Opportunity makes the thief.And when the fishermen realized they had such a good opportunity,they grabbed it lock,stock,and barrel.When they saw that so many people were gathering around the new fish,they decided to win back what they had lost when they cut the rope from my foot.So they sent word to the ministers of the Inquisition,asking permission to show a fish with a man's face through all of Spain.And when they offered those gentlemen a present of the best fish they had caught,they were given that permission immediately.Meanwhile,our friend Lazaro was thanking God for having taken him out of the belly of the whale.(And that was a great miracle since my ability and knowledge were not very good,and I swam like a lead brick.)
Four of the fishermen grabbed hold of me,and they seemed more like executioners--the kind that crucified Christ--than men.They tied up my hands,and then they put a mossy wig and beard on me,and they didn't forget the mustache:I looked like a garden statue.They wrapped my feet in seaweed,and I saw that they had dressed me up like a stuffed and trussed trout.Then I began to groan and moan over my troubles,complaining to fate or fortune:Why are you always pursuing me?I have never seen or touched you,but if a man can tell the cause by the effects,I know from my experience with you that there is no siren,basilisk,viper,or lioness with her young more cruel than you are.By flattery and caresses you lift men up to the height of your riches and pleasures and then hurtle them into the abyss of all their misery and calamities,and their depths are as low as your favors were high.
One of those cutthroats heard my soliloquy,and with a rasping voice he said to me,"If you say another word,Mr.Tunafish,we'll salt you along with your friends,or we'll burn you as a monster.The Inquisition,"he continued,"has told us to take you through the village and towns in Spain and to show you off to everyone as a wonder and monster of nature."
I swore to them that I was no tuna,monster,or anything out of the ordinary.I said that I was a man just like everyone else,and that if I had come out of the ocean it was because I had fallen into it along with the men who drowned while going to make war on Algiers.But they were deaf men,and even worse,because they didn't want to hear.When I saw that my begging was as useless as the soap they use to wash an ass's head,I became patient and waited for time--which cures everything--to cure my trouble,knowing it all came from suffering through that damned metamorphosis.
They put me in a barrel cut in half,made to look like a brigantine.Then they filled it with water that came up to my lips as I sat in it.I couldn't stand up because they had my feet tied with a rope,and one end of it came out between the mesh of that hairy mess of mine so that if I made so much as a peep,they would make me hop and sink like a frog and drink more water than a person with dropsy.I would keep my mouth closed until I felt whoever was pulling on the rope let it go slack.Then I would stick my head out like a turtle,and I learned by what happened to my own.
They showed me like this to everyone,and so many people came to see me (each one paying twenty coppers)that they made two hundred pieces of silver in one day.The more money they made the more they wanted,and they began to be very concerned about my health so they could prolong it.They held a summit conference and discussed whether or not they should take me out of the water at night:they were afraid that with all the wet and cold it might cut my life short,and they loved mine more than their own (because of all the profit they were getting from mine).They decided to keep me in the water all the time because they thought the force of habit would change my nature.So poor Lazaro was like a string of wet rice or the binding on a raft.
I leave to the dear reader's imagination what I went through in this situation:here I was,a captive in this free land,in chains because of the wickedness of those greedy puppeteers.The worst part about it,and what tormented me most,was that I had to pretend to be mute when I really wasn't.I wasn't even able to open my mouth because the instant I did my guard was so alert that without anyone being able to see him,he would fill me up with water,afraid that I would talk.
My meals were dunked bread that the people who came to see me threw in so they could watch me eat.So for the six months I spent in that cooler I didn't get another damned thing to eat:I was dying of hunger.I drank tub water,and since it wasn't very clean it was all the more nourishing--especially because its coldness gave me attacks of diarrhea that lasted me as long as that watery purgatory did.
