an opening in the wall across from his desk. It’s funny, but I hadn’t noticed the opening before. I must not have looked very carefully.

The stairs were the metal kind that curved all around as you walked up them. At the top was a door with the word Errantry on it. I put the key in and turned it. As the lock made a loud click, it was almost as if I could feel something inside me click too—as if something had turned and opened.

Inside was a small room with a table and one chair. The walls were completely lined with old books—the kind Mr. March had been reading at his desk. I began to look at the books, and my heart skipped a beat. They were all about knights! I recognized a lot of them. There were the same books I used to have in my room. Now I could find out what happened to Sir Edwin and Lady Hillary.

On the table was a book that was larger and thicker than all the rest. Every time I began looking at the other books on the shelves, it seemed as though my eyes were drawn back to the one on the table. Finally I sat down and opened it.

The Adventures of the Ingenious Gentleman,

Don Quixote of La Mancha

by Miguel de Cervantes

I turned the page and began to read.

To he who reads this book—You must know by my very oath that I have tried to make this book the most beautiful book you can imagine; the liveliest, the cleverest, the most interesting book you could hope for. I have worked on it for a long time, and it has nearly worn out my mind.

Now, I don’t claim that Don Quixote, about whom this story is told, is a perfect knight. Like all of us, he has his weaknesses and his faults. He also, though, possesses a type of nobility that is rare among men of today. Permit me to tell you his story.

The book was weird. The first chapter started out with a bunch of poems, each about a different character. Some were about knights, some about sorceresses, some sounded like love poems. It took me a while to get through them. Then I finally got to the story.

Somewhere in Spain, in a place called La Mancha, a strange gentleman once lived. I call him strange because of the way he dressed, the way he talked, and the things he did. He wore an old wool shirt and velvet pants, with brightly colored stockings. He seemed to be about fifty years old. Perhaps the strangest thing about him is that he said he was a knight, and rode around on an old horse, claiming to be a knight.

No one knows where he got this idea. They think he probably got it from reading too many books about knights of old. He bought every book he could find about knights, and kept them in his room. He lived alone, and was cared for by a woman who was his housekeeper. His only family was his niece, who lived nearby. Seeing how often he pretended he was a knight, both his housekeeper and his niece often tried to get the books away from him. They never succeeded.

The first few chapters told how Don Quixote would put on an old suit of armor he had gotten somewhere, grab a wooden pole, and start riding his horse off into the countryside telling everyone that he was a knight. Some of the people he met laughed at him. Some didn’t know what to do when they saw him. He seemed silly; I felt sorry for him.

When I was just about to start the fourth chapter, I suddenly heard a loud noise right outside the door. It sounded as if men were arguing.

“Let the whole world declare that there is no maiden more beautiful and more virtuous than my lady, Dulcinea del Toboso!”

It sounded like an old man talking. Another, younger voice answered. “Sir Knight, we do not know who this lady is. If you’ll show her to us, we will gladly tell you how beautiful we think she is.”

It didn’t sound like Mr. March. Maybe someone else wanted to look at the knight books here. I put the book down and walked over to open the door. When I did, I almost fell over backwards. Instead of the stairs I had come up, the door opened onto a dirt road going through an open field with huge trees on either side. I looked all around to find the stairs, but they weren’t there. Only the road.

In the road were five or six men riding horses and pulling mules behind them. It looked as though the mules were carrying bundles of cloth and other things that the men were taking somewhere to sell. In the middle of the road another man, just about the strangest looking man I had ever seen, was blocking their way. He was also riding a horse but, instead of being big and strong like the salesmen’s, his horse was old and skinny. I had seen lots of people in Boise, but I had never seen anyone like him.

The man had on a suit of armor that was rusty in several places. On his head he wore some sort of a hat or a helmet that looked as if it were made of paper maché. All I could see of the man was his face. He looked as though he was about fifty or sixty years old, and he had a scraggly, grey beard. His eyes were blue, but the white parts were sort of red. He had a bruise on one of his cheeks and a black eye. He was holding a wooden pole that looked like a big broomstick, only he was pointing it at the salesmen.

“No,” he answered, “I won’t show her to you, because if I did, then it would be obvious that she is the most beautiful maiden in all the land. You must swear that she is most beautiful without the opportunity to cast your gaze upon her. Any who fail to do so must do battle with me. I will fight you one by one or all at once, it matters not!”

If this guy was going to try and fight six other guys all at once, he was going to be beaten pretty badly. It was clear he wasn’t a very good fighter. He was lucky just staying on his horse with all that rusty armor on.

“Sir Knight,” replied the leader of the salesmen, “I beg that you will at least show us a picture of this maiden, because it is not right to ask us to swear to the beauty of someone we have never even seen. I mean, what would happen if we swore she was beautiful and it turned out she was ugly, with watery eyes and a hump in her back?”

“Her eyes do not drip, you vile scoundrels! And she doesn’t have a hump-back. You shall pay for the blasphemy you have uttered regarding the fair Dulcinea. Prepare to do battle!”

With these words the knight (at least I assume he was a knight) lowered his lance (at least I think it was supposed to be a lance) and charged right at the leader of the salesmen. If the knight’s horse hadn’t stumbled and fallen, I suspect the salesman would have been run through. The knight fell off and rolled over two or three times. Every time he tried to get up, he was so tangled up in his shield, his lance, and his armor that he fell down again. After several tries, he simply lay down and yelled at the merchants, “Don’t run away, you cowards! Stay and fight! It’s not my fault that I lie here, but rather the fault of my horse.”

The leader of the salesmen finally lost his patience. He got down off his horse, grabbed the stick out of the knight’s hand, and broke it in two over his knee. He took one of the pieces and began to hit the knight with it.

There wasn’t anyone around to help. Even though the man with the stick was much bigger than me, I couldn’t just sit back and watch him beat the old guy to a pulp. I ran over and grabbed his arm. “Leave him alone! You can’t beat up an old man just ’cause he says some things you don’t like.”

The salesman looked at me for a while as though he was going to hit me. I put my arm in front of my face, but he dropped the stick and got back on his horse. He began to ride away, shaking his head and mumbling to himself. The other men followed him, laughing.

I looked around to see if I could find the door from the library, so I could get Mr. March to help this poor old man. There wasn’t any door! There wasn’t any library. There wasn’t anything, but trees and the dirt road. How the heck did I get here? Where was the library? And how was I going to get someone to help the old man? I guess it was up to me.

The old knight tried to get up off the ground, but after that guy beat him up, there was no way he was going to get up by himself. He finally gave up trying, and, of all things, began singing a song.

“Oh, where are you, my lady,

That you grieve not for my plight?

Either you know not of it

Or else you are faithless and light.”

I looked down at the knight. “Are you all right?”

“Ah, fair sir, of course I am all right. I may be bruised and battered, but I don’t think I have been wounded. Help me off with this armor so I can check.”

I helped him get the top half of his armor off. Then he was able to stand, and he looked all over himself.

“No, it is as I suspected. I have done the most famous deeds of chivalry in defense of the honor of my lady, Dulcinea, and have been protected by her blessing from the infliction of a serious wound. Did you witness, sir, how I banished those evil knights?”

“You mean the salesmen you were arguing with?”

“No, sir, not salesmen, they were evil knights, dressed in the blackest of armor, who had come from a distant land to do harm to my lady Dulcinea. I was able to thrash them soundly and send them back to where they came from.”

Him, thrash them? What was he talking about? He hadn’t even touched them. They were the ones who had thrashed him.

“Excuse me, sir… I mean, Sir Knight, but I think you’ve got things mixed up. It looked as though they thrashed you. And they weren’t knights. I think they were just salesmen on their way to market.”

At this the knight got red in the face. “What? Not knights? They thrashed me? Why, if you had been here to see it, you would have known that I speak the truth.”

“But I was here, and I saw the whole thing.”

“Why then, it is the work of the evil wizard again. He has cast a spell over you so all you could see was salesmen when in truth they were evil knights mounted on huge horses. This always happens. Whenever I do a good deed in the name of my lady Dulcinea, the evil wizard disguises my courage and my prowess to all who look on. It is my fate as a knight to carry out my quest without recognition for my feats of valor.”

Somehow I had to find my way back to the library. Maybe Mr. March could explain what was happening. But I couldn’t just leave the old guy all by himself.