022. The Dwarf (El Enano)
Once upon a time there was a student who was courting a very beautiful girl, but the girl’s parents opposed their relationship because the student was poor. So life became increasingly difficult for the both of them and one day, [when] talking about their problems, the girl decided to secretly leave home with the student [e.g. elope] to get marry in a faraway chapel where no one would know who they were. So they agreed on this and, the next night at the agreed time, the girl looked out from her balcony and saw in the shadow a young man leading a horse by its reins. She threw her [packed] belongings over the balcony and said to the young man:
Take these belongings [of mine] and help me get down.
The young man took her belongings and loaded them on his horse, then held the rope by which the girl used to lower herself down, settled her on the horse’s hindquarters, mounted himself and rode off.
The girl was puzzled by the student’s silence, who did not speak [a word] to her, but she said nothing [of this]. And when the day’s first light broke out, at which time they were still riding [on the horse], she saw that her companion was not her beloved but an unknown young man and, on realizing this, she said:
For God’s sake, señor, it is not with you that I wanted to run away with! Please don’t go on, leave me here!
The young man left her by the side of the road with her belongings. And she was all alone and heartbroken without knowing what to do when some shepherds appeared and they were astonished upon seeing her, for she seemed to them as beautiful as the Virgin herself; and on seeing her precariousness, they took her with them. In the village where the shepherds lived was a childless couple, who accepted to take the girl into their home and treated her real well and with great affection. They did not want the girl to do the shepherding work, but she insisted [on doing such work] and began to go to the mountain every day with the other shepherdesses from the village.
That village belonged to a kingdom where a king lived in a magnificent palace. However, the villagers had been frightened for some time by the things that were happening in the palace. And it was [because] that, every night, one person from the kingdom had to go and sleep in the princess’s room. They would choose a person by lot each day and, in the next morning, that person would wake up dead. No one knew why this happened and it caused great dismay and unhappiness in the kingdom.
[Nguyen: I’m not sure if you can have someone “wake up dead”, which is the literal translation here. Or perhaps “would be found dead” is better in this context?]
And as luck would have it, one day the girl’s foster mother was designated to go to the palace to sleep in the princess’s room. And when the girl found out, she said:
I won’t allow anyone from this house to go to the palace to sleep in the princess’s bedchamber, so I will go [myself]!
And without further ado, she presented herself at the palace on the designated day. The king, when he saw her, said:
I cannot permit such a beautiful young woman to die. Let it be the person whom fate had designated to sleep with the princess [to do the deed].
The girl was headstrong and did not bend her will easily, so she insisted and insisted to the king in such a way and with such conviction that, in the end, the king had no choice but to agree.
So the girl went up to the princess’s bedchamber and stayed there. As the night wore on, she became so sleepy that she was on the point of falling asleep. But the girl was so willful that she determined to not fall asleep to find out what happened during the night, and she managed to overcome her sleepiness after great effort.
And it was past midnight when, pretending to sleep, she was able to see a secret door opened and a dwarf entered through it, who then went to the princess and thrust a pin behind her ear. And the poor princess began to scream out:
Oh My God, they are burning me! They are scalding me!
After a while she seemed to have calmed down, and then she approached the dwarf and said to him:
For God’s sake, I beg you not to kill that girl who is sleeping here [tonight].
And the dwarf answered her:
I cannot placate you[r wish], for I have to kill her like [I did to] the others.
And the princess insisted:
Don’t kill her, for she is a very beautiful girl.
The dwarf went to where the girl slept, observed her for a few moments and then said:
Certainly she is very beautiful, the most beautiful of those who had come to this bedchamber, so for that alone I will not kill her until dawn breaks.
Then the dwarf returned to the princess and drove [thrust] the pin he had stuck behind her ear a little further. The princess seemed to lose consciousness and the dwarf disappeared through the secret door.
Then the girl, who had been watching it all, got up to investigate what was behind the secret door. And as the dwarf had left it ajar, she passed through it with stealth and found herself in another room. And there the dwarf was busily writing on some papers, which he first filled out, and then read them aloud, and then threw them into a cauldron which he had placed on a fire.
Each time he threw a piece of paper into the cauldron, blue flames would come out of it and the princess could be heard shouting:
Aye, I am burning! Aye, I am scalding.
At last the dwarf got tired of casting these spells and laid down to sleep on a rickety, old bed next to the cauldron. And on seeing this, the girl approached him very carefully and when she was next to the cauldron, she knocked it over and spilled its content over the dwarf, who was scalded and died right then and there.
The girl [then] immediately ran to the princess’s side and pulled out the pin that was thrust into her, and the princess woke up as if she [just] came back from a deep sleep and was healed at once.
At the hour when they came to pick up the corpse of the person who had slept with the princess every morning, the servants entered and found the girl safe and sound next to the princess, and they ran off to tell the king. The king, once he had heard the girl’s account of what had happened, he commanded her feat to be proclaimed through out the kingdom. And, traveling to and fro, the news reached the ears of the student, who was desperately searching for the girl. And as soon as he went to see her, the girl received him with great joy and they got married, and their adventure ended here.
—– VOCABULARY —–
Abrasar – (to scald) to burn; (to blaze) to burn
Acomodar – to seat
Acompañante – companion, partner
Acudir – (to attend) to go to
Afanosamente – (persistently) digilently; (frantically) feverishly
Amanecer – dawn, daybreak; (to begin the day) to wake up
Asomar – to stick out, to lean out; to come out, to appear
Atemorizar – (to cause fear) to frighten, to intimidate
Aún – still, yet
Avanzar – to advance, to move forward
Averiguar – to find out, to discover
Caldero – cauldron
Camastro – rickety, old bed
Cansarse – to get tired, to get bored
Capilla – chapel
Cariño – affection, fondness, care
Ciertamente – indeed, certainly
Clavar – (to force) to hammer, to drive, to thrust, to pin
Comenzar – to begin, to start
Complacer – to please, to placate; complacerse – to take pleasure in
Consentir – to allow, to permit
Consternación – consternation, dismay
Convenir – (to be desirable) to be advisable;
Cortejar – to court, to woo
Cuerda – rope, string
Darse cuenta de – to realize
Desconsolado – disconsolate, heartbroken, inconsolable
Desde hacía tiempo – for a long time
Desesperado – desperate
Diciéndole – telling him
Doblegar – to defeat, to vanquish, to crush; to get over, to break, to overcome
Doblegarse – (to submit oneself) to yield, to give in
Embrujo – (bewitchment) curse, spell
Empeñarse – to insist on, to make an effort
Enterarse – to discover, to find out
Entornado/a – ajar
Esfuerzo – effort; (physics) force; (engineering) stress
Estudiante – student, pupil
Fingir – to pretend, to feign
Gritar – to scream, to shout
Grupa – (animal anatomy) hindquarters, rump
Hazaña – (achievement) feat, exploit
Hincar – to thrust, to drive, to bury, to stick
Indagar – to investigate, to inquire into
Infelicidad – unhappiness
Llama – flame
Maravillarse – to be amazed, to be astonished
No sigas – no need to go on, stop!
Ocuparse – to deal with, to be in charge of
Oponerse – (to be against) to oppose;
Oreja – ear
Pertenecer – to belong to
Precariedad – (instability) precariousness
Pregonar – (to declare) to proclaim, to announce
Pues – since, because; then, well
Quemar – to burn, to set fire to
Quiso – (querer) s/he wanted
Quiso la suerte – as luck
Sana y salva – safe and sound
Sanar – to cure, to heal
Sentido – consciousness; (context) sense, meaning
Sigilo – stealth, secrecy
Sombra – shadow, shade
Sorteo – (lottery for a prize) draw, raffle, lots
Sujetar – (to grasp) to hold; to fasten, to hold in place
Sueño – dream; sleepy, tiredness
Tozudo/a – stubborn, obstinate
Traspasar – (to penetrate) to go through
Vera – (border) side, edge
Verter – (to move into or out of a container) to pour, to spill, to shed
Volcar – to knock over; to spill
Voluntarioso/a – headstrong, willful
Y sin más – and without further; and without delay
Ya – (in the past) already; (in the present) now