Basilio’s Trick

What you will learn

• Concede a point and carry on making yours, using aunque.
• Choose between indicative and subjunctive after aunque according to what you know.
• Follow a twist in the plot told in long sentences.

Before you read

The story in easy Spanish

Aunque el prado estaba lleno de gente y de música, se hizo un silencio grande cuando el cura salió a casar a los novios.

Although the meadow was full of people and music, a great silence fell when the priest came out to marry the couple.

Camacho iba vestido de fiesta, con una pluma muy larga en el sombrero y las manos llenas de anillos.

Camacho was in his festive best, with a very long feather in his hat and his hands covered in rings.

Quiteria, muy pálida, miraba al suelo y no levantó los ojos ni una sola vez en toda la ceremonia.

Quiteria, very pale, kept her eyes on the ground and did not look up once in the whole ceremony.

Nadie hablaba de Basilio, aunque todos pensaban en él y miraban de reojo hacia los árboles del prado.

Nobody spoke of Basilio, although everyone was thinking of him and glancing sideways towards the trees of the meadow.

Entonces apareció entre aquellos árboles un hombre delgado, vestido de negro, que se apoyaba en un bastón muy largo.

Then a thin man appeared among those trees, dressed in black, leaning on a very long staff.

Aunque no dijo su nombre ni se descubrió la cara, todos lo reconocieron en cuanto se acercó al altar.

Although he did not give his name or uncover his face, everyone recognised him the moment he came near the altar.

Basilio se puso delante de los novios y pidió que lo escuchasen un momento, aunque fuese el último de su vida.

Basilio stood in front of the couple and asked them to hear him out for a moment, even if it were the last one of his life.

Dijo que no venía a estorbar la boda, sino a mirarla desde cerca y a despedirse de una vez.

He said he had not come to stop the wedding but to watch it from close up and take his leave for good.

Dijo también que Quiteria era libre de casarse con quien quisiera, aunque él la hubiera querido desde niño.

He also said that Quiteria was free to marry whomever she pleased, even though he had loved her since childhood.

Y que, aunque el mundo entero lo llamase loco, no pensaba vivir un día más que aquel.

And that, although the whole world might call him mad, he did not intend to live a day beyond that one.

Sacó del bastón un estoque escondido, puso el pomo en el suelo y se dejó caer sobre la punta.

He drew a hidden rapier out of the staff, set the pommel on the ground and let himself fall onto the point.

La hoja le salió por la espalda y el hombre quedó tendido en la hierba, bañado en sangre.

The blade came out through his back and the man lay stretched on the grass, covered in blood.

Allí se quedó, llamando a Quiteria con una voz que cada vez se oía menos.

There he stayed, calling Quiteria’s name in a voice that grew harder and harder to hear.

Los músicos callaron de golpe y en todo el prado solo se oyó el ruido del aceite hirviendo.

The musicians stopped dead and in the whole meadow the only sound left was the boiling oil.

Todos corrieron a levantarlo, aunque el cura les gritó que no lo movieran de donde estaba.

Everyone ran to lift him up, although the priest shouted at them not to move him from where he was.

Basilio pidió, con voz apagada, que Quiteria le diese la mano de esposa antes de que él muriese.

Basilio asked, in a faint voice, that Quiteria give him her hand as his wife before he died.

Dijo que así moriría cristianamente, aunque fuese solo por un instante y aunque él no llegase vivo a la noche.

He said that he would die a Christian that way, even if only for an instant and even if he did not live to see nightfall.

Camacho protestó y dijo que aquello era una comedia bien ensayada y no una desgracia de verdad.

Camacho protested and said that this was a well rehearsed piece of theatre and not a real misfortune.

Don Quijote intervino y dijo que aquella mano se daba a un moribundo y no a un marido.

Don Quixote stepped in and said that the hand was being given to a dying man and not to a husband.

Añadió que, aunque la ceremonia fuese verdadera, la viudez llegaría mucho antes que el banquete.

He added that, although the ceremony would be genuine, widowhood would arrive long before the banquet.

El cura, viendo tanta sangre en la hierba, los casó allí mismo y sin discutir más.

The priest, seeing so much blood on the grass, married them there and then without arguing further.

En cuanto acabaron las palabras, Basilio se puso en pie de un salto y se sacó el estoque del pecho.

The instant the words were finished, Basilio leapt to his feet and pulled the rapier out of his chest.

Se quedó de pie delante de todos, sano, entero y sonriente, con la espada limpia en la mano.

He stood there in front of everyone, sound, whole and smiling, with a clean sword in his hand.

Llevaba bajo la ropa un canuto de hierro lleno de sangre, escondido desde antes de salir de casa.

Under his clothes he was wearing an iron tube full of blood, hidden there before he left the house.

Lo había preparado a fin de que la hoja no le tocase la carne en ningún momento.

He had arranged it so that the blade would never touch his flesh at any point.

Los amigos de Camacho sacaron las espadas, aunque el novio burlado fue el primero en calmarlos a todos.

Camacho’s friends drew their swords, although the jilted bridegroom was the first to calm them all down.

Dijo que quien quiere lo ajeno se queda sin lo propio y que el banquete ya estaba pagado.

He said that whoever wants what is another’s ends up with nothing of his own, and that the banquet was already paid for.

Aunque la boda no era la suya, mandó que se sirviera la comida y que siguiese la música.

Although the wedding was not his, he ordered the food to be served and the music to go on.

Se comió y se bailó igual, aunque sin los novios, que ya iban camino del pueblo de Basilio.

They ate and danced all the same, although without the newlyweds, who were already on the road to Basilio’s village.

Sancho, que no entendía nada de todo aquello, se quedó del lado de las ollas.

Sancho, who understood none of any of it, stayed on the side of the cooking pots.

Vocabulary

The hidden sword

el estoque

the rapier

la hoja

the blade

el pomo

the pommel

la punta

the point

el bastón

the walking staff

el canuto

the tube

atravesar

to run through

el pecho

the chest

Dying, or pretending to

el moribundo

the dying man

tendido

stretched out

apagado

faint

bañado en sangre

covered in blood

la viudez

widowhood

ensayado

rehearsed

sano

unhurt

la treta

the trick

The wedding that changes hands

el altar

the altar

el anillo

the ring

estorbar

to get in the way of

burlado

made a fool of

lo ajeno

what belongs to another

lo propio

what is one’s own

de reojo

out of the corner of the eye

calmar

to calm down

Aunque: one word, two moods

Aunque el prado estaba lleno de gente, se hizo un silencio grande.

Pidió que lo escuchasen, aunque fuese el último momento de su vida.

Aunque la ceremonia fuese verdadera, la viudez llegaría antes que el banquete.

Every aunque does the same job: it hands the other side a point and then goes on regardless. The choice of mood does not change that job. It changes what you are claiming about the point you handed over.

1. Indicative: you are informing

Aunque el prado estaba lleno de gente, se hizo un silencio grande. The reader does not yet know the meadow was full. The narrator is telling him, and telling takes the indicative. If you can put and by the way in front of the aunque clause, it is indicative.

2. Subjunctive: you are conceding

Aunque la ceremonia fuese verdadera, la viudez llegaría antes que el banquete. Don Quixote is not informing anybody that the ceremony is genuine. Everyone standing there can see it. He is granting it, in order to knock it down. That is concession, and concession takes the subjunctive even when the fact is beyond doubt.

3. Subjunctive: you are supposing

Aunque el mundo entero lo llamase loco, no pensaba vivir un día más. Nobody has called him mad yet. This is a hypothesis, and hypotheses take the subjunctive in every language that still has one.

A rough but reliable shortcut while the distinction settles: if English says even if, Spanish uses the subjunctive. If English says although and is giving you news, Spanish uses the indicative. If English says although about something already established, Spanish still prefers the subjunctive, and that is the case English speakers miss.

The same rule runs through the other concessive connectors: a pesar de que, por más que, aun cuando, and por mucho que. And note the pair aun and aún: without the accent it means even, with it, still.

A wedding Cervantes lets stand

A marriage performed under threat or by deceit was void under the law of the time, and any reader in 1615 knew it. Basilio lies to a priest at an altar, and Quiteria, who says almost nothing in the whole episode, gives her hand in the full knowledge that she is being asked for it by a man who has just staged his own death. Cervantes reports all of this and then declines to judge it. There is no punishment, no exposure and no moral. The trick works, the couple leave, and the chapter ends.

The strangest detail is Camacho. He has been publicly humiliated in front of three leagues of neighbours, his friends have their swords out, and he is the one who calms them down. His reasoning is not generous and Cervantes does not pretend it is. He observes that a man who wanted what was not his gets nothing, and that the banquet has been paid for, so it may as well be eaten. That is a farmer’s arithmetic, and it is the same arithmetic that bought him the bride in the first place.

Don Quixote, meanwhile, is the only person present who behaves entirely honestly. He argues that the marriage should stand and later defends Basilio in earnest, and he is deceived along with everyone else. It is worth noticing where the madness sits in this chapter. The knight who sees giants in windmills is the one taking the events at face value, and the sane villagers are the ones running a piece of theatre.

Cervantes in the original

ahora vivas largos años, ahora te lleven de mis brazos a la sepultura

whether you live long years, or whether they carry you from my arms to the grave

Quiteria says this in II, 21 at the moment she gives her hand, and it is the only substantial thing she says in the whole episode. Two things in it are worth the effort. The first is grammatical and is the point of this lesson from another angle: vivas and lleven are both subjunctives, and the sentence concedes both outcomes at once rather than asserting either. That is concession stated as a pair, and it is exactly what aunque does when it takes the subjunctive. The second is ahora… ahora…, which here has nothing to do with time. In seventeenth century Spanish it works as a disjunction, whether… or…, where modern Spanish would say ya sea… ya sea…. And there is a third thing, which is not grammar at all. She says it before she knows the wound is a fake, and she says it having watched a man kill himself for her at her own wedding. Whether she believes him is a question Cervantes leaves entirely open, and readers have been arguing about it for four hundred years.